By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)
Many times our friends, in an effort to be helpful, but not actually understanding what we have been through in a “break up” with a psychopath, may tell us, “It’s time you move on with your life, and start dating again,” or words to that effect.
Any time you lose something important in your life, you suffer what is known as “grief.” It doesn’t matter if that something is a break up of a relationship, a job, a death of someone you love, or you lose the Miss America Pageant when you expected to win. Anything that was important and is lost causes grief.
Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, MD, an internationally known psychiatrist, studied grief in the terminally ill and wrote a book called On Death and Dying. It is a classic text for nurses, physicians and others who work with patients who are terminally ill.
You may ask why the grief she studied in the dying is the same grief we experience in other instances. Grief is grief, and one of the important aspects in dealing with grief is time.
Importance of time
I have learned about time that there are some things you just cannot rush. You cannot get a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant. Healing from a significant loss is one of those things that cannot be rushed.
One of the things that seems to be consistent in failed relationships, especially with psychopaths, is the intense trauma experienced by those who have been abused by this class of individuals. It doesn’t matter if the relationship is with a psychopathic parent, psychopathic child, or psychopathic lover, the damage is intense. The grief afterwards is equally intense, and takes time to resolve.
Stages of grief
According to Dr. Kubler-Ross’s research, grief can be divided into several stages. Denial is the first stage. This is where the acceptance of the problem, the loss, is denied, because it is just too huge to comprehend “in one bite.” We tend to think, “No, no, this cannot be the truth; there must be some other explanation.” Denial, short term, is protective. It keeps us from having to acknowledge something that is too horrible to comprehend all at once.
“Sadness,” which is pretty self-explanatory, is another stage. As well as “bargaining,” or trying to figure out a way to “fix” the situation so it doesn’t have to be permanent. “Anger” is another normal part of the grief process. Any time we have been injured, we will feel a normal anger. The final stage in healthy grief leads to “acceptance” in which the grieving person comes to accept the reality of the situation and moves on with their lives.
Unfortunately, the grief process leading to acceptance does not proceed in a straight line from denial to acceptance. It vacillates back and forth, from denial to anger to sadness to bargaining to acceptance and back again, seemingly at random.
The death of a spouse, as an example, may take from 18 months to three or four years to adequately be resolved, in even a healthy grief resolution. Trying to “move on” from a huge loss too soon leaves us vulnerable to making poor decisions. Many people who have suffered emotional and other traumas from the psychopathic experience may try to ”move on” too soon and become vulnerable to getting into a relationship wit another psychopath.
I thought I was rescued
After my husband’s sudden death in an aircraft crash, I was totally devastated by his loss, especially in such a dramatic fashion. I felt alone, lonely, old and unlovable, and I was perfect fodder for the first psychopath who came along looking for his next “respectable wife” to cheat on. He love bombed me, and I thought I had been rescued from my sadness and my loneliness.
I was fortunate that I got out of the relationship before I married him, because I caught him cheating even before the marriage. I kicked him to the curb, but it broke my heart to do so. I ended up wounded again when I had little in the way of resources.
Not long after that trauma, my son decided to have me killed. I was again devastated by the realization that my son was truly a psychopath. I had denied it for decades, but was forced to finally face my emotional trauma.
Not completely healing from the trauma of my son killing Jessica Witt in 1992, I had failed to appropriately resolve my grief over that loss ”¦ the loss of the son I idolized. He wasn’t physically dead, but he was “dead” as far as a relationship was concerned, and I had difficulty admitting to that truth.
Adequate time
Time alone won’t heal us; I wish it would. But not giving enough time, and work, to grieving does not allow us to come to acceptance of our loss, and leaves us vulnerable to the next psychopathic trauma.
Be kind to yourself and give yourself adequate time to work on the emotional devastation you have experienced. But not only time, give yourself the gift of working on your grief issues. It is work, too. It is hard labor, harder than digging the Panama Canal with a teaspoon. There will be days, weeks, maybe months, when you will feel like you are not making any progress. Times when you feel like your pain will never end.
