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.
Re-traumatising and PTSD
(Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)
By Sarah Strudwick
Sarah Strudwick profile in the Lovefraud Professional Resources Guide
Everyone always writes about the positive aspects of coming out of a relationship with a psychopathic personality. You read things about how as a result of being in such a toxic relationship, it empowers you and teaches you how to recognise and spot predators. If you have never learnt how to have boundaries in the past, you learn how to have them. You learn about healthy self-respect and self-love, and most people decide, if they have had proper counseling, that they will never come have this type of relationship again.
When it comes to future dating, if you have never been able to spot the warning signs of what could be a relationship based on power and control, you learn those, too. That way you never enter relationships that are likely to harm you again.
There are many, many positives that come out of the relationship with the narcissist or the psychopath, but what is the downside of having had a relationship with a psychopath? And do people really understand how the relationship has affected its victims?
Triggers
Few therapists really understand what goes on with a psychopathic personality and the damage they can do to their victims. Chances are, the abuser will often turn the tables on the victim and try to blame them. Sometimes they might even tell the therapist that the victim is crazy, and being such charming, convincing characters, it’s not long before the therapist is on the narcissist’s side, questioning the sanity of the victim.
Most victims of psychopathic personalities suffer from PTSD long after the event. It takes many forms, and it needs a very understanding therapist to understand exactly what is going on, and to not judge the victim for being triggered. It could be something as small as a smell that triggers them, or the fact that they bump into someone in the street who looks like their abuser. If a victim has had a history of attracting abusive types throughout his or her life, then the victim may start to develop the “girl/boy who cried wolf” syndrome, whereby if they want to tell the therapist something, they feel the therapist won’t believe them. Perhaps the therapist may appear to be disinterested in what the victim is telling them. They will say things like, “Well you should be happy, after all, think of all the positives.” “You have a nice job now, things are going good aren’t they?” “Think how lucky you are to be rid of (fill in the blank).”
A small trigger like the above is fairly easy for the victim to deal with. But what happens if something more serious happens within a few years of leaving a psychopath? Say, for example, you are put in a situation where you meet another psychopath who threatens your safety. This is challenging enough for anyone who has never even been in relationship with one, but its even more challenging when you have already had a relationship with one. Victims are often left hypervigilant, and know exactly how to spot abusers far better than they did before. So when another abusers slips through their radar, the victims will immediately blame themselves, and say things like, “Why didn’t I spot them?” “Why didn’t I see it coming?”
Why? Because the person doing it is a psychopath, and they can trick and con anyone. Even with the best tools, experts get conned by these people day in day out.  My friend is an “expert” on psychopathic personalities, and yet she still got caught out again by these insidious individuals. The therapist, on the other hand, may just pooh pooh it, and think it’s just another trigger.
My friend’s experience
Most recently a friend contacted me who was unfortunate to have had a run-in with another psychopath after her relationship with the previous psychopath had ended. It had been more than two years, so she was already well on her way to being completely healed.
What happened was pretty disgusting and would have been enough to upset any normally stable person, but this particular situation sent my friend into a tailspin. The therapist, not recognising that she had PTSD from her previous encounter that was re-triggered by this new event with a different psychopathic person, decided to prescribe her antidepressants. As a result of her interactions with the therapist, when she eventually went back for counseling she decided to tell the therapist she was okay and that nothing was wrong.
Nothing could be further from the truth. But what happens is that victims may start to feel like there is no point in even telling their therapist anything, because they just don’t get it. The therapist may put the victims reaction down to being “hypersensitive” or “reactionary.”
To change or not to change
I have been in a similar situation myself and it puts the target in a difficult situation. They don’t want to go and see another therapist, because the new therapist will ask why the victim has left the previous therapist. If they do find someone else it, then means churning everything all over again from the past that isn’t necessary, and that the victim doesn’t particularly want to talk about, thus reinforcing any old traumas that may well have been dealt with. The therapist may blame it on the victim’s old pattern, and not even understand that this is a “brand new trauma” with a “brand new psychopath,” complicated by the fact that they are also dealing with re-traumatising and probably a bit of PTSD thrown in for good measure.
(Notice I use the term target, as pyschopaths will target both people who have been victims of psychopaths and those who have never had the misfortune of meeting them.)
Options
As a result, the target feels helpless and victimised again, and although, like any normal person, they may wish to seek help because of their previous experiences, they are left with a couple of options.
