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.
Eva:
I think I was trying to escape reality and he was the perfect person to do it with. It was the excitement, the stimulation. Also, something skylar said in another post about them pushing for something quickly…HUGE red flag. That is what he did…pushed the relationship very fast. I saw it because I did say something about it…I said it was all so fast and he even admitted it was a bit fast, but I still went ahead with it. Not sure why. I saw the red flag and still acted. But I learned and won’t do that again. I guess that’s the most important thing…to not repeat the same mistake.
Louise, ask anyone who is involved in any 12-Step recovery and they will tell you that recovery is a lifelong endeavor. There is no such thing as a “permanent fix,” and there never will be. Accepting that it is a day-to-day and minute-by-minute effort will absolutely relieve you of the misguided belief that you “should” be healed, by now. It will relieve you of the false belief that you are, somehow, OBLIGATED to “just get over it and move on.”
I often wondered the same things, a year ago. In fact, I was DESPERATE to “finally be healed.” Well, a number of long-timers responded with wisdom. My recovery finally began when I started to unintentionally focus upon ME instead of what the exspath did. This is not to say, by any stretch of the imagination, that I am no longer angry at what he did – you BET I’m still angry! But, it’s no longer that desperate and ineffective rage that’s motivating me to make changes. It is the fact that I have maintained false and misguided systems of beliefs for my entire life that motivates me, today.
Eva, I’m at the point where whether or not a toxic and predatory human being is aware of their evil deeds is no longer important to me. What is important to me is to shut them out, and lock down my boundaries so that I’m not such an easy target, anymore.
Brightest blessings
skylar, I know you’re right that they enjoy to do what we call evil but i think they feel that’s ok because it satisfies their need of being poweful. It’s morally sick but they’re that not by choice, their personality and their dangerous psychological needs seem to be not a choice.
Your exspath is a joker 😀 To have an active vendetta against God…
Idon’t know if your sister is a truly spath. Are you sure? There are people who have some trais (egotism, materialism, superficiality, low empathy and incapability to love) that are not spaths. Could be more or less bad people but not truly genetic psychos.
Louise, if you do it again don’t punish yourself, just go out as soon as you recognize you’re acting irrationaly due to hidden desires of evading from yourself or being drived or dominated by others.
Eva, make no mistake: they DO know that what they are doing is “wrong,” and their actions are 100% CHOICE.
Sociopathy and psychopathy are not conditions that respond to any known or experimental treatment. It cannot be treated, managed, or cured by medication, by counseling therapy, by surgery, by spritual epiphany, or ANY combination, thereof. Sociopathy is a series of deliberate choices and actions that the perpetrator is cognizant of being morally, socially, ethically, and legally WRONG.
Make no mistake about predatory people. While they may not be aware that they are setting up lures, dangling bait, and snagging targets, they DO know that their actions and choices are “wrong.” They cannot be defined as “Legally Insane” because they are cognizant enough of their actions to attempt to conceal what they’re choosing to do.
When we make the mistake of believing that these people aren’t “evil” and that they make their choices and decisions with “evil” intent, we’re opening ourselves up to EXCUSING and enabling their choices, actions, and behaviors.
How each individual defines “evil” is a personal matter because “evil” is an individual PERCEPTION that is based upon culture, spritual/religous beliefs, and core-beliefs. So, let’s replace “evil” with the word, “malice.” And, there is no opportunity to second-guess whether or not their actions, choices, and behaviors are not driven by sheer MALICE.
Malice and intent are both legal guidelines to define criminal actions. Spaths are, indeed, driven by malice and they absolutely have intent, whether or not they acknowledge this fact.
Brightest blessings
Truthspeak, I know they know what they do because in fact they prepare and calculate their actions, and they know most of their action are not only considered illegal or immoral but they also know they produce pain but they don’t care at all and keep on repeating them over and over.
Is this compulsion that sometimes are, at least seen front outside, in detrimental of their own interests (psychopaths are more likely in risk of receiving a beating, of being killed, of being “victims” of revenges, etc, because they’re continually provoking others) that raises the suspicion they can’t choose their preferences.
They’re able to repress their abnormal need of being in power but only to some degree. Anyway, whether if they have an emotional disorder or are a genetic variation, what’s it’s clear is that they’re dangerous.
And you’re right that they are able to corrupt normal people. They’re a big problem but I don’t know what could be done but to inform, not keep it as a taboo.
Eva,
I get your point, that they are only doing what feels right to them. But intellectually, knowing it is wrong, it is still a choice.
For example, some men are color blind to the colors red and green, instead they see gray or brown. Over time, they have learned to distinguish the shade of gray or brown which is actually red or green and can usually pick it out. They have to make more of an effort, but they can usually succeed. They’ve learned to stop at a red light because they know the top light is red and the bottom one is green.
