Not long ago, I heard from a woman whom we’ll call “Rochelle.” When Rochelle was in her 50s, through a high school reunion, she reconnected with the first boy she ever loved. Rochelle had a crush on him when she was 14. They dated for almost five years, although he always seemed to have an eye out for other girls. When they broke up, Rochelle was heartbroken, but she moved on, married, divorced, and life was reasonably good—until that first love came back into her life.
He poured on the charm, and Rochelle felt like finally, after more than 30 years, she had her chance to be with the guy she always wanted. Rochelle left everything to move out of state with him. They eventually married.
Well, he lied, fabricated, manipulated, accused, took her money, ruined her credit, filed for divorce behind her back, and left her with nothing. It was the type of behavior we all know so well—sociopathic behavior.
Rochelle realizes that the guy is disordered; she was exploited; he never loved her. Still, she wants him. Yet she also realizes that she’s in love with a person who does not exist.
She asks, “When does it get to the point where he stops taking up space in my brain?”
Scope of the question
The first thing to understand is the scope of this question. “Getting the sociopath out of my head” is the ultimate goal of everyone who has been betrayed by one of these predators. Once you’ve achieved it, you’ve achieved full recovery.
So cut yourself some slack. This individual probably crashed through your life like a battering ram. Your emotions, finances, home, health and/or psyche may all be in splinters. This is going to take time to repair. If anyone says to you, “Just get over it,” this person has no idea what you’re experiencing.
Understand what happened
You were probably blindsided by this experience, so in order to move forward, you need to understand what happened. We have lots of material here on Lovefraud to help you. Many people have told me that my two books, Love Fraud and Red Flags of Love Fraud, were especially helpful.
Here are some key concepts:
- Sociopaths exist. They are social predators and they live their lives by exploiting people. They do not feel remorse for their actions, and they will never change.
- The sociopath never loved you. You were targeted because you had something he or she wanted. It could have been money, sex, a place to live, business connections or cover for his or her secret life. Or, the sociopath messed with you simply for the fun of it.
- There is nothing you could have done to make the sociopath treat you any better. The involvement was always about exploitation. You were probably targeted because you were good, caring, giving, responsible, and in some way, vulnerable.
- The blame for what happened rests squarely with the sociopath. This person lied to you, manipulated you and betrayed you. You were guilty only of being human.
Acceptance
Recovering from sociopaths is a process. The key to the process is accepting what happened. This does not mean that you excuse what happened, or that you try to forgive and forget. But you must believe that yes, he or she did it, and yes, the sociopath knew what he or she was doing.
You can’t make time go backwards. You can’t take back the things you said or did that enabled the sociopath to become part of your life.
Once you come to terms with the fact that yes, it did happen, you begin the healing process.
Addictive relationship
In the case I described at the beginning of the article, Rochelle said that she still wanted the sociopath. This is not quite accurate. The truth is that she was addicted to him.
Relationships with sociopaths are highly addictive. They actually cause chemical and structural changes in the brain, similar to what substance addictions do. Therefore, you need to treat leaving the sociopath like kicking an addiction.
The way to do this is to have no further contact with this individual—no phone calls, no email, no text messages. Certainly do not meet the person. Don’t even go to the individual’s Facebook page.
If you must have contact with the individual for some reason—like you have a child together—do your best to implement Emotional No Contact. That means you remain absolutely neutral in any interaction. Sociopath love to get emotional reactions from their targets, and will do whatever they can to engage you. Do not take the bait.
Staying away from the sociopath can be really difficult. But the longer you stay away, the stronger you’ll become. If you give in and have contact, you’ll have to start all over again..
Processing the pain
This was not a normal relationship, and it’s not a normal break-up. Even if you weren’t physically or sexually assaulted, you suffered massive emotional and psychic injuries. You have losses that need to be grieved, including your loss of trust.
I believe that you must allow yourself to feel the pain of the experience, although you may not be able to do this right away. In the beginning you may just be numb. This a protective measure taken by your psyche, because the injury is just so massive.
