Because there is so much discussion lately about pity, empathy and compassion in the wake of a relationship with a sociopath, I am writing this article to discuss compassion as it fits into the recovery process.
Before I begin, I would like to humbly remind my readers that recovery, by its nature, is a progression through different stages of emotional learning. If the trauma is major, these emotional states will be intense. And they will color our “sight” or view of the world and ourselves. I’m pointing this out as a warning that, unless you are in late-stage recovery, the material in this article may be irritating and you may find me a holier-than-thou pain in the butt.
If the farthest you have gone in trauma processing is denial, bargaining, anger, or grief and letting go, the related emotions will — and should — dominate your view of things until you learn the lessons of that stage and gaduate to the next one. Each graduation changes your world, and it also alters your perspective on how you felt before. For example, anger looks back at denial as a less empowered, less insightful phase. And denial veiws anger as anger as socially unacceptable or scary. This is just the natural progression of maturing consciousness. We look back from a larger perspesctive. We tend to block or demonize information from levels that are too far beyond where we are now.
So if this article doesn’t make sense to you, or it seems “nice but improbable,” or you find it irritating or nutty, it means it’s not useful to your current learning stage. Typically we can see into the next level of healing, even if we’re not fully there. Beyond that, it’s hard for us to intuitively grasp how it’s going to be.
As we observe on LoveFraud, there is a lot of learning in recovery. This article is about the end of the process. It’s an end so complete that, every “next time” we face a trauma, we know how the processing will end. It changes forever the way we approach healing and the speed at which we do it.
Defining compassion
Most of us grew up in the Judeo-Christian tradition where compassion is understood as a “social” feeling. That is, the feeling is about “we,” not just “I.” It’s associated with ideas about welfare as a community goal, not just an individual one. So we tend to define compassion as concern about someone else’s difficulty plus some level of obligation to help.
This definition of compassion is why the sociopath’s pity ploy is so challenging for us. It’s also why there may be resistance to my statements that I feel compassion for my ex, because I am aware of the painful identity damage he lives with. The assumption, I believe, is that it’s dangerous to feel compassion for an anti-social person, because that feeling comes with implied obligation to help. So it may seem inexplicable that I am aware of his pain, but feel no responsibility for alleviating it.
The concept of compassion that I am presenting to you today is somewhat different. It is more like a Buddhist or Eastern idea of compassion. This compassion is simply a state (of mind), not a process of identifying need and acting on it. This state of compassion may inform our actions — quite literally inform, by providing information — but the actions themselves are driven by other commitments or goals.
That’s all very abstract. Why does it matter?
Here’s why. The state of compassion which is open-hearted willingness to understand other people’s states and situations and to feel whatever feelings that produces puts us into full alignment with “what is.” It’s a vibrant awareness that keeps us gathering information, learning, and accepting reality without judgment.
It’s not that we don’t make judgments on other levels of consciousness. In a compassionate state, we may understand what’s driving a person who is dangerous to us. On another level, we may interpret this person as nothing but a threat and be preparing to defend ourselves or flee. But the compassionate level “sees” their state, our state, and many surrounding details. All that information moves “down” the processing ladder to refine what’s going on at the visceral self-defense level, the pleasure-pain level, our community-feelings level, and the cognitive level where we’re doing logical reasoning.
In other words, this compassionate level of awareness feeds all our processes by providing them with information that is detailed, perceptive and based on openness to active states and connections in our environment.
If this sounds like a hierarchy of consciousness, that is exactly what it is. There are lots of models for this hierarchy, which I’m not going to get into now. But I mentioned earlier that this is the end-state of recovery. That means recovery from a specific trauma. It doesn’t mean that we have this compassionate awareness in every area of our lives, but any specific healing process is over when we have processed through to compassion.
Our changing focus in healing
We’ve talked about denial, bargaining, anger, grief and letting go, and finally learning the lesson that changes our perspectives and/or life rules. This follows the Kubler-Ross model of grief processing. But Kubler-Ross was conceived as a model for people facing terminal illness. It described how people come to accept the ending of their lives. The model I’m working with goes farther, because it assumes that recovery is a doorway into a new chapter of life.
To see the whole picture of recovery, it helps to look at the progressive shifts in our focus. Up to anger, and including part of the angry phase, trauma processing is about maintaining personal control the idea that this is something we can change or affect. First we try to control our reactions (denial), then we try to control how our behavior influenced the situation (bargaining), then we try to control the situation by force of will (anger). In anger, we grasp that the problem is external to us. To control the impact of such externalities in the future, we develop defensive skills and perceptions.
