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.
Sorry, I meant “I, like you, was worried. . .” but I like you too! Lol
Dear Beverly,
I haven’t been visiting the site much lately, but you came to my mind this morning and I was wondering how you’re doing. I just saw that you’ll be having surgery very soon. I want to wish you all good things, and the strength and courage you’ll need to face these transitional days, between the fallout from your old painful life, and the new life you’re getting, the new start. It will be a wonderful day when you get the diseased experiences you’ve had out of your life and out of your body for good.
I agree with all the ladies on the site who say that we attracted these monsters into our lives because we were vulnerable and needed to learn how to be happy with ourselves, and to be able to protect ourselves. In a way, the monsters that brought us through hell are our gifts. They can liberate us from old ways of being that kept us depressed and in a state of longing, lonlieness, etc etc. As soon as I let go of my N and his SP (it was a team from hell), and disowned all the evil they attempted to instill in my life, I was liberated. I began to figure out that I have to be okay where I’m at, with what I have, and with who I am before I’m ready to add positive things in my life. Once I realized that all of the rotten, hurtful, twisted, demeaning and sick things my N was doing BELONGED TO HIM, I was able to set myself free. I made it clear to myself that the bad things he did are not mine to keep in my heart or my head, they’re HIS, and I threw them out of my emotional, psychological, physical and spiritual life. Of course, I have to keep doing this again and again, because that’s just what it takes to keep it from returning. I just keep telling myself that all of the wretchedness is of his making, because he made it deliberately and treacherously, so it belongs to him and him alone. I came at the situation with a pure and trusting heart, like so many of us, and my real ‘crime’ was not protecting myself sooner than I did, and not knowing how to care about or value myself enough. And now I know better, so the case is CLOSED. I have to see my N every day, but I make sure he knows that I’m doing just fine now that his poisons are out of my life. I look at him with a smile on my face brighter than it ever was when I was with him. And people keep telling me that I look like I’m in love, and so much better than I did a year ago (when I was still with him).
So my point for you Beverly is that I think getting rid of any lingering vestiges, residues, toxins, or whatever you want to call them, from these monsters, is the very best thing you can do to start really healing, and building a new life…with a fresh foundation. I am hoping that you’re doing fine, regardless of it all. It sounds to me like you’re really going to turn things around in your life, and you’ll come out of this transition shining like never before:). I really believe that.
xoxo, STN
Hi Beverly,
I forgot to mention something. I got to the point, too, where I was nothing but depleted on all levels. I felt like a puddle of water that had been run over by a steam-roller. It was an exhausting low, I could do nothing but sleep and cry and shake. My health was devastated, I simply could not function. This was exactly one year ago.
Just to give you a sense of how things went for me (in case your case my turn out to be similar), after clearing my N out of my life (I was fortunately out of town between Feb. and October of last year, and well away from my N), I gave in to the exhaustion and just committed myself to clearing out all the things in my life that were poisoning me. After a while, I had a kind of breakthrough, I think it was in May. I was still feeling incredibly fragile and every day was still painful on many levels, but I felt I had really purged the things that had been causing me to grow weaker and weaker in life. And from that point I started to rebuild my strength.
I think I had a gift from the Universe/God, because I was sent unexpectedly for work to an island, where I could swim and sleep as often as I wanted for about 5 months straight. It was heaven on earth, even though I was still working my way out of emotional hell. Anyway, I took what good things I had and worked the situation for all it was worth. I swam and walked and slept as often as I wanted, and gave in to what my body and heart needed. And I ate the healthiest of foods, took ayurvedic treatments designed to build strength, and drank tons of bottled water. Ever so slowly my strength returned. I was shell shocked for half the time I was there, but when I left the place, I was a new person, with a whole new way of thinking and being.
I feel like you’re in the purging stage these days, and that your surgery can be followed by a time of much needed rest and eventual recovery. I only wanted to mention these things in case they could offer some hope, and a sense that what you’re going through may bring you (ultimately) to a much better place.
xoxo, STN
Dear Beverly,
I hope your surgery goes well, I’ll send some healing thoughts your way.
Dear Oxdrover,
Doesn’t having your sense of humour come back feel amazing? I’m also finding that each day gets a little easier, and that life seems fun again sometimes. Sometimes (like yesterday when I made my first post), it does feel really “two steps forward, 1 and a half steps back”, but over time I can see that I’m still going forward. I also agree with you that relationships do take a lot of work, and so right at this very moment I am more than happy to be by myself. It’s only when I think about the long term that I start freaking out. Guess I just have to try harder not to do that, and, as you say, just focus on me right now.
