Since Lovefraud launched in 2005, I’ve collected 2,850 cases—people who have contacted me to tell me about their experiences with a sociopath. In nearly 100 of these cases—3.4%—the person who contacted me was not actually the victim, but was a friend or family member who was trying to pry the victim away from the sociopath. For example, here’s an email that Lovefraud recently received:
I have a sister-in-law who is dating a married man, who claims he will be getting a divorce, which is still yet to happen. Now she’s pregnant with his kid so things are more serious. They were supposed to move out together a couple months ago, but when the day came he disappeared, then a couple weeks later she found out she was pregnant by him then they were in contact again. Anyways, they went ahead and got an apartment again, which he’s not living in because he is still living with his wife, so it’s a come and go when he pleases”¦ He’s using her! This is not his first child out of wedlock, in fact, he has no contact with the other one and he has now cheated on his wife six times! All these red flags, and all she does is cover up for him. I’ve noticed she’s been depressed and been doing irresponsible things with her health as a result of this guy! Everyone also bluntly tells her that she’s basically his whore, so she knows how everyone feels. What do I do to open her eyes?
Lovefraud’s standard advice in this situation is that there isn’t much someone else can do—it’s up to the person who is involved with a sociopath to open her own eyes and see what is going on. In order to break away, the victim must feel, and own, the negative emotions associated with being controlled and/or abused. This will spark the victim’s desire to get out.
The best thing loved ones can do is stay in contact with the victim, because the sociopath will try to isolate him or her. Friends and loved ones should be emotionally supportive of the individual, but not supply material support, such as money or a place to live. The idea, essentially, is to wait it out, and then, when the relationship crashes and burns, be there to pick up the pieces.
Dr. Liane Leedom explained this approach in her article, “How can I get my _____ away from the psychopathic con artist?”
I’ve sent many, many people the link to that article. But every time I do, it is so dissatisfying. Isn’t there anything a loved one can do?
I understand that people become deeply bonded to sociopaths, especially when they are emotionally and physically intimate, and more especially when they are pregnant. I wrote a whole chapter in my new book, Red Flags of Love Fraud, that explains exactly how this happens. Chapter 6 is called “Sociopathic sex and bonding,” and it explains the psychology and biology of how this powerful psychological love bond is formed.
Here’s a chapter by chapter summary of the book.
Still, I don’t like the idea of just waiting around the victim hits bottom. Sometimes, by the time that happens, the victim is so broken that there is no recovery. And sometimes, when the victim hits bottom, she is dead.
So, I ask Lovefraud readers: Have you ever conducted a successful intervention? If you were the friend or family member of someone in the clutches of a sociopath, were you able to get him or her out? How? Or, if you were the person bonded to the sociopath, did anyone ever do or say anything that gave you the strength to leave?
If anything works, please let us know. I’d love to be able to offer more heartening suggestions.
Someone warned me but she should have been more specific and persistent and it would have shortened the process. I also warned someone and it worked. You need to identify clear lies, clear instances where a story told to one person as a significant other does not match the life history and events told to another person
I have had several successful interventions. It must be done slowly, as the victim needs to prepare and so does the family. It is rare that a victim can leave without family support. The domestic violence shelters in my area are full and underfunded.
The whole process takes about 7-9 months. I use a combination of Cognitive Behavior Therapy and biofeedback. The nervous systems of those involved with a sociopath are in an elevated hyper aroused state. The biofeedback allows relaxation and then use of supportive therapy and when trust has increased, CBT. The biofeedback is the necessary component in the beginning. It keeps the victim coming back as they feel the relaxation. They also begin to understand the change in their body when they leave the office and go back home to the sociopath. The family is also coached and biofeedback is used, it is difficult for family members to see their child return to the spath’s environment. It is usually a family member who brings the client to the session week after week. It is not cheap, as the victim usually has no health insurance and of course there are no funds available for alternative treatments. Part of the reason a victim cannot leave is the over responding of the nervous system. They begin to react to every trigger and they struggle with people outside of the relationship, while the spath feeds on the over reaction. Without this type of intensive treatment, it is amazing that anyone can leave.
