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.
They all have his phone number in their phones. I have to call my phone carrier and figure out how to block him…but his wife has a phone too …not sure what her number is. I will figure it out. I really think I should tell him to stop sending texts to the girls on holidays because he is upsetting them. But, maybe after this one…my 14 yr old will not respond or contact him anymore when he texts her. I am going to have to talk to her…when she isn’t upset anymore.
I know I can make it financially somehow…I always find a way. I chose to stay here because rentals in my town are the same as my mortgage payment. And they are limited too.
I can’t even sell the house because i’m underwater. I owe 50k more than I could sell it for. My plan was to rent out my daughter’s room because it has a separate entrance…only no bathroom in it. I had this planned in case I couldn’t make the mortgage…but it needs to be the right person. I also have other ideas in mind….
I just need to stay here in town until my last one is out of school…in five yrs. I could always rent it or sell it then. I just hope I can figure out a way to live without stress…or defauting again!!!
Anyway…just had too much going on this weekend…betw him and the x texting me…and selling my car…and my daughters friends parents cancelling the sleepover last minute…and my sisters antics….
Whew!
We had a great time today though. Had friends from up north come down to continue the birthday celebration. We played “Telestrations”. Its a great game…Love BoulderDash too!
2B, it is good to have friends in and have just FUN! Great going!
Thank you Oxy. I have weeded out so many people from my life! I feel good. I went back to work, substitute teaching and I feel so good because I am using my skills to help children and I am making the extra money I need. I will do flea markets in the spring to supplement my income. And, I am meeting new people and I feel better about myself.
I just need to take care of the issues with my xhusb and get him to stop texting them. Its hurtful to them.
Nothing like true friends (who care )to surround ourselves with.
to tobehappy
i’ve just finished with my spath/exfiance and am alone with 6months old daughter. how do you handle life after 10 years…? i’m scared to death to even open my email box…i know there will be nothing but more abuse or ‘requests’, emotionally loaded statements, eloquently written thou. the only good thing is he lives in different country now but decided to come back to visit his daughter frequently and to quote him: watch me ‘bleed’ so to speak.
is there any light at the end of this tunnel?
ToBe, I’m so sorry for the pain you are going through via watching your girls suffer. This has to be difficult. We have all made mistakes that had some bad consequences – please don’t beat yourself up over it. You can turn it into something positive by modeling to your girls that you are someone who doesn’t put up with crap and that you are someone who moves on from bad experiences and doesn’t let those experiences drag you down. They will ultimately internalize some of your personal strength. And you can always tell them that even though you married a bad person, THEY are the good things that came out of it. (I’m assuming he is their biological father?) From my perspective, learning how to overcome a bad situation is a priceless lesson that will help them as they go through life. If you teach them that lesson, you will have turned the whole thing around and made it into something constructive. There will always be some source of pain and suffering in life in some form or other (it is the first Noble Truth in Buddhism). You will not always be able to shield your children from suffering as they go through life. But you can teach them how to handle it. This, to me, is one of the greatest gifts you can give to them.
tobehappy: after having been married to a man, for 13 years, that I truly believe has issues, our having had four children, whom I never ever spoke to about how ‘horrid’ or ‘ugly’ their father was…What I did do was take them away from the ugliness and became a single mother where “I” was not being beaten, at night, after the kids went to sleep; where I was NOT ordered around like a maid of some sort –
I made the most strong and peaceful life I possibly could for my children and protected and defended them no matter the cost. My ex husband was an alcoholic. We were young, in our 20’s, when we met, married and started a family. I had four children by the age of 26. I stayed married to him for 13 years. THEN I took the children and moved half way across the country to pursue a legal career and left my married life behind me.
Never have I ever advised my children negative things about their father. I have always told my children to love and respect their father because he is the only one they will ever have. We maintained ‘joint custody’ and I made myself very clear during the divorce proceedings, IN FRONT OF THE JUDGE, that if he were to ever use our children as weaponry of some sort and/or if he was ever cruel to them and ignored their feelings, that I would indeed do something very mean to him because THEY are not the pawns in this charade. Did I make myself understood?
