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.
I am new to this board and have just started reading the articles and comments. First, thanks to Donna for setting up this website as I am sure it has helped many people. And second, just in the short time here it has given me a lot of insight on what I was doing wrong. My son is a sociopath and I have suffered over 20 years of emotional damage. However I am making an effort to heal the wounds and although there is a long long way to go, I feel optomistic.
RobertS,
welcome, but sorry you had to be here.
I can’t even imagine how horrible it would be to have a child as a spath. To have to cut them off is like choosing to amputate a limb, I imagine.
My brother and sister are both spaths. She tried to put him in prison and he DID put me in jail for 2 days before dropping charges of DV. My parents know that they are spaths, but they are such good supply that they won’t go NC. My bro lives in their basement, drinking, smoking, online watching porn and gambling. My sister married a full blown spath that MY own spath secretly sent to marry her (she had an insurance settlement). She won’t move very far from them and spends hours at their house each day.
These people literally FEED on your emotions. That’s why you are damaged. NC is the first step and it’s so important.
Next, I would say, learning is critical. Until you really understand what happened and how spaths work, you will always have doubts, always wonder if they are “real” or just acting. This is SO difficult and you will have to really work on it because our brains just don’t function like their do. EVERYTHING they say or do is 180 degrees the opposite of what it appears to be. The word “hypocrite” barely begins to touch the reality of the spath.
Then, sharing your story is really important because being validated is critical to healing. That’s why LF is such an important part of the healing process. We need to be heard, understood and believed.
My heart goes out to you. I’m glad you’re optomistic.
Thank you Ox Drover… In response to your comment, I believe you must be right… about the betrayal by the P, being that of a bigger, more contentious loss of sorts, and I believe the deceit and betrayal are what keeps the anger coming back, presenting itself periodically, throughout the process. What a ride it has been…
Thank you Donna for another inspiring article.
Seems to come always when most needed. xxoo
If you don’t allow yourself to access the anger, you will never find a way of dealing with it. Trust me, I know. NOT DEALING with the anger from all of this put me right where I ended up: in the hospital, with a major heart attack and two heart surgeries to save my life.
It is “healthy” to deal with that anger but not to the point of self destruction. I can so relate about throwing all legalities in the courts, off to the side, because it’s only more attention for them. Be the attention good or bad, it doesn’t matter to them as long as they are getting your attention. Sometimes, depending upon the spath, the uglier the attention, the better. I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t live in DramaRamaLand.
I did not ‘forgive’ but I did ‘absolve’ in a gray rock sort of way. Even still, the stalking continued. This has been shadowing my life for the past eleven years now. This is the first ‘holiday’ of any kind, where I have TRULY spent it in complete peace and quiet without intrusions and that’s only because I changed my number. Now “IT” has NO WAY to contact me except for in person. If it persists in person, due to the death threats, etc., there is a good chance “IT” would be staying in my area a while, doing a little time, so I would stay away.
The thing I don’t get is that even after ‘absolution’, “IT” continues on. WHY? What is spurning this? WHAT?! I am glad I absolved and pushed it out of my life. I know he deserves A LOT more than that, but that’s self survival, for me. Having more of this garbage in my world would only shorten what life I DO have left and “ITS” not getting it. It just isn’t.
Happy to hear life is moving forward for a lot of you.
It is me too.
I am finding life again.
Something I never thought I would.
Healing comes slow but it’s not easy sorting through a lifetime of beliefs and being honest with ourselves. It isn’t that we have done anything ‘wrong’ nor ‘bad’, loving and caring for someone, it’s that we were left with a whole lot of leaks springing in our dams. We need to shore them up and move on and upward to more important things in our lives.
I don’t understand WHY IT still persists.
I mean, seriously.
In the past eleven years, the past four days have been absolutely quiet. NO stalking phone calls. I can answer the phone with freedom and knowing someone isn’t going to be on the other end, calling me names, telling me they are going to kill me…imagine that. This past weekend has been the first weekend in just about 6 years, that I was able to just ‘breathe’. FINALLY!
They deserve all the formal legalities they can have thrown at them. However, I am not going to waste any more of my life on this. I just am not. I take away ALL the drama; all the words; all of everything. There is just nothing left to say. Period. Over. Finished.
