By Ox Drover
Donna’s great article about Victory, of a sort, over a sociopath the other day got me to thinking.
Just what is “victory?”
My wonderful stepfather was a young basketball coach when he got his first real job coaching for a very small rural school which had not had a winning game in over a decade. The team was dispirited and had no real expectation of ever winning a game.
One of the local coaches bragged that he would beat them “by a hundred points!” at the next game. The team thought there was a good possibility that that coach’s team could do just that. However, it is “good sportsmanship” for a coach playing a much weaker team to let their second, third, and fourth strings get a chance to play, and to win over the weaker team, but not “tromp” them.
Daddy thought this other coach’s brag to stomp and tromp his team was poor sportsmanship so he made a plan. When the fourth quarter started and Daddy’s team had the ball, they “froze” it (which was legal in the game then) and wouldn’t either shoot the ball or take a chance on losing it, so passed the ball from one of Daddy’s team members to another the entire quarter. They didn’t make any points, but they kept the other team from even getting their hands on the ball the entire quarter, and thus making points against them. Daddy’s team didn’t win, but the other coach didn’t win by his “hundred points” either. That little team went on the next year to win their division championship because of the confidence that Daddy inspired in them.
Sometimes “winning” or “victory” can be interpreted in different ways. I’m also reminded of the old Country and Western song, the “Winner” where an older man and a younger man are in a bar talking. The younger man wants to be a “winner” in bar fight brawls, and the older man is educating him on what is “winning” and what isn’t.
Sure, you can get into a fight and you may inflict more damage on your opponent than he inflicts on you in the fight, but like the old man said, “He gouged out my eye, but I won.” Sometimes it is better to walk away from a fight and not lose more than you have already lost, or allow your opponent to take another “pound of flesh” in your attempts to “get justice.”
It isn’t always about getting what you deserve, or victory over them, or even seeing that they get “what they so richly deserve,” sometimes, I think, “winning” simply means keeping them from taking more out of you and, like Daddy’s team, “freezing the ball.” Sometimes, it is like the would-be barroom brawler, walking away (intact) with the other guy yelling curses in your direction.
It is emotionally tough to watch a cheater “get away with it” when they have ripped us off, and go “waltzing away” unscathed and apparently the victor. It eats at our sense of fairness to let them “succeed” and not pay a price for their bad behavior.
Yet, sometimes, “discretion is the better part of valor” to use an old phrase, or to “be a live dog, rather than a dead lion,” and “retreat and live to fight another day.”
Those victims who are not able to fight for a “victory” of any sort, I don’t think need to feel that they have “failed” because they chose not to fight the sociopath.
Too many times fighting the psychopaths are like “fighting a circular saw,” as my grandmother would have said. It “just isn’t worth it,” because the damage to yourself will be worse than you can possibly inflict on the psychopath. They stack the odds so in their own favor, that even if you “win,” you end up like the old brawler sitting in the barroom, broken and so gravely injured yourself in your effort to gain a “victory, of sorts” that in retrospect the price was too high.
Sometimes, it is better to walk away a “loser” but still intact, and with your head held high, using the energy and resources you have left to focus on healing yourself, on recovering what you have lost in terms of finances and strength, and take care of yourself. To me that is also a “viable victory.”
Thank you JAH. I did get that you were sticking up for me, and I appreciate that. I didn’t mean to be a brat. I think we both have really good points. I’m sorry, I guess I’m just feeling vulnerable tonight. It’s funny, I can go on thinking I’m invincable (I can’t spell) forever, but then the smallest thing sends me over. When I focus on this stuff, things happen. It makes me realize how much power it still has in my life.
Thanks again for coming back. God bless you and me and all of us!
I believe that when we have been traumatized, it sets up an energetic pattern in our body/mind. We tend to gravitate toward people and situations that remind us of that trauma, until we release the energetic patterning. This is NOT the same as saying we are to blame for bad things happening to us. I believe this “patterning” is not only mental but physical as well and can be released energetically out of the body.
