Finding what we lost after coming out from the turmoil of a relationship with a sociopath can be daunting. Healing from these encounters takes time. Yet, we have a tendency to believe we should be able to get over it, be done, and finished with the hurting within a pre-determined schedule carefully marked on the calendar page. As if healing from an emotional rape has a timeline and can be accomplished by following the direct line from A to Z.
There is no alphabet encoded path to healing from these encounters. No step by step process that states do this and in 23 days you will be healed.
I used to hate the word, ‘organic’. As in, the process is organic. Since getting free from his abuse, I’ve learned to love it. Healing from abuse, any kind of abuse, is an organic process. It begins within me. It moves within me. It changes within me so that outside I can live the life I’ve always dreamed. The life I deserve.
One of the most difficult aspects of healing that I have encountered with many many people is embracing the belief, I deserve to heal.
So often, abuse leaves a trail of shame and self-blame. Like Hansel and Gretel looking for a way back through the forest, the abused drop grains of self-respect along the path leading to their abuser. Caught amidst the deceitful web the abuser must weave to keep the victim trapped within their embrace, the seeds marking the path back to self lie like fallow fields of grain, never to be reseeded as they get picked over by the carrion hovering above the dark cloud of the victim’s existence.
To heal, I had to believe I was worthy, deserving, able to heal. I had to choose to believe I could heal.
That’s hard.
The wounds inflicted by an abuser run deep. They run wide. They run wild within our psyches. Choosing to believe I could heal was the first step to healing.
Taking action that supported me in healing was the next step. That included writing, therapy, exercise, healthy eating, loving self-care. I had to take positive actions that affirmed my belief I could heal. It was up to me.
One of my mantras in healing became, “Never say never.”
It is often instinctual to say, “I will never …. Heal. I will never trust another human being. I will never love again,” after an encounter with an abuser.
Truth is, we have no idea what the future holds in store. All we can do is our very best today. All we can do is be true to ourselves in this moment so that the next is a continuation of our very best.
When I say, “I will never trust again,” I am saying, “I choose to set myself up today so that I will not be trusting, or trustworthy in the future.”
When I say, “I will never love again,” I am saying, “I am terrified the past will repeat itself. I will avoid at all costs loving anyone — and that includes myself, because love hurts and I don’t want to hurt like this again.”
Saying ‘never’ is lethal in healing. Never is the dam holding us back from claiming our right to live the life of our dreams.
There is no straight line in healing. There is only the choice to do what is loving, caring, healing — or not. The path to well-being is winding and circuitous. Four+ years after that encounter, I still find corners of unease — not because of him, but rather because the tapes in my head fire off messages that undermine me, disturb my peace of mind, unsettle my well-being.
Those tapes were there before I met him. Some things haven’t changed! What has changed however is my awareness of them and my ability to navigate rough waters, to walk through rocky terrain, to be determined and convinced of my right to live my most beautiful life today.
I can’t unwind the tapes from the past. I can limit their playing continuously in my head today by living free of the belief I don’t deserve to heal, I don’t deserve a life of joy.
Truth is, I absolutely do deserve a life of joy and wonder. We all do.
It’s up to me to live it up and be magnificent! This is my one wild precious life. To live on purpose. With purpose. This is my one wild precious moment be be the star of my creation, shining light on the path of my healing. To map the wild and unexplored territory of my heart. To discover the hidden treasures within me as I explore life beyond the boundaires of my imagination. Passionate and free, I become the wild one, the fearless inspiration of my own design to become all that I am meant to be.
For each of us, this is our one and only life. May we all live it with fearless abandon, being the awesome human beings we saw ourselves to be when first we touched the fiery breath of their assertions that we are magnificent. We are. It was they who were blind. In healing, do not let the burning pain of his abuse destroy the truth — You are magnificent. An awesome human being on the journey of her lifetime. Life it up!
Thank you so much for this post.
I remember when I made up my mind, in the month after I finally got him out of my life after five years of destruction, making the decision to live rather than kill myself. And with it, making it the decision to figure out what was wrong with me that I had been so untrustworthy with myself, so unable to protect or defend myself from this thing that has destroyed my self-esteem, looted my bank account, killed my company. I couldn’t blame him totally, because I had collaborated in every bit of it, breathlessly trying and trying and trying to cross that constantly changing finish line to where he would love me.
