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
Thanks, Kathy, it is always wonderful to receive validation from someone I admire as much as I do you! Your writings have been an inspiration here for a long time! Is that a mutual admiration club or what! LOL It is very sincere though, for sure!
I’ve just been popping in and out between loads of laundry and cleaning house! Just was reading about a convict in Oklahoma that had a cell phone in his cell and had a FACE BOOK PAGE with photos of him inside his cell for several months before he got caught! His name is Justin Walker and in prison for shooting and killing a sheriff! He and his co-defendant sang “I shot the sheriff”–talk about raving psychopaths! I sent a copy of the article to my attorney that is fighting the parole for my P-son.
Texas prisons were “locked down” for about 4 months a year or two ago when a prisoner on DEATH ROW called the state senator in Texas who is head of the prisons to give him a cussing! Death row is supposed to be the most secure area but they had had the cell phone for months and 10s of people knew about it and the inmates shared it….what a dip-stick! But they found dozens of cell phones inside and so now all the prisons are working on getting jamming devices to stop them from being used—of course GUARDS are the ones who smuggle them in for $$$$ of course, along with cigarettes and drugs!
(head shaking here!) But I guess my little darling isn’t the only dumb arse convict in the world! There was a time I felt like he was, and I was the only mother with a son in prison for murder. It FELT that way, but the feelings are not so painful now, and the disconnect is helping. I sort of “keep up” with what is going on with him via the back door—and send in dis-information via an inmate I write who knows him—funny thing is, the guy I write to is probably innocent of the murder he is in for, the Houston Innocence project is actually in the process of getting DNA tested to prove his innocence…doesn’t mean he isn’t a spy for my P son though, so I send disinformation on a regular basis in sweet “chatty” letters. Funny thing, I’m not near as dumb as P son thinks I am. That’s validating too. LOL
I wasn’t sure about this guy’s sincerity in writing to me, and I figured he was a spy, but decided to go ahead and write to him, but here lately (after years of him telling he how he doesn’t believe in God) now he is “PRAYING FOR” ME!!! LOL Uses even the same words that P-son used when he would write to me and to my egg donor about how he was PRAYING for us! Yea, right!
Bob Hare’s comment about they “learn the words, but not the music” is so right on, they just don’t get it that we can tell that their “sincerity” is FAKE! LOL It may have taken me a while to catch on to that, but once I caught on, it is much more difficult to fool me NOW. I don’t even say I couldn’t be fooled again, because I could be, but it would be much more difficult to do it now than before, because I am so unforgiving on dishonest behavior–and no longer give out my trust without making sure it is deserved.
From the same sages who said “it was your fault for making a bad choice” and “get over it”, they also said you’ll never hear from him again.
Today I had an email from a woman he introduced me too. I don’t know if it was from him or from her. But it doesn’t matter. I hit the delete anyway.
Can’t say that it doesn’t cause me some alarm because I truly was hopeful THEY were right.
As it turns out, Driver license info is considered public information. So at the end of the day, if you have one, you can probably be tracked down.
However, I did find that you can delete your name from the google search database and make it more difficult to do for people who would just try a web search.
I have no idea what will come next of if anything will. But, that email took a brick out of my wall of comfort for sure! I hear you Ox with regard to being wary of anyone who had or may have contact with them.
For my part was the answer to any further connection to him or anyone he introduced me to is going to be NO.
NO is a complete sentence…
Wow Kathy,
I must be dumber than I thought.
I don’t even get what you wrote. I understand the dialog, but it seems like you want me to be mean and selfish?
No offense. But What if the other person is honestly confused by my changing the rules?
Oh I just reread your notes to Oxy, you’re talking about listening to your gut, I get it now. In that conversation, my gut had said, “BAD, BAD, go away” so I was supposed to follow up with that, right? But, I can’t hear my gut.
Well, due to my “upbringing” I have had intestinal problems since I can remember. Constant stomache aches as a child, gluten intolerant, couldn’t gain weight (not the case now though. Oxy, I found the 20 lbs. you lost, can you send me your address so I can return them? they don’t look good on me. :P)
Then the last 25 years my spath was poisoning me with small amounts of strychnine, so I have learned NOT to listen to my gut, it’s too distracting with all the diarhea etc..
