By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)
Someone posted one of those “signs” on my Facebook page today that everyone forwards and shares, which I call “one-sentence wisdom or humor” but this one struck me as suburb wisdom.
The past is where you learned the lesson.
The future is where you apply it.
Don’t quit in the middle.
We have all had the misfortune to learn our lessons the “hard way” in associating with a psychopath (or two), but actually I think “misfortune” may be the wrong word, because learning things “the hard way” means that we will not forget those lessons. “The burned hand never forgets the fire” is another way to say it. Maybe we have actually been fortunate to escape from the psychopath when we are still able to escape, and when our “burns” were not fatal. We read in the newspapers, on the Internet, and see on television the faces of women (and men) who did not escape with their lives from associating with a psychopath.
Now that we have escaped, I think we need to apply those lessons learned in the past, to the future. We can’t quit in the middle.
Treating the wounds
While I realize that many here on Lovefraud still have open wounds, sores that are still bleeding or weeping, that are still painful to touch. The pain caused by those wounds, by the physical, financial, and emotional wounds can be horrific. Worse, still, can be the pain of treating those wounds.
I recall my son D’s burns after the plane crash. They weren’t quite severe enough for him to be hospitalized since he had a trained medical person at home, so they sent him home with me with a car load of creams and potions with minute instructions on how to cleanse and re-bandage his burns daily.
Each day I would pre-treat him with a dose of morphine to numb the pain somewhat, though he said it didn’t actually numb the pain, just made him where he didn’t care. Then I would start the process of taking off the old dressings, exposing his wounds to the open air, then wash the burns, removing the old, dead skin, then put on the creams tenderly and carefully, and then replace the bandages which went from the tip of his fingers to his shoulders and back.
I can’t even imagine just how he must have hurt, but my own empathy for him as I treated his wounds was extremely painful to me as well. I know there were many times he wanted to just “give up” and many times I wanted to as well. Just quit! It was too painful to go on treating the wounds! (Just an aside: my son’s wounds healed successfully and unless you know where to look with a magnifying lens, there are no scars visible.)
Emotional wounds
There were times I felt the same way with my emotional wounds in life. It was just too painful, I just wanted to QUIT! Anything to stop tearing the bandages off and treating the wounds again. It was too painful.
After my husband died, I was in such emotional pain that I didn’t want to do the grieving. I didn’t want to tear those bandages off and treat those wounds of my loss. It was just too painful. So I became vulnerable to the psychopaths in my life. The new boyfriend looking for a new “respectable” wife to cheat on was not a successful way to end my pain and grief. I had quit in the middle and didn’t apply lessons I had learned in the past to the future.
Associating with psychopaths leaves us with wounds of all descriptions and levels of damage. Those wounds are difficult and painful to heal, but we must not quit in the middle. Therapy is painful. We have to tear off the scabs that keep us from being able to heal and allow new growth. Whether the therapy is from a professional or is self administered, it is painful to expose our raw inner selves to the open air of examination.
Applying what we learned
When those wounds are healed, however, we must apply those lessons learned to the future of our lives. We must watch for the RED FLAGS of disordered people in the future associations of our lives, and when we see a RED FLAG, we must HONOR that red flag by running as fast as we can away from the person(s) waving it. If not, we will be burned again ”¦ and again ”¦ and again.
Our healing processes start out in learning about the psychopaths, but they end up being about learning about ourselves as well. Learning why we were vulnerable to the psychopaths in the first place. Fixing those vulnerabilities and using the knowledge we learned from our past, to make our futures better.
Don’t quit in the middle.
Excellent discussion – many things for me to consider, right now, and this discussion is helping me call the whole thing for what it is.
Spirit40, there’s nothing wrong with being outspoken. I’m known for being opiinionated, but age and experiences have taught me that I need to sometimes just shut up and let the chips fall where they may – I do not have to defend myself, prove myself, or be in the right, all of the time. Additionally, opening my mouth when it’s not always appropriate has caused me MANY problems, in the past.
Anger is a normal part of the healing process. I just have to be really careful to NOT allow it to develop into an obsession. One side of me says, “Well, why SHOULDN’T I be obsessed with what he did to me?!” The other side answers, “Because Life isn’t always fair, and I don’t have the ‘power’ to see that he gets what he deserves.” I only have control over ME and my choices. Surviving these experiences and living a productive, positive life is the best revenge of all. NO CONTACT facilitates those possibilities, and, in my case, the exspath has nothing to say to me and vice versa. I don’t WANT to hear anything that the exspath has to say because none of it will be sincere, and none of it will be true. He isn’t human, and that’s all there is to it.
Brightest blessings.
Silvermoon,
I can’t tell you how PROFOUND that “reunion” in prison was for me as well….there WAS nothing left to talk about, but I did, he did, and I unfortunately listened with my heart and not my head.
