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.
Oh am I ever glad you covered this topic Dr. Leedom! I self diagnosed myself as OCD in highschool when a malignant female N was wreaking havoc on my life… I didn’t know it was her presence, I thought it was ME… I even bought a book on OCD.. It was the same.. being cruel and then acting like nothing happened. The cycle over and over again. There was no end. Bringing other girls into it.. who later wised up to her antics and deserted her. So she started feeding off the attention from the very people on the outskirts she made fun of on a daily basis.. it was quite disturbing.
I remember feeling these anxiety attack symptoms around Socio #2 but the duration of the involvement was much shorter because I wised up to the at times blatantly abusive behavior..
A huge problem in psychology today I feel is diagnosing victims exclusively for these anxiety disorders and not addressing the underlying cause.. either out of ignorance or the notion of being involved with a S/N/P not even coming into question. I’m lucky that i didn’t seek out a therapist in highschool because i feel they would have treated me for anxiety and put me on medication. After the years I struggled with PTSD all of that went away.
This is another HUGE reason for bringing awareness of Psychopathy to large… I genuinely feel that these people are responsible for the majority of “anxiety” and “mental” issues which run rampant in society today. Primarily anxiety.. but I think our bodies try to cope with the abuse with a lot of strange behaviors. Eating disorders ( Check ) Self-mutiliation, Depression… the list goes on.
OXY – if you’ re out there – just watched the night listener. yup, it’s got a lot of similarities – just fewer waaaay fewer characters. don’t know how the book is – movie could have set up the emo connection a bit better between gabriel and the story he was buying. but even the loss immediate before the con, is the same in my case.
i wonder if she has stolen from the book. sigh. I suspect she’s not so inventive; and i fully expect to come across some books or movies in the future, only to read part of the con, and it will be BAM to the middle of my forehead, in the same way that finding the blog about her impacted me when i found it last year….i read and read….2.5 years of posts…writing down every detail that was connected to the con of me. and then when i found the real boy’s blog, the one whose photos she stole, i wnet through years of pictures there, too – wrting down the real names and identities of the real people and put them in a spreadsheet with the details, the horrendous BS stories, connected to each of them. rapists, incestuous parents, incestuous siblings, bfs, the daughter’s of dead bad men who had tortured him………………….were really, his real parents, who he smiled with, and his friends and colleagues in the fashion industry – people he seemed to care about and value.
nary a rapist to be seen. lying sack of crap evil c.
Dancing –
LOL about the OCDs….I have had touches of mild OCD behaviours at least back to the age of 3 or 4 that I can remember. I have also had bouts as an adult (although have never been diagnosed OCD). I did a lot of reading about it (one really great book was called “The Boy who couldn’t stop washing his hands”…or something like that) and realised that while I was in no way “full blown”, the OCD traits had always manifested at times of severe trauma and/or prolonged distress in my life.
Even as a little girl, I was trying to balance my out-of-control life and emotional/stress state by exerting abnormal controls elsewhere. Interesting stuff, if a little freaky!
LL,
Thanks for bringing this article up. WOW… How I relate to it with the anxiety and avoidance. I’m not lazy afterall. It is that cycle. I need to break it and I will, now that I understand what is happening!!!!
Hugss
Soimnotthecrazee1!
My OCD was so happy before xspath… everything clean neat and tidy. A nice little comfort zone. Well xspath stole that from me with his mental beatings and his hoarding!!! I have been wondering why I can’t get back there… NOW I know, this article is perfect!!!
Trolling for EB!! anybody seen her? sure do miss her!!
thanks for this article.
it explains why I just sit on my ass all day now.
Since I started trying to figure out my parents, I’m frozen, avoid everything. do nothing. except surf the web and eat.
gaining so much weight…. blah. I might dip into the SSRI bottles from years ago.
What is SSRI bottles?
selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. old Rx bottles.
prozac, paxil, and all the cousins.
Ok! Thanks Sky!