Sociopaths, even though you
might be calling them “narcissists”,
must hook prey.
They’re constantly baiting…
Casting a “line” in order to hook prey.
Hooking prey is a user’s full-time job, no matter if you call them a sociopath or a narcissist. They hook prey with bait. Every time they open their mouth they’re tossing bait. Pretty much everything single thing they say or do is bait.
Continue readingWeeping in despair, grief. Confusion.
A shattered life. Depression and self doubt. Isolation.
This heap of feelings and thoughts and questions
are the beginning of restoration.
We can heal even the PTSD after a sociopath or what many call a narcissist. It includes emotions rolling over us in grand sweeps and simmering cess pools. These turn to feelings and thoughts that are untrue. There’s a is terror in PTSD others around can’t us usually can’t understand… We might not understand it ourselves.
You owe it to yourself to realize what this PTSD is, how it shows up, how to heal and rebalance yourself, and that it’s okay to be in a sate of post truama so that we can restore our gorgeous selves.
Altogether it’s loneliness and fears and doubts that are not the new you but can seem like it. There are many signs of PTSD, but the initial stages are most described by one word.
Continue readingWhat is coercive control?
How does it happen? Why do we stay?
Where does it come from and how do we break free?
Coercive control is defined as being forced to do something we don’t want to do. As being harmed by someone against our will. Does anyone willingly stand in harm’s way…?
The coercion comes about by definition when someone controls and harms us or forces something upon us when they: make jokes that are insulting, make direct criticism and insults, call us names; by physical harm or endangerment; in financial deprivation or control including creating debt we’re held responsible for.
This is also known as narcissistic abuse. It’s also known as toxic behavior, or dysfunctional behavior. Bottom line…? It’s fraud. The person carrying out the coercion is the doer. – The wrongdoer.
Yet, we so often blame ourselves. And, so do they. They get us to do all kinds of things, put up with so much nastiness, disrespect, lies, affairs, withholding sex or affection, or attention, mounting bills, disappearing funds, and they disappear. Even where they are and what they’re doing becomes a painful aspect of torture in coercive control.
Guided recovery sessions.
Everything you’re feeling is normal.
And we stay. Maybe for a long time. And as we’re still there, naturally we do what normal humans do, we first look for the answer to why it’s happening within ourselves. We take responsibility for their behavior; we look to ourselves as the reason they do things that makes us feel bad or harm us.
At first, this makes some sense, early on with someone we feel we love and are in a relationship with, naturally, we do what humans do.
We adjust, compromise, try, fix, seek help to fix it, say no, say yes, apologize, try harder, cook better, do more, and want to have long talks with them about it all… And none of this works.
That’s when we start looking for different solutions; more answers as to why. This is often when we come across more wrong answers or solutions that fix nothing and don’t answer our question: Why is this happening?
In fact, these traditional answers cause more pain. These wrong answers as to the why this happens are reflected in the concept of us being codependent, the idea of our low self-esteem, in the notion of having no boundaries, and on and on in a litany of nonsense ending with: because we don’t love ourselves other’s treat us badly. Nonsense.
We do love ourselves. Always. If you didn’t love yourself what they do wouldn’t hurt so badly.
I’m not sure how any of these blame-the-person-being-harmed-for-the-rotten-persons-behavior concepts ever made any sense, but they’re largely adopted as the way to look at situations where someone is stuck in coercive control or deceptive fraud.
Is it not possible that we’re influenced and yield to them simply because of what they are? If our hand is in the water, does our hand not get wet?
A human hand or a doggy paw for that matter, when dipped in water gets wet. Is this the case because there’s something wrong with us – or our hand – or the dog? Or is it because water is wet?
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.
Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.
“He tried to convince me he had sex with Dawn because of losing the dog.” ~ Shannon O. Five women’s stories from the promises to hell to escape and healing.
