Healing from an emotional trauma or extended traumatic experience is a like a long, intimate dance with reality. Or perhaps a three-act ballet. We are on the stage of our own minds, surrounded by the props of our lives, dancing to the music of our emotions. Our memories flash on the backdrop or float around like ribbons in the air. Down below the stage, in the orchestra pit, a chorus puts words to the feelings and gives us advice drawn from our parents’ rules, our church’s rules, all the rules from the movies and books and conversations that have ever colored our thinking.
And our job is to dance our way through the acts.
The first act is named “Magic Thinking.” We stumble onto the stage, stunned, confused and in pain. Our first dance is denial — the “it doesn’t matter” dance. Our second dance is bargaining — the “maybe I can persuade whoever is in power to fix this” dance. The third and last dance before the intermission is anger.
This article is about anger.
The emotional spine
Everyone here who has gone through the angry phase knows how complex it is. We are indignant, bitter, sarcastic, outraged, waving our fiery swords of blame. We are also — finally — articulate, funny, re-asserting power over our lives. We are hell on wheels, demanding justice or retribution. We are also in transition between bargaining and letting go, so all this is tinged with hope on one side and grief on the other.
Anger really deserves a book, rather than a brief article. It is the end of the first act of our healing, because it really changes everything — our way of seeing, our thinking, our judgments, the way we move forward. Like the element of fire, it can be clarifying, but it can also be destructive. To complicate the situation further, many (if not all of us) tended to repress our anger before we entered this healing process.
So it may be helpful to discuss what anger is, where it comes from. What we call anger is part of a spectrum of reactions that originates in the oldest part of our brain. The brain stem, sometimes called the lizard brain, oversees automatic survival mechanisms like breathing, heartbeat, hunger, sleep and reproduction. It also generates powerful emotional messages related to survival.
These messages travel through increasingly sophisticated layers of our emotional and intellectual processing. One of those layers, the limbic system or mammal brain, is where we keep memories of good and bad events, and work out how to maximize pleasure and avoid pain (often through addictive strategies). The messages pass through this layer on the way to our cerebral cortex.
There in the thinking layer, we name things and organize them. We maintain concepts of community and identity (right and left brain), and we manipulate them continually to run our lives as thinking, self-aware beings. Beyond the thinking brain is the even more advanced area of the frontal cortex, which maintains our awareness of the future, interconnectivity (holistic thinking), and the “high level” views that further moderate our primitive responses into philosophic and spiritual meanings.
What our thinking brains name “anger” is actually a sensation of physical and emotional changes caused by the brain stem in reaction to perceived danger. The spectrum of those danger-related sensations roughly includes alertness, fear and anger. While our higher brain may see a purpose in separating fear and anger into different categories, our lizard brain doesn’t make those distinctions. It just keeps altering our hormones and brain chemicals for all kinds of situations, depending on its analysis of what we need to do to survive.
The point of this long digression is this: alertness-fear-anger responses are a normal part of our ability to survive. They travel “up” into our higher processing as the strong spine of our survival mechanism. There is nothing wrong with feeling them. In fact, paying attention to them is better for us in every way than ignoring our feelings (denial) or trying to delude ourselves about what is happening (bargaining).
The many forms of anger
One of the most interesting things about the English language is its many verb forms, which express various conditions of timeliness and intent. I can. I could. I could have. I would have. I might have. I should have. I will. I might. I was going to.
Those same factors of timeliness and intent can be found in the many facets of anger. Bitterness and resentment are simmering forms of anger related to past and unhealed hurts. Likewise sarcasm and passive-aggressive communications are expressions of old disappointment or despair. Frustration is a low-level form of anger, judging a circumstance or result as unsatisfactory. Contempt and disgust are more pointed feelings associated with negative judgments.
When anger turns into action, we have explosive violence, plans for future revenge and sabotage. When anger is turned on ourselves, we have depression and addictions. The judgments associated with anger foster black-and-white thinking, which can be the basis for bias and all kinds of “ism’s,” especially if the anger is old, blocked for some reason, and thus diffuse or not directed primarily at its source. This typically happens when we feel disempowered to defend ourselves.
