Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, the turn of the year, the winter solstice and all the holidays of the “dark” time of the year are celebrations of the miracle of renewal. The harvest and colorful leaf fall of autumn is over, and the seasons are turning again to the beginning of the annual cycle of life. Our gifts, all our gatherings, the lights and candles are all expressions of joy in our shared warmth, and our faith and hope in our survival through the cold months to the blooming of spring again.
This morning, reading in bed (Richard Powers’ Prisoners Dilemma), I found this line: “Inside each of us is a script of the greater epic writ little, an atlas of politics so abundant it threats to fill us full to breaking.”
It made me want to write you about the “politics” of getting over a relationship with a sociopath. Sociopaths challenge our faith and hope. Our faith in ourselves, and the goodness of the world. And our hope that there are happy endings for us, or that anything we do will be enough to prevail over the forces of evil or the random destruction that appears in any life. In some ways, this is the biggest challenge of healing — to recover our easy belief that we are precious in the world and that what we need is here for us. Somewhere in our hearts, we remember feeling that way. But we are struggling with a terrible lesson that seems to prove otherwise.
As I write this today, I am looking out the windows behind my desk at a grey sky. Sleet is coming and dangerous roads. The snow is frozen hard on the ground, and dozens of finches, cardinals and jays are at the feeders. At dawn, deer came to nibble on the ears of corn my son scattered at the edge of the woods. My furnace died earlier this week, on a day where the temperature never climbed above 25, and it was 12 hours before the repairmen figured out how to get it going again. Now, with the heat turned up, and me wrapped in sweaters and fleece and woolen socks, my fingers and toes are chilled by the cold that falls through the storm windows.
Elsewhere in the house, my years-old Christmas cactus is blooming beside a wildly-sprigging rosemary bush that looks vaguely like a Christmas tree. Wrinkled but still sweet apples, picked months ago from a local orchard, wait to be peeled and mixed with mincemeat for a pie. A leg of lamb is in the refrigerator for Christmas dinner with a man who was an untrustworthy lover, but a loyal and delightful friend. After dinner, we will go to the movies with my son to see Robert Downey Jr. in Sherlock Holmes.
All of it stories of risk and survival, disaster and renewal, the fine edge we walk and the mysterious providence that brings us to each new day. Even the most blessed life encounters harsh weather, and sometimes we find ourselves in trouble that taxes us beyond our conventional wisdom. When our rules don’t work, and our usual insurance policies don’t suffice, we are challenged. And often, we don’t know what it means.
Does it mean that somehow we have fallen from grace, that our luck has changed and we are no longer loved by the world? Does it mean that we are broken in some fundamental way, and no longer dare to be comfortable with ourselves? Does it mean that the world is darker than we once imagined, and that we must struggle harder for less?
This is what a great philosopher called the “dark night of the soul.” In this midst of this challenge, there is something truly great happening. A kind of personal miracle that — depending on how we think about things — occurs in our intellect, emotions or spirit. When faced by something we do not understand and cannot manage with our usual tools, we are learning and growing. Like the germs of life stirring in the seeds buried in the cold earth, we are experiencing the birth of something new in ourselves.
Because the challenge is threatening, because it makes us question ourselves and what we know, the first part of the learning seems like recognition of evil in the world. Sociopaths seem to be dark messengers, informing us that our love, goodness and hope cannot triumph over their selfishness, greed and senseless destruction. But in time, we come to realize that this lesson is not really about evil at all, but despair.
This is about a war — profound and eternal — of belief. Are we, as sociopaths believe, essentially alone in an uncaring and untrustworthy world, forced by circumstance and entitled by the survival instinct to take whatever we can grab for ourselves? Or is there something about us that is blessed by connection to something larger — the love we share with other people, our dependence on the combined strength of our communities, our instinct that an infinite wisdom and strength exists beyond our imagining, larger than us, but also part of us? And that we are meant, by some birthright that we can hardly explain but that is clearly part of our deep character, to find lasting peace, understanding and gratitude.
