Editor’s Note: Lovefraud received this story from the member who writes as “Duped.” She describes her hyper vigilance — and how it worked against her.
In hindsight, I remember questioning the little green things on the dinosaur nuggets he prepared for dinner. I was surprised he’d made the effort, in response to much nagging about not pitching in. It was late and I’d just returned from teaching an evening class. An overload to pay the bills since he quit his job. We had been arguing a lot, or rather me complaining; him not working, cleaning, taking care of the kids or pets and not making so much of an effort as to prepare a meal or help me. I had been working my full-time job teaching, overloaded for extra pay, consulting work for a publisher to generate more income, plus trying to finish my graduate degree in time to make tenure. All this and two children, one his and only a year old. And he never lifted a finger.
Until those dinosaur nuggets with the odd parsley flakes.
Less than two weeks later, he filed a false Protection From Abuse (PFA) order and attempted to have me and my eldest son thrown out of our house (the one I had built from the ground up before I met him) take me for full custody of our one year old son who’d never spent a night without me, and soak me for child support, alimony and half the marital assets (we had been married 11 months) to which he had contributed nothing!
Fortunately, he was unsuccessful. Mostly because of who I am and the life I’ve created for me and my children. In part due to some due diligence. In part, despite my hyper vigilance.
It is hyper vigilance I’d like to address. It’s a nasty side effect of PTSD. I was able to get his PFA turned around and file one against him. I was believable, he was not. I was credible, he was not. I HAD cared for my children, he HAD not. I had NOT been abusive, he HAD. This was relatively easy to demonstrate, although it didn’t feel so at the time. So, while I had him right where I needed him, I still felt panic and fear. I still believed he would be believed. Why not? I had believed him and I’m no sucker!
So, I made an urgent appointment with my doctor to have a drug test. He WAS using drugs. I was NOT. He had accused me of being a drug dealer, when in fact it was his mother who was his supplier, and I felt this burning NEED to prove myself. I got that drug test and believe it or not, they lost the sample. Right then I should have taken a breath and allowed the Universe to work its divine intervention. But NO, I couldn’t do that. I was in the throes of battle. I NEEDED every little piece that would set things right. I HAD to have that drug result to PROVE HIM WRONG. I was DRIVEN and consumed.
I had a second test run right before court and asked the doctor to fax the results to the attorney. I didn’t need to hear the results first. I knew what I had and had not done. It would be negative. And my attorney believed that too, which is why she handed over the results to his attorney without reading them herself. And that’s how I lost the battle.
The results were positive for THC, the intoxicating chemical found in Marijuana. Not possible, until I remembered those parsley flakes in the damn dinosaur chicken nuggets he had served up with a pleased little grin.
And that was when I had to face being my own worst enemy. Hyper vigilance, while once my comrade in a childhood filled with craziness, had become the enemy. No one asked for the drug test and it certainly wasn’t court ordered. I had gone full blown into trying to work every little piece and angle to save me and my children, that I’d opened a cans of worms HE HAD ANTICIPATED! He played my vigilance to his advantage and had won the battle.
I won the war. Because I am who I am and he is who he is and I didn’t have to make that case. He made it himself, once I tuned down from hyper vigilance to due diligence. I shifted from histrionic to matriarch. My change in posture elicited a change in his. He wasn’t pulling my strings any more. He wasn’t in control any more. I was in control of myself, which gave me far more of a positive influence over the situation. And his facade was shaken, revealing his true colors.
My point is, if you have been the victim of a sociopath, it is most likely you will be and maybe still are suffering from PTSD. With that comes the nasty black cloud of hyper vigilance. It’s exhausting, unproductive and ultimately leaves one angry and disappointed with themselves and actions. If you’re in the throws of situating your life in the wake of a sick or evil person, stop and take a deep breath. Ask yourself if what you’re doing is for the right reasons, makes sense and will take you in a direction that will raise you up, not bring you down.
Are you reacting because the situation REQUIRES it? Or are you reacting because you’re DRIVEN to? I ask myself these questions with regularity and find I’m a happier, more relaxed and better focused person, mother and professional.
Namaste
Duped
Learn more: Self-care for Complex PTSD
Lovefraud originally posted this story on Nov. 24, 2009.
Hyper vigilance is exhausting, unproductive and may make your situation worse.
Lovefraud’s 3 Rules of Dating
velveeta – Before my X came into my life I didnt know squat about narcissist, sociopaths, pyycopaths, borderlines. I had been in one way or anoter affected by people with personality disorders my whole life. I had heard the terms, but never thot I would be affected by them. During my relationship with my x a good friend was enduring the chaos and drama through me. She witnessed my decent into hell but said nothing, just listened. Then one day she pointed her finger at me and said ___is a Sociopath, Well I had heard the term but never really knew exactly what it meant. So that day I googled SOCIOPATH and the trait’s fit him to a T. I can not diagnose anybody. He mite just be a TURD but from what I have read, shared here on LF, talked to a few therapist and a physciatrist I think he is one. So I found loveFraud. I bought a book “Meaning from Madness’ by Richard Skerritt and so began my education about personality disorders. And in the process learned so much about me and my learned disorders. And yes right there in black and white the truth was apparent about my mother who I had gone no contact with years before this..
Do do you have contact with your mother now?
And “meaning from madness” suggested by two people from this site now, will it tell me why people are evil?
Oxy: Thank you so much for your[ as always] helpful response to my post! I see what you are saying…I am still working thru the rest of the stress. Ok. Got it. When my brother was tragically killed in a car accident….I dreamed of him for months and months-because I never got closure with many things he did to me…I kept telling him in my dreams what I never could in life —and then the dreams gradually tapered off-as I forgave him and I told him so in my dreams….. I do walk and exercise much. I also find music that expresses my feelings helps me greatly. Plus: classical music really heals my mind. I do like to hear some loud classic rock/blues too….but you are right….I avoid violent films but then I always disliked those. My adrenals are burnt from too many stress hormones so I can get an overload fast if triggered -which will make me sick and take me days to overcome. What these people do to us is like being in a war zone-living daily in the fight or flight mode=survival.