In the later stages of anger and this is one of the things that moves us out of anger we become aware that we’re dealing with something that was not in our control at all. While the skills-building makes us feel better about ourselves, we are still reacting to outside threats. This focus on the external continues through the grieving and letting go process.
Turning inward
Grieving what we cannot change leads, eventually, to letting go. We can’t fully let go in anger. Instead, we have to revisit the love or great value we felt toward what we lost. (This may be, and often is, something that we now recognize as an illusion.) Reawakening love, even to say goodbye, relaxes us back into ourselves, and opens us to the “lightbulb” learnings that typically release us from previous attachments or ideas of what we “must” have or do to be happy or whole.
In discovering what we don’t need, we gain freedom — more scope of action, feelings, and even intellect. But to explore the meaning of that freedom, we find ourselves “shaking down” our internal systems to see what makes sense now and what doesn’t. With freedom comes responsibilities, and we have more learning to do about how we will act, what we will expect, and how our feelings work in this new world.
As a simple example, a common learning from our experience with a sociopath is that, although we once needed other poeple to confirm our okay-ness, we realize we don’t need external validation to trust our values and perceptions. So flattery and promises, or outside opinons about our dreams or our guilt, may sometimes make us feel good (or bad) but they’re not ultimately as true for us as our own ideas and feelings. So how does that affect every other relationship in our lives? Working this through takes time and experimentation.
More to the point, perhaps, relationships with sociopaths teach us that we have the inborn entitlement and responsibility to take better care of ourselves. To take ourselves more seriously. To assign higher value to not just our survival, but what we do with our lives. And this imperative eventually brings us to a confrontation with how we really feel about ourselves.
Clearing the obstacles to self-love
This confrontation is usually shocking, something like traumatic. It’s mindbending to discover that we’ve been carrying around damage that has caused us to treat ourselves as badly as we accused the sociopath of doing. In fact, we could almost call the sociopath an agent of our own distrust and disrespect for ourselves.
But now we’re experienced enough to know that we didn’t do this to ourselves. We identify the externaliites and note how little control we had. Even working with memories, we can assert our right to our integrity, our right to thrive, and reject the old influences on our lives that once crippled us with feelings of unlovability, unworthiness, insecurity or despair.
This process of restoring self-love is the end stretch of trauma-processing. Our shakedown of our internal beliefs, rules and processes becomes more pervasive and profound. We are in touch with a need that we may have felt before, often masked in background anxiety or in addictive hungers, but we can’t mistake what it really is. We want to clear away anything that keeps us from being in touch with our true self the bright, good, authentic, perceptive, learning, feeling center that has been the source of our best social impulses and also our self-healing impulses all our lives.
When we understand that this center exists and feel its nature, we come home to something that has always been there. It’s an experience that is impossible to describe, but it is the beginning of making sense of everything in our lives. In particular, we see how much of our life story has been about our attempts to heal traumas and get back to who we are. We become more conscious of how unhealed wounds color our perceptions. Though we cannot resolve everything at once, each resolved trauma illumates more of our authentic self, and helps us tell the differnce between what is authentic in us and what is unfinished trauma-processing. In this knowledge, we become more understanding and able to comfort ourselves, and more accepting of our normal human pains, fears, losses, as well as hungers, attractions, and goals.
We don’t have to be perfect to love ourselves. We can make peace with who we are. We can become more relaxed about new challenges, because we accept that, win or lose, we’re going to learn something great. We can acquire a sense of humor about where we’re still developing and are not so good at being all we could be.
We gain a new perspective, a kind of distance from ourselves that relieves us from fear and criticism, but encourages us in our progess as evolving people. That perspective also gradually aligns all the levels of consciousness behind a new “boss,” a new highest, deepest level that is more open and smart, while being more tolerant and supportive of our humanity. All of it our need to physically survive, our genetic attachments to family, our drive to bond and reproduce, our dependence on community, our desire to make our lives meaningful, and all the other needs that come with being human. Compassion is like having an angel in the “top office,” influencing the way the whole company works.
But here’s the thing about compassion. As that open-hearted awareness anchors our internal workings, it also changes the way we see the world. Our perceptions are a reflection of our inner lives. We see from where we are in ourselves.
Compassion and Sociopathy
Compassion is a state of awareness. As I said earlier, this definition of compassion does not require us to act or react. It simply provides a new and more refined set of information to the rest of our systems. In the case of identifying a sociopath or finding reason to react, the identification is made with openness to understanding their state, including the wounded pain of their broken humanity. But compassion feels this pain without becoming involved in it. The information made available to our defensive systems may be simply that this person is wounded, extremely needy for personal support, but is apparently unable to heal or return support to other people. His needs are bottomless and not fixable by us.