Eventually, you need to let yourself feel it. You cannot bottle the pain up within you. It will either poison your life, or it will make you ill. You must get the pain out of your system.
Cry your eyes out. Stomp you feet in anger. Take up boxing and hit a punching bag. It’s scary at first to face your own anger, embarrassment, rage, humiliation—whatever the sociopath caused. But allow yourself to feel the emotions, honor them, and then let them go.
Let joy into your life
Draining the negative emotions will leave an energetic void within you. How do you fill the empty space? You allow joy into your life.
Any kind of joy will do: Enjoying a sunny day, letting your pets comfort you, having coffee with a friend, letting a waitress be nice to you. Soak up any joy and pleasantness that you encounter.
As you drain the negative emotions, and replace them with instances of joy, you’ll slowly change your perspective. Gradually, you’ll find that the sociopath is no longer renting space in your head. And that’s what you want to achieve.
DenBroncos007, thank you for the vote of confidence, but I can assure you that I’m struggling with my recovery – seriously struggling.
Your ex sounds like the exspath – non-violent (so I thought!), old-fashioned values (on the surface), and mild-mannered (passive/aggressive). I was utterly snowed and ruined to such a degree that I will never recovery, financially, and he is skipping away from his forgeries and coercions without missing a beat. Oh, well……..
I’ve learned a very, very valuable “rule” in the event that I ever begin dating, again. ALWAYS talk to the ex. And, because I’m an adult and in control of my own feelings, it’s not an act of confrontation or any other harmful intent. If a divorce was bitter, there’s “A Reason,” whether what the potential partner is claiming is true, or they’re a vindictive a&&hole. But, no talkie to exie? No datie!
Brightest blessings
denbroncos007:
We all become detectives in some way. The first truths I learned about my x-spath came when I accidentally came across a profile of his on a dating website. After that, any time I used a dating site, I would look to see if he had a profile. From these, I actually really, really learned about him.
However, I never hacked an email of his, although I did have the opportunity when I met somebody who was a manager at a Yahoo.com support center.
To be honest, a bit after this, I was angry I did not get the one bit of information I needed to hack his account (postal code) but in retrospect I am glad I did not.
In addition, several of his friends have hit me up on these sites — it is a small gay world! However, I never responded to them, although I was tempted to play them a bit to see how much they knew about him.
As my counselor wisely notes, crazy people make people do crazy things…
BBE, I have a dear friend who is gay and recently (2 years ago) got his first computer. He had been single for the vast majority of his life and is now searching for his own soulmate using a dating site.
I’m concerned for his well-being, because he is wise in many ways, but he’s not familiar with online games. UGH…..and, I know this wonderful guy that’s a chef and business owner! SHEEEEESH!
And, what’s with the Yahoo.com personals? I learned that the exspath had been placing ads on Yahoo/personals 4 years ago after I collected all of our joint financial records!
EW……..just……….ew
People are not resistance to change. Change its self is neither hard or easy. We have all changed stuff without any problems. But sometimes it’s like pulling teeth. And if we rip open our heads we’ll find that the problem can be in the beliefs we hold as true.
Beliefs drive our behavior, which includes our ability to change, our willingness to change, our need to change. Beliefs tell us to look within to make the change or look out into the world for the change. Sometimes we believe that what we are doing is right. No matter how many times it blows up in our face. Change can mean going against what we already believe.
It can be very frustrating trying to change when we keep hitting that brick wall. Bouncing off. Landing on our butts. Kick our feet and screaming “what the frack.” When this happens the brick wall we hit can be one of our own beliefs. In other words we are being constant with our on beliefs. [Note beliefs drive our feelings too.]
Beliefs have the same problems as feelings. They are not facts. Most of the beliefs we hold are at best half truths. Both are only as real as we make’em. [If you don’t believe me just take a feeling or belief and put it in your hand and give it to someone.] We have beliefs. We do feel. However what we believe and feel is up to us. We are the creator’s of our beliefs and feelings. Whatever we do – believe and feel – will effect us. The effect depends on what we choose to believe and feel. The evidence of these beliefs and feelings is in what we do.