Dear Ariadne,
Yes, I am still affected by family problems from my childhood, including abuse, neglect, death, divorce, illness, substance abuse, mental illness… you name it, I think we had it. I’ve dealt with it the best I can over the years, and it has been a very hard battle at times. A year ago I would have told you that I still had a few issues, but was basically okay. Now I know that, as a kid, I dealt with all that pain the only way I was taught how, which was to push it down and deny that it was that bad. So, now I am grieving this relationship and trying to heal from it, and part of that is grieving earlier losses and trying to heal things that have needed healing for a very, very long time. I’m going to counselling for this, and it is helping.
I think that was part of what made me so vulnerable to the S – part of the reason I wanted a happy family so badly as an adult was because I felt I never had that as a kid. Now, I know that even if I woke up with the perfect husband and children tomorrow, it would not do anything to fix the pain from my past. It’s still very much something I want, but obviously I have some stuff to work on first. I guess it’s just hard for me not to go to a place of panic that I will never meet the right person, and I’ll be alone forever. I hope this gets easier over time, and it’s something I am working on in counselling. I hate that just having a basic human desire to love and be loved can leave us so vulnerable to these predators. Argh.
Okay, here’s another part that’s hard – before the S came along, I basically was happy with myself. I still had issues from when I was a kid that left me WAY more vulnerable then I realized, but I was happy. I had a nice place to live, good friend, good career, etc. etc. The piece that was missing was the “partner and kids” piece. And when I thought I had that piece with the S (before I figured out what a monster he was, when he was still being “good” to hook me in), I was way, way happier than I’d been on my own. I had created a life for myself that pretty much rocked, but sharing that life with someone I loved, working towards shared dreams and doing the family thing, was WAY better than things were on my own.
So….. yeah. I’m trying to “get” all this, I really am. I want to be better. I just have trouble wrapping my mind around this concept. I guess I feel like I wasn’t miserable or depressed or looking for a partner to make me happy. I thought that I had a nice, full happy life, and then I found a partner to share it with and things got even better. I thought I was doing things the right way, and that is why this is so hard.
Greengirl,
I didn’t mean to suggest that you weren’t happy or were needy or something before the S came along, but I think if you have even a little bit of pain leftover from the past, they can sense it. After all, it only takes a drop of blood for the sharks to start circling. Ever since I was a child, people would always ask me what was wrong, when I thought I was fine and happy. I guess it showed in my face and I didn’t even realize it. Sometimes you can see it in children’s faces who have been abused. They are more aware and not as bubbly or cheerful as the others.
It is really good that you are going to counseling and dealing with your past. Sometimes I think that the relationship with the N kicked me in the butt just enough to realize I had to deal with some unresolved issues. Now, although it might hurt like hell, you have the life experience and the tools to identify another S when you see one. It doesn’t make it hurt any less, but it can be the start of a new life that you might not have been able to get any other way.
Hi Ariadne,
No worries. I think you are bang-on about how if you even have a bit of issues, S’s can spot it. Mine used to talk about how he could size someone up within 30 seconds of meeting them. It’s true. We had a situation once where he met a good (male) friend of mine at a party. My S didn’t have any extensive conversations with this friend, but simply hung out with him in a group for a few hours. He did not know anything about this friend, but on the drive home he started telling me what issues he thought my friend had, and he was eerily, scarily accurate about all of them. He even guessed accurately at what some of the past experiences were that had led to these issues. All this just from meeting and observing someone for a few hours at a party – yikes!
The analogy that I’ve used is that, yes in many ways I was happy before this man came back in to my life. I think the emotional pain I was in, from when I was a kid, although no longer crippling, was something I’d lived with for so long that I didn’t even realize it was there anymore. Kinda like when people live with chronic physical pain for years – eventually it can become kind of “background”, you get so used to it being present that you don’t actively notice it anymore.
It’s funny. I had known for awhile that I should probably go to counselling and deal with some of this stuff, but I kept putting it off with “I don’t have time”, or “I can’t afford it” or some other excuse. I always had such a busy, intense life full of activities that I rarely slowed down enough to deal with my feelings or my past. I guess I felt like if I kept going forward and adding good things to my life, eventually the past would stop bothering me. Wouldn’t it be nice if it actually worked that way?
