Few, if any, walk away from their experiences with psychopaths completely unscathed. They may leave us bankrupt, homeless, or destitute. They may feign victimization, as they continue to wage their assaults, further insulting what we actually endured at their hands. Their thirst for destruction may be almost insatiable when it comes to us.
Those are just the tangible losses. Let us give equal time to the emotional confusion and trauma. Many of us suffer from PTSD, depression, or serious physical medical concerns, as a result. Living through experiences with psychopaths, or those with such features, is an incredible feat.
While we tend to focus on the negative consequences, we should also take time to examine the positive ones. It’s important! Here’s why….
Defeated? Don’t answer yet
Human nature and our culture tend to leave us concentrating on what we do not have. If a psychopath enters our world and then exits, leaving us in turmoil, we think this is a bad thing. We mourn our losses, feel bad, and wish things were different.
This is normal. Typically, we don’t enter relationships to leave them. However, when these folks touch our worlds, no good can come of the connections. As a result, as we progress through our journeys, we can come to learn that we have actually been given second chances by their departures.
The little things that are not so little
For example, from the day the person I learned my life lessons from entered my world, I spent a lot of time sick. I am not talking about major issues. Mainly, I experienced lingering colds, strep throat, unexplained fevers, bronchitis, pneumonia, and the like.
It seemed that I visited my doctor frequently for minor, but legitimate, concerns that needed some level of attention. Almost a year and a half ago now, I saw my doctor for a regular check up. She told me that she was surprised to see me. She assumed I had left and gone elsewhere.
I must have looked at her strangely, because she backtracked, explaining that she only mentioned that because she had neither seen nor heard from me in that time. I thought for a moment. It was true. I had not been sick at all.
Similarly, several years ago, my dentist advised that I should sleep with a mouth guard. Apparently, I was grinding my teeth fairly seriously. I recall waking many mornings with my teeth clenched shut. I remember trying to convince myself, while half awake, to unclench my jaw, but could not. I had to fully awaken first and consciously force myself to separate my teeth. The result, serious headaches that sometimes last lasted for days.
Last year, even at the height of two separate court battles, the same dentist indicated to me that he could tell the grinding had stopped. So, what does this indicate? These individuals bring undue harm. Their departures, even if only partial, can change us for the better.
One day at a time
I am not saying that all of the bad magically disappears one day. We may carry many of the scars for years or even for life. However, we can re-emerge with the help of our attitudes and awareness. Even if they persist and seem truly unable to move on, we can work toward freeing ourselves from the burdens. They no longer have to matter to us. It takes time and can be very difficult, but know that it is possible. Once, we invested in relationships that were destined to fail. Now, we can concentrate on rebuilding ourselves successfully. It truly is an example of gain, diguised as loss.
KatyDid
darwinsmom
What a terrific, emotionally healthy perspective about yourself. Thanks for sharing your process. It’s very instructive and helpful.
Katy, who is going to stop my joke about how I ’embrace my inner weirdness’ (b/c it was really me acknowleding my inadequacy and excusing in a light way b/c i didn’t know any way to fix it.)
Sunflower
Lol, that sounds way tooo familiar. I was also told I was special, now I’m weird and I’m looking for normal. Guess what? Normal is hard! Lol, strange as it sounds…. But I completely get what you are saying. I said to my therapist the other day: “Define Normal.” She responded: “That is an impossible task.” Uhm…. yeah… how to deal with that one… 😛
Truth is, in my opinion, “normal” is also wearing blinding glasses and in that lies my conflict. Anyway thanx for the answer 🙂
Sunflower
Take a look at this, The Johari window:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johari_window
Ox Drover
Darwin;smom,
Great way to put this concept.
Mine is a bit shorter, “at first in order to HEAL, we need to learn about them (psychopaths), and then we must learn about OURSELVES.” th
Actually I think “weird” is just one end of a continuum of Bell Curve we call “normal” —and who defines “normal” anyway? Does “normal” equal “average?”
What is unique? Is that weird? Is weird even bad?
We can play with words all day, but in the end, each of us is an INDIVIDUAL, and is UNIQUE. We are similar to each other in some ways, and different from each other in other ways.
I think that we should EMBRACE our uniqueness and love ourselves as we grow on this journey we call “life.”
We can reach out a hand of help and friendship to others, and some people will reject that offered hand, or even think that the offer of help is something dangerous, others will accept it. Sometimes when we are deeply hurt even an offer of an extended hand is painful and we reject it. I remember once I fell on some brick steps and hurt my shin so painfully that when my husband reached out a hand to help me up I yelled ” DON’T TOUCH ME!”