I have talked about this here before, but I was physically abused as a child. I was beaten repeatedly with a belt until I had welts all over my backside, for really no reason. This was ongoing for 9 years. One day, as a young adult, I had the good fortune to attend a 10-day meditation retreat. On the third day, I relived a very bad beating I’d gotten at the age of 10. While I released the anger by yelling at the perpetrator (who was no longer alive), the pain from the repressed beating went out my body like an electrical current. I believe that if I’d never had that experience, I’d still be attracting men who are physically violent. My sister, who never had the energetic experience I did, when on to date some physically abusive men.
I believe that when we release an energetic pattern, we vibrate at a different frequency (going on the “energy” theory and will attract others who vibrate at that frequency too. This is why I recommend any type of kinesthetic body work, trauma work, or intensive (supervised) meditation for anyone who has been abused. It really does help physically release some of these things out of the body. Once they are gone, you are not fighting yourself to avoid attracting them back to you. You just have moved on from that piece.
Something to think about: Those of us who have been abused (which is probably everyone on this forum) have internalized the abuser to some extent. This causes us to beat ourselves up. That will take the form of reading an article or someone’s advice and filtering it though your internal critic to sound like “you are bad or wrong; it is your fault that this happened to you”, etc. I don’t think this is the intention of any of the authors/bloggers here.
When you read some of these things and find yourself getting angry, you may be projecting some of the inner abuser onto one or more group members (I think Oxy described this very eloquently). This is a good thing! It is helping you get in touch with that anger so you can own it and release it. Fortunately, we are among a very caring and safe group to do such a thing. It is like a group therapy setting.
I feel very privileged to be here with so many people who are healing and helping others with their healing. It’s a great community to belong to.
I hope I havent’ gotten too metaphysical here. Let me know if I have.
Hugs,
Star
Oxy,
I also wanted to add that I have watched over and over how you are able to let go of P’s out of your life and arrive at a peaceful place, including this last one–the minister. You are really an incredible woman, and you have developed a gift or learning to release others’ negativity rather quickly. It sucks that you keep getting tested on that, but maybe it’s to make that inner muscle even stronger. I envy that ability. I stew for weeks/months sometimes over others’ negativity toward me. If I never learned anything from this site, I think I’ve learned the power of NC!!!! So useful when dealing with evil people. Trying to fight them on their level just drags us down to that level. But walking away helps us focus on what we want in our lives, rather than reacting to what others dish out to us.
I think I’ve had some revelations today which sort of tie everything in this thread together.
First of all, as Star said, there are some amazingly compassionate people on LF. I’ve never met so many SELFLESS, CARING, EMPATHETIC PEOPLE IN MY LIFE. Actually I’ve only met one other, in my whole life, I think.
What are the odds that they should all be on any one blog?
Don’t let it go to your heads, it’s not a complement. Really. That’s not how I intended it, I was stating a fact.
That leads me to my next statement: Maybe it IS us and not them! I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be, or that we should be caring and empathetic. In this statement, I’m not putting any moral or value judgement, I’m just stating that maybe we are in a VERY SMALL MINORITY of people whose empathetic natures are tripping us up from judging others as being “bad” or “dangerous”.
I could write an entire thesis on this but I’ll try to be concise.
Today, I was with a friend who raised his 23 year old son pretty much by himself because his drugged out girlfriend couldn’t stay off coke and meth, so he dumped her. But he has always been a drug dealer as far as I know. He quit doing all drugs when she got pregnant except he smokes pot all day and drinks beer all day. I consider him a friend although I had not spoken to him for about 22 years, until the break with my XP.
You are all probably thinking: He’s a P! Run! I think maybe he’s N-lite but that isn’t the point. The point is that I can see everything clearly when I’m not INTERACTING with the person. But put any N, S, P, jerk, saint, or whatever in front of me and I go all wishy washy and non-judgemental – BUT NOT BY CHOICE, but by nature!!! I do not blame or accuse myself, I just need to recognize it. Maybe I could try harder to resist feeling this way, or better yet, I could resist acting on that empathetic, wishy washy, non-judgemental feeling, but the fact remains that I do feel that way AUTOMATICALLY. Maybe it’s a conditioned response or else it is genetically programmed. I’m not sure, maybe it’s a combination: Just like the P is born a narcissist, whose behavior is then reinforced by the people who raise him and then he also has to make a choice. Those 3 things come together to create the evil P we all know and hate. Perhaps 3 things are coming together in us. We are born extremely sensitive, then we are abused and it reinforces the empathy in us, thirdly, we continue to make the choice to give in to that compassion we feel for everyone we meet – especially someone pouting or crying for pity.
