Editor’s note: The following article refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud’s statement on Spiritual Recovery.
If someone is continuously harming you, and refuses to stop, should they be forgiven? This is a question that I hope you will try answer at the end of this post.
My dad is a convicted serial killer. He killed 4 people and told me about the crimes with great pride. He used me, his favorite son, to help him destroy evidence when he felt that I might be a risk. He made me a part of this so that I would not go to police. He abused my mom, and brothers and sisters.
This is not the place to try to make one experience with a sociopath out to be any worse than another, they all bring about the same feelings of shame, guilt and often times depression. The question really is”¦”what do we do with these experiences?”
As far as I can tell, based on my own experience, is that we have only two choices. We can let go through forgiveness and find freedom that we never imagined possible turning this nightmare into a net gain that becomes a gift, or we can resist the lesson and continue to punish ourselves for the rest of our lives.
This is The Choice.
How does it make you feel when you think of the pain that was caused by your experience with a sociopath? Take a few minutes to look within yourself and be honest about how it makes you feel to think about the events that happened to you as a result of your encounter with a sociopath.
If you feel sick, sad, guilty, or regret the past, ask yourself who is harming you with these thoughts and feelings right now. If the sociopath is not in your life at this time and you are still feeling this pain, where is it coming from and why is it still there? Finally, if you still feel this way, are you not continuing to give the sociopath the power to control your life and poison existing relationships?
These are tough questions and the answers did not come easy for me. As long as I was not willing to let go of the past, I continued to suffer. As a result, I had paralyzing migraine headaches, chronic back pain, nightmares, irritable bowel syndrome and other illnesses that plagued me as a young adult long after my father went to prison.
I “thought” he didn’t deserve forgiveness. In fact, I was sure of it. That is because I did not know what forgiveness is. What I did not realize was that it was not him that I was hurting, but me.
Once again, forgiveness really has very little to do with the other person. It does not condone the behavior, release them from their responsibilities or say It’s OK to harm people. What forgiveness really does is release us from an emotional prison that we have created for ourselves. We hold the key and don’t even know it; because “we think” forgiveness tells the perpetrator that what they did is OK. Forgiveness is only accepting what already is and what cannot be changed.
There is A Miracle that awaits us when we do this and it changes everything. Our perspective changes, our outlook upon life improves, and happiness is restored.
Why are so many of us so unwilling to let go of the past? I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know this, a simple willingness is all that’s needed to make The Miracle possible. God will show you the way if you ask for His help with a sincere willingness to be free of the past.
Part of the Miracle is that when we let go of the past, we stop repeating it. Freedom has all kinds of rewards and the end result is gratitude for the experience because of what it really offered. Listen to those that have found their freedom from forgiving others (and themselves) and you will see this Truth.
Today, The Miracle for me is that I have learned The Truth about suffering. The only thing that has the power to harm me now is my thoughts. This is where all suffering comes from. Freedom from this comes from letting go of the past.
I have none of those physical and emotional illnesses today. The one thing that changed everything for me was a decision to learn about and pursue forgiveness. I first had to accept that I knew nothing about what forgiveness really meant.
This helped me to learn a little bit about exactly who was hurting me and why. If I cannot forgive him for hurting me, then how can I forgive myself for continuing to hurt myself with the experience long after it happened? I have forgiven myself, but I needed to see the benefits first, trust the process, and forgive my father to be able to do it.
My dad is still on death row and is no threat to me or my family. He cannot harm me anymore. When I forgave my father, all I really said was “you can’t hurt me anymore.”
As for me? I still have do work daily to keep from hurting myself with negative thoughts, but at least I am aware of who is really doing the hurting now and know what to do about it. Awareness is a great spiritual gift. I have found much of heaven and am grateful.
I will continue to write weekly here, but for those that are interested and willing to go more deeply into the process of letting go, please join A Course In Forgiving (begins January 19, 2012). I did not come here to promote The Course, but to offer it to those that feel moved to do something more about the pain in their lives.
There is no fee of (optional donation of up to $25.00) for the six week online course. This Course is designed to guide participants through the Step by Step Spiritual Process of Letting Go with weekly lessons, readings and exercises that are intended to open the pathway to healing and Peace.
If interested, please visit www.victorythroughpeace.com and click the link in the left hand column titled “Six Week Course Online”. For those that participate, I will be available by phone and email to share experience in addition to this weekly blog on Lovefraud.
Peace.
@phoenix
I do a Bible Study on Friday mornings, but there are many aspects of church that I miss sorely. I do have a group of friends doing a small home church group. I may go back there again. I do have a rich and deep faith and spend time daily in prayer and devotions, it is more important than anything else. My faith has given me strength and sustained me through the pain and chaos of a relationship with a spath. I have made progress toward forgiveness and letting it all go with God’s help. I trust God will show me my path, I just need to be patient. One of the more difficult thing to let go of is the fact that he is actively seeking his next victim. I need to let go of that to…it is so hard because I know it is only a matter of time before he hurts someone else like he hurt me, and his daughter’s mother and his daughter and any other girl or woman caught up in his web of deceit. I pray God’s best for him, because only God sees all things. I have learned that praying a simple prayer of “God’s best” for a person that has hurt me helps me get to a place of complete forgiveness. It is a process and it takes time. Somehow in the surrendering of my will and praying God’s best for the other person it is like medicine for my soul. Over time it heals the painful wounds and soothes the sting of injustice of malicious and unrepentant abuse from another person. Truth be told I think God’s best for him right now would be putting the sociopath back in prison for the his many crimes, just being honest, not especially proud of that. Until God heals my broken heart and helps me get to a place of peace and total forgiveness I need to give it all over to God, over and over and over again. I know from experience that is what has worked for me in the past. It is both very difficult and very rewarding at the same time. I really do hope he will change his ways because he does such harm to others the way he is now, but the more I know about sociopaths the more I understand that he probably will not change. I can’t comprehend how someone that has lost relationship with his family, girlfriends, wives, friends, children, and been in jail and prison as many times as he has would not be motivated to change. It makes no sense to me and that is why I have to let it go and give the whole big mess to God. And yes I agree, if he fools everyone with his lies and just keeps going on hurting, using and abusing people he will answer to God someday for his behavior. He may get away with murder in this world but there will be ultimate justice in the next.
