I can’t believe that it is Labor Day. Here in the U.S., it’s the holiday that marks the end of summer, and all I can wonder is, where did the summer go? Yesterday, my husband, Terry, complained about a “time leak”—he swears that an hour is now only 40 minutes long.
Actually, of course, time keeps moving at the same pace, with the exception of the “leap second” added on June 30, 2012. (This apparently caused software problems all over the Internet.) Yes, time marches on—and we can use this to our advantage in recovering from the sociopath.
Involvements with sociopaths cause serious damage to our emotions, psychology, health, finances, social connections—to our very lives. We can recover, but it will take time.
How much time? It’s impossible to predict because every case is different. The short answer is that it will take as long as it takes—but there are steps you can take to make it go faster.
No Contact
First, and most important, have No Contact with the sociopath. Cut the person out of your life. No phone calls, text messages, email and certainly no in-person meetings. Why is this so important? Relationships with sociopaths change the structure and chemistry of your brain, much like addictions. In fact, many people experience these relationships as addictions. Therefore, you must break the addiction.
The longer you “stay on the wagon,” and maintain No Contact, the stronger you become. This is using time to your advantage. But as anyone who’s struggled with other types of addictions knows, if you give in to your addiction a little bit, you have to start all over again. The time you previously spent maintaining No Contact is lost.
In situations where you must have some type of contact, such as shared parenting, your goal is to do your best to minimize interactions. More importantly, you want to go for Emotional No Contact. This means you get to the point where the sociopath simply means nothing to you. You know and accept what the sociopath is, and when you see that typical behavior, you just roll your eyes.
Because No Contact is so important, it is one of the issues you need to consider when deciding whether or not to pursue holding the sociopath accountable for his or her actions. I believe sociopaths should be help accountable—they get away with their moral or actual crimes far too often, which emboldens them and harms society. But the truth is that going after the sociopath keeps you in contact with them, which can slow down your recovery. So you need to decide—is it worth it?
Hastening the recovery
The other thing that can make your recovery faster is consciously deciding that you are going to heal, and taking the necessary steps to do it.
First and foremost, take care of yourself—eat right, get exercise, get sleep, don’t smoke, drink or do drugs. Involvement with a sociopath may have left you with anxiety or depression. Healthy habits go a long way towards combating anxiety and depression.
You then need to decide that you’re going to deal with the emotional and psychological effects of the involvement, using whatever method works for you. If you can find a therapist who gets it—great. If you find comfort in church, prayer, meditation or spiritual practice—fabulous. I used both of these approaches—plus my personal favorite, pounding pillows in which I envisioned my ex-husband’s face. However you do it, you must get the toxic emotions and energy out of your system, or they will eat you up.
I also believe it’s important to look deep within ourselves, beyond the experience with the sociopath, to discover why we were susceptible to the sociopath in the first place. These human predators target our vulnerabilities. In fact, they can spot vulnerabilities that we don’t even know we have.
Did we have wounds from our childhood? Did we have mistaken beliefs that we were unworthy or unlovable? Something made us vulnerable. To truly recover, we must find out what it was and heal it.
If we maintain No Contact with the sociopath and focus on our own healing, over time, it will happen. And sooner or later, we’ll discover that our lives are happier than we ever thought they could be.
After doing some additional reaseach and reading, I happened upon this article, and would like to share it! This one really skewered me! But in a good and PROFITABLE way! http://marriagepartner.com/relationships/6937.php (excerpt of article)…” Abused women make up a significant proportion of any community. And it tends to be their gentler, more feminine qualities that put them at risk. By acquiring self-awareness and learning to ring-fence their frailties with strong boundaries, they can safeguard their specialness. At the same time they can protect themselves from further abuse.” So what are the characteristics that set an abused woman apart?
� She’s a naive romantic. She believes that love, her love will conquer all. It takes her the longest time to learn that love doesn’t excuse her partner from being accountable for his actions.
� She doesn’t know when to give up and walk away.
� She is a natural at guilt, apologies and shouldering the blame for whatever goes wrong.
� She takes responsibility for anything and everything. Hence my concern that writing an article aimed at revealing the specific characteristics of abused women might benefit predatory men.
� She doesn’t believe that she is good enough. Her low self-worth, progressively lowered in an abusive relationship, means that however imperfect her man is, she still feels inferior to him. She sees him as compensating for her own inadequacies.
� Her ‘no’ lacks authority. In other words, she is easily bullied and put upon. She may sound strong-minded, but her wants, needs and reasons never carry the same weight for her as those of her partner.
� She has little or no idea of boundaries. She has little instinct for self-protection or self-preservation. Her best ‘strategy’ is often to hope that others will do right by her. (This strategy causes frequent, painful disappointment.)
� She believes in gender stereotypes. Men are the strong, powerful ones. Women can’t manage on their own. Women need a man to complete them and to manage the challenging areas of life.
� She’s really into rescue. A generous soul, she may well yearn for a rescuer, but she can’t resist running to the rescue of anyone in distress. (This is often part of what attracts her to an abusive partner.) She’s slow to learn that the people she rescues are more likely to turn aggressive than to show gratitude and loyalty in the long term.
� She believes that she is entitled to far less from life than other people. Other people have rights, she only has wishes that she believes are probably unreasonable.
� She’s a generous, long-suffering person. Seeing myself in many of these was/IS a real eye-opener for me! Just OMG!!!!
Radar, this article is right on for sure!!!!! Well said, thanks for sharing it. If we look around, there are lots of places that have information that we can use and share in our recover and in safeguarding ourselves from being abused again.
TOWANDA!!!!
