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.
This is a truly amazing thread!!! You all just awe me with your writing and your work. You are becoming artists of your own lives.
A couple of comments. One, again, on helping. This time on doing volunteer work. I think it was Polly who mentioned her concerns about working with DV victims. I think that concern is well-founded.
There is a huge difference — both in what it requires from us and in how we feel afterward — in dealing with people who have a specific goal in asking for help and people who are in shock, confusion and unprocessed trauma. If you go to a shelter, and help prepare and serve food, you are addressing a clear and simple need that everyone understands and you can succeed in helping. If you, as Polly described, trying to help someone who is basically in chaos, you’re projecting your belief of how that person should be on a situation that won’t support it.
How do you know the difference? Because that person can and will say, “I want” something. Something real. I want my own house. I want a job. I want to be independent. People who haven’t processed the reasons for the situation tend to only say what they don’t want, or express their wants in reactive terms. Even Oxy’s description of her visitor fits that mold. Any movement toward taking control of her life was met with stories of what happened to her and reasons why she can’t do one thing or another. Real help is assisting people who have a positive, concrete vision of what they want, but just need a hand, because the don’t have all the resources to put it together.
So what about the mentally ill, the people who come out of unexpected tragedy, the DV women who are physically hurt and suffering from Stockholm Syndrome? Yes, they need help, and they should receive it. But not from you, not if you’re still healing. Because you haven’t gotten your own psychic feet squarely on the ground in terms of what you want and don’t want in your life. (You may have the “don’t want” down, but the clear ability to identify what you want and to be able to tell the difference between something that temporarily supports a wounded ego and something that actually contributes to your life isn’t fully jelled yet.)
People who work with destabilized people need to have strong, centered egos and to understand their own and other people’s limitations. It is tough, tough work, and even the strongest people can become overcome with grief for what they cannot do. The burn-out rate in social services is high and there’s a reason.
So I’m respectfully suggesting that, if you want to volunteer, and I think it’s an excellent idea to get out and feel like your life has more meaning than just healing yourself, that you find something that’s less agonizing. Volunteer to read at the library or to blind people. Deliver meals on wheels or help elderly people get around to do their shopping. Or if you want to do something more difficult, like volunteering to help sick people, make sure for your own wellbeing that there are solid support systems in place for the volunteers.
Do not underestimate the fact that you are still healing. Really. You are in no condition to be involving yourself with people who are in major states of emotional need.
On to the second thing, which is grief and depression. I haven’t written a lot about this, and meant to get to it at some point. It’s not uncommon for people to slow down in the grief phase, because they start struggling with depression. It’s ironic because the angry phase should have clarified that this was not their fault. But grief is also the phase between blaming the outside thing and starting to think about what we need to change in ourselves. The chemistry of grief can drain our serotonin, and leave us in what I used to humorously call the “big lugubrious state.” Look up lugubrious, if you don’t know the word. It a great descriptive word for that dark, low rut that claims us sometimes.
So, here’s the thing. Grief focuses us on loss. The end of grief is making peace with the loss. If that process starts including obsessing about our own role in it, or ideas that that our life has been ruined permanently, or that we personally have lost some quality that once attracted good to ourselves, don’t try to power through it. These obstacles, when they rise, are something we need to look at before we can let the loss go.
That dark cloud that someone mentioned is important. Don’t let it get away. Give it your attention and, if you can, put yourself right inside of it. Ask it what it is. Sometime I try to find out if things like this have a song, and then I sing along to find out what it’s about. Don’t be afraid of these bits of darkness. They are you, and if you walk right up to them and ask them to tell you all about themselves, you’ll find out what’s really bothering you. And then you can process it through. (Trying to ignore them is equivalent to being in denial again, stuffing a feeling because you don’t like it, and then discovering the result is that you’re living with not liking part of yourself.) Don’t be afraid to let the feeling start another grief process. When you process on feelings, it goes faster than processing on reality you don’t understand. Because the feelings are real; they are going to bring you to personal truth faster than anything else.