The thrill of engagement; the excitement of meeting Mr. Right, The One, the one like no other is the sociopath effect. There are specific feelings and thoughts that well up. These demonstrate we’ve fallen into the trap of a disingenuous user; in the time of the experience, we call it amazing love.
There are people of inherent coercive control. It’s a quality they possess simply as who and what they are. You could say they’re people of inherent evil. – Just in the same way we’re inherently good and that’s just who and what we are.
How many of us had the opportunity to be cruel to them, or take something back for them but couldn’t do it? – Yah. Because we’re inherently good. It’s who we are.
These spontaneous and overwhelming feelings represent the common marker that we’ve met a person who’s interested in us for their own dark-minded entertainment or their personal gain.
We fall into a particular and unusual emotional state; an instantaneous unconscious transformation that is the stuff of coercive control. You could say, being hooked is a state of involuntary coerced agreement. Towards them and things related to them, we become a bouncing ball of, yes!
And they, the hunter in pursuit who’s just bagged us? They are thrilled. Ecstatic. We see it in smiles, a buoyant attitude, wanting to be with us, messaging, and texting lots… It’s their pride in ensnaring someone new which they see as an accomplishment.
We naturally mistake for mutual and genuine excitement that we met. In truth, it’s the thrill of engagement and just the beginning of a long hard Tilt-O-Whirl of crazy.
Please embrace how good you are. Know that you do love yourself or you wouldn’t be on this page. Understand that codependency as an explanation for why we were deceived and used is a behemoth of outdated thinking… and results in feeling more beat up.
And further, codependency is a misconception applied to women. How many men are told they’re codependent and this is what caused a sociopath to hijack their life?
Low self-esteem can be an effect of time spent under #coercivecontrol. This is not a character flaw, it isn’t permanent. It’s normal to feel down and defeated when we’re controlled coercively, that’s one piece that makes coercive control work.
But low self-esteem or lack of self-love does not cause coercive control. After all, if we didn’t love ourselves, or have esteem for our lives, would it all hurt so sickeningly much?
We can sidestep and escape coercive control by understanding what it truly is, why it happens, and who’s doing it. Combine that with embracing your own life in all your goodness.
And please, never stop seeking evolution in your answers and explanations for life’s phenomena. Remember, they used to think the earth was flat.
Join the podcast!
Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
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2019_09_27 2023_01_30
Are we magnets for them?
Do we attract them?
The answer is that they’re predators.
They have to find dinner or die.
The question, what do con men look for? is one I’m asked a lot and often, especially at speaking engagements.
Frequently this question comes from young women in their college years or early career days, wanting to avoid dating a monster.
These beautiful young women want a future with a great career, a family and a great man and they have every right to it. It is possible. And In truth, so many of us need the answer to this zillion dollar question.
You can learn to sort the nuts from the normal before their venomous coercive control takes us over. And rest assured, there are many, many amazing young men and women, heterosexual, gay, nonbinary, trans and all combinations of people on the planet to meet, love and marry.
What would it mean to you
to take your life back?
Knowing what con men look for is critical nowadays. You can consider this burgeoning cultural either a sad thing or a fantastic opportuntiy. This depends on how you look at it gaining a deeper understanding of life on this earth and the human beings who live here.
Realizing that people of coercive control, predators, pathological liars, and users exist is a good thing sincae, afterall, these cone men do exist.
They’ve been here since the beginning of time, and only those who know how to recognize them are immune or safe from being entrapped. Why they’re here is another question. But, they are.
What do con men look for? It’s important to know what con men look for and how to recognize them. First and foremost they look at anyone and everyone as prey. Secondly, the person they ensnare is the one who “clicks”.
The first one locked-in on any given day is their ideal prey. They need new people constantly and love to hang on to the old ones they’ve got in their harem. I realize this is very general and at the same time, it’s a lot. Let me explain this bit here and then get on to specifics. Let me define some of the words I’m using.