I didn’t want what I saw to be what was TRUE so I stayed in denial. I allowed myself to PITY him and the situation he was in, and forgot that HE HAD PUT HIMSELF THERE.
The next reunion won’t be a happy one, I am sure the police will be called to clean up the crime scene of that family reunion one way or the other.
One day at a time, one hour at a time, one breath at a time.
I think the thing I need to work on the most is forgiving myself.
It is overwhelming when I think about it, how I let this guy abuse me. I mean, I was RIGHT THERE waving my hand, “pick me!”.
Anyway. Thank you Ox.
Athena
Athena, I think forgiving ourselves IS THE HARDEST PART….and yes, we were there waving our hands saying “I’m a sucker, pick me!” LOL (head shaking here) Yep, that’s me, a total sucker! But not any more so I’m standing proud now, so girlfriend get yer sheet togetha before I bonk you! Quit bein’ so hard on yerself! LOL (((hugs))))
Athena,
We did what normal people do. You, me, Ox Drover.
It takes a lot to wake up to the reality.
The point is, you are not alone. IT happens to people. People like all of us.
Its not about forgiving yourself, you really didn’t do anything more wrong than get fooled.
Now you know what happened.
Now you get it.
Now you can LET GO of him and everything that happened with him.
The longer we savor the heartbreak both for the loss of the relationship and ourselves, the longer they linger in our world – in our consciousness.
The step that counts is the one where you just let go of the experience, the abuser, the pain.
Its the hardest step to take because it means that life suddenly becomes unfamiliar.
But, like Ox said above, it is the minute where everything changes. And suddenly, after the long haul, reality becomes both different and clear.
Remember the WIzard of Oz, when after all the adventures, Glinda finally tells Dorothy that the Ruby Slippers would have taken her home at any time but if she’d been told from the first she wouldn’t have believed it?
What if its true that we who suffer can have that same realization? That the part of us which is in pain is not all of who we are, but just for now the loudest part. And what if when we decide that, we can also choose not to listen so much to it.
At least not for a breath, or a minute or an hour or a day….
Be at peace. You are on the road. And you know too much to turn back now.
Silvermoon, you are so expressive! Thanks for being here!!!
Ox,
It makes me chuckle to think about how hard it is to understand that realization that there is nothing left to talk about.
Its so hard to not say or do. To not solve the problem anymore. Because not solving the problem means letting the illusion shatter.
Amazing isn’t it that there is so much to say about not having anything more to say?
For me, that is the hard part.
I arrived at that place where there is nothing more to talk about. And I realized that it is a moment which comes around in a lot of other situations.
Situations in which there is something going on that isn’t right and the more I fight and argue with it, the more opportunity I give the perpetrators to convince me that I am mistaken.
No way to win those arguments.
So, when there is nothing you can do, the best thing is to do nothing.
But nothing is a tough concept to actualize, isn’t it.
Sometimes, it occurs to me that doing nothing is a discipline, not a decision.
Perhaps, it is something we need to understand better because there are clearly times when doing nothing is better than anything else we can do.
Especially when there is nothing left to talk about. Its pointless. No matter what, the conversation will be one sided.
Either the other person will not hear us or whatever we have to say becomes drowned by the part of us that doesn’t want to experience the breaking of the illusion.
Without that breaking of the illusion, the transformation of ourselves back into the real world can not be accomplished. It must be so.
I am restless these days OX. So much to do in little time and all so huge. But these tasks don’t take all day.
I am happy to spend this time among the friends who helped me so much and in return give what I can to others.
I am reminded of the Song of the Open Road so often in the discussions here-
The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
The picture alive, every part in its best light,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted, 40
The cheerful voice of the public road—the gay fresh sentiment of the road.
O highway I travel! O public road! do you say to me, Do not leave me?
Do you say, Venture not? If you leave me, you are lost?
Do you say, I am already prepared—I am well-beaten and undenied—adhere to me?
O public road! I say back, I am not afraid to leave you—yet I love you; 45
You express me better than I can express myself;
You shall be more to me than my poem.
I just read what Truhspeak was writing on the other thread-
Its so relevant here I’ll just quote it!
Cognitive Dissonance- Now there’s a word!
In order for the cognitive dissonance to ease off, you need to make “a choice” around which your brain can start to rationalise for the good of you that you were right to leave him, in a way that you feel there’s no turning back. In order to make it the dominant choice over the active choice of the past to be with him, you must make the choice to leave a very active one, and one from which it seems there is no return possible ”“ in other words, when you burn your bridges in your mind.
Silver,
Those bridges? Burn them? NO!!!! DYNAMITE those bridges!!!! TOWANDA
Towanda kaboom.
I like to concept of becoming a mental artillery expert…
LOL!