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.
Dark Soul as a destroyer
By Sarah Strudwick
Sarah Strudwick profile in the Lovefraud Professional Resources Guide
Psychopaths are known for their lack of fear, but at the same time they often have other associated personality disorders along side, such as malignant narcissism. Deep down they have a sense of self-hatred and loathing, which is why they feel the need to have a constant fix of kind loving, empathic individuals that they can then slowly pull down to their own level. It’s a bit like the analogy I put in my book, Dark Souls, where they take a helpless spider and pull the legs off one by one—just to see what happens. Why do they do it? Because they can.
So why does the Dark Soul or psychopath feel the need to destroy their victims when the relationship is well and truly over?
Many targets complain that well after the relationship ends they are stalked by the psychopath, or they continue to bombard them with emails and spam. Sometimes they will try and befriend you on Facebook, or constantly monitor what you are doing by stalking you. Even when you have moved on with your life, recovering from financial hardship, emotional stress and so on, the psychopathic personality is not happy. With their own deep sense of self-hatred, they will often feel jealous, and may be vindictive by sending you viruses on your PC or other inconveniences. It’s their way of saying, “You think you have moved on, but I will be there in the background constantly monitoring you.”
It’s also their way of bringing you down to their disgustingly low level. On a conscious level, they know exactly what they are doing and want a reaction. They hope you will hate them as much as they hate themselves. Even if you have no evidence with them they want to continue contact, and being extremely narcissistic, it’s all about getting attention, any kind of attention. What better way to get your attention than, for example, to hack your computer or send you vile pictures on your computer? What better way for them to project their vile, angry, unowned thoughts and feelings back onto their victim, so that they do not have to own them?
Psychopaths are notorious for using sneaky underhanded tactics when it comes to playing dirty, whether it is getting the authorities or lawyers on their side, or other members of the family. They will always find a way to turn the tables back onto their victims and say they did nothing, creating crazymaking behaviour. If and when the victim finally has had enough and lashes back, the Dark Soul can then say, “See I told you she/he was crazy – look what she did!”
The worst thing you can do to a Dark Soul is be indifferent to them. Since causing a reaction is their game, this creates a distinct kind of “does not compute” interference with their brain chemistry. It’s almost as if they cannot understand why no one would react to their silly games. If you can, imagine a robot about to explode. This is the reaction that indifference causes to the psychopath.
They may be thinking to themselves, “I hacked into their computer today, why didn’t they do anything?” “I sent them those disgusting pictures via email, but why didn’t they respond or react?”
Because the psychopath is so sneaky, and makes sure to do everything in a way that you know they are doing it but they cannot be caught, it’s a fine line between being indifferent to them and enabling them. They end up feeling so omnipotent, they think they can actually get away with anything.
Those who have malignant narcissism and psychopathy, or sociopathic traits or both, do understand the concepts of the law and how they will only go so far. After all, it would an inconvenience for them to end up in prison.
To some degree, let them be the destroyer, but keep evidence along the way, so long as it’s not causing you physical or emotional harm. However, when things get out of hand, let them know in no uncertain terms what evidence you have on them, because at the end of the day all they are doing is digging themselves an even bigger grave to put themselves in. Having said that, it’s not as if they need one, because they died a long time ago.
When you have finally had enough of their stupid games, make it very clear that you have been careful enough to have collected evidence on them and give them the shovel. Trust that like all good sociopaths, they will get caught eventually from their own stupidity, and will end up digging their own graves.
Sarah, great article and so true, they do want REVENGE once the relation-shit is over, and for what it’s worth, research has shown that thinking about revenge lights up the “pleasure centers” of the brain….just thinking about it….so I am fairly sure that they get a chemical reward inside their brain for the thinking about and acting on the REVENGE motive….
While many of them do just “play games” there are those that are genuinely dangerous. The article Donna put up about the SWATTING is only one example of the “dirty tricks” that they play, but others will stalk and kill, not only the victim that escaped, but their families as well…that guy who was in the news lately that killed several people in multiple houses, including an 11 year old boy, because of a “fight” with his girl friend and her family members over him not cleaning up trash at the family’s home that he was living in before the cops shot him to death.
While not all psychopaths are even likely to become killers, it is best I think to be “safe, not sorry” where it comes to dealing with people who have even shown verbal violence, and if someone has shown ANY tendency for physical violence, EXPECT the worst and hope for the best.
Excellent article Sarah,
they do want us to join them in their hell. That’s the bottom line.
I was reading about borderline personality disorder and now see how it relates to spath disorder.
From psychcentral:
I do believe the problem with spaths is that they envy us for having a meaningful existance, which they can never have. So when they see us recovering from their attack, they must come back and finish us off.
