Several readers of Lovefraud have mentioned medical problems that arose in their lives with psychopaths. These readers are convinced that the psychological stress and pain of these relationships translated themselves into physical ailments. Some of these symptoms disappeared when the psychopath disappeared, some didn’t. Here are a few recent comments:
When I parted from him, physically I felt so raw and sore, I looked like I had been in a boxing ring. My health was poor and I couldnt even have the osteopath touch me, I said I felt like I had been stabbed all over. All though he never laid a finger on me, he gave me plenty of mental and emotional abuse.
I have a feeling its 2 years of being TIRED and worn to a pulp emotionally by his wordy games.
sleep loss is another big thing ive experienced since this s path during and after i still have trouble sometimes sleeping, like my mind will not shut off. and during being with the s apth i was trying to work out what the hell was going on and trying to work things ou in my head stopped me from sleeping well. which makes your head even more clouded.
Talking about physical consequences of being around bad stuff for seven years in my case, I don’t know if this applies but there is one thing that makes me think is the fact that my blood pressure got so much better. I used to have high blood pressure during the last four years with him. Since I left him for almost six months I don’t even need to take medication and I’m sleeping so much better these days.
Anytime we are trying to fix someone else, we are off track. I just work on me now. If I see someone other than me that needs work”¦ I feel TIRED. No can do!
Dr. Steve: I would so much appreciate a forthcoming post about physical consequences or PTSD of an association with a Sociopath. Nearly 5 months hence, and past the “why” and figuring out the “puzzle” (identifying him as a sociopath and doing intensive investigation/research as to who he really is and what he has done), there is still a lot of emotional pain
Have you noticed anything similar? How do you understand/make sense of this ‘translation’? Have you managed to deal with such an ailment or overcome it? How exactly
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In future posts I will write more on the interaction between experience, the mind, and the body. I will present some ideas of how/why it is that a interpersonal situation can have bad effects not only on one’s mind but on one’s body. Also, I will introduce some exciting research on what you can do to help repair the damage psychological distress mave have contributed to your body.
Tami Newman
I can SO relate to this. My s never laid a hand on me, either. Yet, I stayed sore and had horrible muscle spasms all the time! I was in my chiropractor’s office at least once a week. He’s been gone over a year now and I’ve seen my chiro three times since. My s also displayed strong symptoms of being a sex addict. I didn’t believe that he was cheating on me but always had it in the back of my mind that he would if I didn’t give him everything he wanted. I should have listened to my gut. He needed my full attention 24/7 and nearly consumed my soul. I had to do everything for him right down to his thinking! But he proclaimed such great love for me, I felt guilty if I didn’t give him what he wanted. And, imagine this…if I denied him sex ever now and again…he wanted it at least once a day…I’d awake from nightmares of him leaving me or cheating on me. As it turned out, he left me for a younger woman after having known her for 3 weeks. After he told me that he was leaving and swore that it had nothing to do with another woman…he stayed at my house for 3 weeks and he was purely evil! He was a complete and total stranger to the person that I thought I knew him as. I couldn’t eat nor sleep and he didn’t express one ounce of concern! I dropped 10 pounds during that 3 weeks! It’s odd that when I did indeed find out that it was another woman and told him that he HAD to leave…I felt a sense of relief although I was deeply hurt. Of course, I spent months trying to figure out just who he was and how I could have been so deceived. I finally sought out a counselor and when I told him my story…he didn’t hesitate in telling me that my ex was a sociopath as well as a sex addict. I knew then that I was off the hook and had no reason to feel belittled that I’d been left for a woman 18 years my junior or that I had done something wrong. It was like the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders. I now feel great physically and people tell me that I look so much less stressed and happier than when I was with him. S’s will certainly take a toll on us. It’s funny, the entire time that I was with him, I sensed that there was something that just wasn’t quite “right” about him but I just couldn’t figure him out. I’m so thankful that I now understand and that he removed himself from my life. However, I feel really sorry for the girl he’s with now…she believes with all her heart that she’s the one…although he used up and left at least 4 other women in the same manner he left me–two with his children that he hasn’t even tried to get to know. He left them both when the children were very young–I suppose they took too much attention away from him.
swallow
I have been struggling with bizarre physical symptoms since the day I got involved with my P until today two years after starting NC.