Sometimes people on the blog are in such pain that they will reach out and attack an extended hand of friendship. Also keep in mind that 80-90% of communication is NON VERBAL, so what we type here may be misinterpreted. So we try very hard to be non-critical of someone (anyone) who may be in such pain that they perceive our words to be an attack. Yet, at the same time, we try to give FEED BACK for people that is helpful, because I think we ALL NEED that feed back from the people here to help us to over come our “blindness” in some areas.
But, that’s what LF is all about. That caring and that sharing. God bless.
Ox Drover
Good link, Sunflower…
darwinsmom
Sunflower,
Funny on the way out and back just the past half hour I was thinking of it more in depth myself and tried to come up with a definition for normal.
Normal = potential to be unique or being unique
When we compare the behaviour of spaths many of us mention how alike they are, like a copy of each other, how not unique and unoriginal they are.
Meanwhile any normal, healthy human being has the potential to grow throughout their life to become a very unique person. So uniqueness is normal.
The issue that arises is that the speed and timing of this uniqueness development always differs for people. And other people, especially at a child’s age, will respond either very positive or very negative to it. Hence we start to connect our uniqueness to weirdness/specialness. I had a need to feel special, because I had originally experienced as being perceived as weird. Deep down I actually just wanted to be regarded as normal, I wanted people to see that despite my uniqueness I was still normal. I just believed wrongly that nobody could ever see me as normal, that it was a status I could never achieve, so desiring it was simply not an option for me. And of course if you have to choose between being seen as weird or as being seen as special, you’d choose the latter. Well it’s completely “normal” to try to forward yourself as special in that situation.
If you’re curious: everyone I interact with here, you sunflower, you Katy, you Stargazer, you Hens, you Oxy, you Skylar, you Donna, and so on and so on… I think of you as completely NORMAL people, as much as I consider you all to be unique… It is exactly that personal uniqueness that makes you so normal to me!
skylar
**must fit in, must appear normal, must not stand out**
Skylar puts on her sunglasses to appear normal 😎
I’m normal. right? 😕
Darwinsmom,
I can relate to not feeling “normal” as a kid.
The other girls would jump and scream for no reason sometimes. Or they would run yelling down the hallways. It was out of the blue. I just watched in dismay. Why did they do that? I was quiet and subdued. So yes, I grew up doing things differently, since I knew I was different anyway.
I went to a private school and in high school, we all dressed a certain way, mostly emulating the VERY wealthy kids. I learned to dress very fashionably on a tight budget.
But I knew I was faking because I wasn’t like them and I wasn’t rich like them. So I hitchhiked, dressed like a fashion model. It was the dichotomy I was after, in part. I did that for a couple years. The whole time I was just waiting with a chip on my shoulder for some guy to proposition me, to assume I was a prostitute. Well, nobody ever did. EXCEPT ONE. I was ready with my cutting remark, meant to degrade the recipient, “See this thumb? It means I need a ride. That’s ALL it means!” And he apologized.
That’s why I remembered that guy, because he was the ONLY one. Then I saw him on the news several years later and it was Gary Ridgeway. lol.
So, yes, being different DOES attract spaths. We stick out. They notice that we aren’t “boring” and we become their marks.
Sunflower
You said it Skylar 😉 Point on!
Louise
This is kind of what I was talking about in my rant about sleeping with guys too fast. The world sees it as “normal,” but I don’t. It does nothing but cause heartache and problems. So I will be “different” and “special” because I will not be doing this.
darwinsmom
Sunflower,
Specialness/Weirdness/Normalness has become a total non-issue to me. That’s being truly free … I just am.
I regard re-asserting oneself into some category whether it’s weird or special as still in a reactive stage to one’s past, and therefore not free from it and indeed vulnerable to flattery. It’s as if we are being triggered: responding to our present environment as if it was the spath/abusive environment of our past.
Mind you, I do believe we cannot escape the see-saw without going through the see-saw. I had to shout out I was special in order to gain enough self-confidence to escape the maze. It’s a healthy first step to liberating yourself from being dependent on what others think of you. Because you start to take over the power of perception: it’s not the others who define the perception of yourself anymore, but you will define how others will perceive you. But it’s not true freedom yet: it’s just choosing your own prison with the clothing, car, friends, music, interior design that make it easy for yourself as well as your surroundings to put you in the box you want to be seen.
What you notice is that once you’re free from the self-chosen prison is that you vary the stuff without any true care of how it’s perceived, but reflective of yourself at that moment. I do what is right to me.