All of that sounds pretty terrible and toxic. But, in fact, the most toxic forms of anger are the ones in which the anger is not allowed to surface. The lizard brain does not stop trying to protect us until we deal with the threat, and so we live with the brain chemicals and hormones of anger until we do.
Anger can also be healthy. The anger of Jesus toward the money changers in the temple is a model of righteous anger. In response to trauma, righteous anger is a crucial part of the healing process. Anger has these characteristics:
• Directed at the source of the problem
• Narrowly focused and dominating our thinking
• Primed for action
• Intensely aware of personal resources (internal and environmental)
• Willing to accept minor losses or injuries to win
Anger is about taking care of business. At its most primitive level, anger is what enables us to defend our lives, to kill what would kill us. In modern times, it enables us to meet aggression with aggression in order to defend ourselves or our turf. We expect to feel pain in these battles, but we are fighting to win.
However, anger also has its exhilaration, a sense of being in a moment where we claim our own destiny. For those of us who have been living through the relatively passive and self-defeating agony of denial and bargaining, anger can feel wonderful.
As it should, because anger is the expression of our deepest self, rejecting this new reality. We are finally in speaking-up mode. We are finally taking in our situation and saying, “No! I don’t want this. I don’t like it. I don’t like you for creating this in my life. I don’t like how it feels. I don’t like what I’m getting out of it. And if it doesn’t stop this instant, I want you out of my life.”
Getting over our resistance to anger
Of course, we don’t exactly say that when we’re inside the relationship. In fact, we don’t exactly think it, even when we’re out of the relationship. And why is that? Because — and this only my theory, but it seems to be born out here on LoveFraud — people who get involved with sociopaths are prone to suppress their anger, because they are afraid of it, ashamed of it, or confused about its meaning.
When faced with a painful situation, they suppress their inclination to judge the situation in terms of the pain they’re experiencing, and instead try to understand. They try to understand the other person. They try to understand the circumstances. They try to interpret their own pain through all kinds of intellectual games to make it something other than pain. To an extent, this could be described as the bargaining phase. But for most of us, this is a bargaining phase turned into a life strategy. It’s an unfinished response to a much earlier trauma that we have taken on as a way of life.
Which is very good for the sociopath, who can use it to gaslight us while s/he pursues private objectives of looting our lives for whatever seems useful or entertaining. Until we have nervous breakdowns or die, or wake up.
We can all look at the amount of time it took us to wake up, or the difficulty we’re having waking up, at evidence of how entrenched we’ve been in our avoidance of our own anger. It retrospect, it is an interesting thing to review. Why didn’t we kick them out of our lives the first time they lied or didn’t show up? Why didn’t we throw their computer out of the window when we discovered their profiles on dating sites? Why didn’t we cut off their money when we discovered they were conning us? Why didn’t we spit in their eye when they insulted us? Why didn’t we burn their clothes on the driveway the first time they were unfaithful?
Because we were too nice to do that? Well, anger is the end of being nice. It may be slow to emerge. We may have to put all the pieces together in our heads, until we decide that yes, maybe we do have the right to be angry. Yes, they were bad people. No, we didn’t deserve it. And finally, we are mad. At them.
Anger in our healing process
Anger is the last phase of magical thinking. We are very close to a realistic appraisal of reality. The only thing “magical” about it is this: no amount of outrage or force we can exert on the situation can change it. The sociopath is not going to change. We cannot change the past, or the present we are left with.
But anger has its own gifts. First and foremost is that we identify the external cause of our distress. We place our attention where it belongs at this moment — on the bad thing that happened to us and the bad person who caused it.
Second, we reconnect with our own feelings and take them seriously. This is the beginning of repairing our relationships with ourselves, which have often become warped and shriveled with self-hatred and self-distrust when we acted against our own interests in our sociopathic relationships.