The comments about sociopaths being thieves is closely related to this issue. And you’re starting to understand that everything they took is also part of the ultimate lie that there is anything real about them. What you see about them is artificial constructs, composed of their attempts to pretend to be everyday people (thank you, aspergersouls for the wonderful terms!) and our projections of what we want them to be. Nothing is theirs, even after they steal it from us and seem to take it away.
This is an abstract concept, but let me see if I can make it more clear. My ex spent a great deal of time and energy on creating the reality that everything good about me was a lie, so that he could feel like less of a nothing. He denigrated the way I looked, the way I thought, the way I felt, what I did for a living, my taste, my history. And because I’d projected on him my need for love and safety, his opinions became the measure of how much love and safety I had. So I nosedived. But let’s take away my projections and needs, and look at what he was building his self-esteem on. There was nothing here about him. It was all about what he could steal from me. Or from how he could denigrate or place himself higher than other people. Interesting huh?
What about the material things he walked away with. All the money he took by leveraging my need-based projections. Viewing this as thievery is absolutely right. And if it’s theivery, it’s still yours. That might not put it back into your hands, and you may never be able to recover it physically. But this concept helps me to get a grip on and start finding words to say that this empty shell was driving cars, wearing clothes, eating food that my work bought. Ninety percent of what he owned and most of what he claimed to be came from me. He stole it, but it’s mine.
And instead of feeling like I’d been robbed, I started to feel like a creditor and he was a debtor. He owed me. And the debt wasn’t going away, just because he denies it exists. He may think he got away with it, but in my mind, he did not. At some point in my healing, I wrote down a list of exactly what he took by leveraging my feelings, and his debt to me is in the six-figure range, not counting all the “merit badges” of professional history, expensive hobbies, and travel experiences that he now wears as though God pinned them to his chest. I’m not obsessing about it. It’s filed on a shelf in my mind among the other unfinished business of my life. But the debt is forever associated with his name, and if the day ever comes that I see the opportunity to collect or take any of it back, I will do that. (Such as, if he, as he claims he will, ever decides to run for national office, I will, without the slightest qualm, take back some of the phony persona he built on my financial and personal life equity.)
Part of this work is to figure out how you are going to view them in the future. And to find a way to do that that gets you out of thinking that you were a helpless victim of a natural force. That’s early-stage thinking when you were confused about your feelings and their identity. Anger should get you more clear about what you were dealing with, which was a professional user. By the time you get to grief, you’ve also started to play around with the beginning, at least, of understanding your own role in this, even if you haven’t done the deeper work on understanding why you did it. (And you’ll get there.)
Naming him a thief is a very good start. And then, when those clouds passes through, which are really about questions about whether he right in his low estimation of you and flashes of self-hate about whether you didn’t really deserve all this because you are so stupid and existential fears that you were born to be a victim, you have something about him to hold onto. He was an empty shell who stole everything that looked like personality, power and reputation. The only real thing about him is the dark pit of anger and hunger and grief at the center. You were conned by someone who survives by pretending, conning and trying to convince himself and other people that he has any community value, when he doesn’t even know what that means.
This isn’t about you. It never was. Except that you had vulnerabilities. And you ultimately will realize that while trying to steal all that was good about you, he also shared his emptiness with you. Feelings are contagious. That’s why these guys want the warmest, move loving and feeling people whose inadequate boundaries just allow them to pig out. They are desperate for the illusion of belonging, of being valued and loved. (And yes, they don’t know what to do with any of this except to consume it to the destruction of the host.) But you have been around someone whose only enduring qualities are self-hatred, resentment, despair, inability to trust or love, and a level of denial that makes them clank like empty suits of armor. And you’ve been going to this person for validation? Guess what came through those leaky boundaries? Your own mini-S that didn’t leave when he did.
So, yes, you have to go visit the dark cloud and find out what it has to say. Because it’s part of you, but if you discover, as you probably will, that it’s some residual echo of the answer you got when you sought love from Sir Clanksalot or one of the people in your past that he’s serving as an avatar for, you can process that through pretty fast. It comes down to blood from a stone or juice from a sour grape. And if you’ve got the energy, you might want to dig a little further down into the question of why. Why would you ever have looked for approval or anything like it from these people? You might just zoom right down into the jackpot zone of remembering how you got into the habit when you were little and dependent and had no choice but to live or die on their approval. And figure out that this wasn’t about you either, but about the problems of other people and reclaim your right to be treated well. And process that while you’re at it.
