According to the National Institutes of Mental Health, “anxiety is a normal reaction to stress. It helps one deal with a tense situation in the office, study harder for an exam, keep focused on an important speech. In general, it helps one cope. But when anxiety becomes an excessive, irrational dread of everyday situations, it has become a disabling disorder.” Put another way anxiety is supposed to help us. The parts of the brain that produce feelings of anxiety are similar to the parts of the brain that process pain, another negative emotion. Anxiety and its cousin pain help us by signaling danger and causing us to avoid. Their job is to inhibit behavior. The part of the brain that processes pain and anxiety is called the Behavioral Inhibition System or BIS.
I have observed that anxiety is the single biggest obstacle to recovery from a pathological relationship with a sociopath (psychopath). The aftermath of these relationships leaves a person with terrible anxiety, dread and when anxiety/dread is overwhelming, avoidance sets in. Avoidance coping leads people to withdraw from life and responsibilities and the result is only more anxiety. A vicious cycle sets in where anxiety leads to avoidance, avoidance behaviors get us in trouble, that trouble leads to more anxiety, that anxiety leads to even more avoidance”¦and so on.
Why is a pathological relationship different from all others? Why is the anxiety experienced afterward so profound? I think the roots of the anxiety have to do with 6 things:
1. During the relationship, mind games, undermine a person’s confidence.
2. During the relationship the victim is intentionally isolated from potential sources of support.
3. During the relationship the sociopath/psychopath does things that harm the victim’s relationships with significant people in his/her life.
4. The break-up of any relationship causes anxiety, conflict laden relationships more so.
5. In the aftermath many victims face financial problems.
6. In the aftermath many victims face legal problems.
O.K. , I admit the anxiety is caused by a total destruction of the framework of a person’s life!
I think that our psychological defenses can operate so well that many people underestimate the degree to which anxiety influences their behavior and the level of avoidance coping they engage in. The best indicator of anxiety, in my opinion is this avoidance coping.
Just what is avoidance coping? Avoidance coping means that a person denies or minimizes the seriousness of a situation. He/she uses a self—protective strategy and actively suppresses stressful thoughts. Most importantly, behaviorally speaking avoidance coping means an avoidance of tasks that might in anyway remind us of the stressor and avoidance of doing many of the tasks of life. Since avoidance coping requires so much mental energy, there is not enough left for getting work done. Instead, people tend to get satisfaction through other activities like eating or watching TV.
I got to thinking about avoidance coping this week because I tutor a 15 year old in math and he described his own behavior which is a good example of avoidance coping and its consequences. I hadn’t seen this student for about a year. I worked with him for several years and the last time I saw him he was in 8th grade and was doing very well in that he could solve simple algebra problems. Now in 9th grade, he is failing math so his mother called me. When I tested him, he had regressed. He could not do any of the tasks he could do easily only a year ago.
I asked him what happened. He said, “The things I know I do. When I don’t get something, I don’t want to do it. I get home and feel like I would rather ride my bike, so I do. Then I don’t do my homework.”
The point I want to make to you, is that I worked with him for only an hour and he got a 93 on the next test! Due to this victory, he feels a great deal less like avoiding. So I ask you, are there things you are avoiding that you could actually succeed at if you just stop avoiding? Wouldn’t an A grade at some task that you are avoiding boost your confidence and serve you better than that nagging feeling you are not doing the stuff you are supposed to do.
My student’s mother has some negative words for her son’s motivation. She says he is lazy etc. She just does not understand the degree to which anxiety is producing his dysfunctional behavior. He doesn’t outwardly appear anxious, though inwardly he is. Just that little contact with me reduced his anxiety enough to help him face that which he had been avoiding. Just like my student, even when we don’t appear anxious, our avoidance behaviors often lead to further damage to our already damaged relationships.
If you are avoiding too much, I encourage you to stop avoiding. Confront those tasks that are causing you dread, fear and anxiety. In the end you will feel a lot better. You might get an A grade if you try and not trying always leads to failure-an F. Next week more on anxiety and coping.
OxD:
There was a point, early on, where the guy I was with yelled at me for no reason, in public. Because I asked what made him play hooky that day from work and decide to go to lunch. Perfectly innocent question, something I would ask anyone I was with, sort of like, “so, what’s with wanting to play today?”
He jumped down my throat. At that moment, I felt such a huge amount of embarrassment for all of it, just the entire situation. In public. Being treated like I was five. Being suspected of something bad when my intent was absolutely nil – benign, or actually non-existent. Just conversation.