Third, anger is a clarifying emotion. It gives us a laser-like incisiveness. It may not seem so when we are still struggling with disbelief or self-questioning or resentment accumulated through the course of the relationship. But once we allow ourselves to experience our outrage and develop our loathing for the behavior of the sociopath, we can dump the burden of being understanding. We can feel the full blazing awareness that runs through all the layers of brain, from survival level through our feelings through our intellect and through our eyes as we look at that contemptible excuse for a human being surrounded by the wreckage s/he creates. Finally our brains are clear.
And last, but at least as important as the rest, is the rebirth of awareness of personal power that anger brings. Anger is about power. Power to see, to decide, to change things. We straighten up again from the long cringe, and in the action-ready brain chemicals of anger, we surprise ourselves with the force of our ability and willingness to defend ourselves. We may also surprise ourselves with the violent fantasies of retribution and revenge we discover in ourselves. (Homicidal thoughts, according to my therapist, are fine as long as we don’t act on them.)
It is no wonder that, for many of us, the angry phase is when we learn to laugh again. Our laughter may be bitter when it is about them. But it can be joyous about ourselves, because we are re-emerging as powerful people.
The main thing we do with this new energy is blaming. Though our friends and family probably will not enjoy this phase (because once we start blaming, it usually doesn’t stop at the sociopath), this is very, very important. Because in blaming, we also name what we lost. When we say “you did this to me,” we are also saying, “Because of you, I lost this.”
Understanding what has changed — what we lost — finally releases us from magical thinking and brings us face to face with reality. For many of us this is an entirely new position in our personal relationships. In the next article, we’ll discuss how anger plays out in our lives.
Until then, I hope you honor your righteous anger, casting blame wherever its due. And take a moment to thank your lizard brain for being such a good friend to you.
Namaste. The healing warrior in me salutes the healing warrior in you.
Kathy
Hummingbird, I read the email you posted, and I was also struck with the condescending way he expressed himself, hiding behind all these words like smoke screens. And the poor woman seems completely hooked in. Ugh. What a creep. The thing is, once you know what he is, you have no choice but to walk away and never have any contact with him again. There is nothing he can ever say or do that will be truthful, caring, or reasonable. It takes a lot longer for the emotional part to catch up with what your mind knows about him. Yes, you obsess and long for him. It eventually gets less. You don’t actually get the kind of closure you are wanting right now. But as time goes by, the connection you feel to him will weaken and you will have less need to have closure. It can take a while to go through all the stages of grieving, so pull up a seat, grab a snickers bar, and make yourself at home. The people here are truly wonderful and will be here for you when you need to talk.
Hi Kathleen, and all
Taken a bit of a break from posting, but have been trying to keep up with the site.
Wanted to say, Kathleen, that your posts have brought me to tears on several occasions. They are absolutely fantastic !!
You manage to convey, so competely and thouroughly, that you totally, totally GET IT. You have what we call ACCURATE EMPATHY.
Ive also felt, in reading your work, that I, with my psychology training, wouldnt say it like that. Ive thought long and hard about the why of it, and come to the realisation that because you are so completely and unconditionally and blatantly on my side, you let me feel that you get it. Without wanting to antagonise people here, I think it is because you have been through it yourself, that you know, in your bones, THAT THERE ISNT ANOTHER SIDE TO THE STORY. And it is exactly that which enables me to feel properly heard and understood.
I find myself having passed through all the stages so far. There are times where one predominates, but they are all on the go in the background simultaneously. I still encounter denial here and there. I have occasional anger. I bargain with my fate. But my awareness of the stages helps me: When I catch myself bargaining now, I say ‘wait a minute!” Think of the bigger picture. Do you really miss those disappointments? Do you really want to hear a few more lies. Do you really want to be managed back into a corner? Do you really miss wishing you were dead?
I use Anger as a message. It is an emotional message telling me that there is something that I want, that Im just not getting. The Anger in itself is of no use, but the message is very important.
When I start doubting, and think, “but what if..”, I stop now, and cut it short with “He just doesnt care”. That is the answer to every question that I have about my N. He just doesnt care.
Make me angry? You bet.
