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.
I have to comment on OxDrover’s tragic son and other teenagers learning early how to be psychopaths. I’m so sorry you have suffered this!
There are degrees of this, I think. It’s all just narcissism, which is pretty normal among teenagers in our culture. Unless constantly challenged to recognize the needs of others, teenagers stay narcissistic, like babies in an adult body.
I hesitate to diagnose my “Chrissy” as a full-fledged psychopath, but some of this definitely relates. The faking-it at school, at life, and in relationships is a good start toward a career as a psychopath.
Chrissy’s ex-con father is a psychopath. Perhaps people develop the same tendencies as a defense against them. Chrissy’s father held a neighbor hostage at gunpoint when she was 5. This guy was banging “his” wife, “his” property, invading “his” family. (The neighbor was molesting Chrissy, not the wife — but nobody ever defended Chrissy’s territory. She got shipped off to foster care for five years.) I guess he might say he had no choice.
Chrissy hates her dad. But no-choice is where Chrissy now comes from. She is given all these opportunities, like a basketball scholarship and trips to colleges, and she always — always — finds a way to screw it up for herself. And then she claims she is a victim of circumstance. She now has no choice but to hurt me.
It’s life on automatic pilot, and that looks like, yes, “Violence and the Sacred”: We had no choice but to sacrifice people.
And my own auto-pilot says, “Feel sorry for this kid.” Feel sorry, but wow, exercise some discernment! I blew it. Fortunately for me, awareness comes rather early in these kinds of experiences.
I’m cutting off her supply of opportunities and sympathy.
I understand the “mimetic desire” thing. I modeled the other thing, yes, and showed her places, like colleges, where people live in other ways, like cooperation. I showed her my family and friends acting in empathetic ways. I showed her a theatrical play with famous actors in it. I was painting that damned fence with a big smile on my face. She said she wanted a life like that.
And then, the rest of the time, she worked very hard to tear down what I was building up. Forgetting to call college representatives and job contacts, having “accidents,” and staying home from school.
Very naive to think that just showing people your happy life will make them want it. Some people operate, like vampires, in a nocturnal state. Night is day, bad is good, pain is happiness. It’s all subverted.
There’s a reason teenagers today are hooked on all that vampire stuff, tattoos and piercings, and dark images. From an early age, they’ve been taught to suppress anything pleasurable or adventurous as bad. I’ve seen it in a piano studio I used to run — parents scolding their children the first time they make a grab for the keyboard. (Do they think a 6-foot Steinway is going to fall apart for a two-foot-high four-year-old?) They call it “impulse control,” but it leads to its opposite — really bad impulses, and no self-control at all. We’re raising a generation of vampire psychopaths.
sister
there is another book that you might like, it’s called “the myth of irrationality” It touches on the way the mind learns and how social structures get superimposed on an individual’s brain to create a complete person.
According to this author, the problem didn’t begin recently, it began during the age of romance, when some idiot decided that being “intense” was really cool. The “intense” people started a trend – dressing funny and acting contrary to social mores. Indulging in a hedonistic lifestyle. That meme has spread into what we now call our culture. It’s funny when only a few people are doing it, but when the entire society is based on the cult of the individual, it starts to spin out of control as there are no adults left.
Dear sister-sister,
Go back adn read some of Dr. Leedom’s articles, there is a GREAT DEAL of GENETICS involved in the production of a psychopath as well as environment. It is NOT all environmental.
Yes, most all teenagers are ns and will astonish you with how they think, but NOT even a majority of them display the P tendencies that you are describing, or that my own son showed.
In studies of identical twins (totally genetically identical) who were raised APART by being adopted into different homes, about 80% of them if one is a P the other is too. And I wonder if the other 20% don’t show at least a high level of traits but may not be “diagnosable” by their high level of P behavior. My sperm-donor was a definite P, and my egg donor’s brother was a P, and my son’s paternal GF was also a P, so there are Ps scattered in my family like apples under a tree, and he did not fall far from our family tree’s huge component of ROTTEN FRUIT!
Not all children or grandchildren of Ps become Ps my sperm donor had 4 biological children and apparently only one of the 4 of us turned out to “be just like daddy”—but I don’t yet know how may of the grandchildren of the normal and/or P child will turn out to be Ps either. I know my own son did, and my P-half bro has 2 children, and my half sister has 2 children, and my other half bro has 1 biological child, so it will be interesting to see what happens. I have to get information from a distance though, as I am not in direct contact with any of the three.
Sister, I am not telling you to “give up” on the teenager you are talking about, but to ENTERTAIN the IDEA of WHAT YOU MAY BE DEALING WITH.
Witsend, who is on here now for the past six months or so came ehre when her 16 yr old son was “acting out” DETERMINED to find a fix for his problems with the school or law stepping in to help, instead, she has been able to start to see the TRUTH…he son is “just like his father” who died when the boy was 4, except as far as Witsend knows, he hasn’t started drinking a fifth of vodka a day.
Prior to all this she had “blamed” her dead husband’s problems on his drinking, but now can see that his problems were NOT FROM the drinking but the drinking was only PART of the problem of the fact he was a psychopath, and her son has likely inherited this psychopathic personality disorder.
