Editor’s Note: The Lovefraud reader who goes by the name of “NomorePTSD” has a request. Can any Lovefraud readers offer her any advice or suggestions?
This is “NomorePTSD.” My blog post, LETTER TO LOVEFRAUD: Escaping my mother, the sociopath, appeared on Lovefraud in June of 2013. I talked about my healing from flashbacks that were a result of my childhood and beginning adulthood relationship with my mother, a sociopath who stalked me for 18 years, motivated largely by envy. We are doing total No Contact, and have essentially erased ourselves from the map of her world.
Now I have a bit of a dilemma with privacy. My husband and I moved to a new place, bought our home in a LLC and our cars are in a different LLC so we can’t be tracked. We are off Facebook. Our PO Box is quite a drive from our actual house, and we go by nicknames.
The issue I am wrestling with right now is what to do with my children (my oldest is 5, my next is 3 and I have an infant an am pregnant with another baby) in terms of privacy. Public school will not offer any sense of security due to the lack of privacy, and the fact that little kids have all sorts of cell phones and it’s a total fad to post everything online immediately. I can’t have my children being posted online by their clueless peers.
I also don’t want to raise neurotic and fearful children, so I am leaning towards home school. But I don’t know how to do this without giving out our personal information. Do you have any books, or people who you know that might have traveled this road before?
I didn’t know what to suggest for NoMorePTSD. I hope Lovefraud readers can offer advice.
Thank you Donna for doing this for me!
NoMorePTSD,
I admire that you escaped a crazy world. Few do. As sad as your childhood was, you are one of the lucky ones.
As I understand it, you want to provide as much security as possible without teaching your children to live fearfully. I don’t see this happening in a public school.
Do I read that you are Christian?
Perhaps look at what options there are for Christian schools. They have smaller class sizes, more personal relationships with their students, and would be more likely to listen to your concerns, address your children using nick names (or middle names?).
Teach your kids a safe word, not to be used for play.
I know there are books out there that guide parents how to provide more security for their kids, especially because your mother isn’t the only crazy person out there.
Just my thoughts.
Dear NotWhatHeSaidofMe,
Thank you for your kind words. I feel uniquely blessed to be able to live free of my biological family. The destruction I survived is really nothing short of a soap opera without commercials.
I’m really curious about your statement about “teach your kids a safe word, not to be used for play” what does that mean?
Thank you!
NoMorePTSD, I was shocked and saddened to read your original article. I’m deeply sorry for what happened to you growing up and for what is happening to you now. I cannot imagine the pain it has caused for you and your new family, and I admire your strength in turning your life around.
Though I’m not particularly versed in how to hide from a stalker, if you could give some more information such as how she is stalking you, the frequency, how far away she lives, etc., I might get some ideas. I also don’t know what an LLC is?
One thing I’m sure you realize is that her treatment of you growing up and her continued stalking are criminal acts. It is within your right to turn her into authorities and press charges against her. I know this is an uphill battle dealing with a corrupt justice system and perhaps no physical evidence. But maybe with some documentation and witnesses, maybe you could at least get a restraining order. Or maybe the threat of prison time would deter her.
Dear Stargazer,
Thank you for your encouragement, I am so grateful for my good husband and our mutual commitment to privacy. It has helped me heal in so many ways.
My biological mother thrives on attention and is fueled by envy. We considered getting the law involved at one point, and the lawyers I spoke with told me that though felonies were involved, it would not go anywhere productive. We also realized that it would quickly turn into a game for her, and if you have ever needed a restraining order the order puts you on the map. Do not to go “X” place and bother “X” person.
“how to be invisible” was a great book for us explaining LLCs etc. I can’t recommend it more.
I was hoping somebody on this blog would be versed in how to live privately.
…or it could thwart her into doing something violent.
yes, exactly
I don’t know enough to understand how you have made your mother into an all powerful/all knowing being in your adulthood. So, my concern rests on the makings of that and how that will play out at any juncture if it is allowed to reign.
You are an adult who is fully prepared to protect yourself and your children from anything/anyone that brings harm. You also must protect your children from models of managing their lives in overkill or odd ways.
You have to weigh the odds of your mother ever getting access to your whereabouts in this day of almost ridiculous confidentialities and you have to weigh the odds of the random picture of your child (with his name)falling into your mother’s lap by any kind of media. And after that, you have to ask yourself if your mother really lives a 24/7 mission to get back into your life. That would seem fantastical…especially if she was a narcissist.