Making a decision to get better was an amazing thing, even in those dark times. It was like the most important gift I’d ever received, and perhaps the only important gift I’d ever given myself. Inside that decision was hope and a kind of confidence in myself that was lost in every other facet of my life.
I knew it wouldn’t be easy and it would take time. My thinking and feeling processes were so tangled up. There wasn’t a thought or feeling I had that was simple, nothing I didn’t question, wondering if I was wrong to think it or feel it.
I’ve written this before here — and I know it’s a very strange thing to say — but after three and a half years of working on this, I’m glad I was forced to go through this process. I feel like this man brought in the last chapter of my life as a woman who needed external validation and who had little faith in her ability to take care of herself alone. Healing has been the first chapter of my new life in which I’m not only more self-sufficient, but also more spiritually evolved and more connected with life than I ever was before.
I’ve also learned that my attention, where I choose to invest my time and interest, is the most important self-management tool in my life. “Evil” is evil because it destructive. But an encounter with evil is so dangerous because it is seductive. Yes, sociopaths are attracted to generous, giving people. But we are victims, especially in intimate relationships, because we are tempted to sell our souls in little increments in pursuit of some romantic fairytale.
I remember, while I was involved with him, asking myself, “Can I give up this, if it will make him love me?” Can I let go of control over my money? Can I accept that he doesn’t think I’m smart or pretty? Can I live with his infidelities? Can I live with my own pain if I take him back again? The “prize” of these trade offs kept getting smaller. In the beginning, I was aiming at the kind of committed relationship I’d had with other people. At the end, all I was hoping for was that he not be cruel to me in front of other people. No, that’s not even the worst of it. At the end, the best I was hoping for was that I could somehow conduct my life without crying in front of everyone. And that was BEFORE I made up my mind to get him out of my life, while I was still supporting him and begging him to care about how much he was hurting me, even if he couldn’t love me.
I look back at those days, and I want to throw up. Because I got involved with someone like him. Because I did so much damage to myself. But the key words here are that I did it. Something in me said yes.
Today, I feel like I’ve come through a great war. It looked like a war with him but it was truly a war with myself. Not the “real” me, but a lot of ideas I had and rules I lived by that weren’t functional and certainly weren’t designed to take care of me.
The most important thing I learn was that I have a right to my feelings. They are the voice of my needs. And every human being has needs like being appreciated, being understood, companionship and community, and seeing our efforts turn into results. These are all the needs that were unmet when I was involved with the sociopath, and those unmet needs were generating pain the entire time.
We can’t demand that everyone meet all our needs. But we do have choices about where we put our attention. Turning away is a powerful thing. Choosing to focus on what delivers good to our lives is how we create a joyous and meaningful “now” and future. That’s why “no contact” is a vote for your own wellbeing. And that’s why letting go and moving on, as soon you can process your grief, is the end of that chapter and the beginning of a better one.
It wasn’t easy to get here. I still get flashes of brutal things he said, or sudden understandings of how coldly I was used. But that was then, and this is my life now. I’m not collaborating with him anymore in destroying it or my self-esteem. And I just think, yup, that’s how it was, and move on to something that serves me and the things I care about.
So this has been very long-winded, but in conclusion, I totally agree with you. Healing is a gift we give ourselves, and the people we love. I’m not sure if it was here on Love Fraud or somewhere else that I read, “The things we don’t grieve we pass on to our children.” And our friends, and our future lovers, and the people who we touch in all our lives.
Taking this healing seriously was the best thing I ever did for myself. And it turned the greatest disaster of my life into the greatest triumph. I wish each and every one of us a brilliant second life.
khatalyst
Thank you so much for your thoughtful and inspirational post. It is true—when we allow ourselves to heal after the horrible injustice and pain of a sociopath, our lives can truly blossom.
Dear Donna,
Would you consider posting khatalyst’s comment as a Blog Entry? It is simply WONDERFUL… I wouldn’t want anyone to miss it.
