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.
“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.”
That is perfect, Ariadne!! Been dancing around trying to understand why so many S’s get involved with women who’ve had scary, Dickensian childhoods…and that MUST be it. They know we’ve got the ability to “split” — to love someone despite their behavior, because our earliest training was to love people who hurt us.
They’re not “more intuitive.” They’re predatory. Where you and I would look at someone’s flaws and see that these flaws make them distinct, give them shadings and richness of experience, the P or S only sees holes or entryways. But the fact that they have to LIE their way in, to pretend, shows me they are just cowards.
It takes everything some of us have to just be ourselves in the world, to be honest even when its scary. We even falter and fail at it, but we keep trying. They never did try and they never do.
I think for me, maybe for others, part of the key to healing is accepting ourselves like we accept others, and that means the big, scary angry emotions, the rights and privileges that we extend to others because we love them have to be extended to ourselves because we love ourselves.
My problem comes in sticking up for myself assertively, not waiting too long and acting out of a place of extreme anger. In day to day stuff, years ago I wasn’t sure I had the right to expect good things and treatment. Now the expectation is there but the ability to trust and speak out kindly for what I want, rather than wait until my boundaries are pushed over the edge, is the next step towards walking in total integrity, even when it means being human, frail, angry or extremely flawed.
What courage does it take to live behind multiple, completely illusory masks like the P does?
Thank you all – for your good wishes and prayers. Tomorrow morning I have the cancer lump removed from my right breast, then radiotherapy. It has been one blow after another for me during the last year. After the last six months of feeling like I lived through the nightmare of fallout from the exN, and menopausal and struggling with other stresses my energy is very fragile at the moment and I feel very unwell too. However, I move forward and hope that I can weather the onslaught that my body is about to endure. I am going to have the surgery feeling very very depleted. But I have some good friends who will be rooting for me and hope that you can all ‘mentally’ join the circle with them in sending me strength and prayers. Thank you. As Southernman said ‘I am sick and tired of feeling sick and tired’! Healing and (((hugs))) to you all.
Orphan, you are so right on—especially about speaking out when your boundaries are FIRST pushed, not waiting until someone has pushed and pushed and then redlined. That is something that I am working on very much.
I have NEVER expected as much of others as I have of my own self. I would never ever be as hard on anyone else as I was on myself. I expected perfection of me, but not of others. It was like if I wasn’t perfect, how could I expect others to even be “nice.”
Now that I am not “in chaos” no longer “crazy” and no longer “Stressed to the max” I am so much more able to see past experiences more logically and less emotionally, even ones that were painful at the time. I can do a “post mortem” on these things, and see where I was not handling things in a healthy way, and resolve to do better in the future.
Beverly,
There has been some research on prayer for patients. Patients were picked at random and assigned to a group to be prayed for or not. None of the patients had any idea they were in a “study.” So there was no “bias” of the patient thought they might be prayed for or not and a placebo effect take over, but you know what, the “prayed for” patients had a statistically better recovery than those that were not prayed for.
I have a strong religious faith, but you know, I don’t know how it worked, it wasn’t a “miracle” but I do believe that somehow, some way, positive energy is transferred to the patient. I had some classes on the healing of touch when I was in nursing school as well and I have seen it work, even in unconscious patients. In my experiences with Hospice I have seen amazing things that boggle the “scientific” mind,, not because they are not real, but because we can’t explain them scientifically.
Please know that I have put your name on my prayer chain and there are hundreds of people praying for your recovery and your strength as you go through this episode in your life.
A lot of the “old wives tales” about medicine are being proven scientifically to be true. One for example is removing warts. Physicians discovered that warts are caused by viruses. OK, I accept that, but I know too, that you can “witch” a wart off a child by any number of “made up” ways, as long as the child BELIEVES (it is more difficult to make an adult believe in magic) but it worked. A few years ago a scientific study was made and BINGO it proved that there IS a psychological component to treating warts. I knew it all along, and had used various things to “treat” warts that had no MEDICAL reason to work, but only that the person BELIEVED they would, and presto, 99% of the time the placebo worked. LOL
The power of the MIND to heal the body is profound is my point, so KEEP UP YOUR POSITIVE THOUGHTS. God bless.
I think I would like to read the book mentioned, and maybe even look into attending the program. Ladies, I really feel like I need help that I am not getting in counseling or from my medical providers.
