We recently received the following letter that expresses very well what many victims tell us they feel. Although I have written on this subject before, this week I would like to share new insights on healing and recovery.
I spent two years in a relationship with an antisocial psychopath. In the last four months, since I last saw him, I have built a new life, I get on with my life, I am successful in my job, I am a good mother, I am comfortable in my own skin, and, for the first time in my life, am content to live a single life.
This sounds like a success story, but in every minute that my mind is not occupied by the routine of daily life, I am totally consumed by thoughts of my “ex”. Most of these thoughts revolve around the things he did and said. As we all know – the words and actions of these people are almost always opposite. After all, someone who “loves you more than anything……wants to be with you more than anything…….wants to marry you….is 100% committed to buying a house with you”, doesn’t hit you, trip you up, get on top of you with is hands round your neck, spit on you, and leave you to pay $4,000 a month for a house you moved into a month before (just to mention a few of the nightmare scenarios).
I need help with two things in particular:
– Every morning now, for over a year (since he left me paying for the house, a day after my dad died and my ex said, “you should be glad he’s dead”), I have woken up, and the very first thing that enters my mind is him. I am totally emotionally exhausted. I dread going to sleep at night. How can I stop this? It is worse, in some ways, than the abuse itself. I have considered going to a hypnotherapist, but am scared that, like medication, there could be “side-effects”. What should I do?
– My ex and I had an amazing sex life. I know this is common with psychopaths, and losing this I can live with. What I can’t live with is remembering how we were together in bed, in a very deep emotional way. We could lie there for hours, just stroking each other, massaging each other, “grooming” each other. When we fell asleep we would move through our three positions every night, all the time touching and stroking until we fell asleep. I can’t get that out of my head, and I miss it so much. I can read over and over again that, “it wasn’t real”, but it doesn’t remove the fact that it happened, and the feeling was real. How do I disconnect that amazing feeling from the person who gave it to me?
I really need help. Being so completely unable to control my thoughts is killing me, and though I can keep thoughts of him out of my mind when I’m totally busy, I can’t be busy all the time as I’d be exhausted!
I hope you have some insight, and thank you for your help.
First let’s repeat the basics. You cannot heal mentally without also addressing your physical health. Our friend is wise to be concerned about her state of exhaustion. It is important to eat healthy foods and get 30 minutes of moderate exercise a day. Also consider taking a daily multivitamin with minerals like calcium. Please limit alcohol and do not use street drugs.
It is very common for victims to respond to the financial and other life stress by feeling like they have to be energized and vigilant. This feeling that we have to be “on alert” is magnified by what our friend describes in her letter. The minute we slow down, we experience “the thoughts.” In fact, hypervigilance is noted to be a symptom of PTSD.
For many victims the hypervigilance comes naturally at first due to stress hormones. But, since this feeling of energy and alertness becomes a habit, victims want to maintain it. To do so over the long run they turn to caffeine.
Excessive consumption of caffeine (more than about 120mg/day) leads to insomnia, anxiety and depression. It is not difficult to overconsume caffeine since a Starbucks’ Grande has over 300mg.*
Many victims are afraid to cut down on the caffeine because they fear that if they are not super-alert they can’t keep going, and the thoughts will come back. Victims are also afraid to fall asleep because they fear being attacked in the night.
So how do you end the vicious cycle? How do you stop wanting to be on alert? First, you have to convince yourself that it is necessary to slow down and you have to have a means of coping with your fear/anxiety. Acceptance is an important ingredient here. Unfortunately, we have to accept that we are going to feel pain, fear and anxiety. That is a normal and even necessary part of this process. We often spend too much energy trying to fight the pain, fear and anxiety. A good therapist will tell you that tolerating these is an important part of recovery.
It is OK to let yourself feel it. I can say that to you because I say it to myself.
Apart from tolerance, coping by using relaxation techniques, exercise, psychotherapy and friendship is important. I recommend Stress Management for Dummies. I use that book to teach therapy students about stress management. Everything you need to know is in there and it is an inexpensive book.
About sleep- if you don’t sleep well you will be too tired to heal and you will be even more likely to need caffeine. Please discuss these alternatives with your physician, but I will mention two over-the-counter sleep aids that are considered safe in the short term that is why you can get them without a prescription. I believe Melatonin is the best option because of few side effects. Diphenhydramine is another option found in over-the-counter sleep aids. Be aware that this medicine causes weird anxiety reactions in some people and can cause you to want to eat at night. Since it dries out your mouth, it can also be bad for your teeth if you don’t brush well before bed.
Now I will specifically address the good and bad memories. In many experiments researchers have shown that good and bad memories are part of separate brain circuits. When people are in a good mood they have better access to “good memories.” When they are in a bad mood they have better access to “bad memories.” That is why the more you fight the pain and the fear, the more you will only remember the good part of that sociopath you were involved with. The good experiences you had with him/her are stored in a different brain circuit from the bad experiences you had.