What we ultimately learn from an intimate encounter with a sociopath is that this battle is not in the world, but in ourselves. The sociopath triggers our fears, our insecurities, our willingness to give up what we value for the illusion that the ultimate source of love or safety is outside of us. In their betrayals, in the brutal disappointments they return for our commitment to the gorgeous illusions they cast to draw us in, we are thrown back on ourselves. They prove to us, in a way that is a perfect mirror of however much we were willing to give them to make this illusion real, that the first source of our love, safety and greatest wisdom is inside of us. That, however important shared love and community may be, the foundation of everything good in our lives is inside us.
It is about what we believe. At base, under all the little rules we’ve picked up from parents and teachers, under all the little restrictions we’ve placed on ourselves as a result of old traumas, under all the lingering resentments or fears we’ve never resolved, is what we believe about ourselves and this life. It is what, under it all, we know to be the truth and the meaning of our stories.
Our lives, like the life of every other living thing, are about survival and growth and learning. Our lives are about understanding more as we age, an evolving wisdom that sometimes grows out of joy and triumph and sometimes out of pain and loss. Our lives are about trying, not waiting around for something to happen, but also believing that trying is not just us working at what we see. Trying also magically attracts new resources to us. Everyone here on LoveFraud knows how trying to get better brought us here, and here we found resources that simply zoomed toward us, challenging us in good ways to wake up to new ideas and use them. That is how the world works.
Our lives are also about seasons. Not just the season of age, but the seasons of mastery. We have little challenges to learn on a daily basis, and we have huge challenges that we inherited, and that are so much part of the fabric of our family’s history or the state of the entire world that a lifetime may not be enough to understand it all or master its opportunities. We learn the immediate things — how to change a diaper, work the e-mail, get along with a boss, drive in the snow. But our lifetimes are also about those immense inherited questions, and part of the meaning of our life is how much we do learn and how our learning affects the great whole.
Nothing, not one breath or molecule of these recoveries from grief and loss, is wasted. We are part of a great turning of seasons. What we do here is important. We are important. The world and the great spirit that gives it life force have given us a gift, an opportunity to learn something amazing. About ourselves. About the meaning of love and belonging, as well as solitary courage. About how to be whole in the face of adversity. About the great cycle of renewal in ourselves, and how truly dependable is the fact that we are meant to learn, grow, thrive, bloom again, and face new challenges as we feel strong enough for a thrilling new learning experience.
The earth is turning toward sunnier days. Seasons when we take the warmth and light for granted. So are we.
As Oxy likes to remind us, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Not just to endure. But to recover joy, confidence and belief that every bit of this is a gift, sent to us to help us clear our internal decks, get rid of fear and grief and anger, and open our minds to the bright spirit of faith and hope, peace and joy, understanding and gratitude that is our birthright, that lives in the center of our beings.
Namaste. The light in me salutes the light in you.
Kathy
Thanks imfree, but I don’t have RA – I have a colleague who does though!
Thanks for your care imfree – that was really nice of you to offer me information.
FIBRO sufferers:
Hi guys, there is an institute I recently read about, not sure if you have receieved this info…..not sure how ‘global’ this news has been……..Check out the link below.
It’ will give you info on the peterson institute which has made headways on this topic of fibromyalga and Chronic fatigue…..
Hope this helps someone…..
BE WELL!
http://www.rgj.com/article/20091229/NEWS/91229051/1305/MVN/UNR-virus-discovery-could-lead-to-new-drugs-treatment
Wow – no had not read that! Eeek – wonder how long till tests and treatment – could be a long way away. Wonder if antivirals might work then aciclovir?? that stops viruses replicating. That means I caught it – so it’s an std??? Maybe? Wow … still could be all those other things too and could just be a correlation – won’t get my hopes up too high just yet!
Thanks for sharing EB 🙂
To fellow sufferers please check out this site about the virus and put yourself on the map – the blog author is looking to see if there are any ‘hot spots’ in the world.