I was talking to a good friend this morning, and I told him — this is my best friend, BTW — that there was something “different” about this relationship that has torqued my perspective. I’m trying to get a handle on why that is — why it is different. It goes past heartbreak, because I’ve been down that road, and yes, heartbreak is hard, but there is also a sense of resolution. Even in my divorce, which, oh GOD, that was just awful, I felt like we finally arrived at the point where we understood that it had to end.
I think that in most *healthy* relationships — when they end, that is — one person doesn’t end up feeling conned, lied to, taken advantage of, filled with lack of resolution, or truth. Not with people like my ex — sociopaths. They seem to drop the bomb, suddenly, without warning; there are copious lies involved, and from what I’ve read, the scamming of money. Monetary gain from the victim seems to be a big thing for the sociopath. You never really know what happened in the relationship, where things went wrong, until you look back on it carefully. That’s what I have found out for myself. There were a lot of tiny red flags that I didn’t pay attention to that all added up to a big warning sign.
I think these factors are what makes all of us here feel so ashamed and tortured by these relationships. I don’t know, I’m not a professional. But I sense a lot of lack of resolution from people posting. I know this to be true for me. And I wish that I could let go of it.
Hi Beverly,
I know you’re about to go through something very difficult tomorrow, and I’m glad you’re facing it by trying to consolidate your energy -this tells me that you’re stronger than you may feel. And it is definitely an onslaught, definitely. But if you can think of surgery as your chance to rid yourself/your body of something that would just drag you down and make you weaker, something that was prob. caused by the stress your relationship put you through, it might seem like a relief to go through this and get it OUT. At least on some level, it could feel to you like you’re removing the last of the garbage that this man brought to your life. I like the idea of rooting out evil and completely chucking it, as you might have noticed:). And I like the idea that when you recover, you can be like Oxdrover’s cow, and be strong enough to challenge anyone who would ever dare to try to hurt you again.
And thanks lilOrphan for trying to answer my question. It helps. I’m sure that I was conditioned by my family to put their happiness before my own. And if I had a conflicting idea/opinion, etc., or if I saw the truth in a bad situation, I was effectively silenced – they taught me to keep the peace at the expense of the truth (denial denial denial). I think this is what my N saw in me, he knew he could bully me into putting his interests ahead of my own. He knew I believed in love and wanted it enough from someone to let him get away with the unspeakable things he did. I
I don’t do that anymore. NO WAY. Not for anyone. And it feels GREAT. And I thank heaven that I can deliver to my N the most tormented year of his life. I take great pleasure in ignoring him day in and day out while we work side by side. It challenges his idea that he’s the center of the universe in a way that suits me just fine. And I take great pleasure in showing him that none of the weaknesses he exposed in me exist anymore. There are no more chinks in my armor that he can exploit. This as made life better all around, on every level. Even he goes around telling people that I am “tough” – this is his idea of a criticism, and a way for him to complain that I’m being to hard on him (poooor him). I take it as the highest compliment and a sign of victory! Anyway, I really think I attracted people like him into my life since I was 15 years old (I’m 38 now), I can see them in hindsight, one after another, with periods of relative peace in between. I really hope I have ended the cycle for good.
Okay Beverly, you take good care, and my thoughts and prayers are with you. You’ll be able to make yourself stronger after this, I’m sure of it.
xoxo, STN
Neverneverland,
I tried to post and my internet server cut me off. So will try again.
To me, the letting go of it all started when I went for treatment for my PTSD for the plane crash that killed my husband and burned one of my sons and two friends. The therapist used a “rapid eye movement” therapy where he would have me FEEL the physical sensations from the associated emotions, while I moved my eyes back and forth following a moving pointer.
I do NOT know how this works, but it has to do with the left brain and right brain connectons. I can now look back at the terrible day when I ran up to the burning plane, saw my husband, knew he would not survive, and though I was within 3 feet of my son, I literally could not see him my FEARS were so great. I remember thinking “I can’t stand it if I lost them ALL”
After the crash, my wonderful step father died a few months later, and then I met the P BF and that threw me back to square one, then last year my P-son tried to have me killed….so it was one thing right after another. I was barely able to breathe much less function.
The therapy for the PTSD of the plane crash now lets me look back at the other things that were so stressful, not just the crash, and to see them without the assciated fear, pain and grief. I can examine them without the emotions that were tied to them. I am a medical professional, and have several years of psych experience and I still can’t tell you how it worked, but it did for me.
