Many people have asked Lovefraud to suggest a treatment program to help them overcome the personal devastation of a relationship with a sociopath. A friend of Lovefraud, Sandra L. Brown, M.A., offers a program for women who are recovering from such debilitating encounters.
Sandra Brown is the author of How to Spot a Dangerous Man, which was reviewed in a previous blog post. The book describes eight types of dangerous men—most of them are sociopaths, or partial sociopaths. Brown then explains how women override their internal warning signals and get involved with these men, even when their instincts are shouting, “Run away!”
If you’ve been in a relationship with a sociopath, at some point, of course, you found yourself devalued and discarded. He merrily moved on to a fresh new supply. You’re in a crumpled heap, a shell of the person you once were.
Many of you have asked Lovefraud: How can I heal? Will I ever be able to love again?
The answer is yes, you can recover, and yes, you can love again. Sandra Brown’s program may help you.
Healing retreats
Sandra Brown offers four-day retreats at her facility in the hills of North Carolina. The program is called Healing the Aftermath of Pathological Love Relationships.
First, Brown explains pathology 101—adults with personality disorders are hardwired to behave the way they do. They are not going to change.
Then Brown looks at the dynamics of a relationship with a disordered person. The lies, the manipulation, the crazy-making—this is nothing like a relationship like a normal man. The point is to help you understand that you were not imagining things. Yes, the guy really did lie to you. And no, he never loved you.
But then Brown helps you look at your own life to figure out why you were vulnerable to the sociopath. What did you learn in your family as a young girl? How do you view men? What was going on for you internally throughout your life?
Many women come out of the sociopathic relationship with post-traumatic stress disorder, which can be reactivated by future traumatic events. If this happened to you, Brown teaches self-care techniques and symptom management to help you in the future.
When to participate
The most beneficial time to participate in Brown’s retreat is after you’ve been out of the relationship for four to six months or more. “We are a good program for women who have figured out what he is, have left, and need some psycho-education that they did, in fact, make the right decision,” Brown says. The program then helps you identify internal traits that made you vulnerable, and issues from your family of origin.
The program is not appropriate in some cases:
- Women in crisis. If you’re recently out of the relationship, or if you’re still trying to decide whether you should leave, it’s too soon to gain benefit from this program.
- Women using online dating sites. After a relationship with a sociopath, Brown believes you should stop dating for a year or two, until you’re closer to being healed. “If you’re on Match.com, don’t call me,” she says.
Adult children of sociopaths
Some Lovefraud readers have realized that their parents were sociopaths. For you, Brown offers another program called Adult Children of a Pathological Parent.
Space in all retreats is limited—only six participants are accepted for each session. For more information, visit SafeRelationships.com.
Thank you findingmyselfagain,
Glad you enjoy my posts. and Yes, I am really pleased that my son is seeing his way to healing. I know after almost to the day 8 years of being married to her, and “sticking with i t” even though he was very unhappy for most of those 8 years, though he kept his cards about that very close to his chest…that he is seeing that it isn’t anything that he did, but that she was using him from the get-go as a meal ticket.
I didn’t realize until after their separation (when she went to jail for attempting to kill him) that apparently she had tried to physically fight with him for years. He would not do this and would just leave until she calmed down, but their life was chaos and crazy and unhappy. But, he was committed to the marriage “for better or worse” no matter what.
I think now he has learned a great deal about Ns and Ps, I gave him Robert Hare’s book “Without Conscience” and other things with which to gain more knowledge. I’m not really sure whether his X would be diagnosticly classified as Borderline Personality Disorder of full blown Psychopath, but the bottom line is that she is PERSONALITY DISORDERED. He is accepting now that he will never know all her motives, except that she was USING him and LYING, stole from my mother, had sex with him and pretended that she was trying to “patch things” up after he discovered the affair she was having, but it was’nt becasue she was trying to patch things up with her husband, but to “throw him off the track” for a few more days while she got the money into her hands. Essentially she prostituted herself for money by having sex with her husband when she didn’t want to.
It has been difficult for him to accept these things, and realize that she was lying to him by making love to him.
Since her arrest, he has moved about 350 miles away, so I too am “worrying” from afar, but in many ways we are closer now than when they lived next door to us. We talk on the phone regularly, he is living with a male friend of his (so he isn’t alone) has a new job that he absolutely loves and gets up each morning with the feeling that he GETS to go to work, ,rather than HAS to go to work.