It’s gonna be tough.
Like Oxy, your guidance has also been very valuable to me, too. I think maybe you “imprinted” me last year, when you wrote a very touching post that just had me in tears.
Now I’m like your puppy dog, just waiting on your every word.
Don’t mean to brown nose, I hate people who do that, it’s just the truth. thanks for taking the time.
Dear Drover
“I think we have all seen people who came to this site very. RAW and VERY hurt, and they would become angry at something someone said that was NOT in any way intended as an insult. ….. a big flame war starts …occasionally there is one of those things goes on here. …I was DEVASTATED by the woman’s flames …
It almost drove me away from Love Fraud and if it hadn’t been for Donna’s intervention Aloha and I both would have tucked our tails and left LF at a time we both DESPERATELY needed it”
I really believe that everyone who is here (however long that has been for) needs to be here. We are all at different stages of the game; and although the same themes may run through our stories, we are each individuals who process and move through stuff at different rates and in different ways.
I personally (being as brand-new as I am) have only felt acceptance and understanding and support here.
I am someone who can talk the hind leg off a donkey in real life, so I guess that sometimes that translates into long blogs; but the other element to that would be whether or not a person is also comfortable with sharing in such a forum, which I am. Double-whammy! Verbose AND an open book!
I accept that we are all different. I feel no hierarchy (if there is one, then I must have missed it…)
Please – ALL – stay. I learn much from you all, daily. xx
Wow! What a great thread. All about boundry building, and respecting our instincts. I have never been great with the boundry building, but I have become very good at hearing my gut speak…it requires listening to your body…and actually talking to that still small voice inside you. I actually ask myself, “why am I feeling like this?” Or, “when have I felt like this before?” Then I spend a little time, just being quite, and wait for the reply.
I am very familiar with the butterflies in my tummy feeling…that queezy yucky feeling, and when I feel that, SOMETHING IS WRONG. STOP, LOOK, AND LISTEN.
As far as boundrys go, I remember, once, years ago, as I was in therapy for substance abuse and co-dependancy, I was at a Christmas party, and someone I was not comfortable with sat next to me on a couch, way to close, and started monopolizing my attention. I felt manipulated and angry, but my first instinct was to be polite. I didn’t want to hurt anybodys feelings, but, as I said I was in therapy, and one of the things I was working on was building boundrys.
I said excuse me, got up off the couch and walked away.
I can’t tell you what a triumph that was! I felt powerfull.
We tend to respect other peoples, (guessed at and presupposed) feelings, more than our own! Who on earth is going to look out for our own well-being, if we don’t. And, Spath’s know all this and use it to their advantage. They know we are invested in our “rule book’. That we will always be nice, polite and good.” AH, hell no. Not anymore.
I have some key phrases I use when feeling manipulated. One is, “I’m confused. Can you clear this up?” Another is, “suit yourself.” And then there is always, “That is not my problem.”
When I first started using them, I was amzed at how exhilerating it was. I also decided to stop believing lies, and stop explaining myself or trying to justify myself. I didn’t keep secret for people anymore, or accept responsibility for their wrong doing.
I would jump at the chance to go back into therapy. It helped me enormously.
Sky, I think you could start building your boundrys by checking into some on-line co-dependancy stuff.
I know they have groups for adult children of narcissists. It might be just the ticket for you. Just a suggestion.
And listen to your gut about doing those books. There’s a reason you are feeling the way you are.
Oxy, Hiah. Yes I’m moved in, and very cozy, but still adjusting, and having a bit of an emotional reaction to it all.
I feel a little lost. And very lonely.
I need one of those analogue converters for my TV, and haven’t been able to afford it, yet. (Soon.) So have been borrowing movies from my kids, and watching them two or three times each. I’ve been reading a lot more, but my eye sight leaves a lot to be desired, so I can only handle so much.
My house is SO QUITE. But I’ve been doing a lot of cooking to keep myself occupied.