By removing or changing the belief that we are running into – the brick wall goes away and the change becomes a whole lot easier to, it just happens.
If you’ve ever watch a baby learn to walk it is amazing. They fall down -they try again. They fall down -they try again. And they repeat this until they walk. They don’t know they can fail. They don’t know it is hard. They don’t know it only works for everybody but me. They don’t know they are not suppose to get what they want. Most of us did just like any other baby we failed over and over until one day we walked. The I can’t, it’s hard is just meanings we learned to put on things. Which just gummed up the works.
A list of some of them. I don’t deserve, I’m not good enough, nothing ever works for me, fear of failure, fear of success, they’ll think I’m stupid, I don’t matter etc.
How can we use this beliefs drive behavior?
Say we want to lose weight. With will power we can go for a few days. Then the old cravings start and soon we cave. Lots of research has been done and what they found out is that we can learn to eat for many reason. Like stress eaters and Unhappy eaters. When these people try and lose weight they run into their brick wall. Start stressing out about whatever, they reach for something to eat. Eating for this person isn’t about food but not being about to deal with stress. So they have to deal with the stressing out part before they will ever be able to deal with the weight problem. Same goes for unhappy eaters. Deal with the unhappiness problem or they’ll do the yo-yo diet their whole life.
The person who is unlovable. Normally thinks they feel this way because no one loves them. But that’s backwards from what is going on. Usually it’s when the kid decided that the reason his parents didn’t love him was his fault – he is unlovable. When it was the parents problem of not being able to love. More then likely for the same reasons.
A boss that yells all the time. May not have a yelling problem but that he believes – “no one listens to him.” So he does the only thing he knows to do yell. Nothing will get him to change his yelling until he deals with the belief that “no one listens to him.” On the surface we think can’t he just stop yelling. Don’t he see what he is doing to his staff. This is simple stuff. But for him it’s not so simple. He identifies with the belief “No one listens to me.” And is locked in by his own belief. His brick wall.
There are the one’s we don’t even have a clue as to what they are. But we know that feeling that can stop us in our tracks.
I had one of these, well more then one. But this one was about getting in shape – exercising. Joined a club. No biggie. Start a program. Things where going fine then one day I was driving to the club and there is was – nearly a panic attack. I had to turn around. The feeling start lessening. What the frack? Made no sense to me. There was no reason I could think of that would cause this. I waited a couple of days then headed back to the gym. No problem. Got within a couple of blocks and there it was again. I stopped. Fought with myself. Drove one more block. Full blown panic attack. Like to not have been able to drive away. Went home pissed off, bewildered, scared. So I worked out a plan. I would drive by the club or at least try. Then work from there. Next day drove right by the club no problem. Next day did it again. Well I took care of that. Next day heading to the gym to workout and there it was again. Got hammered that night. Didn’t think about the club for a whole week. To shorten this story. I was able to exercise again. But the problem would come back. It was a cycle. This was the first thing I ran the movie technique on. When the feeling started up I anchored it and went back in time to that memory to where the feeling originated. It was an event where the Aunt who I was staying with picked that little six year old up. Slammed him against the wall and screamed,”I’m always watching you, don’t you forget it, you loser.” She dropped him and slapped him. The strange part is I hadn’t thought about this since I was a little kid. But the seed had been planted. It didn’t show up until I started exercising. Why? Don’t know. But after running the technique on the memory. The panic never happened again.
This is how I started using the technique. It took a few years to understand what I could do with it. If I run it on this one will I still be me? Am I going to become someone else? A lot of these types of questions.. At first it took me many days to get the courage to run the technique and this was just on small stuff. The little brick walls. The big stuff I wouldn’t touch. But the more of this stuff I killed the calmer I became. The more I was being me. Not what I thought others expected of me. Then I became aware that I could kill this stuff and I still do all the things that I use to do. Get mad etc. but was no longer compelled to do them. The past didn’t have the hold on me that it once did. I could talk about those things without getting angry. In fact it was like I was telling a story that happened to someone else. Similar to me telling you a story about some guy in some novel I had just read.