Could you entertain the idea that you will set up lives for your children based on the typical securities needed for children today, and decide that you will cross any bridge you come to in a fit fashion should there need a bridge crossed? I don’t know in your case whether you are doing the proactive thing or being over reactive. I do know that if fear is a lead dog, it can get to be an odd kind of life.
Viewpoint,
This is not an obsession it’s my unfortunate reality, and your comment makes me feel invalidated. I realize you do not have the whole story, and so it’s not really your fault.
I do agree with you that living in fear is not good, but I also know that you can’t navigate psycho but you can outsmart them. And that is precisely what I plan to do.
I rarely comment, but this message cannot pass without reply. I find it unhelpful and dismissive to assume this person – who has taken all these steps – is unaware of the impacts and efforts and consequences.
Your last sentence gives me grave concern that you are here on a whim and do not have any personal understanding of what these monsters do to people.
NomorePTSD, you have my sympathy. I have ‘disappeared’ a few times and it wasn’t easy as a single person. Schools, facebook, photos… I can see why this is something you’d want help with to protect your family. I too am surprised that you haven’t gotten meaty replies yet, perhaps more time is needed.
The only thing I can think of would be to consult those who are well versed in stalking and protecting victims. Have you spoken to any women’s groups? I like the idea of a private school over a public one if you can afford it.
A few years ago I realized my sociopath was probably dead. It was a glorious liberating feeling. Your day will come.
Can I suggest that if you come up with any tips to come back and share?
Remember the woman who left Fl. with her two children and came to Raleigh, NC.? Her psycho ex came and shot her as she was coming to work in a small retail shop here. It’s hard to “hide” in the US if they’re hell-bent on finding you. Only way I can think of is to emmigrate to another country but that means that NO ONE here can know your whereabouts…hard to do. She did everything right and legal and still he found her. FBI etc. are probably no help but you could contact Dr. Mary Ellen O’Toole (“Dangerous Instincts” and retired FBI profiler who’s on t.v. about psych cases.
My best wishes and hopes for you!
Dear flicka,
I don’t know how many precautions she took in her move. It takes an enormous amount of rework to start over legally. =) Unfortunately most people in this situation are living in adrenaline and don’t have the resources to know exactly what to do and how to do it. My husband and I were given a decent head start in restarting, due to my mothers life drama at the moment(she had enough drama in her life at the time, she didn’t know we were disappearing). We have already begun helping others who are the victims of crime by sharing our story and the steps we have taken. One day when my children are older, we will fill this void and work on behalf of the victims to help them start over and be emotionally supported. It was very stark for me, as we only knew of a couple books, but no people who had done it, and especially as a very social woman I got depressed having to cut off so many relationships. But a few years later, I do feel isolated at times, but I have made many friends who I trust, and am grateful for my new life without constant drama. I can look at my children and know I did what is best for them.
Dear Speakout,
What a wonderful day that must have been for you to realize that the person who was terrorizing you was finally gone!
For me, being her child, I am sure it will also come with many complicated emotions and questions, like the last quills of a bad porcupine attack finally being extracted. But I plan on hiring a body guard to walk me in,(so to help deter her family from any famous last words) see the body, and walk me out into the fresh air a free woman. And I will dance my heart out praising God that the train has come and gone and I have not lost anything else precious to it.
Hi hun im a homeschooler and have done it for 18 years. there are many organizations to help, http://www.hslda.org/ is the baseline to legal rights and well as a start to find any local homeschooler or homeschool groups in your area, yes they are xian based but not totally and you can start off from there. The John Holt society of cambridge, ma is for unschoolers and a much looser and more family friendly way of schooling for young families.
good luck!
Thank you mommymonster! I’ll check out the website and unschooling.
NoMorePTSD,
I admire your ability to recognize your situation, heed your intuition and act accordingly. A stalking SPATH can not be judged by normal standards and you seem to have a keen knowledge of her capabilities. Fear can take over, so I my only suggestion would be that you make your decisions from a base point of logic and knowledge, not fear. Having said that, I’m confident that you and your husband are seeking the safest environment for you kids to provide them a normal life and also peace of mind for the two of you. Your wisdom and especially your love for your babies is inspiring. Best wishes for finding the perfect fit for your family.
Dear HopingToHeal,
Thank you for your encouraging comment! We have taken great care to protect ourselves from being easy to find due to my biological family’s nature.
My logic and knowledge kept me in a relationship with my destructive biological family for far too long. It was when I allowed myself to listen to the deep pain, fear, and adrenaline that was telling me to run for the hills that I found myself in God’s arms. I needed to let my e-motion do it’s part in being energy-for-motion. In my case it was pent up fear(adrenaline, or whatever you want to call it) that kept me in a hostile environment.