The judge promptly advised me that I could not threaten someone in his presence, as I had just done. I looked at the judge and I told him: “Then arrest me, Your Honor, for attempting to protect my children.” He asked my soon to be ex husband, if he heard that and my husband smiled and said ‘yes’. The judge then said: “So be it”. WE HAD ONE ATTORNEY between the two of us, soley to be the mouthpiece and to do the paperwork with the courts. We had decided to split and we came to all agreements, etc., prior to walking in the courtroom.
I didn’t want to clutter the childrens lives with the details of our divorce and never have. We attempted to keep all of the emotional upset away from the children.
They are all grown up now and have great relationships with both of us. They are awesome, well adjusted, kind, good and sincere people. I never let their father terrorize them with his ‘shortcomings’. When I would see emotional distraught, I told him, straight up, what he was doing to them and asked him to make the necessary adjustments in himself to enable our children to live in the peace they needed. To stop his taunting for the sake of the children, which he did…if he had not, I would have turned to legal remedies.
Fortunate for me, he went along with every request I made and it all ended up being good. He and I can talk though and are friends. He doesn’t try ruining my life and I don’t his.
I would state the case simply and in terms that can be understood. And I would back it up with the law if necessary in order to protect my children. Period. I do not repeat myself. I say it once because I feel once in enough. If it is not, I shall pursue other avenues.
I am sorry this is happening to you.
On top of everything else, this ‘drain dweller’ has the nerve to upset his own children’s lives. THAT in itself makes him a ‘drain dweller’. No consideration at all. I would MAKE him have consideration. If the LOSER can’t take care of his own children, he needs to just stay away since all he can do is upset them.
I would advise you from a legal opinion point of view to seek counsel if you have not already done so. I would request the court MANDATE that he stop upsetting them and allow them to live in peace. Once the court decides, there is no argument.
What he is doing is not right and I would put a stop to it.
If you just stop participating, it will go away and fade away, eventually. My biological father did the same things to me.
He would only barge into my life when he wanted to ‘grand stand’ and since he was never paying any child support for me, that was irritating and upsetting. His ‘bi yearly’ visit but I never knew at the time he was my father…imagine that. When I was being adopted by my maternal grandfather, my biological father said: “I give my permission to adoption on one term: that being she never try to contact me in her lifetime.” Nice thing to say about your own blood; isn’t it?
With a ‘father’ like that, he needn’t worry: I would never try to contact him and never have. I have been on my own since I was 16 years old and will be 61 years old this year. Nobody has done for me along the way but one thing I have always done was protected my children and gave them the very best possible DRAMA FREE life that I possibly could.
I am sorry for you and the kids that you have to go through this but I definitely would put a legal stop to it. Period.
If you have an open line of com with this loser, advise him that he is upsetting the kids and you wish it to stop. THEN without threat to him, seek counsel and just keep on blocking. Period. It might cost you a little bit of money but it will be so well worth the peace. Trust me. As amicable as me and my ex were, there were times I had to sit him down in the corner; trust me.
You can do this! Look how far you have already come!
I will pray for you and send thoughts your way…
Let us know what you decide and remember NOBODY can decide this for you, but yourself. Nobody can make the changes for you but yourself. I wish you strength and courage. You sound like an amazing MOM.
REMEMBER YOUR VALUE AND WORTH.
Dupey
my gramma told me once “it’s all in how you hold your mouth”. that didn’t mean much to me til i found myself in what i now call a snakepit, and had to climb out. i was literally surrounded by sociopathic persons; & this before there was any mainstream acknowledgment of their existence.
it is all in how you hold your mouth. if you are happy, just being happy…automatically removes you from the influence of evil people…even if they hurt you.
which is the ‘carries guns” effect. i have found only one thing that is a more effective barrier to a potential sociopathic person in my life- the “tell” when i tell them i carry guns…. : )
i also tell people i am a christian, then i act as one. including no tolerance for unchristian actions, such as emotional abuse.
big shield there, too bad i didn’t use that when i was younger.
but one thing i had to determine in climbing out of that snakepit– the “hooks” that are often used are our attachment to family and a sociopath will use that forever and ever. i myself walked away from an eight yr old child who’d considered me her “good” mom. one of the very hard things in my life. i knew though, that so long as we were connected, her parents would use her as a hook to debase and destroy my own children.
draw lines. forgive, but do not forget those lines. learn from your experience, because only God can save these people’s souls. learn how much you personally are strong enough to give, and give not one ounce more. anything else, well, the phrase i have learned is “put it in His hands”. and that does work.
