A syndrome called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can affect victims of sociopaths. The trauma of losing love, friends, family, possessions and of enduring psychological/physical abuse is the cause of this disorder. To fight the symptoms of PTSD, it is helpful to understand the symptoms and how they relate to loss and trauma.
As I read through the current literature on PTSD, I quickly discovered that there is a fair amount of controversy regarding this disorder. We can actually learn about the disorder by listening to the arguments. The first question on which there is much disagreement is, “What trauma is severe enough to cause PTSD?” There were several editorials by experts disparaging the fact that everything from giving birth to a healthy baby to a boss yelling at an employee is now said to cause PTSD. Most experts are in favor of reserving this diagnosis for people who have suffered truly unusual life experiences, like kidnapping, rape, war, 911, etc.
The problem is that many people do experience severe stress reactions to difficult life circumstances. It remains to be determined what we should call these reactions.
Those of us healing from our relationship with a sociopath often vacillate between accepting the trauma and minimizing it. Thus, the argument about what kinds of trauma are severe enough to cause PTSD has a direct effect on us. The argument can leave us feeling weak, like we should be able to get over this. After all it wasn’t as bad as 911, Iraq or Katrina—or was it?
The second question is “what symptoms constitute PTSD?” The following table shows the most common symptoms seen in a group of 103 British men and women diagnosed by psychiatrists with PTSD (Current Medical Research Opinion, 2003):
| Symptom | Frequency (n=103) |
| Insomnia | 98 (95%) |
| Anxiety at reminder cues | 96 (93%) |
| Intrusive thoughts, images, sounds, sensations | 94 (91%) |
| Irritability | 93 (91%) |
| Poor concentration | 93 (91%) |
| Diminished interest in significant activities | 88 (85%) |
| Recurrent dreams of trauma | 86 (83%) |
| Avoidance of activities or places associated with the trauma | 85 (83%) |
| Foreshortening of expectations about the future | 80 (78%) |
| Detachment from others | 78 (76%) |
| Avoidance of thinking or conversing about the trauma | 75 (73%) |
| Poor appetite | 69 (67%) |
| Hypervigilance | 55 (53%) |
| Startle reactions | 46 (45%) |
| Acting or feeling as if the event was recurring | 37 (31%) |
| Inability to recall parts of trauma (amnesia) | 19 (18%) |
I put up this table because I thought that a number of you would also endorse these symptoms. Notice that “acting or feeling as if the event was recurring” was really not that common. But similar symptoms, like “Intrusive thoughts, images sounds and sensations,” were very common. Amnesia was also uncommon. Startle reactions were only seen in half of the subjects.
A feeling of a foreshortened future is a particularly debilitating symptom because it impairs a person’s ability to plan for the future and leads to a sense of hopelessness. I will expand on this further, but I strongly believe this feeling of a foreshortened future has to do less with our thoughts about our past, and more with our thoughts about our present.
As I look at this list of symptoms, I am struck by the fact that many, many of those writing into Lovefraud complain of these symptoms, particularly nightmares. There is something special about having had emotional involvement with an aggressor that seems to produce nightmares. Since so many have all of the most common symptoms, I think it has to be that the trauma of life with a sociopath is severe enough to cause this disorder in many people.
Here’s where defining exactly what trauma is gets sticky. Rachael Yehuda, Ph.D., said in a recent article published on MedScape, “One of the things that biology has taught us is that PTSD represents a type of a response to trauma, but not the only type of response. It is a response that seems to be about the failure to consolidate a memory in such a way as to be able to be recalled without distress.” Well, this is precisely the definition that is too broad. I personally have a lot of memories that I experience or re-experience with distress. Yet these memories are not accompanied by the list of symptoms in the table above.
For me what made the experience traumatic was the truly life course-changing nature of the trauma. The answer to the question, “Will I ever be the same?” for me defines trauma significant enough to cause PTSD. The trauma that causes this disorder redefines us in a way that is different from other emotionally significant experiences. This trauma strikes at the core of our identity.
The final controversy surrounds the treatment of PTSD. Interestingly, there is no question that medications (SSRIs, particularly Zoloft) are very helpful. The problem is though that when a person goes to a physician and receives a medication, he/she is by definition “sick.” Assumption of a “sick role” or “victim identity” is one of the many factors that slow recovery from PTSD.
Many therapists are of the belief that “debriefing” or retelling the story is necessary for recovery. One group of researchers reviewed the studies on debriefing and concluded that there is no scientific evidence that it prevents PTSD. Instead, the evidence points to post-trauma factors like social support and “additional life stress” being most important.