Sad for him, and sad for us to know this about him. But it clarifies our response. Compassion tells us there is no potential for a mutual relationship and nothing to be gained by trying to help.
People who have read me here for a while, know that I am committed to changing social systems that, in my belief, create the circumstances in which children develop affective disorders — inadequate nurture, environmental violence and direct abuse. Sociopathy is an affective disorder, which may have genetic factors of predisposition, but is powerfully affected by environmental factors. I can’t change sociopaths, but I want to help reduce future suffering (and all the suffering it causes) at the source, where children are learning despair of trusting anything but themselves.
My way to change those systems is to help individuals stop the cycle of damage for themselves. I believe that we can heal our old damage, so we are no longer perpetuating or supporting the transmission of damage through generations, communities and other human systems. If we don’t get well, we are part of the problem. If we do get well, we become living solutions. Some of us will change the world just by being human beacons, people who inspire other people to learn to love themselves and discover with the powerful rationality that compassion brings. Some of us will use the information compassion brings us to actively work on human systems to create a better world where human potential can flourish.
So that is compassion in my view. I hope this clarifies what I mean when I talk about compassion, and why some of you may find my perspectives and my language so different. I hope that, in my voice, some of you hear the voice of your future.
Namaste. My angel high-fives your angel.
Kathy
PS. This article is not about what’s wrong with you, being a more loving person so you’re treated better, or accepting or forgiving bad behavior. If it even seems like that, come back and take another look at it in a year or so. In the meantime, don’t worry, you’re doing fine and exactly where you’re supposed to be on the path.
What an excellent article!!!!! I’m learning that the reconciliation between what was is a long, thoughtful process for me. Sometimes, I get angry, still other times, I grieve for what “should” have been. What I keep coming away with is simply this: it just was.
Perhaps, it’s the intensity of the damage and the urgent need to put and end to my trauma, but I think that I wasn’t allowing myself time to process all of this damage. I wasn’t “getting over it” quickly enough, according to those around me. It takes time, patience, and diligence. It takes decades for a tree to grow to maturity, and I figure I’ll be spending the rest of my life learning to mature from my experiences, and that’s okay – as long as I’m still learning, life is good.
{{{Verity}}} We’re “allowed” to reinvent ourselves! GOOD FOR YOU!!!!!!!!!!!! 😀
Dear Buttons, thanks so much for the hug and have one back. ((((Buttons)))))
I know for me the healing journey isn’t over and that there will likely be more grief and anger that such a thing is even possible and that it happened to me but, as the book Emotional Rape Syndrome says, recovery cannot start until we NAME what happened to us and I’ve only just accepted what he was. The evidence was all around me but it was too hard to believe. I still have PTSD symptoms but now I understand that it’s a perfectly normal response to an abnormal situation I find it easier to bear. The old me was willing to carry his shame as well as my own, but not any more.
I really relate to what you say: “As long as I’m still learning, life is good.” Life IS good, and as we reinvent ourselves I think we’ll attract even more good into our lives. 🙂
Taking just a moment away from the work I set out to do today to write here. Missed an appt this am. Was graceful in my apology and re-booked and am NOT going to beat myself up about it; this is the PTSD reality”there is a part of me that just isn’t in the world yet, too busy inside, too shocked still.
I was checking the date on a group of documents ”“ and saw today’s date ”“ it’s an anniversary time for me with the ppath. It gave me a jolt. I stand with one foot in the world, and one foot in ppath world still, and I work to spend more and more time in the world. In that one tiny second I traveled to ppath world and then yanked myself back. THAT land is a bottomless pit where the light has been shut out and I am worth nothing. Lies and evil.
I was just thinking, ’what are the qualities of the person NOT in the pit?’ And before I got deep into answering that up came the question, ’What would I be proud of in myself?’ As in, what goals would I need to be working on? I need to lower my expectations and raise my consistency. I set myself up for failure if I don’t, given the ’new normal.’ I need to see what and who I am, and focus on having a huge heart for myself and my struggles.
Wow.
Dear one_step, your post has moved me a great deal. Anniversaries are hard. They’re felt viscerally.
One foot in each world, yes, I relate to that very much right now. The lifeline has been thrown across from the non-ptsd world and I’m hanging on, and some days and weeks can swing all the way in. There’s a lot of progress.