Prey: Prey can be any person. Anyone who meets the predator and feels an attraction to them is sucked in. Prey embark on what we believe is a relationship with the predator and naturally assume a predator is a normal person too.
Predator: Often thought of solely in terms of preying upon someone sexually, let’s expand our understanding to include more reality. A predator is that pathological person who lives their life living off of others in every way imaginable and mostly in ways we could never imagine.
They use others for sex, money, food, clothing, shelter, to appear like a good or popular or trustworthy person by association, for an address to use, to hide behind, for drugs, as someone to be left holding the bag on rent, car payments, credit card bills and more. They know that they do this and like doing this while trying to hide that they are doing this – because they know normal people don’t agree with it.
Coercive Control: This is a term, coercive control used to describe the kind of insidious take-over of the prey by the predator. From a legal standpoint, it’s forcing, coercing someone to do things against their will with threats, insults… Emotional and physical abuse.
From our experimental standpoint, how and when does coercive control set in? How does it come to the point that we do what they say? We’re not dumb, or sheep… So what is it?!
You’re going to feel so much better.
Lightbulbs and breakthroughs.
The person who is preyed upon (us) is under a spell. This point is missed within the legal definition. You could say we’re hypnotized, or injected with some kind of mind-numbing venom that overtakes their normal self and common sense.
If this hasn’t happened to you, this sounds impossible and like a weak excuse for bad choices and just ridiculous. It isn’t. – If this has happened to you, you know this as the sickening, surreal truth.
Pathological Liar: This is a person who due lies due to the way their mind works, literally due to their brain biology. They can’t not li. Sociopaths lie about all things. Lying is a reality to them. Real is made up. They believe their lies and know they’re lying at the same time. Therefore, they believe anyone’s lies. Including ours.
This is key in getting away from them. You can lie to them. They’ll look at you with a weird look, questioning what you’ve said. They do know it’s a lie.
But hold your ground, the next millisecond they shift straight into action based on the lie you told as if the lie is the truth. They can’t help it. Lies are real to them and reality is made up. In other words, everything is lies, and lies are real… This is how every sociopath thinks.
Now for some details… Any pathological predator is looking for someone who is kind, friendly, outgoing, or shy and reserved. A con man looks for people who believe in love, or are skeptical and wary of people.
A con artist (using the term artist very loosely here) wants someone who is resilient, giving, loyal, adventurous, trustworthy and means what they say.
Con men look for someone who is true to their word. They like people who have goals and a life going on. They target people who’ve had loss or failure. People who have not met their dreams or just as often, people who have fulfilled many dreams. They like very happy confident people. They just need people. Any and every person will do.
This is just a beginning and I realize this isn’t much in the way of specific detail. And that’s the point. Con men look for normal people with normal dreams, desires, loss, gain, successes, hope, longing and everything else that is normal. And yes, this is pretty much all of us.
I know most people don’t realize this or believe this, but: there’s nothing specific or particular about any one of us that makes us more or less vulnerable to being sucked in by a pathological predator or someone who’s survival is found in their coercive control of others.
Our protection is found in our accepting that they exist and in a deliberately gained ability to recognize them by how we feel around them or because of them and by what they do and say.
The way to avoid a con man monster before any entanglement can begin is first by engaging the willingness to accept that they exist. The next thing to put into action is your gut instincts. Following your true gut instincts is key in spotting and avoiding one of these beasts. The nuances of how we feel when we meet a con man are the most use of all.
If you feel the following things, stop contact with this new person immediately for your safety.
This might sound ridiculous if you haven’t had one of these encounters with a coercive controlling predator. Especially this last point. We all feel we know what we expect in relationship dynamics. And we’re secure in knowing “who we are”, in our values, and our morals.
But: people of coercive control don’t ask people to give up their beliefs or their kids. It happens of our own accord. A predator has an uncanny power of influence.
Something indefinable has us shift our thinking to accommodate them. It’s something that emanates for them like invisible penetrating smoke. This elicits emotions by their very presence. It’s the hook. It happens in seconds. Within moments and hours of meeting them we begin to change…to do things we’d never otherwise do.