1) Sharing their experiences with people who have been through the same, i.e., other victims/targets. This can be okay, but sometimes this can prolong the healing, especially if they go on forums where the victims actually enjoy being stuck in victim mode and then they have to churn up all the old stuff again, which they don’t want to do.
2) Sharing their experiences with friends and family, most of whom do not understand at all and really don’t want to hear it all again, least of all that the victim may have met another psycho.
3) Internalising it and trying to figure out for themselves why they are being re-traumatised again, and dealing with it the best way they can.
The third option is okay IF they have done enough healing and had a good therapist in the first place. But what if the therapy they got in the first place wasn’t enough? The victim is back to square one, and may have to start their healing all over again.
Getting it
My hope is that one day, therapists really start to understand what it feels like to be in a relationship with a psychopath, and not just to lecture their clients about what victims should and shouldn’t do. Most therapists may have had a few run-ins with the odd narcissist, which although unpleasant enough in itself, compared to the psychopath is pretty easy to spot and a walk in the park to some degree. However few, if any, therapists have ever had to deal with a true psychopathic malignant narcissist.
Having had more than a few run-ins with psychopaths, when I wrote Dark Souls it took me many months after thinking I was completely healed to realise that PTSD was what was keeping me stuck, and not that I was some kind of psycho attractor. A colleague finally reminded me that the only types of people who are likely to read a book like mine are those who have been victims, or those who are psychopaths thinking they are buying a book that will teach some new tricks. Sadly for them, my book is to empower victims of psychopaths, not the other way around.
The general public is not aware of psychopathic behaviour. Very few therapists, on the other hand, understand psychopathic behaviour at all ,unless they have worked directly with them, or been on the receiving end of one of their scams.
There is no quick fix when it comes to getting over a psychopath and you will only heal as quickly as you allow yourself to. The good news is that therapy works for neurotics who have been victimised by these people, so by seeking therapy you are on the first step to recovery. My advice to anyone seeking help, if they have been with someone they know to be a psychopath, is to make sure you seek someone that understands their disordered personalities and has dealt with victims of psychopaths, sociopaths or narcissists, or you could be in for a long bumpy ride.
Kathy,
can’t wait for your next blog post!
I can so relate to what you said about forgiving too soon. That is what I did, at age 18 with my parents, but there were things that should have been talked about and dealt with then and there. Instead we swept them under the rug for another 25 years and we all felt so much better. In the meantime, those seeping wounds were attracting flies (in the form of spaths) into my family. Now we are surrounded by spaths and are in fear of them. Lots of blame gets shifted around, but nobody wants to cauterize that wound.
I guess forgiveness isn’t really forgiveness if nobody takes responsibility and it shouldn’t always be a scapegoat taking the responsibility, it should be the perpetrator.
Hi Dancingnancies.
Thank you so much for your insightful and loving words of encouragement. Thank you so much for helping me remember that truth. Thank you, thank you! I “know” I do not want illusion… I know that when I experience that “raw beauty”(love that!) with my four year old in a fit of laughter, when he says “Mama? I need some love!”, and whenever we are together in the present moment; I “know” it when I write with my students; I “know” it in headstand… I “know” it in theory and in body! Just as I know I will be at times swept away by false memories (illusion) with the same strength they promised when i was a girl (anything, please, but this reality right here and now!)… and… I also know what I do with those “swept aways” is what really matters, which is, allow them to pass as they always do… Thank you so much for that boost. It’s so nice to be understood! Hugs…
And to Skylar (and all of course): I fear I misrepresented myself as a “blind” therapist here, especially when your response suggests my statement, then, does not “bode well” for the world. YIKES!!!! I fear my laziness and subtle reference to being a therapist shortchanged both my field and my credentials/skills, etc. Here and now is not the time to defend them (or me), which I do not feel I am called to do here one bit, but I just want to clarify that even in blindness, like many of us, I think, we are still able to sympathetic/empathetic/healing to those, and ourselves who are suffering–no matter what the issue. If a client is herself suffering in an abusive relationship with a SP or anyone at all, with whom or why she is suffering has little to do with the “other” first or foremost; I will first listen to her, validate her, tell her what I am hearing, and refrain from judgements one way or the other of any kind. As therapists, our job is to listen and reflect back, offer a loving, present relationship where one feels safe enough to heal, be in her truth. If a therapist (or lawyer, or clerk, or …) does not hold that space with a client, then that therapist is not doing her job.
