By Ox Drover
What’s the most important thing the sociopath took from you? Money? Love? Your home? Your self-esteem? Sex? Or, is it something else, which in my opinion may be even more important than just about anything?
The most important thing I think I lost from every sociopath I ever dealt with was my own confidence in myself to make assessments about people and then, reasonable choices about those people, based on those accurate assessments.
Many former victims have said that they just have trouble “trusting others” again after being totally hoodwinked and ripped off for so many important things in their lives by the sociopath. Is it others that they don’t trust, though, or are they unable to trust themselves to make accurate assessments of others they may meet in the future? I think it isn’t so much others we don’t trust, as it is ourselves we don’t trust to make good judgments of the intentions and sincerity of others.
Dr. Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” says that the first thing we are concerned with in our lives is out biological needs for oxygen, water, food and relatively constant body temperature. These are the strongest needs we have, about in that order, because if we don’t have these things not much else matters.
The next need we have, according to Maslow, when the physiological needs are satisfied and are no longer controlling out thoughts and behaviors, is the need for safety and security. We (adults) don’t usually think about “safety” until we feel threatened. Of course after we have been injured by a sociopath, we really don’t feel safe at all. Our world of safety is upside down.
The next highest need of mankind, according to Maslow, is the need for love, affection and belongingness. We seek to overcome feelings of alienation and loneliness by both giving and receiving affection.
If our need for “safety” is not satisfied, it is very difficult for us to seek affection, because we feel threatened.
However, because we had difficulty “seeing” from the looks or behaviors of past encounters with sociopaths that these people were “dangerous” to us, we become “paranoid” of others, especially new others. We want the affection of others, but because we have failed in the past to correctly assess the dangerousness of previous people we felt affection for, we are afraid to get too close to others. It is not so much the others that we don’t trust, as we don’t trust ourselves to make good choices.
Not feeling safe makes it very difficult for us to advance on to the “higher needs” such as affection and connectedness with others when we fear that we may make another poor assessment of another’s sincerity and motives with will lead to more pain and injury.
Rather than working on trying to trust others, I suggest we should work on learning to trust ourselves and our ability to make valid and correct assessments of others. This may seem that it is the same thing, but I actually don’t think it is at all.
How do we learn to trust ourselves again? How do we put our past mistakes in assessment of others we have sought to have mutual affection with behind us?
I think we do it slowly by forming new friendships, first of all, rather than looking for a lifetime mate. We meet new people in our environment, or go out and seek to interact with new people. We keep our distance at first from these new people, and we look at them, watching their behavior, and watching for the red flags of deception in their words and actions.
We educate ourselves on what we believe makes a good friend, and we accept nothing less in those that we allow to become closer friends.
We look at people who are already in our “circle” and assess them by what we know about their past and current behavior. Does this person now, or have they in the past, shown less than stellar respect for us? What are the benefits versus the liabilities of having this person in our lives? Maybe we decide that this person doesn’t fit well within our circle of people we think we can trust and we distance ourselves from them.
Just as a child slowly learns whom they can trust by observation, or just as an animal learns that certain people are liable to hurt them, or that certain people will reward them for approaching, we need to reeducate ourselves slowly and carefully, and learn to trust ourselves. If we trust ourselves, it will be much easier to trust ourselves to keep us safe when we venture into “unknown” territory, because we will know that we will keep ourselves safe by our valid and good observations.
We will also know that caution with others is a good thing to have. We will validate that we respect ourselves and love ourselves enough to keep ourselves safe without depriving ourselves of the opportunity to have the love, affection and connectedness that we, as humans, need and want.
hi skylar;
thanks for the clarification.
i do want everyone to have happiness and hope and love and prosperity. it’s more that i’m feeling i have nothing left to give, or that why should i have to always be the one to give it.
really depressed today. i can still feel his touch. and i miss it. but i loathe him. sigh.
Dear Oxy and Kathleen,
Very timely and applicable topic and as always full of wisdom.
Kathleen, I do isolate a bit too but I am trying to date. I have already spent many years in the past letting life pass me by so I just can’t do that anymore.
I am lucky to work with a team of people that are committed to change and healing and courage and compassion. So my work is a healing environment for me. Lucky! They understand trauma because we work with troubled foster youth and behind every troubled foster kid, there is MASSIVE trauma.
We just learned Maslows Heirachy of Needs in class. Thanks for introducing it into this healing space. It is absolutely applicable and you have explained how our need for safety has been undercut. Thank you.
I wanted to say more but I want to do some self care today in the form of OLD NAVY… hahaha! And my meatloaf. Cooking makes me feel like I love myself. I feel loved when I make myself homemade food.