So that’s why Oxy and Kim and JAH can make contradictory statements and all be correct. The truth is LAYERED.
yes we can all use common sense, but it’s not easy to go against your loving nature, so it isn’t fair to blame someone who keeps making the same mistakes over and over again. It isn’t as easy as just saying no. It’s like asking a cat to like water! Doing what’s right isn’t always easy when it FEELS WRONG and your nature automatically FLIPS you into empathy/trusting mode the moment you get around ANY PEOPLE AT ALL.
For me, I doubt that my empathy/trust can be removed with common sense. Even when I fear that someone could be a P, I just can’t feel the self-protection mode that other people seem to get. That could go into a WHOLE OTHER discussion as to why that is. But skipping over that, I’m hoping that the answer can be found in logic. I must somehow be able to convince myself LOGICALLY of the wisdom of self-protection, because EMOTIONALLY, I don’t think I have it in me. That logic has to be burned very deeply into so many routes in my brain, that it will pop up as the obvious choice when I’m in the company of other people.
I don’t know if I made any sense to anyone, these are the thoughts that have been going around in my head today as I try to figure out why this guy who has so many LOGICAL red flags, doesn’t wave any EMOTIONAL red flags in me at all!
Star,
well, you might be a bit metaphysical but i think i get it.
If logic doesn’t work for me, I think it might require rebalancing my chakras thru a method of acupuncuncture called esoteric acupuncture. That’s pretty metaphysical too.
I really don’t know how to get us to normal – or better than normal. I just don’t want to be a P.
Tilly,
I can sense you are in a lot of pain, & anger is eating you up. I am praying for you, & sending you a cyber hug ((())). I have felt just like that many, many times, & it hurts to feel like that. Please be good to yourself.
Skylar, Here here. I don’t want to be a P either.
Yesterday was my grand-daughters second birthday. We had a big family celebration, back-yard bbq, cake and Ice cream, etc. As at any of these celebrations, I am in contact with my XN from twenty years ago. We’ve managed to get along quite well, considering, but last night I found myself feeling a little numb around him. I think being here on life fraud is triggering some issues, and then seeing him…well you get what I’m saying.
But the birthday party was great, and my grand-daughter was beautiful. And I’m really fortunate to have my family so close by. I hope everybodys feeling great today!!
I agree that there is something “programmed” into our “selves” that makes us tend to be hyper-empathetic or gullible (pick your word! LOL) and whatever this is it is NOT logic. In Women Who Love Psychopaths the women who were surveyed all had a lot in common and all were LOYAL as much as anything.
Look at your dog. I will bet your dog is LOYAL no matter how much you kicked him on a daily basis he would still come crawling back to you. That part of a dog’s make up to remain LOYAL even to their abuser is genetic. It is part of what makes a dog a dog. There are some exceptions to this, but over all, that’s the way dogs are.
The psychopaths on the other hand have NO LOYALTY to anyone, though they may assume “ownership” of someone, they dont’t play by the same rules we do.
We KNOW that there is a big genetic component in psychopathy, so maybe there is a big genetic component in the kind of woman (or man) who will stay with an abuser who beats them or emotionally abuses and cons them. Of course, not every person even knows the P is “cheating” on them, or stealing from them as he is “Mr. Nice Guy” right up til he disappears with everything they own.
Then, of course, you have the TRAUMA BONDING which can I think work alone to “bond” a victim to their abuser, or maybe what it does is “turn on a gene” that is otherwise dormant until the person is engaged in big-time trauma/fear.
We know that trauma of any kind changes the way our brains are wired up. I’m reading a book on this very thing right now, I’ll review it when I’m done. Maybe I’m obscessive, but I am very interested in the way the brain CHANGES due to “trauma” and “high stress”—both physically and chemically.
One of the chapters I just read talks about the way a trauma and PTSD effect our ability to VERBALIZE things, especially the trauma itself and how the emotions overwhelm us and yet traditional “talk therapy” alone won’t always “reach” that trauma and in some cases makes it worse, but “guided imagery” which uses a different part of the brain helps the body/mind to heal itself.