Gem, darling. I’m sorry I dissappeared on you. Thanks giving week was a lot of time -off for my daughter, so I was not here with the babies much, and had no computer access.
I’ve also had my mind on a lot of little details about getting settled in. I’m not computer savvy, but I will go to my Email in box today and see if I can successfully e-mail my address to you.
Kathleen, I always love your wisdom and insight, and you are so very generous with your helping spirit. Thank-you.
I loved your dialogue, by the way…especially his asking for an explaination, and insinuating that she was, in some way, not functioning. The fake concern. Oh my, as Hens would say!
Sure am glad to have you all. You keep me conected to humanity!
Oh!!!! I am SO glad you got the cottage!!! (I’m a cottage girl myself, so I feel like squealing with delight but I won’t because that would just be too damn silly!)
I felt lonely here too at first, but I think that (for me) it was more about how I came to be here than the fact that I was. The divorce, the unreality of it all, the neverending stream of revelations that my whole life for 7 years was just a big fat lie…
My cottage has helped to heal me. I have fruit trees, and ducks and chooks (Oz slang for “chickens”) and cats and dogs and even 2 hand-reared pet sheep who are my babies. I overlook a railway reserve (so no houses opposite) with paddocks full of cows beyond that. Big tall trees, lots of wild birds, roosters crowing in the mornings…
May your cottage be for you what mine has been for me.
Silver,
There are various books and things that will help you learn to “disappear”—now you are NOT hiding from the FBI but from “google” and from private investigators who can access legal information on you….it may require moving.
Utility bill addresses for payment and for service, drivers licenses etc. are the most used tracer informational sources to track you down. Professional licenses is another way, Nurses, Doctors, lawyers, and personal property tax and car registrations and license numbers.
Therefore, you must have these things secured so that no one can get them.
Utility bill in someone else’s name—a way to do that is for an LLC which is like a one-person corporation/business, and you can put your home in that name, your utilities, phone and all under that name so the way an LLC is set up there is no easy way to trace it to YOU. Driver’s license address can be problematic, but you can over come it as well. Talk to your local law enforcement about a legal way to do this. California is very helpful for people in the situations of a stalker and even going so far as name change. Kids in school are another thing to be used to track us, so maybe home school or private school. Or use the kid’s middle name to enroll him/her.
It isn’t nearly as easy to disappear in the “information age” as it used to be to just move across town and start using a new name. LOL There are ways to stay safe_er, and hiding out from someone who is hunting you is definitely like using a condom, it makes you safe-er, but not guarenteed SAFE.
Skylar,
I know that dialogue is challenging. And you made me laugh when you asked if I was telling you to be mean and selfish. Maybe I am, though that’s only the way you’d look from the perspective of someone who wants to use you, control you or convince you that you don’t the right to your own opinions or choices.
Think I’m being too extreme? Let’s look at the dialogue.
Probably the most important line is the first one. You said “Stop it.”
You didn’t say, “I don’t want to bother you or hurt your feelings or discourage you but I’m really not comfortable with what you’re doing.” You didn’t say, “I really like that sometimes, but for some reason it just doesn’t feel good right now.” You didn’t say, “Oh, this is fun, but hey look there’s the mailman. Maybe the tax refund is here.”
What’s different about “stop it” that may seem challenging is that you’re taking back any power you’ve lent him to decide what he does to you in that moment. The subtext to “stop it” is “this is my life; I make the choices about it; I don’t like this, and I want it to stop.”
When I wrote this, I didn’t provide a context. The reader doesn’t know if this is the first or third time she’s told him to stop. If he’s making love to her or hurting her or saying something. The only thing that’s clear from the dialogue is that it’s something that’s he’s done “to her” before. And at least once before, he claims that she liked it.
So I left a lot to your imagination. But I wanted you to see some technique — not just his, which is initially plausible (“I don’t understand; you liked it last time”), but then turns manipulative and denigrating pretty quickly. You recognized that.
I wanted you to see what she was doing.