Grant, I was just checking in. I’ve got another busy day today. But I found your post and I wanted to respond to it.
First, thank you for letting me know that you found something for yourself in my posts. That means a lot to me.
About “getting it” and possibly talking a little differently than a psychology-trained person would, you’re right I have been through it. But I’m also an iconoclast. I do my own research, and build my own internal models. When I started to write here, I had no idea whether my idea about the path (the way I did it) would be like the way other people healed. Writing here has shown me how alike our experiences of healing are.
I like what you said about all of the stages going on in the background, and different ones predominating at different times. I think all those stages represent different areas of consciousness. There are a lot of models that talk about how we develop from one level of consciousness to the next, but it’s a building process. We don’t abandon the last one, we just add another one on top of it. All have their reasons, especially in terms of how we experience life and particular challenges we face.
(The chakra model is a good one for that. All of us know what it feels like to get a sudden worry about our survival-level stuff, like whether we’ve got enough money in the checking account to cover the checks we wrote. That’s first chakra stuff, and it has a special feeling of its own.)
I also read something interesting last night about how forebrain development doesn’t occur until long after our childhood, which is why children are relatively impulsive and have little interest in delayed gratification. (An interesting point in regard to the morality of sociopaths, who seem to be developmentally blocked from an early age.)
I think this healing process is so challenging that keeps a lot of our layers engaged for quite a while. I wrote a post about loving again earlier this week, and I realized afterward that I’m still so reactive that I’m creating all kinds of rules about love, rather than just being interested in seeing how I react to what comes along. Another bit of PSTD I have to work on. Another bit of trust in myself I have to cultivate.
I agree with you about anger. It is a message about what we don’t want in our lives. But the challenge is to turn it over and find out what it means about what we do want. In fact that’s the challenge of this whole process. We are going “no, no, no” and eventually that negativity is transformed into new and better knowledge about what we want in our lives. And that is the biggest step toward finding it, attracting it, manifesting it.
And I also like what you said about “there isn’t another side to this story.” I agree. Our stories are ours. These people who challenge us are just props, supporting characters in what is really our personal development track. The lessons we find to help us along. It doesn’t feel like it when we’re in the middle of a very challenging lesson.
But I think that at the end of everything lesson, we learn some thing positive. Something about love. Or something about how to extend ourselves with more positive energy into the world. Which may sound strange when the message of these relationships seems to be the total opposite. But it’s been the end of every other challenging lesson I’ve ever had, and I expect it to be the end of this one too.
Okay, I’m off the the races. Have a wonderful day.
Kathy
To all who wonder about closure and letting go, It is a do it yourself project cause your Sp has no desire to help you along and no compassion for your pain. Last month, I was in an isolation room at the hospital coughing up blood clots the size of tablespoons. I had an understandable moment of weakness as I faced a possibility of death. My 15yr old daughter and her 19 yr old brother called the ex and begged to be allowed to bring his 11 yr old daughter who calls me Mom to visit. His answer was that my ex-daughter didn’t want to see me. I’m the problem because I got mad at Daddy for having a whore. I heard his response and told my daughter ask him what I was I suppose to do, be fine with it, not get angry about it. His response was I have no answers and nothing to say. He refused to talk with me. Prior to my illness when I first discovered his betrayal I begged him to talk with me to give me a few answers, to let me vent, to seek closure and understanding so that I could move on. Again, no time for me. I spent 10 yrs with this man. He raised my children and I helped him gain custody of his daughter whom he had never known until 2 yrs ago after she was placed in foster care due to Mom being a Meth addict. Now he honors my no contact rule because he truly wants no contact. He idolized my daughter, always ignored my