I am in process of finding a balance. Prior to P intrusion, I saw all things through rose colored glasses. Now, I am hyper vigilant on a continuous basis, SIZE PEOPLE UP, CONSTANTLY, all folks are guilty until proven innocent, etc. I am working with my therapist to find a middle ground. I used to be happy-go-lucky, kind, helpful, fun-loving, friendly, sweet, enthusiastic, free-thinking with a smile on my face at all times, etc. Post-P, I am overly cautious, suspicious, dissociative, always on the offense inside my head, unnecessarily accusatory at times, over-protective of self, and others to an unhealthy degree. I can see I have many if not all of the necessary tools to protect myself, and I can vouch for the fact that I am using them, as I am speaking up to others when need be, asking for the things that I need, requiring other’s respect for me/my boundaries. I am fearful of letting go, I think, of the hyper awareness and constantly being on guard… Ugh, it is now getting exhausting. If I let go of the unnecessary parts, and just use the tools that I have acquired, I consciously know that I will be fine, at least well on my way to the balanced way of existence that I am seeking. I believe, I see, just through writing this, that it is purely fear of letting go of the control and keeping creepy behavior of others at bay, that is holding me back from trusting in myself, enough to allow myself to relax and to believe that if I am approached in unhealthy ways by another, my instincts will automatically kick in, and I will kick ass at protecting myself, as needed.
@Truthspeak,
I cried randomly, throughout most of the first 3 months of the aftermath (I have been out of the relationship and have remained “No Contact” for 8 1/2 months, thus far). After about month three, the crying, s l o o o w l y began to taper. I think similar to what Donna mentioned within her comment to you, is that while crying, you are releasing so much, and in turn the more you release, the less you will find that you will need to… it is an incredibly important part of the process I think, in that it cleanses you and frees you of residual venom and other toxins left to you, by the P. I still have random bouts of crying, periodically, however, not nearly as much, and very short lived, compared to several months ago. When this happens, I try to see it as allowing compassion for myself to flow. I learned this from my Mom. XOXO to you!
Thank Donna for another great article. This weekend has been incredibly tough for me. Like Truthspeak, sometimes I am not even sure why the sadness returns in such a strong way. It has been months since I have burst into tears. (though I wanted to note that Truthspeak you are not alone there) For me, I mostly broke into tears out of frustration when my ex would pull another stupid court stunt, tell another lie that went on the record, or even when I would see a man with his child in public (who appeared to actually care about the child).
It’s interesting to think of this “recovery” as a journey of sorts. It does really have to turn into a journey for us to find ourselves. The psychopath is a lost cause. Focusing on that person is a waste of precious years. More important is to focus on how to live well and recover from such a devastating life blow.
Not that this is so important but I will express it out-loud anyway… I think that my healing process has been taking as long as it has, due to the extreme amount of anger I have had. I had never felt anger to any large degree, or even much more than a small amount, and for very short durations of time prior to the P experience. The degree of anger that I have had is literally indescribable. At this point in my recovery, it fluctuates. Sometimes I think it is “finally gone for good”, and then BAM, it has returned. It comes less frequently, and leaves more quickly as I recover more of myself, but the anger is what has been the biggest hardship to overcome, of all of the parts of grieving throughout the aftermath.
Truthy and Shane,
The “grief process” (healing) from ANY loss (death, or anything thing that is important “loss”) is a cycllical thing, not a straight line.
Google Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and the Grief process she studied.
There is denial, bargaining, sadness, anger and acceptance. But they do not go 1-2-3-4-5, but instead go 1,4, 3, 2, 5, 3, 2, 1, etc. and back and forth and back and forth until you reach #5, acceptance, but then you will “lose” that and go back all the way to #1 or #2, but eventually, EVENTUALLY you will reach acceptace and STAY THERE.
The intermittent crying jags are NORMAL….that is the way grief works, and if you KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT, then it isn’t so scary to you when you “back step” into a previous “phase” or stage of that grief.
The HUGE loss we experience when the “love of our life” turns out to be a TRAITOR is much worse than if the love of our life dies! Believe me, I’ve been both places…at least on an intellectual level you know that the love of your life didn’t die on purpose, they died of cancer or whatever (but even that won’t keep you eventually from becoming angry at them for letting cancer win) LOL
We can use the grief journey to also learn about ourselves and our part in becoming a victim….learn why we were vulnerable, and learn to spot the predators in our environment and identify them in the future.
Hang on guys, it will get better!
Thank you VERY much, Ox Drover! I believe you, and this theory you make mention of. I have found myself going forward, backwards and sideways, at any given time within the process. When the anger would return, I think it would make me angrier, because I had previously thought that since it finally subsided, it was finally GONE for good. It has now returned on numerous occasions, which has proven to me that there is in fact no “Gone for good” that exists in this process”. Thank you for the valuable information and encouraging words you have so kindly provided! I have heard the name; Elizabeth Kubler-Ross mentioned in past. I will definitely be Googling her, ASAP. I appreciate it very much!
Ah, I just went to look up Kubler-Ross, and found that I know of 2 of her books. I have not read either, however. I think Truthspeak or another poster brought up “On Death and Dying”, within a different thread. Thanks again for the resource(s). I have been taking full advantage of all of the excellent suggestions and information that I have been coming across, here!
Shane, glad you looked up Kubler-Ross, her work with dying patients and with the GRIEF PROCESS has been very helpful to me. Grief=grief=grief it doesn’t matter WHAT the “loss” is, it all works in the same process.
I do think the BETRAYAL aspect of dealing with loss form a Psychopath makes it worse at times, but still it is the same back and forth up and down, in and out….but, believe me, there will come a time (don’t try to rush it) when it will be pretty well acceptance and the anger even will be less or gone. Don’t give up on healing, just relax and enjoy the ride. LOL