Given time and work, though, it will end, and you can come to acceptance of the losses you have suffered. You can then “move on” in a healthy way. God bless.
Joyce, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for this insightful article. Yes, grief is grief and I think Kubler-Ross’s book is a MUST read for every survivor seeking recovery.
I had to read “On Death And Dying” as a course requirement when I attended school – it was a private Catholic school and this was one of the many insightful topics that the “CLS” classes encompassed. (CLS = Christian Learning Science) So, at 14, I was acquainted with this monumental work and it came as a godsend as I later had numerous friends and classmates that passed from long illness, sudden death, and suicides. This one book helped me throughout my entire life when I’ve had to deal with my personal grief.
And, grieving from the loss of a spath is like no other process. My belief is that we are “equipped” to process other losses, but what we experience at the hands of a spath is beyond anything else in the realm of Human Experience. It’s a systematic dismantling of everything sacred to the target. It’s not simply a matter of losing someone that we loved, but a loss of finances, sexual identity, spirituality, healthy “Self-isms,” and our homes. When our parents pass away, we don’t typically lose our income or finances by fraudulent means. If a friend ends their own life, we don’t typically lose our own sexual identity. If a family member drowns during a flood, we don’t typically lose our dwellings. These are the things that are so thoroughly difficult for survivors of sociopathic entanglements to process and manage.
That’s why I am a strong advocate for survivors to seek the help of a counseling therapist that “gets it.” We are simply not equipped to process THIS type of devastation, alone.
And, I would recommend that everyone read “On Death And Dying.”
WONDERFUL article, Joyce. Thanks, again.
Brightest and warmest blessings
Joyce and Truthspeak – thank you so much for what you have written. I’m keeping these as part of my “short list” of frequent readings. These truths help so much to keep my perspective on the right track, especially as I learn to acknowledge the reality of spaths as compared to “normal losses.”
I’m recently emerging from the “bargaining phase” of grieving my now fully unmasked marriage to a spath. I’m also beginning to experience prolonged moments of peace, knowing that I cannot fix IT. Strange territory to feel moments of peace, but so welcome. These moments of peace provide strength to keep going. I think I am healing bit by bit.
Thank you again – Bless you !!
Dear Oxy,
Thank you for such a timely article. My dear Dad died on 23 Dec.
Dearest Joyce, Appreciate this insightful article. This speaks to what I was feeling all day yesterday, Compounded grief, anger, Frustration along with everything else. I do not grieve for the death of a relationship at all, I know that the relationship was all a sham. This is not coming from a standpoint of self pity, but I grieve for the loss of myself in this. Before the demon infected himself in my life, I was happy, healthy, joyful, confident, and so on. Yes I am aware of the stages of grief, and how one can go back and forth. Out of all of this right now, I need to give myself time…. thanks again. Lovefraud is my lifeline! Good to know we are all Kindred spirits here. Best wishes for a healing day to all. 🙂
Joyce,
Grief is the emotion I tried to avoid most in my life. I grieved since I was a child and I didn’t know why I felt such grief. It was because I felt unloved by my mother.
So I guess that’s the stage I’m at still. stuck in grief because I was avoiding it. Thanks for the article, it is pointing me in the right direction today.
Truthy,
I remember in college, some kids told me that they were taking the “On Death and Dying” course. I was horrified. I couldn’t even discuss it with them, I turned and walked away. To me it was the equivalent of walking into a morgue. So I see now that avoidance has been a factor in my choices. I avoided seeing the spath for the evil that he was because it was too horrifying. He is death, personified.
Strongawoman,
my condolences on your father’s passing. ((hugs))
Yes. I am seeing the roots of my losses in my childhood.