It’s really helpful to understand that depression is part of learning. Those dark clouds are part of learning. Don’t ignore them. Dig in. Ask “what are you?” And consider the idea that depression itself is a resistance to learning something you already know. What are you resisting? That this made you feel really, really bad? That someone didn’t love you? That you can’t control everything in your life? The God didn’t single you out to have only good experiences? That your guardian angel may have decided to let you live through this one, rather than warning you away? And of course, that old country favorite, that you’re not pretty and sexy and unique and lovable enough to win the heart of a great guy like him? Or it’s flipside that you’re stupid, fat, ugly and unproductive, and even you can’t stand you.
So of this is just getting a grip on reality. Some of this is the residue of believing in people who you’d never believe in now. In grief, we handle this stuff, unwrap it, discern whether it needs to go into the processing queue or just throw it down the disposal. The more of this stuff you look at, the more of it just turns out to be minor housekeeping tasks.
So look at it. If you don’t want to look at it, if the whole idea makes you tired, understand that you’re dealing with denial and eventually you’re going to have to look at it, if you want to get clear and really let go of your losses. It will wait for you to get brave enough to face it, generating all its toxic crap, dragging you down into self-hating, self-denying, disassociative, addictive states.
But here’s the good new about this stuff. If you’re feeling it, if you’re conscious of black clouds changing your mood, it’s like the kid in the classroom waving his hand and shouting “choose me!” It’s ready to be looked at. You’re ready to look at it. It’s popping up in your consciousness because the internal heal-o-meter has decided it’s time for this one.
If it’s visible to you, it probably means there’s something really good in it for right now. Tell denial to take a coffee break, and come back in a few minutes, in case you decide your really can’t handle it yet. It’s like those PBS programs you’re too tired to watch, and flip over to another Law & Order re-run instead. But if there’s no re-run you haven’t seen five times, and you break down watch PBS. and you discover cool new ideas that open your mind and change your life.
Welcome to your personal PBS. And oh yes, tears are good. You know when it’s good clean grief. They are a special kind of tears that let us simultaneously love and let go at the same time. It was important to us, but it’s over. Honor its importance. Honor your survival without it. Blow it a kiss, even if it was an illusion, as it fades away. Whatever it was, it did it’s job in getting you here.
Kathy
Hi all,
There’s something I’m not getting, maybe someone can help. I’m sure it’s fairly simple and I’m having some sort of mental block – like when I don’t really want to acknowledge something important. My family history -surprise surprise- is similar to those that some of you have shared on this blog; neglect, emotional abuse, etc. I am beginning to think I was raised by a narcissist for a while. I thought that enabled me to spot abusive behaviours – which I kind of did, I would accuse the sociopath I was in a relationship with to treat me badly, I could see through the manipulation, gaslighting, guilt trips etc, at least partially. Like many sociopaths he combined those with his pity play and “I’m a work in progress” line. And I stayed with him. There were many hints that he was a sociopath – I let them go, until I had no choice but face reality. I’m ashamed by how basic my question is. Yet I cannot answer it: what in me made me trust him? I read the whole thread and I know the answer is somewhere but it is eluding me.
Thanks
EILEEN:
because you are a good person that doesnt want to punish everyone for past relationships? or as hard as we try and as much as we see what is going on…we are just human beings with good intentions and we let those emotions get in the way of the obvious?
the answer will come to you in one of those moments …im still trying to figure mine out as well. just dont drive yourself crazy…remember ..these people are EXPERTS! people are fooled by these types all the time…the pentagon, the investors of madoff etc…you did nothing wrong. this is their career. we cant make sense of someone that is crazy and manipulative. the answers that we normal healthy people are looking for might never come…and thats ok..cuz i really dont want to think or be like these guys…:)smile and hugs
Eileen,
It is I believe what happens in the begining of the relationship that lures us in. An S/P/N is very good at seducing us to believe in that illusion they create in the very begining. And we cling to that. We are addicted to that.
