By Ox Drover
One of the themes that seems to run throughout the stories of many of, if not most of, the people who have had experiences with psychopaths is that we have either had repeated episodes of being abused by the same psychopath, even after we saw their dishonesty, or had episodes of being sucked into the webs of multiple psychopaths. Or, we have both of these—multiple episodes with multiple psychopaths.
Most of the people I have known who were formerly victims of psychopaths are not stupid. In fact, some of the smartest, most accomplished people I know are former victims, and have been repeatedly victimized by one psychopath after finding out that this person was dishonest and abusive. Somehow, they kept on going back to the relationship, even after multiple attempts to disengage from the abuser. Why? Why does a person who is smart, accomplished, and otherwise successful in life and business keep repeating the same behavior that allows them to be hurt?
There is an often-used quote, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” It seems by this definition that the victims of psychopaths are “insane,” because we keep on trying to have a relationship with someone who is repeatedly abusive. There must be some reason that otherwise smart and successful people keep repeating the behavior that is unsuccessful in its outcome. There must be some common thread among victims and former victims that makes us susceptible to frequently returning to an unsuccessful and painful relationship.
Here’s a little story that may contain what may be a grain of truth that might point us toward the answer to the question of. “Why?”
The Chief and the Snake
Once upon a time there was a very wise and kind Indian chief. One day as the chief was walking through the forest, he came upon a rattlesnake in the path. He stopped and started to go around the snake, not wanting to hurt it, but not wanting to be bitten either.
As the chief started to pass around the snake, the snake spoke to him (not an unusual thing in those days) and said, “Chief, please have mercy on me, my wife and family are on the other side of yonder river, and I can’t swim, and I can’t get to them. Won’t you please pick me up and carry me across the river?”
The chief looked at the snake and laughed a bit and said, “Why, if I tried to pick you up you would bite me and I would die. I am sad that you have a problem but I must not be bitten, or I would die and my own children would starve because there would be no strong man with a bow to hunt brother deer to provide meat to my little ones. Though my heart feels sad for you, no, I must refuse to pick you up.”
The snake then spoke to the chief saying, “But such a brave man as you should not be afraid of such a small snake as I, and I promise from the bottom of my heart that I would never harm you if you were to help me across yon river. I am so afraid that if I am not able to get across, my wife and children will perish. Please help me in my hour of need.”
The chief looked at the snake and his heart was sad because he knew what it was like to have one’s children without food. His heart took pity on the snake, and he agreed to take the snake across the river, if the snake would agree not to bite him.
The chief reached out to pick up the snake and held him high over his head as he waded the swift and cold waters of the river. About half way across the river when the chief was doing his best to protect the snake from the cold waters, the snake reached down and bit him on the neck, sinking his poison fangs deep into the chief’s blood stream.
The chief was surprised and said to the snake, “Brother Snake, why did you bite me, now I will die and you will drown as well. You promised on your honor not to bite me if I would have mercy on you and help you, now we shall both die and our children starve. You promised me.”
The snake replied, “Ah yes, I promised, but you knew what I was when you picked me up,” as they both sank under the swirling cold water of the river.
What we have in common with the chief
What caused the chief to reach out and pick up a snake that he knew was poisonous, that he knew had the power to harm him, and that if he was wrong in making this decision to pick up the snake, and the snake did bite him, that his own children would suffer because of his decision?
Empathy is what the chief had, empathy for the children of the snake. Because the chief loved his own children, he assumed that the snake must also love its children. Just as the chief would do what was best for his children, he empathized that the snake would also do what was best. Since the chief knew that he would never do anything deliberately to cause consequences for his children, he did not see that the snake would deliberately do something that would cause problems for his own offspring.
Thinking that others have the same motivations that we have can get us into the same problems that the chief got into. The chief wanted to help the snake. He felt pity for the snake. He knew that he would not want someone to refuse to help him if it meant that he would die and his children would go hungry, so it never dawned on him that the snake would be willing to make a decision to do a deed that would insure that the snake-children would go hungry.
The chief’s empathy and his thinking that others had the same empathy, the same motivation for their behavior, and no reason to hurt another, even at the cost of hurting themselves or their near and dear, caused him to want to believe the snake’s promise not to bite.
The snake, however, was right. The chief knew what he was when he picked him up. When we allow ourselves to believe the promises of people who have proven that they are dishonest, we open ourselves to be repeatedly injured or even killed. When someone shows you what they are, believe your eyes. Believe what you see, not what you hear.
