Almost three years ago, Lovefraud published the story of a man from the UK whom I called Tom. Tom’s wife left him for another man, took their children, had him arrested on false charges nine times and wiped him out financially. Here is the original story:
UK man says sociopath stole his life
Now, three years later, Tom still hasn’t seen his children. His ex-wife and her new husband, who also sounds like a sociopath, have removed the children from the UK. They live in France, at a small town near the Swiss border. “My heart bleeds every minute for the loss,” he writes. “It is a living bereavement and a nightmare from which I may never awake.”
I asked Tom if he was taking care of himself. Here’s his reply:
I have taken care of myself and for the most part I am okay. Some days are worse than others. I do have my very depressed and painful days ”¦ but I close my eyes, dream of days and memories of long ago, sleep and they pass.
I have to deal with my health and look after my parents. My mother phones me and cries about her grandson all the time. She has post-traumatic difficulties and says she cannot connect with her other grandchildren because of what she feels for my son. She feels a deep loss and is constantly worried about the kids. Every open discussion starts with them [opening the scar] and ends with them.
I am holding my own and my health has deteriorated but I am stable. I hold my family in the balance on many fronts. I am keeping it together but the pain is immense at times.
I am working and seem to have bounced back somewhat to where I used to be”¦ the years have been tearful, painful and costly. I don’t think that I will every really recover.
Releasing the pain
How do you cope when there is no resolution in sight?
I asked Tom about how he is taking care of himself because that may be, for the time being, all he can do. Emotional pain weakens us and makes it difficult to continue the battle. So somehow, Tom needs to alleviate the pain, even though his circumstances have not changed.
This seems counterintuitive—how can he feel better when his children are still kept away from him? The solution is to deal with the pain directly. Pain can be processed and released, even when the source of the pain has not changed.
Pain comes from wanting things to be different. The solution is to accept what is, for the time being, reality. This does not mean giving up hope. It does not mean quitting the legal battle. But it does mean letting go of the internal upset that keeps us trapped, and makes us ill.
How do we do that? We allow ourselves to feel the pain and grief at our loss. This is best done privately, or perhaps with a skilled counselor. We allow ourselves to cry, moan with the anguish, perhaps pound pillows in our anger. We continue until we feel a release, and then we stop.
Tom will probably have to do this many times—the well of his pain and grief is deep. But each time grief is released, it makes room for healing. And from a place of healing, it is possible to find the internal resources to continue the battle.
Hi everybody,
…..I havent been on here for a little while, I suppose I have been doing ok. I have a question to everyone/anybody that can relate.
What do you do when out of the blue the anger builds up again. Memories of my sociopathic ex come to mind every single day for a large proportion of the day. I ahve been capable of dealing with it at least to the degree of functioning ok and not crying that much anymore. But now at this moment I feel enraged again. Not just sad, not hurt, but plain angry. The crazy things he said and did, how he manipulated me etc etc and I bought it all, I kept on believing in him, being such a good partner to him, I was so loving and understanding of him, and I think back of specific things and I just wanna ……do something. Dont know what. Manifest this rage, this anger, this feeling SO played, PLAYED! And its a useless circle that I have gone through before, I keep looking and thinking about actions, ofcourse constantly concluding that any action undertaken with this anger is bad for myself, destructive, not healing etc. But it makes me feel so powerless and again played. Used up….
Anyone ideas?
Thanks!!!!!!
MariaLisa, Welcome back. I’m sorry you are still dealing with some of the aftermath! I understand it is pretty predictable and normal, though.
You asked for ideas about handling the rage. I wonder if the technique I was given to handle painful PTSD symptoms would work with rage, too. It certainly is an emotion.
I was advised when a trigger prompted the physical sensations of sheer agony, I should just let the emotions flow over me, really allow myself to FEEL them and for as long as it took for the sensations to recede. At first, this was often a day long length of time but by the second year, it was like I was purged of most those emotions (mainly terror) I had obviously felt but had obviouly supressed at the time of the immediate danger and only came periodically. I was advised not to think, remember the events, nor analyze, just FEEL what ever emotion came out. I rarely have a PTSD symptom any more, even with triggers.
Others have expressed the difficulty of knowing what to do with the rage when it finally comes. Some say that experiencing this rage is one of the levels of healing. (I’m still waiting for mine to surface.) I had to get rid of the other “junk” first, I guess.
But, your post made me think that the rage is very similar to fear and terror, that is, during the bad (and confusing) times during the relationship, in order to “survive” what was coming next, that the anger at that time was suppressed. Now it is necessary for healing to really occur by allowing ourselves to FEEL the rage.