Carries guns,
That is an awesome post, and I want you to know I am 100% with you…and “how you hold your mouth” has a lot of meanings in the culture of the South, and that way of looking at that phrase was one I hadn’t thought of but you are right there!
Trying to be a Christian and to also not tolerate abuse has been a journey for me in learning. I read the Bible AGAIN with “different” eyes, with NEW eyes, and saw that the “slant” that had been put on the Bible teachings by my egg donor and her ilk was NOT what the Bible actually taught! DUH????!!!! Forgiveness does NOT mean we have to forget or to let them continue to abuse us. Love your neighbor as yourself does not mean a “squishy” feeling, it means to TREAT them well…but it also supposes that you will TREAT YOURSELF well. DUH?” Again, I hadn’t seen that in the teachings of the Bible before….I did not and was not asked by God to treat others well and allow them to treat me poorly and to pretend it never happened. WOW! What a wonderfully freeing change in how I saw what the Bible taught!
Glad you are still around Carriesguns! SO DO I and they are my “friends”—I hopefully will never have to actually use one to defend myself like that little girl had to defend herself New Year’s from the guy who had stalked her with a knife…but she killed him on the spot and protected herself and her baby, she had been on the phone with 911 for 21 minutes and they had not arrived to help her yet. I’m sorry she HAD to kill that man, but I’m glad she had the guts and backbone to do what she had to do. Bless her heart, she lost her husband to lung cancer on Christmas day. SAD for the girl!
Forgiving my ex-spath is not an issue for me… I don’t forgive him, but a lot of my resentment has left me.
Today, I actually I kinda felt a gratefulness towards the life events of the past year: I’m grateful to the OW that she fell hook, line and sinker for his trap and she took him off my hands, when I was unable to put an end to it, even if I felt it was necessary. I realize though that she got the bad end of the deal. I’m grateful too that he went searching for a new victim and got bored with me. How much longer would I have stayed involved in an unsolvable limbo otherwise?
I’m grateful that my weak principal sacked me… It made me decide to finally take matters in my own hands and start studies I truly enjoy, as much as a hobby, and it even has started to shift my ideas career-wise, not just on what I want to teach, but at what level I want to teach. I’m getting more and more convinced to become a lector at high education institutes rather than high school. I would most likely never felt the necessity to take this physics studies on without it all.
And ultimately I am most grateful of myself of having a healthy bounce so I can turn such a negative experience and what seemed to be a dead life in new dreams, new paths.
No, I will not forgive him for what he put me through, will not forgive him for what he is. He is evil. But I have forgiven myself, for putting myself in that position to be abused by him for a long time, because I (not him, but I alone) also used it to grow and take charge of my life again. For the same reason I can not forgive him: he will not grow, will not take charge and take responsibility. But I don’t need to forgive him. He’s not asking for it, nor in need of it. And not forgiving him for trapping me to accept him into my life, does not prevent me from being grateful he’s out of my life.
Darwin’s mom,
Actually I think you and I are just talking about the same thing, and using different words. I think your “gratitude” IS ACTUALLY WHAT I CALL “FORGIVENESS” which is getting the bitterness out of your heart. It sounds ot me like your “gratitude” is getting the bitterness out of your heart. Not that you think what he did is right or that he will change, but just that he no longer matters.
I’m glad that you have made some significant life changes for the positive. Actually that is what the healing process is all about I think! TOWANDA for you!
You now have a PhD in Psychopaths! (((hugs)))