Sociopaths will manipulate anyone. Let me repeat that. Sociopaths will manipulate absolutely anyone, including mom, dad, brothers, sisters—anyone. One way that this happens is the sociopath gets his or her family—knowingly or not—to participate in the victimization of the target.
Lovefraud received an e-mail from Rod in Nebraska. Rod’s daughter had been targeted by a sociopath. In his e-mail, he wrote the following:
One thing that I do believe should be approached about a sociopath is his ability not only to control his victim, but also his family. The sociopath works his family to the extent that he manipulates his immediate family into believing that none of his problems in life are his fault and consequently the blame falls on the one he wooed into a relationship. In this manner he deliberately cons his family into enabling him in his behavior. Oh, poor guy, the world is against him, he has a seizure disorder and has the gout. Thus concluding my opinion that he controls his universe and his family’s.
Family ties
There are parents who continually bail out their sociopathic children—even as grown adults. There are family members who continually acquiesce to the sociopath’s demands, maybe just to maintain the peace.
Sometimes the families are just as clueless as everyone else. They don’t understand the sociopath’s behavior, but they feel family members are obligated take care of each other. They believe the sociopath when he or she blames the victim for whatever is going wrong.
Other times, the family members are sociopathic themselves—the risk of developing this personality disorder is genetic. So they see absolutely nothing wrong with predatory behavior.
So to escape, the victim must often stand up to not only the sociopath—which is difficult enough—but the sociopath’s entire family as well.
Dear Kim,
I cant wait for this night to be over for you… and all of us finding our better days ahead TOGETHER…sending you thoughts and prayers and peace and comfort.
We are all here for you. Great big HUG to you.
Kimmie:
I prefer to think of you as loving, caring and a friend!
Keep your head up girl……there are better days ahead.
Have a good cry and let it out.
Heres a hot cup of tea and a headrub……and a song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Mt7Nfq1CJc
XXOO
EB
Dear Kimmie, sweetie, I’ve been there, angry at myself because I “wasted” all those” beautiful years” I thought, and I tyhought I was “happy” in those years but I can look back and see that I wasn’t ready in those years, I just wasn’t wise enough and was still way to arrogant. But things are working out better now, and I’d rather be wiser and older than going back to being youngt and dumb and make those same mistakes again!
Had a great day, Son D’s bio family drove down to get his sissy whos just got back from Africa, they stayed Fri and Sat and left this morning, had some scouts over too, so had a house full, but it was a good weekend and then spent an hour and a half on the phone catching up with my Best Fr.#2 we hadn’t talked in a while. Every dish in the house is dirty and the floors all need cleaning and the beds all need changing and I’ll get around to it when I feell like it…we had fun, ate great food and spent some family bonding time together.
It’s taken me a while Kimmie, but I’m getting finally to where I don’t feel lthose lessons that I flunked in the younger years and had to keep taking remedial classes were wasted, I finally got the message,. No sense in crying over it now! Enjoy TODAY! That’s all we’ve got is today, so enjnoy the hell out of every singled today! Make good memories so you can enjoy them again and again! Chirp up, sweetie!!!! ((((hugs))))
Dear Kim, dear Sarah, I am so sorry what happened to both of you. I also have been at this point at LF about a year ago when I felt being wrongfully attacked by another poster. I then decided that LF was too important to not blog anymore and decided to ignore the posts of the other blogger.
And sometimes to just abstain from the hurting places have been helpful for me as well (switch off the radio with hurting music, leave conversations that hurt).
I have found out that the feeling of being hurt is a very valuable feeling, and it was for me the sign of the awakening soul who dared to feel these ever oppressed feelings, and it was overwhelming! It was two years ago when I was driving through the lonely woods of Southern Sweden, and only the trees heard my crying and saw my tears I wept behind the steering wheel. It took its time, but somehow the bad times weaned with time, with some rebounds of course but less deep than they used to be.