I’ve heard people say that, if you don’t “get the message” about something that is not working in your life (relationships, work, childhood issues, health wise, whatever) the first time, the universe will keep smacking you with a bigger and bigger (metaphorical) hammer until you are forced to deal with the issue. I thought for years that this concept sounded like hippie new-age nonsense.
But damned if I don’t think that sometimes things work that way now! This whole experience has forced me to deal with many things in my past much more quickly and intensely than I ever would have voluntarily chosen to do. Maybe in the end that will turn out to be a hidden blessing?
Even if there is no real reason WHY this happened, other than that my ex is probably an S and that this is what S’s do, I still think it is up to me to take what lessons and growth from it that I can. I am struggling mightily to do this, but I have come a long way in a couple of months, and I can’t wait to see where I am a year from now. It’s funny, isn’t it, how an experience with an S makes you question almost everything in life so intensely. Maybe later on this will be a hidden blessing too?
Thanks again everyone for all your kind comments. Reading this blog has helped me to stay sane over the last few months. I wish that not another person on the planet understood the kind of pain I’ve been going through, as obviously I wish no one had ever encountered a sociopath. However, since that is not the case, I can’t tell you how healing it has been for me to realize that I’m not the only one, I’m not crazy, and I wasn’t imagining things. To be able to finally understand that my ex is a sick, irreperably broken man, but that I can choose to heal and be healthy again, has been really good for me, and hearing everyone’s stories has helped convince me that there is hope.
Hey Ladies,
I was thinking back on my past, before my N, and like you, I was feeling all right, pretty good in fact when I met my N. But I certainly had issues left-over from childhood. There was a hole in my heart where the love of my family was supposed to be, but wasn’t. Anyway, I thought I had this pretty well tucked away, and just learned to live with it, not knowing that I had any other choice. So my N and his SP picked up on it b/c it was embedded in every action and word somehow. Just in my attitude towards others – i think it was clear to the sharks that I didn’t put self-respect before the respect I had for others. I always aimed to please others, often at my own expense, thinking it was the right thing to do.
Anyway, I look back to the people in my life before the blowout relationship I had with my N, and I can see now that there were several ‘friendships’ and work relationships I had had with N’s and SP’s before, and that I just never quite learned what I needed to learn from those bad experiences. Now I think I have. I guess the real test will be to see if I attract good people into my life, and manage to keep the Ns and SPs out.
But here’s my question – can you ladies look back and see other Ns and SPs in your past, and can you also see how you never quite learned as much from them as you did from your ‘romantic’ relationshps with SPs and Ns? I look back and can see with 20-20 vision just how many there were in my life, and it’s pretty amazing. I feel like I was bounced from one to another until now. Now feels different, I feel like I know what’s what, and my N relationship taught it to me. I feel like I won’t make these mistakes (ignore the red flags) ever again. I sincerely hope I’m not fooling myself….
STN
I see them, STN. Without going into huge detail, definitely there were more than one in the past in both romantic and work relationships. Not so much friend relationships, for whatever reason.
At the time the P returned, well, rather before he returned, things were very quiet for several years. Learned to enjoy my own life and being on my own, happy with my own company, no romantic relationships at all. BUT — I waited too long to even look for a partner, and then my family was all going their own ways (parents old and me caretaking for them, oldest child moving out) so life was flux. Felt like I was losing my center.
*That’s* when he came back, promising, I guess, to become the person to share this last phase of life. Which at first was just perfect, because here was the guy I’d loved for such a long, long time now wanting to step-up and reciprocate after a history of his disappearing if I dared ask for anything more than a cup of coffee. (What, slow learner – me?!? 🙂 ) He was the person I always wanted to spend the rest of life with, both of us taking care of each other. But I guarded my heart and watched…until things seemed safe. Then I admitted my feelings. THEN HE CHANGED, drastically, almost overnight. As though he’d gotten what he wanted…
Reading SecretMonster’s blog reminded me exactly of this. He blogs of “intrigues” with various women where the entire goal is to see if he can trick them, win them over.
It took 7-8 months, but my own “secret monster” succeeded and then tried to break me.
Even though before he came back I was doing ok, overall, there was something missing and it was the future, my fears of the future in a life different than the one I’d known forever, without parents or young children – without being needed by anyone. I have that icky need to be needed and useful, from growing up in highly conditional love and sporadic abuse. And the prospect not of being alone but alone and unneeded, scared me at the time. Was still processing the changes and I think abandonment issues it raised.
