By Ox Drover
Most victims and former victims of sociopaths are extremely capable and smart people, so why exactly did these really smart people go “bankrupt” in their personal lives by letting a sociopath take over? That’s a question that has plagued me since I started on the road to healing.
I’ve always been a pretty astute businessperson and an excellent manager of both personnel and resources in my professional life. Why did I do so well in my professional life and go so wrong in my personal life?
I finally came to the conclusion that I ran my business like a business and I let my personal life be run in a very ”un-businesslike” manner.
I’ll use my farm as an example. I had a herd of cattle that I raised to provide meat, which I sold. So my product was meat, but my means of production was my cows having healthy calves, nursing those calves with plenty of milk, and being good mothers to the calves. If a cow did not have a calf because she had a fertility problem, she was an “unproductive” worker, so I had to fire her. Even if I was attached to her, and she was otherwise a nice cow, if she did not give birth to a calf every year, I could not afford to feed her (or “pay her salary”). If a cow was not having a calf, I noticed her lack of “production” and terminated her without too many tears, because I realized if I had a pasture full of cows that did not have calves, my farm would go “bankrupt.”
Suppose old “Bessie” hadn’t had a calf in five years, but she is so very sweet, and never kicks at me, so how could I in good conscience get rid of her, when she looks at me with those big brown eyes and nuzzles my hand when I go to feed her? Or how about old “Bell”? She has a calf every year, but she has a bad udder and doesn’t give any milk, so the calf always dies, but it really isn’t her fault, she just had an infection that caused her udder not to produce any more milk, and she really is so sweet, so what’s a little more feed anyway?
Or how about that old bull? I really do hate to get rid of him, he is so pretty, but he does tear down fences and go walkabout a couple of times a week.
How long before I would have nothing but a bunch of very decorative live pasture-art? My farm would go bankrupt because I let my emotions and excuses for why those animals were not “carrying their weight” influence me to keep on feeding unproductive stock.
I had little if any problem getting rid of unproductive or disruptive cows on my farm, because I knew that if I kept cows in my herd that cost more than they produced, or caused trouble for me or the rest of the herd by tearing down fences, trying to hurt me, or just in general causing problems, my farm would start to cost more than it brought in and I would go “bankrupt.”
So why didn’t I apply these same principles to my life that I did to my business? Well, first of all I let emotional attachment to “friends” and “family” who were “costing” me more than they produced to stay on my “emotional payroll.”
I had “friends” who only seemed to come around when they needed something, but after all, they really were in a bind, and maybe it wasn’t entirely their fault. I also had friends who seemed to think it was my responsibility to take care of them for the rest of their lives. I had friends and family who seemed to think that I owed them “unconditional love” because I gave birth to them, and no matter what they did, how badly they treated me, or used and abused me, I had to “play nice” with them.
How come if a cow even shook her head threateningly at me she was immediately hamburger, no matter how many calves she had or how fat she nursed them, and I had no problem at all sending her off to the butcher, but I couldn’t stand up to a “friend” or a family member and say, “Don’t treat me like that!”
I knew how to run a business, and I knew what made a business profitable or bankrupt. Why did I not know how to run a life and how to make it profitable and good? I let my life go bankrupt emotionally. Why did I think that things were going to change or get better if I simply allowed more output than there was income to continue? I kept giving to those in my life, but never receiving.
In our lives there are always times we give more than we get in supporting our friends and family, but if this is a continual occurrence, over time we become physically, financially and emotionally “bankrupt.” We must receive as well as give to friends and family.
Now, while I don’t literally run my “life” like I do the farm, figuratively I do. When a person is disruptive to the peace of my life, just like a cow with a dangerous attitude, I terminate them from my “pasture” so that I am not in danger of being hurt. If a person is always taking and never giving, that person is also removed from my “pasture” as unproductive. If a person is always breaking the rules and “jumping the fences” and causing trouble, what do I need that person in my life for? To get me out of bed at 2 a.m. to post their bail? To pay their rent because they can never seem to keep a job?
The people who are now in my life give as much as they receive, show respect for me and for the fences (boundaries) in my life. They don’t stand around waiting for me to bring them a bucket of “feed,” but they get out and hustle up their own, and take responsibility for themselves. I can count on these people to do what they say they will do, and to be trustworthy individuals.
My life is now more “profitable” than it has ever been and that “profit” is laid up as a big “bank account” filled to the brim with PEACE, LOVE and JOY! I am the richest woman in the world.
I think the heart is like a wound, i.e. to be able to LOVE you must be able to stay vulnerable. The heart then, is like a wound that never heals. That is why it is so painful..this love. Each time you are wounded you are more vulnerable through the loving. Yet you are stronger through the experience. My heart has become a gangrenous wound from being hurt so many times by my loving psychopaths. Still. I love them. I have to, because loving is what I am on earth to do. Psychopaths “KNOW” of this loving. You can see it in their eyes in some instances. Just because they are incapable of loving doesn’t mean we can’t teach them some things.