Maybe we are just defining our words differently. I do not want to live in constant fear, I just know that it has served me well when I have needed it.
Again thank you for your encouragement!
I have homeschooled forever (3 older kids groan and gone besides my younger 2). The regs vary wildly depending on ur state and the implementation of them by the local districts. Or you can go under the radar and not worry about the regs. There are pros and cons to that.
If you want to ask Donna for my email, we can talk privately.
Also I have often thot about living off the map as my kids’ spath daddy could at any moment threaten their safety. And the courts are a joke.
I am so sorry for what you are dealing with and I understand being cautious about your sociopath. While you don’t want to live your life in fear, there is a big difference between being fearful and being proactive and cautious. Maybe life SHOULDN’T be this way, but sometimes it is and we just have to deal with it to the best of our abilities. Being realistic saves lives.
This is a difficult question, because even if you change your name, there will be a legal record of that change somewhere and it will be searchable. The internet makes it so easy to find people these days.
Even if you move far away so your mother can’t find you, and your kids make new friends that she can’t search for, your name may still come up in a search engine somewhere. My daughter has social media. It is kind of a given these days because that is how the kids communicate, but I have her use a fake name. Her friends know what that name is, I tell her it is because she is under 16 so she must protect herself from online predators, but also part of it is so her dad can’t monitor her every move. I check it regularly to make sure she doesn’t have any people I don’t know on there.
You would think your mom would get tired of the game and stalking, but after 15 years, my psycho still stalks and still wants to know what I am doing. Some of them never let go. That is reality. It isn’t fun, but we have to do what we have to do to protect the ones we love.
stillinshock,
I am so very sorry that your ex-husband has put you in this position! It has a very similar pattern, initially my mother stalked because she wanted custody (and the money that came with it) but then it just became an obsession and a hobby, and before you know it she planned to move next door to me without my consultation. Thank God we got out of there before that happened!
Wow, NomorePTSD,
Your story has really touched me. It’s too close to the bone for me (my mther is(was?) also a stalker), and I haven’t been able to respond – even though I have some ideas. I’ve tried four times now, and each time it’s been an overly long essay, because it’s dragging things up for me that I haven’t adequately dealt with, and I can’t get my thoughts straight.
I’m glad you’re taking it seriously, and not listening to people who are giving you bad advice based on the assumption that you must be exaggerating &/or paranoid. I listened to those people and ended up paying a very big price, and if I had my life to live over again I would have taken the threat more seriously, sat back and researched before I acted (or in my case didn’t act), and stopped giving those people so much credence. None of those people, btw, had the courage or integrity to stand by me or even apologize when it hit the fan later, nor to admit that their advice was flawed and biased based on THEIR prejudices and “irrational thinking”, not mine.
There is a case here where I live that I was considering sending you as a good example of worst case scenario, and why your situation shouldn’t be under-estimated, but thought that it wouldn’t apply to your situation. Turns out, from your comment above, it does, and I’m so sorry to read that. Just google “Jeffrey Baldwin Inquest”, especially anything written by Christie Blatchford of the National Post. But warning – this story is not for the faint of heart.
What I did (short version) that helped me: stopped listening to the nonsense I got from MH experts – none of whom seem able to acknowledge that women can be dangerous &/or stalkers (at least that was my experience). (Seems no-one has heard of Jane Toppan, Countess Bathory, Mary Beth Tinning, or Baby Farms.) Instead I started reading everything I could by criminologists and crime writers about two things: 1) Victim Selection, and 2) female offenders, and started to study how they operate. Since female offenders is a taboo topic (I was told once at a conference that anyone who researches and publishes about them in a way that isn’t supportive gets drummed out of their profession), generaly you’ll only find information about female serial killers. But since it’s all on the spectrum of harm, and since I recognized my mthers personality and behaviour there everywhere and suspect you will too, it’s all relevant and informative.
That gave me an ‘aha’: that SK meet thousands of people that they don’t kill or harm; it’s only those people who are in their target victim group, and ideal crime scene/scenario (time, place, visibility, etc…) that are in danger, and if you can figure out what that is and how that works for your own particular stalker you can keep away from most of the harm. But since no-one anywhere in the police/judicial system will intervene if the offender is female (until there is a dead body, and often not even then), it’s even more important to take preventative action (not that I need to tell you this).
So if you haven’t done this already, you could try reading about HOW dangerous women commit their crimes and the societal/cultural factors which allow them to continue unchecked, look at the range/pool of specific behaviours your own mother would be likely to use, and concentrate your efforts on defending against those. You could try reading Patricia Pearson “When She Was Bad”, and crime writers Katherine Ramsland, Deborah Schurman-Kauflin, and Joni E. Johnston. The last three all have blogs on Psychology Today. I’d even suggest writing the last three and asking if they’d write a column or give you advice.