But I wasn’t an easy mark for him. Not as easy as I once was. Not even as easy as I’d have previously thought. Something was “off.” He did not pass the sniff test. That to me is a sign of my own growing healthiness.
Please don’t think though that a sign of our health is WHO we attract into our lives. Think it’s more who we actually LET IN and keep in based on their actions. Everyone attracts the Bad Men, I suspect, but not everyone lets them stick around.
LilOrphan,
I agree that the Bad Men (and Women) size up everyone looking for weaknesses to exploit because that is how they function. Everyone has weaknesses so if we let them in, they will find out a way to take advantage of those weaknesses and get what they want from us.
But I think that the sociopath with half a brain and some experience can size us up and tell who will let them in and who wont. I dont think they are any more intuitive than anyone else, but they spend a lot more time breaking down someone’s personality and looking for flaws and weak points than we do. And people always give a lot more information about themselves than they realize.
I once read that the biggest factor in determining how dysfunctional a family is isn’t how messed up and broken the family is, it’s the level of denial operating in the family. So whether the rule (unspoken or not) is “don’t let the neighbors find out” or “we don’t talk about such things in this family” the denial is there. As kids in a family like that, we learn to adapt to the situation and play along with the denial, even though we know something is wrong. This screws up our sense of reality. We stop listening to our inner voices and ignore red flags(!) because the adults in our lives are telling us that everything is okay, nothing is wrong.
I think most sociopaths know that, on some level, the little bit of pain that is still visible in us shows that we went through that in the past. So when the honeymoon period with them is over and they start to show their true colors, we go into denial mode automatically like we were used to. I don’t know if that explains every situation but it seems to be a trend. I know I had to retrain myself to trust my perception of reality because it was so skewed from childhood I couldn’t tell what was what.
I always go oback to what I know, and that is a lot of it animal behavior.
When the predator, lion, tiger, wolf, whatever (like the P) sees a large herd of animals go by, maybe a 1000 or more, almost in a glance that predator can spot the ONE animal in that herd that has SOME disability–maybe only a tiny one, but one that will make it move slower, or be more vulnerable to an attack. The predator HOMES IN on that one animal out of the herd, because instinctively the predator animal knows that he has the best chance of catching that one, slightly more vunerable animal than all the others.
Ps are just like other predators, some way they have some 6th sense, or are keenly observant enough, SOMETHING that makes us a bit more vulnerable to their attack than others in our “herd”—
Maybe it is some childhood abuse, or we are enablers, and whatever it is it doesn’t have to be “big” and we don’t even ahve to be consciously aware of that little thing we haven’t “dealt with” that makes us more likely to be “caught” and not have the “will or strength” to fight the predator before he has totally over come us.
In real life animal predation, the prey animal once caught, though still able to fight many times doesn’t fight back, but just “gives up” to lie there while the predator animal finishes the kill. Some do fight back, but many just accept their fate, and as one wild life biologist says “self pacify.” That tendency in prey animals is used today very successfully to calm domestic cattle while they are being vaccinated or other procedures with a “squeeze chute” in which the animal is held securely and immediately “self pacifies” and quits struggling.
I realize that there were times I “continued to struggle” against the Ps, and other times that I literally just lay down and accepted my “fate”—and the people who totally lie down and don’t fight are NOT on this site, it is WE who have continued to struggle, in spite of our “disabilities” or earlier history or previous injuries, or injuries from the most recent predator attack—I think the people here, on this site, prove that they ARE STRONGER than the P thought when he first chose us because s/he detected some “limp” in our psyche, but we have risen up and fought back, and escaped the clutches of the predator—wounded maybe, scarred maybe, bleeding maybe, but we are healing our wounds, and growing stronger and have become much wiser in watching for predators in the grass or among the trees, and we are the ones who will be HELL for the next predator to catch.
I had an old cow once, who was very old and very wise, and she was heck to catch, and she taught her daughters to be just like her, when the entire herd went together to the corral, driven by men and dogs, the old cow would take her calf and “run for the hills”—she had “seen that trick before” and as soon as she saw the trucks, men and dogs drive up, she was GONE. There were five years when I gave up chasing her and she never got any vaccinations or wormings but she still thrived and did well. Plus, if you did get her “cornered” she would turn her long-horned head at you and dare you to fight, with the “you’re not going to take me alive” look in her eye!
I want to be just like that old cow, and at the first sign of them I am going to run for the hills. LOL