He is climbing out of the financial hole that his X dug him in to. Also he has stepped up to the plate as far as controlling my enabling mother, to keep her from sending money to my P-son in prison to enable him to mount another attack on our family. He is very supportive of my NC with my mother and all around the thing I am so happy for him to be on the road to healing from this disaster.
My own road to healing, which I realize is a life time journey, not a destination, is also going well, and I actually feel stronger each day, more self assured and less apt to be a “people pleaser” to my own detriment.
It makes me very happy when I see people on this blog who come here in the shape I was in only a few months ago, and see them grow and heal. It’s just one of those things that it is so nice to share!
OxDover,
I LOVED the Rat and the lever. That was great. I was a rat!!! Dang. I remember how hard I was trying. I even remember saying to him, “I am trying to be a good girlfriend with 100% of my being and it still isn’t enough!” The weird thing is when I broke up with a good man several years before, he aknowledge me for being such a nice girlfriend. Still, I kept trying to get it right for that BAD MAN.
I hate to hear what happened to your son. It makes me so sad. I am almost 39 and never married and then I always hear about good guys that get into relationships with women tha are so exploitive and I all I ever wanted to do was love and be loved. I don’t get it.
Still, as I was reading your post and others above, I reminded myself that when I was with the Good Man, he was my whole world.. and that was a mistake because when it ended… there was nothing. I won’t even do that again.. make a man, even a good man… my whole world.
I have learned all my lesson the hard way. Honestly, does anyone ever learn anything from everything going perfectly? Not that I know of.
Time to head to the beach. It’s my day off.
Aloha… E.R.
Well,, I’m not sure that anyone learns a thing by “success”—at least I never did, most of what I have learned is by making mistakes—LOL
I love reading the Old Testament, where the Jewish people would get rich and prosperous and then start behaving badly, and when things got tough again, they cleaned up their act for a while, until things got good again. LOL I think maybe it is just human nature and we aren’t unique in that aspect.
It did take me a LONG TIME however, to see the pattern I had set up for myself in trying to “please everyone” and be “all things to all people” EXCEPT me.
It is odd to me that I could see in animal training all the things to do and not do, and basically people are animals too. We react pretty much like the rat in the cage does for the stimulus, but I never caught on that I was behaving that way when it was obvious that I was. HINDSIGHT IS ALWAYS 20/20 though, so now I am trying to be more mindful of how I react to other’s behaviors and proffered “rewards.”
I am trying to “think” with my head as well as my heart, desires and instincts. Trying to be more aware of not only myself but others as well. Trying to keep an OPEN MIND, but not letting my mind be so OPEN THAT MY BRAINS FALL OUT! LOL
I don’t want to be cynical and bitter, but at the same time, I am growing a back bone in all aspects of my life, not just in dealing with the Ps of this world. But in other things, smaller things, where people want me to enable them, and also where people offer to enable me. I am more able to require, no demand, respectful behavior from others, and to give respectful behavior in exchange. I am responsible, why should I tolerate irresponsible behavior toward me or my things?
I am learning when someone asks me for something that my gut tells me is something that I really don’t want to do, I say “NO”—and DON’T feel guilty about it. In the past, I would have done it because I didn’t want to upset them, even if it interfered in what I had planned or was doing. I would drop my own needs on the ground to go do something for someone that THEY should have done for themselves.
Poor planning on their part, poor decisions on their part, doesn’t make it MY EMERGENCY.
So in all, the P experience as long as it has been (most of my life) has been pretty stiff tuition in the School of Hard Knocks, and I think I have a PhD (LOL) but I finally got the lesson and I don’t want to go back for any more “classes” or pay anymore “tuition”—the price was too high and the lessons were too painful!
I’ve been reading Lovefraud for a while now, but this is my first time posting here. I’ve gained a lot of insight from the information on this website, as well as the comments from the readers.
I believe my ex has sociopathic tendencies, and may be a full sociopath. I read somewhere on here that sociopathy is a continuum, and I think he is more towards the “scumbag” end of the scale than the “murderous psycho” end, however he has managed to absolutely devastate me. We broke up several months ago – after swearing for months that I was the love of his life while simultaneously lying to me and emotionally abusing me, and encouraging me to move cities so that I could move in with him, he very suddenly changed his mind and decided to end our relationship in a very dramatic and hurtful fashion. I was devastated, as I’d believed his lies about how much he loved me, and plus I’d given up my job and apartment to move cities to be with him. I now realize that this was a dumb move on my part, live and learn I guess.
I’m having trouble getting past this. I’m better than I was when it first happened, but I am still really in a lot of pain. I really, deeply loved this man – well, the man that I thought he was, anyway.