How can we put this all together? Considering last week’s post, those who experience trauma serious enough to have stress hormone overdose as manifested by dissociation, are likely to also develop PTSD. An examination of the symptoms of PTSD reveals that at the core of the disorder is the fact that the person really doesn’t believe in his/her heart that the trauma has ended. PTSD is about ONGOING, not past, trauma. For those of us whose lives were assaulted by a sociopath, there is ongoing stress. The stress is the social isolation, financial ruin, and threatened further losses long after the relationship has ended. Those who recover from this without PTSD work hard to put the trauma behind them in every way.
Putting the trauma behind you does not mean you can’t take medication to help with the process. It does mean facing those bills, former friends, and other personal issues you want to avoid. Remember AVOIDANCE STRENGTHENS FEAR.
Above all, stop the ongoing trauma by ending contact with the sociopath. Do not assume a sick role, instead, work to stay healthy. Fight to be the person you want to be. Don’t allow this single experience to define you. Make living for today the place you love to be. As Louise Gallagher says in her recent post, “This is, in many ways, the greatest challenge of recovery — to accept the past is simply the route I took to get to where I am today, a place I love to be. The past cannot be changed. It cannot be altered. It cannot be made ‘better.’ It can only be accepted so that it, and I, may rest in peace with what was, eager to accept what is true in my life today.”
Cat,
As you are sorting it all out and experiencing bouts of anger and sadness and confusion you will see some days are way more difficult than others.
It sucks (cant think of any other word). Its awful. I hated some of my days. I stayed in bed alot… but its what I needed to do…until I started having better days and more answers after doing all of the hard work.
I was so ANGRY and felt he took my belief in mankind and myself too. And with the help of others here, I realized that my belief in mankind and myself wasnt fully developed, understood and realized before and during the time I was with him.
I really didnt know evil existed. I really didnt know myself or my inner strength and deservingness. Up until my experience with him I was pretty much fortunate to meet so many good people in the world. I had such a sweet innocence about mankind and myself…which proved to be dangerous. It wasnt until during and after my experience with him that my belief in mankind and myself became more realistic.
I dont think Ill ever be the same again is something I would say over and over again – full of anger and sadness. Eventually I found myself saying I dont think Ill ever be the same again – in a positive and reassuring way. I would like to say had I never met him I would still be the same and I wouldve never had to change the way i viewed others and myself…but eventually I would have crossed pathes with evil, or disordered selfish souls – and I had to come to terms they exist and that I CAN protect myself from them with the choices I make.
I went through a living hell. Court orders and judgements against him. Embarrassment of the money he stole from my family. My loss of the joy of life…the nurturing for my children…the loss of myself…
I am not the same person as I was before him. Today, for me, this is not such a bad thing. I know you will get there too…I just wanted to share that there is light at the end of the tunnel…for the longest time it was just a speck for me, if not non-existent — and then the pieces started coming together. HANG IN THERE!!!!!!
Cat, you won’t be the same, because you’ve been through it. But it doesn’t mean you won’t process it and come out the other side, smarter, stronger and more competent in your life.
Traumas are, at base, things we didn’t expect. Things that don’t fit into the rules we live by. And this whole healing process is about absorbing that information, figuring out what it means to us, and revising our rules of living.
What we learn depends on where we are in the healing process. That’s why our perspectives change over time. In each stage of healing, we learning something different. And sometimes we’re bouncing around in the different stages, because we’re further along on one part of it, just starting in others. Relationships with sociopaths are complex traumas. There were lots of experiences, and sorting them out takes some time. However, you’ll find, as you go on, that you’re learning more comprehensive things that cover new memories as they come up. Eventually, all this emotional reactivity calms down, and you can get on to later-stage work on consciously changing some beliefs and habits, and changing your life.
So, you’re bouncing around from feeling an overwhelming sense of loss to feeling angry and ripped off to feeling a kind of depressed grief. Believe it or not, this is great news. You’re not in denial. The closest you’re coming to bargaining is imagining that a baseball bat might offer some kind of cure. (Just joking; that’s just healthy anger.)
What I’m not hearing is a strong sense of your improved capability to defend yourself in the future. But I haven’t read a lot of your posts. Your writing is really lucid and self-aware. You are angry about losing what was yours, which is really good. Nice solid boundaries.
This is just a Kathy-analysis of what you just wrote. But from my perspective, you’re doing well. Maybe hanging out on the edge between anger and acceptance. It’s one of the harder transitions in this process. You’re saying that you’ll never dig yourself out of the pit. But maybe you’re really saying that whatever you had before is gone and you’re not going to get it back. True. (Just like what you said about not being the same being true.)