Before he even pounced but when he was closing in and paying me so much attention I started to lose weight rapidly. Within 5 weeks of the affair I had lost 7kg and my face was haggard and wrinkled (according to my friends) although I thought I looked fantastic. He used to brag that he had changed me completely. For the entire 11 month affair I NEVER slept properley, could not sit still for more than 5 minutes, developed claustrophobia and could never choke down a meal. I existed on coffee and biscuits.
After it ended, the insomnia continued and I developed severe cystitis ( sometimes a weird sexual feeling) that has never improved. I have had every test but nothing pysically wrong can be found and I have come to the conclusion that it is a manifestation of trauma. I can eat now and have put a lot of weight back on.
When I realised what had happened to me I wrote down how I felt during and after. It’s a long list but I would be interested to know if any of you have felt like this. Many of the symptoms appear to be very similar to how someone would feel if they were addicted to meth and withdrawal. Given that I now know he sells drugs, I have often wondered if he gave me drugs in my coffee without my knowledge. My friends are sceptical but if it never ever occurred to someone that was what was being done to them, would they recognise the effects? I’ll probably never know.
During the affair;
Overwhelming feeling of euphoria
Insomnia
Dramatic weight loss
Dizziness
Overpowering feeling of love towards him to the exclusion of everything else
Obsessional thoughts of him 24 hours a day
Feeling excited and terrified at the same time.
Feeling hot and shivering at the same time
Feeling that my destiny is beyong my control
Chronic pain in my back and legs
Claustrophobia
Panic attacks
Depression
Fear of losing him
After NC
Craving to contact him
Depression
Severe anxiety and panic
Overwhelming feeling of fear
Chronic back and leg pain
Severe cystitis and Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome
Dizziness and fainting
Nightmares
Flashbacks
Emotional numbness
Feeling completely lost
A feeling of dread at seeing him or the OW
Intense rage and thoughts of revenge
These feeling are subsiding now and are not so intense but I haven’t been able to conquer them all. I live in SEAsia where there is no therapy available so I’ve had to treat myself through education and anti-anxiety/depression meds.
Swallow
wp
Some years ago, for just a few months I worked at a job where I believe there was at least one… and then as well some other unbalanced and disturbed individuals who went out of their way to make trouble for everyone, and particularly me. It was a text book case of workplace mobbing/bullying. It interfered with my job, and their jobs, but for some reason, even though these people caused productivity loss, and damaged equipment at the workplace, though the manager saw the problem, the owners refused to do anything about it. (I actually started to wonder if the problem person or persons were blackmailing the owners or something.)
During those short months, I had multiple weird medical problems in the middle of summer. I caught a summer flu that year (something that usually doesn’t happen to me, and was more unusual because nobody I knew was sick), I had multiple migraines (which also I usually don’t get in summer), a few other medical problems, and I developed backaches, which I never had any problems with my back ever before… that would ease up considerably on the weekends, and then come back full force on Monday – to the point of where I was walking like an elderly person hunched over a great deal of the time. I had a very decent chair at work, and wasn’t doing any physical labor, and there was no mishap or strain I could say happened before they started, so there was no real explanation for it.
Within 3-4 days of leaving that job, the backaches disappeared completely, as if I’d never had a back problem at all.
I went about a year after that with no migraines at all.
I didn’t catch another cold/flu until the next winter – when there were dozens of people sick, and it wasn’t that unusual.
And I didn’t have another back problem until a couple of years later – which was linked directly to a strain, and cleared up in a week or so, and wasn’t anything like the chronic back problem I had for over 2 months while I was working that job.
My belief is that the brain/mind and body are very much linked. That one’s mind and body will send signals, in whatever way they can, to tell you that the situation you’re in isn’t good.