Because they are “kids” we want to think that they can “come out of it” and grow up, but unfortunately, if they are showing Psychopathic traits as teenagers it is unlikely they will learn at that age to love or to have compassion for others or empathy. They are stuck forever in the world of their own delusions of grandure. Unfortunately “popular” culture that everyone has “good in them” if they just had the “opportunity to show it” and weren’t “abused by their past” is a crock of crap that has been pushed on us as caring people who WANT to think the best of everyone. Unfortunately, there are some people who are just EVIL. Evil DOES EXIST—it is called psychopathic personality disorder (and other such names.)
Thanks for the headsup on the genetic factors and not to overlook “what you’re dealing with.” If it quacks like a duck . . . .
I still think there may be degrees of this, or maybe a developing trait not yet fully realized in teenagers. I just don’t see this kid as completely without a conscience — yet. I’ve gone over the checklist here, and heck, even my sick sister comes out less than total. (My uncle, though, is pretty close to 100%.)
Completely unaware of what she does is more like it. Not to excuse it at all, or downplay its dangers — or even to assert that it’s reversible, because I really don’t know. I’m outta there!
Maybe evil is, as Eckhart Tolle says, just unconsciousness, “knowing not what you do.” It’s still just as evil. (My uncle tried to reconcile with my mom a few months ago — and she said she’d forgiven him for stealing that money. His response: What money? He was totally serious.)
Thanks for the book tip. I’ll add it to my really large stack of “to-dos” for my own book research. Narcissism is a big part of what I describe, only I call this misunderstood-romantic b.s. “fake taboo.” People who are banal and unconscious, auto-pilot types, need to pretend they’re “fighting the power.” So they go all edgy by wearing rebellious clothes and joining bogus social movements (the kind where everybody goes out in the street with signs and indulges in antisocial behavior “for a good cause” being preferred). Teenagers of course are a good example: using fake taboos to actually conform. (But Mom! Everybody at school has a nose ring!)
I’m sure anyone who’s crossed over from sociopath-land has experienced the utter taboo of that experience, so you probably know what I mean about “fake taboos.” Once you’ve crossed a real taboo, come under that kind of fire, the fake ones look really stupid.
And of course, I describe it all eloquently, I’m sure — but isn’t it kind of telling that I’m here, on Lovefraud, licking my wounds from at least four hit-and-run sociopath attacks in my life? What is this BLINDNESS? At least I can say I’m pretty perceptive and tend to leave the scene of the crime early rather than late. (I tell friends that, in this lifetime, my karma is to finally “get it” about sociopaths.)
sister,
I just got back from running a few errands and am begining to understand that sometimes answers come in different ways than we expect. Today the colors of the trees are awesome. It’s everywhere I look in my neighborhood. But its a rainy, cloudy day so the colors are not as nearly intense as they could be on a sunny day. My first thought exactly: today would be really something if the sun was shinning. My perception means EVERYTHING. How things “register” in my brain.
In my ongoing battle of living alongside of my son and his disorder, and my ability (or lack of it at times) to accept it for what it is, my ability to see that I don’t seem to be able to do anything “right” (for him) at this stage of the game……Most of my struggles NOW are emotional. How does one disengage from being a mother?
Well I can tell you that just the fact that I am going through the disengaging process….Speaks volumes to me.
BECAUSE it is everything that goes against a mothers nature. It is everything that I DON’T believe in. I believed in unconditional love. I thought it was the kind of love a parent has with their children. That no matter what that child does you love them and stand by them and still BELIEVE in them. And continue in whatever way possible to show them the right path in life. (even with your adult children)
You believe in them because you have seen in them the “good” that exist, even when the “bad” seems to be on the surface.
But with disorders such as this…..The dots DON’T CONNECT. It is hard to stay in the twilight zone. I have questioned myself over and over again, how this is possible? I have blamed myself for every possible thing I might have done or NOT done to contribute to this. Did I not love him enough? Did I love him to much? Did I not give him consequences for his actions at the right time? Did I give him to many consequences at the wrong time? Did I put to much empahasis on school? Did I not put enough on school? Was I to involved in his life at a young age, should I have been involved less?
I have cried literally buckets of tears behind closed doors fearing my sons outcome in all of this.
The truth of the matter is, I WAS there for my son when he was growing up. I wasn’t neglectful, I wan’t preoccupied with getting a man, doing drugs or drinking & entertaining myself at the bars. I was there for my kids.
I have known women who WERE preoccupied with all of the above and STILL managed to have kids that came out very decent.
I know I wasn’t the perfect parent. I don’t think there is such a thing. But I also know that I was a loving parent. And he hates me. Not in the defiant teenage way….That many teenagers bestow on their parents temporarily. But in the true sense of the word.
And my reflection today when I looked at the trees and the color, is my perception. How we interpret things……There is ALOT to be said for how things “register” in the brain.
I have been asking myself so many questions??? How does the brain of the personality disordered person work. How is it that things don’t register such as they do for the rest of us?