I stumbled on this treatment when I left my ex. I had been introduced to LF and others in the movement. Still I had an unbalanced nervous system, I could not connect to so many people because of my reactions. When I was introduced to biofeedback, it was love at first treatment. I finally felt like my normal self again.
Well my spath left me for another woman cold turkey and was married to her within two weeks and she was immediately pregnant. I know the woman he ran off with before her (from me) he was also trying to convince to marry him and have a kid right away! I guess he had a agenda alright, but I threw a lot of crap in his way for a year or two before he finally got the job done! But I wrote out a step by step story of all he did to me and others and gave it to her in writing and the said, “Thanks I think”. To this day she is still with him, however I have heard he quit his job and they were really having a rough time of it! She has a facebook page and never is on it, I am sure he is controlling that! I am certain I seen him out without her with another woman at least once also! Anyway, she did not listen and is probably suffering as we speak. I feel so helpless…I just wish she would reach out and talk to me. I did see her one day and she waved and acknowledged me looking as if she wanted to talk to me!
rebccap,
Unfortunately, most of the time there is no money for treatment of any kind…and getting the victim to GO to therapy is difficult too. Glad to know though that something works if you can pull it off.
Doony62, I have been warned about people I was interacting with who were psychopaths and I did not listen,, and I have also warned others and I did not listen…so been on both sides of the coin. LOL BOY I would listen NOW!!!!! LOL Makes a difference in my “hearing”
KatyDid on March 5 – I really like your commentary. Thank you!
I found something that worked to get me away from my experience with a sociopath. Abuse counseling at my local Abused Women’s Shelter. Statements from counseling such as “you can’t expect to feel better when you continue to take the poison everyday”, and “it’s not your responsibility to fix him or his behavior”, and “obviously he does not want your help with his condition and even resents your help and sympathy”. It took a while, but the messages finally sank in. I am currently scheduled for a court hearing, I filed a restraining order, and he counter filed a restraining order. After this, it will take me YEARS to recover financially. But the abuse counseling DID help me see that he is heartless and uncaring and nothing will ever change that.
Congratulations Debby!
You saved yourself!
That’s such good new to hear, that another person “got it” and got out.
((hugs))
I have been in so many situations where I see people getting involved in counterproductive relationships or “deals,” and I’ve tried so many different ways to talk them out of it or get them out of it. But when someone is convinced that this is the right thing, or entirely seduced by the appearance of something she really wants, I’ve discovered that the most direct ways of attacking this just don’t work. Criticism, opinions, analysis, suggestions, advice don’t work on these dreamwalkers. So I’ve developed different ways to think about it, and different types of influence.
One way to think about this is that I am, in attempting to influence a victim, competing with the influence of the predator. The predator has everything to gain from keeping her addicted, and from suppressing the rational self-protective aspects of her personality. His brainwashing includes all sorts of defensive elements to keep anyone else from influencing her. The demand for unquestioning loyalty is certainly one of them, as is the use of sex to keep her bonding hormones high.
Another way to think about this is that we are watching someone in the most intense learning experience of her life. No matter how functional she may be in other areas, the predator has found her vulnerabilities, the places where she is willing to give up control over her life for something that she believes is more important. These beliefs are key to her dilemma, and until she has enough evidence that she needs to change those beliefs, she will not be finished with this relationship. Even if he leaves her.
I don’t think I can speed up this learning process by attacking the relationship or even her dysfunctional thinking or behavior. She is already engaged in an internal drama that is more compelling than almost anything I can say, unless I am the social services taking her children or the doctor telling her that she is going to die or the sheriff turning her out of her house or whatever convinces her that she is choosing destruction over life, if she doesn’t stop doing what she’s doing.