son. He desired to build a wedge between me and my children with the games that he played. My Dad believes that he had sexual intentions toward my daughter and he still bathes and sleeps with his 11 year old daughter so maybe he is a predator. I know that the first time we fought it was because he refused to allow me and my son to go on a trip out of state with him and my daughter to go tubing in the snow. I refused to allow him to go alone with my child and he went postal. He knows that I was a victim of childhood sexual abuse. Call me paranoid but why could my son and I not also go since I offered to cover our cost of the trip myself. His only answer was that the trip wasn’t about my son and me. It was about my daughter and him. That struck me then as well as now as insensitive at best and sickening at worst. Anyway, I hope this just goes to show that there is no closure and no answers from them. They either really don’t have an explanation or they choose to withhold it to hurt us and to feel empowered by that. The good news is that I saw the ex yesterday while I was out. I was telling my Mom about the funny post with Jim here and feeling good smiling as he passed by. My Mom asked how did I feel seeing him. Did it bother me? Actually, for the first time I felt nothing at all. Better still he saw me happy if he saw me at all. I hope to keep the smile on my face and the laughter in my heart both of which were lacking with him in my life. I wrote a letter of the good that this brought me and one of the things that I wrote was that I now know that I want to live and love passionately and that I want to laugh out loud a lot. Any man who comes into my life will have to share those qualities. The ex laughed only about 2 times in 10 years and his smile never reached his eyes. Looking back it reminds me of a spider smiling at a fly as it says come on over to my place. When we feel weak, we need to remember the relationship that we really had and not the fantasy one that we wanted and believed could be ours, if only…
By the way, I am still fighting a horrible infection, but I’m doing better, and I’m back at work part-time. The director of nursing agreed to allow me to return with the 30 day heart monitor in place. I’m feeling stronger and I want to be healthy again in body, mind, and spirit. This community really does help with the process.
Dear Joy,
Sounds like a pedophile to me!!!! I think your gut was RIGHT, else why the rage? Yep, “bonding time” for step-daddy and cute little girl!
Read Dr. Anna Salter’s book “Predators”–she is THE expert in the world on pedophiles. Will make your hair stand on end and make you start to keep your eyes open. I am SURE GLAD you listened to your gut! GOOD FOR YOU.
Joy – I hope you continue to use all of your positive energy and resources to fight that horrible infection inside of you and I wish you a speedy recovery.
I encourage all of us to continue to focus on ourselves. To go through each and every stage/phase of experiencing the loss and then to set goals and reach them. Make sure they are easily attainable in the beginning… start SMALL…my first goal was literally to go from laying in bed to sitting up. Then to do simple things (from my bed) lol… then to do things for myself. .. (did my nails – went to a antique show – joined meetup.com – treated myself to a Philly cheesesteak and fries (just because) one day – said yes again to invites from friends – ALL THE WHILE HAVING MOMENTS IN BETWEEN OR FLASHBLACKS OR PANGS OF EITHER MEMORIES OF HIM OR MISSING HIM – but the difference now was I COMMITTED MYSELF TO STAYING IN THE MOMENT , MY MOMENT, NOT THE DREADFUL PAST.
A little over a year ago when it was over, if I had something go wrong in my life , he was still the first one I wanted to reach out to — for support, for encouragement. Afterall, I had spent years with him being that person for me, we actually texted every day for a year. (DONT ASK!! Some were us trying to find our way, some were manipulative ones, some were missing eachother, some were anger, some were love…we were STUCK… we werent healthy together.. before LF I thought it was all him, but it was HIS CHOICES THAT HE MADE WITH ME (after the ” masked honeymoon phase” ) that caused our story to take a turn for the worst and I TOO MADE UNHEALTHY CHOICES to stay THEREAFTER on the slippery slope with him- his unhealthy personal choices to tell me lies, to cheat and to steal. My unhealthy personal choices to give him more chances, to believe his excuses and to trust he was sorry and making changes. There were some stretches of time where he actually did get his act together – but it was fleeting. There were some stretches of time where I actually did get my act together – stayed away, stayed strong – but it was fleeting.