On top of that grief and loss, I’ve had to do a lot of re-building of my life, as I gave up so much to be with him. Plus, the loss of the dreams I had for the future, and the promises he was making to me – it all equals a whole lot of loss. I feel like just when I think I am doing better and finally starting to heal, I backslide and wind up crying and depressed again. Yesterday I was feeling quite good and positive, and I went to yoga for the first time in a long time. I think the yoga released something, as I nearly broke down sobbing during class, and then wound up bawling my eyes out for the rest of the evening. When will this bloody pain ever stop? I have been busting my ass trying to get past things – going to therapy, journaling, reading about abuse and sociopathy and relationships, looking at issues in my childhood and family that may have led to me getting in to this relationship, etc. etc. I’ve also been trying to concentrate on me, getting my career back on track, spending time with friends and family, self care, all the rest. And STILL, I am in so much pain sometimes I don’t know if I will be able to stand it. How long does this take, anyway? I am so tired and frustrated at this point.
Also, this man promised that he wanted to have a family with me, and we were planning to start trying to have children sometime this year (or so he claimed, anyway.) I have always wanted kids and a family, and I was so excited and happy. It is so hard – everyone says to just focus on myself and not worry if I am ever in a relationship again.
Well, I am a very people-oriented and family-oriented person, and this is so hard for me to do! One of my biggest goals in life has always been to have a happy marriage and children, and so I feel like trying to find other goals is just a way to make myself feel less crappy until I find the right guy. I can’t see how I will be able to be happy if I never get to be married and have kids, because this is something I’ve wanted all my life. Maybe this all sounds very negative, but I’m having a lot of trouble reconciling this with the advice to just focus on me and not worry about every having a relationship again.
How do you learn to balance the strong desire for a relationship with the “need” to be okay alone? Everyone says to me that I have to forget about a relationship and stop wanting one, then I will find one. This is weird advice, to me. I’ve never heard anyone say, “If you want a good (job, education, house, hobby, whatever), then you need to NOT want it and not look for it, and it will happen.” So why should it work this way when it comes to finding a partner?
Sorry for the length of this post. This is an issue I’ve been wrestling with for the last few weeks, and I’ve seen so much wisdom from the ladies on this board, I figured if anyone can relate to what I’ve written it’s probably you ladies. My friends and family are wonderful, but they really don’t get what it is like. I’ve been through other breakups in my past, but none has ever devastated me like this man has. I wouldn’t have gotten it myself if I hadn’t been through it.
Dear Greengirl,
Welcome.
How long? As long as it takes.
Having a desire that he held out to you like a “fantasy” for you to reach for that brass ring, and then to grab it away is typical P.
Wanting a husband and a family of chldren is a normal and reasonable desire…but to predicate ALL your happiness on having that is setting yourself up for “failure.”
Placing ALL your happiness, now or in the future, on “having” anything or not having something is risky business. Happiness I think is a SIDE EFFECT of being satisfied WHERE YOU ARE, AS YOU ARE, and there for if you will only be happy IF XYZ, then you may never be happy.
I am a widow, and I loved my husband, he was “mu life” but he is GONE…if I were only happy if I had him, I could never be happy again. Sure, you are sad when you lose something or someone you really love…but being happy is not what we have so much, I think, as what we are satisfied with.
The Apostle Paul, a very wise man even if you are not a Christian believer, said (paraphrased) “be happy where and how you are, if you are a slave, be a good slave, it is okay to aspire to your freedom, but if you never get it, be happy and content where you are if it is out of your control. If you are married be happy, if you are single be happy. If you are rich be happy, if you are poor be satisfied and happy.”
Wanting anything is not “bad” unless it is something that you cannot be happy “witout”— My grandmother used to tell me, “don’t wish your life away” when I said “Oh, I’ll be so happy when I…….__________(fill in the blank) graduate from high school, get a job, get a house, get a car…etc.
Enjoy the YOU that is TODAY. Don’t give up your dream of a “happy home” but realize that we need to enjoy and appreciate the NOW for waht it is. Appreciate the freedom that you have now (without a kid on each hip) to take time for yourself, the yoga, or wahtever else you enjoy, that you might have to give up for a while when you have children, etc.
I would love to have another relationship with another “soul mate” but I am realistic enough to know that it might (probably will )NOT happen. I am 61. But I have also come to the realization that I will NOT send the rest of my life pining about NOT having that or being needly or lonely, because want to be happy.