The more you tolerate the pain, the more integrated your recollections will be because you will have emotional access to both the good and the bad at the same time. It is best not to try to over-control your thoughts, let them flow. Manage the pain and anxiety with relaxation techniques.
I also officially give you permission to enjoy the good memories you have. Those memories don’t have to cause you to try to go back. They are there as a record of your very real life experiences. The fact that you may have enjoyed some of the time you spent with a sociopath is O.K. and doesn’t mean you are a bad or stupid person.
Having said all this, it can take many years to get beyond all these symptoms. 4 months is a very short period of time, though it seems like an eternity when you are suffering. I am glad to see our friend is fighting, questioning and seeking. As for many of us, the well being of a child will be enhanced by her healing.
Please know that your children are aware of and observe your struggles. How you handle memories, pain/fear and anxiety can set a good example for them.
lostnsad,
You are correct about listening to a man. I fell in love with a man about 10 years ago who told me he had sociopathic tendencies. I didn’t know exactly what that meant at the time. Boy did I find out. 3 years of his selfishness punctuated by cheating on me while we were living together. It took me years to get over him. He hadn’t even physically cheated yet. He was just talking to his new long distance “girlfriend” on the phone. I packed a bag and left and never spoke to him again. Ever. Talk about NC.
The actual sociopath that brought me to this site was much different. He was charming and attentive for the entire time we dated (only a few months). But he was a serious pathological liar and con artist. At least the other guy was honest.
Hey did anyone happen to see Oprah yesterday. I rarely watch it but it is also on at night here and I caught part of it last night and there were 5 women on that had put a man in jail for spreading HIV and one of them USED the word sociopathic to describe him!
lost,
my xP pretended to love his mom. I didn’t really understand how much he hated her until the end. When he began to show me his evil side, he also showed her. Out of the blue, he called her every name in the book and told her never to call him again. Then I remembered all the stories he had told me about how she had hurt him in various ways (emotionally) as a child. #2, my instinct did try to warn me but I didn’t get it. #3 and #4 were not really there for me. My xP was very subtle and sly.
Hi Star and Witsend,
Thats great that the word is getting out. It can’t be soon enough.
Skylar — #3 happened to me in the like the first 6 months and #4 he didn’t admit until much much much later….
Star … I am all out of sync with you lovely ladies having conversations with the same time zones! So here is a very late reply to the reply you took the time to write me a long long time ago 🙂
Yes I was with him a long long time – ten years and a bit and pain in every one of those years. I often said to him ‘You know – I can’t actually recall any good parts.’ He would say I was nasty to say it but it was the truth – all I can remember are all the bad bits – all the traumas and disappointments.
Yes gathering the information was a feat of herculean proportions. I had several motives for doing it – one I wanted to capture things I read that I could relate to so I didn’t forget them. The symptoms are so so so subtle and so hard to describe that when I saw elements described well in a way I could relate to … I wanted to keep them. Two I wanted to KNOW that I wasn’t imagining what I had gone through. It is very easy when these bastards are gone to forget all the bad and just feel so guilted you want them back. So I wanted a resource I could look at to remember when I felt weak. Three I had decided to hold a workshop on psychological and emotional abuse for training teachers so lots of this information formed the basis of my workshop. Four I knew I wanted to write down my own experiences – to use the pain as food for creation. By doing this, I can almost see it as a gift if that makes sense. I can see the point in my going through it if to express it so others can relate to it. I didn’t want the experience to be just for nothing. I have acted and written and devised for years so I knew there would have to be some kind of expressive element to it. And finally I wanted to gather evidence and process my own experience to make it rock solid in my mind that what I experienced was abuse at the hands of a personality disordered person.
I have to say I got all those things. It was so worth pulling all those threads together and expressing my own personal experience. It took a great many hours and isn’t over yet, but the process clarified for me what had happened and allowed me to understand it through the lens of abuse and through understanding the psyche of someone who has a personality disorder. It doesn’t mean I forgive him. Or that it didn’t hurt. Or that I am not angry about it anymore now that I understand. It hurt lots and still does, I am damned angry and I don’t forgive him. But it doesn’t sting and drive me crazy like it did when I didn’t understand why he kept doing these things. It’s almost like understanding why a person with no legs cannot walk – of course it isn’t that obvious. But now I understand it was nothing I did and nothing I ever did could have stopped what happened. It has relieved me of some of the guilt in some respects.