The key for me was understanding that these beliefs where compelling me to react to things. I was not being me but being controlled by what was happening around me. Some one cut me off when I was driving. How dare they. The cuss words would flow and I’d get red. A person could say or do something and boom I was mad, embarrassed, happy, sad just depended on what was happening.
I learned that I didn’t become someone else but instead was becoming me.
That I could still do any behavior I did before – but had a choice.
That I was no longer being compelled to react to life.
And that we already know in most case what we should and shouldn’t do.
I then went on a killing spree.
The world isn’t different. I’m not different except I’m no longer being triggered to react.
There are other techniques that people says work.
The key is in the beliefs we hold and the emotional hooks that can be triggered.
A big trigger for many is for someone to say your wrong. It’s not being wrong – we are wrong all the time. It’s the meaning we have placed on it..that is what we believe it means about us. They are judging me.. The judgement being what we already think about ourselves. This drives us to do all sorts of destructive things.
spoon
I have a question – I am at home today; took a “mental health” day and called in sick. I am in a position where I shouldn’t be calling in sick, but the past week and a 1/2 all I do is sit in my office and read self help books because I can’t think or concentrate on anything else. I am thinking about asking my therapist if I can see her 2 x’s a week versus 1 —
In any case, everything I read about sociopaths and psychopaths state that they have no empathy (aka feelings, right?). So how is it that at times I could see my ex being so thoughtful and showing empathy, not towards me, but towards a complete stranger? For example, there was a little teenager who was begging for money and had a little dog with her; my ex said “that’s someone’s daughter, how sad” then he handed me money to hand to her — Is he still a sociopath? This is where I am still so confused because he can show thoughtfulness in this case, where he would clearly get nothing in return. There were tons of times that he was super nice to me but could turn cold instantly – there were times when he was super nice to me when i was sick (a month ago) and took care of me, but was that just to get something from me? I guess in order for me to continue to put up with his bulls&&t and for him to continue to have this “control” over me, he had to keep showing me some of his “fake self” right?
But then he would turn around and do and say the most cruelest things and somehow it was all my fault…
No wonder i am so freaking screwed up right now – I feel like I need to be checking into some mental asylum!
denbronco, they can FAKE empathy….and they observe others at various periods of tiime…and see how someone else reacts and they are like ACTORS they “play the part” and he DID get something out of it, he convinced you he had empathy. So yes, it is all an ACT.
BTW empathy is NOT the lack of feelings it is being able to feel what someone else does…say for example you go to a friend’s house when she has lost a parent and she is SAD and you see your friend’s sadness and YOU feel sad as well…that is EMPATHY. You may also feel SYMPATHY for her, but the sadness is EMPATHY.
The Path can FAKE empathy but they are unable to comprehend REAL sadness in someone else. THEY may actually FEEL sad, sexual desire, or mad or angry, or rage, but love and empathy are not part of the mix of feelings that they can experience.
BONDING to another person is not somethiing they can do either, anything that may appear to be “bonding” is OWNERSHIP feeling they have toward that other person.
READ READ READ the articles here under the headings on the left about psychopaths. Order Donna’s book RED FLAGS OF LOVE FRAUD, read THE TRAUMA BOND and other books here in the LF library book store, if you can’t afford them new, order off amazon.com used. READ READ READ and EDUCATE yourself about psychopaths and about healing.
BTW, if your therapist doesn’t “get it” about psycho/sociio-paths find another one who does. Unfortunately not every professional mental health practitioner “gets it” about the damage they do.
Good luckk and hang in there kiddo, it WILL GET BETTER but it is a LONG ROAD AND ONE YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO WORK AT. it is not “quick and easy” ((hugs))))
Awhhhh thanks Ox Drover! I think I have already spent $100+ dollars on all kinds of books and have read Donna’s as well!