Before finding LF, I had just recently realized that if/when I reached out to him he would either 1. Blow me off or 2. Temporarily be there for me. I think it depended what was going on in his life or who was in his life. The last time I called him I had been in an auto accident when a teenager ran a redlight and hit me head on. We were 8mths out of not physically seeing eachother, I called him from the ambulance – He was concerned, I could tell by his tone and his questions. But his sociopathic tendency surfaced – it was a choice he made – he said where is your car? I have a friend who has an autobody shop, he will come tow it and take care of everything. TRUST ME. I felt a red flag. FOR THE FIRST TIME, I ACTED ON IT. I thought why would he say trust me to something like that? I HADNT A CLUE. BUT I said ok i will after I get checked out cuz ambulance had arrived at the hospital and I had to hangup. I received sev. texts are you ok? any reports back? Did you call my friend? This went on for several days… I answered each one, except for the questions about my car. Finally I told him, I just called my dealership and they referred me to their collision shop. HE SAID BUT I TOLD YOU TO USE MY FRIEND! I CAN GET MONEY FOR REFERRALS. I COULD HAVE GOTTEN MONEY IF YOU HAD CALLED HIM!
The reason I am telling this story is because — I could have chosen to ignore my gut feeling and called his friend and unbeknowngst to me he would have received his referral money and I would have NEVER known – and I further would have thought wow he really cared, and went out of his way to take care of my car and was such a great guy. All the while he was assessing my situation to his maximum benefit – he/they are selfish souls. He was ALWAYS ASSESSING SITUATIONS FOR HIS BENEFIT. WHETHER IT WAS WHERE WE ATE, WHAT WE DID, WHAT WE DIDNT DO, WHAT HE WANTED/NEEDED. WHAT WAS GOOD FOR HIM IN THE MOMENT. AND IF I DIDNT QUESTION ANY OF IT, I WAS A GOOD CANDIDATE TO JOIN HIM ON HIS JOURNEY.
I QUESTIONED IT THAT DAY. AND I MADE MY FIRST HEALTHY CHOICE TO SAY NO. TO PROTECT MYSELF FROM SOMEONE WHO COULD MANIPULATE SITUATIONS TO MAKE IT APPEAR AS THO HE CARED BUT WAS REALLY IN MY LIFE FOR SELFISH REASONS.
I stopped turning to him, reaching out to him. I either dealt with whatever was going on in my life myself or I reached out to a gf, a family member, in my time of need and eventually I reached out to LF. I made the HEALTHY choice to rid myself of someone who brought me down, took my money, drained my spirit and overall just didnt care about me. BUT HE WAS SUCCESSFUL IN GIVING OFF THE ILLUSION THAT HE DID.
BOTTOM LINE – LOOK FOR THE RED FLAGS – FEEL THE MOMENTS YOU ARE LEFT WONDERING, SAD, LONELY, REJECTED, UNFULFILLED, USED OR ALONE, EITHER WHEN YOU ARE WITH HIM OR RIGHT AFTER EACH OF YOU LEAVE TO GO HOME. IF YOU ARE IN THAT PLACE WITH ANYONE – YOU ARE IN AN UNHEALTHY SITUATION. LISTEN TO YOUR BEING. IT TELLS YOU THE TRUTH EVERYDAY – IF YOU JUST LISTEN TO IT AND DONT IGNORE HOW YOU ARE FEELING WITH SOMEONE. EVEN IF, BY ALL ACCOUNTS ON THE SURFACE – HE IS CALLING, OR HE IS MAKING EFFORTS TO SEE YOU, OR HE IS APOLOGIZING – IS GIVING YOU THE ILLUSION THAT HE IS EITHER TRYING OR REALLY IS A GOOD GUY – BUT YOUR INNER BEING KNOWS THAT HE IS NOT CONSISTENT WITH HONESTY, RESPECT, EMPATHY OR ABILITY TO CARE.
TRUST YOURSELF. ITS A BEAUTIFUL THING.
