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.
Nolarn ~ It seems like night time is always the hardest when trying to deal with emotional stuff. I’m going to try what used to work for me when I was a bit younger. Get myself lost in a good book. Very often I would read until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. By that time, I wouldn’t be conscious enough to think about what had been bothering me.
Just a thought. G’nite
Goodnite!
OneJoy,
hmmm… we have to talk about your boss. He reminds me of someone… catch you tomorrow.
2becop,
wooohooo for you! You are doing great because you know what she is. They all have that magnetism.
My spath bro is soooooo disgusting. He lives with my parents and he’s 46. He gets food stamps and sells blood for money. Occasionally will take a day job. his laziness knows no bounds. He has admitted to me that he wishes he were a cat so he could just lay around. He has also admitted that he “can manipulate anyone” and that he “kicked kittens to death” (I saved 2 of them) and that he thought about killing 2 old people as they lay sleeping in their bed, when he broke into their home.
The reason I’m telling you this is because he has always, since childhood, had an incredible power over women. In gradeschool, girls in his class would become my friends just to talk about him. He makes women quiver just by looking at them, I’ve seen it in my friends. They can’t stop thinking about him and talking about him. He was extremely handsome when younger. Still not that bad looking.
But he prefers porn to women because the women he has been with (he told me), freak out once they get to know him (like within minutes after sex) Other than a few prostitutes, I imagine he has only had a handful of women in his whole life. He is very aware that he makes women tremble when they look at him, he has told me. But he can’t stand for them to “see” who he really is. He used to wear sunglasses all the time, night and day so people couldn’t see his eyes.
Oh and BTW too, he was very smart in school, spelling bee champion, high grades then dropped out at 16.
Spaths are strange. My spath bro is very different from my spath exp (who sucked at school, is ugly as sin, and unattractive but fucks everything in sight), but the magnetism, the animal sensation, is there. You know that when someone affects you that much, so quickly, they are spath. Only your intellect can save you.
Staring blankly, something I found it way too weird about ex spath.
He would stare without blinking for very long time, totally not human. He has a doughter, now she is 16 years old. He is obsessed about her, every which way. Whwe got married she was young (10), and as she grew, he would stare at her even from the one corner of the room. She would sit in front of him at dinner table, he would just stare, I asked her few times, doesn’t this bother her that he stares at her like this. She kind of shook her shoulder, but somehow she enjoyed the attention he was giving to her. He is a father, but she is a trophy doughter. This guy would check her out and told her she needs to loose weight on her but, when she is perfect weight wise.
He has programmed her since she was young, and me as an outsider can see, something was very sick here. Sorry I am not there to protect her anymore… Hopefully she would know what is normal, what is not normal.
My heart:when you say your ex programmed his daughter..???
Sky:your brother sounds like my spath with the sun shades. Its like.they feel the world knows their secret without them.
So reading all of these stories about all the work we must do to recover from these spaths kicked my sense of compassion into overdrive. What kind of person would I be to not warn his next victim?? I wondered if maybe speaking to her parents would be worthwhile. I searched their names for a wedding announcement, and didn’t find one, but OH MY! Apparently he’s going to France with all of them in September as an “on site massage therapist” for some 6 day workshop. What a friggin’ score for him! Her parents run some company with their two daughters (she’s a photographer) and they run workshops at their villa from time to time. Now I supported that jerk and a baby while he went to massage therapy school, but after he got out I quickly realized he had no intention of making any money at it. All he did was give massages to women he was interested in… telling them he was all about “healing” (and peace and love and effing rainbows… what a joke!!!). I’m guessing this will be some sort of “working honeymoon”. The man couldn’t contribute to a restaurant bill much less a vacation. I paid for everything!! This spath hit a real jackpot. He’s going to rob them all blind. I am really torn with keeping silent and trying to appeal to these poor parents to protect their child by at least knowing the information. That’s all… people need all the information before making an educated decision, but he and his stupid family will keep silent and make me the scapegoat for his horrible behavior. What would you all do?? I reel to think of all the broken hearts he will cause. I know she would never listen, but would her parents? I suspect he will be in his best behavior for a long time with this one…
Eva says:
“Me too, behind blue eyes. Because i’m rather shy and a bit insecure i thought it must had been a misinterpretation of mine due his huge security in himself not that it was inner alarm ringing.”