No Contact
“No contact” is the commonly accepted “treatment” for any abusive relationship. This means that only contact that is required by law (such as meeting that person in a courtroom due to a law uit) or the minimum amount of contact required by law to co-parent with such a person, is the only interaction between you and your former abuser. No contact allows the injuries to cease, and keeps you safe from new and repeated injuries from the abuser.
“No contact” also includes not stalking the person’s Facebook page or other social media. It means blocking or deleting any text messages, phone calls, e-mails or any other form of communication, including having others tell you what the former abuser is “up to.” Refusing to engage in tale carrying, gossip, or drama involved with the former abuser is also essential. If you must speak about the relationship, do it ONLY with a trusted friend or family member who sees that the relationship was/is abusive, and with assurances that the person will keep your information in absolute confidence. This process can be likened to “not renting them space in your head,” which includes wondering if they have a new relationship, and if they are making this new person happy o,r if they will change for this new person, or wondering if you were wrong about what they are.
You know what they are now, so don’t pick them up. NO CONTACT WORKS.
kim frederick,
I didn’t watch t.v. last night – the weather was bad – a tornado watch. I’ll keep the movie in mind, watching it one day.
Dear Bopeep,
I know you are frustrated and want “fair” and “justice” and it does not sound like you are going to get it….
Doing things that are SELF DEFEATING though, like the vicodin, is not the answer to Getting “justice”—sometimes, we must just walk away and find our own validation because there is no other kind availabl or even possible.
NO antidepressant is going to make you feel “wonderful”—none will take away your pain. I think you are expecting your antidepressant to just wipe your mind clean (like the narcotics will) If you are going to use narcotics to DULL YOUR PAIN and become an addict, I think I would recommend you just go for heroin and be done with it and not mess around with the vicodin which really won’t numb the pain all that well, not nearly as well as heroin. The heroin will help keep you from facing any of the pain,, much less feeling any of it, and you can just stay zoned out and then you can blame all your problems on the disease of heroin addiction…I think really that would solve most of your problems—it wouldn’t help you any but you wouldn’t have to face handling them yourself either.
I hope you know I am being pretty snarky here and do not really recommend heroin, but the VICODIN is just the same thing and you are ALREADY doing it—you are unwilling to face your pain so you take an addictive drug to numb the emotional pain, knowing it will get you hooked, and you refuse to take the antidepressants because they don’t TOTALLY NUMB THE PAIN, WHICH THEY DO NOT DO, they only help you COPE with it…but you are UNWILLING TO COPE, you are demanding NUMBNESS and numbness is NOT what you need.
I’ve been there bopeep, I’ve been in the fire, the RING OF FIRE where the only way out is to dash through it to the other side….but I would not be much of a friend to you if I did not tell you that your ADDICTION to vicodin and to AVOIDING the pain is appropriate action—it isn’t,, it is DANGEROUS action. It is FATAL action.
GET APPROPRIATE HELP, call a DV shelter today….call a therapist today, call an Emergency Room, call a doctor, GET HELP, the help you need, the support you need. You are sinking and you don’t have to sink, this seems like the end of the world but it isn’t. You are alive. You have been treated unfairly, you have been abused, your kids have been abused, you have been stolen from, but the IMPORTANT PART IS YOU ARE ALIVE AND YOUR KIDS ARE ALIVE AND YOU CAN RECOVER—-but narcotics are NOT the answer, they are only compounding the problems. God bless you, you are in my prayers! (((Hugs))))
I cannot get my ex spath out of my dreams. He has been talking about me, why do they feel the need to do that?help! It wasnt negative th is time by why am I even topic of discussion with his new victim?
Dear Farwronged,
They do the “smear campaign” to tell others how bad we are and how innocent they are…very typical and is just SOP (standard operating procedure) right out of the psychopath’s play book.
As for your dreams, that is just what we do…we try to work out the problems with them in our sleep subconsciously, and that will diminish with time and with healing..
I had what I call “themed dreams” about me taking care of something or someone who was helpless while my own life fell apart. Can we say ENABLING!?! LOL Even sometimes I would try to talk sense into my egg donor or others in my dreams, and once my beloved deceased step father came o me in a dream to give me advice—and I realized he would have said exactly that same thing if he had been alive….it was good advice. LOL
The dreams finally decreased in intensity and frequency though I occasionally will have a dream about me trying to take care of something helpless and being frustrated that I can’t accomplish it, but mostly now my dreams are just dreams and not frustration dreams or themed ones or symbolic of bad things. Just more normal types of dreams. Not even ones I remember most of the time any more.
