A relationship with a sociopath is a traumatic experience. The definition of physical trauma is a serious injury or shock to the body, as with a car accident or major surgery. It requires healing.
On an emotional level, a trauma is wound or shock that causes lasting damage to the psychological development of a person. It also requires healing.
To some degree, we can depend on our natural ability to heal. But just as an untreated broken bone can mend crooked, our emotional systems may become “stuck” in an intermediate stage of healing. For example we may get stuck in anger, bitterness, or even earlier stages of healing, such as fear and confusion.
This article is about my personal ideas about the healing path for full recovery from the emotional trauma caused by a relationship with a sociopath. I am not a therapist, although I have training in some processes and theories of personal and organizational development. My ideas are also the result of years of research into personality disorders, creative and learning processes, family dynamics, childhood development, recovery from addictions and trauma, and neurological research.
After my five-year relationship with a man I now believe to be a sociopath, I was physically and emotionally broken down. I was also terrified about my condition for several reasons. In my mid-fifties, I was already seeing evidence of several age-related diseases. But more worrisome than the premature aging was my social incapacitation. I was unable to talk about myself without crying, unable to do the consultative work I lived on, desperately in need of comfort and reassurance, unable to trust my own instincts.
I had been in long-term relationships almost my entire life. My instinct was to find another one to help me rebuild myself. But I knew that there was no safe “relationship of equals” for me now. I was too messed up. No one would take on someone as physically debilitated and emotionally damaged as I was, without expecting to be paid for it. Likewise, I was afraid of my inclination to bond sexually. The only type of person I could imagine attracting was another predator who would “help” me while draining whatever was left of my material and financial resources.
My challenge
So, for the first time in my life, I made a decision to be alone. Knowing that the relationship with the sociopath had involved forces in my personality that were out of my control, I also decided that my best approach to this recovery was to figure out what was wrong with me and fix it. At the time, I did not understand my role in fostering this relationship, except that I couldn’t get out of it. But I knew that what happened to me with the sociopath wasn’t just about him. It was also about me.
I also made a decision to manage my own recovery. I made this decision for several reasons. One was that no one else really understood the mechanics of this relationship. My friends offered emotional support, but they were as confused as I was about his hold on me and why I could not extricate myself. Second, I found no meaningful assistance from therapists who seemed unable to grasp that this was a traumatic relationship. Third, everyone I knew wanted me to get over it and get on with my life, which was simply impossible to do.
So I was not only alone, but proceeding on a path that no one else supported. I’m not sure where I found the certainty that it was the right thing to do. But I was certain, and I held onto that certainty through the years it took. Today, when I’m essentially at the end of the process, except for the ongoing work on myself that has little to do with the sociopath anymore, I look back at it as the greatest gift I ever gave myself. It was the hardest thing I ever did. And in its own weird way, the most fun.
Here is where I started. I knew that I wanted to discover and neutralize the causes of my vulnerability. I knew that my vulnerabilities pre-dated the sociopath, although he had exploited them and made them worse. I felt like my battered state and particularly the sharp emotional pain gave me something to work with that was clear and concrete, and possibly the emergence from my subconscious of a lot buried garbage that had been affecting my entire life. Ultimately, I did engage a therapist to assist me in uncovering some childhood memories, and then went back to my own work alone.
My personal goal may have been more ambitious than others who come to this site. I not only wanted to heal myself from the damage of this relationship. I intended to accomplish a deep character transformation that would change the way I lived. Before I met him I was superficially successful, but I was also an over-committed workaholic with a history of relationship disasters. Except for a lot of unpublished poetry and half-written books, I had made no progress on lifelong desire to live as a creative writer. I wanted to come out of this as a strong, independent person who could visualize major goals and manage my resources to achieve them.
Because I had no model for what I was trying to do, I did things that felt very risky at the time. For example, I consciously allowed myself to become bitter, an emotion I never allowed myself to feel before, because I was afraid of getting stuck there. I’ll talk about some of these risks in future pieces — what I did and how it came out. I learned techniques that I hear other people talking about here on Lovefraud, things that really helped to process the pain and loss. Some of them I adapted from reading about other subjects. Some of them I just stumbled upon, and later learned about them from books, after I’d begun practicing them.