It looks like it is blood bourne and those affected are advised not to donate blood at this time. Already my memory has isolated the likely candidate for infection 🙁
Well that knocks all previous theories out of the water!
polly:
no bone scan. i friggin’ hate doctors.
: )
Hi to Imfree
It’s very interesting what you say about the illness hiding out but not actually being dealt with, when “dealt with” by anti biotic.
I have had a mild chest infection which I fought for ages and then I said to hell and it went with anti biotics. I know for a fact it has gone back into hiding as it goes too quick. also it comes back as if deeper and down further as if it has been repressed, not dealt with at all. I sense it is actually an illness that feels in a strange way to be healing and linked to the experience with the P brain.
could it be it’s my identity, my true inner self thats undergoing a transformation from shallow to deep connection. That these illnesses are not in fact life threatening but life saving. Just a thought…my chest infection will be back, I get a rash on the skin, dry cough, sore throat and huge glands and temperature.
Hey this toxic poison had to go somewhere….better to be spewed out on the lovefraud blog than ending up as illness!!!
So on that note I’m giving myself permission to voice a message to the P brain for 2010 (please visualize me in a helicopter flying low outside his window) glass of champagne in one hand and hand grenade in other, I lightly toss it in his direction to land by his feet, he looks at me stunned, I shout loudly so he hears me clearly GO STRAIGHT TO HELL MORON!!!!
oh yes! that feels better…..for now
And maybe this fantasy is too violent for me. I have just watched DISTRICT 9…. what a movie.
I felt that adrenalin rush I had in my nightmares after the P experience nearly all the way through it…and the only way was to fight back all guns blazing and take the psychos out!
And I used to be such a nice woman……
Pollyanna you said this:
“I am imposing boundaries with my own mother and holding my own when things come up that she doesn’t want to discuss now. I also point out to her when she invalidates me and that if I did that to her pain it would be world war three. Little steps and I am very careful not to exhaust myself by being too long in her company. I have to acknowledge though that her encounter with my father was very much like what I experienced with the P – lies, let downs, broken promises, emotional abuse etc. She didn’t have the tools to help herself though – there was no community like this back then. So she covered up the scars and kept on marching. The weird thing is, my process is helping her to look back at her own history and start pulling off the scabs to finally let the pus out.”
———————–
There have been times in my life when contact with my mother was so negative that I just had to take a break. My boundaries were non-existent with her – the second she complained about anything I would instantaneously have a cramp like a fist to the gut. If she had a problem and wanted me to solve it for her AND I SAID NO, she would rage at me and guilt me and I would get really upset, especially if there was no way I could do what she wanted. At the same time she can be very loving and kind and do nice things for people. I can now see alot of her behavior as PTSD and TRAUMA related. Thank god she has mellowed out since she retired, and since she is the only family member I can talk to she can be a comfort to me. I think she has finally learned that her rages are not going to get the best results!
The other thing is that, like you, my mother has information and knowledge I need for my recovery, and I know that getting these things out must be healing to her also. When I became disabled 10 years ago she finally began talking to me about the abuse she put up with from my P father and my P stepfather. This woman has been through some bad chit. Now that she has stopped inflicting her rage and pain on me I have a lot more compassion for what she has been through. She is also honest with me, and will talk about the horrific things both these men did to her. It helps us both get closure.
It’s funny because all the P’s I am trying to heal from were in my family in the past or present, not a romantic relationship. But my addictiveness to relationships that have sapped the life out of me causes a lot of the same problems. I KNOW that I have a tendency to be attracted to charismatic exciting P’s, and ordinary good guys are boring to me. Also I need to deal with the crippling anxiety I feel when a man is attractive to me – a post Kathleen says about the AGE of her emotions (that they are actually emotions coming back from when she was a child) is making sense to me – this anxious reaction is probably because my father was a terrifying person from the time I was an infant.