Dear Khatalyst,
Thank you Khatalyst. I can’t even begin to say what it was that was so great about this… ALL OF IT. The Bad Man was my wakeup call that I was living for validation by someone else. I knew it but I thought it was okay… until the ultimate train wreck. Now I know it’s not okay.
Oh how I can relate to your decline in expectations of the relationship!!! And trying to cross the finish line where you would get the prize.. the “Love.”
This was a Brilliant contribution. Thank you so much for putting this into words.
Thank you, thank you, thanks you…. thank you!
Aloha… E.R.
To ML Gallagher,
Thank you for the reminder to be wild and free. I do need to take on my healing with a little joy and freedon. I do want to love and trust again. I need to be open to giving someone a chance to love me and to experience me trusting again.
You know, it’s hard to write that. I do have someone in my life but I do have a lot of fear. He is a patient man, and it is obvious for so many reasons that he is truly a kind person… (I did my homework on him, checked his references.. blah blah.) He has never given me any reason not to trust him so I know the reasons are coming from inside me.. the tapes… the knowing of things I did not know before.
Anyway, I always have something to say so I will just ponder this one by myself. But thank you for your post. I shall return to it often until I get it on the inside. :o)
Aloha…. E.R.
I too so relate to what khatalyst has written…….. taking something that nearly destroyed me, and making it into something that changed me for the better….. helping me to evolve into a smarter, more true person…… Oh how I relate to jumping through the hoops….. selling myself short…. accepting so little from someone who I loved deeply, but made me feel so unloved, unneeded, unvalued…..unwanted….all for wanting their love….. a love that in the end, they were totally uncapable of giving….. being used for someone elses own self gratifacation…..and all the while… in my heart…..knowing it was wrong….knowing it was hurting me…..but trying to convince myself she was worth it……”I can do this” I would tell myself with a heavy heart….. My thinking was skewered….. but of course wasn’t all of our thinking that way? The promise of love with someone who touches and pushes those certain buttons within our soul that most cannot find is indeed very alluring…. it is…. our dream come true….. and for most of us… we now know that if it seems too good to be true..chances are….. it is. The healing takes so long…. longer then I could have ever imagined….. longer then with most “regular” relationships…. but in that healing…… in those tapes that run in our heads…..we find the flaw in ourselves, and we work on that….. None of us deserved what we received from our relationship with a sociopathic person…. and yes… on some levels we were a accomplice to their hidden agenda which was disguised as love….but from the ashes we have risen…. to become not only more healthy and wiser… but to love one’s self and others in a more Agape way……. The scar will always stay….. but with time and work…..self forgivness, hope and wisdom grow…..and in time comes peace…….
Agape to all
Khatalyst, I agree — powerful post.
Like you, I believe my life is far better than it was even before the sociopath ran havoc through my days. I am a far stronger human being. I know who I am. I love myself.
Before him, I was a constant contradiction. I knew I wanted to love myself. I was too frightened to be true to me.
That journey set me free. There were a thousand paths I could have taken to get here. This is the one I chose. I am blessed.
Thank you so much for writing your beautiful and inspiring words.
Let’s all be wild and free,
ML
Thank you for your kind words.
I too wrote my way through this. When I was doing it, writing from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed for a long time, I felt like I was writing a travelogue. I had some idea that I might be able to publish it, though I’m not sure I even want to live through it again in editing it.
Instead, I’m probably going to publish a book of poems that also came from this period. I used to be a very good poet. While this was going on, I was writing poems that were like a straight transfusion from the inside of my head to the paper. I didn’t care if they were elegant or structured. I just cared if they were true. And they’re very rough stuff.
I didn’t know if they were worth anything. So I screwed up my courage to take them to an open mike where a lot of established poets go to try out their new work. It took all the nerve I had to expose myself this way.
Over the course of a year, I’ve gone four times with different groups of poems. (That’s how long it would take me to get up my nerve again.) The poems talk about the relationship with the sociopath and what a fool I was. They talk openly about the sexual and emotional abuse of my childhood that set me up for the sociopath. They talk about how I was drowning in pain, and my long path out of it.
I’m telling you all this, because I want you to hear the punchline. The first three times I went, there was very little response, except for one or two people who would say something kind, not about my poems but encouraging me. I always felt like they probably saw how upset I was, and were trying to make me feel better.