Though not all of us may think about our recovery as deep transformation work, I think all of us recognize that our beliefs, our life strategies and our emotional capacities have been profoundly challenged. We are people who are characteristically strong and caring. Personal characteristics that seemed “good” to us brought us loss and pain. After the relationship, our challenge is to make sense of ourselves and our world again, when what we learned goes against everything we believed in.
What I write here is not a model for going through this recovery alone. I say I did this alone, but I recruited a therapist when I needed help. I encourage anyone who is recovering from one of these relationships to find a therapist who understands the trauma of abusive relationships, and that recommendation is doubled if, like me, you have other PSTD issues.
The healing path
Given all that, this article is the first of a series about the process of healing fully. I believe that Lovefraud readers who are far down their own recovery paths will recognize the stages. Those who are just recently out of their relationships may not be able to relate to the later stages. But from my experience, my observations of other people’s recovery, and from reading the personal writings on Lovefraud, I think that all of our recovery experiences have similarities.
Since my own intention in healing was to figure out what was wrong with me and fix it, this recovery path is about self-healing, rather than doing anything to or about the sociopath. However there is a stage when we do want that. We want to understand who we were dealing with. We may want recognition of our victimization, revenge or just fair resolution. There is nothing wrong with feeling that way. It is a stage of recovery, and an important one.
My ideas owe a lot to the Kubler-Ross grief model, as well as to recovery processes related to childhood trauma, codependency and addiction. I also owe a great deal to the writing of Stephen M. Johnson, whose Humanizing the Narcissistic Affect and Characterological Transformation: the Hard Work Miracle provided invaluable insights and encouragement.
Here is the path as I see it.
1. Painful shock
2. Negotiation with pain
3. Recognition with the sociopath
4. Anger
5. Measurement of damage
6. Surrender to reality of damage
7. Review of identity after damage
8. Rebuilding life strategies
9. Practice
The words here are very dry, and I apologize for that. The experience, as we all know, is more emotional than intellectual, though it taxes our thinking heavily.
From what I’ve experienced and seen, some of these stages may occur simultaneously. We may feel like we’re in all of them, but working particularly in one stage more than the others. In my case, I often found that I was “going around and around the same mountain,” returning to a previous stage but at a higher level than before.
There is no specific mention of depression in this list. This is because I regard it as a kind of brown-out of our emotional system, when we are simply too overwhelmed by facts and feelings that conflict with our beliefs and identities. Depression can happen at any time in this path, but feelings of depression are most likely to occur in Stage 6. Terrible as depression may feel, I believe it is evidence of a deep learning process, where our conscious minds are resisting new awareness that is developing at a deeper level.
This path is a model of adult learning. It would be equally valid in facing and surmounting any major life change. If you are familiar with the Kubler-Ross grief model which was developed to describe the challenges involved with bereavement, this model will look familiar. It is essentially an extension of Kubler-Ross into a post-traumatic learning model. The trauma may be the loss of a loved one, a divorce, a job loss or change, or any of the major stressors of life.
This is all about learning and evolving. If the path is traveled to its end, we emerge changed but improved and empowered. We have given up something to gain something more. The fact that this change is triggered by trauma may cause us to think that it’s a bad thing for a while, but ultimately we come to realize that we have not only recovered from a painful blow, we have truly become more than we were before.
What drives us to heal
The future articles in this series will explore the stages, their value to us and how we “graduate” from one to the next.
Our struggle to get over this experience involves facing our pain, which is the flip side of our intuitive knowledge of we need and want in our lives. Those needs draw us through the recovery process, like beacons on a far shore guide a ship on a stormy sea. To the extent that we can bring these needs up into conscious awareness, we can move through the path more directly, because it programs our thinking to recognize what helps and what does not.
Here are a few ideas about where we think we’re going. I hope they will stimulate some discussion here, and that you will add your own objectives to the list.
1. To relieve the pain
2. To release our unhealthy attachment to the sociopath
3. To recover our ability to love and trust
4. To recover confidence that we can take care of ourselves
5. To recover joy and creativity in our lives
6. To gain perspective about what happened
7. To recover the capacity to imagine our own futures
Finally, I want to say again how grateful I am to be writing here on Lovefraud. As you all know, it is not easy to find anyone who understands our experience or what it takes to get over it.