We can see them for what they are. This is found in our response to them that is over the top and not what a normal attraction feels like.
Even if this is your first relationship, if you feel anxiety underneath the excitement, back off. Let it go. Step away. Either you aren’t ready or this is very much the wrong person.
There are answers to it all.
So, please, if you repeatedly hear bad things about this person from other people you know and trust and who care about you, trust what the other people are saying. Always leave lots of space between when you first meet someone, and when and how often you see them.
Keep up with your own goals, studies, social things with your friends. Hold onto your own self and things you love to do. Please, don’t compromise what you believe, such as when to have sex or what kind of sex to have for anyone. Ever.
We can learn the signs to recognize them on the spot or within a few hours’ time. Yes! We can. And then: they got nothin’ because their “success” is solely dependent on our lack of awareness. Contrary to popular belief, that’s as smart as they get.
Join the podcast!
Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
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2019_07_19 2023_01_30
Our subconscious mind is a powerful thing.
Our sleeping mind, our dreams hold the key
to unlocking self-doubt,
anxiety and fears.
Our sleeping, subconscious mind is on our side. Nightmares aren’t just a horror show, without the popcorn, they show us how amazing and courageous we are, even in the face of fear.
The subconscious mind is a storehouse of our experiences and what they mean to us. They’re housed in the limbic system of our beautiful brain. After trauma, the waking fear can paralyze us in depression and anxiety. Nightmares plague many of us in PTSD. Have no fear, sleep and see what stuff our dreams, and we, are made of.
We really do have all we need inside our selves. One of the most underused resources to our inner life and inspiration and “self-knowingness” is our dreams, the kind we have in bed at night, and housed in the subconscious, limbic brain.
By writing down our dreams the morning after as we wake up we can find many clues and answers to what we want, how we’re doing, and who we are. What we need, what’s going right, what we need to do next.
It may sound absurdly simple, and a little too hippy-dippy, but don’t discount it yet, we don’t want to lose out on something significant and helpful in our recovery, we need real support where ever we find it. The power of our subconscious mind is not to be underestimated… we can reign it in to support us.
“Every time you dream, you are washing upon the shores
of your own inner landscape.” ~ Dylan Tuccillo
You decide how fully you restore your life
One of my nightmares filled me with awe and appreciation for myself. In the dream, I wake up in the middle of the night and walk into my kitchen. On the way there, those gigantic, outdoor type cockroaches we have so many of in Southern California, tons of them, are crawling along the floor. Nightmare. Horrific. Traumatic.
Next, I’m spraying the roaches with a bottle of bleach and water. It’s scary and revolting and I don’t want to do it. It’s gross. I hate them. Then the bugs are gone, but my laptop, the one I write from daily, is in the middle of the kitchen floor in a flood of water. I pick it up and tip it to drain the water out. I’m estimating the damage and thinking of how to get the water out.
The laptop gets smaller in my hands, as things in dreams can. I observe that I”m thinking while dreaming: That I believe it will be okay.
Then, a fire starts inside the computer. I blow the flames out and place it on my desk. It’s very small now and thick, all one piece, like an old, clunky cell phone.
As I’m thinking about how to keep the laptop working, it comes to my dreaming mind that it’s amazing that I do so much on this slow, chugging laptop.
And then, I marvel, still in the dream, at how I took care of the problems of the roaches and rescuing my computer, my life-line. Tgus translates to a conscious mind realization of how well I handled the nightmare escape from a sociopath. My marvelling at myself was a form of gratitude for mtself and for all the hard work this rickety-laptop does for me.
Once awake, as I sat myself down with my morning French press so-strong-you-need-a-spoon-coffee, I wrote out my dream as it came back to me. As deeper-psyche, unseen-things from the subconscious mind, the stuff behind all the elements and happenings of the dream, fell onto the paper, lo-and-behold!