However, there are some things I believe can help. These are strategies I use now with people who are behaving irrationally in pursuit of a dream:
1. Acknowledge, support and and encourage them in areas where they are still in control of their decisions. Applaud their achievements. Admire the character traits — like courage, creativity, persistence — that enable these parts of her life. My aim is to help her remember and feel good about her strengths.
2. Respond authentically to her painful stories. As agreenbean suggested, I show the normal human responses to experiences she is describing. Not analyzing them, or turning them to advice or lessons. Just trying to be a model for how people react normally. I say things like, “That must have been so painful, disappointing, scary, exhausting. If it were me, I think I’d be in tears, angry, confused, really wishing things were different.” I might ask how she’s doing, how she’s handling it. My aim is to get her to take her feelings seriously, rather than the stories she’s telling herself about how they’re wrong, don’t matter, or that she can handle it.
3. Introduce stories of analogous relationships into the conversation, from my own life or something I know about a friend, or found on TV or in a book that particularly struck me. There are a lot of kinds of abuse. It might be a show I saw about horrible bosses or the miners’ strikes in Pennsylvania. It might be about the difficulties faced by a friend who discovered that her child had been raped. Or about discovering that a friend had been stealing from me, or that someone I went to school with was injured in an accident when her drunken husband was driving. I don’t take the next step to compare it to her life. I don’t try to do anything that will trigger her defenses, but only share something I was thinking about, or something I felt bad about. My aim is only to resurrect her ability to think critically about people who hurt or take advantage of other people, the costs involved and maybe the ways that victims resolve their situations.
4. This is probably the touchiest thing, but it can also be helpful — talking about life after the relationship. Like everything else, this has to be handled from the perspective of my own feelings and thoughts, not as advice or pressure. I let her know that I’ve been thinking about how it will be for her when the relationship i over — no matter how it ends. She is probably unable to think much about life without the huge stimulator/stressor of the predator, and that is to be expected. Still, I can let her know that I’ve started putting together mental lists of what she might need when it’s over. Maybe a place to stay, or some new belongings. Maybe a therapist to help with her feelings about it. Maybe a job. Maybe a lawyer. There’s no way to tell exactly what she’ll need, but you’re telling her you’ll be there for her. My aim to encourage her to start imagining the next chapter of her life.
All of this is sensitive business. It’s work and it requires self-control. I can’t share opinions or judgments about her, what she’s doing, or her predatory partner. In every way possible, I’m talking about my own thoughts, feelings and challenges.
In my experience with people involved in these relationship, it is the only way to influence them. And it doesn’t do anything but, hopefully, stimulate the right types of thinking to help them move through the learning experience faster.
It’s hard to watch what they’re doing. Really hard. But sometimes that’s part of being a true friend, being with them while they’re suffering without blaming or judging. I think it’s also a message that they’re worth that kind of friendship.
I look at my own friendships through the years, and the ones that stand out aren’t the ones with people who pressured me to take better care of myself or who loaded me with advice or unwanted offers of help. Rather, they are the one with the people who stuck by me, no matter how wrongheadedly I was behaving, and helped me feel my feelings accurately and give them names. That may sound strange, but sometimes just hearing someone say that she would feel angry if that happened to her empowered me to name my feelings as anger. And that ultimately empowered to act as an angry person should, rather than as a doormat.
rebeccap:
Thank you for your post. ESP this section: “Part of the reason a victim cannot leave is the over responding of the nervous system. They bein to react to every trigger and they struggle with people outside of the relationship, while the spath feeds on the over reaction. Without this type of intensive treatement, it is amazing that anyone can leave.”