Interesting comment about insecurity because I have to admit feeing such at that time. In addition, the x-spath was “profiled” online as being highly insecure, something I found interesting as he did not give me that impression.
Actually, he is profiled nearly 180 degrees opposite of what I thought about him, which speaks volumes about mirroring, manipulation and lies of omission.
Wow!
This is how it was….a washing machine!
I was a sensible, intelligent but maybe too trusting woman who became confused and suspicious of everything he said after awhile. There were little shreds of truth thrown in with a larger lie. My intelligent brain told me he was full of shit most of the time. My emotional brain was confused by the soulful looks and seductive voice. The voice is a powerful instrument and in the hands of a spath, can be very intoxicating. It confuses things even more.
He took full advantage of my value of being a nice person. So when I would question him about inconsistencies, I would get in response, “How can you be so suspicious?”, “You are so paranoid!”, “What is YOUR problem?!”
Those kinds of things.
There was no one to kind of bounce off his stuff, to help me make sense of it. That is how he engineered it: “we don’t want anyone in our business.” So it was harder to clear my head.
Now what I am trying to do is to change my thinking. For each thought that comes up about him, I try to find a more acceptable replacement thought. There are pretty common thoughts that arise around thoughts of him. I write each one down and then carefully craft an alternative. Then I repeat the alternative in my head over and over. Remember: the neurons that fire together wire together. So if we keep thinking the same thought over and over, it becomes a neural pathway, and a habit from which a feeling flows.
Trimama,
how are you? have you moved yet? How is the NC going.
I’m glad you are trying to get your head straight regarding the thoughts. Usually the correct answer is 180degrees from the lie he told.
But be careful how you think about it because you can drive yourself crazy trying to understand each little word or detail about his behavior. It is more useful to understand the UNDERLYING disorder in it’s entirety because then all the behavior fits into a pattern and your neural pathways can synchronize better when they fire. Then, as you said, “…feeling flows.” Your knowledge becomes wisdom. Like in the movie “Doubt” with Meryl Streep.
Reading books about narcissism lays down that first layer of understanding. “why is it always about you?” by sandy hotchkiss, did that for me. It is an excellent analysis of the infantile emotions of a narcissist. “Why does he do that? inside the minds of angry men” By Lundy Bancroft, put down another layer of understanding. So there is a lot of really good understanding about narcissism out there.
There isn’t so much of that regarding the socipath, which is the next level of malignancy. People don’t really understand how the sociopath thinks and why it lies sooooo much and why it is addicted to the pain of others. I take more of an anthropological view of this and see the spath as a throw back to primordial humanity (the snake brain). The spath “feels” to me like a mythological creature, which morphs, mirrors, seeds its evil, and slithers away, not wishing to gain anything, only wanting your demise. He is an infant that doesn’t want to grow up and doesn’t want you to grow up either. He wants you to stay and decay with him in his stunted emotional state. Your growth makes him envious.
Sky, I’d be interested to know WHO One-steps boss reminds you of.
Sometimes LF totally frustrates me. I find myself strenuiously disagreeing with some of the advice given. Some of the fiercely held beleifs. I don’t want to engage in drama. Tire of trying to help. Tire of my own reactions.
Sometimes I need to detache, breath, restore myself.
I enjoy the fellowship, and the mutual experiences, however, miss it when I retire for awhile.
I have been using some mindfulness techniques, and meditation as well as some questioning my beliefs about myself, people places and things…trying to work on the all or nothing dichotomy…the black/white thinking that gets my emotions in a panty wad. Seems to be helping a lot.
Thanks for mentioning ACT a while back. I’ve been reading a lot about it and trying out some of the techniques.
Hope you are well and happy, today.