The New Year brings you a great opportunity to change your life for better health and well-being. In preparation for a better life, consider how recovering from loving a sociopath/psychopath is like recovering from addiction. Since the New Year is an opportunity, let’s take the time to focus on recovery.
A good friend of mine is struggling with substance addiction. This addiction is very similar to what many of you face because my friend was highly functioning before the addiction which started at mid-life. Before the addiction, he functioned well and was very productive. There is no obvious reason for my friend to be now at the verge of death from stimulants.
When we recently discussed his addiction, I asked my friend to consider what goes through his mind at the moment he decides that the best thing for him to do with his time is to use speed. I admitted being baffled about why he would make that choice. There are so many other ways he could spend his time and he knows that. He said, “When I don’t use, I feel great”¦ Then I use”¦I am an addict.”
Although I am generally in favor of people identifying their problems, in this case, “I am an addict” seemed like a quick excuse used to avoid really taking responsibility for his choices. After some reflection he did say to me, “You are right, it feels like a compulsion, but I guess it is a choice.”
Maybe you face a similar struggle. Instead of battling addiction, you are battling the love you feel for a sociopath. Just like my friend, even though you feel a compulsion to call the sociopath, you too have a choice to make. You can either choose to spend your time doing things that will bring you health and wellness or you can choose to spend time with that sociopath/psychopath.
During our talk, my friend reflected that he feels empty and bored at the time he chooses to use. The speed is a quick fix for the emptiness and boredom.
Many of you go about your lives just fine, then you end up home alone one day with nothing to do. Feeling bored, it suddenly occurs to you that your best choice is to call that sociopath. At the moment of boredom and emptiness all the pain the person caused you is not accessible to your consciousness. All you think about is the fun you had together. This fun is a marked contrast to the boredom and emptiness you feel in the moment. Since you feel sentimental, you think it is OK to make that call.
If you are waiting to feel repulsion for the sociopath before you disengage, you may be waiting for a very long time. The pleasant memories may always be tied to the love you feel which will be activated when you slow down and give yourself time to think. You have to make a conscious decision to make better choices for yourself. This decision has to be independent of however you feel in the moment. The decision to break away and remain free is a leap of faith in the belief that your future can be better “sociopath free.”
OK so how did you get to this place where you decide your best option is to choose to be with a sociopath/psychopath?
Just like my friend with speed addiction, during the relationship, you gave up on many of the activities that used to be meaningful to you. Also like my friend, you left friends, family members and hobbies behind. Maybe you also now surround yourself with other very dysfunctional people.
Getting free means choosing to spend your time in healthier ways; it means connecting with the love you feel for the friends and family members you abandoned when you chose the sociopath. You have to reconnect to the “you” that existed before this relationship.
You also have to admit that it is very selfish for you to hold on to your love for the sociopath. You likely have people who are counting on you to be a friend, parent or devoted family member. You can’t be there for others who need you as long as you hold on to the sociopath. Stopping then, means thinking of those other people. You do have a duty to them, much more than you have a duty to the sociopath.
You might benefit from combining all your New Year’s resolutions into one: Resolve to live a life of greater physical, psychological and spiritual well-being.
Make a commitment to fill your boredom and emptiness with activities that will build you up and make you healthy. If you are overweight, the CDC says you need an hour of exercise each day. There is a world out there full of fascinating possibilities, you can find them if you try.
Now I’d like to introduce you to a couple of friends who have brought joy, meaning and healing to my family. Each day when we walk and play with our dogs, the dysfunction brought into our lives by a psychopath feels very far away.
Use the comment section below to make your own lists of things you can do in the New Year, rather than wasting your time and precious life energy with a sociopath.
Other articles on addiction to a sociopath:
Ask Dr. Leedom: I am really sick, aren’t i?
How does one ever get over the heartache of being taken by a con artist?
Why is this so hard for us mentally?
A deeper understanding of love, ourselves and the sociopath
Why you can be addicted to a sociopath
I don’t understand why I still care
any system i have entered into be it 12 step or Buddhism has eventually become a box for me – one that I used to ‘rise above’ awful behaviour of both near ones and ‘club members’.
so, i hear you .
and parhaps we can get the rep. spaths and the dog spaths together and see wha thappens. although i would suggest a theory – that dog spaths want to present as ‘likeable ‘and snake spaths want t present as ‘anti-social’. ROTHL! sorry, just playing with sterotypes. 🙂
I think there is some truth to what you say about reptile people, but not all of us. We seem to be split into two camps. Some of us are the warm, cuddly types and the other half are cold and insensitive. I butt heads a lot with these types on the reptile forum. Personally, I find snakes cute and cuddly, and I’m about to go cuddle my 6-foot boa right now. She’s waiting for me with her little head sticking out of her hide box. Really, there is nothing more adorable than the way boas do that.
snake/ human is a very symbiotic relationship on a visceral level. I like them too.
umm, snakes that is. humans, weeeeeel….