I remember when I first found out about the ex P husband’s murder of an innocent woman. I was still married to him back then. I looked him straight in the eye, and I said to him, “you have stolen my peace of mind and destroyed our family”. I could see in his gaze he knew exactly what I meant. EXACTLY. I left him shortly after that when he tried to murder me. For the same reason that he tried to murder her, ( I knew too much).
When I said I lost in court. I lost the case. Now he is in a much better position to kill me. The reason I said but I also” won” is, not only because I am still breathing but I know that on SOME LEVEL the psychopaths know. He KNOWS that it was true that he stole my peace of mind . He knows what it is like to have NO PEACE OF MIND. We can teach them some things.
Now I love them from a distance. A no contact distance. But if they attack, I attack back like, when a tiger attacks. I will not “go gentle into that good night”, and ” I will rage at the burning of the light”.
I can’t afford to hate. I have turned the corner there. I am incapable of running my life like a business. Thats just me. Thats why I am not rich in material things. I don’t OWN any THING. Yet I am rich in LOVE. MY heart remains VULNERABLE. And I speak out against abuse. I attack it or run from it (fight or flight). But I am nothing without the love of my true friends, my friends that know my LOVING HEART, my vulnerable wound that never heals. I AM NOTHING WITHOUT THEM. And that is just how it is for me.
I use my vulnerability and love and my heart to paint and sing with. But it is also what I use to fight with. I will not go “gentle into that GOOD NIGHT”. And my friends and I will fight to stay loving in our vulnerable hearts.
Loving, is the only difference between animals and humans and psychopaths and humans. But I have seen sometimes that a psychopath KNOWS what it is to lose their peace of mind . On some level they KNOW the absence of love and what that means. I sense it.
I think some of us were not born to be farmers. I could never kill Bell the cow, or Any cow or Bull or dog or horse. I have trouble standing on a cockroach. But the ex p murdering husband had no trouble drowning kittens. I don’t know where he go the kittens from when we lived in the bush (an environmental living zone, no pets or foreign flora or fauna), He would take great delight in timing how long it took for each one to drown in the river. Later I realised he was practising for one of the woman he drowned.
Interesting analogy… but where is the line? I walk on eggshells around my sister, is that ok? She is a snorting bull if I p*ss her off, if I point out she is wrong about something or disagree… she is a b*tch. I feel bankrupt, I have friends I call, they never call me… extended family… only see them once a year at Chritsmas, and I am thinking I won’t even go this year. This is not the life that I imagined for myself. Without my sister I have no one.
Well, I’m an ethical vegetarian, and if I weren’t I’d be one for health reasons, and in fact vegan most my adult life, and I DO think animals are capable of great love, and emotions,( Amazons with their white skin even blush in embarrassment at the right times) so I have to totally stay out of this one! TOTALLY!
What I meant about running your life like a business and my business happened to be cattle, but the analogy is to ELIMINATE people from your life that are UN-“profitable” that take and never give.
If you have a factory full of “employees” that show up for work when they feel like it, do no work, and expect to draw a “paycheck” from you and you keep on “paying” these people—all outgo and no income, you go financially bankrupt, it is the same EMOTIONALLY. If people take, take and take and never give back, WHATDDA YA NEED EM FOR?
That’s what the psychopaths do, is to take and take and give back nothing but lies and empty promises. I made a decision to eliminate anyone in my life that was a mooch, leech or “emotional vampire”—-you would be suprised how that lowered my own stress level not having these people in my life. I NO LONGER HAVE TO WALK ON EGG SHELLS. That was a decision I MADE for me. Each of us must make our own decisions on each relationship in our lives.
Dear Chic,
So waht does your sister “contribute” in a positive way to your life? How does a relationship with her improve your morale and your life? Does “having someone” even if they are hateful to you, make your life better?
This is the question we all have to ask ourselves about our relationships. Each of us must make our own decisions on whether or not to continue a “relationship” that doesn’t “pay.”
Now that I am out of BUSINESs of trying to make money with the cattle, I only have a few special “pet” animals and so I don’t give a flip if they have a calf or not, in fact, one just got an udder infection that will render her probably incapable of raising the calf she will have in January or February, but she is my “baby” and if she can’t raise her calf, I will give it away and see that she is never bred again. I am at a place where I don’t have to eliminate an animal that doesn’t “pay their way” but when you have 50+ head of cows, you can’t keep a herd full of them that don’t “pay their way.”
JAH, I respect people who are vegans or otherwise don’t eat meat or animal products. The “commercial” meat production of chicken, pork or cattle, is to my way of thinking inhumane to the animals and produces poor quality food. One reason that I raised and sold (for high dollar) meat was that my cattle were raised in a humane manner, low lstress and not fed supplemental grain so that their meat was from stress-free cattle on a natural diet, and were slaughtered in a humane way in a small plant, where they were not stressed, scared, or mistreated. I stayed with them so that they would not be scared.
