Editor’s note: The following article refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud’s statement on Spiritual Recovery.
Healing does not always look like what “I” think it should look. Last week’s post was another example. I checked it late in the evening and read many posts that sounded like my post was doing more harm than good to some. Frankly, it made me uncomfortable for a moment and I needed to think about what I was feeling. I’d prefer everyone to say wonderful things about these posts and get well immediately, but that is not how it works.
The Truth often makes us uncomfortable, because it means that we have a choice, and can do something about how we are feeling. The absolute hardest lesson for me to learn was that I am not a victim (there I go again!). If I am not responsible for my own happiness, then who is? Healing is not always easy. It often takes courage, faith and endurance, but it is always available. It IS up to us.
My experience was, and continues to be, that healing does not always look like I think it should look. In fact, sometimes it appears to be destructive, hurtful and scary. This is where Faith and fellowship come in.
Personally, I needed the help of others sharing their own personal experience as it related to my own journey. Many of them “thought” they were being harmed too, when in fact, they were on the road to Healing. This gave me hope when I needed it most”¦when things looked the worst.
The gift of this site is that Lovefraud provides a place where people can share and help each other. Those that have been through this and healed return to help others and that is a beautiful thing. I call it A Miracle.
For the ones returning to help, what was once a nightmare of pain and suffering has now become a beacon of peace, hope and freedom for others. I am pretty sure none of us saw that coming when we were at our darkest moments.
I certainly never thought my experience with my dad killing people would be a “good” experience”¦But hey, what do I know anyway??? Certainly not enough to tell someone else what Healing should look like! I do know that it feels good and for that”¦I am forever grateful!
Today is a great day for A Miracle!
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.
If you registered for The Course and have NOT received an email from me, please re-register, or email me at travis@victorythroughpeace.com.
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.
myheart,
what a lovely, lovely post. absolutely inspirational.
without intruding on your boundaries, I’d like to ask for a ((hug)).
and xxoo too.
Thanks skylar hug back to you as well. This site has helped me a lot in looking at things I refused to look at and was a lost soul, since I didn’t understand what had happened/
Thanks all of you being there for all of us.
with regards
Forgiveness gave me weakness. It happenes, whenever I felt like I forgave him, I wanted to call him, hug him, like I did during our marriage. Whenever I forgave him I wanted us to make up and want to behave like nothing happend.
So forgiveness still has same effect on me, which is counter productive in my healing. So instead of forgiving him, I want to get to a point, that even he comes in front of me, I will look beyound him, unconciously, like he is a total stranger to him, what he does or doesn’t do who is he with or not, whether he is alive or dead, doesn’t mean anything to me.
I don’t sound like a good person, but I don’t beleive in forgiving a criminal, yes I want to forget them, like I never knew them…..
I understand, my heart.
Forgiveness looked that way to me too. for my whole life. And it is what dragged me back down.
Now it looks different. Today, I look at forgiveness the way I look at termites, slugs or coyotes. These are creatures that destroy what I value. It isn’t their fault. It’s their nature. I understand. And I kill them anyway. Not that I kill spaths, but what’s important is that we understand and don’t take it personally.
Ido understand that he is a different type of person with zero remourse, and it is not something he may be doing intionally, I do feel sorry for him that because the way he is, he drags people away from him, so he is the one who will exit this world alone.
But it doesn’t take any less effect what he has done, and impact of that will be there… It is like a murderer kills somebody and we all say he didn’t know what he was doing, may be true, but it doesn’t mean somebody didn’t lose his/her life.
Brazil,
I don’t know if I’m in a position yet to give advice on sociopath’s, but bitches, yes.
The less you and your hubbie have to do with her, the better. While I agree its up to your husband to be the one who ends the relationship with his sister, which ends the abuse he clearly does not need, you can support and encourage him. It sounds like he is on the right path.
Good luck.
Sky, it’s not the nature of either termites, slugs or coyotes to destroy what you value… it is their nature to survive, and it sometimes happens that what you value is in their territory and a means to survive. But true, they don’t know any better.
And yet, I cannot compare this to a spath’s nature. A coyote, termite and slug do not have a cognitive ego, cannot reason through actions. Even if spaths lack empathy, they cognitively know they are hurting someone, and some even have a duping delight in it.
Myheart, a spath murdering someone is imo not comparable to say someone who is truly psychotic, schizophrenic or impaired in their intelligence. A spath knows very well he is murdering someone and that it is bad, but feels he can just because… A psychotic person feels his life is in physical danger by some imagined threat and acts out of defence as far as he knows. Same for someone schizophrenic. And someone impaired in their intelligence may not even know his own force when responding in anger. A spath is not dillusional and knows his strength full well. They just lack the capacity to care, and in some cases even take enjoyment in it.
Darwin’s mom,
its true that spaths can make choices, whereas other parasites and predators cannot because they don’t have that type of cognition.
Yet there are similarities. Both feel entitled to take what is in “their territory”. Although spaths use their cognition to make their choices and strategize how they will achieve their ends, I think the impulse for their behavior comes from a sense of entitlement and a feeling of fear.
The spath’s intellect is used in the same way that the jaws of a termite, slug or coyote is used: in the service of appeasing their hunger. Except in the spath, it is an insatiable emotional hunger that they seek to appease. It makes them feel entitled to consume and destroy whomever looks weak enough to take on.
My heart,
The word “forgiveness” has different emotional meanings to different people. To me it means to “get the bitterness against them out of my heart, but not to ‘forget’ or to trust.” It simply means I am no longer bitter and hateful inside myself, I ACCEPT what the past was and it is past, but I no longer want a relationship with them and I no longer trust them in a good sense.
Indifference to them is the ultimate to be desired state where we really could care less about them one way or the other, and if we ran into them it would not wound us or cause us anxiety, they would just be a NOTHING. I am sort of there most of the time with a few of these folks, because the wounds they did to me were not that deep and they are no longer important in my life An old boss, an old boy friend, my ex husband after 30+ years, etc….I am INDIFFERENT TO. To others, it would upset me to see them, bring back unhappy memories. But NC helps with that because we are not in contact with them, unless you run into them in a store in town or something along that line. NC protects us.
I’m glad that you are getting on with your life and with your children and functioning again. That is the GOAL of healing. God bless.
Sky, I think ‘insatiable emotional hunger’ is an apt point to make.
I “understand” how and why a spath does certain things when I try to imagine their shallow inner emotional life. When a person has no inner rich life, then it’s imo logical to be ‘bored’ all the time and to counter the boredom with outside stimuli.
Even before I knew what a sociopath was exactly, I noted how often my ex-spath would mention being bored. I kinda never understood that. I can sit in complete ease and enjoy sitting by myself for hours, and perform a certain task for a long time. Of course I need human contact, and be active as well. But it was evident that it was just impossible for him to do that.
Once I learned about sociopathy and how one of the hallmarks for psychopathy is boredom, I finally understood it, and I understood why I could enjoy and not be bored even doing nothing for hours and he could not at all. I have a rich inner emotional life. There’s always something going on inside of me. He needed external stimuli to feel anything.
For me that is the chore issue for a sociopath and what makes him or her so dangerous. They cannot ever be stable, will take immense risks and why even when relationships don’t work out anymore they’d hang on at least to cause drama and fights.
It is the sole part I pity him for. He’ll never know how it feels to be so alive inside that you can sit still for hours and have a whole emotional adventure happening inside of you for no outside cause at all.