Lowering expectations and raising consistency is ringing true with me. I’m still setting the sort of ridiculously high standards for myself that a spath would set. Better to enjoy a little good time each and every day by being loving to ourselves. Being proud for having the courage to face this.
Having a huge heart for yourself, that’s wonderful. It’s the medicine we need. This is an important post you’ve written, I know it.
YES ONE-STEP!!!!!!
Re-mark your calendar!!! Its no longer the anniversary of the date darkness entered your life.
Its the new date and the beginning anniversary of the date the love and lightness between YOU AND YOU, YOURSELF, YOUR WORTH, YOUR VALUE, YOUR TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS AND YOUR GOALS FOR YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU YOU!!!!!
GREAT POST!!!! Realistic expectations can never equate to failure. Only with the resolve to try again until its achieved.
GREAT POST! You are leaving the darkness behind with each passing day! Good for you for choosing to grow and learn and move on!!
Buttons and verity, I just dropped in and saw your posts. Hooray for you both.
You know, one of the oddities about this process is that, looking back at it later, we realize that it is one of the most engaged, vibrant and creative times of our lives. The years I spent healing from my five-year relationship with a sociopath were different than any other time in my life. Even though I thought it was about him, I was pouring my best energy into myself. It was a huge gift of learning and growing, and I never would have done it, if I hadn’t been so challenged by this person.
Now, when I’ve gone back to my “real” life, albeit with a lot of lessons learned and changes made, the reverberations of that time keep coming. It’s a very big deal to change some of our most embedded beliefs and personal habits. The fact that I’ve become more aware — of who I really am and what I want in my life — helps me see more of how I sabotage myself in large and small ways. And the skills I acquired in processing my feelings open up new possibilities of learning how to deal with problems and challenges.
But the challenges and the learning don’t stop Here’s an example. My ex is about to publish a book of his short stories. At least a third of them are, in some way, about our relationship or its aftermath in his life. His thoughts and feelings, as you might expect, are misogynistic, self-indulgent, insensitive, and generally romanticizing of despair, chaos, predation and betrayal. The idea that someone is publishing this paean to destruction and that impressionable people will be reading it just nauseates me. And I find myself daydreaming about how to add my comments wherever people are discussing it. And even to identify myself as the woman who lived through the experiences of “Shelly” and “Kate” and “Carol” and other women in his stories.
Writing this makes me think about the scene in “Godfather” when Michael Corleone said, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” Which makes me laugh at myself.
Michael also said, “Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.” Because it keep you in a reactive state. Fighting. Resisting. Creating an identity for yourself that is really about someone or something else. Rather than approaching the world with an eye toward what we can do that is good, what we can create that is beautiful, what we can leave behind that makes it better for those who come after us.
It’s a subtle distinction. Sometimes cleaning up a mess is a creative act. But only if we are not focused on the mess, but on a vision of what it could be.
I thought this was the last article in the series, but perhaps I should write one more about the power of where we place our attention.
Thank you both for making me think about this again. And congratulations on recovering your life in such important and joyful ways.
Kathy
One Step,
Realistic expectations are really important, especially when dealing woth the PTS. At the end of the day we need to look at what we accomplished for ourselves in the day rather than focus on what we didn’t.
When dealing with PTSD, our accomplishments aren’t always the “physical work” we accomplish in a day, but the EMOTIONAL work we accomplished in that day.
Being true to ourselves.
Finding another piece of the puzzle in the reworking of the new improved One Step, is far more important at the end of the day than any appointment you might have missed.
Your kind heart can be used to show kindness towards yourself, not only towards others.
xxxx
“Godfather”…..one of the all-time GREATS….a cinematic masterpiece….
“You broke my heart, Fredo…..You broke my heart!!!”
I love that line.
Kathy, thank you for all you’ve written here on LF. I hope you know how important your work is and how much you’ve helped me to heal. At the beginning I used to read and re-read until I felt better but not feel up to working it. Now it’s time for action.
“Sometimes cleaning up a mess is a creative act. But only if we are not focused on the mess, but on a vision of what it could be.” YES! This is it. Pleeeease write more.
It’s that shift one-step was talking about when we’re between worlds. I always describe it as being in or out of the trance. Inside the trance is their world and their (or our projected?) view of us, but outside is where we can create something new that they have never had their grubby little hands on.
Oy! Stories about your relationship! That is HARD and I feel for you. Nauseating is right. My spath is a writer and it’s possible it could happen to me too but I won’t ever know, I’ve made sure of that.
My sincere thanks to you Kathy.