So many elements here to relate to … and I think I have finally found the time of day in my part of the world when you all post!
I am struggling to keep everything together. My sense of the world as I knew it is shattered and I don’t know who to trust. I know I have made some bad calls on character in the past – the worst one with this man who hurt me so bad. So I can’t trust my own ability to keep myself safe.
I feel cut adrift as though I don’t know what the hell my next step is. I lost all sense of self efficacy with him – my ability to change things in my life and make my dreams come true. I am tired and struggling with fibro (brought on by the stress) and PTSD that wakes me through the night and makes me tired every day. I don’t know which problem to deal to first and am running around like a scalded chicken trying to hold everything together and stop the dam from bursting. I have a pet that has high special needs and needs treatments four times a day – that is costing me a fortune and I have to see a specialist myself. I am depressed, unhealthy, emotionally overwrought and generally not coping.
And yet I have not totally lost my capacity to hope. I take on projects and think perhaps this experience could provoke finding the very best in myself and healing all those long time hurts that caused me to fall into the arms of the bad man – Henry I totally get you on that. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a favour – to be frank it was a ‘learning’ I could have done without! But I understand the brokenness that allowed me to accept such dreadful treatment of my soul for so long.
Trouble is I don’t know how to restore my soul. I don’t have endless time or money or energy and am struggling to manage with everything happening at the moment. I don’t know where the path leads from here but I sure want to get better. I want to get to a place of strength. I don’t like what I have become – have lost my self respect.
You are all right that it does us no good to contemplate why they are the way they are – the hurt they inflict is all that matters and they need to sort out their own brokenness as we need to sort out our’s. I do think there are consequences to being trained to kill – certainly it is a form of brainwashing. Mine was never in active service on duty but trained for it and felt cheated at not having had war experience. Very strange. The whole family was military of one type or another. Even the training to kill teaches young men to devalue the enemy.
Duped – thankyou for your honesty about not having found the path out of the woods yet. That both depresses me and gives me hope.
Henry – never let me see you say you are not eloquent – you have intelligence, articulation, emotion and sensibility that is expressed so beautifully – no university can impart that into a person no matter how many degrees they have.
Oxy – your warmth, empathy and wisdom is most welcome for me today – today is hard and the road feels long. I feel cheated of my family, my safety, my joy and I am so sad and angry about it.
Velveeta I don’t know the reason they came. I try to live my life through that frame too – what learning does this bring me that I needed? Why did this happen to me? what is the meaning>? I am sorry to say I feel I was wrong – this has blown all my beautiful framework out of the water, perhaps there is no meaning. Or perhaps we will see it in time to come. Or perhaps there is nothing. I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore – I just thought I did.
my mother is in a rest home – she is almost eighty and looks like a barbie doll because of all the plastic surgery – she holds a mirror and looks at herself constantly. When she first went into the nursing home she shared a room with a sweet blind lady that I really liked. I asked my mother if she liked Bonnie and she said “No I hate that bitch” I asked why? and mom said “Because she cant see how beautiful I am” that was the way my mom was my whole life. She stood by and did nothing when my father molested my sister – she would beat my sister for this” my sister lived a tormented life, she klilled her self at 45. Read that book Velveeta order it online it is only 10 bucks or so – then read other books and then listen to my favorite song “GOD ID GREAT. BEER IS GOOD. PEOPLE ARE CRAZY.
velveeta: I can tell you where I found my answer on why people are evil. In the Bible.
OOPS GOD (IS) GREAT…POLLYANA THAT WAS A BEAUTIFUL POST.. You will get better..be patient, take a deep breath and know that I care and think of you…
Oh Henry:
I can’t seem to stop saying that — your nickname — the chocolate bar.
My parents are still both alive and still tormenting me and each other — well my mother is tormenting us. She is 82 and sharp as a tack. Her tongue is as sharp a ever and she brutlizes my father who suffers from Alzheimer’s. I will get the book you speak of. But will it tell me anything I don’t already know but I just cannot comprehend is true. Weren’t we all taught to believe in the good, the righteous?
I am very sorry about your sister . . . from what I have read this happens to those of us who are “true spirits” who cannot and will not accept evil in our lives.
Velveeta
Polly: “And yet I have not totally lost my capacity to hope”
And there is your answer.
Everything you said….I’ve felt and still feel in varying degrees [I think most of us do]. Just hang in there from day to day….and each day gets better and your way gets easier. I don’t know many of those answers yet….and may never….but some of them I am no longer worrying about. I was numb this time a year ago…something I’d never experienced before. I was terrified I was not going to feel again like I did …..[I’d always enjoyed life in spite of the p’s]….yet I made it thru that swamp too. One day at a time….sometimes one hour at a time…each step easier and easier. Your head is on straight….you are saying the words of grief…it will pass and you will find restoration…hang in there….it’s a journey. Cannot rush it….let it flow. Very good introspection….questions we all need to ask=the meaning of life!
Pollyannanomore:
I don’t think you were wrong. I don’t think I was wrong. I know he was wrong. I know whoever did this to you was wrong — really really fundamentally wrong. On some instinctive level I realized that he was wrong after the fact. No one thinks there is anything wrong with him to this day.
But then i said to myself: I have lived what I believed and honored — what my rudimentary religious upbrining brought me –to love trust be reverent, to honor – I don’t want your beautiful framework do be blown out of the water. I want this to not happen to you too! I don’t want you to have to learn this horrible lesson.
Velveeta