Just remember, though. This, too, will pass. Neither good time or bad ones last forever, just alternate in our lifetimes.
Hi ANewLily,
Thanks for your response. Does that technique have a name? Do I do that just by myself? And are you saying this has helped you A LOT? Like taken away a lot of the anger?
I feel the anger and I cant say Im ignoring it ( at all actually), I am torn between people telling me to just not think about it again, that me thinking back just feeds into it, and thinking like you said I need to deal with it. but how many times does one deal with it….when does it stop.
The anger Im feeling now is close to when I just found out the monster he is. Not the same cause when I was in that process I felt I lost myself for a while. I never experienced something like that before and my childhood wasnt happy g lucky either, but this whole ordeal made me almost lose my mind. im not at that stage anymore, but I still have fantasies all the time about conversations I would have with him, scenario’s of how I make sure everyone around him knows about him, or just plain aggression on him. I know I wont do this, but the rage has to go somewhere in my mind I suppose…I think If I tell people what goes on in my mind, people will think Im completely and utterly obsessed with what he’s done to me and with sociopathy too…
About your technique. If I would just feel it, I think it would drive me mad and have me hitting my walls and crying like crazy until my body wouldnt take it anymore….And that would be pathetic. So now that I think of it, yes I do push it away after the wave comes over me for more than 10 minutes….
How do you start it…?
Maria Lisa,I totally understand you. I was exactly the same and still am, some days. We have to remember, you have to get the anger out! Its healthy and normal to feel anger, its like a boil bursting, you have to get rid of the poison before it poisons your whole body, mind, and emotions. Pound a pillow,find somewhere remote with no people if possible, and scream and cry, it helps!Remember, we have held in and denied this anger, wrath, and rage for so long, just to survive day to day. It has built up like the pressure in a pressure cooker.One day it has to explode!Dont ty to push away the wave of pain and anger,imagine you are a surfer, with a huge wave coming at you. Instead of the wave swallowing you up and drowning you, just try to ride the wave,it will carry you, and eventually it will cast you up on a peaceful, sandy quiet beach,where you can “come to” and start to heal.Imagine you ar a seagull, riding the thermals, be carried up nd away, let yourself go. The more you fear and block this rage and fear, the worse it will be for you.Let it wash over you. I promise you wont be killed by it!I read this,”I sometimes have bad days. Then I remember, I used to have bad years!”Be kind to yourself.Love and {{HUGS}} geminigirlXXX
Marialisa, OMG do I identify with your anger. I have been NC for two years , and still think about my S/P everyday. Not in a sad yearning way, but in a what a peice of @.......#&% way. After my last break up I have been accepting of the whole situation, but the time before, for an entire year, I woke up angry, went to bed angry and spent the whole day in between angry. I was angry about being angry, because I felt it meant I was still somehow owned by him. Still there was nothing I could do. I have come to believe that this is just a part of the process and can not be denied or passed over. After all, it is kind of like someone has died. Take a look at the five stages of grief of Elizabeth KUblar-Ross. 1-denial 2- anger 3-bargaining 4-depression 5-acceptance. Kublar-Ross says we can go through these in no particular order and circle back through them until the work is done. Don’t beat yourself up, you are right where you’re supposed tp be. Do the work and God bless. One day You’ll wake up and realize he was totally benieth you. You’ll ask yourself what the hell you ever saw in him. As for myself, still thinking about him, well I don’t know, but I think it has a lot to do with reminding myself about this thing called sociopathy, and learning all I can so I don’t fall prey, again. Good Luck, KF
Marialisa, I’m still in the same spot you are. But I hate crying my eyes out because it makes them puffy for two days. I only left my P in May. For the next 4 weeks my heart raced at 120 beats per minute night and day. I lost 30 pounds.
I’m not sure what the emotions I felt were.
When I first left him I was terrified of him. At some point, a day or two later (I think) it turned to euphoria because I felt finally free of that life. For the past 5 years I would wake up every morning and curse that I was still alive. I prayed God would just take me in my sleep. Being away from him felt libertating. Knowing that the anchor I had felt for so long was caused by him: gas-lighting, sabotaging, slandering and poisoning me. Add to that, I was his slave and his savior (or make that his mommy). I had been confused by my life for 25 years because I had believed that he loved me. When I finally figured it out…I thought “God I’m free!”
Then, when I found out about malignant narcissism, I was floored. Finding out that there is a sea of these creatures out there was terrifying. Why hadn’t I known? Why didn’t anyone tell me? Why isn’t this taught in schools? How the heck are we just supposed to know? I lost 25 years because nobody told me when to run.