I know that there are good churches out there, I will find one when the time is right. I think it is interesting that your spath wants to go to church for “the sense of community”. I saw how my spath ex works people against each other behind the scenes just for his entertainment. Sometimes he had an agenda like undermining me or someone in authority, but sometimes he just messed with people for sport. I came to understand that all people were just pawns in some kind of sick game that he was playing and his statements about love and faith and ministry were EMPTY LIES for the purpose of manipulation.
I pray for deliverance, healing, resources, support and forgiveness for all the victims of relationships with a sociopath! I pray that communities like Lovefraud will be a place of healing, learning, education to empower people to overcome the pain and move on in life.
Hugs and Blessing to you also! Thank you for your prayers, I will pray for you also!
Phoenix, I agree with you praying FOR them…even if you do not mean it when you start….will help you let go of some of the bitterness against what they have done. I prayed for my egg donor and my offspring, and it was hard. I did NOT mean it when I said “please bless X and Y” but I knew God knew I didn’t mean it, and that I was doing because that is what I had been told to do, “Pray for those who persecute you” and I literally had to write the words on paper and READ them aloud in order to say them I was so angry and hurt…but it did help ME.
Holding on to the bitterness is like someone said, “drinking poison and hoping some one else will die.” It is TOXIC to us, not to them. It is also something that I have to WORK at CONTINUALLY.
When I got the note offering the “olive branch” from my X friend in the Christmas card, I started to answer his note and just tell him what I thought, and as I wrote to him I became angry all over again….just thinking about the things he had done to me. None serious (he isn’t a psychopath, just a jerk) but still it made me angry just going over them, and in fact, I remembered some I had actually forgotten about. That was when I realized I had “fed” the “bitterness monster” that lives inside of each of us, and even a little food will make it grow and devour us from the inside out. We must starve that bitterness monster….for our sakes, not for theirs. What we think about them, or how we feel is of little to no importance to them, but it is very important to us and our own health—mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. To me it is a constant struggle to starve the “monster” that would devour my life and my soul! I won’t let the psychopaths or even the jerks ruin my peace, my happiness….my life.
It is so true!
It’s like the Cherokee story about the two wolves:
An old Grandfather said to his grandson, who came to him with anger at a friend who had done him an injustice, “Let me tell you a story.
I too, at times, have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do.
But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times.” He continued, “It is as if there are two wolves inside me. One is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him, and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way.
But the other wolf, ah! He is full of anger and bitterness. The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. It is helpless anger, for his anger will change nothing.
Sometimes, it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit.”
The boy looked intently into his Grandfather’s eyes and asked, “Which one wins, Grandfather?”
The Grandfather smiled and quietly said, “The one I feed.”
Hosanna, I wasn’t married to a spath pastor however it has been many years since I felt comfortable inside a church although I do consider myself to be spiritual. I used to work for a church that I didn’t belong to and when I was there alone I was bombarded by so much negative energy I could only stay there for short periods of time. Perhaps it was residual energy from spaths within the church and their dirty deeds.
It wasn’t until this past Christmas Eve when my ex MIL, who is also a spath, stopped over that I realized how many people with high P traits are so devoted to going to church every week – they are trying to redeem themselves! Finally I understood why I was leaving church with less positive energy than I entered with. Since that realization (which was before I took the job at a church) I’ve only been for baptisms, weddings, funerals and memorial masses. I can be in touch with my spirituality just by being in nature and breathing it all in. I was brought up Catholic, went to Catholic school……and knew many of the clergy who were later revealed as abusers.
Church is a wonderful community if people can find peace, love and healing there. It just doesn’t work for me anymore but that is due to my individual experiences.
As many others have stated, we will be judged for how we lived our life, not how many times we entered a specific building.
~New
Hosanna, very wise words indeed from the Cherokee people.
Alina, so sorry for what you are going through. Many positive thoughts going out your way.
~New
Hosanna, How touching and I will try not to feed the evil wolf!!
@New
I am so sorry you have also experienced a toxic church. It truly breaks my heart when I hear about people being hurt by a church because it is the extreme opposite of what God intended. I agree, people are not “saved” by going into a particular building on a fairly regular basis. I am glad that you can experience God in nature, I do too! Personally I have been in a loving healthy church in the past and it was absolutely wonderful and I miss it very much. I have moved to a new area and I don’t know much about the churches here. I have lots of friends and family that are believers and we have rich fellowship often. I haven’t found a place yet were I can invest my heart but I trust that God will open a door for me when the time is right, or maybe not…maybe God will lead me someplace else…I don’t know and I am ok with that. I can have a deep, rich, personal, intimate relationship with God on my own and my church may be my family, friends, Bible study, working at the Homeless Shelter and the Food closet!
God bless you in the new year New!
@strongawoman
YES! We need to feed the good wolf and starve the bad! ; )
Hosanna, I agree that there are many avenues in which we can fulfill our spirituality. Another door will open for you when the time is right, probably after you’ve had an opportunity to heal a little more.
Many blessings to you for the New Year. 🙂