Actually, ironically, my therapist is the one who said my ex was a sociopath – up until then I thought he was just a emotionally unavailable man who had commitment issues and had a slight degree of narcissism – boy was I wrong!
My therapist came right out and told me what I described sounded more like a sociopath w/ narcissist tendencies and who is also a sex addict! I thought to myself WOW – how the hell did I get fooled! Never again!
Thanks again for the words of encouragement – it really does help! I love this website too 🙂
Bronco, we just need to give ourselves TIME…if you broke your leg you wouldn’t think you could walk as good as new the next day after someone said “your leg is broken” you have to give it TIME to heal and, like me with my ruptured achilles tendon replacement surgery I had about 8 weeks no weight bearing, and PAIN and frustration because I am ACTIVE and don’t like to be unable to do things for myself….and now I am doing PT (THAT’S PHYSICAL **TORTURE**) and my PT is a sadomachacist from hell who just added 4 new exercises for me to do every day in addition to the 12 I am already doing…but…I can see progress. I don’t hurt AS MUCH each day, I accomplish more, and my muscles are starting to SLOWLY rebuild. The doc said I would get back 80% of what I had before the injury (so much for listening to the doctor who told me it was NOT ruptured) I might have had 90-100% if I hadn’t waited for so long (that’s partly my fault too) but we do the best we can WORK hard at learning all we need to know (and that’s a lot) so GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK and don’t expect to get over this SERIOUS injury in jig-time, it ain’t gonna happen so take it one day at a time. Just do the things you have to do today. Let some things slide…just like my house is covered in dust because I ave not been able to dust since August or run the vacuum, but I am working slowly one room at a time to clean it back up….and it IS frustrating to me to leave things undone….even tonigt when I ahve worked HARD labor for 4 days there are still things I wish I could do and I am having to MAKE myself sit here at the computer instead of put away laundry….it WILL wait…and I have done ENOUGH for today.
Dear God, please give me patience—RIGHT NOW!!!!!! LOL ROTFLMAO
denbronco,
I took the same path…..Iwas reading books about the emotionally unavailable man….then researching people who lie…..all kinds of shit, and then I landed HERE and it all finally made sense.
He told me once that he was selfish and shallow. That was the understatement of the decade. How about evil and empty.
You would not be at this site if he was normal. REMEMBER THAT.
HUGS!
Ok Drover – I am so sorry you’re having to go through all that, but you seem so strong and strong people seem to always persevere, right? 🙂 You’re words of encouragement are exactly what I need and it helps me more than I can say, so thank you from the bottom of my heart! 🙂 Sending HUGS your way!
callmeathena – how funny that he told you he was shallow and selfish. My ex would always tell me it wasn’t me, it was him, and that he was broken and needed fixing. he would tell me I deserve so much better than him, and he also admitted he was selfish – but looking back I now see that this is just a pity game right? Or did he really feel this way? He couldn’t possibly really think this because if he did, he wouldnt be so cruel. Sometimes I think his words hurt worse than his actions ever did – Yes, he cheated and I found out several times and it was always w/ someone different, but what he would say to me when I did find out hurt worse than his actual actions. I became secondary and everyone else, including himself became primary. I can still remember when I told him that I had text one of his little girlfriends and the first thing that came out of his mouth wasn’t remorse or empathy, instead it was “I’m sure you told her bad stuff about me.” I thought to myself here I was hurt and he was more worried about himself and I sat there making him feel better by telling him I didn’t say anything bad about him, which I didn’t really, but still — my goodness, I was making him feel better while I sat there still feeling like shit!
Unfreaking believable!
Hang in there — I personally think talking about things even if it’s through this website is very helpful – when I feel like texting the ass or calling, I write something on this website and it distracts me….in a good way too!
Sad thing is that I even look back and I realize I put this jerk before my own daughter – I can’t believe I did that and when she actually needed me the most too 🙁