By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)
One of the things I have heard from victims of psychopaths here at Lovefraud, seemingly over and over, is that people compare their losses to my losses and Donna’s losses and Dr. Liane Leedom’s losses, etc. and think that their losses don’t “count” because they haven’t lost X, Y, or Z and we did. They seem to think that because I lost a child, or Liane lost her medical practice, or Donna lost a quarter of a million dollars, that they are not entitled to feel as injured as we were/are.
The people expressing this somehow seem to have “survivor’s guilt” about feeling so devastated when their losses were somehow “less.” Or they feel that we are somehow “super heroes” because we survived “big losses.”
I felt that way too when I was reading Dr. Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning. Dr. Frankl wrote the book after his years in a German Nazi concentration camp, in which he lost everything except his life, and barely retained that.
Pain is like gas
I felt that my own losses didn’t compare to Dr. Frankl’s losses, and that somehow I should feel guilty for feeling such great pain and desperation. Then I read Dr. Frankl’s explanation of how pain operates like a gas.
In science, we learn that a gas, because it has atoms that are far apart, will expand until it completely fills an empty container. It will also compress easily so that a larger amount of the gas can be put into a small container. In any case, the container is full. It is totally filled.
I realized upon reading this that my pain was just as “total” as Dr. Frankl’s, and that my losses were just as “big” (or “small”) as his were. All pain and all loss is total. If something is important to us, we value it and when we lose it, we grieve for that loss. We feel pain, which is what grief is.
Grief process
The “grief process,” as Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross explains it, is an emotional process where we come to grips with loss, and eventually come to acceptance of that loss.
Dr. Kubler-Ross’s grief process consists of denial, bargaining, sadness, anger and acceptance. These five stages of grief are not processed in a linear 1-2-3-4-5 formula, but in alternating steps, more like 1-3-4-2-3-4-1-2-4-5. Eventually we come to and stay in the last stage, which is acceptance of the loss.
A baby who drops his pacifier is totally in misery and pain. He cries from the depth of his soul’s loss that his grief is total, his pain is total and his life is ”˜ruined,’ because he doesn’t have his pacifier. Of course we know that his life is not ruined, he will recover, but he doesn’t know this at that time because he doesn’t have the knowledge and experience to know he will come to acceptance of his loss and recover.
Pain is proportional
When we lose something that we care about, our pain is in proportion to how much something means to us. If we drop a penny, usually we will not be devastated. We know that we will still be able to buy lunch, pay the mortgage and go on with life. But if we drop the bank deposit for our business and lose it, it is another matter entirely. Now we may not be able to make payroll and things will get very bad, so our loss is bigger and we grieve over the problems this will cause, the bigger loss.
When we are devastated by the loss of a “great love,” or by the betrayal of someone we trusted, depended on and cared for, we have suffered a great and grievous loss that rocks our world. It isn’t anything we can put a dollar value on; it is an emotional attachment that has no price. How do you quantify “love?”
When we have lost something that is of utter value to us, whether it is something that we can quantify, or whether it has no monetary value, only value of the heart, the soul, then we must realize that our grief is total. We must not compare our losses to what someone else has lost and feel that their loss is “greater,” because it isn’t greater. The pain isn’t greater. It is all TOTAL LOSS. The pain is total.
So if you start to feel that your loss is nothing compared to someone else’s loss, Stop! Realize that your loss, your pain, is your loss and pain. No one else’s is more or less.
Sky, I realize that your X is VERY dangerous, and I also realize that you want to know if he is trying to contact you so you have some idea at least what is happening with him…it is one of those lines where you have to decide if the danger is more if you block him, or if you let him e mail you but don’t answer. (Sigh)
skylar:
IF your spath is telling the truth (I say IF), don’t you think it may mean something that you are both dreaming about each other?? Hmmmmm…
Louise,
he is not telling the truth.
If he is dreaming about me, he is dreaming of torturing me. Or he is worried that I’m going to show up at his annual helicopter con job where he makes thousands just sitting on his ass.
Likely it means he is having fantasies (not innocent dreams) about PUTTING Skylar in some horrible predicament; NOT that he wants to save her from one.