In other words, my awakening on a personal level to the SP is still in process, which speaks to my (our?) humanity–the failure to believe that our species is truly capable of being reptilian–(I am still and will always be shocked by this and I think it is important to be in shock about this!); however, long before I was awakened to this truth, my ability and methodology and that of my healing community, has always been to honor the client where they are, not to argue/discredit/deny their truth!! That indeed, would not bode well for anyone! Akin to saying “just get over it,” or as Newhart satirizes: “JUST STOP IT!” One thing I love so much about this site is how we all share the common gift of being human—therapists, moms, dads, singers, actors, kids, elders, etc—and no matter how much we know or what we do, our very “humanness” has “betrayed” us by falling for the reptilians… this site celebrates that humanness instead of berating it and encourages it’s survival all the way while offering loving words of caution and true stories. Thank you all so much. Big hug. B
Dear Kathy,
Thank you for the kind words, and I agree, it isn’t what “really” happened but what we thought about it, how we felt about it, and what the consequence to ourselves was.
I think a lot of times though OTHER PEOPLE’S Unfactual (for lack of a better word) memories can impact negatively on US….like a witness that identifies me as the killer or robber when I was NOT the killer or the robber….and that false accusation is devastating to my life.
The psychopaths with their lies and their gaslighting can implant false memories in others and in ourselves too, and twist reality until we are not SURE what is real and what is not.
Son D has swiss cheese memory too…and sometimes he and I both remember an event, but we remember it differently. We are BOTH AWARE of this so we don’t “fight” over waht is “true and what isn’t.”
We laugh about it and agree that neither of us is SURE. Once we were going to change the water filter under our kitchen sink. He had installed ONE water filter oon the COLD water tap…and as he was removing all the stuff you keep under the sink, he mentioned it was on the HOT water tap….andn I said “No, it is on the cold water tap.” He said “Look, I installed it I KNOW it is on the HOT water tap.” I said “No, it is on the cold.”
So he got under there and sure enough I was in this instance RIGHT, he looked up at me and said “YOU MOVED THE DAMNED THING JUST TO SPITE ME!” and we both laughed. He was SURE it was on the hot water side, and I was SURE it was on the cold water side. We have things like that happen all the time where he will remember one thing and I will remember another but we don’t let it bother us or think the other person is gaslighting because we have absolute trust in each other to tell the TRUTH as we REMEMBER IT, but we also know that our memories are sometimes faulty. So we both make a lot of lists of things to get when we go to town, things to do each day that we don’t want to forget and we are FLEXIBLE with each other and with things.
Learning not to put pressure on him, or myself, has been a long process, but because I can trust him and he trusts me….when we disagree about something, or how something happened, we both are agreeable to “neither one of us may know what actually happened,” so we will go with the flow and fix the problem without ascribing any responsibility or blame to either of us.
With both of us having short term memory problems, one of the worst things we have a “problem” with is if we can’t find something we want or need (a tool or whatever) we don’t know if WE moved it ourself and don’t remember doing it or if the other one moved it and doesn’t remember where it is either. LOL But because we love each other and both accept that the other one as well as ourselves have a problem with this…we try to work together to keep up with stuff—plus, after having our “sticky fingered” friend living out here a couple of years ago, we are still finding stuff that is “missing’ that she probably glommed onto but we can’t be entirely sure…because our memories aren’t 100%, so it is frustrating, but we try to make the best of it and endure rather than assign “blame.” Especially not to each other.
Dear Bodhi.
Welcome to LF and glad you are here. This is a great place and learning that there ARE people who have no empathy, kindness or compassion is an “eye opener” for some of us who wish that deep down there was “good in everyone”—-would be nice if there were, but unfortunately there are people there are NO socially redeeming features in their character…the only word I can use to describe them is evil.
Healing from them, even as a professional, and there are several mental health and health care professionals here and I think we have all been more than statistically represented here by those of us in the “helping” professions being more likely I think to be hoodwinked in our personal lives because of our own empathetic and caring bent.
Learning for me (as a retired mental and medical health care professional) that I am as you point out HUMAN and subject to being fooled by a psychopath just as easily as anyone else. Accepting that humanity, that vulnerability to being taken in by a psychopath and that I ALLOWED IT and why I allowed it was pretty traumatic until I came here to LF and saw I AM NOT ALONE IN THIS…there are others here who are educated and who have been just as vulnerable as I was. I am not “stoopid” or unusually flawed, just human.