It was flamethrowing, Star. And I definitely went through a flamethrowing stage, singeing just about everyone I knew, when I first accessed my anger.
But you have an alternative to expressing your feelings. Which may make you feel momentarily better, but it generally doesn’t get your point across as clearly as saying what you want and don’t want.
You say you regret not setting better boundaries. My experience is that you can re-set boundaries any time. You don’t have to talk about the past. Don’t have to apologize for any possibility that you may have mislead them about what was okay with you. Just say what is okay with you now.
It helps if you can enforce it. But enforcing doesn’t have to be standing on a cliff and threatening throw yourself over, if they don’t give you what you want. One of the subtlest ways of enforcing what you want is to simply stop being the cheerful participator that they’re used to. Do a brown-out. And if anyone asks if there’s something the matter, repeat what you want. No apologies. No explanations. Hopefully if they ask for specifics of what you want, you can provide an example of how you’d like things to work.
A friend of mine had a friend who kept ranting to her about the Palestinians and the Jews. She got sick of this conversation, and she finally told him that she didn’t want to talk about it, and the next time he brought it up, she was going to get off the phone. And she did. This is a classic brown-out.
(And if anyone thinks that it’s passive-aggressive, I disagree. This is just quiet resistance to what is not acceptable. It would be passive-aggressive, if you didn’t tell say what you wanted and expected other people to figure it out. But once you’ve stated your position, and then clearly linked it with your repercussions, you put the ball in their court.)
Expressing your feelings is only good in a context when someone actually cares about your feelings. Or you give them a reason to care about your feelings. Such as:
When you raise your voice to me, I feel stressed and have a hard time hearing what you’re saying. So if you want me to hear and understand you, it would work better for me if you spoke calmly.
I realize that’s a pretty formal way of speaking, but I’m hoping it’s a good idea of the principle. Yes, your feelings are in there, but what you’re actually saying is that they don’t get what they want unless you get what you want.
Much more effective than flamethrowing, if your goal is to give them an incentive to change their behavior.
Kathy
Dear Kathy,
Your advice is RIGHT ON! I’ve done my share of “flaming” when I had felt I had been pushed to the limits, but I’ve finally learned (most of the time) to set those strict boundaries and be up front about them.
There is a drama queen who is married to a dear friend of ours and in order to visit him we have to put up with a minimal amount of her. She loves the DRAMA and will create it any time she is awake.
Once he and she came over to our place so her husband (who is quite ill) could spend some time with my sons. She and I and another woman she didn’t even know were in the house and she started in bad mouthing her sick husband about how he imposed on her with his illness and I had listened to all of this crap I wanted to hear. I tried to placate her and that didn’t stop her, so I finally turned to her and said, “Nicely” but FIRMLY “You know this is a really nice day and I really don’t want to listen to you gripe about (her husband) it spoils my peace, let’s talk about something else”
She acted like I had hit her with a bucket of water and said “But I need to VEBNT!” and I just smiled and said “And I need PEACE” that was the end of it at least for the day.
Only a few years ago I would NEVER have said anyting, I would have just seethed and listened and said “Uh- huh” in appropriate places and my day would have been ruined.
It’s a SMALL boundary, but it made the difference in my day in MY house. MY PEACE! Even now, I congratulate myself for setting boundaries because it has been so long I didn’t know how without either not setting it, or letting it pith me off because I didn’t. Either way I LOST. Now with boundaries I made myself clear BEFORE I get so pithed off I flame them out.
I have a very FIRM voice (my kids say i should ahve been a marine DI LOL) and I can do the “stare down” with the best of them if it is required. Again my kids say I ican melt steel with it, but it comes in handy sometimes. One of my son’s friends who went to a very strict Catholic school says that I am at least as good as the “baddest” of the Nuns there! LOL
Great advice, Kathy. I don’t want to raise my voice. But one of the things I’m angry about is something that happened last week. I seem to be unable to process and let go of it, so my thought is that I’d have to speak it. I’d really rather not. I’d rather just be in the present. But the incident reminded me just how much I felt betrayed in the past but let it slide because I had to work with them. Nothing slides any more. I know when they see me go from super cheerful to quiet and matter-of-fact, it will raise concerns for them. So I have to figure out a graceful way to do it so I don’t end up having to confront them about past issues.