One more thing. I am having a 3rd date tonight. A meatloaf making date. HAHA! The last time we went out, he tried to kiss me and he got a hand shoved into his chest, “Not READY!” I think I shocked the poor fellow. But you know what, I don’t know you dude and I am not ready! So I put a boundary and guess what? No one died!
That was great! And I feeling like more of an adult. And I am restoring that faith in myself.
Honestly, when I met the Bad Man, I didn’t believe I could take care of myself and so I fell into his arms when he hinted that he might take care of me. Bad idea.
So back to the 3rd date pending guy. He was wondering why I haven’t made very much time for him. (It’s a lot to juggle work and grad school.) He wasn’t weird or controlling about it, he just assumed that I wasn’t very interested in him and like I said before, I am undecided.
I had to explain to hm that while having a relationship is something I really want, I am putting more energy into my plan to take care of me right now because that is more of a sure thing! Imagine that!
Well, off to retail therapy.
Aloha ladies……..E
Kathleen, Yes, being slimed IS a contagious emotional state and it can occur in so many ways. But I watched my xP in action soooo many times that I can smell a slime from a mile away. It’s also how I know that my mom is a P. It’s a very feminine form of emotional abuse in its subtlety. When it hits you, you don’t even know you’ve been hit and you certainly don’t realize it came from outside you. For example, my xP would introduce me to his P-friend’s gf. Even at my fattest, I was never really too fat, but the other girl, Heather, although very beautiful and young, had recently put on quite a bit of weight. Both my xP and his P-friend began to comment on her weight and my xP told her about my exercise routine and commented on how well it worked for me. All this done in a “helpful” sort of way out of concern for Heather’s weight gain, but also pointing to me as an example of how she could do better. Heather, could not help but feel belittled and blame me for her feelings because I was the model that they were comparing her to. She got slimed with envy and shame simultaneously.
My xP would also do it by commenting on the amazing and committed relationship between another couple, knowing that our relationship sucked. He would also do it by commenting on other people’s nice homes, knowing that he would never fix ours.
What he didn’t realize is that, like you Kathleen, I have some P-traits of my own: I live in my own little world and I make up my own rules as to what’s important. What living with my P has taught me is that all that external stuff isn’t important. As I struggled in vain to accomplish all the stuff that I could never accomplish because he was sabotaging me, I realized that the struggle and what I learn from it, is important. Who I turn out to be, is what is important and not comparing myself to others and what they have that I don’t.
As always, what I’m able to give to others, AFTER I’VE GIVEN TO MYSELF, is what is important.
So, yeah, when I first took inventory of the price I had paid for being with the P, I felt impoverished – just like he wanted me to. I had lost 25 years of my youth. I had lost so much money and my health and opportunity to have children and friends and so much.
So then I took inventory of what I had left and what I had gained. I had survived hell, so that was a big self-esteem booster, I had managed to keep assets in my name despite having been duped into debt. I had done all these things WITHOUT EVEN UNDERSTANDING WHAT i WAS UP AGAINST! Then I started to learn about the disorder. Those revelations came as if from God: It was luck that first connected me with a stranger who explained malignant narcissism. I was given the gift of understanding my family’s part in this. I have greatly increased my potential for success in whatever endeavor I take on because of my new found knowledge. I can see that the person I was before was an innocent child, and though I mourn her passing, I would much rather be an informed adult. Looking at it this way, I’m grateful.
It took me a couple of paragraphs to explain what my ex-fiance, the guy whom I judged too stupid for me to marry, told me in 1 sentence: I don’t focus on the stuff I can’t do, instead, I focus on the stuff that i can do – Like fishing!
And you know what else? even under the best of circumstance we all end up losing youth and beauty and eventually, our lives. There is no use railing against it. The best we can do is hope to exchange youth and beauty for wisdom and grace so that we can bestow it on the next generation.
skylar: lot of wisdom in that post.
So: What’s It all about, Alfie?
Huh, TB, who the heck is Alfie?
Kim, you must be young. That was a song a long time ago “What’s it all about Alfie” was the title or a line it in. Pondering the meaning of life as I recall.
polly, I really related to much of your post, yes, the magic seems gone, bland, bland bland. I used to be a fun person to be around, now I am hating myself, which one of the things that Kathleen wrote about in her post a little while ago (above).
I am sorry you did not have the children you wanted. I have one daughter, she lives 3000 miles away from me!!!!!
I have hope, after reading others posts, that the good feelings will come back, eventually!!
