Today Lovefraud introduces a new feature: Lovefraud Lessons, a series of videos to teach you how to recognize and recover from sociopaths.
Lessons #1, #2 and #3 are up now, and new videos will be posted every week. The primary venue, of course, is YouTube, on the Lovefraud Lessons channel. My goal is to reach as many people as possible, around the world, and teach them about sociopaths.
If you know someone who should watch the videos, forward a link!
The sociopathic betrayal as an incident in your life
callmeathena,
I haven’t read any of Tom’s books yet, but he is indeed someone who gets it. I visited his forum for a while and I found it overall a place of wisdom. I don’t go there anymore though because I experienced that it was a big no-no to refer to someone as narcissist instead of as a psychopath, or even to suggest that the professional world may have their reasons to differentiate between narcissists, psychopaths and borderliner. And people were quite dogmatic about that as well as the term ‘psychopath’, and I was told I was invalidating other people’s experiences by saying it didn’t matter to me what labels are used exactly, as well as told I was on the wrong forum if I didn’t agree with that dogma. I concluded Tom was right about me being at the wrong forum. I prefer places where we can all disagree with each other (including the host) and have the freedom to make up our own minds.
But I do believe he is an insightful man who gets sociopathy/psychopathy, and I’m curious after his books. And I still recommend the forum to people who are learning about their partner being a sociopath/psychopath. It’s advizable not to mention Lovefraud there though, as they do not ‘endorse or strongly disagree with opinions and mission’ of Lovefraud (in their own words http://psychopathfree.com/showthread.php?1088-Master-List-of-Recovery-Resources) and it’s what caused a rejective response, and I do not wish anyone from here experience a similar thing or worse (like being accused of being a troll or spath intent on causing trouble) while visiting there.
Victorian 12,
I neglected to mention something… In regard to your comment “my degree of tolerance for other people’s behavior is low”…allow that to be something positive in nature. I am the same, and the low to no tolerance I have has been very useful for me, as previously I had been much to accepting and flexible.
In addition, regarding your trust issue…Trust has been the most difficult for me to re establish in others, as well as myself. There is an excellent book that I am reading, and use as a workbook, called “Trust After Trauma”, by Aphrodite Matsakis, Ph.D. I have read several books regarding many different aspects of the disordered, as well as healing from the affects, and this book has surpassed the rest in terms of healing from symptoms of post traumatic stress and gaining back trust. I highly reccommend that you utilize this book, if possible.
Much love,
Shane
Personally, I believe that my “trust issues” were what allowed me to be so open and vulnerable a target. I openly trusted people until such time as they gave me reason to withdraw my trust – even then, I was always reluctant to reclaim it and engaged in heavy-duty cog/diss. I didn’t want to offend anyone lest they disapprove of me or not “like” me.
To me, that is more of a “trust issue” than remaining wary of people until they’ve earned that trust.
Boundary issues, I’m afraid, will always require my vigilance. UGH…..so it is, and so shall it be.
Victorian12, it just may be that your “intoloerance” is linked to personal triggers and not necessarily an appropriate time and/or place to voice an opinion. I know that every recovering story that I have read on this site (as well as others) consistently reflects this “growing pain” of recovery.
I find that I must be very, very cautious because my personal triggers are hair-wired, go off if left unattended, and end up creating more problems for me than if I had simply acknowledge where my control truly is (with myself, and nobody else), and just remove myself from an uncomfortable situation.
Working on this, today, is a serious challenge. I am emotionally raw, right now, and I recognize this. So, I’m going to have to really focus on facts rather than feelings for a good, long time.
I am just seeing the same about myself, with regard to the intolerance / trigger things. I experienced something the other day, when I was out with a friend and we ran into someone that she knew from her past, who immediately came off to me as an extremely superficial charmer. Within the first few seconds of his introduction he came off as an over confident, immature storyteller. I somewhat shut down mentally, became bored and a bit nausiated. It took me a few hours of introspection to come up with what exactly it was that caused me not to trust him and or like him, for that matter. During that few hours, I had met a friend of hers that was kind, gracious, but mostly projected an abundance of humility. I realized at that moment that if someone shows that they possess a humble character, I engage with ease and find that I trust them. If that makes any sense…
… Ugh, I guess the Psychopath can portray humility, too…in the initial stages. Still learning…
shane,
yes, they mirror us. Mine seemed so humble. But there were little tells. He acted a bit childish, his voice was so soft, seductive and gentle. Almost like he was talking to a child.
A bit later I noticed that he seemed resentful of successful people, he couldn’t compliment anyone. He was always comparing himself to others, saying how much more innately talented he was.
Soon it was the obvious lies that were the most blatant red flags. but I didn’t know what they meant.
Even at age 17, I could see something was off. It wasn’t anything specific. It was a general impression of having low self-esteem and trying to hide it by putting others down and by lying about himself. Rather than make me sick of him, I felt sorry for him and I excused it. I wanted to reassure him that he was every bit as good as he pretended to be.
dumb, dumb, dumb. People with that kind of self-hate are toxic to others. You can’t fix it.
Yep Skylar, so very true, and I saw the same behaviors in the disordered one that I was with. Interesting how they are all so much the same. As if cloned…so unoriginal. No authenticity. Sheesh. Well, all good, now that we are rid of them.
Shane,
Thank you for your comforting words and good wishes and the book on trust. I will read it. It’s a valuable experience to me to have you here and share my feelings and thoughts with you, it’s so comforting to see that I’m not alone in this, that there are people going through he same pain who can understand me and share positive thoughts. We all have many things in common, we are good people who made the mistake of believing that everybody is as good as we are or at least we didn’t know that the evil we fell prey to existed.
I’m still suffering the aftermath of the traumatic bond with the spath, my mind feels numb and I sometimes move around like a zombi and I cry often and i feel pity for myself.
I know this too shall pass and I have to give it time.
Once again, thank you to you all for your support.
Blessings and love.