I had a good child-hood til I was about ten. Then, things changed. Inexplicidly. I never knew why. I wasn’t abused, just left alone a lot.
My parents avoided each-other, and I got lost. Perfect set-up to be left alone in my marriages, and to wonder why? But, at the same time, to expect it and accept it as normal.
Skylar thank you.
Like you I felt unloved by my Mother. My Father tried to make up for that…..he must have seen what was happening. Even to this day, Mum declares “Well you always were his favourite”
Nope, she couldn’t show love
Kim Frederick
You are making the same point on two threads. It’s what I woke up thinking this morning.
Knowing our “hooks” = knowing ourselves = knowing our vulnerabilities
I am VERY good at spotting the bad stuff from childhood. I have STRONG intuition about pedophiles. The micro nuances seem to trigger my radar BIG time. I am also VERY good at spotting a person who wants others to SUCK up to them. The SUCK up game was one my narcissistic mother did to us kids. It was HORRID and so I am VERY sensitive when I see others have an agenda where they want others to SUCK up.
People who play the SUCK up game and pedophiles have a lot in common. They are both PREDATORS.
Your comment about knowing our hooks is spot on. Our hooks come from our childhood conditioning. Sometimes we are VERY sensitive to the blatant abusers and blind to the manipulative abusers (my vulnerability), and vice versa, can’t see an spath to save our souls b/c spaths are SO NORMAL to us.
Strongawoman, I’m so sorry for the loss of your father. Losing a nurturing parent definitely leaves a hole in our hearts. My beloved step father died almost exactly 8 years ago this week (Jan 8th) and I still miss him, but I have learned to keep him in my HEART and if I come up against a situation I don’t know how to handle, I ask myself “what would daddy recommend?” Then I have the answer. (((hugs))))
Truthy, yep Kubler-Ross is one of my main stays in helping me cope with the diifferent emotions connected with the grief process.
Long before I ever heard of Kubler-Ross, my beloved Grandfather died, I was about 25 or so. I was devastated as I was closer to him than anyone in my family. About a year after he died, I woke u one night in the middle of the night SO ANGRY AT HIM I WANTED TO DIG HIM UP AND HIT HIM, HOW DARE HE DIE AND LEAVE ME? LOL Once that night of anger was over though, I moved on to acceptance (though at the time I didn’t know about “acceptance” I just knew I didn’t hurt any more.)
Wen Ii went to Nursing school and we studied Kubler-Ross I could look back and see how I had progressed through those stages before.
Parents who shield their kids from grief I think are doing the kids a disservice. We learn how to grieve by doing it. For example, the kid’s dog dies, the kid is sad and crying, so the parents rush out and get another dog to stop the kid’s crying, the kid does not get a chance to experience and process and LEARN about grief.
In my culture, rural south, scots-irish, death and grief were a part of life. Children were part of it, saw it, experienced it. When my dogs died I got to grieve…so at least I was experienced in the grief process and when I learned the stages, so I could realize what “stage” I was in it helped me move through them, but still in all IT REQUIRES TIME to accomplish.
The bigger the loss, the bigger the grief and the longer it takes….and the more WORK as well.
I agree that a therapist who “gets it” about the trauma of abuse suffered at the hands/mouth of a psychopath is a good thing, but unfortunately, not everyone has access to any professional therapy.
Oxy, thank you. Your words are very comforting.As a young child it was my Father I went to if I was upset and all my life he was there. He was a man I could rely on……something I have never found with subsequent relationshits with the opposite sex.
I feel so privileged to have been his confidante days before he died, instructing me of his wishes. He had given up on life and wanted to die, poor man. I was devastated at his candour but am so glad that he spoke so openly to me.
He was, after all, the first person I rang when I made my escape from the spath, a broken wreck of a woman.And he held my hand all the way through the ensuing madness I endured.
I will remember your words;
“if I come up against a situation I don’t know how to handle, I ask myself “what would daddy recommend?” Then I have the answer”