After my husband died I was needy, felt fat, old, ugly, wrinkled, and “no one will ever want me again, no ne will ever care about me…PPPPPPOOOOOOOOR ME! Well, that needness, that depression, that lonliness left me open to a P predator and he latched on to me like glue….fortunately I got out after 8 months, but spent another 6 crying and feeling bad. Now I am even older, and probably more wrinkles, but when I look in the mirror, I like who I see.
Be good to yourself and focus on YOU and being happy today and as the Apostle Paul said, BE CONTENT with what and who you are, and HAPPINESS WILL COME…and my guess is you will have a family when the time is right. (((hugs)))) from an old woman who earned every wrinkle and every gray hair!
OxDrover,
Thanks for your thoughts. I am trying really hard not to feel desperate, depressed, etc., as I know then I will just be vulnerable to another person like my ex. It’s tough some days, though. It’s true that right now I can do whatever I like, I am not tied down to kids or a house. But, before I hooked up with my ex I was feeling like I was getting to the point in life where I had done many of the things I wanted to do before having kids (traveled, worked, partied, gone to college, and many other things), and I was wanting to turn my attention towards having a partner and a family. I’m in my 20s, but I left home when I was very, very young, and so I’ve essentially been living as an indepenent adult for much longer than most people my age.
Actually, my S found me when I was in a very vulnerable place last year. My S was someone I had dated years earlier, and broke up with because he treated me poorly (we never lived together the first time, just dated for about a year.) I was heartbroken then, but eventually I moved on, was in another relationship and wound up getting married (as did the S.) I always deep down carried a bit of a flame for the S, as when I dumped him the first time I was still in deep denial about who and what he really was.
My husband and I were seperating last year. We realized that we are both good people, but that we were not right together as a couple (would have been better to realize that before the wedding, I realize, but what do you do.) So, here I was seperating from my husband, in a big career transition at the same time, a bit at loose ends about what to do with my life. I was basically happy with myself and my life, but my life was definitely in a big transition. Well, in swoops my S ex, saying all the perfect things about how he had loved me all these years, never forgotten me, he is seperating from his wife, and he has always felt he lost out on a good thing with me and that we should be together and make all our dreams come true.
He pretended to be the perfect man for me, pursued me, romanced me, promised me a home and a family (the things I was losing out on by splitting with my husband), amazing sex all the time (something that my marriage lacked, and that the S knew was lacking in my marriage). Basically, any way that he could find to manipulate me by telling me what I wanted to hear, he used, including using our shared religious beliefs to strengthen his “case” of why we should be together (eg. “Oh, I know that God wants us together and is behind this somehow.”)
He even involved his child (with his ex-wife) in to the act. He shares custody of his kid, and so he had me helping to caretake his child, talked about how this was my stepkid, his kid was getting very attached to me, when he and I had a baby this year then it would be like his kid was my kid too, as the kids would all be siblings. He would reassure me that he was serious about me by pointing out that he would never, ever have someone around his child unless he intended to be with that person permanently. Ha. Then when he abruptly dumped me (and of course blamed it all on me and what a horrible person I was), I had to grieve not just him but also losing the relationship with his kid, who I’d become really close with.
It all sounds so stupid now, but I was vulnerable and I so wanted to believe that I was finally getting my “happy ending” with this man that I’d never really forgotten about. Well, I found out in fairly short order WHY there is a saying about things that seem too good to be true. It is so sad how S’s will hook themselves to people who are vulnerable, as you were, as I was. The last thing I want is to be vulnerable to another S. It is so hard though – when I was living with him and his child, I *loved* being in a family environment and step-parenting and everything else with it. Loved it, adored it, didn’t care that I wouldn’t have as much time to myself for the next few years.
I realize now that the happiness I felt in that situation was an illusion, and couldn’t have lasted (in fact, it did not last.) I just wish I could be in a situation like that with the right man. I am trying to be content, and trust that things will work out and I will find the right person at the right time, but it’s tough for me to have faith now after thinking my dreams had come true and then having them all crushed so severely. I also don’t think that everyone eventually finds someone. I have several female friends who are in their mid-40s, have been single most of their lives, no kids and never married despite the fact that they would have liked to be wives and mums. And I watch them dealing with regret and sadness that their life has turned out this way, and I worry that that will be me in 15 years. There are definitely things in life that give me joy and satisfaction, and I am trying to get back in to my own life, work on my career, travel more, etc. I just worry that one day I will wake up and be 40 and be alone and realize I missed my chance to do the family thing, and I would find that very difficult.
