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.
You still have your wonderful open loving warm self. Thats who you are. It is the essence of you. NO ONE can rub that out. not even a sociopath.
The ‘it’ came slowly, but it helped. I think that after a long time of thinking about this creature, the other creatures, and me being me, it was a good mechanism for distancing an out and out human empath from further trying to ‘understand’ the un-understandable.(d’ya like my grammer there?;)x
There is an article on here about it….’After the sociopath is gone: Changing our language’ xxxx
blueskies and Lwh,
“It” is more accurate than “him”, because they are mythological creatures. You can call a baby an “it” right? That doesn’t dehumanize it, it’s just that the gender of a baby is irrelevant, just like the gender of a mythological creature or a cat or a dog is irrelevant.
Lwh, I was with mine for 25 years and YES, I gave him the freedom to be himself, didnt ask him to conform to normal societal norms because I could sense that that would be like keeping a wild animal in a cage. It just seemed wrong. The only thing I asked of him is to not hurt himself or me. But that was too much to ask I guess.
I’m getting ok with the loss of 25 years because I understand that there is no way I could have learned the things that I did without that experience. I tended to be non-judgemental and let everyone do and think what they please. But now, I’m seeing WHY certain thoughts and behaviors are wrong/bad. The P takes everything to an extreme and then you can clearly see the ultimate outcome of his erroneous thinking. The function of this mythological creature, this monster, is as an example of how not to be: Poison, Pathetic, Pathological, Parasitical.
Skylar:)xx Beautifully put.
‘I gave him the freedom to be himself, didnt ask him to conform to normal societal norms because I could sense that that would be like keeping a wild animal in a cage. It just seemed wrong. The only thing I asked of him is to not hurt himself or me. But that was too much to ask I guess.’
The ‘it’s’ are Mythological creatures.
Your logic as a none mythological creature as good as it is, does not apply.
LOL, blueskies,
I’m trying to be a real person and not a mythological creature, but I’ve only just arrived from Fantasyland and I’m still trying to figure out your cultural norms 🙂 here in Realityville.
I was like Harry Potter, living part time at Hogwarts and part-time with Muggles.
I’ve been reading some interesting stuff trying to make sense of why I keep slipping back into fantasyland. And it might have something to do with the perception of time.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427311.300-timewarp-how-your-brain-creates-the-fourth-dimension.html?page=4
after reading that article I googled “time and narcissism”
and found this:
http://samvak.tripod.com/narcissisttime.html
Both articles are interesting.
Oh lord Skylar! I didnt mean ‘YOUR’, it was a collective empath human being YOUR :)xxxx pesky, text typing…:)x
CHUCKLE!:) I dont think there’s anything wrong with being a part- time muggle, I like living a half magical life….. as long as I am not a P!:)xx (like voldemort!).
Thanks for the links lovely:)xxxx
I just watched the movie, “the brothers bloom”
Some of the dialog triggered my ptsd. The brothers are conmen and throughout the movie, they say, “That wasn’t a con, it was REAL.”
OMG. the P said that to me.
There was other dialog that really got me too.
I am just realizing what this personality disorder is about, both for me and for my xP. It’s about living in fantasy land. And the movie is all about that. The boundary between real and a con is constantly shifting. There is no way to know where you are until after it’s over.
The only part that I didn’t like about the movie is that it wasn’t dark at all. It was so lighthearted. But I know from experience that the narcissist’s life is not lighthearted, it is evil. That part was completely glossed over.
Could say so much more about it but I think I’ll watch it again.
Skylar:(
‘The boundary between real and a con is constantly shifting. There is no way to know where you are until after it’s over.’
So true. Its con on top of con and lie on top of lie, uncover a lie and its immediately ‘frame shift’ into another!
Its why we all feel like we’ve been living on a non-stop rollercoaster… thank god we manage to step off!x
Bluskies–I am glad I am not alone in this and that you can relate to so much. It is making it more and more real that he was a sociopath. No matter what he has done to me I think I am still in some sort of denial about this.
Like you Skylar–I have just come from fanasyland with him. I also had a rich imagination and lived part here and part in reality. I could switch very quickly.
But my fantasies were sweet and harmless. Imagining ways to help the world.
His were cruel and insane. Imagining ways to control me.
I too was non judgmental. We are all unique I thought. Just like many–I believed in the healing power of love.
It seemed to work with him in that 7 years. This is shattered. I based my whole identity on this.
I was a peaceful person, totally satisfied with life and had healed all past wounds.
I was thinking of becoming a counsellor.
This has to be shelved now==because after experiencing something so inhuman I have lost my ability to judge accurately.
I look at people and wonder what is lurking underneath. Before O saw it as just normal human emotions at work. Normal problems.
This has totally thrown me.
I feel that I am in the film Alian Nation where you put on glasses and can see all the aliens. I want a pair of those. LOL
I think I viewed the world through rose coloured ones. I miss them. I was happier. Always seeing the good in others.
Now I don’t even know what is good and bad.
Thanks again
Peace and love xxx
LWH, I know it doesnt feel like it now, but that magical wonder and beauty will return. I relate to what you say about the kind of person you are, I have always been extremely sensitive to beauty, especially beauty in nature; today it is a bright crisp golden blue autumn morning, there is a wonderful breeze making the leaves all dance in propitious parade, blowing away my cobwebs…I stood on my balcony and drank it in along with my morning tea and it takes me to a VERY magical place:)x A good magical place.
I remember coming here and saying that I had lost the person I was, because of the realization of this evil in the world, and that I was mourning something, that loss of innocence or beauty… but it comes back, I promise. One ugly part of this beautiful world cannot take it all away:)xx
I believe that love and beauty IS where its at.
Love and beauty DO NOT LIVE IN THE WORLD OF THE SOCIOPATH, no, but they live EVERYWHERE else.
Give yourself time, you will slowly build yourself back together again, leaving out the things that were not good, and keeping all that was:)xxxx
“For whatsoever from one place doth fall,
Is with the tide unto an other brought:
For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.”
(once again apologies for my fluffyness)