Everyone told me not to look at this dark stuff as it would just make me more fearful. The opposite has been true: as I’ve been allowing myself to look at worst case scenario (and everything in the spectrum up to that) and concentrating on ensuring that I have some degree of preparation my fear level has gone waaay down. You have to step away from it from time to time so you don’t end up drowning in it. But ignoring it and pretending that isn’t your life only makes the people around you who have a vested interest in not acknowledging that this stuff exists feel better; it doesn’t help you. (Again, not that you don’t already know this.)
Quick thought – not sure if it would work. I’ve learned a lot of victims of females lie and when they’re going for services say their abuser is male (otherwise YOU end up being viewed as crazy or abusive). Could you and your husband do some version of this and approach your school board and ask them what procedures they have to protect children who are at risk of abuse from stalking family members? And just let them assume the gender, or say that it’s your brother or uncle? And then get them to implement those procedures for your children – say register them under a different name?
Wow – see? Another long essay…
Sending you and your family huge hugs and best wishes.
BTW, the only reason I suggest changing the gender of your stalker when you talk to the school board is that my experience (and that of other women I’ve talked to who’ve been stalked by their mothers or step-mothers) has been that whenever you say that your stalker is female the people around may nod and say they believe you, but there are always some who don’t think it’s possible so don’t take it seriously, and everyone I’ve talked to has told me how there have been ‘accidents’ where their security/privacy was violated.
Wow Annie!
Thank you so much for taking the time to write your essay! I love every bit of it, and will do as you suggest. My instincts told me to exit the relationship many times, but all social norms and christians I met kept saying, “honor your mother and father”. . . .and I was a bug on a web getting more blood sucked out of me all the time! But then, by the grace of God I married and got pregnant. . .that baby, my maternal instinct kicked in for that little baby and I started to run to the hills. But it wasn’t until a far deeper betrayal that I was cut free from the web and have put much energy to never getting back on it! YOU ARE TOTALLY RIGHT ABOUT FEMALE STALKERS!!! I sought help a few times and when it wasn’t a man, I was turned away, oh we can’t help you with that, we are here for women. . ..I am a woman, hello!
The best part of this website is to realize others have gone through similar stuff, and although it’s no way an easy thing to compare notes, it’s freeing to know you aren’t crazy, and that somebody out there can help you walk what you have got to walk. It’s a kind of underground railroad, it’s tense at times, but it’ll get us to freedom.
Hi NoMorePTSD,
I just came across the following quote, and thought of our discussion (re: people not adequately protecting others from harm):
http://www.mbpexpert.com/basics.htm
I hope you and your family are well.
Any advice on how to deal with an older sister who just won’t respect boundaries? This woman is in constant ‘motion’, psychologically and in every way. HER opinion matters and yours is the ‘babbling of a hysterical and witless’ child.
I am 63 this month…she is 68. I ditched my counselor who was giving me headaches, largely because she was a ‘cognitive’ therapist and not into ‘psycho dynamics.’ All she could say was my sister will never change.
Sister lives in an affluent town near Boston and is a high achiever. Her son is a doctor (graduated from Tufts) and a specialist in his field…her daughter is a very successful lawyer.
She will think of anything, including telling me I am jealous (when actually she is). These people who are highly successful often are empty and have no clue about happiness…real happiness. In fact, she visited my home with our younger sister years ago…sitting in our back yard, which is very private and woodsy. Lots of trees, rocks, woodland…and she said, “I think this is more the kind of home I would want.”
I had a dream about getting a restraining order on her but that is not really necessary because she never really calls or comes to my door. My younger sister told me that she was in therapy for seven years just to talk about our older sister.
Dear Barb, Since youur sister doesn’t contact you, I would just leave it stand as NC. What’s your problem with that other than having to give up on your own flesh and blood. Sometimes we just have to do it.
sumtimes the only way to honor ur parents is to NOT DIShonor them. not bad mouth them, be civil if need to have contact. but to have a fullblown relationship if u feel they are a bad influence even? nope.
not a word about that in the bible. honoring and obeying are two different things. one a child does. the other is matter of respecting their “office”–as ur parent. its like honoring our president. not becuz he has anything honorable about him, lord knows. but he’s in the office of president. as such we dont slander or discuss dirty laundry; and we be civil if we cross paths.
ppl that want that info that dont need to know…get told U Dont Need To Know. they can think wat they want then. who cares?