Thanks for reminding us of the importance of keeping records.
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Constantine- I agree with you. It’s a common misconception- but a misconception no less. To feel self-loathing, I think, requires the ability to reflect on one’s behaviors ( self-reflection ) and introspect. Psychopaths don’t. They are keenly aware that their calculated behaviors have a negative, degrading effect on their target, and they like it. They enjoy this. That would be inconsistent with self-loathing. As such, the notion that psychopaths are the devil-incarnate/manifest is right on target. Why? Because they purposefully and consciously abuse others- and they have no internal reservations about it, whatsoever.
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Hi Constantine,
I woke up and it’s 2AM.
Self-loathing and shame isn’t a straight forward thing.
From what I understand, it has nothing to do with what a person has done. It is a feeling about who you are and your basic core as a person. It is a slime that has been put on you, often times by sexual or other abuse as a child. Parental rejection creates shame on a child. The shame is about what you are, which is different from guilt about what you’ve done. This shame is so overwhelming that the person chooses not to feel it at all and instead feels no shame and behaves shamelessly.
This doesn’t absolve the behavior, it only explains it. As a child, the person isn’t responsible because he has no perspective to understand his own behavior, but as an adult, it now becomes his responsibility.
Spaths feel all the things that they project on us. The slime we feel when we encounter them, is what they “feel”. But they aren’t aware of feeling it at all. They have numbed themselves and all that’s left is the overwhelming need to make others feel bad, so that they don’t have to live in their hell alone.
Interesting you talk about shame Skylar, my P used to talk about being shameless. He said he wanted to be called into court on a count of shameless indecency and then be able to tell the judge, that he felt no shame at all about whatever the instance was
I think something happened to him when he was a child about aged 7. I think there were issues with his mother. I was told after I dumped him that his mother used to put his hand on the hot cooker when he stole biscuits form the tin.
Yup, my X had not one trace of self loathing. Oh, he played humble quite well, but it was the first thing to crack.I knew he was a narcissist long before I realized he was a sociopath. After two years of NC, he suddenly sent an email to my daughter, all about how wonderful he was doing and how he hadn’t been in a “serious relationship” the whole 14 years we were together. Since it happened right after I happened to go into the place he used to work, I can only assume someone mentioned to him how much happier I am now, not to mention healthier. After we stopped laughing over his boasting, she blocked him. I did nothing to that man, yet he felt compelled to hurt me after all that time.
He certainly can’t (and with me didn’t try) to blame it on his childhood. He had a wonderful mother and sister who raised him. I had the traumatic childhood, it made me into a victim, not someone who tortures someone else. And at that, I choose not to be a victim any more.
Since X is dangerous, I keep a low profile. But I think the reason he hates me is because he knows darn well that I keep records. Maybe it wouldn’t hold up in a court of law, but it certainly would convince most people he wasn’t at all what he pretends to be. He’s all about the Mr. Nice Guy image he’s so carefully built. He has no idea that people don’t take him at his own self evaluation as much any more. What passed for charming and off beat at age 20 comes across as weird and creepy at age 50.
romantic,
I do agree that it is a choice. These people choose not to feel pain and instead decide that others should feel their pain.
But as far as how they got slimed… it could be anyone.
My spath had a very good mother, AFAIK, but he blamed her for everything and hated her. He told me he loved her, but at the end, the mask came off and he showed that he hated her and all women. The true culprit was his spath father and spath grandfather, both of whom he idealized. Actually, he said that his grandfather was an abusive and raging alcoholic but that he kept chocolate bars on top of the refrigerator and if spath waited until he was sober, the spath gf would give him a special treat. I told spath, “HE WAS GROOMING YOU!”
If you’ve read my previous posts, you know what my parents did to me. But I have not been able to see them as anything but saintly since I was 20 years old. My mother prays the rosary every night. She used to bless me whenever I left her house. All the while knowing that I was with a man who didn’t love me and she didn’t say a word.
Parents are not always what their masks make them out to be.
Skylar, while I agree with you, X really didn’t have a traumatic childhood. Believe me, he would have used it if he could. He only feels for himself, no one else has any reality to him. Once he knew I was on to him, he stopped pretending, since he didn’t need me any more. He pretended to adore his mom, but he shed not one tear nor had any reaction to her death. He just used it to get what he wanted. However, he IS distantly related to Richard Nixon, so it may be hereditary. And yes, I know all about parents not being what they seem to be, my mother showed one side to the world and another to me. Her “mom mask” never slipped in front of others, even my older siblings. “Mask” is a perfect description!
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