It was originally written and sung by Cilla Black,{original name, Priscilla White{,in the cavern club in Liverpool, about the time the Beatles were discovered. Its about a young Lothario, or Don Juan, who loves all the women and leaves them. he has affairs with married women anyone who takes a fancy to him is fair game. Im sureAlfie was a Narcissist. They later made it into a film, the original movie had Michael Caine as Alfie, [when M.Caine was young and good looking.I think Jane asher was in it, but Im not sure recently, the movie was remade, with Alfie played by Jude Law.The song is sung by the one woman who truly loves him, but realises he is bad news for her. Love, Gem.XX
Thanks Shabbychic – I read down the other responses and felt quite sad reading what people had to say. Yes I know that having children depends on another person and I know I shouldn’t pin my whole happiness on it, but … I am starting to cry even writing these words … it is something I irrationally want and I am so not at peace with not having it. It’s not something I want to accept, grieve and move on from in one foul swoop.
Thankyou so much for just saying sorry and affirming my grief about it – everyone in my life has tried to cheer me up about it ‘Oh well just get on with it.’ ‘About time you were past that now – it was years ago now’ ‘Well maybe you should stop doing things that you end up regretting’ (THAT one really hurt – from my mother several years after the event).
My whole life has been about children … I trained as a teacher thinking it would be short term and would give me excellent parenting skills so I wouldn’t repeat the things my mother did to me. I never saw it as long term and it was ultimately to benefit my own children. I never saw myself NOT having children – I didn’t see that as a possibility at all.
Skylar – what you said about your ex made sense – raving about what an excellent dad he would be and how great looking the kids were while sabotaging every element of life around us both. The liar did that to me too – spun elaborate tales about having twelve dancing princesses. I just wanted one. The envy position makes it clearer – my God it hurts though. How can someone do that?
To those who tried to make me ‘see the good’ in my childlessness … please don’t. If you have children yourself then you have no conception of what it is to not have them and want them desperately – you have even less understanding if you haven’t lost a child yourself. If you are at peace with not having children then that is great for you, but I am so not at peace with it. I wake up crying every morning with dreams of babies waking me and my limbs contorted into painful spasms.
The heart wants what it wants and logic shall have no part in it.
My lawyer asked the other day ‘Do you have children?’ and I replied no. She said ‘That’s a good thing.’ I started crying and decided to reply. ‘No it’s not a good thing – if I had a child I would have something to continue for. Don’t presume it is a good thing always – I am very sad about not having children.’ She paused as her eye ran over a framed print of herself and her two grownup daughters dressed up for a ball and put her eyes down.
I think maybe the sociopath creates a personal hell for each of us based on what we most want and most fear. I really hope there is such a thing as karma because man – he has a whole lot coming back to him.
Sorry if I sound cross – I am sad tonight. My period is due and each month I anticipate it I wonder how many more are left. I just want to know why everybody else got to have their babies … and why me, who had so carefully prepared and learned and would have sincerely done my best always never got that miracle.
I have missed a lifetime with my little boy – he would have been seven this year – maybe losing a tooth or waking with a bad dream and climbing into my bed all drowsy and cuddly and warm with slumber. Maybe he would have loved dinosaurs. I miss him so much and have missed every day of his life.
I also recognise what I have managed to Learn and salvage from the poison and chaos. I have kept my good credit rating. I have learned to handle money carefully – even though I don’t have much and he has left me with lots of debts. I have learned good people don’t always get what they deserve and sometimes the world is incredibly unfair and cruel. I have learned there is nobody to protect me but me. I have hope too about the good feelings coming back – life is so dull at the moment. I don’t like the person I see – I am proud of lots of elements, but she is not the vivacious person I once was.
I like this idea of being slimed – of being poisoned by their worldview. I guess this is the brainwashing. I have found when practising mindfulness as a kind of meditation that lots of my thoughts now are self defeating and even sound a little like him – a monotonous mumbling that has no life or energy about it and is eternally bland. If it was a colour it would be beige … bland and boring!
I can start to interrupt it when he is gone for a while, but when he comes back I am right back to feeling controlled in some strange way. I don’t get involved in doing anything in case I am interrupted – it’s like I have been conditioned to do this over the years – to remain constantly available IN CASE he decides to tear himself away from the computer to interact … except after so many years of waiting, now I am simply not interested in talking with him anymore.
Kathleen I am hoping I get to the space you are in now – able to be grateful for the experience. I am writing it to understand it as I have so many times before. I spent a year writing a play about the relationship as a way to explore the themes and try to understand what was happening. I was really no wiser at the end of the process. But this time, I have gathered over six hundred pages of information about personality disorders, abusive relationships and abusive men. I have a specific lens to view situations through and NOW it makes sense. I have written 120 pages so far of a book to understand and get out my story. It is a cathartic and frightening process to reflect and document the relationship.