(((((HUGS)))))
{{{{{{Kim}}}}}} The triggers will always be there, I think. Sometimes, when I hear certain songs, words, experience fragrances, colors, etc., I go back to “those days” when everything seemed bright and full of promise. Then, my mind leads me to those dark, dark, terrifying days. GODDAMMIT!!!! WHY did I not see what the ex spath was before I committed?? WHY did I believe its version of its own events? WHY was I so frigging STOOPIT??? So, I beat myself up for an allotted amount of time (say, 90 seconds), and I force myself to accept that the “bright and promising” future was something that had been fabricated, completely.
Last year, when the ex spath kicked the proverbial bucket and I was “communicating” with the eldest spath son, he mentioned that he had visited my business website and that, “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel (one of my most beloved songs) was ALSO the ringtone on the dead ex spath’s cell phone. “So, you guys still had something in common,” was his point. BullSHIRT! My interpretation of that song meant something completely different than what the ex spath intended, and I changed that song immediately.
Today, I can listen to some music, watch some movies, and experience words, etc., with much less angst. I still feel the nausea and sadness for what “should have been,” but I have to really work hard to remind myself that what “should” have been was something that NEVER “could” have been. If that makes any sense, I’ll pat myself on the back!
Brightest blessings, Kim – we all have these moments (sometimes, hours).
This has always cheered me up….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiW3pyMdp3w&feature=related
Very interesting responses supporting ‘kimfrederick’.
The sociopath discredits their victims of their credibility; they operate using manipulative dialogue. We are reasoning with pathological liars. To then have my own voice questioned, suspected, to find my own identity revoked and my credibility attacked led to a profound phase of PTSD and suicidial thoughts since my last post. I started smoking after 2 years quitting it (I took up smoking at 35 – a symptom of ptsd) How to undo 9 months of therapy? Attack another poster on LF! Kim, it took me 38 years to find a voice. To actually admit the abuse and stop being in denial. I found myself breathing scarily on the other side of abuse (being a warrior and stepping away from denial). I’m back to square one. Outlier is the most fitting name for me even here.
You woke up to a potential banning; you did not question your thoughts in the morning. There is not one single post of mine that warrants your suspicion. If you can find where I raised your suspicions, please post it.
I clearly see nobody comprehends the implications of being attacked on LF. If I were to quetsion any of you and state that everything you have ever written on LF is a lie, can you imagine the trauma? Where can you be believed? Nobody your sociopaths deceives will believe you, and it seems nobody in the healing group believes you, so where and who believes you? You find the courage to stop denying abuse. You break a lifetime silence of childhood sexual abuse. You find the strength to open up to a doctor, make a referral for yourself, then embrace the trust of a therapist. You find strength to read past a paragraph on LF that carries and sets of many many triggers. You then regain a sense of identity. You are starting to heal so slowly, but the healing was evident in my resurgence in creative pursuits (I have a background in design). Just listening to music was a magnificant challenge. You then hit a wall at 100MPH and you’re back to the moment you were attacked by the sociopath.
Again I urge absolutely nobody to ever attack a fellow poster. The implications, the isolation and the damage it causes the poster is too deep. I don’t hate you kimfrederick, you certainly made me think about who to trust in opening up my wounds. You taught me a lesson to be careful who to open up to, even fellow victims can be abusive. But I think you need to question your own conscience time to time, stop analysing posts on LF. Think twice why people sign up to LF. What are the majority of people here to do and seek from LF?
I had an interesting reaction which Donna witnessed. I was so keen to reveal everything about me providing links and anything that could possibly reveal my real idenitity. It seems irrational I went through so much effort to say who I was, when I didn’t require to. But this also taught me how to react when questioned – WALK AWAY from abuse. I instead tried to reason with a powerful influence (that influence being the attack) by revealing who I was with a load of extraneous information. I recall doing this with my elder sister who trusts who I am, knows the truth and was used as a pawn by the sociopath. She would silence me ‘you don’t have to say, explain’, but I was so traumatised by the attacks (from my family); I went through extreme lengths to tell her everything I did that the sociopath discredited. I did the exact same thing with Donna. Trying to explain who I was in many different ways.
