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
One:
Remember to Breeaathhhhhhh.
Focus and Breaathhhhhh!
You can do it, you can do ANYTHING!!!!!
Mojo to you baby!
thanks for the vote of confidence EB! I have to barrel ahead and take the reins, or these folks will put my work in the crappers. i have been trying to figure out how to do that – but i am no longer figuring it out – didn’t come up with much – i am just freaking doing it. going into hardcore mode.
it’s been a bit of a rocky ride this last week. I keep coming here and posting when i freak out, and trying to find ways to calm myself. I find small breaks, breathing and stretching are all helping. glad i didn’t have to deal with her face to face. exhale….done for the day.
dinner and then boot shopping.
Yea, As much as I want to go overtly and yell TOWANDA! I can’t. My lawyer filed the parole papers NON-DIGITALLY so there is no change p-son can find out they are in his package—but I told the attorney he will KNOW anyway, he said “He CAN’T KNOW” I said “Oh, yes he can, he KNOWS ME! I told him I would do it 4 years ago and He knows I do not lie or bluff” In fact, one of his favorite stories about me was a TREMENDOUS BLUFF I pulled off against a company that was giving me the run around—actually a specific employee who was giving me the run around because I got him in trouble for not doing his job. The bluff WAS so timely and so OUTLANDISH that they didn’t take any chances I would go through with it (it wasn’t illegal just OUTLANDISH and would have caught every news agency in the state to send 3 cameras to film it for the 6 O’clock news! LOL I got what I wanted and what can you say, it worked! I pulled another outlandish bluff on a neighbor once who was arieal spraying his rice crops next to my home and garden with herbicide and bombed my orchard and my livestock.. I convinced him I would shoot down the plane WITHOUT EVER ACTUALLY MAKING A THREAT THAT HE COULD HAVE TAKEN ME TO COURT FOR TERRORISTIC-THREATENING….after that it was almost funny to see the pilot do everything to avoid flying over my place. But you do what you have to do sometimes when folks won’t listen. So when people look at me and smirk “sooo, sue me!” it trips my trigger! LOL
Getting on a “righteous high horse” doesn’t always pay off though if you are dealing with a really dangerous or psychopathic creep. It does sometimes work with arseholes who have something to lose, but not psychopaths, so I have learned to shut my uppity yap now when dealing with my P-son and his creeps and with my egg donor.
They know that I seldom bluff, so there’s no going back on what I told them already, they will FIGURE that I probably hired an attorney, but I haven’t said anything to the convict spy friend of P son’s and he should be getting a post card from OZ about now telling him about my trip there to spend the winter…after a few months, I may just “MOVE THERE.” That ought to confuse them. hee hee
who’s ass ya gonna shove those new boots up?
🙂
One-step, envision the boot up her arse when you pick it out!
EB you and I had the same thought at the same instant! How is that girfriend? LOLROTFLMAO Are we sisters or what!
Oxy…I LOVE the postcard deal!
HA!
oh gracious – y’all make me laugh!
thanks for that – it’s important to the, ‘it’s not the end of the world recovery program’.
she’s a short, red faced woman….and i don’t think she’s big enough to deal with my clod-hoppers….LOL!
🙂
Hey, hey, hey……..hey Soul Sista……
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JV74i4yvcA
oxy – i have a whole whack of similar spathback that i have done.
many more ideas like this used to live in my mind….now, they are just a memory.