I have been working on a book about this recovery path for several years. The ideas I’m presenting here have been developed in solitude, and “tested” to a certain extent in coaching other victims of sociopathic relationships who entered my life while I was working on my own recovery. But I’ve never had the opportunity before to share them with a group of people who really know and understand what I am talking about.
I respect every stage of the recovery path — the attitudes and voices of those stages, their perspectives and the value they provide to us. So if you find me more philosophic, idealistic or intellectual than you feel right now, believe me that I have been through every bit of it. If you had met at different places on the path, you would have found a stunned, weepy, embittered, distraught, outraged or depressed person. I was in the angry phase for a very long time. I had reason to feel that way, and it was the right way for me to be at the time.
I believe the stages are a developmental process that builds, one stage to the next, to make us whole. I also believe that this healing process is natural to us, and what I’m doing here is describing something that has been described by many people before me, but not necessarily in this context.
Your thoughts and feedback are very important to me.
Namaste. The healing wisdom in me salutes the healing wisdom in you.
Kathy
PS My therapist says the S could have suffered the same kind of trauma that I did, but one of us chose to be the victim and one of us chose to become a victimizer. I don’t know that I agree with that, but, another point of view.
justabouthealed:
Blame the victim. More bullshit from a therapist who doesn’t understand what sociopaths are all about. These creatures have no emotional core. They are hardwired to abuse, lie, manipulate, deceive, cheat and steal. None of us deserved what we got from our sociopaths. And shame on your therapist for trying to give any justification for your sociopath’s behavior toward you.
JAH,
I think you’re therapist was wrong about you or the S choosing to be one thing or another. Children go through specific developmental stages with specific risks of failure attached. That’s what the concept of “good enough parenting” is about. It sounds like it’s about whether the parent did one thing or another, but it’s really about whether the child made successful passage of early personality-formation states.
Matt, I’m surprised to see you writing this. There is plenty of research evidence about the impact on children — specifically in regard to development of anti-social behavior and bonding disorders — of traumatic environmental circumstances, such as growing up in a home with domestic violence.
The characteristic of the rigid baby or one that doesn’t like being touched is associated with autism as well as behavioral disorders. It’s a nervous system issue which creates hyper-sensitivity, sensory overload.
I feel like I’m pushing a boulder uphill here, but I think it’s important to recognize the causative factors that we can change. If we’re actually spawning sociopaths out of the womb at the rate we’re seeing them in society now, there’s been some major evolutionary mutation. I just don’t think that’s the case.
Going through the healing process, i have found myself hitting a wall – not being able to overcome “guilt” feeling.
Being hurted by ex, unconsciously and, for sure, unwillingly, i hurted my daughter. First, by not being able to “be there” for her when she needed me the most (early teenage ages), because i was destructed and dow to my pain, and secondly, by letting her be witnes of my dawnfall.
Now, after 5-6 years, she is grown person and not a chld anymore, i lost many opportunities (and many happy moments) to get close to her. We are not strangers, she still trust me and lay on me whenever she gets in some problems, but there is a transparent wall between two of us.
I think, that is something i will never be able to forgive, not to myself, not to my X.
It is MY FAULT, not his, that i allowed it happen. He sucked me slowly, mentaly and financially, and the true victim was my daughter, lacking so many things in her sensitive ages, lacking money and lacking my time spent with her, because i had to work all the day, all the night, in order to deliver “first class service”.
Was i sleeping, was i hipnotised, where the hell was my brain and my heart?
I am not that much considered how to heal my wounds, as i am considered how to fill that emptiness i left in her little heart/soul, during the time i was dedicated to please X.
Any help?
Just to add, i never neglected my parental duty, she had everything she needed, she was the best in school, she is great person every parent can dream his child to be, modest, honest, warm and caring. Maybe it is the reason it hurts so much to face the reality that i neglected an angel because of devil
ThornBud,
Hi, I’ve been reading your recent posts, and they reminded of things I went through. I have similar issues with my son.