I left but only when it got to the point where I thought my body was literally dying. I got it together enough to move, but then I collapsed for months afterwards, not healing, not recovering, not even really living. Days turned into weeks. THe pain was NOT going away. One day (must have been feeling better?), I told my brain that I was tired of hurting and since waiting for pain to stop wasn’t working, I decided to look at my body from a third person perspective and experiment on things to heal it. I went to the library and checked out every book on Brain anatomy/physiology they had. To even read the books, I had to go slow and take notes, not b/c I was stupid, but b/c I had lost the ability to comprehend and recall, I could not absorb. So I started small. I forced my brain to go on vacation (b/c I was unable to meditate) so I busied it with Sudoku. 10 minutes several times a day. I forced myself to sit in the sun, 10 min at a time. Everything was 10 minutes. I got lavendar scents, to change the smell of everything into something not normal for me. I stopped eating anything that I had ever eaten when I was with my husband. I did one thing though, I had afternoon tea, the whole ceremony, with bone china cups, real tea, heated pot, and a shortbread biscuit.
These are descriptions of simple things I did to interupt the toxic hold on my brain. As you wrote and I cited, my nervous system was constantly triggered… and I was a Farking nutcase, totally dysfunctional, unable to even remember to take a bath, going weeks without speaking to a single soul, only quick trips to a grocery in the middle of the night so I could avoid ANYBODY. I made NO eye contact, I don’t even remember if I combed my hair. I shut out the world.
I did these things, on my own, with no family, no friends, not a single soul to care b/c my spath made sure there was no one. My message to you is, if a person WANTS to live, and my drive to survive was instinctual, not conscious, there is a way. Can’t help thinking if I did it, there are Millions like me who have done it too. They are here of LF. I am so happy you were able to access your help. It’s a blessing. I have learned we all walk our path and mine is so similar to others that I have “me too” moments, but at the same time, our paths are as individual as we are. I think what helped me was that I was NEVER addicted to my spath. There was no drive to attach to him. At the end, I was staying, waiting to feel better, to get over a stroke, and terribly sick, dependent on a place to live so I could rest. I had desired who I married but who he became was repulsive to me and I avoided him, shutting myself into a room whenever he came into the house. I now can see the path to getting sick, I just didn’t see it when I was INSIDE the abuse.
Thanks for your words, they add to my healing.
ps I am an incredibly improved person. If you met me, now a competent, caretaking, joyfilled person, you would NEVER think me one step from a homeless nutcase, but I was!
KatyDid,
I too was struck by the same comment by rebeccap.
And also by what you said, that you did these things on your own, without help or support.
That is also my story and experience… I mean, I did some things that were seeking support, like I went to a domestic violence support group for a short while, but no one came in and rescued me. No one tried. I don’t blame them — they might not have realized, since I did my part to put up a good front to the community.
Back to what rebeccap said: I had been told a few times by therapists, etc. that I was “emotionally reactive” and I needed to STOP!!! Well, I took that as a lot of criticism of who I was! I was offended. I didn’t understand what they meant. I believed that my ability to feel things intensely was a gift, and how dare they criticize. Also, I didn’t see how there was any way I could NOT feel my feelings — and so I felt criticized about that, too.
I have a different understanding now. Amazingly, I have become a lot less emotionally reactive. Now that I know what it is. But it was NOT through any sort of force of will, or any sort of listening to what those therapists told me to do and then just simply doing it. No, it was a very long, hard process, and becoming less emotionally reactive to my spath was a sort of side effect of that process… but it wasn’t anything I was ever able to consciously do: “hey you, stop reacting emotionally!” That just doesn’t work.
What worked for me was being willing and unafraid to look the beast in the eye and see it for what it was. At first it was icky and disgusting and scary. Then, after looking awhile, it was sort of boring and mundane. It is very hard to be emotionally reactive to something that is so … banal. It ceased being personal. It stopped being able to affect me.
But I don’t know how ANYONE could push me to get to that process any more quickly. I had to do the work myself. I think that’s the way it is with these Life Lessons (thank you, Kathleen H for putting it that way!)
I agree the best thing we can do for our friends who are victims is to not abandon them, but to just be there, watching and waiting with compassion (not meddling) and then, provide whatever validation and support they need, when the time is right. As Glinda says, “she had to learn it for herself.”