I looked down at my car keys sitting on the table and immediately thought of just getting up and saying, “nobody talks to me that way” and calmly getting in my car and going home. It was early days, after several years of, yes, nobody treating me that way. Because I’d likely never speak to them again.
I was totally unconditioned for such weird behavior after being apart from him for so long.
To this day, I wish I’d left right then. Not because I regret the rest of the relationship, necessarily. In many ways, I do and do not. But because it was a good gauntlet point for how I expected to be treated and was used to being treated. It was a good boundary to create that I did not.
My promise to myself: I will walk away if anyone ever treats me like that again. Immediately. No questions.
The mind games and personal insults are the source of anxiety. When you begin to trust another person, you assimilate their reality and incorporate it into your own. You begin to believe in them, and, in a healthy relationship, this is a positive step of growth for the couple, as you rely on this person’s viewpoint as being trustworthy.
Once you do that and the mind games begin, it is hard to not give their version of reality, their illusions, some bearing in your own world. And that is when the fun begins for people with bad intent.
It is when anxiety sets in, because you are suddenly uncertain of reality and don’t have enough frames of reference outside the relationship in order to anchor yourself better to the TRUTH.
Fortunately for me, I was doing that work outside the relationship while it was happening, journaling and comparing his version of the truth with everyone else’s, including my own. Usually his was singularly opposed to that of everyone else, whose opinions were usually pretty close together, as a group.
And still, here I am, now diagnosed officially with PTSD, anxiety and depression. Wonder what would have happened if I’d totally bought the whole package?
Thanks, Warrior, I guess why I am so big on this sort of thing is that growing up, I have seen the “social politeness” in which people are humiliated and cut down in PUBLIC because the people putting them down with SNIDE remarks know that the person will NOT “blow up” back at them in public.
“Blowing up” in public, (read: standing up for yourself) is a BIG NO-NO where I grew up —and where I live now. The two-faced back-stabbing remarks that are used to humiliate people just make my skin crawl. I have always been able to stand my ground with people outside of the family, but with people close to the family, or in the family, I have tolerated it “just to keep the peace”—but that isn’t “peace” for anyone but the BAD-ACTOR who destroys other’s peace.
The 45-yr old guy, who has a great sense of humor, dubbed our farm and airport “The Asshole-Free Zone” because I wouldn’t tolerate people coming here and acting like asses, and had no qualms about asking them to cool it or leave. In fact, this same man’s son was one of the first we (my husband and I) asked to leave and not come back. He is a narcissistic horse’s butt who is a minor thief. I never felt guilty about that one bit, or the two or three other people I have “called to task” about their behavior being inappropriate here in my “territory.”
Since the P-episode last year, I’m getting better about setting boundaries with those close to me, and WITHOUT feeling guilty! I’m still learning, but it is a liberating feeling, really.
I have a 17 year old son who I dragged through the muck with me. He was in the car with me on the last dui which was 3 years ago. That just kills me.
I went camping with some people I did not know very well just to get away from all the pain that I was going thru with the P. They were acting very strange toward me and my son. We were the odd guys out since everyone else knew each other pretty well. Drinking did not help me to not feel sorry for myself. The horn in my vehicle kept going off and they were getting angry with me so I left and hence, the dui. My son was tramatized! I feel sick about it and can’t hardly stand to think of it. But, I KNOW I will never drive drunk again.
My son and I have talked about it but sometimes when he is ticked off at me, he brings up the drinking. Not the dui but the drinking. I tell him time and again that he cannot punish me more than I already punish myself and I am about sick to death being punished by ANYONE. So, that is where I am at.
In the relationship I had with the P, he would come to my house, have sex, then tell me “You know I care about you but I have to go home to sleep. I only can sleep in my bed.” If he did fall asleep, he would wake up in a couple of hours, jump up and leave. He never took me out to eat or any place in public unless I was taking him to court or some other errand he had. He didn’t have a drivers licence since he did not pay his ex-wife child support. When he did see someone he knew, he would introduce me just as “my friend Rita” even when we had been intimate just an hour previous. I do believe he was ashamed of me. This is where all of my anxiety began. I put up with this for 6 long years.