First she was direct and commanding. Stop that. She’s speaking like someone who owns herself and doesn’t apologize for deciding what happens to her. She was speaking like someone who had only lent someone permission to touch her or to affect her life, lent trust, lent a bit of power. But she could take it back. (As we all can, even if we’ve brainwashed ourselves into believing that we’ve given someone permission forever. It is impossible to ever lose the ability to take it back.)
What she actually said is less important that the position she was speaking from. There are a million ways to communicate what she was saying. This was the most blunt. But what I want you to understand is the mental position. This is the truth about all of us. We have that power, and the right and obligation to use it to protect ourselves and to pursue what is best for us.
The rest of this dialogue is how it plays out with someone who doesn’t want to allow you to believe that you have that power over our own choices. “You’re crazy.” “You’re unfair to me.” “I want you to think about how I feel, rather than how you feel.” “I want you to defend your behavior, so I can find a way to talk you out of it.” “I want you to give me all the keys to controlling you, all the promises that I can use in the future to bend you to what I want.”
“You” are sensitive to these violations, because you have no intention of giving up power over your life or your choices. You may think this is “mean and selfish,” but I would suggest that this is simply not biting. She not playing his game. She has one objective, which is for him to stop that. And rather quickly, she has a second objective which is not to allow him to turn her demand to his own profit in terms of controlling her.
No, she’s not defending her feelings or behavior. No, she’s not giving him a set of rules that he can use to control her. No, she’s not making this a discussion of his feelings. No, she’s not interested in what he thinks about her character or her mental health.
Why, you may wonder, is this not a rational, mutually supportive discussion about why she feels that way and what they can do together to resolve the issue at that moment? Why is she not giving him that chance?
It’s simple. He had “strike one” when his first response was to argue with her, defend his behavior and call her crazy. There was not the slightest element of caring about her in his response. Not the slightest indication that he was interested in her feelings or reality. He immediately made it about him.
You may react to that by thinking about his poor ego, his hurt feelings, his whatever. If so, that’s a clue how fast you are to make other people’s issues more important than your own. You said “stop it” because you have a problem. His response was to talk about his problem. Weak ego or not, it was a bad response if he intended to start a conversation that would actually provide a means to resolve this situation so that you were okay.
I changed the ending on this after I first wrote it to illustrate something else that’s important. Your last comments show the difference between self-defence — which is your situation throughout most of this conversation — and pursuing your own good. She chooses at the end to pursue her good, rather than continuing to cooperate in his game of attacking her identity and power over herself.
As I said, there a lot of way to say the things “you” said in this dialogue. Once you can get yourself into this mind set, you can be a lot smoother and more apparently gracious about how you handle a situation like this. But the truth is that most of us, in learning how to take ownership of our own experience and choices, are blunt at first. Simply learning how to say “no” in direct and immediate response to a boundary violation (or something that makes you uncomfortable) can involve being pretty forceful in the beginning. Because you’re pushing through your own resistance to being that honest and self-caring. After some practice, it gets less scary and then we typically develop ways to say no that are less dramatic, but equally effective. (Like simply ignoring something, changing the subject or walking away.)
I want to add two more thoughts before I close this. One is that the “him” character did something that was a true boundary violation. That was his comments about her character and mental health. Other people are entitled to their opinions about us, but their opinions have nothing to do with who we really are. Only we know that. When someone tries to tell us who we are, as “truth,” we have to drop the wall, either internally or externally. We have to remind ourselves, if necessary, or clarify with them that their opinions are their business, not yours. You are the authority on you.
And finally, I offered some examples of things that you didn’t say. Most of those had a communications error built into them. They expressed how you felt without saying what you wanted. They implicitly asked or expected the other person to care enough about your feelings to figure out what you wanted and do that. This is passive-agressive behavior, equivalent to saying, “If you really cared me me, you’d do…”
The correct communication is to say what you want. You have the option of saying why. Such as “That doen’t feel good to me right now. I want you to stop.” But that’s optional. And frankly, most poeple are only going to hear what you want. That’s the information they’re looking for.
If you were dealing with a compassionate person who was truly interested in you, that is the information he would want as well. The conversation would have gone very differently with that kind of person. But that kind of person would have been grateful and approved of your assertiveness, authenticity and openness. This kind of communication is actually what good relationships are based on, people telling each other what they want, how they really see things, and only secondarily how they feel. Because feelings are so fluid and dependent on subtleties of circumstance.