And later, for most of us who were not taught to have good boundaries, we might see through some of the manipulation, pity ploys, and gas lighting ect….But we still also hang onto our beliefs that this person IS the illusion that we fell in love with in the begining. That is the addictive “hold” that these types of relationships have on us.
Until we are able to see clearly our own reality and actually embrace what is real and what isn’t, we can’t think straight.
You trusted in him because you thought you could. You thought he was deserving of your trust. Once you saw signs that he wasn’t worthy of your trust, you were conflicted. Unable to see clearly what he really was v/s what he projected himself to be. (the illusion)
Being compassionate shouldn’t mean that we give away our trust without someone earning it first. For many of us though it means just that. We give trust freely and believe that we should trust people unless they give us reason not to. This is something that we have to struggle with now after the fact. How trusting we were. And we have so much to re-learn about how we want to be, our “healthier” self.
eileen, I think that it might be easier to answer another question. What did he represent that you wanted so badly to override your normal criteria for letting someone into your life?
I’m saying he “represented,” but that’s not the way we experience it. We experience them being it, whatever this is.
The weird and potent chemistry of a sociopath’s ability to mirror back to us our needs and our hunger to get those needs met is incredibly powerful. We write a lot here on the processes sociopaths use to identify and groom their targets. But that’s about them. Let’s look at us.
We’re walking around with old damage, desperate for resolution, that we don’t interpret as damage. We interpret it as ideas about what we need (outside of ourselves) to complete our life or our happiness. So maybe we’re looking for a better job and more money. Maybe we’re looking for a situation that makes us feel better about our looks or our competence. Maybe we’re looking for a relationship that relieves anxiety of some sort — that we’re lovable, or that we will be protected, or that we have access to someone smarter and more experienced.
All these sound pretty reasonable, except for one thing. They are all examples of pinning our happiness or peace of mind on something outside ourselves. Wanting is one thing. Needing is another. People who come out of unresolved trauma have, by definition, unmet needs. Another way of looking at trauma is that is something that drastically cuts off our access to something we need. And unresolved trauma is the state of living with all the internal machinations we have done to deal with that.
Typically this is a strangely focused relationship with that need. With needs we have no problems getting met, the fulfillment just flows through us. What we need, we get and we don’t think about it. When the need-fulfillment process is broken, it creates all kinds of elaborate compensatory structures. We may claim not to need something that we are simultaneously chasing after while calling it something else. We may disparage the whole concept of that need. We may enviously resent people who seem to get that need met effortlessly. We may cry uncontrollably over books and movies where that need and the loss of its related fulfillment are key themes. We may develop jokes about it, especially sarcastic ones. We may live with chronic background anxiety or a sense that we’re not okay.
So the net of all this compensatory activity is generally not being consciously aware of what we need and are not getting, or the associated pain and desperation we live with. We sublimate it and intellectualize into socially acceptable pursuits of better jobs, bigger houses, more love, more safety, more people who we will reassure that we’re really okay.
But the sociopath’s business is to identify the wobbly places in us. And when this character shows up and, after a bit of probing and paying attention to how we behave and what we seem to care about, start reflecting back to us either the solutions that we have identified or his shrewd analysis of what’s underneath these yearnings (because he’s an expert in unmet needs of his own), we don’t just hear this on the superficial, logical conscious level, we hear it way down where this desperate lack, despite all our attempts to shore it up, is creating problems is our deep-down structure.
It’s a difficult idea to accept that in we are actually looking to recreate primal trauma to that we can get a different ending this time. But I know that, in my dealings with my ex, I was conscious of recognizing things wrong with him, really wrong, but coming up with all kinds of excuses not to pay attention to them. One of my favorites is “We can’t help who we fall in love with.” But the truth of the matter was that he was offering me a cure for something very old and very deep. And I wanted it. When he failed to be that cure, I couldn’t let it go. He had brought something up to the surface in me that wouldn’t just conveniently disappear again.