I actually believed him when he said he cared about me and thought he just needed to get his life together with my help of course, then he would see me and “claim” me as his lady. I was so very wrong and I KNEW IT. Knowing that and continuing to put up with it and his lies made me so very angry at myself that I felt like I could not cope, and being a single parent for lots of years and not taking proper care of my son is what my excuse was for the drinking. It temporarily helped me to forget what a mess I had made out of my life and also my sons. I am trying to put my past mistakes behind me, it is the only thing I can do. Did I learn? Yes. Was it a crappy lesson? Yes. Would I want to do it again? Hell no. Did it make me a bettr person? No, just wiser. But I am trying to move on and some days it is difficult. Some days are very good and I am going to focus on those days.
rperk6069:
You are not alone. In the last year or more together we rarely spent the night at each other’s place. He had to go home for his medicine or the old stand-by, for the grandchildren. He did come by to be intimate but didn’t stay the night.
He introduced me as his “friend” in public. He said that I didn’t need to get to know his close friends (mainly women) to validate our relationship.
I later found out that he took one of the mothers of his godsons with him on a cruise that he supposedly went on with his family.
So you see we can all be fooled by these conmen. They use our caring and nurturing nature against us.
Rperk,
The humiliation of being “hoodwinked” and the shame of realizing that we failed to take the kind of care of our children that we should have because of being “hoodwinked” I think hits most or all of us that have children that we let down.
I spent so much time on P-son’s problems, both mentally and physically, that I essentially neglected son C, who needed me too, and because I was focused on his brother, I didn’t give him the part of me he needed. After all this exploded, I wrote him a long detailed letter (and later verbally) apologizing to him for that neglect.
But I also realize that I had to FORGIVE MYSELF in order to keep on healing. If I had kept on beating myself over this (which I can’t go back and change history) then I could not have moved forward. I realize you should not have done that thing, but you did. You must, though, forgive yourself. MUST, in order to move on. For others to keep gouging at that wound of shame, poking it to make you bleed is CRUEL on their part–how could someone who “really loves” you do such a thing? How long is it OK for these people to shame you?
They WILL apparently shame you as long as you let them. That does NOT help your healing.
Just as we have to forgive the Ps (get the bitterness toward them out of our heart) we more importantly must forgive OURSELVES. We can’t heal if we are not at peace with ourselves, if we think we are shameful. YOu are human, you made mistakes, you did things you shouldn’t have, but you are NOT shameful. You are worthy. You are valuable.
Go back and re-read ML’s posts. She so eleoquently describes her own shame, and her road back to self respect and peace.
Be good to yourself! Love yourself! (((((HUGS))))))
OxDrover:
How can I explain to my adult children how foolish I have been trusting this P? How can I explain all the money that I gave him based on lies and cons?
Humingbird,
I’m not sure how to answer your question—my “sins” of neglect against my son C were during the time when he was in his teenaged years and needed my attention, and I was giving it to his brother in a futile effort to “save” him from himself. I spent time, effort, emotions, money on the unsaveable while the “good” son was left to fend for himself emotionally, and I was a basket case not “there” for him, when I should have been. I feel really bad for that neglect.
I’m not sure how your being scammed effected your relationship with your adult children. Consider how it did and discuss that with them. If it is just a situation where they don’t know how you gave money to this man, etc. and they were adults at the time, it might be more appropriate for you NOT to tell them. Think about it.
My apology to my son C was for the “sins” I committed against him by neglecting him in favor of his brother.
If you took your children’s college funds and gave them to the P, then you need to talk about that, but if it was YOUR money, you might not want to discuss that with them. Does that make any sense?
Did your relationship with the P effect directly or indirectly your relationship with your kids? If it did, then any discussion or apology would I think be directed to what you did and how it effected your relationship with THEM.
If your adult kids were on to his scam and warned you and you didn’t listen to them, then you might want to say that they were right, and you relaise that now and that you were obviously hoodwinked and didn’t listen to them. etc.
The main thing I think we need to do in order to heal is to FORGIVE ourselves for whatever we did, to damage ourselves, or others. To apologize to the others (if any) that we damaged by our involement with the P.
So just look at the situation with them and you and see what you think you need to say to them, if anything. (((hugs))))
OxDrover:
They were adults at the time that I was seeing this man and weren’t even sure of my involvement with him. He wanted to keep our relationship quiet until my children had time to adjust to my divorce (He suggested a year). I think that I may not let them know the extent of my foolishness with my money. It was not their inheritance money at least but my hard earned dollars working two jobs. My children are the beneficiaries of my retirement and life insurance policies.
