Passing through the hatred and rage at the sociopath’s betrayal

Donna, thank you for such a wonderful response to this woman’s devastating pain. You put it all together so wonderfully, clearly and completely.

Yes, finding a therapist that “gets it” is difficult. I was fortunate that my psychiatrist had known me for some time and respected me. I did find a therapist that FINALLY believed me, but I had to take in court documentation and a witness to prove I wasn’t a “paranoid delusional” NUT CASE thinking the whole world is out to “get me.” LOL I wasn’t offended, because I KNOW how CRAZY and paranoid my story sounds, and EVERY STORY on here is JUST AS OUTRAGEOUS AND “UNBELIEVEABLE” by “normal” folks, even therapists. LOL

For the person who has not experienced such devastation from what might even seem to some as a “trivial” break up with a lover or a divorce—it is IMPOSSIBLE TO COMPREHEND.

In many things humans I think can somehow get SOME idea of how you suffer if you break your foot without having had a broken foot yourself…you have other things that are similar that you can compare them with. But it IS “different” with the total devastation of our psyches by the psychopaths. It is somehow so much deeper, so much more painful–the “tip of the ice berg” is all that shows, and the wounds are SO MUCH deeper and less visible than other wounds.

I liken it to a malignant melanoma, which can be on the SURFACE nothing more than a small black, irregularly shaped mole, but while very little shows, it is growing in every part of the body, eating it away with an INTERNAL CANCER that destroys its host from within.

The quicker we can find that the “cancer” is there, and excise it, the less damage it will do, and the better our chances of recovery without great damage—but if we ignore the outward signs (the red flags) and let it continue to secretly invade ourselves, it can literally kill us or rip us apart, leaving nothing but a shell.

Coming here to your site is so healing for so many of us and I would like to thank you again for your work on this and your care and understanding. God bless you, Donna.

Wow, some profound and deep thoughts!

Aloha, yes,, that is the way it is with HOPE, if you have no hope, you can’t be disappointed, but without hope there is no joy.

If you have no love, you can’t be betrayed, but if you have no love, you have no joy. (and that definitely includes self love)

If you have your heart’s desire, there is always the sword hanging over your head that it will leave, be broken, die; that in some way you will lose it.

In the years of the American Revolution, many women lost beloved children, many beloved wives died in childbirth or as a complication of it. I am reading a biography of Thomas Jefferson right now. His wife had 6 horrible pregnencies, and was critically ill with each one, four of those children died, most of the deaths after the children were several years old, Jefferson was filled with terror of losing Martha and guilt that their love and bearing children was killing her. When Martha finally died, even though her death had been expected for several months and he had had several close calls with her death before, he was totally unprepared for that death and went into a profound and deep depression.

Jefferson, though a man of genius, was on a personal level very troubled and dysfunctional. He bound his two surviving children to him with guilt that if they were not “good” children that he would not love them. By today’s standards, his letters to them were cruel missives of “do what I say or I will quit loving you.”

After his wife’s death, he had several affairs with unhappily married women, and then his slave Sally Hemmings by whom he had several more children. He was never a happy man except for the first few years that he was married, before his wife’s problems with her health began.

He felt that the Universe had taken away from him everything he loved and he didn’t deal well with the guilt and never really recovered his hope. His unresolved griefs haunted him like Ghosts for the remainder of his unhappy life. Even though the grief about his wife, never resolved, was not directly discussed in his letters, his letters to his paramour, and the famous 12 paged dialog between “Head and Heart” that he sent to her, give us a clear look into Jefferson’s emotional turmoil—the same turmoils that WE–humans—have about love vs loss.

Jefferson’s writings about his estatic love for this paramour, knowing it could not last, but being besotted by the woman, and she by him, (her marriage was not a marriage but a financial arrangement, however she was the property of another man) sounds like the feelings that we felt when we too were besotted by the Psychopaths’ promises of estacy.

My husband was 15 yrs older than me, and I knew there was a very good chance that I would out live him, but knowing that, I still loved him. Married him. Lost him. I would do it OVER AGAIN, KNOWING WHAT I KNOW NOW.

I purchase a dog, and love it, and know that there is almost 100% chance that I will outlive that dog, and grieve and cry when it dies, gets hit by a car, runs away, or whatever happens to it. Then I grieve and go get another dog…knowing the same thing, I will most likely outlive that companion of my heart.

Recently when doing a cattle herding demonstration my beloved border collie got kicked and went down like he had been shot RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES. I groveled in the mud and cow crap crying uncontrollably and in shock to pick up what I thought was his dead body, ignoring the 100s of people who were watching. Yesterday I tookk him out to work my cattle, knowing that there is always the odd chance it will happen again.

Everytime we put our kids on a school bus, there is a chance they might not come home. It isn’t as much a chance from disease and death by accident as Martha and Thomas Jefferson faced, but it is there. We know the RISKS of loss, and most of us have faced the REALITY of loss as well.

The complete resolution of grief, the final resolution of our losses, is that we can come to ACCEPTANCE..where we CAN HOPE again, we CAN LOVE again.

The mother who loses one child and never completely resolves the grief and lives in fear that something will happen to the other child and is continually in FEAR and without HOPE ruins her own joy, and the joy of the child as well. She smothers the liviviing Child with the FEARS of LOSS and the Lack of Hope.

We can go through the rage and anger, the sadness, the bargaining, and all the other stages of the “grief process” but if we don’t come to acceptance where we can again embrace HOPE—we have not completed the process. Unresolved grief is as TOXIC as about any cancer there is, it steals the joy of your life for what you DO HAVE. CAN HAVE.