But what you say makes total sense.
Admin assistants are such a catty bunch. One of the newer ones that I really liked informed me one day that she actually writes down everything that happens at work. She keeps a work journal, so she always has evidence if she needs it. Ever since she told me that, I’ve backed off 10 paces, psychologically speaking. I don’t want to end up in her journal. Another one is just rude and entitled in her attitude. Another one is completely fascinated with herself. And the two I’m most angry at sided with a former co-worker who made my life miserable. They rub it in my face by telling me all the things they do socially with her. I really just need to learn how to set boundaries so it doesn’t bother me. Ironically, my boss (the big boss) is not the least bit petty. She is very kind and is actually a good friend. And the nurses I support are wonderful. It’s just the other secretaries. It’s such a challenge to work with them. They like to have potlucks every month, which I feel obligated to participate in. I wouldn’t mind except that they all bring crap (cookies, chips–not even the good chips, the cheap ones–bread, dip, and other crap). They once had a popcorn potluck. Who can just eat popcorn for lunch? I like to eat healthy food. So I usually end up bringing something good for the potluck. Then I still have to go out and eat lunch just to get a balanced meal. No more of that crap either. I’m done with the stupid stressful potlucks.
Sorry. Venting….
Some day I will be done with being a secretary. But first I need to learn the lesson of setting limits with these people. That’s what I’m there to learn.
I dont even have the words to describe how I feel right now but I know you are the only ones who can understand. I need to tell someone but I have no one to listen to me. I think I’m on the brink of losing it.
I’ve tried so hard to keep it together at work and at home but I cant anymore. Sometimes I feel like this is all happening to someone else, that I’m in the middle of a bad movie.
My ex S and I work together. For the past two months since he dumped me he has not even acknowledged my existence. Trying to go to work and deal with this has been almost impossible for me. I’ve been trying to move on but there’s so much unfinished business between us. It makes it very hard to move on when I see him everyday.
On top of all of this my father is dying. My father was ill while the S and I were together. The S is well aware of how close I am to my family. He knows that I have no friends in the world, noone except my parents. He knows this diagnosis is absolutely devastating to me. I’ve been going to work everyday and co workers have asked after my father’s health and how my mother and I are coping but the S still did not acknowledged my existence.
Last week the S was on vacation. The day before he was due back to work, I received a phonecall at work from him. Why I didn’t hang up the phone immediately will be something I’m sure I’ll punish myself for a while to come. He asks if I have received his texts messages. I reply truthfully that my phone has run out of battery and no what did they say. He doesnt respond so I ask if something is wrong, has something happened. He says that he loves me, wants to come back to me, he is sorry for how he treated me, that it killed him not to ask after my father’s health, that he doesnt care that I am damaged and not perfect and that he wants to help me. I ask him if this is a joke. He says no it’s genuine. He loves me and asks me to take him back. I tell him that I am too numb to answer that question and he asks me to call him later that night. Before hanging up he says he will call our boss to tell him that we’ve reconciled. I tell him not to do that because we haven’t and we need to talk more before deciding if that will happen. I charge my phone and sure enough there are the text messages from the day before stating everything that he has just told me over the phone.
That night he calls me but for some reason I don’t answer. He sends texts asking me to call him. Again, for some reason I don’t. Then he calls the house. My mother answers and I tell her to hang up. He sends another message saying that he was the one on the phone, he was calling so he could tell my mother the same things he told me that morning.
I dont why I didn’t answer the calls. I love him and he told me everything that I wished he would say all these months.
I tell my father that S called and he is relieved that the S and I are back in contact. He is worried about me being alone after he is gone, that at least I will have a friend who will support me through this time.
Two days go by and I hear nothing from the S despite my attempts to contact him. He returns to work and treats me again as if I don’t exist. I send him an email to ask what is going on.
He replies and says that he “mistook his words”. He says he wasnt in a fit state to making that phonecall or sending texts. He was suffering from panic attacks and it was the Valium talking. He then says because he offered his help he will honor that part but for me not to think that he cares for me or loves me. I tell him to go to hell.
More emails are exchanged and he says that I will be happy to know that Karma has already caught up with him. He has a suspected punctured lung and cannot breath. I tell him he is arrogant. He then replies that he is offended by me saying that, that i must have thought this of him all along and that he never expected that criticism from me. He ends by saying I will never hear from him again.