Sorry to sound like a broken record. I am trying to just “live in the now” and not worry about the future – definitely a big life lesson for me! I am used to being the type of person who figures out what I want, and goes for it full out. Through this whole experience I’m having to learn how to be patient and how to just let things be – neither of these are easy for me!
I really do appreciate your comments, and I will try to keep them in mind.
Dear Oxdrover, I am not far behind you in years and you are so right. After many years out of a relationship, I yearned for one, and it was like I was ripe for the picking. Now after the nightmare I went through with the exN, I only want to have a relationship with myself. After feeling depleted on all levels, I am conserving my energy for my surgery on 26th March.
Beverly – I didnt know you had surgery scheduled. Will you be doing chemo or radiation as well ? We’ll all be pulling for you ~ stay in touch and let us know how you are doing when you feel up to it. Sending blessings your way…..
DEar Green girl,
Right now, I am taking care of ME–FIRST and FOREMOST. I am not assuming responsibility for anyone else—and in addition, I am cutting out all stress in my life that I can in any way accomplish.
Each day is getting better…and at the end of the day I’ve “made a little progress” at something that I want to work on or wanted to do, or just some sweet memory of the day.
There’s laughter in my life again, and in my heart. My twisted sense of humor is coming back and I am seeing all the funny and absurd things in this world that there are to chuckle about! Relationships, even GOOD ones, take workk and energy, and right now I don’t have any to spare on anything but my own renewal.
Beverly,
I hope all goes well for you—take care of YOU for the healing of your body as well as for your spirit! You have SO many prayers and good wishes going up for you.
Last summer when I had the tick fever and was so sick, running fevers every day for two months and I LITERALLY DIDN’T REALIZE I was critically ill because my stress level was so high and I thought the “hot flashes” (haven’t had those in 10 yrs) was “just stress” DUH, (and I call myself a health care professional?) Anyway, I DO know that taking care of yourself and decreasing stress is the ABSOLUTE KEY to healing!
I’ve always been like the “energizer bunny” and never slowed down, kept going no matter how steep the mountain, but I finally realized that I am HUMAN, I am not and don’t have to be SUPER HUMAN and ask more of myself than I would EVER ask of another ten people. Maybe my illness was God’s way of telling me to SLOW DOWN! I don’t have much patience with “being sick” and never have had any, so always tried to keep on keeping on, and I realzie now, how SILLY (and stupid!) that was. Now if I don’t want to get out of bed til noon, I don’t. If I want to get up at 6 a.m. I do. AND BEST OF ALL I DON’T FEEL GUILTY ABOUT IT!
My strenth is returning slowly, and can be “up and about” and working so far up to 5-6 hours a day–and I was so weak I couldn’t hand wash a single sink of dishes without sitting down once or twice to rest. On days I feel good I do more on days I am tired I do less….so am listening to my body, and the world has NOT fallen down without me to hold it up. LOL
I know that you ARE listening to your body and that will help you so much. ((((hugs))))) and Prayers.
Greengirl,
I like you, I was worried after the relationship with the N that I would never find a man to really love and care for me. But the pain of that relationship made me face the pain I felt in childhood resulting from my socio stepmother’s abuse. You mentioned leaving home at an early age. Is it possible that you are still affected by childhood problems?
Nowadays people make fun of the cliche therapist saying “Tell me about your childhood.” But it really is important to face what we were running away from. I ran straight out of the country but I just ran into similar situations because my heart was stuck in the situation at home. I guess you can’t run away from yourself. After finally dealing with that and talking to my friends and some family members about it, I felt I was finally free to leave the situation that I was stuck reliving over and over again. Only after I started to be true to myself did I find my husband- who is sweet, caring and loves me unconditionally. I never knew a relationship like this could exist because I had never seen anything like it- my family is so messed up! Lol
So I think when people say “You have to not be looking to find someone.” I think they mean, like Oxdrover said, that you have to be happy with yourself first or nothing, not even what you think you want, will make you happy. I remember reading somewhere that marriage between two miserable people is just a mixing of their misery, it can only increase. But if you are happy with yourself, you will naturally attract a good man who is happy with himself too. Then you can be sure that he doesn’t need to put you down or prey on you to feel good because he is happy with himself already and has the courage to treat you with respect.
So, if you aren’t happy with yourself or if you feel like you are waiting for someone to make you happy, disordered people will be attracted to you like sharks on blood. They can sense when a person is in need, even if it is temporary because of a loss or a breakup. It is not your fault, by any means, but it is something to be aware of when you know you are vulnerable.
Beverly,
I’ll be praying for you and hope that all goes well with your surgery.