I am not ‘reposting’ on LF, I wanted to just let the healing group understand the implications of attacking a fellow poster who is always raw and always vulnerable. Just don’t do it. It’s like your therapist saying to you, you know what? everything you’ve said is a lie, and I don’t belive you’. Imagine how it would feel.
Thank you Donna.
PS I can’t highlight enough another great resource – click on my username (which is also a Malcolm Gladwell book title) and I stress, an accurate username based on my experience. “Outlier” is what we all are in fact, look up its meaning, kim. Bullyonline is a UK-based resource – frequent mentions of Dr Robert Hare and whilst that was a ‘bible’ for me; it is LF that allows victims to exchange their experiences in real time; and for that I applaud this community for making the site very supportive for vulnerable users who simply read or who actively posts.
Abusers teach us a lot. I guess ironically, kimfrederick, you also taught me a lot. Just be careful online and learn from your mistake and error of judgement. Do not ever attempt to question another poster. They’re still published but I feel unsettled they remain online. Re-read my posts if you wish. Understand a little about my story – I grew up with a sociopath, being her target from childhood to adulthood, sexually abused by her at 7. At 38, I’m trying to regain an identity she took away from me.
Outlier
I hope that you would reconsider posting here at LF. Your contributions are valuable to this community. It isn’t easy to expose our “secrets”, things that have happened to us that have been life shattering. You will make it – we live in a fallen world, all of us blundering at times, sometimes unintenionally hurting each other. I don’t always have an easy time sharing things (especially past experiences that have been bewildering and upsetting, produced by the h-spath), I go ahead and state what I have gone through, usually what I am processing in my head. Peace to you, Outlier. You deserve peace and joy, a fulfilling life.
So true. My ex has a large family here, and I have none. When I went through my injury nearly two years ago, not a single one called to ask if I needed help with my toddler son. The ex was always gone, and I couldn’t walk! I know his sister and mother simply believe the sun rises and falls with him (though they bickered constantly, too), but the rest of the family just couldn’t believe me when I told them the things he had done. What kind of person would do that, right? And their own flesh and blood? Clearly (to them), I was the “crazy” one, which is what he had been telling them all along. At first I wanted nothing to do with them, but as time passes since we separated, I think, “Why should I let him win? He WANTS me to feel all alone and isolated and cut off from everyone. Me not contacting them because I am hurt and disappointed is playing right in to his lie that I am a bitter, hateful person!”
So I started contacting some of them. It’s awkward and they don’t know what to say at first, but once they get that I have no desire to discuss him or the past, it’s actually cordial. His first wife was also abused, and they did the same thing to her. She never looked back. I don’t get that luxury with having a child with him. I totally believe that if you give them enough rope, be patient, and not let them define who you are to others, eventually the truth will come out. I need all the allies I can in our custody battle!
Dear bluejay, I may well reconsider, but when I feel able to. I posted earlier as today was the first time I felt able to state my piece, which I think was rather essential. The damage I really could have done without. The last thing I need is to be called a liar by people in the same position as I.
freemamma, ‘their own flesh and blood’ means nothing to sociopaths. The only family they care about deeply are the ones they choose to enable them. The others are used to attack. If you ever watch Big Brother (a psychologist’s playground), you’ll easily find the group division, the alpha (fe)male instantly recognisable and the plotting begins. They are influential and the targets are identified from the start. They own little self awareness that their behaviour is in fact stark and blatant. The only reason we see it is because cameras record it all. You’d be amazed just how much evidence youc an capture with a mini recorder, a hidden camera, it captures everything the world doesn’t see.
The family is a potential group, it makes no difference that it is family. The fact they know their targets intimately serves them greater. Within the family they are easily influential as they “are family”, so the enablers (sane people) wouldnt dare see them as anything else.
Take care of yourself.