I was driven to do it and it happened naturally so it is just a documentation of some of my healing journey. I would recommend others do it if at the start of their journey and just starting to understand the world of personality disorders. It worked for me and it may well work as a process for others. I feel much further along after just two short months of reading and writing. Before knowing about personality disorders, I wrote and wrote and read tons but it wasn’t highly relevant stuff that explained all the contradictions I was living with – only personality disorders explained that.
Happy Friday tomorrow everyone! Hooray for the weekend 🙂
witsend:
I saw Oprah yesterday, and the fact that one of them used the word “sociopath” also jumped out at me.
This sounds like the same folks that were on 20/20 or dateline, and the guys name was Phillippe something or other, I sent it to donna and she put a thread here on it and one other psychopath. On the show I saw about them there was no use of “THE word” (any of them) but it was obvious to me what he IS.
Sister-sister, I have a son who is a P, he is in prison now, and at puberty he morphed into this “teenager from hell” and Witsend has a son who is a P and morphed at puberty as well. It is my opinion that by the time they start showing DEFINITE SIGNS it is way too late to effect any change in their thinking.
They are so narcissistic and grandiose that they DO NOT VALUE ANYONE ELSE’S OPINION. You cannot teach someone who does not value your ideas or YOU. You cannot teach someone who considers themselves SO MUCH smarter than you that they look down on you like a worm. They disrespect you, and are determined to prove that THEIR ideas are BEST.
My son is extremely bright intellectually, but he dropped out of high school without even finishing, because he was already ‘smarter” in his opinion than anyone else in the world. Witsend’s son is “attending” school because he would otherwise go to custody of the law, but in a couple of months he will not be constrained by this, but in the MEANTIME, HE SLEEPS THROUGH CLASS and turns in BLANK pages, refuses to do the work. PROVES HE IS MORE “POWERFUL”—and the old saying “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink” is very true with these, especially by the teenaged years. Some, however, are OUT OF CONTROL by age 8 or 10, but most by puberty is a “what you see is what you get”—-though some of them WILL stay in school and try to “pass” in mainstream society as OK—-but those that are very definant by puberty, are, in my opinion, already a LOST CAUSE.
Oxy,
It was the same story as on 20/20. That was his name and I saw 20/20, same story.
Only difference was one of the women DID use the word. Sociopath. Because like in all of these tv interviews the women were being heavily “questioned” as to how in the world they found themselves in such a situation? In other words what they did wrong rather than focusing on HIM and his sociopathic abilitys to draw them into the situation.
I would just ONCE like to see this kind of story that did focus on the perpertrator and what they are capable of. And how “regular” people might find themselves victims of such an ordeal.
You could tell that the audience members (as usual) were in “judgement” of the women involved rather than the MAN involved in this scam.
“Violence and the Sacred”? OMG, my favorite book! I’m even writing a book based partially on it — on a public health matter. (Society runs public health on the sacrificial model: sacrifice a few for the good of all, etc.)
I never thought it applied to psychopaths. On the other hand, it applies to every human enterprise in which people regress to a less mature state of development. In other words, people under extreme stress — including psychopaths, who may have been raised by child abusers and molesters — are prone to relapsing into a “hypnotic” or “trance” state, doing what they believe needs to be done for survival. There’s almost no stopping that, once it starts. Human beings are just too powerfully wired for that, out of our primitive past.
What it probably means for psychopaths is that, barring some kind of massive social change, other people and society will keep buying their acts for a long time. (Witness the number of psychopaths in politics.) Under stress, even conscientious people “switch off” their higher consciousness, just as psychopaths do. Only psychopaths operate from there all the time and know how to gain an advantage from it.
So to avoid psychopaths, stay aware, in a very profound sense. Be aware of the whole corrupted stew you swim in that passes for normal. Don’t “trust” in conformity. It’s OK to be an outsider and question societal norms, for example, women’s childlike desire to trust men unconditionally, that lead to false trust.
Real trust is the kind that is honest, aware, clear and mature. Trust is for grownups.
Sister,
how cool, you read the book too. KimFrederick also read it.
Since ENVY AND SHAME is the root of the narcissistic behavior, and memetic desire is the cause of reciprocal violence, I believe they are the same problem. If you recall, the author proposed that memetic desire is actually instilled by the model onto the subject. In other words, the P was slimed as a child by another P. It is inherent in human beings to model ourselves after those people around us, but as the book states: if you want something that your model has, you can’t both have it. One of you must give it up.
I think the answer is in memes. We need to get out a new model and make people want it. Mark Twain described it best in his story about tom sawyer (a P-child, for sure). Tom didn’t want to whitewash a fence but he convinced all the boys in the neighborhood that it was an enviable job to have. They ended up paying for the privilege of doing his work.
http://ensign.ftlcomm.com/people/TomNhuck/ted.html
The new model we need to display to young children is the model of empathy and sharing as opposed to selfishness.