Editor’s note: Resource Perspectives features articles written by members of Lovefraud’s Professional Resources Guide.
Sarah Strudwick, based in the UK, is author of Dark Souls—Healing and recovering from toxic relationships. She has also created a wonderful animation that describes the antics of a sociopath, called Exposing the Mask of Insanity. View the animation here.
Getting your head out of the washing machine
By Sarah Strudwick
Sarah Strudwick profile in the Lovefraud Professional Resources Guide
I often receive emails from people asking me to talk about different subjects. One recent subject was the mind-bogglingly creative ways in which a sociopath will literally mess with your head. A client came up with the perfect analogy and said she felt like her head had been in a washing machine.
The sociopath will use many different techniques—gaslighting, emotional blackmail, manipulation, creating confusion, lying and creating fear.
Gaslighting, for example, is the type of abuse whereby an abuser uses an increasing frequency of systematically withholding factual information from the victim, and/or providing false information. This has the gradual effect of making victims anxious, confused, and less able to trust their own memory and perception. When it’s done for a long enough period, you will literally start losing your mind and feel like your head has been in a washing machine for most of the time you have been in relationship.
It could come in the form of verbal gaslighting, whereby the sociopath manipulates by lying to control information. They may also do it to keep you off balance psychologically. The classic example of gaslighting is to change things in a person’s environment without their knowledge, and to explain that you “must be imagining things” when you challenge these changes.
Let’s say they wanted you to think you were forgetful. You lose your car keys then they help you find them. Whilst they have been very “helpful” searching for the keys with you, the keys suddenly appear in the ignition of your dashboard. You’re thinking, “I am sure I didn’t put them there.” They say, “Oh silly you, see you are so careless, you need to be more careful otherwise someone could have stolen our car!” The reality is they are the ones that moved them there in the first place.
One very sneaky trick a sociopath I knew used on me was to hack into my hotmail account, not change the password but selectively delete some of the incoming messages so I would see them one minute and the next they were gone.
More tactics
Sociopaths appear to have selective amnesia. They may say things like, “I don’t ever remember saying that I think you have you’re wires crossed,” or “Did I really say that?”
They are experts at creating unpredictability. The victim feels on edge because they never know where they stand and the goalposts are constantly shifting. Victims always remain hyper-vigilant, wondering when the abuser is likely to have an outburst or change of mood. As a result, the victim may start to feel frightened and unsettled.
Other tactics might include keeping the victim unaware of what is going on and what changes are taking place. For example, they may make plans for you and then cancel them, or talk about you behind your back, with the intention of isolating you from others. This type of abuse is done with the intention of keeping the victim in a constant state of anxiety and confusion.
There are a number of other mind blasting techniques that do not fit into any of the other types of verbal abuse categories, such as putting you down, being verbally abusive, using the silent treatment and so on. These tactics can also apply the narcissistic type personality.
The silent treatment is a favourite weapon of both personality types, and is particularly effective because it renders you unable to communicate anything to them. This is the most powerful weapon in their arsenal of sneaky abuse tactics.
Crazymaking comments
Other tactic includes conversations or actions that divert from the original argument or put blame back on the victim, but often they are very ambiguous. These comments are meant to make you feel crazy, confused, off guard and unable to respond. For example:
“I think the fact that you are really angry is stopping you from seeing things clearly. Let’s talk about this another time.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. Why would I do such a thing? I wasn’t going to tell you, but only yesterday, I went out and bought you that present you wanted.”
“Look, if you are going to cry every time we have a conversation, how can I answer you? You’re not really in a fit state. Here, have a tissue and let’s talk about something else instead.”
“I really don’t see any point in discussing this further until you have all your facts straight.”
“It’s all your imagination. Isn’t it about time you went back on the antidepressants darling? Here let me make you a cup of tea.”
The mist clears
If you are left feeling confused and crazy by their gaslighting behaviour, their verbal assaults and emotional demands and strange conversations, stop!
This is exactly how they want you to feel. The minute you become aware of what they are doing, and the fact that they are actually manipulating you, sometime miracles happen.
You realise much of what they say and do makes no sense at all. You take yourself out of the washing machine. Your head stops spinning and suddenly the mist clears. You realise you are not crazy, but they are.
After the relationship many victims of sociopaths have literally felt like their head had been in a spin cycle. They are left emotionally, spiritually and financially drained. On an energetic level you have literally been sucked dry and brainwashed until you have no idea what is real or imagined anymore.
My advice is to start writing down what the sociopath says to you and you will soon find yourself wanting to take your head out of the washing machine— hopefully long before the spin dry and they have completely taken you to the cleaners.
Thanks Oxdrover..that is what I thought….
Another question:
Sorry I am probably annoying right now. How can his parents love him? He has stolen so much from them and lies all of the time to them. Do they just put up with it. They have been enabling him his whole life. He is thirty living at home with his son. He walks the walk so his parents keep enabling him….he puts on the show of: he goes to church on Sundays with them, sees a psychiatrist, sees a counselor and goes to AA. He knows he can’t change. He does that to put on the show so his parents will keep helping him. Hey….I don’t mind because they send me checks to help pay my debt off from a hole piece of crap. I say keep enabling him and bailing him out until my debt is paid off. Thanks enablers.
@seriously, yes sociopaths *can* cry. Some may pull it off better than others.. but they can. They call them “Crocodile Tears”… if you try to hash a motive for each action they do.. you will understand.
Let’s take crying- why would they cry? It is a tool for eliciting sympathy. Normally when you see a child, or even an adult cry, you feel a desire to soothe them– well they are manipulating this “discriminative stimulus” ( Stimulus which elicits a specific response. In this case, because it pulls on your heart-strings, your moral compass. ) to their own ends.