Healing takes time and effort and you can’t skimp on either one, you just do a bit and then rest a while, do some more, rest a while and then keep on like you are cleaning up an extremely “dirty” house…can’t do it all in one day so you just work on different aspects of it as much as you can for as long as you can, then gather strength and go back to the job and eventually you will get it done. Rushing yourself or trying to do it all in one day isn’t going to work, so you just keep on chipping away at it.
Or like my grandfather would have said, “do it like the cat ate the grind stone, one lick at a time.”
Its so hard!
Dear farwronged,
Of course it is HARD! SOOOOOO HARD and if I tried to comfort you by telling you it wasn’t I’d be lying, it IS HARD. It IS painful, it IS seeming like it goes on forever, but I CAN PROMISE that it will get better eventually.
GRIEF is what we are experiencing and this is the process in which we resolve the hurt we experience from losing something we value.
Google and read and learn about grief—it isn’t just about a death it is about LOSS and the stages of grief do not go 1-2-3-4-5- over, they go 1,3,4, 2,3, 1, 5, 2, and so on and eventually you come to ACCEPTANCE which is the end of the cycle and you get to STAY THERE. I have hit “acceptance” several times and then gone back to stage one and had to start over, but each time the time in any one stage shortens and the time you spend in acceptance lengthens until you are pretty well done with that particular grief….but with the psychopaths they leave us not just one loss but many. Loss of our dreams, our love, our finances , our friends, and damn —it is a mess of all these overlapping losses and overlapping griefs so that we feel like it will never end.
The “trick” if there is one is to just work on one thing at a time til you get tired, then put it down and rest, do something good for yourself, taking care of you, then when you are stronger you pick up and go again.
It is sort of like walking from NY to San Francisco, you can’t do it in one day….you have to walk a while, rest a while, then walk a while more….and eventually you get there. ((((Hugs)))) and God bless.
Thanks Ox,
My ex spath is trying to ruin my professional relationships good thing one individual was smart enough to tell him it is not professional to discuss personal matters and called him childish. It hurts knowing he never cared one bit and that he is already with another repeating the process, doing the same things he did to me. So many around me have come forth now about red flags when I ignored them. One friend of mine works with his mother and who admitted to him her son being mentally ill. At least his family is not in denial, however they also play normal like he leads a normal life, which I do not understand. I hate that he just keeps getting over!
Dear Farwronged,
Families do not tend to address this kind of behavior in their offspring, especially adult offspring…so don’t look for validation in that quarter.
Most of the time the ONLY VALIDATION we get is what we have for ourselves….many times NONE of our friends, family or co-workers “get it” and so we just have to accept that TRUTH IS TRUTH even if we are the ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD that gets it.
As long as you focus on him getting what he “deserves” you will never be able to heal…instead I suggest that you focus on your own life and your own healing, and quit renting him space in your head. Focus on doing good things for yourself, not focus on him “getting one over” or him “succeeding” but focus on living the best life you can live. He will eventually come to no good, but if you wait to be happy until he gets his….it may never happen. YOu CAN survive and thrive, but not if you wait for him or his family or friends to wise up. It may happen but chances are it will not. Or it may be years and years down the road. We can’t allow them and what happens or doesn’t happen to them to continue to RULE OUR LIVES and dictate our happiness.
Powerful stuff, Ox Drover. Difficult, but powerful. I have a deep desire for him to get what he deserves too. Good advice.
Won’t getfooledagain,
I don’t think there is anyone in the world who wants the Ps I’ve known to “get what they deserve” and I’d like to personally give it to them…bamboo slivers under the fingernails….on to some really badddddd stuff…but you know I realize that when I think like that I become like them and I don’t want to be a bitter person…I don’t want to be the person who CAN torture someone else no matter how richly they deserve it….so I do my best to focus on making myself the best person that I can be….and leaving them and their fate in the hands of a just God.
It doesn’t take much “work” for them to be the way they are, evil is EASY but being better takes work but I don’t want to BE like them. I don’t want to be devoid of conscience, or be filled with anger and wrath and rage….I want to live peacefully and happily and calmly. What chaos and unhappiness, dissatisfaction and grief they come to in the end, no matter how much money they scam or how many people they fool. Their life in the end is empty and shallow.