After the sociopath, when the fog starts to lift, many of us ask ourselves, “Why didn’t I see what was going on?” According to a new book, we should probably cut ourselves some slack.
Read Book Review: The Invisible Gorilla on Scienceblogs.com.
Link supplied by a Lovefraud reader.
teacher123
I haven’t read the book-it sounds good. Many of us didn’t see the gorilla in our midst because we were focussed on the shiny gold things like love and attention. Now that we do know about the gorilla, get them off our backs and out of our minds for good. Don’t let the gorilla in the front door, or talk to them on the phone. They will take your banana and trample it under foot. And have you ever tried talking sense to a gorilla? It just ain’t going to happen how you want it to. They get mad at what they can’t understand.
bluejay
teacher123,
That is SO my experience – when you try to talk sense to them, forget it, they DO get mad, the h-spath repeatedly telling me, “you need to stop, you need to stop, etc.” getting upset, agitated. I don’t get the answers that I seek or get to convey the message that he needs to hear – he wants the discussion to be OVER right then. Your post has me thinking – “they get mad at what they can’t understand.” hmm.
geminigirl
Bluejay. My 2 spath daughters used to do this to me all the time,ie,these are the sort of things theyd say.
“YOUR the crazy one, you should be committed” or
“How can you expect us to even TRY to have a normal Mother daughter relationship with you,, when you are
1} being so unreasonable
2} keep bringing up the past
3} Are a total Drama Queen
4 act so childish ly and selfishly
5]Are an unfit Mother,and embarrassment to us.
Theyd keep on blowing smoke screens, and turning everything back to being MY fault.
Theyd never ever acknowledge any of the mean and hurtful and underhand and betraying things theyd done to me,much less apologise for them!
Ive now totally given up trying to have any sort of relationshit with either of them, in their eyes they are perfect, flawless, without blame, and Im the bad evil Mother in their eyes, despite me being as good a Mum as I could be, always.
Until I found LF, I was even starting to believe all their lies!! Thank God the FOG has lifted!! Love, mama Gem.
Cat
This book is FASCINATING so far and all I’ve read are the excerpts! I so agree with the phrase, “inattentialal blindness”. Not seeing the unexpected. And I did exactly that. I didn’t see the unexpected behaviors, intentions, SO much of what the ex said and did. And it was all around me to the point where the unexpected was the norm. Something in me CHOSE to not see it and focus instead on those shiny gold things that teacher is talking about. They tarnished pretty quickly. I am going to see if I can find this book at the library and read it cover to cover.
bluejay, YES, they get mad. Yesterday, my ex showed up here to take my son swimming. BEFORE all of this happened, I had received a call from a mutual friend who told me the ex wanted to take his son swimming. Fine…as long as there’s supervision. My ex shows up at my door yesterday, wanting to swim at MY pool and had a movie he wanted to watch with my son HERE, at my house. He was furious when I said NO. HUH? Hello! I have a r.o. and I have it for a reason. He then tries to turn it around and tells me it’s MY fault he can’t spend time with his son. I had to spend some time talking with my son and explain how this REALLY works. The BEST part of all of this? Two police cars came into the complex I live in for a completely different matter and the ex thought it was because of him. I’ve never seen anyone move that fast! I was going to call them anyways. And all of the above took place within about a 5 min. time span. It’s a huge reminder to me that he can still stir the pot and make a mess of lives and he does it fast. The gorilla didn’t understand that never again, would I offer him a banana in any way, shape or form.
As teacher123 so aptly puts it, there is no talking sense into a gorilla.
OX, this whole incident just gave me more motivation to move from here and go to a place where I simply cannot be found.
neveragain, that list sounds eerily familiar. It takes a lot of self-honesty to do what you are doing. You actually brought up a couple of vulnerable areas I hadn’t realized.
I have found that when I look at what has happened in my life, it’s not about the other person. It’s about those gorillas I chose not to see and so I look within rather than at him or anyone else.
Cat
one-step, I so enjoy what you write here. It makes much sense to me!
bulletproof
I would have had a better time WITH the goddamn gorilla than him
ErinBrock
Cat;
They do have a reaction to the law. They don’t like thinking the law is breathing on them.
I believe, this is what has mostly kept the spath away.
He knows i’ll report and follow through!
The local cops are completely aware of his behaviors and keep an eye out for him when he ‘pops’ into town.
If I didn’t attain the TPO’s and stalking po’s, I believe he would be showing up at all hours, days, places we were…..
He did that in the past, when I was 18…..he’d crawl through my second story window in the middle of the night…..or show up at my work etc…..(yes, i still married him) 🙁
Since they are set out to ‘win’……if we are serious about keeping them out of our lives…..WE MUST FOLLOW THROUGH!
To whatever extent the law requires.
It’s good to know he had that reaction…..and it’s good you didn’t ‘bend’ the TPO for his convenience!
Keep up the brick wall…….
Ox Drover
Dear Cat,
Yea we THINK we see more than we do and we see what we WANT to see or EXPECT to see. Then we INTERPRET what we actually saw (not even knowing we saw so little of what really happened).
The book gives us some perspective on a lot of things. About what we remember, and what we forget, or what we never saw.
There is another book, a bit more technical called “The other Brain” which is about research on the physical brain its self. I understoode most of it as I’ve had organic chemistry and physilogical chem and quant and qual chem, so it might be a little more difficult for others without as much chem as I’ve had to “get it” about the studies done chemically and physically on the brain, but there are some REVOLUTIONARY studies being done that seem to show that we don’t really knows JACK about what we thought we knew about the brain. That book poses more questioons than it answsers, but was extremely interesting to me, and especially in lite of the “invisible gorilla” book. I read them one after the other. The two together is like WOW! One addiing to the other.
In the “other Brain” they are finding for one thing that the parts of the brain that they thought were just more or less “insulation” are in fact, the COMPUTER of the brain and IN CONTROL of everything…and they can help the brain heal itself, they keep timing right for message transfers, make new routes for parts of the brain that are exercised more, and in short coordinate the interior workings.
Makes me want to be here in another 100 years to see what is going on with all this research then! But who knows, by then humans may be back to living in caves again.
Cat
ErinB.,
You are indeed correct! My ex HATES the law and anything to do with it. Honestly, it was almost laughable that he reacted the way he did. And NO, I will not drop the order, I will keep following THROUGH on the order and I don’t care what he does as long as it’s not around me or my son. He’s a career criminal all the way and he will always be.
Ox, I will try to find that other book as I took some of those courses as well. It really is a journey through one’s mind in so many ways, isn’t it? I am more and more fascinated daily with the way people operate and never see the truth. My mother is one who constantly misses the gorillas in life. And she WILLINGLY admits she does it on purpose. She doesn’t WANT to see the REAL truth. Now, there’s a case to study, don’t you think?
I think I lived in a cave when I was so in denial about the ex. It was dark, cold and lonely.
Hugs!
ErinBrock
Cat….
They commit crimes thinking no one will care or they ‘cant’
get caught…..they are above….
Some of them ‘do’ fear the law…..or the repercussions from which…..
This is ONE benefit of a TPO!
It doesn’t keep them away,….like a golden fence…..BUT….it gives consequences if they do violate it and WE are in control of calling the police.
They push that ‘limit’; in us…..nah…she’s not strong enough to call….she won’t follow through….she hasn’t in all these years….so she won’t now…..
HA>……watchme!
Ring,ring……..
TRO’s extended…..can work….IF we follow through.
If we don’t ever apply……there will never be any consequences!