And there’s plenty of scientific evidence, from multiple reputable medical studies, that suggests stress does indeed have physical effects and contributes to physical ailments and diseases.
So in my opinion, dealing with any type of abusive characters, socially unstable people, or corrupt loved ones, certainly can have an detrimental effect on one’s physical well being.
And the anecdotal stories I’ve heard since looking into these matters, and talking to other people who’ve been in these types of stressful situations with problematic people, cemented my belief.
gennyrabbit
the entire time i was with him i had the same nightmare every night. i couldn’t sleep. after he left i had it for a while until i went to a therapist and then it went away.
notquitebroken
At the outset of our relationship, when I was ignoring my better instinct that said he was too good to be true, I started having migraines. They’ve stopped since it was over.
I’ve recently started having nightmares about murdering him in cold blood and trying to hide the evidence, not sorry I’ve done it, but terrified someone will find out that I could do such a thing. I hope I couldn’t really, if presented with the opportunity. That’s why these dreams are so terrifying to me. Am I the same sort of horrible person?
holywatersalt
I lost weight- never could I lose weight.
I didn’t sleep. Now I sleep and am fighting to keep weight off.
I always felt ill-at-ease…even now their presence makes my
heart jump.
I stay as far as I can- but somethings are unavoidable.
I recall once I was so exhausted and jittery – I looked like what a meth addict must look like.
I think it is because I allowed the psycho’s response to me ( am on their good side or not) to dictate my day. Someone I know who had a r/s with the psycho said the same thing- sadly they are still enmeshed with the psycho.
It was like I was a puppet.
DrSteve
notquitebroken – Migraines (leaving aside problems with bright lights, certain foods, dehydration, etc.) are promoted by unconscious anger, I believe. Of course it’s very hard to express anger towards a psychopath. Also, it may be that psychopaths attract a certain gentle, forgiving person – i.e. an ‘un-angry’ person. So, if my theory is right, it’s not that surprising that migraines increase around these folks.
As for dreams – they are not predictors of the future. Rather, a dream is a symbolic working out of something that’s going on in one’s mind. There is a world of difference between what one dreams and what one does – and it’s only the latter that we should be judged on.
DrSteve
tami and gennyrabbit – Good therapy can certainly make a lot of difference. I think of it as forging new channels for the emotions to flow along so that they don’t get dammed up in particular harmful thought/emotional/physical pools.
stunned
In 15 years with the P, I suffered from bouts of Anorexia, which would pretty much go away without need of intervention during a separation or an outright breakup.
Upon a reconciling after a 9 mos separation, he encouraged a worsening of the Anorexia by suggesting that I was thin but not toned-I should go to the gym and followed that up by showing me his collection of pornography and telling me to compare myself to the women in the photos.
The Anorexia became so severe I almost died from it several times in the first 2 years I was back-it was the first time I was not able to recover from it on my own -it took 6 years to recover.
Each time I made progress and began to gain weight, he would intentionally undermine my progress while simultaneously berating me for not recovering, accusing me of selfishly impacting his life with my eating disorder. Multiple Sclerosis also developed at the same time. Insomnia for 5 years straight along with continual hypervigilence.
For me, it was a combination of direct and intentional undermining of my health and well being along with the effects of the ambient abuse and induced stress which resulted in serious illness.
I believe there was some serious Munchausen’s By Proxy being perpetrated, as he sought attention from everyone he knew 24/7 about my anorexia and the toll it was taking on him having to put up with it.
With each relapse tho, I kept trying to gain weight-I refused to let the relapses prevent me from continuing to strive for progress-that kept me alive but the only way I was able to recover was to get out.
After 3 years out I am plagued by constant nightmares still and insominia due to fear of sleeping/MS symptoms which flare up due to the stress from the nightmares and the lack of sleep-still working thru it but the P definately gave the gift of ill health that kept on giving…nice legacy.
-Stunned
DrSteve
swallow – I hope that this blog is useful to you too. I’d just like to mention that distance therapy/counselling is available on the internet. It can work rather well.