Recovery from a sociopath

On Monday, I posted an article entitled, Healing your addiction to sociopaths. In it, I offered three steps for changing a pattern of falling in love with sociopaths. The steps are:  No Contact with the current sociopath Do not date anyone for the time being Heal the vulnerabilities The real work is in the third step healing your vulnerabilities. What I suggest sounds somewhat like the good advice that we get on many topics, like: Eat your vegetables Make time for regular exercise Cut down on sugar, carbs and alcohol Get enough sleep We all know we should do all these things, but do we do them? How often do we skip going to the gym, or pour ourselves another …

Pain as motivation for freeing yourself from sociopathsRead More

Trying to solve problems or make any type of progress with individuals with personality disorders can be very difficult.  Virtually every communication is insulting, repetitive, and circular.  They are seemingly unable to stay on topic and have propensities for driving others off topic.  Covering the same ground to no avail can be exhausting for the non-disordered participants, as they tend to push relentlessly for our participation in their arguments. It is easy to fall into their communication traps and become engaged in their attempts for power.  However, with knowledge and diligence, we can re-train ourselves to successfully stand our ground by controlling our own behaviors. A few simple …

Communicating with disorderRead More

Lovefraud recently received the following email from a woman whom we'll call "Peggy Sue." I feel hopeless. I'm a target for sociopaths, or I'm addicted to them. My ex-fiancé was one. I was with him 7 years and was abused everyway possible. I was so confused with the lies and double life. He said I was crazy and I went on tons of medication and was completely isolated. I finally was able to leave after 7 years with the help of police, only to move back to my dads with nothing and to start all over. A month later fell in love with another sociopath. My friends and family think I'm gonna end up dead by him or killing myself. I have been to therapy they all just say move out and leave. I …

Healing your addiction to sociopathsRead More

Lovefraud recently received the following email from a reader who posts as "Salvation2012." Thank you for helping me decide when I needed to cut my losses during my divorce. I did cut my "losses," yet the total I received tallied up to a number similar, just not in all cash. Because I settled in his eyes, he told everyone I was just proving how I was the guilty one and didn't want to risk being exposed. To the end he will deny permanently injuring me and bleeding me of money, and cheating on me (which I only later found out about the extent). My recent concern is watching him seemingly have no consequences. I'm not a vengeful person, so this is a distressing area for me, but I just …

What we should do when sociopaths experience no consequencesRead More

What sociopaths do to us is unfair, coercive, exploitative and evil. In a just world, they would be held accountable. They would be forced to return what they took from us, and compensate us for the pain and suffering they have caused. They might even be prosecuted and imprisoned. But we do not live in a just world. We live in a world that is oblivious to the human predators among us. We live in a world where clueless people believe a convincing liar; the best performer wins and courts have neither the time nor the inclination to sort out the truth from the lies. For all of us who have been targeted, this adds insult to injury. We've been abused and exploited. We are damaged. Then because …

Recovery – parallel courses for moving forwardRead More