A couple of weeks ago, I posted an article entitled, How to overcome your addiction to sociopaths. In it, I offered three steps for changing a pattern of falling in love with sociopaths. The steps are:
- No Contact with the current sociopath
- Do not date anyone for the time being
- Heal the vulnerabilities
The real work is in the third step — healing your vulnerabilities. What I suggest sounds somewhat like the good advice that we get on many topics, like:
- Eat your vegetables
- Make time for regular exercise
- Cut down on sugar, carbs and alcohol
- Get enough sleep
We all know we should do all these things, but do we do them? How often do we skip going to the gym, or pour ourselves another glass of wine?
So why should “healing our vulnerabilities” be any different? What would make us put time and energy into this “good for you” program, when we slide on so many others?
The answer is the emotional pain we feel due to the sociopath.
Motivation to recover
Just as physical pain is a symptom that something is wrong with our body, emotional pain is a symptom that something is wrong with our internal self. The pain can be so searing, and so devastating, that how we respond to it affects our very survival. Either we find a way to alleviate the pain, or we die if not a literal death, then the death of our spirit.
If you are feeling the pain of sociopathic betrayal, channel that pain into motivation. Use the pain as motivation to recover from not only the most recent experience, but to seek out and cure the internal vulnerabilities that made you fall for the sociopath in the first place.
Mistaken beliefs
Usually these vulnerabilities are mistaken beliefs about our own worthiness, lovability and place in the world. We may have absorbed these beliefs from the sociopaths, from our parents and family of origin, or from society in general. Recognizing and releasing false, harmful beliefs enables us to change our lives.
I understand that this is not easy and it takes time. But once you get to the other side of the process, you’ll find the peace, stability, and perhaps even the relationship, you always wanted. I know I did.
We are all worthy. We all deserve love, starting with self-love. There can be a benefit to the sociopathic pain — an opportunity to make these truths part of our being.
Lovefraud originally posted this article on July 13, 2013.
Kiley White, 26, allegedly claims brain cancer to con people into caring for her
Here is a good free self help website that can help you with a good road to recovery. http://www.selfgrowth.com/relationships_articles.html
Can’t guarantee that it will never happen again, as I survived several sociopathic relationships (I have it in my family), but thanks to this forum and the changes I made in my life, I think I MINIMIZED it from ever happening again.
Recommend counseling from a counselor who is familiar in sociopathology, reading every book you can on the topic, participating in this Blog and attending Mary Ann’s bimonthly teleconference.
I had to ‘reach bottom’ as any addict can tell you; before I began the small slow baby steps to get out and start over. My body was tired, my mind/emotion/thinking abilities were shot. I had almost nothing left in the tank. It was either die by suicide or a slow death due to a stress related illness..It took almost 29 years.
it sure is.
Time really does heal..as long as there’s no contact. Delete everything…unless a lawsuit is pending. Acknowledge magical thinking and deal with it first. Keep in touch with websites such as this one. Take a course offered here. Once you have gained your footing..work on each issue..you do get better!
After spending the last two months with no contact and reading everything I had written on this crazy man I allowed in my life, a man who tortured me mentally, emotionally and causing me physical pain. Because of the abuse I am still wondering how I put up with the things I had and for so long.
The question I kept asking myself was that even though I knew what he was, even though I could predict his every move I still allowed him to stay. I learned by watching him do certain things he was dyslexic and I wondered is this the only way this man can survive in this world? I suppose I thought I could help him? There was a language barrier and I found this was certainly cause for many fights. But, he liked fights and he liked getting me upset. I learned he was socio/psychopath when we first met. But, I kept trying to see if I could be the one to crack the code and make him a better person. In time I realized he was a lost cause.
There were countless break ups and he would con me into taking him back. A year ago this past April he suffered a heart attack. I nursed him back to health and paid for all his copays on his follow up visits. That tempered him for a while but soon he was back to his old self. He would freak out, I would call him awful names and he would take a walk and come back like nothing happened. I could write a novel here on what went on and how I allowed someone of lesser intellect take advantage of me. He was not working alone. He had help and that is the most disgusting part.
I did not see this article but I realized I was addicted to something very bad for me. I treated it as such and I went cold turkey. This man was so screwed up that I had never in my life seen anything like it. But much of what I read here explains a lot.
Was I in the most vulnerable time in my life? Absolutely! Becoming a senior citizen, losing a husband and taking care of an elderly mother is no recipe for a new relationship. Like every other transactions or interaction we have in our lives, the old adage is, “If it appears to be too good to be true, it usually is.” This was maybe an exaggeration because he really had nothing to offer me. I never got anything from him. He did odd jobs around the house, washed the cars and took the garbage out. That was it. He was a misogynistic European that was demanding. He wanted to be served and never offered to help and clean up. A few occasions he would help prepare but that was very few times. This was all while I took care of my mother.
He lost his job and his healthcare, but that didn’t matter because I never saw a dime of his paycheck. It went directly to his wife. The last eight months were the worst and I saw my savings dwindling and I knew I was going to be in crisis if I didn’t move quick. When he learned I was selling the house and perhaps leaving the state he really became nervous because he knew he could not come with me. He only knows what he is familiar with. It took him over a year to figure out how to get to my house. Or maybe it was an act so I had to pick him up, use my gas and he never had money so I always paid.
BLAH BLAH BLAH!