Perception is key. Interpretation. My son can’t FEEL the love. He interprets anyone that is trying to give him something as they are trying to take something. My son percieves himself as superior. So no one really has anything to give him. (in his disordered thinking) If you ARE esentually giving him something he wants, he feels entitled to it anyways. Even the SIMPLEST of things. So it isn’t that you are giving him a ride to somewhere he wants to go. He is TAKING the ride because you OWE it to him. It is a simple example of a very comlicated disorder and way of “thinking”.
I believe that the most mind boggling thing of all is that my son seemd perfectly normal until puberty. So it is easy for me or any parent to dwell on this….Well what about how he seemed so normal then? He showed empathy. He had love to give. He “played” with other kids well. He shared his toys. He sat on my lap and gave me hugs when he was little.
I can’t keep going there….I can’t keep focusing on what he was when he was 7 or 10 or 12. Its torture. I have instead tryed to focusing for the last 2 years on what I see now and what I can do now. I have done all I know how to do.
Finally I have arrived at the fact that ANYTHING I do is fueling his anger. That is a rude awakening but also something that I can’t ignore.
Sister,
I forgot the most important thing I learned today in my “ah ha” moment about perception….Am I the only one who can type a long blog and FORGET the important point I set out to make? I often feel like I am…..
I used to try and get my son to understand the nature of “perception”. When I FIRST recognized his troubling personality traits coming out. I used the “old glass” analogy, one day.
That 2 people could look at a glass as half full or half empty. And this wasn’t a right or wrong question. That both people were “right” in their perceptions of how they saw the glass. It was like choices you make in life. Depending how you feel, what kind of day your having, or even if you choose to see the positive or the negative in all things. I tried to explain to him that every thing in life was not like a mathmatical problem. A right or wrong answer. Everything in life wasn’t always black and white. LOTS of grey areas.
He REALLY didn’t get it. He saw it that however he choose to see the glass was the RIGHT answer and how someone else saw it was the wrong answer. That “my way or the highway” mantality. His inability to get past this very black and white thinking was only the begining of what would present itself in the next two years.
Today, I thought of that when I was having my own “bad day” and having my perception of the trees….
The DIFFERENCE is that I know my perception can be positive or negative depending how I feel that day. And my perception is NOT right. It is just my perception of things.
I think the disordered personality can’t make that distinction. This is not the “core” of their disorder. However it can certainly add to the fog they try to create and keep us in when trying to distort our own reality.
Dear Witsend,
The above two posts that you posted today on “perceptions” and the black & White thinking of the psychopaths is so right on! Profound! I am glad you have finally and painfully come so far in your acceptence of this terrible situation with your son. I wish so much I had read or known all of the above 20+ years ago myself. But we can’t undo the past, we can only accept that IS the NOW.
Sister, getting our “heads around” all the philosophical constructs of this, making it fit with both reality and what we would “like to be” and not becoming TOO cynical ourselves (but I find I am pretty much cynical) but at the same time, keeping a reality check…which is difficult, especially when our emotions come into play.
WE ARE EMOTIONS, all of the range of emotions, but the psychopath seems to be stuck on anger/rage, greed and entitlement.
I think wits description of you doing a favor for her son, he accepts it as HIS RIGHT, not a favor from you, so there is no gratitude at all. Without gratitude and empathy what would our life be? without love? Without connectedness.
My psychopathic sperm donor stated several times that HIS PERCEPTION of the world was that he was on this earth in the same manner as a man who resided ALONE (the only human) on an island populated only with malicious chimps! He felt he was SO ABOVE other humans that that was a great analogy of how he felt about the rest of the people in the world, compared to HIMSELF. Yet, at the same time, he CRAVED the adoration, the notice, and the worship of his “superiority” from these “malicious chimps” because if he didn’t ahve it (or think he had it) he was ENRAGED. He was quoted with that quote in a newspaper once and just couldn’t understand why others didn’t see how beneath him that they were, he guessed they were just too stupid to get it. LOL
He was a bright man, and eventually wildly financially successful, but inspite of it all, he never was satisfied. I think that none of the psychopaths are ever really satisfied with what they have—but are always looking for more—more sex, more adoration, more money, more glory, more fame, more control….more, more MORE!@.......!!!!
Oxy,
Well you know I go two steps forward and then three steps back.
The black and white thinking was one of the very first things I remember struggling with when I tried making sense of what was different about what I saw going on with him.
I still have trouble with it today. Its hard to wrap my brain around it. But I see it.
I have a nephew who struggled with ADD as a child and had to take ritalin. He chose to stop as a teenager and trained himself to overcome his problem. But one thing that he has always had and still does have is Black and White thinking. He doesn’t have a problem with it. He thinks that’s ok to be this way. He’s about 23 years old, a successful person working as a computer programmer. He also decided to be very involved in his church and attends mass and reads the bible. But still, he has very little social life and puts money ahead of anything else in his life.
I think that if he hadn’t made the choice to become the person he is, he might have become a P. I think the potential was all there. He told his mom he didn’t believe in God when he was in 3rd grade. She just about died. But now, next to money, the most important thing in his life is God.
He doesn’t express himself much to me but this is my take on him. I’ve told him about the P and I can tell that he thinks I’m over dramatizing everything. LOL. I WISH.