UPDATED FOR 2024. Last week, Lovefraud posted a letter from “Cybil,” I did not choose this guy. Here’s more of her experience about “things people say.”
I’ll call this, “Things people say, part II.” This is the other one that bugs me: “You’re paranoid.” I always have a good 24 hours of self-doubt before I realize they’re the ones that are nuts, not me. I know a lot more about what crazy stuff is out there in the world than your average, never-tangled-with-a-sociopath human does.
I just went to a seminar of a national expert on how domestic violence leads to murder, especially for women. Over and over he said, “Trust your instinct.” He told the audience to take women seriously when they have these stories (like those on this blog) and that if she is a co-worker you should elevate these stories to security for everyone’s safety because it could easily become a workplace shooting.
Paranoid
But continually I have had people in my life say I am paranoid since my ex came into my life. HE used to tell me I was paranoid. Crazy. Hysterical. Depressed. I wasn’t. I was living in a psychological and physical war zone. People who survive sociopaths have survived wars. The people on the blog are war-buddies.
The funny part is watching how the people who told me I was paranoid act when their blinders fall off. Like my parents, every few weeks another blinder falls off. When the death threats came in, they were in shock and they never said, “You told us so,” but they started taking things a bit more seriously and realized that when they told me I was paranoid that he was going to kill me (Well, yes, he hit you, he lied to you, he had an arrest record, but he’d never kill you. He’d get in trouble. He’s not that stupid), they were wrong. The sad part is watching them go back into denial as the “living with death threats” thing starts to become routine.
A strange event happened the other day. I called the police. My parents say: You know that was just a random thing that happened. You’re paranoid.
Really?
Responsibility
I am going to start telling people in my life, you are not allowed to tell me I’m paranoid or that I chose this guy. Not only is it horribly deflating, it goes to the heart of what I am healing from and getting stronger by.
When people tell me “You chose him,” they are telling me I have to take more responsibility, but taking more than my share of responsibility for what happened is what kept me in the bad relationship longer than I should have been. Because I started to believe it was my fault, because he told me it was my fault. If I could just fix me, then maybe he wouldn’t have to get so crazy and mean. It took me several years of dangerous experimenting with every “me” I could be, to realize it wasn’t ME. Yeah, I don’t have a problem taking responsibility and I don’t need help taking more.
When people tell me “You’re paranoid,” they are really questioning my instinct and telling me not to listen to it. I am a year and a half out from living with an abuser and a gaslighter; I am largely over the hyper-alert period. I know what I feel. Doubting that was also what kept me in the bad place: Maybe he is telling the truth, maybe he did do that for my own good, maybe I am being too judgmental, maybe I should give him another chance. Not doubting my instinct to walk out that last time was what let me walk out!!!!
I’m not going back there. Not even in a mental sense.
Learn more: Beyond betrayal — how to recover from the trauma
Lovefraud originally posted this story on Nov. 27, 2010.
The sociopathic MO in three easy steps
Kim,
the orgdyn part of the URL has a problem and I get a NOT FOUND.
Yes, I did fix the htp to http but still no go.
sky – try
orgdyne (with an ‘e’ on the end)
thanks kim!
http://www.orgdyne.com/team_mirror/scapegoating.pdf
Got it. GREAT Article, thanks Kim.
It says that when small groups scapegoat, it is a group dynamic that occurs when they have unnamed fears or unease. I would love to do an experiment where groups are formed but first the members have to take the PCL-R. Then we have groups which have my exP involved and the control which doesn’t involve any P’s. Then we give them the exact same problems and see what develops.
Here are my thoughts:
when I first met the P I had the uneasy sense of being prey. But I got over it. For 25 years I had a sense of unease but I didn’t know where it was coming from. Perhaps not all groups scapegoat, but only groups where a P is involved.
Like a herd of cattle, often times they sense that a predator is around before any of them see it. Then the entire herd panics and starts to run. The human predator gives off an intense feeling. I’ve felt it from my exP and from others. Wild prey animals can feel it.
So perhaps scapegoating is just the response to the sense of unease from being around a predator.
sky – well, since predators are everywhere…..
i think scapegoating exists to deal with existential angst, guilt, fear or the unknown, lack of understanding of natural events (like trying to understand natural disasters before the advent of science)…and i think it is a mark of a lack of responsibility in dealing with what frightens us,
One,
You are so right. Entire nations go through the scapegoating process when things aren’t going right and the problems are so complex. Even with natural disasters today, we hear some religious figures say that it is God’s wrath because of this group or that group’s behavior….blah, blah, blah.
Education is the key and Rene Girard talks about revealing the scapegoating process. He says only when the process is looked at, can the spell be broken. Kind of like, :follow the yellow brick road and you will find a man behind a curtain pulling the strings. He’s a short, comical man, pulling a con, pretending to be a wizard.
…actually he is a short fat spathy house wife from illinois; but i digress.
Elizabeth Edwards A wonderful and strong woman, an example for us all has passed!
I got chills when I heard the news……she was a pillar, given all she endured, along with the typically sociopathic impeccable timing.
Here is a quote from her daughter:
“There are the things she taught without words … how to continue to live your life on your own terms when it somehow becomes savaged by people you never invited into it,”
said Cate Edwards
Elizabeth Edwards is an example of taking the high road…..Grace under fire.
Yea, EB I heard about it today and felt like I had lost someone close to me. Bless her heart! I was listening to Sharon Osborne talking at the time Obama’s news program cut in and she was calling Gov. Edwards a SLIMEBALL. The news report said he was at her “bed side.”
Slimeball is not enough of a word to describe him, and she was such a lady. I hope she will rest in peace and that her daughters will learn from her example. She fought the good fight. She will be mourned sincerely. He will be and is scorned sincerely.
‘at her bedside’…trying to steal the gold from her teeth, no doubt.
Thanks, One step, I knew there was a reason, I just didn’t know what it was. I’m glad I now know. It had to be logical. That’s logical.