This excerpt from Martha Stout’s book, “The Sociopath Next Door” may be helpful.
She writes :
“Question your tendency to pity too easily : Respect should be reserved for the kind and the morally courageous. Pity is another socially valuable response, and it should be reserved for innocent people who are in genuine pain or who have fallen on misfortune. If, instead, you find yourself often pitying someone who consistently hurts you or other people, and who actively campaigns for your sympathy, the chances are close to 100 percent that you are dealing with a sociopath.”
Most victims of sociopaths, as illustrated by Sandra Brown in her book ( Women Who Love Psychopaths ) are generous and kind hearted. You would think these traits to normally be considered strengths, but in the hands of a sociopath they are “weaknesses” “potholes” and “strings” which the sociopath uses to manipulate. Yes, they are the lowest of scum.
There’s an “emotional detachment” because they lack emotions, feelings. Martha Stout writes in the same book ( of the question of whether one might be “hurting” sociopaths feelings by ignoring them ) :
“You will not be hurting anyone’s feelings. Strange as it seems, and though they may try to pretend otherwise, sociopaths do not have any such feelings to hurt.”
And of course, in this example I will doubly stress, “though they may try to pretend otherwise.” Remember, all these “tools” to elicit your pity ( Crying, etc ) are just those- tools, NOT REAL. He is as cold as a robot, he’s just angry that his prey has wised up. Sociopaths may become intensely frustrated and annoyed, that their usual tricks aren’t “working”, but they have no “real tears” to shed ( the ones you may see are as I said before, “Crocodile Tears”).
By the way, the S that I encountered lied on resumes too, and set up fake references with fake numbers ( he said he got female “friends”- [not that the sociopath has any real friends] to answer the phone, apparently ), and I was surprised, a bit taken aback. His response was, ( smugly, and very cavalierly) “Everyone does it.”
Dancing nancies,
“Women who love psychopaths” was CO-written by Dr. Liane Leedom and Sandra Brown, then Sandra did a “second edition” to this book, without Dr. Leedom. Sandra has an “M. A.” but is not even a licensed therapist, she calls herself a “life coach,” I think (unless something has changed since I last checked on her credentials) Dr. Leedom is an MD and a psychiatrist.
There are some very interesting things in the FIRST edition of the book about the similarities of the victims, just as the psychopaths have similar traits, so do we.
OSomething so weird. My x would tell me about his counseling sessions. T After we were not together and he knew that I knew his game. I told him that if he truly wanted help he would tell his counselor hes a sociopath. I also told him that there is no help for him bc sociopaths can’t. Be fixed or changed. I don’t know what bull he was feeding her bc she told him not to contact me so he could heal. Shouldn’t it be the other way around. So now I have to talk to his parents about financial crap. It’s better for my healing that way but geeze…give me a break. Does anyone believe in karma? Any stories of these people getting their crap handed back to them? Thanks for listening. Anyone ever meet in person on here to talk and help one another get through this? I could use some girl therapy time. I’m 30 and feel like I wasted so much time w my xspath.
Seriously-mine cried all the time when I started to get the strength to break up with him. That’s how he manipulated me. I would tell them that I didn’t want to be with him anymore and he would cry and beg me not to do it. Please DO NOT fall for it. They are pretenders.
Shelby-you do have a support group here. I can relate to not having anyone to talk to and sometimes, these people on here were the only ones I talked to about things. Please keep reading as much as you can on here because your eyes will be completely opened and you will see through them. A lot of people here who have gone through some terrible things may also have a lot of good advice for you-even in things legal if you need it. Sorry you have to be here, but it’s a good place when you feel like you have no where else to go.
Oxdrover, I must have purchased the second edition, because i bought it just earlier this year. The second edition of the book also had a substantial set of information on the similarities of victims of psychopaths.. extroversion, unusually high levels of empathy, etc. But I didn’t know about Liane Leedom having co-authored the first edition. Hope they didn’t having a falling out because I respect both of them for their contributions to psychopathy education.
I thought I would share with you all one of my favorite lines from Martha Stout’s book, “The Sociopath Next Door.”
( she prefaces this sentence with the preoccupation of adults with being “polite” with people– even with those who have wronged you, such as the sociopath[who is not a real “human/person”, per se]- who takes full advantage of this politeness to his exploitative benefit )
“Do not be afraid to be unsmiling and calmly to the point.”
Amen.
@seriously… yes I believe that the evil reap what they sow. Even if not in this lifetime, they will have it coming.
Someone referred to this verse on LF a long time ago and it really helped me.
Romans 12:19 ( KJV )
19Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
And you can bet that our feable attempts at a sort of vengeance ( Which may possibly involve coming back within contact with the S ) in this lifetime cannot compare with that of God’s, who “records our tears” for it is also written :
Psalm 56:8 (KJV)
8Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?
Most important I think it is to secure your safety. Cut off all dealings with the sociopath in any shape or form, try to have as little contact as possible. The rest is up to God.
no longernaive: Thank you for your comment. I am so glad that I now have a place to go. I read the comments and it is scary to see all of the people that have been affected by sociopaths. The crying, the stealing, the lies, deception and all of a complete fiction by these nutbags. My ex-boyfriend even lied to his therapist. He admitted that toward the end.
I just want him to leave me alone. And, I want to move on without being frightened.
Shelby-you are just like everyone who comes here. I was fortunate with mine because HE dumped me and threw me away. At the time I was beyond devastated. I came here and found out what he was-a narcissist and a psychopath. Some of the people here though are in really dire and scary situations. Keep reading and talking to people and keep your chin up because it WILL get better. 🙂