The best I have done with this sort of thing is to understand that I was crazy — first with the obsessive, self-destructive relationship with the sociopath and then with depressive grief and self-hatred it created. Not beating myself up about being crazy, because I know how it happened. I’ve come to terms with my vulnerabilities and what they led me into. And I’m worked on going back into my history to heal these things, and make myself a stronger smarter person. But it doesn’t change the fact that at the time I was disordered.
I also don’t believe that it’s healthy for us or anyone we love if we feel this guilt. It confuses a lot of things inside of us, makes us uncertain of ourselves going forward, harder to rebuild ourselves and our lives.
So I’ve made a difference inside myself between guilt and sorrow. I’m really sorry, and it’s not something that I discuss with my son, unless he’s wants to discuss that period. I don’t want to burden him with these feelings of mine. I have an inner list of things I regret, things I wish I’d done differently in my life. It’s not a beat-myself-up list, but a list of lessons. If any good is going to come out of this, it is that I learned something from my mistakes and their repercussions.
I think that it means a lot to our children if we get well. Parents who are emotionally ill or simply unable to cope, no matter how much the children claim that they are going to be different, are a frightening harbinger of their own future. If we go through grief and come out the other side of it to rebuild our lives, we also offer them a model of processing true feelings and survival. Everyone’s life will include grief, and it’s good that they know it’s survivable and a good, happy life is on the other side of it.
Forgiving ourselves, too, is a good thing to model for them. Not saying it didn’t matter. It did, and we know it. But acknowledging that we made mistakes, taking the learning from them, apologizing to the people we might have hurt, and going on with changed behaviors. This is incredibly powerful stuff, showing that people can use their lives to become better people. This is also something they’ll have to do.
ThornBud, the hardest thing to let go, at least for me, is the wide open intimate relationships we had with our kids when they were younger. They leave. They necessarily don’t share all their thoughts or depend on our approval. And that transparent wall you talk about becomes more or less real to us, depending on how important that intimacy was to us. The role of parents inevitably becomes smaller, and we have to find other meaning in our lives.
If that is going on at the same time as your dealing with a healing process that includes self-blame, this can be a lot worse. It sounds like you have a wonderful daughter, and you really don’t have any evidence that your difficulties damaged her. Maybe what this is really about is you getting closer to looking at some other difficult things. It’s possible that your idea that she has bad feelings about how you treated her is a projection, based on an older trauma that you have yet to process.
A lot of us here have discovered that our vulnerability to the sociopath had something to do with traumas we sustained earlier in life. I haven’t read your earlier writing, so I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about this. But it might be so.
In any case, I wish you peace of mind. Guilt is one of the hardest things, but I think it’s another way that we get into the good work of grieving and letter go. Maybe it will do that for you.
Namaste.
Kathy
Dear ThornBud,
No parent is perfect, that’s a fact. No child is perfect, that too is a fact.
Sometimes life gives us hard times and we are not able to spend as much time with the children, or “be there” for them as much for “X” reason—maybe it is working 24/7 just to feed them, or because we are crippled, or because we die and leave them, or divorce, or 1000 other things we are not incontrol of.
Beating ourselves on the head because we were not a “better” parent or spent more time with them, or whatever the reason, is COUNTER PRODUCTIVE FOR US.
Life in earlier times, even in this country of “plenty” was much more difficult for families. Children died from “childhood dieseases” with ferquency, that now we have vaccines for, women died in child birth that now we can prevent, fathers and mothers still drank too much and men tended to abuse their wives like possessions more than today (I think) birth control was not allowed, or available, and women gave birth to more kids than any woman can reasonably care for, food was not balanced, and many months of the year would be scarce. Diseases caused by vitamin deficiencies was rampant, my own great grandmother died of one in 1905.
Many childtren grew up without one or both parents in grinding poverty, or abuse in an “orphanage” or from a foster system that bordered on slavery, but not all or even the majority of these children were psychopaths because of the condition of their impoverished up bringing.
Berating ourselves and beating ourselves over the heads because our children didn’t “turn out” like we hoped they would is just not something that is helpful to either them or ourselves.