This makes sense to me now in a gut kind of way. Knowing things intellectually just doesn’t have the same effect as that flash of insight you feel in your gut. That level of anxiety makes no sense to you because it is the reaction a helpless child would feel, and not the reaction of an emotionally healthy adult.
I still have to watch my mom’s passive-aggressive behaviour with the rest of my sorry family – she tells them my business at times when they have no right to this information without talking to me. I will have to tell this to her AGAIN now that she is back from her visit with them. And I really do not want to hear about what a good time they had without me, since I used to be included in those good times. She can really be like a child sometimes – “Oh and then your sister made this delicious thing” Good grief I do not want to know. She just does not realize that this causes me pain, and that my family KNOWS they are causing me pain because I am left out. The deliberate cruelty is just unbelievable sometimes.
“I told X Y and Z that your roommate was stealing your pain meds.” Oh, great! Now that I realize that the fewer people know what I take the better. (Get a lock box for your pain meds, people! I did not for many months because I thought I was miscounting – I just could not believe that my roommate -who was very sympathetic about my grievous pain and suffering, was actually CAUSING a lot of my pain and suffering when I did not have enough meds until the end of the month – this has really caused much of my most recent meltdown because I thought I was in a safe place and had a FRIEND). Now her concern and friendliness are just PHONY to me and I don’t even want to speak to her. The bizarre thing about this to me is even though I know it is true beyond doubt she still fools me. It’s as if she still believes that we have a friendship and doesn’t even know what she is doing to me. Again, bizarre behavior I cannot understand. Oxy your posts about the piss tests were very enlightening to me – catheterizing a helpless infant to get clean urine for a drug test is just UNFATHOMABLE to me. Is this something that only a sociopath would do?
In spite of all these obstacles my mom and I are very much alike and like a lot of the same things, and enjoy time spent together. It is precious to me because I really believe that when she passes I will have no family anymore.
She said something to me recently that was very validating. In another post above I talk about my younger P sister manipulating and marginalizing me out of the family because she decided that I was an Alcoholic. It wasn’t true and it was actually a crazy thing for her to say, since she is the famiily member who is a recovered alcoholic and we certainly didn’t decide to SHUN her because of it! We were always very supportive and sympathetic to her. I now understand that she tested me over some time, telling me lies about things between her and my mom that I KNEW were lies at the time and just said nothing when she had these “heart to hearts” with me. I would listen, saying nothing, and not judging her but at the same time I didn’t AGREE with her and show her that she was pulling the wool over my eyes. At the time I just thought she was terribly misguided and hurt and possibly being manipulated and lied to by her own husband. I thought it was sad that she believed these lies. I thought when she comes to a point in her recovery she will understand that these things are not true, and that could take a long time. I certainly did not want to hurt her by pointing out her error in thinking these things – and INSTINCTIVELY I knew that it would be DANGEROUS to contradict her. How did I know that?
Now I understand that her rage and marginalization of my place in the family were the only way she had of controlling me, since I was not going to buy into the lies. I KNEW that this is what happened, but I still did not understand her behavior until I came here to the LF site and began truly understanding the reasons behind the crazy behavior and the seemingly counterproductive lies and manipulation. I will no longer expect her to suddenly become remorseful and sorry at treating her own sister this way. She was envious of the place I had in the family and my close relationship with my other sister. I can look back now and see it all happening when I think about conversations we have had and how she reacted to them.
It really is difficult to believe the cold hard truth about how these people operate. I did not want to believe it and I still loved my sister and felt that she just wasn’t ready to deal with her pain from the sexual abuse. I felt that her anger and bitterness toward my mom was because she was not able to deal directly with the fact that my stepfather was the person who did this terrible thing to her. Now I am starting to see that the abuse, control and manipulation that was done to her is how she learned to interact with the world.
I was having a conversation with my mom a few weeks ago, and my mom said “You know, when P-sister had a mental breakdown (age 19) and we checked her into the psych ward she told all of her doctors and counselors THAT I WAS A COCAINE ABUSER.”