*correction* — I referred to my xtox as having a sociopathic tendency. While it quite conceivably could be a personality disorder of sorts. Im not well versed in diagnosing ANYONE. All I know is that he made choices that were not healthy, or otherwise normal choices in a loving, giving, caring, sharing relationship. He chose to lie , he chose to cheat and he chose to steal. There is a court ordered judgment against him that I am trying to collect on. His choices are why he is where he is in his life. The choices I made once the mask fell, and the red flags went flying are the reasons why I ended up where I did in my life. I continued to ignore what my being was feeling — all the while getting deeper and deeper with someone I did not belong with. On the surface he made me feel as though we belonged together (or I wanted to believe that) but deep inside it all felt off/it felt wrong. I made the unhealthy choice to stay… until I nearly hit rock bottom and he was ready to hit the road because I wasnt being a cooperative , easy, willing person anymore. His resources with me ran dry. I became in control of myself, my money, my life again.
Each and everyone of us can do it. IT AINT EASY. But you have to look INSIDE and find out why you were so willing to stay and fix that flaw. Its very easy to go back to these people because of the illusion, because of the love we feel and because of the hardship of breaking up and feeling possibly responsible or guilty.
We all have a part in a two-way relationship – and all of us here at LF put our heart and souls and trust in our partner – because we wanted to believe they had those same intentions and qualities about themselves toward us. They dont/cant/didnt – they are all about themselves. Let them go.
THEY DO NOT KNOW HOW TO HAVE A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP. As we have a known weakness of not being able to move on and let go. They have a known weakness of using, abusing, discarding.
One of us can fix our weaknesses and become stronger, better people on our journey and make healthier choices. The other one cannot fix their weaknesses- – they will continue to use, abuse, discard you and others throughout their entire journey and make unhealthy choices.
Chose to create balance in your life – look inside – find out who you are again and what you are all about — each and every one of you are amazing – you wouldnt be here if you didnt care about yourself your children your future –and select your inner circle based upon the ones who make you shine, grow, explore and create.
Dont go back to the way it was – if you are struggling – reach out to others – there is a better choice than a selfish disordered person as your partner. You cant fix them, but you can make the choice to fix your weaknesses within and rid yourself of the illusion that you need them. They are your ticket to hell on earth. A healthy you is your ticket to living well.
Joy…glad to see you’re back to work. And I’m with Oxy…never give them the opportunity to be alone with stepdaughters.
Joy…laughing and smiling…not always, when you are still in the FOG. I remember years ago…when my 24 year old was probably in 2nd grade…they had one of those “sheets” in school. Question…What makes your Dad laugh? Daughter’s answer: Nothing. My ex-Tox got quite a kick out of it.
My 13 year old, this morning…Why are you in such a good mood? Me…it’s 70 degrees, I’ve already put the top down…and you still want to play tennis, right? Why shouldn’t I be in a good mood?…whistling, humming, teasing the cat…
Ok, so I act crazy and laugh too much…I got years of lost time to make up for….TOWANDO!!! I’m FREE!
Im on my way… I can feel it…its a choice. I will always wish my journey with him was a different one, I cared, I truly cared. But we each made unhealthy choices. And he is not ready willing or able to fix himself. He truly may never be able to.
But I truly can live well and live in the moment. Because thats a choice that I want to make. I will have setbacks, I will never forget, but I will always remember its up to me to choose where I am going, what I want and who Im with. And to TRUST MYSELF.
And to choose to say no thank you, I dont want to be involved with someone who is making unhealthy personal choices to lie, cheat and steal. They have to choose to fix themselves or find another victim.
Everyday we wake up, we have a choice. If we have a setback…we always have LF. Thanks Donna, and everyone who chooses to find, stay with or revisit LF on their journey. A special thanks to Oxy for never missing a welcoming hello with open arms here to all of our first posts and thereafter. To Kathy for touching my spirit and motivating me to trust what I believe in – and my honesty within (filled with past pain and possibilities of growth). I support your views on Sociopaths, even if that makes me in the minority about needing to find out why they behave the way they do – its not just genetics… thanks to Jim – the laughter helped jumpstart me back to finding my fun sense of humor and enjoying others as well… and to all the kindred spirits here, thank you for sharing, listening, suggesting… it helps me more than youll ever know. My heels are firmly planted in staying connected to positive energy…Im a part of the LF process – and it feels great. My greatest appreciation to Donna for giving us the gift of LF.