It’s a tough thing to face. Up to that point, most of our processing work is about how many ways we try to avoid the truth of our losses. But facing them brings their own rewards, and new levels of learning. If you finally agree that this is where you are now, this is who you are now, and this is what you have now, what then?
You’re not only talking about what you have, but who you are. Which is good. Who you are is really the issue. In my processing, I remember finally getting down to “thinking the worst.” Okay, no one will ever love me again. Okay, I wasted so many years of my life. Okay, I lost my business and I don’t have the energy to ever put that money together again. I’m older. I’m less trusting. I get mad faster. I’m less sensitive to other people’s feelings. I may never be able to pay off my debts. I may never be able to stop talking about my past and my griefs. Suppose all of this is true, what then?
And that started me looking at myself in a different way. Maybe doing an accounting of what I had left. The grief stage of this whole process is part of that accounting. In figuring out who we are now, we have to look at the things we really liked that don’t exist anymore. It’s almost like weighing ourselves on one of those old fashioned scales with two sides. One the one side is the stuff you lost, on the other side is what’s left. And the thing that somehow keeps being proved is, yes, it was important once, but here I am alive. And it just goes to show that I didn’t need it to live. And maybe I really liked my life then, but this is my life now, and I can live in the past, or I can figure out how to get on with things.
There’s a point in all of this that we wake up to the fact that our life is still full of choices, some of them a lot better than others. And that every choice we make right now affects what tomorrow is going to be like. And that awareness takes us from focusing on control of external circumstances (which we learned in the angry phase) to focusing on how to use them creatively to build something. All those skills we built in the angry phase are important, but now we recognize that they’re just life skills, not what life is about.
And all of this occurs in the context of learning how to live in a world where this surprising thing (the trauma) is one of the things that might occur. So that we don’t have any more losses to that particular thing. So we recognize it, and know what to do about it if it shows up again. And so we put it where it really belongs in our mental filing cabinets, as something that happened to us, as an encounter with an unpleasant circumstance, as a lesson we learned about the world, as a stimulus for personal growth.
I’m walking you through this, so you can see where you are. You are doing great. Don’t worry more than you have to about how you’re going to come out. You were made to heal, and you’ll be okay, better in fact. It’s just one of the harder lessons of life, but we’re built to heal and learn. And you’re on the path.
Love —
Kathy
Dear Quantum Solace, we have to believe that they will get theirs….even though it seems to be taking sooooooo long. I too have become a worse person and hate them for it. I didnt know that kind of evil even existed in the world….oh how naive I was. But be glad you dont understand what makes them tick….I am. I too wish they would break up so he can at least look as miserable as he made me feel but he too, is too dumb to think for himself. All I can do is put it in Gods hands and attempt to somehow let go and heal…however hard that is.
Also, I will never be able to be healthy now or in another relationship. That makes me so angry that they have each other and I am alone with no one and all this anger
Miss K
Do you remember when you were with him and to the outside world “pretended to be ok, be happy”… chances are if thats not going on now with him and another victim…it will be happening down the road.
And lets not forget – the type of person that lasts with a S is someone who is willing to give up herself, her attributes, her shining light– in order to remain sub-par in the relationship. Better her than you!!!! She can have him – is I how I looked at it.
How are two losers together feeding off of eachother better than one recovering winner who is flying solo right now???
I respectfully disagree that you will never be able to be healthy now or in another relationship…it just takes time work and believing in yourself focusing on yourself.
And if you do what you say…then you will def be your healthiest again one day —
“All I can do is put it in Gods hands and attempt to somehow let go and heal”however hard that is! ” Now you’re talking like youre on to something :)))
In my case, Miss K, I know it won’t last much longer. As for justice, well, I gave up on that a long time as I came to realize that in order for there to be any justice, we have to realize what we have done & feel remorse and neither one of them has a conscience, him less than her. I learned that lesson with his parents who raised him to be the monster that he is today. He used them just as he used me, when they got too old to be of any purpose to him, he threw them in a nursing home and forgot that the existed. I used to think, how’s that poetic justice? Then, I realized that they had no clue that what he had done was a result of the way in which they raised him and, any morbid joy that may have been in my knowing that just went out the door. The same thing will happen to him, he’ll end up his days alone and miserable but never knowing how or why.
Miss Kathy,
Thank you!! so much for your words! Everything you say makes a lot of sense. I am officially “on the scales” today.
I DO get into periods of wondering just how I’m going to come out of all of this and part of that is standing on those scales. What I’ve lost cannot be retrieved. I CAN build something new, however, now and in the future. In fact, I’ve been getting these flashes of excitement over new ideas and new ways to make money and I didn’t get excited about ANYTHING for a long time.