One of the most startling insights in my healing was when I recognized that I was living through a pitched battle inside myself, and had been for the entire relationship. I’ve written about this fairly recently, so apologies to readers who already read it. But maybe its worth repeating. There was the grown-up, logical, daylight side of me that I thought was my identity. That part of me was horrified at this attachment, fully aware of the damage being done to my life and my sense of myself, and crazy-furious at me for not getting a grip and fixing this situation.
But the other side of this argument was something that could just steamroller that sensible self with the pure force of its need. It wanted him. To this part of me, he was the answer to every prayer. And if he wasn’t acting like that, then it was flogging me to do whatever it took to make him act like that. He’d said that was who he was. He recognized what I really needed. He was the most perfectly accurate solution that ever showed up, and this part of me (which had certainly been active in other love relationships, but nothing like this) was demanding that every other part of my being get behind it, on the job, to get what this guy offered.
I was in a battle to save what was left of my life, but the battle was with me! Everytime I did anything to resist him, to renegotiate his demands, to try to maintain boundaries, I risked an internal implosion as this I-want-him side got terrified I was going to lose him or turned up the volume because I wasn’t take this seriously enough.
I didn’t interpret it this was at the time. I thought that it was him. I thought that he was so powerful. Or that my love for him so powerful. I thought that he had some magic that could make me feel great or feel like dirt. But wasn’t him. It was the hope for deep healing, for resolution of a trauma that I had pinned on him.
There is a piece of Buddhist wisdom that the best possible thing that we can do for ourselves is pursue our more powerful dreams. And I think that our stories of relationship with sociopaths and healing from those relationships explains why this is so. And of course, there is also the Buddhist saying, that when the student is ready, the teacher will arrive.
If the logical daylight side of me had succeeded in forcing down that other side back into the realm of denial, and I had walked away from this relationship, as I had walked away from every other relationship I had started to fulfill these buried needs and then found didn’t solve the problem, I still would be living with it. But I didn’t. For the first time in my life, I recklessly pursued the happiness I thought this man was capable of giving me. And got whacked over and over and over by the reality of what he was. I used to think about it as flinging myself against a black Teflon wall. And I could see what I was doing but simply couldn’t understand why.
Much later, after I’d gone through the healing phases of identifying him as a bad man and getting angry and building better boundaries, it was in the grief process that I finally started getting the insights that would later lead me to do some serious work on making myself healthier. Those insights started with the realization that he was an avatar, not really important as him, but a stand-in for something else. My friends used to call him Kabuki Face because of his typical expression of disdain or arrogance, and I began to see that Kabuki Face as a kind of translucent mask with other faces behind it. I started to realize that we he had done to me, the personality type he was, the whole drama of interaction between him and me was not new in my life.
I once read that our negative emotions are just reproductions of the first time we felt that way. Each time we feel it again, it’s because the current situation causes us to revisit the first time. So I started digging down into the feeling and the whole drama around it. Where did that come from? I had an incest background, and I’d always assumed that was the primal source of my various dysfunctional behaviors. And it was important, but not the bottom. Which is pretty logical when you think about it. Incest doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. The family has a lot of problems already. And I found my primal trauma, the one that set everything else in motion for me, including creating a framework for more traumas and more elaborate compensatory structures, at about three or four years old.
It was pretty simple, and I’ve written about it before. But suffice to say, it was a moment when I realized that no one was going to protect me and that my ability to manage other people’s feelings was going to determine whether I got any love, nurture, shelter or survival at any level. So I shut down any needs for understanding, appreciation, comfort, etc. and started on the long learning path of becoming an effective codependent enabler and manipulator for my own survival.
And that powerful I-want-him side of me that showed up when the sociopath offered exactly what seemed to undo all that was the me that existed immediately before that trauma. With all the force of a child’s hunger to be whole. With all the backed-up power of that blocked development of healthy self-interest and expressiveness trying to break through. This guy was going to be the good daddy to replace the bad daddy, and I was finally going to be able to grow up.