Keywords describing the real truth of the dream popped out at me, my sleeping, subconscious mind was on my side. I felt better, and better as the ideas and meaning within the dream spilled out of my still-asleep mind, rolled through my hand, and moved my favorite pencil across the clean white paper.
As I wrote down the dream-scenario of killing the bugs, what I had to do to accomplish their slaughter poured out of my subconscious mind. Thoughts I hadn’t had as I was dreaming, like, I had to chase these disgusting roaches down, to really go after these slippery, scavengers in order to win.
And, I observed that, even in fear, I was relentless, aggressive, and persistent. I didn’t give up, or let go of the conviction in what I wanted, not even in challenges that nearly stopped my heart, and filled me with consuming-dread.
And, suddenly, the magic subconscious mind’s message appeared: It wasn’t those nasty bugs I was dreaming about after all: It was me, and how I am in my life.
And the laptop in a puddle and then on fire? My response to that revealed how resilient I am. That, no matter what, I find a way. And that realization led to conscious awe and gratitude I hold for myself, and always, for turning my hideous time with a con man into a positive.
I had on fear, no anxiety. Instead, I found myself in awe of myself, and of my life, and life itself.
A nightmare-dream reminder that I’m doing okay. And that I handle things well and am resourceful, and I can count on myself. I wouldn’t know that if I hadn’t written the dream down. Instead, I woulda been bugged by those bugs all day.
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Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
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2018_10_30 2023_01_27
Suspect you’ve got a sociopath spouse?
Are you kinda falling out of love?
Walking on eggshells.
Thinking, this is such a mess…?
Sociopath spouse in the house? For most of us, this is a difficult and hard-hard realization to come to. Amazingly, after over five days time talking with two different friends who reached out to me spontaneously, to my own shock and surprise, let alone theirs – we discovered each of them was not in great relationship with a few problems but married to sociopaths. They each called me because they know about my experience and what I do to help others.
The thing is, there are distinct and unmistakable signs of a sociopath-spouse. They’re specific and clear, but when we’re in it we’re not so sure. It’s natural to feel a need to “be sure”. To want to prove to ourselves what’s happening, what we suspect, what they are.
None of us are going to leave the first time they say something strange, or come home late… not even the fifth time. This is normal and absolutely the way it goes under the influence of the sociopath. – And then, when you do want to end it, things only become more difficult.
As my friends talked with me over the next months, I witnessed each of them grasp a wisp of the truth of what they were in – but not fully grab onto it.
In one moment, they’d get a snip of insight, make an infinitesimal shift in perception about their sociopath spouse, and then bob back up to the surface of “normal”.
“Normal”, meaning the way we look at life. We use our life-lens of good, trust, and love to interpret the behavior and words of a suspected sociopath spouse – and everyone and everything else around us.
Confusion is the theme of a marriage to a sociopath. Or “mush”. Mush in life. It can feel as if, the floor under our feet, the floor of our life which we never gave a thought to previously, has risen into our awareness for its soft and squidgy feel rather than its firmness. Having security is soemthing that isn’t in our minds when we have it, but is felt when it drifts, slides or falls away.
When we reflect upon it, or without much reflectin at all, we can recall with an unease that hasn’t left us a converssation, or many in which we were uncertain. Uncertain about how we came to a decision of some sort. Uncertain in wha twe;re talkign about; an oddness or discomfort in what they said, and surprised at our own reaction. And then followed by rationalizing simlently in our minds. Allowing for “why” what was said was said. What was decided we try to form into a kind of sense. We unfortuatnly keep wondering…
When wondering and in pain, it’s normal to lay the blame at our own feet while we give them a second chance. Normla human beings naturally look for the “why” when something is painful or uncomfortable within oursleves. We question out “part in it”. that’s wonderful… and natural and it’s how as normla huamns we resolve issues and grow togeher.