I do have issues with personal safety. I went 2,000 miles away from this man(?) and he still came after me. I do have a permanent restraining order, but like so many of them, he tends to forget the laws were written for him. I’ve also seen him con the justice system itself and then laugh.
When I look at what I have, freedom, peace from his chaos, my child, a job, I have a great list! I think I’m in a phase in which I take that which is good and then my mind shifts automatically to what I’ve lost. That’s when the anger kicks in. I wouldn’t steal a toothpick, but he thought nothing of taking, as though it were owed to him, trust, faith, money (thousands and thousands) and so much more. And I know he will KEEP taking, just not from me.
I think I AM in full blown grief over the things that cannot be retrieved and I relate to what you said about all that which you had lost; loss of energy, trust, myself in a lot of ways.
We CAN take the experiences we’ve had, pick them apart and learn NEW ways to live in this world, find someone to share it with and most importantly, get ourself back. I’m coming to truly understand the person I come to be will be a few parts old + a whole lot of new parts.
The person that I am when I am finished walking through this process isn’t the person I was when it began. I am counting on taking days like this and learning more from them than those that are good ones. That may sound odd, but it’s in these moments that I think we learn the most and are the most receptive. I can truly relate to those on here who have said their greatest teacher has been their ex.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t want to see him get his. I DO have that anger and resentment factor still running around in my head. I know it won’t vanish overnight and I’m not trying to make it go away. I’m too new in the process.
What I do NOT have is an urge to call him. I realized that just as I was typing this (unless he’s up for some baseball. LOL)
An accounting is exactly what I’ve been doing all day.
I’ll re-read what you’ve written. It’s been such a help!
Hugs,
Cat
miss k,
I’ve been dealing with that very thing all day. Kathleen has written a wonderful post on here about what we lose, but you know what? We ARE strong enough to come through it all and when we do, we are a newer, finer version of our former self and someone will see that in us and love will find us again; HEALTHY LOVE.
Cat, I think you’re right about learning more from the bad days. Whatever is bad about them gives us a reason to look inside ourselves, and that is when the insights start to pop up.
It took me a long time to stop wishing my ex ill. I used to fantasize about seeing him down the block in NYC, and having a rifle to just take aim and shoot him. If he appears in memory — usually associated with some terrible thing he did or said — I still shoot him. Bang! (That’s why I could so relate to TooLate’s dream.) It’s the fastest way I know to cancel out his influence on my thinking.
But these days, I’m more into recognizing what the type, including him, and making decisions about how to fence them out, limit the damage or sabotage them so they go away. It’s just just part of the general housekeeping of life, as impersonal on my side as it is on theirs.
Oh, except for one other thing, which I mentioned recently on another thread. As far as he personally is concerned, he is in debt to me. Whatever he took under conditions of bad faith, he owes me. And he will continue to owe me.
I don’t have any problem telling other people that he’s a con man who preys on women. I know that makes me look like a bit of a dope, but hey, it was an educational experience. And I’m alive to tell the tale.
A more serious issue is how vulnerable I could be to him, if he ever showed up in the future. He got back into my life four or five times after I tried to shut him out. Those addictive neural pathways don’t go away, just because the circumstances aren’t right to make us want to jump back on the rollercoaster. Thinking about him being in debt to me helps here. I know what he cost me and I know what it cost me to get well. If he showed up again, the first thing I would ask is if he came to pay me back, and then tell him that a $50,000 cashiers check and nice piece of jewelry to make up for the aggravation is the price of even saying hi to me. Otherwise, get off my property or out of my space.
On another level I can be more understanding about his history and how tragically damaged he is. But that’s very theoretical, and not particularly useful in the real world.
I’m going on and on here. I think the main thing is that, once you’ve let go of your losses, learned the lessons and moved on, anger becomes much less seductive. And if it does rise, it probably means there is some other corner of the thing you have worked through yet.
One of the really great things about the process, in my view, is that it offers many of us an opportunity to work through serious trauma to resolution and personal growth for the first time in our lives. I have a theory that however far we’ve gone with trauma-processing in the past is going to be pretty easy for us to get to now. And for those of us who are carrying around old, unresolved trauma from our childhoods, we may well have gone no farther than denial or bargaining.
Here on LoveFraud, pretty much everyone moves into anger, which is hugely more functional than the previous states. If we can do the rest of the grief process, it means that we know how to process unexpected and painful events right through to the learning and recreation of ourselves and our lives. And also to have the confidence with our ability to handle life that comes with it.