BINGO!!!! When she is cornered she will use PROJECTION as a means of control and manipulation. My mom had worked in the hospital and medical community for many years and she told the truth and they believed her. Even though probably 20 years went by between her doing this to my mother and then doing it to me it was a huge lightbulb moment for me.
She was very cunning. Apparently she could see that I was not going to be subject to her control, but that my other sister was. I still find it hard to believe that my smart and educated sister could be taken in by such a ridiculously transparent manipulation. We had been through some very hard times as a family and ten years ago I believed that as we all became adults and dealt with all of our various traumas that we would become closer as a family, and leave the dysfunction behind. For a while that actually appeared to be the case. That was MY DREAM – that we had left behind all the bad people and the bad things that had hurt our family and we would find our truth and have a tighter bond because of it. Certainly we would take care of each other and treasure each other because our lives were now up to us to determine and we would not let any more bad things hold us back.
Boy, was I ever wrong. I am now sitting in the smoking hot ashes of a wasteland, wondering what the hell happened.
Without the honesty and the painful sharing that people do on this site I would still feel totally at a loss to understand just what was happening to my family. My sister’s behavior was COMPLETELY incomprehensible to me. Not any more.
LF is the only place where people understand the level of devastation and chaos these people inflict. AND the fact that it goes on for GENERATIONS. The way you look at the world completely changes, and you feel so alone and so vulnerable. You think that you are a competent adult who learned to deal with the world and now you completely lose faith in your ability to make decisions and protect yourself from the BAD people.
And your energy is gone and maybe even your health and well-being are gone and you feel so CYNICAL and JADED and feel that there are no people left to trust and if there were you wouldn’t know how to tell who they were anyway!
For me, the depression and helplessness are the absolute worst. When I get back in touch with the ANGER at least I regain my sense of self-interest and boundaries and the need for ACTION to get beyond this hell.
There was another blog about DRIVEN behavior that can be your worst enemy. That is my own worst enemy now, and I am beginning to see it very clearly. I want to kick myself because I get into this state where I do things that are self-destructive on many levels. It APPEARS to me that I am doing something empowering and rational at the time, but later I can see that it was only a pathetic and misguided attempt to exert some semblance of CONTROL over my life.
I just want you to know that I will be asking a lot of stupid questions that would appear to have obvious answers, because I do not understand what is true anymore. They are not rhetorical but are just my attempts to understand what people are really saying and what they really mean. I have always given people the benefit of the doubt and assumed they were being honest with me. i would make every excuse in the book for bad behavior. Now I feel like I must be the most easily manipulated boob on the planet.
POLLYANNA I READ YOUR LIST OF SPECIALISTS AND LAUGHED OUT LOUD!!
Then Gemini’s “12 Healing Days of Christmas” really hit the mark.
Where oh where are my gift certificates PLEASE!!
I have been through the doctor and therapists and the herbs and the shamans and the bodywork etc. etc. etc.
And the thought of, like you said, having TO TELL THE STORY ALL OVER AGAIN just makes me want to stand outside naked while tearing my hair out and screaming at the top of my lungs!
The neurologist got pissy with me because I hadn’t filled out all the paperwork yet and did not DRAW ON THE LITTLE FRONT AND BACK PEOPLE DIAGRAMS where my pain was. He had my MRI up on the computer screen, what more did he need?
Holy Crap! Did you think about, uh, maybe just ASKING ME???!!!
I told him that my physiatrist would do nerve blocks in his office without sedation, and I could drive there and drive home. This is to make the procedure COST LESS.
At this point the neurologist said to me – WELL IF YOU TRY TO DO THAT WE WILL CALL THE POLICE!!!!!!!!!
WTF??!!
At that moment I felt the complete futility of trying to explain 20 years of pain to this man. VERY bad day.
I had a very bad feeling when I initially started the paperwork and then came across AN ENTIRE PAGE saying how they would not could not ever ever a thousand times no NEVER EVER
prescibe pain meds for their patients because they were just a crutch and they would inhibit your healing blah blah blah.