The cruelty and his lack of humanity is what I am having a hard time with. Not only towards me but to involve my parents in his sh*t also, especially my dying father. My whole world is falling apart. The pain is incredible. I’m ashamed that I’m channeling energy towards this b*stard instead of making the most of the time I have left with my father. I’m angry that the last three months have been tainted by the S. He not only destroyed me with this breakup and but affected my parents too. Can someone respond? Am I losing it?
hi Delluca, you’re not crazy at all, but you’re dealing with a serious piece of s**t. His behaviour is sadistic. As you gave the impression you were coping fine with the break-up he decided to hook you again. It’s your gut instinct that told you not to pick up his calls. All his ego needed was you to try and contact him – and then he ignores you again… And the valium/lung excuse…the pity play…trying to isolate you by charming those around you…
Of course, you feel desoriented because he is changing his attitude by the minute, from ignoring you, harrassing you, ignoring you, wanting to be friends, etc. He’s caught you at a vulnerable time as well.
It looks like you’re doing everything right though – not picking his calls, not obeying his orders, getting on with work, being there for your parents in spite of what’s going on – give yourself credit for that.
I’m know your family has a lot to deal with at the moment – but I’m sure you’ll feel a lot better after telling your parents (your mother at least) who that guy really is.
I’m not sure how you can deal with him in work, I haven’t experienced this (got my ex-S sacked!), someone else on the site can probably advise you on this.
Be strong!
Dear Delluca,
No, my dear, you are not crazy!!!! NOT!! Eil3een is totally right, he is a SADISTIC piece of trash. Oh, yes! Build your hopes UP, and then DASH THEM DOWN. It wasn’t enough for him to just cut your heart out, he had to sew it back into place then RIP IT OUT AGAIN!
How do they do it? By giving us a FALSE HOPE that all our dreams of love and caring from another person are “true” and then DASHING that hope—and they will do it over and over and over, IF WE LET THEM.
If we seem to be doing better, getting over the punishment they inflict on us, then they come back and say “OH, I see how much I love you” then DASH IT AGAIN!
This perverted excuse for a human being, this sadist clone of SATAN is what you are dealing with, and mourning the “loss” of. He only gives himself “extra points” in this terrible “game” by knowing he is doing it at the time your father is passing away.
Oh, BTW my psychopath was my son, and I lost my husband in an accident 12 months after my beloved step father whom I was caring for was dying with cancer, and 6 months before my daddy died with the cancer—-so yes, they pick when we are DOWN the worst.
Something I did learn from the TIMING of all that though, is that you can put :”dealing with” this pretend man ASIDE for NOW. Don’t focus on him FOR NOW, focus on your time left with your father. If you find yourself thinking about your longing for this man or his pretend love for you (he never did love you, only pretended, they can’t love) tell yourself–“I’ll deal with this grief later” and then focus on how much you love your dad.
YOU WILL have to odeal with the grief over the immitation human person later, you can’t bury it forever, but when you have MULTIPLE GRIEFS, it IS POSSIBLE to put one aside and deal with the other.
Consider that you are in a physical fight with multiple characters, like some “movie” but because it is a “movie” you have SUPER POWERS and you can FREEZE one of the characters in place. It stays frozen untiol you are able to overcome the other advesary! Close your eyes and even visualize that creep FROZEN.
When you must see him at work, YOU PRETEND (you CAN DO IT) that he is a potted plant, that he is not real. Use your body language to show him he is INVISIBLE TO YOU. That will tick him off believe me, because CONTROL over us is what they CRAVE, like a vampire craves blood. Turn the tables on him. Make him invisible. Pretend you can’t see him!
Spend every last wonderful second with your wonderful father! I enjoyed every wonderful second with my daddy. When the time came for himi to pass away, HE was ready, and WE were ready, we had done our grieving in a bittersweet way together before he died. At that point, I was more ready to deal with the other griefs in my life, but the last 18 months I had with my dad were some of the BEST memories I ever had.
It did slow down my grief over my husband’s loss, and dealing with the reality that my son was a monster (and other things) but it allowed me the GRACE and JOY of being with my dad to comfort him in his passing, to ease my own pain in his passing, and HIS LOVING SPIRIT IS WITH ME STILL,
This may not be the right path for you, but it was a path that I STUMBLED upon that allowed me to deal with MULTIPLE sources of pain and not be overwhelmed by them ALL AT ONCE!
Be good to yourself as well, meet your own needs for sleep (especially important I think) balanced diet, and seek counceling as well, and get assessed for antidepressant medication for now. Medication won’t heal the hurts it just helps us deal with them.
God bless you and you are in my prayers.