Welcome again, glad to have you here! God bless.
I wish Lovefraud was around 30 years ago when I was left by my spath. I haven’t seen him in 30 years. I am passed the point of recovery that a lot of you are going through. Two years after my spath left me I met my current husband. So I’ve been in a good marriage ever since but now years later I find myself having nightmares about what took place many years ago.
My spath used me & married me so he could marry his next victim who was a very wealthy heiress.
At the time he married me he was very much in debt. I didn’t find out about it until after we married. On top of that he was in a 4 year relationship with another woman I didn’t even know existed. She got the surprise of her life when she found out about me. She found out about me on our wedding night & came to our apartment screaming & ranting. I knew instinctively on our wedding eve our marriage was doomed.
If only she had arrived days sooner to tell me what was going on I probably would not have gone through with the wedding.
My spath had his eyes on the wealthy heiress he married after me but he used me to get out of debt so he could marry her. Her family was very wealthy. They didn’t even know I existed or that he was married to me while he was courting her. He even took our tax return and used it to take her away on a weekend before he left me. He brought her diamond engagement ring with our savings. I found all this out after the fact several years later.
When he left I was a basket case. I tried to get therapy. But as someone above already said, few therapist’s are qualified to deal with the victim of a spath. No one understands unless they have been through it themselves. After the spath finishes with you, you come across as the crazy one until you get your head together. Which can take 2-3 years. That’s how long it took me to get it together.
I can remember very vividly, the night the mask fell & he told me he was leaving. I told him off and told him everything I thought about him. On top of all the liasons he was having, one of his hussies called me & told me of all the women in his life including her. She wanted revenge because he had disguarded her. I didn’t know at the time he had gotten engaged to the wealthy heiress while we were still married. And her folks gave her an extravagant wedding not knowing he was a spath and had just disguarded his wife a few months earlier. He told her family she was his first spouse. Never married. As it turned out she was number 3.
I was number 2 but also had been told I was number one.
The night he left I called his mother & questioned her why she never warned any one. I told her you know what he is but you never tell any one why I said? Can you believe she told me : “You’re the crazy bitch that fell for his lies, he duped you and you were stupid enough to go along with it?”
After he left I never contacted him. We broke up cold-turkey that night. I had to be strong. I had 2 kids from a prior marriage and I even went to work the next morning. I wore sun glasses to work because he had beaten me up & given me two black eyes. He beat me up because I told him everything I thought about him. I even told him about one of his mistresses calling me & giving me the low down. Funny at the time even she didn’t know about his engagement to an heiress out of state.
When I read the boards and see what you ladies are going through I can empathize with you all but know it will get better when you remove the spath completely from your life & move on. You can make a new life for yourself if you move on. I did it you can too.
Joanie
Dear Joanie,
Thank you for your post and your story of redemption and healing! Your “testimony” shows that you do know what you are talking about and that you have been there. Glad that you did not have kids with the jerk water at least! Glad that you were able to pull your life together in spite of not having Love Fraud and someone who understood. Thanks so much for sharing!
Yes, sometimes the nightmare emotions do come back after we think we have put those ghosts to rest long ago…but I have no doubt that you will resolve those “ghosts” and put them back into their crypts! Good luck and God bless. Glad you are here.
Dear Oxy ~ I’m sorry to hear that you’re having back problems today.
You mentioned having differing memories than your son. I am wondering… Can that be attributed to PTSD? The reason that I ask is because my husband and I have the same problem. We have trouble remembering where we put things, etc. Goodness knows we’ve had lots of stress in our life due to his ex SSV (soul sucking vampire) and the teen.
“You’re the crazy bitch that fell for his lies, he duped you and you were stupid enough to go along with it?”
These are the “persons” i find more damaging than the spaths themselves.
People who surround the spath know they’re poison but they shut up. This should not be so extremely common as it is, but it is.
Joanie, It sounds like his mother is pretty spathy, as well. Biatch.
Dear Eva ~ “People who surround the spath know they’re poison but they shut up. This should not be so extremely common as it is, but it is.”
This statement is true, without a doubt. In the case of my husband’s ex, people are afraid of her. She is so manipulative that she causes problems for anyone who doesn’t go along with her. She even intimidates her own mother, who is a very sweet elderly lady.