The past is past, and today is NOW—my P-son is beyond redemption, my other biiological son was HOOKED by a P-wife and distanced himself from me for almost 8 long years because of her, but finally, she is OUT of his life and our relationship is restored. Every day now he hugs me and tells me that he loves me, and appreciates me, and it melts my heart. I had accepted that he was hooked by his wife and she would distance him from me, and I thought—for the rest of my life—I am so glad that did not come true. SHE is OUT of his life, out from between us. Our relationship is better than before.
The psychopaths do come between us and others that we love, that is the nature of the psychopaths, but sometimes their alienation and control over the others comes to an end. My P-son controls my mother’s thinking, and she thinks I am “being too mean to the dear boy” (even though he has been convicted of cold blooded murder that he BRAGS about) she CHOOSES to NOT LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE, and to FORGET the evidence she has seen. This is called denial. She denies that what she sees is true. It is less painful for her to pretend to disbelieve what she knows is a FACT, than to accept the fact that SHE has enabled my P-son to hurt me, and even herself.
During the time my good son was married to the P woman, she put him “between a rock and a hard spot”—he felt a duty to stand by his wife, and yet he loved me, but he made the easier choice (for him at the time) to “believe” what she told him about me being an “evil witch” and to distance himself from me. To interpret everything I did for him, no matter how good, as something of an “evil plot” to control him. He denied what he really knew to be true, that his wife was “mean as a snake” that he could “not please her” no matter what he did.
It took her and her boy friend trying to kill him to snap him out of his denial and delusions. Otherwise he would probably still be married to her. Nothing will snap my egg donor (mother) out of her denial and delusions, she holds too tightly to them. My only hope is to ACCEPT WHAT IS REAL and not to beat myself for what I WISH was true. I can’t change the past. Looking back, thouigh, I did what I did with the best knowledge and intentions at the time I did it (for the most part) and that’s all a jack ass can do, is to carry the load it is given to the best of it’s ability. (((hugs)))) and God bless you.
Kathy & Oxy , ur golden advices are so much appreciated and valuable. Thanks alot (hugs).
Unfortunatelly, English is not my native language (though i am goodt in reading and understanding) what is a huge obstacle for expressing and articulating my thoughts/feelings.
Being new here forces me to read archive (thanks, Oxy for advice), so i am not able to participate discussions on board due to lack of time. Moreover, i dont want to overlook some already answered questions, in order not to bother and waight participants in here.
As far, i have found alot of support here and comfort just by reading old posts. Patterns are just unbelievable, bot sides – victims and victimisers.
After FIRST time of being here, i went NC with my X, its almost 3 weeks, and i feel much better already. I believe that it is crucial thing to be told to every new member of our little society here – WHEN U ARE IN HOLE, STOP DIGGING, protect urself from more damages.
GOLDEN RULE !
Hugs for all
Each story here is specific, still similarity is enormous. What i learnet by now is that nomatter how hard it is, it always CAN be worse.
Sociopats are dangerous, cancerogene, toxic, and i believe we all should be thankful to God for not suffering more than we already did.
Recently, my promisquous ex-tox told me he is affraid he catched AIDS from one unsafe sexual encounter, but he cant afford tests.
Not to mention that he was in contact with many married women with children.
God, they are spreading toxine all arround, like some epidemic contaminating disease.
Thanks God, we weren’t in sexual contact last two years (one good outcome from his avoiding sex lol) and i am “clean”. I told him he has moral (even legal) obligation to warn his (ex) partners after that unsafe sex, and he said: NO WAY , i am not gonna let society isolate me like plague ( !!!!! ), i am gonna just leave the country and disapear.
I wonder how it is posible to have such huge absence of conscience and responsibility.
Dear ThornBud,
First off, your English is FINE! You express yourself quite well in fact!
Yes, they are EVIL, which I think is the ONLY word that can describe them. there is no way they will be any worse!
I am glad that you are NC and that is good. It will give your brain and mind and emotions time to heal and to not receive any NEW injuries from outside. Keep on reading and reading, I think it is so important to see that there is NOTHING we could have done to change the situation. The ONLY way we can protect ourselves is NC and finally coming to grips with the fact that they ARE EVIL. Learn the signs and red flags of spotting them, and jprotect ourselves from the NEXT ONE who comes along. And, there will be others in the future. They are NOT all that “rare.” I wish they were. Good luck and God bless you (((hugs))))