This man convinced me that we should both take out life insurance policies on each other to assure that we would have financial stability if something happened to one of us. I cancelled this policy a few months ago after finding out about the other woman and his other lies. I certainly don’t want him to profit in any way from me. Everything should go to my three children.
Hummingbird,
LIFE INSURANCE? Sounds like he might have been planning to bump you off! SCARY!
In that case, I don’t think I would say anything to them–what you do with YOUR money is your business unless you are mentally incapacitated. You may not have been wise, but I don’t think you were mentally incapacitated in the legal sense. When my mom was giving money wholesale to the Ps, she actually was being drugged. I have no doubt about this, because she got to where she slurred her words, could hardly walk even with a walker, etc. and since they are out of her house, she has returned to the “normal” Pre-P state of walking independely and speaking in a normal voice. She does have some short term memory problems and maybe a bit of “sun-downing” (becoming confused in the evenings) but she is NO LONGER BABBLING. We saw an almost IMMEDIATE improvement in her mentation when the court-ordered removal of the Trojan-Horse-P took place. Her emotional functioning is back at least to Pre-P and she is still into denial and emablling, but not writing checks by the handsfull to the Ps.
Sometimes our involvement with the Ps effects those near and dear to us, and we (victiims) faill to live up to our responsibilities to others, and for those things I think we should make a sincere apology and restitution if it is possible. If our involvement with a P doesn’t effect others or our responsibilities to them, then maybe it is none of their business. Sometimes the P just isolates us from others we love, and we neglect to be there for them–we could apologize for that, but don’t have to go into details about other things like money etc.
I think anytime we injure someone else for whatever reason we owe them an apology. But you don’t owe anyone an apology for injuring yourself unless it effects them. If that makes sense.
The main thing we have to do in a case like that, where we are the only one injured, is to forgive ourselves. I beat myself up with a “cat’a’nine-tails” for so long, but I can’t change that past behavior. My son tells me that he forgives me, and that he understands that I was in the FOG–doesn’t excuse it, just explains it. He also was in the FOG and injured me because of it, but he also apologized sincerely and we have forgiven each other. It truly is as “if it didn’t happen” because we talked and worked it out–but my mother’s stance of “lets just PRETEND it didn’t happen,” without any apology or explination or admissions of wrong-doing, just won’t cut the ice. I have forgiven her (or am working hard on it at least) but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, or that she would not repeat it again, so I can’t TRUST her. I trust my son C completely again. He has shown me his remorse, his acknowledgment of his wrong doing, and his willingness to work on our relationship. Out of this whole mess, that has been the most wonderful thing is that he has the DIL-P out of his life, and WE BOTH have the P-son/brother out of our lives and hearts, and our relationship has been restored. It hadn’t been the same since he married the DIL 8 yrs ago, she isolated him.
He has just recently essentially gone NC with my P-by-proxy mother. He no longer trusts her, and he is seeing that without TRUST in a relationship, you have no relationship. He no longer feels a closeness to her that he did before, he realizes she is still in the fog, is untrustworthy because of that, and that if given half a chance to bite us (him, me and my son D) in the butt for the benefit of the P-grandson that she would “In a New York Minute.” She refuses to leave the “Informed Denial” and rationalizes her behavior as “Christian charity and Christian forgiveness” etc. when it is nothing but ENABLING of the P at the expense of the non-Ps.
It is funny really, and even if it is sad as well, that she can “forgive” the P for his crimes of murder, attempted murder, theft, etc. but she FAILS to forgive me for “sassing” her when I was 15. She still feels that she was completely justified in hitting me with the buckle end of a belt until the blood flowed on my back and my step father had to pull her off of me—and my 45 year old crime has increased from “sassing” to “lying”—yet she lies to me, and to son C.
Denial is one of those things that protect people from the TRUTH—yet, in the end, the truth is all we have. Without it we can’t heal. The truth may not always be pretty, but it is what will free us from the P-delusion and allow us to become wiser and better. (((hugs)))) to you my dear.
The theme of “neglect” of the children’s needs because of a relationship with or healing from a sociopath/psychopath is very important. I invite any parents with such regrets to email me drleedom@LoveFraud.com a few paragraphs detailing your regrets. Write your story in a way that gets other parents to think and act differently. I would like to put up a page on this theme here on the lovefraud blog and on http://www.parentingtheatriskchild.com