Drama King!
Blech!
Oxy,
Years ago, when I was just starting here at LF I was feeling SO anxious and pathetic about taking up anyone’s time here, because I thought my losses were trivial compared to so many other’s here. I felt selfish and conspicuous in my neediness.
Thank Goodness you have posted this ‘gas’ idea so many times. It literally freed me the first time I read it, and has given me permission to further love myself by validating what is meaningful to me. It has enabled me to acknowledge even ‘day to day’ losses.
I think we ignore far too many hurts and losses, and that if we could acknowledge them and give ourselves permission to have a moment and a feeling, we would find ourselves WAY less stressed out and sad.
I still haven’t read the darn book though.
Slim
Oxy–
“many people never complete the cycle and instead continue to piing-pong between the bargaining, sadness, anger, denial and do not come to acceptance. If grief is not fully processed, it will destroy our lives.”
Is there a tried and true way to get to acceptance? I know that we are supposed to feel and experience every other stage of grief first, but I can’t seem to get to acceptance yet. Maybe with more time…
I think I have not fully processed my grief at my Mum and Dad’s sudden deaths.
I bought the family home (30 miles away) a year ago, but it lies empty (2 years now) as I cannot make the move or a decision about it. I procrastinate and I don’t know if this is PTSD or my nature? The house is now costing me money and in need of repair. Why can’t I make a decision? It doesn’t make sense.
Spathzilla put me through hell, but I didn’t know about spaths then and was in shock. I fell into all the traps and nearly went insane trying to work it all out.
I’ve lived in the city for 30 years but my house is too small yet I can’t make myself move to the country and a larger house. Why not?
Slim I am glad that concept (of the gas-like properties of pain) helped you as much as it did me. It gave me a freedom I don’t think I wouldhave had without it.
Anam cara, You probably have NOT processed the pain of your parent’s sudden death….and holding on to the house, yet unable to move is a symptom to me that you have not processed it.
I would give it a MINIMUM of 3 years to process it, though of course NO ONE can set a TIME for grief to be processed. But it isn’t something you can do in a week or a month or a short time. It was a BIG loss.
Abbri, I’m not sure how long ago your grief started or how big it was, only you can say for sure how “big” or how deep the pain, but it does take time. Also I finally figured out you will come to acceptance then go back 2 steps, then get to acceptance again and back 3 steps then get there and back 1 step, but eventually you “get there.” So don’t give up!
Oxy,
That was a great article. I’ve noticed a few posters who seemed to express this idea they had less right to their pain because they lost much “less”. While I thought they lost the same important things that anyone else of us lost – the belief in the good of everyone, the belief in the growth potential of everyone, and we all experienced how our beliefs and goodness, our ability to love another human being was used against us like a weapon. To me it’s a humanitarian loss and hurts deeper than the amount of money, assets we lost. The material losses and betrayals is the evidence trail that leads to the realisation of the humanitarian loss.
This thread also has an interesting discussion about the pity ploy, revealing a seeming contradiction… First we accept that another one’s pain is total for whichever loss, and on the other hand spaths make these glaring outrageous comparisons. But a give-away imo is the kind of experience that can be expected… A baby’s pain for losing its pacifier is total and absolutely normal. A spath claiming pain for having to pinch on the amount of butter to buy years back in comparison to someone having lost their whole family might also be total but not normal anymore. It shows they’re still stuck in the baby-stage of losing their pacifiers, while eventually babies will learn that losing the pacifier is either not permanent or at some point don’t need it anymore.
It’s also why we get a misunderstood response from people who have never experienced a spath up close and personal. They see the material betrayals and a break-up and expect us to be at an experience level in life to get over a break-up like any other break-up. They don’t realize the loss is about seeing the foundation of your world view collapse.
For me acceptance came when I realized that my new forced-hand life is one that I really like and I otherwise would not have chosen, AND that I see the loss of my old beliefs of humanity as a gain, rather than a loss now.
anam cara,
I was thinking the same thing as Oxy posted. Procrastinating about the decision is a sign that such a decision implies an acceptance of loss to you and you don’t feel ready for that yet. It’s a sign that you still need to grieve.