However, with a socioapth involved, there is no growth or deepeing of connection, but more adjustment made on our part. The problem isn’t us, it’s them. We end up questioning ourselves and slipping levels of self-esteem. Many of us here the notion that this happens to us becasue we don’t have enough self-love… But I ask you, if we didn’t love ourselves, or have esteem for our lives, would it all hurt so sickeningly much?
We give these creatures who lie and cheat and deceive others far too much credit. They’re so simplistic and solely focused on themselves… are they really master manipulators…? Or do we just not understand what they are? Are they truly great liars…? If they were would we be Googling for answers? ~ Jennifer Smith
Give the benefit of the doubt to yourself.
We look at the world from our own sweethearts, and why wouldn’t we? Unfortunately, when ensnared by a parasitic user, this means we further mistake the truth.
We hold into empathy for them; and as we continue to look at our sociopath spouse and our troubles through “normal” and as if we’re a couple with “problems” through popular views on handling relationship issues we’re getting further from real answers.
Sadly, this “normal” view of life and relationships only steers us in the wrong direction. Ultimately, we discover do “normal” isn’t working. The next step is discovering what’s really going on.
At first, it’s unbelievable. The dawning that Mr. Dream Man is a monster is slow. And why wouldn’t it be? How would we understand something we’ve never known existed? We wade into the dark-deep waters of seeing a sociopath spouse for what they are in baby steps.
We sometimes jump to blaming ourselves for not “knowing”. Please don’t think for one second you could have known these people are real; no one can begin to imagine that the problem is we’re married to a sociopath spouse because, well, what the heck is that?! And we think, doesn’t that only happen in movies?
If only we could recognize red flags waving for things we don’t know exist. If only liar’s pants really did catch fire. Here’s a hint of what it feels like to have a sociopath spouse… In the beginning, it’s nice. Then, after the nice wears off and the good wears down, it just feels like things have gone bad, just really bad.
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.
Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.
Mostly, we’re confused and sad, and next, there’s worse. And for all of us, the really bad drags on and on to a grinding, exhausting kind of life that’s more than exhausting, where things go wrong, and overall we’re in something we can’t explain and possibly feel ashamed to be in. We feel we’re headed towards “losing our minds” or “broken” if this keeps up.
Each of my friends described exactly what it’s like without knowing for sure that they were married to a sociopath. If this resonates in even the tiniest twinge – if you’re feeling two or more of these feelings, or experiencing these kinds of circumstances, chances are Mr. or Ms. Right is completely wrong-in-the-head and possesses the abnormal brain of a sociopath.
Here are more signals my friends experienced when married to sociopaths: Suddenly, they lost huge amounts of weight. Both of them talked about their husband’s rage.
And those husbands didn’t seem to care about anyone but themselves and thought they were victimized by their wives – and nearly everyone else.
My friends really stressed about money and slept badly. They were plagued by confusion and anxiety.
They considered that maybe their hubby was mentally unbalanced… or coo-coo-for-cocoa puffs. Each had sneaking suspicions the sociopath spouse had someone on the side. They themselves were exhausted and worn to the bone.
Being at their wit’s end, they wanted out. Unsettling, undercurrents of fear curdled their peace of mind. Nothing they’d tried to do or say had changed the marriage for the better or altered their husband’s behavior in the slightest. Sometimes the men seemed to care or act differently, but it wore off.
As hard as it is to see and to say I’ve got a sociopath spouse, it’s the beginning and early days of recovering. Without getting to this you can’t escape as safely and smoothly as we might. Certainly, recovery is hindered. Without this one has little chance of getting to the point of being sociopath-proof in the future. And, let’s face it that’s exactly what we need.
You can win. They need us, not the other way around. Step into freedom. You are amazing, awesome, and gorgeous and have everything it takes to be sociopath-spouse-free.
Join the podcast!
Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
True Love Scam Recovery on Medium
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jennifer@truelovescam.com
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2017_01_02 2023_01_09