We all laugh at the old cynical thing about “Murphy’s law” that “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong at the worst possible time.” My husband added to this that “Murphy was an optimist!” LOL

Getting through the rage and anger, I think is the easiest part, getting through the sadness is also one of the “easier” parts—it is coming to acceptence that is the HARD part.

With the loss of my P-son, first his imprisonment, and then the realization, the final realization that he is a MONSTER, will ALWAYS be a monster, and that there is “nothing” I can do about it but ACCEPT IT…I stayed in the “bargaining” stage for so long, thinking that if I did this it might help, if I did that it might help, it seemed to be helping, it didn’t seem to be helping, try something else, etc. and I stayed in UNRESOLVED GRIEF over the loss of my hopes and dreams and love for my son—it was only coming to acceptence with him that he was “dead” to me that I could put it behind me, get on with life and RENEW HOPE in my life. RENEW JOY.

When I realized that my mother was a TOXIC ENABLER for my P-son, a “psychopath by proxy” is my term for it, I felt all the pains of the loss of my parent, the shame the rage, the hate, the frustration—-but in the end I had to pronounce the relationships “dead”–just as dead as my stepfather and just as dead as my husband. GONE.

After my husband’s death and my LACK OF HOPE (My neediness) for another relationship left me open when the P waved his “magic wand” in front of my face and promised me the “love of my life” again—when that was gone, when I realized it was a FAKE, I again grieved….but have come again to ACCEPTENCE, and rational thought that it ISN’T LIKELY that I will ever find another “love of my life” BUT I still have the HOPE that I will, and if it “shows up” I will cautiously clasp it to my heart, but not with the neediness of no boundries.

In the meantime I enjoy the relationships that I DO have, rather than feel bitter or lonely because I don’t have a “relationship with a man” I try to focus on the wonderful friendships I DO have. I remember fondly the relationships that are physically gone, my husband and my step dad and I can “talk to them” inside my head, remember the things we did with joy and laughter.

It has been a LONG, DIFFICULT AND PAINFUL succession of losses since July 04 when my husband died. A lot of things that were previoiusly unresoslved losses and pains and insecurities have surfaced as well. There were things I found out about myself that I had been keeping “secret” from myself. My inability to set proper boundaries, the guilt I felt about setting boundaries within my family and close friends, and WHY I felt this guilt, and I expunged this guilt as inappopriate. I’ve looked deep in to the well of my own soul and seen the “spots” there that needed correction, and I am sure that over the course of my life I will find more, but I CAN ACCEPT THIS LESS THAN PERFECT PERSON, and LOVE HER.

I will not let the loss of the Ps, or the loss of my beloved family members either, take the HOPE and the enjoyment out of the rest of my life. I am the only one in control of my destiny. Only I can acheive my hopes and dreams, but if those hopes don’t come “true”—I won’t let it ruin the rest of my life either.

Right after my husband was killed, there was a medical student at the University of Arkansas in LIttle Rock who didn’t make the Olympic team that he had trained for his entire life. As a consequence of this “loss of his fondest dream” (loss of this ONE Hope) he stabbed his physician wife 48 times, then jumped out the window of a tall building and killed himself.

Obviously “he had some issues”—and he didn’t “deal well” with the LOSS of his ONE DREAM, he let it end his own life and that of his wife. We can see how stupid and terrible this was. We can see what a terrible loss it was, and over something that WE think he should have “accepted” the loss of that one dream to be on the Olympic team, and gone on with his life, and enjoyed the many many other talents and options that he had before him. WE don’t think that not making the Olympic team was anything close to a “reason” or “excuse” for killing his wife and then himself….but obviously at that moment HE did. His RAGE at her, at himself, at the world overcame him and pushed him over the brink.

Most of us, I would say would never never never contemplate such an action as he took, but though we eventually get through the anger and the RAGE at our loss, get over the feeling that we would LIKE to throttle our psychopathic abusers, we get over the tremendous grief and sadness, we quit the bargaining and get over the inappropriate and malignant HOPE that we can fix that situation–but if we stop short of acceptence that we CAN be happy, we CAN have dreams and HOPEs, maybe just not the dream of a “_________” (fill in the blank here).

Having worked with the spinal cord injured patients that I did for 5 years, I saw so many patients that had been so very physically active and now just one car wreck or one injury put them into a wheel chair for life, paralized either from the neck down or the waist down. It ended so many dreams for these people, it took away their independence, their sex life, their mobility—their dreams and hopes–but the “successful” ones didn’t continue to dwell on their losses, but to rejoice in their lives AS THEY WERE. The unsuccessful ones became bitter people who lived lives of utter despair who blamed their unhappiness on an accident that happened one day, or the doctors that couldn’t cure their problem, or on something or someone else—when all the time, JOY WAS THERE, waiting to embrace them, if they had only seen it, grasp it and taken hold of it. ACCEPT WHAT IS and find joy in spite of it in the things that we DO have.

I know, I have “preached another sermon” and the finger I point to others is only one, and the ones pointing BACK AT ME are THREE, but thhis sermon is pointed at ME just as much or more so than at anyone on the blog, because I know that I HAVE TO WORK ON KEEPING MY ACCEPTENCE OF WHAT IS, and continually NOT let myself siink into despair that I don’t have what is NOT POSSIBLE, because there is so much that IS POSSIBLE and I want that with all my heart.