My cows had “family” groups and you could see the attachment between them. Primiarily the male offspring were the ones harvested for meat, and the females were bonded in family groups. Only if a cow was old or injuired was she put down, and when i sold out my herd, I “placed them for adoption” with good humane breeders rather than ran them through the local auction barn.
If there was a disruptive or aggressive animal in the herd that either abused other animals or was a danger to me, that animal was eliminated in a humane way with the meat harvested. That also decreased the stress level of the remaining animals.
I didn’ t mean to start an argument here about eating meat or how meat was raised, the point of the whole thing was that many times we keep people in our lives who give us stress and suck the life out of us just because we don’t think about the “bottom line.”
OxDrover:
Good analogy. I also wondered how I could be so successful professionally and yet be so chaotic professionally. I remember one of my friends saying to me “You always amaze me. You are so cool and organized in the middle of situations that would cause me to either become paralyzed with fear or break from the stress. How do you do it?”
Good question. Because I sure didn’t have the answer then.
Now I think I do. I have had to draw a very hard line between business and personal life. Kathy Hawke brought up a point which I realized I have adopted in my personal life. Ss are goal oriented. And that is the way I have more or less run my professional life. When I’ve let my personal life overlap with my work life or become too close to professional colleagues is when I’ve run into trouble.
But, when I came to m personal life, I was always the reverse — driven purely by emotion. No sacrifice was too great, no abuse to bad, if it meant people “liked” me. Or it kept the peace. Or any of the other ridiculous excuses I made for people in my life whose treatment of me was pretty bad.
After S I finally began to “quantify” the relationships in my life. I looked at each one in terms of what I gave and what I got using a scale that started with the worst case — the S (100% investment, 0% return) and then on various places on the scale.
While OxDrover has culled her herd, I have culled my rolodex. I finally realized I can no longer afford — either financially or emotionally — to have people in my life who are bankrupting me.
Tilly and shabbychic — I think where you are coming from is where I used to come from — we have suffered so much loss that we are are afraid to let go of someone in our life — no matter how badly they treat us — out of fear that we will be left alone and nobody will come into our lives to take the place of our abusers. That is a tough one to get over. However, that entails a certain amount of risk. I urge you to take the risk. After culling my rolodex, I went out and started making some new friends. I got into a relationship with a healthy man. Of the friends who I have chosen to keep, I can appreciate the balance in the relationships. EVen with family members I have drawn far healthier boundaries — to the extent I allow them in my life, they are on very short leashes. I just don’t have the energy to put up with the crap my conman brother, S father or N mother hand out. And I’ve actually learned that by keeping them at arm’s length and not giving them ammunition or getting sucked into the drama, our relationships are actually somewhat better.
So, while my personal balance sheet sure isn’t in the black, it sure as hell is out of the red.
Yes, I appreciate the article very much, it has made me think more about my sister. Lately I have kind of been avoiding her, which isn’t a good thing. I guess she gives me stress, but does not suck the life out of me, so I’m stuck somewhere in the middle, and I guess I’m stuck with her! LOL!
Matt, good idea, I’ll keep her on a short leash!!
Thanks for the validation, Matt, I was beginning to feel like Simon LeGree! But, at the same time, I know that most people who are so “kind hearted” that they couldn’t kill a wolf if it was attacking them, DO eat meat, take medications tested on animals, take vaccines produced from animals, and wear leather, it is the RARE individual who totally does not use any products made from or by animals. I don’t have a problem with those who do, and in fact I know people who will not allow their children to be vaccinated because the vaccines are developed and/or have animal products in them.
I DO have a problem with commercial meat production that raises animals under factory (unnatural) conditions and high stress, and in fact, I no longer eat meat away from home for that reason among others, among which are the “prion” diseases (“mad cow” among others).
Thinning down “your roledex” is essentially what I have done too, several years ago I had done that just as a factor of TIME to spend with the people I held most dear, if you spread yourself too thin with TOO many “friends” you don’t have QUALITY time with anyone as you are always in a rush.
Now that I have “thinned the herd” of all the stressful individuals, I have room for some newer friendships and continue to have time and energy for others as well.
This weekend is my oldest son’s 40th birthday! Gosh how time flies! Just “yesterday” he was a squirming little bald guy and now he is a BIG BALD GUY! LOL Ah, yes! So tomorrow is a house full of people and the RAIN IS SUPPOSED TO STOP!!!!
I guess I’ve been hanging on to some “friends” in fear that I won’t meet any new ones! I like the idea of thinning out the “rolodex”. I mean, if they never take the initiative to call me… how long can I keep thinking of them as friends?
Oh… I wish I had some “home grown” beef here!!!!!