Because of their colorblindness, they are also able to see through certain camouflages that normal sighted people cannot penetrate. This can be compared to the way that spaths can perceive human behaviors that we don’t notice because they don’t feel emotions.
Both spaths and color blind people, do learn to hide their disability and compensate for it. When a spath decides to behave audaciously, it’s a choice.
You asked if my sister is really a spath. Well I define a spath as someone who chooses evil. She has and she told me she has. So she is a spath.
I think where you are getting cognitive dissonance is when you try to think that the spath uses logic to justify his behavior. He doesn’t. He uses splitting and projection. Splitting means that he can believe two opposite things at the same time. He believes his own lies even while he is lying. He might even say, “It’s not a lie if you really believe it.” Projection means placing his own motivations on other people.
Skylar and Eva, I think it’s important to point out that the presence of splitting and projection doesn’t necissarily mean that someone’s a spath. Spath survivors are very likely to display these, as well. Take cog-dis, for instance, and our tendancy to project our good-will, our honesty, our integrety onto the spath. It’s more about intention with a spath. They intend to gain, in some way, by exploitation and deception.
I watched the U-tube video about zero empathy. Good stuff.
I liked what he said about the two necissary componants of empathy: 1. cognition, and 2. ability to respond aproppriatly.
Spaths are very good at the first part.
They can’t sincerely do the second part. If they appear to be doing the second part, it’s tacticle….they stand to gain in some way and they are merely going through the motions.
I also thought it was interesting that the scientist opened with the nazi scientist doing cruel experiments in the death camps, as an example of an extreme lack of empathy. And what a twist that he ended up with an experiment done on rhesis monkeys that demonstrated they had more empathy than the scientists who were exploiting them, and causing horrible pain and distress to them. Hmmmmmm. Makes ya wonder…..
One monkey went 12 days without eating so it could save a fellow monkey from electric shock.
Sounds about as cruel to me as the death-camp experience, but of course the monkeys are objectified….the first step, accourding to, was it Baler? development of cruelty.
Truthspeak wrote:
“Make no mistake about predatory people. While they may not be aware that they are setting up lures, dangling bait, and snagging targets, they DO know that their actions and choices are “wrong.” They cannot be defined as “Legally Insane” because they are cognizant enough of their actions to attempt to conceal what they’re choosing to do.”
More pieces of the puzzle coming together…
My spathic ex-gf (G*d Bless, Save and Forgive her-and us all.), could describe in detail the symptoms of a Personality Disorder in her Mom, including how the woman could prejudge and mercilessly and endlessly savage anybody that she didn’t like and, how the grudge, once formed would never go away. She also diagnosed me with an assortment of mental illnesses and seems to have second-guessed every mental- and physical-health professional that she has ever gotten close to. And yet, despite her saying that I validated her and helped her undergo and experience numerous epiphanies – she did not want to seek counselling alone or with me. And, for me to point out something that she said as unfair or wrong or a wrong conclusion or off-base accusation — well, I would be safer sticking my genitals in a food processor.
And yet, I ‘Loved her’ and wanted to do anything possible to stay with her and make a relationship and a life together. (Yes, I am one of those people that has done a lot of those risky activities like rock and ice climbing, etc – or am I just a masochist? :))
Sunflower, Louise:
You describe my spathic ex-gf when you talk about ‘breaking someone down.’
My ex-gf many, many times described how her Mom had broken down her Dad. Amazing and very sad images were described to me.
So, like I wrote, above, to Truthspeak my spathic ex-gf had the ability to recognize destructive manifestations of personality disorders in other people but, would then ENGAGE IN THE SAME THING against others….like ME!
At times I felt that it was going to be my lot in life to be ‘reduced’ and that it was the price to pay to be with this goddess that I had elevated upon a pedestal. The effects on my spirit, energy, libido and sense of self worth were enormous – and, I kept finding ways to justify it – while hoping for an eventual breakthrough solution.
Skylar;
“When a spath decides to behave audaciously, it’s a choice.”
Here is one I disagree. My experience is that spaths go to great lengths to control audacity and when it is exposed, this is a hint of an abnormal person.
From Checkly:
“Fantastic and uninviting behavior with drink and sometimes without…”
We call them WTF? moments…
Kim, I think we have different understandings of what projection and splitting means.
Projection means that he attributes his BEHAVIOR to others, not just his motivations. For example, he will kick you and then accuse you of having kicked him. He knows it’s a lie, but he figures that if he can convince you that it’s true, then it “becomes” true. Spath survivors don’t project like that.
When we project our motivations on to others, that is different too. We don’t do it out of a sense of trying to shift blame, we usually are being mirrored so that we are lead to believe that the other person is just like us. We make an erroneous assumption.
Cog diss does not equal PD but projection and splitting, does.
BBE, I don’t really understand your post. My spath was audacious in every aspect of his life and he doesn’t drink, hardly ever.