I am still in the stage where I am examining my own part in allowing this to go on for my entire life—and waht it is about ME that made me allow abuse from anyone. That is the only part I can change, ME.
Even the anger and saddness is passing. The grief process always includes both of these aspects of emotion before acceptence can be reached.
My materanl grandfather was very close to me and I was about 30 when he died in a car wreck. It took me several years before I could think about him without missing him, or crying, and when the anger part of the grief process, I didn’t even know then what the “grief” process was, I got to where I could think about him without excess or painful emotions and remember him in a positive light, not a sad light.
I’m even working my way toward the P relationships that way. It helps to have good therapy, very much, and validation that we are “human” and under these circumstances that a “normal” response would be ABnormal.
STN,
Well, I can see that I’ve had some friendships and relationships in the past (all ended now) with some rather unhealthy people. I worked with a woman once years ago who I am absolutely positive was a P. She bullied myself and another employee (she was a supervisor) mercilessly, tried to have the other employee fired by lying about her to our boss (and the other employee was a single mother with 2 children to support), was involved in some shady business practices, etc. She also falsely claimed to have breast cancer so that people would give her sympathy/attention – and I mean, sobbed in front of clients about undergoing cancer treatment – and it was later discovered it was all a lie, she just did it for attention. It was also discovered (after I’d moved on and gotten another job, partially to get away from this woman), that she had stolen tens of thousands of dollars from the company.
It’s funny, because when all this was happening I did a ton of reading about workplace bullying, and I did make the connection that she was a sociopath then. But I didn’t really investigate in-depth was sociopathy was all about. And since then, in work situations, when someone even seems slightly dodgy, or I see even a small red flag, immediately I am on my guard that it could be another person like my former supervisor. Unfortunately, although I feel like I can now spot S’s a mile away in a work or friend environment, when it came to romantic relationships my guard was much more down, and I was willing to overlook red flags.
Ariadne,
What you said about childhood abuse teaching you to disconnect from your intuition – very, very bang on.
Neverneverland,
You will be able to let go of it, eventually. It is very hard, and I’m also finding that this is nothing (NOTHING) like a “normal” break up. But you will get there.
neverneverland:
I think what is so different about the break-up with a Sociopath is the deep sense of betrayal. I told him, “I would rather have a hurtful truth than a sugar-coated lie”. But of course we only get lies, lies, lies. And it’s difficult for a kind and respectful person to grasp that anyone could treat us with such disdain. So we try to “figure it out” and ruminate on “what did we do wrong” until we figure out we were just a game piece, and they’re on to a new game. They are defective, not us.
Hey Greengirl,
I had people like that in my past too. So many of them, and I never really caught on to the true nature of the dynamic until I fell in love with an N (at least on my end it was real love). Now I see them all around me, I can spot them in an instant.
I think my best defense is never letting weaknesses show in public. I used to wonder why people kept themselves protected that way. Now I know. Ns and SPs sense weaknesses a mile away, know exactly where they’re coming from, and exactly how to exploit them. I used to wonder why people put on a happy, strong, etc. face in public, no matter what. Now it’s my habit. It drives the Ns absolutely bonkers not to be able to find a chink in my armor, so that they can weasel their way in. I’m stronger than anyone I know…now (it’s a bit late, but better late than never). Of course, I reveal my vulnerabilities with people who are close to me, but that’s the whole point of a close relationship (selectivity). What I mean is that I used to be open in front of just about anyone, never really getting why or how I needed to protect those vulnerabilities.
Did you ever see these behaviors in yourself too (excessive openness/lack of boundaries)?
STN
STN–
Just kind of flashed on something about your question about excessive openness/lack of boundaries.
In dogs, when one dog rolls over and exposes it’s throat to another the other dog is by “custom” supposed to QUIT biting.
In human terms the same way, when you “give up” the winner in the aggression contest is supposed to quit “aggressiing” but the Ps don’t do that—they keep on with the aggression and the biting. The “kicking you when you are down” script. WITHOUT MERCY. In fact, they seem to enjoy inflicting NO MERCY on you.
Like you, I am very selective who I display my vulnerabilities to NOW. I wasn’t always that way and I paid the price for it. But I think in retrospect it was “tuition money” well spent because I have learned from it. AT LAST, at least. LOL
I won’t say I can always spot the N or P, but I know I can spot many of them now, because I am vigilent in looking for RED FLAGS and I will NOT ignore a red flag ever again.