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.
Darwinsmom,
I have been hooked by the pity ploy of a psychopath pretending to be a victim more than any other way. My son has used it on me, my egg donor has used it on me, people wanting me to do things for them, people wanting to scam me….all used the pity ploy “I NEEEEEED your help, you are so wonderful and strong and you can help me….” Then of course when you help (enable) them it is never to their satisfaction.
When the Pity Ploy is being utilized it is never to their satisfaction. You just didn’t do it right so they will find some reason to be disappointed in your help.
Hi Oxy,
Thanks for writing this article. You did a great job of explaining loss, pain, and greiving. Very helpfull
You know I’m pulling your leg (the good one, not the one in the cast)with mailing me the white cat!
Have fun tonight at your Cinco de Mayo celebration!
ps. I’ve BEEN to Barney’s Beanry about thirty years ago!!
Oxy, you have mention about pain being like a gas so many times, and I completely resonate with this and your entire article. My massage client that I mentioned in the other thread has not had anywhere near the horrendous life experiences some of us have had. And yet her grief over the break-up with a guy a year ago (who wasn’t a spath) caused her immense pain, to where a year after the break-up, she was still being triggered into acute grief. I watched her completely fill up with pain. She became the pain until it passed. Pain is pain.
I think the danger of being the victim of a sociopath is that it is tempting to become identified as such. We develop an entire identity around it and it is then who we become and how we relate to the world. I have not done this with the spath because he was just a blip on my radar screen. But for most of my life, I identified as a victim of an abusive family, and this has dictated how I have perceived the world for so many years. And it’s dangerous, because it goes against the natural life process which has nothing to do with identities and forms.
I think there is real emotional pain and then imagined pain. Real pain can be felt and processed in the present moment when it comes up. It is like the clouds in the sky – they well up, rain, and then dissipate. Emotions are the same. They may only “appear” to linger because we are too afraid to really feel them. Once we address them, they change.
Imagined pain is the story we create around what happened to us and who we think we are. And then if someone else comes along and challenges that identity, we get mad at them. The story is just that – a story. The more we become identified with our story, the less we are actually living in the present. And the more pain and drama we will create for ourselves. This is why I observe a lot of people who just don’t heal. It’s not that they don’t WANT to. No one WANTS to suffer. It’s just that they are so entrenched in their identity as someone who suffers. And (here is the important part) THEY DON’T REALIZE THEY ARE DOING IT. It is not that actual identity that is so painful. It’s that they can’t let go of it and be in the present moment. In order to get peace, you have to let go of the identity. It can be hard to give up. It’s like the monkey with his hand in the cookie jar. He can’t get his hand out because his fist expands while he is grasping the cookie. The only way to get his hand out of the jar is to drop the cookie. And so this is how we all are with our egos (the part of us that who we think we are). We just won’t let go.
This is why you will always hear that healing happens as fast as you are willing to let go of the past and future. When that happens, you can be present. When you are present, any unresolved emotions will spontaneously arise and pass away without all the story and the drama.
Oxy, thanks for your article.
“It is not that actual identity that is so painful. It’s that they can’t let go of it and be in the present moment. In order to get peace, you have to let go of the identity. It can be hard to give up.”
Stargazer,
I like what you’re saying & perhaps I’m getting into semantics, but, here goes: When I realized and felt I had been betrayed/duped by someone I loved very much, I felt like I lost my identity. Who really was this person that I loved? Were they BSing me all the time? Some of the time? If so, when, as I reviewed in my mind so many moments I had spent with them? How could I not have seen the truth? Was I an idiot? Who was I? What was I? How could I have been so blind?
So, what I’m saying is that in the aftermath of discovering someone I loved was an N/SP, I felt like I had lost my own identity. It took some time for me to rebuild myself and forge a new identity. Once I was able to create my new, post-N/SP self & identity, it became easier for me to live in the present moment. But in that interim period of post-discovery of the N/SP & pre-creation of my new self/new identity, it was very hard & painful to live in the present moment. The present moment was full of pain. So, I basically agree with you, except for that interim period.
Oxy, Thank you for your article. I really agree with you.
The other day, skylar posted a link to this article somewhere and I really think it’s worth a discussion.
http://www.yorku.ca/rweisman/courses/sosc6890/pdf/meloypaper-psychopathy.pdf
It is a very scholarly article, but full of insights and references.
A quote….
“Consciously FELT emotions (OF THE PSYCHOPATH) include excitement, frustration, rage, boredom, envy, dysphoria, and shame….Psychopathic men typically modulate affect like 5-7 year old boys…..What is emotionally absent in the psychopath is most important……..These include anger, fear, guilt, depression, sympathy, jealousy, gratitude, empathy, remorse, sadness, loneliness, and reciprocal joy”“emotions that are broad, deep, and complex. Instead, the emotional life of the psychopath centers on envy and shame (Kernberg, 1984)”.