Oh if these people could just be in my body for a day or a week or a year. I began to feel like I have no respect from these idiots. They are going to think the worst about you at first sight and your credibility is gone. It makes you think that your life has become one endless round of humiliation and shame.
Yikes! – I must keep repeating to myself:
“NEUROLOGISTS HAVE NO PEOPLE SKILLS”
“NEUROLOGISTS HAVE NO PEOPLE SKILLS”
“NEUROLOGISTS HAVE NO PEOPLE SKILLS”
And a partridge in a pear tree!
7 steps: “just makes me want to stand outside naked while tearing my hair out and screaming at the top of my lungs!” And this is why they think WE are CRAZY! LOL
You knew when you read the sheet about the no meds. There are signs – but we need help so we put up with the constraints of the sytems.
I did a stand down with a doc recently, and the more we talk about chronic pain and devaluation of those in chronic pain, the prouder I am of my stance – NO, I would not do the anxiety evaluation if they do not work within a paradigm that includes multiple chemical sensitivity. NO, i will not go for an intake, they need to call me and I’ll have a chat on the phone. I am not taking time off of work and wasting my physical energy to go somewhere when I don’t know the paradigm before hand – no where else do we have to put up with such sh*t – even if you are buying furniture you can look the damn place up in the phone book or online, make a call and get some info, before driving to the f*cking store.
your dude, very N traits.
I think your neurologist’s ditty is actually, jingle bells:
“JINGLE BELLS, NEUROLOGISTS SMELL
A WAITING ROOM AWAY,
OH WHAT FUN IT IS TO RIDE, THE ELEVATOR THE OTHER WAY!”
On a constructive note: I have written everything down – I just print the sheet and give it to them. I also got my history from my doc of 7 years when i moved – so i photo copy that and hand it to them.
My new doc – after 5 years with a ‘teaching clinic’ (which i meant i had to go over everything every time i went in, cause it was a new baby doc) I got a permanent doctor last year. the practice is integrated – whcihc means I have access to some services – like the cognitive therapist, and it is covered.
I know the new doc doesn’t BELIEVE in MCS – I don’t even mention fibro anymore – I don’t give them the opportunity to bait me – cause that’s what it’s like. I am a lesbian and I know not to give people the power with that either – SAME thing.
And its what i need to learn about S/N/P also – they are built differently by all accounts, so i need to know how they are built.
It’s about knowledge and integrating defensive and offensive tactics into our systems so that they can’t get to us. It took me about 15 years to be REALLY consistently good at it around orientation – but now i do have a template, that may be transferable.
I noticed that when I was writing to another of the spath’s dupes I didn’t write my feelings – and I really wanted to – but i didn’t – cause i don’t know her and i don’t have any reason to trust her yet. it feels weird, but right.
one step
HI, everybody, Where is everybody from? I’m in MIami, Fla.
We have lots of psychos here.
Staying sane the symptoms you are describing with your chest problem are all heat signs the rash, dry cough, sore throat, temp, you need some aloe vera juice, very little though, or you will be sitting on the toilet all day. I would say you are hot and angry, you need to cool off, it’s better for you. This aloe goes to the liver, and it’s good for detoxing
the mental and physical garbage that we get from them
I also daydream of putting a bomb in my p’s car, and watching her blow up, but it’s not worth it, Even though its a great fantasy, In time these psychos will get what they deserve and more, Karma is a bitch. I know the pain, and everything else leaves a great big mark on us, it really messes you up, and you feel like you are going crazy, I did, still do at times.
Antibiotics do mask and it goes in deeper, need to bring it out
and let go, one way I found that helps is by writing a goodbye
good ridence letter, and writing all those deep feelings, pain, anguish, all the crap crying, and then putting it in a box like a coffin, cremate it, and seal it gone..
Polly, send me the site if you can, I think you have fibromyalgia, you need a soft massage, I think that from your tongue, you don’t drink enough water, also check out the mushrooms.