I hope that some of this makes sense. Stepping up to owning your own power is a big deal. It’s not easy if we’ve been socialized to feel more responsible for other people than we do for ourselves, believing that other people will treat us well if we treat them well. The real truth is that other people will treat us well if we show them that we value ourselves enough to consider our own needs first. People who project themselves as doormats are actually setting the rules of the game, basically saying “I’m here to be used.” Even poople who aren’t sociopaths can be tempted by an offer like that.
Kathy
And one more thought. If you don’t feel safe being that honest or assertive, if you feel that it would bring some kind of punishment or violence down on you, you should take a close look at your circumstances. It is very likely that you are in an unsafe relationship or place.
I suppose that raises the question of whether there are really any safe relationships or places. Maybe you’ve never known one. People like I used to be — who trade taking care of other people for being accepted, supported or loved — tend to gravitate toward this kind of risky relationship or environment. Because the people on other side of the relationship are either like them (in terms of codependent, victim-rescuer approaches to relationships) or they are predators. Either way, they have reason to sabotage your efforts to become responsible for your own self-caring and aware of your boundaries.
If you need to hear it, I guarantee you that there is a whole world out there of people who take responsibility for themselves, who have the capacity for compassion for other people (because they are compassionate with themselves), and who face the same struggles to be a caring and empowered person in a world that continually pressures us to be acquiescent, self-hating and predatory toward weaker people. Their lifestyles, their human challenges, their dreams and achievements are much more interesting and rewarding to them and to the world at large. And basically, there’s a lot more room to move in that world, more air to breath, and better nourishment for your spirit.
Most of this is a matter of figuring out how to get out of your psychological jail cell. And getting out eventually comes down to recognizing that it’s a illusion. Like a hologram. And the key to vaporizing it is learning how to say no to what’s controlling you and making you feel bad about yourself. And yes to the idea that you’re actually more than this. More powerful. More free. Smarter. And you belong in a bigger and better world, where there’s room for to explore, learn, try out things, make the occasional mistake and grow into your own potential.
Okay I’m beginning to feel like a bumpersticker or a television preacher. Time to go back to work.
Namaste. The bright and shining and creative and powerful spirit in me salutes the sister spirit in you.
Kathy
Kathy,
Yes, I am uncomfortable with being so direct about what I want. So used to living with people who would sabotage, that I learned to hide what I want. I never realized I was even doing that because I didn’t know that I was being purposely sabotaged. They are very stealthy. But one day, I noticed a pattern and I mentioned it to my mom. I said, “mom, whenever I have a decision to make, I just ask Spath what to do and do the opposite. It’s amazing how well things work out”
In my mind, the Spath was really stupid and always made the wrong decisions. But in reality, he believed I would follow his instructions and prepared to sabotage everything, without my knowledge. It always appeared to be an act of God or random luck. So by doing the opposite I was sabotaging him.
What you are telling me is so contrary to everything that I am and do in my close personal relationships. But that’s because I’ve always lived with spaths. Some smarter than others. My father, when making business deals, will make unexpected last minute changes. I think that is his natural protection against being conned. He keeps the deal a bit off balance.
What you are suggesting is that I be completely straight forward. I have done that and it did work. When I was secretary on a community board and the president was trying to sabotage all my work (at the direction of my Spath,)demanding that I allow the lawyers to direct us in the wrong direction. They wanted to make me look bad in front of the community. He would RAGE and Demand. Finally, I said, “JOE, THAT IS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. NEVER. IS THAT CLEAR?”
He resigned the next day, stating that he had become aware that he could no longer influence the board.
Spaths do backaway when they realize that you cannot be taken in. They see our natural desire to be nice and want to please, as a weakness and it attracts them. That’s too bad because I like being nice and making others happy. I hate to think of it as a personality disorder, but it is. My BF, just gave me a lecture about it this morning. He said to stop serving his employees, Perrier water with lunch. He said it makes us look like doormats.
I get it now. I’ll work harder on it.