That may be why the Rapid Eye Movement Therapy helped me so much, it is a form of “guided imagery” and it is all starting to make sense now.
I have noticed the “verbal” deficits—OKAY laugh, LOL I have plenty of “verbal” my posts are always filled with LOTS of words,—but what I am trying to say is my vocabulary is probably 50% of what it was, I can’t “think of the right word” so I end up using 5 words to describe what one word would have better and more easily said. I can’t spell worth crap now, and sometimes I forget even small words—a while back I was trying to think of the word TREE—I could see a mental picture in my mind of a tree, but for the life of me I couldn’t get the WORD OUT.
It isn’t just about “short term memory” loss (which is a pain in the butt) which scared the whey out of me for a long time, but is better now, but I think after 5 years it is about as good as it is going to get, but for MONTHS after the airplane crash, I could NOT read at all. By the time I got to the second word, I had forgotten the first one. I could watch a movie over and over and not remember I had even seen it, much less remember the plot.
I don’t doubt that many, if not most, of us here have PTSD in one degree or another, and have recovered somewhat, again, to one degree or another. Some have probably had chronic stress our entire lives, or multiple instances of PTSD waxing and waning, I think I am among the latter.
One of the PRIMARY symptoms in my opinion of PTSD is “crankiness” or what I call ‘shot gun anger”–in other words just blasting away at anything in front of us, not necessarily targeting one person or one thing, but just angry at “everything”—-“I have a right to be angry, I have a right to act like an ass because I have been victimized.”
Dr. Viktor Frankl described this attitude in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning” and the example he used was after they were released it was springtime and the crops were in the field. He and another man he had been with in the Nazi camp were walking down the road when they came to a field of wheat and the man turned off INTO the field of wheat, trampling down the standing plants and breaking them off, ruining the grain he stepped on. Dr. Frankl told him to get back on the road so he didn’t damage the crop, but the man said “I have suffered so much I deserve to destroy something.” (or words to that effect.)
Many times victims or former victims will take that attitude that because they have unjustly suffered that they “deserve to hurt others/things or to act what my grandmother would call “ugly,” and that they are excused because they were “victimized” in the past.
I personally think this anger at their abusers is not resolved and it “must come out some way” if it isn’t resolved. I can’t tell you why some people who are “freed from their former abuse” behave in this way, striking out, and why some people instead think as Dr. Frankl did. I do know one thing, reading his book gave me a BIG attitude adjustment.
The two articles about forgiveness I wrote, one on forgiving others and one on forgiving OURSELVES (if you will do a “search” on LF for Ox Drover it will bring them up so I won’t rerpeat the stuff I said there) but without being able to forgive the others AND forgive ourselves I don’t think our healing will be completely successful. M. L. Gallagher’s articles are along this line as well. I think Louise is a wonderful ROLE MODEL for us all, I aspire to her thinking and healing, yet I know she still has to “work at” keeping her balance. So do I. I have to work hard at it. Hard to overcome my tendencies to enable those I love, my tendencies not to set reasonable boundaries, my tendencies to become overly angry if I am triggered. I have to work hard at being reasonable and I realize I ALWAYS WILL have to work hard at being what I WANT to be, what I ASPIRE to be. That’s why I am still at love fraud, learning. ((((Hugs)))) and all my prayers for everyone of us here! Love, Oxy
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/la-oe-samantha-geimer23-2003feb23,0,4716430.story
This is an impressive article about a victim who has moved on with her life.
I am in the middle of this very dilemma as a victim. I am moving through wanting to exact revenge to actually disengaging the fight, and just letting it all hang there unresolved. I don’t care who’s fight is bigger or who got hurt the most…all of our experiences are relative and traumatic…trauma is trauma.
I don’t know whether to walk away or attack (via court etc) I am having problem with guilt in letting him away to hurt someone else versus saving what’s left of me, and healing, recovering and using my hard earned money for my own life
Thanks for a great post…it just helps to get the viewpoints, ponder them…go round in circles…this is not a race to get to the finish line….I just have to ask and ask myself what to do…I have a window of opportunity to strike and when its gone its gone. I don’t want to regret not taking action yet….I’m so worn out and tired, I just want to to stop fighting.