Yes, that was a mouthful. So the author says the sociopath is clearly all about envy and shame.
I never saw any of the more complex emotions in my spath. Never joy, never lonliness, never sadness. never gratitude, or remorse. Isn’t it shocking when you think about it? I think of my spath and he is SO FLAT emotionally. I *DO* see the mirror – how he pretended to be like me – but all these rich emotional elements were missing.
This should be read, and read again, by those of us on here who wonder if their spath’s new mate has it any better. They don’t.
Athena
Athena, I disagree with Kernberg that the only emotions they feel are envy and shame. I think as we discussed in another thread that “shame” must be felt as a response to guilt and guilt and shame must come AFTER remorse and since a psychopath can feel little or any remorse or guilt, how can they feel “shame.?”
I have seen and experienced the RAGE and ANGER of a psychopath..and they are two emotions I have FREQUENTLY seen and experienced in psychopaths. When they do not get what they want (what they envy) they fly into a full fledged rage and anger state.
I don’t think that shame is related to guilt. Shame is the conviction that I am lacking in the very core of my being…that I am damaged goods, or that I am inherently flawed….and I can see how a spath or a narc can experience this as a core emotion. just my not so HO. 🙂
I guess I need to read the article before I add any more to this post.
Oxy,
you agree that they project, right?
What is projection and what do they project?
We end up feeling slimed, after an encounter with a spath. That’s because they have projected their slime into us. That slime is shame. It had to come from somewhere in order for them to project it.
There are many studies and all professionals agree that shame is very often bypassed. In other words, it cannot be FELT at all. It can only be seen and often is shows itself as rage.
Helen Block Lewis was the researcher who first documented this after painstakingly researching hundreds of case files. Narcissism, the root of psychopathy, is about bypassed shame.
Kim,
in my not so HO, you are right.
guilt and shame are actually direct opposites. Shame is about who you are at your core and guilt is about what you have done.
Shame takes away your power. It is a feeling of being powerless. the psych term is “agency”. Someone who feels shamed is naked, lacking, unable to defend even their exposure. There is also the feeling of being judged as unworthy and “less than in comparison”.
When you are shamed you are no good. Therefore, you can DO no good. you lack the power to do good and be looked well upon.
So what do you do? How to get rid of this powerless feeling?
Do BAD. Now you have your agency back . You are an agent of evil. You are guilty. You cross boundaries and shame others, but you don’t care. You FEEL no shame. You know you are guilty and you don’t care. You are no longer powerless. You HAVE POWER and it comes from your rage. You proved you have power because you DID something. A powerless/shamed person couldn’t do anything.
In some languages, the word for woman is the same as the word for shame. Why? because they let themselves be f*cked. They let men cross their boundaries and merge with them inside. Men are the guilty party, crossing the boundary but the woman is the one synomous with shame.
It’s a sick world out there.
I had this experience at work a week or two ago: The restaraunt filled up in about 5 minutes and I went from zero to eighty in about thirty seconds. I had been completely at rest and then was thrown into high speed. It can be a bit discombobulating!!! A man was sitting at the counter behind me, as I put on a fresh pot of coffee…but, I forgot to put the pot underneith it…no huge catastrophe, I caught it before more that a cup of coffee had spilled out onto the work surface, but I was embarrased, and I’m sure I showed it…I apologized for my ineptitude by saying…I’m trhying to do tgoo much at once. He smiled, seemed understanding, but I believe I showed a vulnerability and a narc saw an opportunity to move in for the kill….
Our building is very old and needs a lot of repairs. There is a place under the lunch counter where there is a kind of a hole that has been jerry rigged to not be obvious…he caught sight of this and latched on like a bull dog…he forced the issue and continued to try to make me ashamed of it…ie, he tried, with all his might to slime me. My boss is well aware of the problem and she has taken it to the owners, repeatidly. Theu don’t want to spens any money. Is it a problem? Sure…but it’s not my problem. I’m a waitress for God’s sake…hjow much influence do I have? But this guy would not let it go. I politely told him that my boss was aware of the situation but was not getting any cooperation from the owners, but he kept trying to get me to react with shame or embarrasment. I just gray rocked him. So then he tried to triangulate. He brought another man at a nearby table into it, yo collude with him to make the lowly waitress feel ashamed. I gray rocked the both of them. Finally he shut up and I warmed up a bit to him, but as soon as I did, he made another attempt. After he left, I comented to his accomplice that the man was a bully who needed to push around the little people to feel important. His acomplice blushed. Ha.
This is absolute narcissism and I know it like I know the back of my hand. If it ever happens again, I’ll give him the number of the owners and be done with it. Comments?