Now, I guess I’m cycling between anger and depression and acceptance. Sometimes I want to go back to him and tell him that I will be with him again, just so I can destroy him the way he tried to destroy me. Then, I just want to move on with my life. He got so many other people to gang up on me. My neighbors, the police, his friends and my sister. How he did this is still beyond me. Closure will forever be elusive for me without the answer to that. How could he get people who DON’T EVEN KNOW ME AND HAVE NEVER MET ME, TO HATE ME?
I don’t know how to get past it. I mean I think I know it has to do with letting go of ego and control, but how?
MariaLisa:
If you haven’t done so, read Kathys articles on the stages we go through in recovery — especially the article on anger.
When the anger hit me, it was absolutely volcanic. I felt the anger literally pouring out of the ends of my hair. What helped me was that I could take strike back at him, to a certain extent, without having to engage with him directly. I went after him for the money he owed me via the IRS. I then set all those creditors holding unsatisfied judgments against him after his sorry ass by letting them know where he worked so they could garnish his wages. Satisfying? You betcha.
However, this is also one of those things, I’ve learned, that time actually helps. I picked up the pieces of my life. I met new friends. I started seeing a really nice new guy. And gradually, as my life started becoming about me again, rather than my life being all about the S and serving his needs, my focus on S lessened, and my focus on me increased and I realized that the anger was just too exhausting and not healthy. But, you can’t skip the nager phase. It is part of the healing process. The longer you try to sove the anger down, or put it aside – because you are listening to people who tell you to “get over it already”, the longer you are going to remain mired in it. Let the anger fly. You are in the right place (LF) that people are not going to tell you not to feel angry. And ultimately you will get to the place that you just decide to let it go.
MariaLisa, you wrote, “1) Does that technique have a name? 2) Do I do that just by myself? 3) And are you saying this has helped you A LOT? 4) Like taken away a lot of the anger?”
1) If the technique has a name, I don’t know it. A professional counselor told me about it. The trick, though, is to just FEEl the rage, not think any thoughts about it or connected with it.
2) Yes, it’s scary but best done when alone. You won’t die.
If it gets “too heavy”, just stop and take a few deep breaths and then continue.
3) Yes, I think this technique helped MORE than a lot.
4) It was fear and terror that I was trying to get rid of rather than anger. But, I really do think the technique “worked” even without thinking last Oct 1st & 2nd (2008) when the rage finally did arise after an illegal move EX made with my maintenance check — and got away with it.
Learnthelesson,
I seem to have trouble treating myself to a pedicure let alone much else…yep…giver not a taker, never ask for help, I can do it myself, it’s OK that you stood me up, I’m gonna buy this for him..he’ll love it…..I’m too nice…just like the rest of us. Always thinking of those I love more than myself….THAT is why the S/P’s want us! They know we will give and give until there’s nothing left. I’m sure a therapist would say something to the effect that I have a deep seeded self loathing due to a lifelong feeling of inadequacy that has made me willing to self sacrifice to the point of identity loss while all the while just wanting to be loved. I don’t consciously know this or think about it, except for the part about feeling inadequate for men. I have a loving family, had a nice childhood…not a lot of physical affection or verbal expressions of love though, which was typical of my parents generation…but an intact loving Christian home with many blessings to be thankful for. Why I let men and ESPECIALLY this S/P treat me like crap is part of the mystery I need to figure out. I would like to think that we all can strike a balance between maintaining our sweet, altruistic, and nurturing personalities, and becoming women that stand up for themselves and their rights…pamper, love, and take care of themselves. And that through this quiet confidence, our inner peace will shine to light the way…
Thank-you for reminding me of this…I’m trying so hard to hold it together, to move on and learn from this experience …
good night all…time to find my kitty
hummingbird06… sorry, I was not home all day… maybe you’ll see this in the morning! That was always my pattern too, to forget someone I would “fall in love” with someone else. Always had to have somebody. This is the first time I’ve ever really been alone… and I’ve posted ad nauseam about it on LF!! My daughter lives 3000 miles away. I have been NC for about a year and a half with the one assclown I was with for 14 years, and now about 4 months with the next one I became involved with because I was so needy and lonely. I hooked up with the 2nd one even after reading and reading here on LF for months, just didn’t get it, but I do now!
I was wondering if anyone else has experienced what I’m going through with anger… I am directing the anger at me, my choices, where the choices have left me. I care about myself more right now than I ever have before in my life, but the anger is making me hate that part of me that made all these bad choices… it’s really bad.