Well, it didn’t work out that way, as it never works out with sociopaths and, actually, people who aren’t nearly as damaged, but still damaged enough to partner up with a damaged person. The unmet needs of people with major childhood trauma can be met, sort of, in relationships that seem to recreate the circumstances of that trauma, but are a somewhat better situation. But looking at my own life, I can see the progression of relationships through older teachers, people who gave me the illusion of normalcy and safety, people who gave me the illusion of getting all the avalanches of love I needed to counteract my feelings of insecurity, people who were dominant daddies who used me but did it because they loved me and I wanted to be used.
I think I tried every possible permutation of trying to get a relationship to fix this thing. And I went through some pretty obsessive involvements, but still with the ability to judge it and walk away. But this guy was smart, perceptive and motivated, because to him, I was the big solution to his problems. So he hit all the buttons. And the big favor he did me was to bring the trauma right up to the service. He made me realize that I was being used by someone who didn’t care about me. That no matter what I did, I might get some temporary relief from fear of being unloved or unsafe, but that wasn’t what I needed.
I actually tried to find a version of him that loved me. Put the famous ad on Yahoo that brought hundreds of responses in 48 hours. (Don’t ask; it’s too embarrassing to talk about.) And I went through these guys, writing all of them, dating a dozen or so. I knew exactly what I wanted. Him, but loving me. Of course, I didn’t find him. Later, I realize that “him” wasn’t him. Whatever he was really, I had him cast in a drama that I was carrying around with me. I was reproducing this trauma with him in the supporting role.
I’ve gone on and on here. And I apologize for another long post. You asked a great question. I hope this response makes sense, and that you can extract something for yourself out of it.
Kathy
Wow Kathleen – that’s big stuff! I didn’t want to look at the dark cloud – it comes up and it’s message evades me, but I do recognise the inner S and the inner S wasn’t there before him. It’s like he has implanted me with a little alien that I desperately want to purge out. And I guess the first step in getting rid of it or at least taming it is looking at what it is.
There is a Billie Holliday song called Gloomy Sunday and I think this is the song of the cloud. Not the verse where she realises she was only dreaming – that was added by the producers because the song was released in wartime conditions and they thought the content was too depressing. You see the other name for the song is The Suicide Song. There is an urban myth about people killing themselves after listening to it and the composer killed himself in later years after not being able to come up with a hit like this one.
And when I look at the connection with the song, I still don’t know the ultimate reason for the cloud and will need to talk with it. But one thing becomes clear for me – the P wanted me to fall into such despair that I would kill myself. And he came very very close. I actually bought piping for the car at one point. At another I saved pills. And he watched me do it all. And in his detached tone said ‘Don’t be silly – you’re fine.’
That might sound irrational, but I think his aim was complete and total destruction of myself BY MYSELF. He wanted to drive me to it then walk away with clean hands so he could say to others ‘See I told you she was crazy’
I want to know more about this inner S. Where does it come from? Is it the toxicity from him given life within me? I sensed my perceptions were being seen through his eyes as I travelled through that bad bad depression many years ago. I literally pulled myself up inch by inch. I still didn’t see he was driving the process of despair but something in me sensed I was in serious danger. I started from the outside and worked inside. I bought clothes to start with – figured if I could present a ‘normal’ image then perhaps I would start to believe it again. Oh he made me feel as though I was defective, sick, selfish, horrific, cruel, angry all the time,calculating, parasitic, envious, contemptuous and someone not worth the air I breathed. And at the bottom of the pit with no dissenting voices to argue with him – I believed him after a time. Those things were all him though – not me.
The cloud I know makes me stop work that is hard – personal writing and projects I love. It says at the moment ‘What’s the point?’ It is something to do with the death urge – it sees the decay of everything and the passing of time and reminds me time is short, but then makes excuses to soothe me ‘You’re tired – you’ve done so much already with this relationship – just enjoy yourself. Numb yourself with the television and live like others’ I don’t want to watch TV though – that’s what happened for years with the P. It makes me doubt I can clear out all the junk at home and move on – it has a stuck quality to it. I feel stuck. So many small tasks to do to the house still and no matter how many I do there are more to be done. I am tired. I am fed up. And yet scared of giving up all this to move to … what? A future unknown.