I think that’s immensely cool. And it’s why I’m such a cheerleader for this healing process. We’re not just getting better, but we’re learning to get better and better.
Kathy
I just want to paint a picture for all of you before I go to bed for the night … to a sleep tortured by the usual nightmares. Maybe if this is my last thought of the night, I will have at least one pleasant dream. I also think that hearing about another person’s hope, you may all see that hope can be found in your future as well. Let the story begin!
I live in a small town. It is large enough for a community college, but it is no city by any stretch. It has a hospital and clinics and a WalMart. It is located only 30 miles from the place I was born. The people here are of the kind that I was raised with. I am like them and they are like me. I don’t live in my hometown, but the feeling of home and familiarity is VERy strong here. It is an important feeling to have after leaving an Spath. There is no conflict with familiarity.
Last autumn, I heard about a vacant house very near to here. I had JUST left my husband so I inquired about the vacant house, but my mind, feelings, and emotions were somewhere else.
The house is a large box …. almost perfectly square. It is 2 stories tall. It has 4 bedrooms upstairs and a livingroom, kithchen, bathroom, and parlor on the main floor. The exterior is covered in a hard asbestos tile siding that was popular about 60 years ago. It sits on 2 lots in a tiny little town (about 3 blocks long). At a guess, the population must be somewhere between 50 and 100. It is So small, that living there is similar to living on a farmstead. isolated and quiet. It is only 12 miles from where I now sit.
I remember that house. When I was 5 years old, my great-grandparents owned it. I remember the interior and the huge vegetable garden that my great-grandfather had in the giant yard. I remember that I ate the most delicious-tasting home-grown carrot from that garden and getting into trouble with my parents because that huge carrot had filled my stomach and ruined my appetite for supper.
That house at this time is a lot like me. It has fallen into direpair. It has been neglected and abused. It sits empty. It is old an unappealing. If it continues to be abandoned, it will be too late to save it.
When I look at the house, I see myself. It needs a LOT of work, but it is still structurally sound. It’s not too late … if only someone could see its potential.
Last autumn, I contacted the owner. He is some distant relative of mine. We had never met before. I told him that I was interested in buying it if he was interested in selling it. he told me that it has been empty for several years and has become his “white elephant”. He said to me “If you pay the back-taxes on it, I’ll give it to you!”.
The back-taxes amount to about $5,000. No, that’s not a typo. Five thousand dollars and it’s mine.
Of course, it needs a LOT of work. Part of the roof is flat (by design). The roof has a tendency to leak, though the leak is small. The owner told me that they have patched it a few times, but it always starts to leak again after a while. The interior damage from the leak, I am told, is minor.
Structurally, the house is sound and straight. It does have old, round, cloth-covered wiring, no furnace, and no pump on the well. The septic system … who knows?
In reality, the house would need to be re-roofed, then gutted. The wiring would need replacing … and it would need new insulation and new drywall. A new furnace, a new well pump, and a new basement (in my humble opinion).
I want it.
My credit is currently trashed from my 13 years with an Spath. But I could afford $5,000 within a year. Even if I put $40,000 into it, I would still come ahead of what houses of that size go for in this area.
The satisfaction? My Spath husband who tortured me all of those years did remodeling for a living. Lazy by nature, he always managed to drag me with him on my days off from nursing to “help” him with his work remodeling. Asshole that he may be, I did learn a lot about remodeling from him. I can do wiring, tiling, drywalling, roofing, siding, hardwood floor refinishing, cabinet installation, painting, and general construction … you name it! Aside from my 2 boys, I learned to not be afraid of remodeling because of him. Anything and everything that my great-granparents house needs … I can do all by myself! Not only that, but I learned from a perfectionist!
I dream of that house. I dream that by healing the house, I can heal myself.
I talked to one of my sisters about the house. As it turns out, there is another house for sale in the same town. She and her husband (and their 3 children) have decided to buy the other house in the spring and move there as soon as school is out.
In late May, I may have a huge project on my hands … and my sister living a block away.
I would help her .. and she would help me.
What I would like is for my divorce to be fianl so that I can buy and own the house independently without having to share it with my Spath.
Maybe it’s just a pipe dream … but to me, that house is an opportunity to have a place of my own. A healing place. A place of comfort and peace.
I hope I haven’t bored you with my dream. I still worry that if everything doesn’t go just right, the deal will fall through.
I am not a religious person right now, but if YOU are, please pray for me. I NEED this, so badly. A part of me says I can … and I am holding onto the idea with a death grip.
Thank you for listening, Kimberly