Have a good week everyone.
Love and prayers ~ Dupey
Oxy, please check your email.
I need your help.
petite
OxD, I read Kubler-Ross way back in the ’70’s as a course requirement. I appreciate your clarifying that the grieving process skips around – I have recognized those “steps” in my process, but I couldn’t understand why I kept going back and forth on some of them.
I’ve posted this, before, but since you mentioned that the exspath was a traitor, it might bear repeating.
About a year ago, I was having a philosophical discussion with my son and we were discussing why “Betrayal” warranted the 9th Circle Of Hell. I was thinking that a child murderer would be the worst of the worst, but what my son said rather sorted that out, a bit. When someone’s life is taken, there is ultimately an “end” to their pain and torment, albeit a final end, but an end nevertheless. When a person experiences Betrayal, they must live with the aftermath for the rest of their lives – trust issues, blame, shame, guilt, anger, rage, despair, longing, etc….every day of their lives they awaken with the reminder that they have been betrayed and that there will be no remedy.
What my son said was so insightful, and this was prior to my discovery about what the exspath truly was. So, knowing that these feelings as a result of the carnages of spath entanglements are “normal,” helps to some degree. I believe that a day will come when I don’t awaken with a feeling of dread, loss, and concern for my future. I just have a whole lot of work to do, yet.
Brightest blessings
Dupey, I’m so grateful that you changed your number, finally. And, any peace is peace-times-ten when one has been stalked and harassed. For me, it was only a year (or, so) and I am still managing triggers from those experiences! I cannot even begin to imagine the level of stress that you experienced – I just can’t.
Okay – off topic and completely aside: WHY isn’t stalking/harassment prosecuted as a “terroristic” act? From my own experiences, being stalked/harassed creates such a state of emotional (and, physical) damage that it can’t be measured – seriously, there can be no amount of money in punitive damages that will make a victim of stalking/harassment “whole,” ever again. WHY aren’t these people held accountable? It’s not a rhetorical question that I’m asking – I am quite seriously perplexed as to why this isn’t treated like the hostile behavior that it is.
Brightest blessings
Thuthspeak and others: woth regards the crying…
I used to create and actually plan physical crying moments for myself. However, I wouldn’t advize this method when you are still totally raw and open, bleeding from the gut. But it can be a helpful tactic when you feel somewhat stronger already, and when the sadness fluctuates with days of being ok or angry or any other feeling.
I’d rent a sure tearjerker movie, have a box of paper handkerchiefs ready, get myself some favourite icecream flavor or a rich chocolate dessert (a mousse, cake, sauce, …). I would also include a bottle of Calvados with that and a glass (I rarely drink alcohol, and never had an issue with habitual drinking. Not advizable for people who have a drinking past). And I’d invite a very intimate, close friend, informing them of the purpose. The tearjerker movie (Terms of Endearment anyone? Or “the Champ”?) and Calvados was to evoke my pain and make it easy for it to come up with tears. The dessert, the friend and the handkerchiefs were the consolation. (Note: the alcohol was not for consolation, but to access the emotions more rapidly and lower the inhibitions against hiding them for myself).
So it was pretty much an organized self-pity fest, but in a protected and planned setting with real care and love surrounding me. Didn’t have to do that often, but it helped me to make sure those feelings did not surface at an inopportune time.
Darwinsmom, what a fantastic idea, seriously. I know that I need to get this venom out, and I am weary of presenting the “strong” facade all of the time. If I get this out of my system, then it’s OUT for a good while.
GREAT suggestion, and thank you so much for throwing that out there to consider.
Brightest blessings
Thank you Donna!
“No Contact” would be the best!!! If I never saw that monster again, I’d be eternally greatful! But sharing 3 young kids with a sociopath makes that extremely difficut–especially since the kids are used as his pawns. Sad.
I’ve come a long way though! Ignoring him does give me satisfaction, makes me stronger and I know it pisses him off 😉 Now that my eyes are open, power & control is very easy to recognize. Will not give in!
Keep up the good work, Donna. Your dedication to the cause has been a blessing as it has helped me in my healing.
Best wishes to you all!