Yes I will give my attention to it. I am more aware now of everything that comes up and I allow it to come without judging or moralising or feeling bad – it’s all part of the process and I don’t have total control over it. Thanks Kathleen – you always provoke such good thinking.
fantastic answers…words that i would not be able to say in this part of my own healing…thanks…your words to eileen helped me too!!!
Needs. I talk about this a lot. I’m not sure how many people understand what I’m talking about.
Needs are NEEDS. Not optional. Not nice to have. If you were a car engine, you’d need fuel in the tank, oil in the engine, a clean air filter, a charge in the battery. If the oil gets old or starts to burn off, it will run for a while. If the air filter gets clogged, it will run for a while. The mechanical system will try to compensate for the lack. But ultimately, not getting its needs will make it run more and more roughly, and finally it won’t run at all.
We don’t talk about human needs very much in our culture, beyond physical survival stuff. Virtually our entire legal system is built around property. Our economic system is built around money. The laws we have that protect people from harassment or stalking or other types of emotional abuse came as a result of major grassroots efforts for legal acknowledgement that emotional impact is a real issue.
If you don’t have a grip on your needs, and don’t exactly understand why I’m talking about when I say “unmet needs,” here is a partial list of human NEEDS from http://www.cnvc.org/en/learn-online/needs-list/needs-inventory:
CONNECTION:
acceptance
affection
appreciation
belonging
cooperation
consideration
consistency
respect
safety
inclusion
HONESTY
authentity
integrity
PLAY
joy
humor
experimentation
PEACE
beauty
harmony
order
consistency
MEANING
clarity
effectiveness
purpose
to matter
challenge
discovery
creativity
growth
AUTONOMY
choice
freedom
space
spontaneity
action
These are things that human being don’t only want. They are things that we are entitled to need and entitled to pursue freely in our lives.
The first time I saw the whole list, it just blew me away. My reaction was, “You mean I’m allowed to NEED these things? To organize my life around needing these things? Whew, I have to think about this.”
I hope it inspires you to think as well. There were a lot of things on the list that just made me feel sad, because I had given up wanting them. (That is unprocessed trauma.)
I go back to this list every once in a while to see how I’m doing. To see what still makes me feel sad, because I’ve given up on it, or decided that I wasn’t meant to have it.
The things about needs is that if we just say “I need this,” something happens. Something changes in our minds. And a change begins to happen in our lives. It might not happen overnight, but life is a process. And once we start to take our needs seriously, we also begin taking that part of ourselves seriously. And we become actors and receivers in getting our needs met.
I never thought about respect before my relationship with the sociopath. The word wasn’t in my mental vocabulary. Now respect informs my entire life. To me, it’s a form of love that recognizes that we are all special, all unique, all with our own realities, but at center all sharing something that makes us part of a whole. It allows me to protect myself and honor other people’s need to protect themselves. But still care and accept caring. It’s an amazing word, and the sociopath and the healing process lead me to know it.
Go visit the list. Meditate on the words, the ones that jump out at you, and especially the ones that your eyes tend to drift over.
This post is as important as anything you’ll read from me. This is about what you deserve. From yourself and from the life you create. What you don’t have to explain about or apologize for wanting. If you are the least confused about what you are allowed to need, go visit the list and see what other people view as legitimate human needs.
Kathy
Kathy,
I cannot express how grateful I am for this particular posting. Although many have helped me along the path of healing, I was feeling stuck this morning and perhaps for a little while. I’d gotten to the point of letting go and not entirely blaming myself, but I still suffered from PTSD and panic & anxiety at times also related to bullying behaviors at work immediately following my breakup with the n/p.
But this morning the recognition of HOW to be compassionate and how I had and continued to try to earn love and appreciation by taking care of others and still at times was deeply hurt when these were not forthcoming. It amazed me that the compassion that you outlined was the step I was missing and I equated compassion with “taking care of” instead of simply letting be and understanding.
Thank you Kathy! And all of the commenter’s who have been willing to share their experiences and thoughts that have helped me along this healing path.
dee
Thanks Kathleen…Wow, I have a lot to think about. I can’t pinpoint which one of all my childhood villains the S embodied…maybe all of them at once!!