But the last time I went, it was a packed house, because there were some very popular people reading there. It was my turn to read after two very entertaining poets who made people laugh. I felt like an idiot climbing up to the stage with my lugubrious recovery poems. Who’d want to hear them?
Well, this time, with a group that was largely not poets, just regular people, I got an entirely different response. Are you ready? They clapped, whistle and hooted. After the first one, I was so shocked I didn’t know whether I should go on. But I did read the three more poems, and at the end they did the same thing.
When I got down off the stage, more than a dozen people got up from their chairs to tell me how good the poems were and that I should get this stuff published. But the best thing was the last person who talked to me, sort of. I was almost back to my seat when a woman walked past me, her head down, buttoning up her coat. Without even stopping, she murmured, “Keep it up. You’re doing this for all of us.”
I’m passing this on to you, because it goes against everything we’ve been talking about, about how hard it is to talk about this experience, and how no one understands. (Even my therapist was horrified when she heard I was taking these poems public, telling me “that’s private.”) Maybe we’re wrong about imagining that we are isolated in this experience, and that other people don’t get it. Maybe they do. Maybe everyone has had their own brush with a sociopath, and like us, they are silenced by confusion and shame. Maybe what we’re seeing when we try to talk about it, is their distress and avoidance of being reminded of their own bad experience.
I don’t know if that’s true, but I am astounded by what happened in that room. The most I ever hoped for was that my writing would provide support and maybe some hints for someone else who was traveling a similar path. I know that when one person in a dysfunctional family gets into therapy, it tends to have a positive ripple effect on the whole family over time. Maybe there’s a bigger picture. That our healing ripples out to encourage and support more people than we know.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
Khatalyst,
Before my book was published people kept asking me, How could you write about it? Doesn’t it hurt? — No where near as much as it did going through it, I told them. It didn’t kill me when it happened (almost but not quite). The only way it could kill me today is if I don’t speak up. If I don’t let it out.
I cried through writing most of it. I cried and and wept and kept typing. I was writing it for me and for all those I knew were out there whose voices had been silenced by a sociopath. I did it for a friend’s sister’s friend who had ‘an experience just like that’. I did it for the neighbour’s brother’s sister-in-law’s cousin who had ‘an experience just like that’. I did it for all those who could not voice their fear and sorrow and shame and confusion because they thought they were alone.
In reading your post, I wanted to cry — for joy. To hear such a pure voice speak up is a gift. It is a beautiful thing to witness.
Thank you.
I love the story of what happened in that room. I love the fact you are continuing to gather up your courage and step onto centre stage to speak up for those who cannot find their voices. In your courage, you give voice to that which holds them back. You give them strength to step behind you and speak out as well.
Bravo!
ML
I have tried to get over my life married to a sociopath. I can’t. I have tried every agency in my county for help, & got none. My lawyer has done nothing to help me. The holiday time has depressed me so bad, I just want to go to sleep & not wake up. The abuse was at least attention. Thie lonliness is killing me.
To sstiles54
It was pointed out to me that sometimes even bad attention is addicting because it’s… attention. We all need some attention.
Going through a relationship with a sociopath is our wake up call that we need to love ourselves and give ourselves, and our feelings, and our well being… our own attention. It’s the old saying, “You can’t love someone else until you love yourself.”
If we gave ourselves even half the love and attention we gave to those terribly destructive and exhausting relationships, where would we be ourselves? We would be healthier and more whole. There is no substitute for loving ourselves. Nothing, no thing, no one, can do that for us.
As you come out of a relationship with a Sociopath, you may feel like you are on empty. Everyone here on LoveFraud has been to the empty place. You have to choose to heal like M.L. Gallagher says. It’s okay even if you don’t know how… just choose it and it will come to you slowly over time.
Also, check with a women’s crisis support center. They usually have services for women, including counseling, at a YWCA. I am looking into that for myself. I get depressed during the holidays too. Find a volunteer thing you can do, even if it’s just one hour per week. I volunteer at the Homeless Shelter and it helps me keep things in perspective.
If you are new to this site, keep reading. You are not alone.
Aloha… E.R.