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 readingThe best sex ever. No sex at all.
Painful torturous sex.
You sleep in one room, they’re in another.
Refusal to wear condoms. No eye contact…
Despair.
Sociopaths and sex. This is a profoundly confusing element of the true love scam. For some, they find the sex better than any they’ve ever had. For most, this goes south just like all the other pieces of the entrapment by a pathological person in what we first perceive and believe to be a relationship with someone normal.
Naturally, as normal people embarking on a relationship, sex is on the list of things that matter most to establish and maintain a relationship.
Continue readingThese creatures infamously talk up a storm.
It’s a trademark of a narcissist or sociopath.
Contact is their full-time work to ensnare,
entrap, and keep prey locked in place.
Gaslighting. That confusing babble that oozes from their gobs nonstop. This tirade of conflicting and hurtful and ridiculous nonsense, unfortunately, spins us up off our feet and into a frenzy of trying to “talk about it”. We want to talk it out and resolve their concerns. So kind of us; so normal.
Continue readingWe’re encouraged and pushed to “move on”.
People give us a look and say,
“Omg, you’re still talking about that guy?”
Don’t let others shove us into thinking
we’re better before we really are.
People ask me, how long will it take before I feel normal again… And my answer is: it takes as long as it takes. And: it’s up to you.
I want to tell you, what you feel is perfect. Whatever you think about them and about what the “relationship” was – is okay. Checking up to see where they live now, or if they moved is cool… If they still take up space in your head, that’s okay.
The scenarios of what you should-have-said-instead-of-what-you-did-say and the replays of what they said… Those are okay as well. They do indicate healing is still in progress. You need all of that because it’s the material that you can combine, mix, and reposition with other key ingredients to reach full recovery.
Continue readingBreak up? More like an escape.
And then how to get them off our tail?!
Why don’t they go away?
Break up. Yikes. When we’re in a relationship and the words – I think I need to break up – the first flash in our mind, we cringe. Breaking up is tough. It takes ages to think about, let alone to actually do. Even under the best of circumstances, breaking up is hard. Really hard.
In the kind of situation, you’re likely experiencing since you found this article in your quest for answers… Know you’re in the right place. Landing here after much confusion, sadness, and maybe some huge unresolved or inexplicable fights is the usual way.
And if you’re here because you’re thinking: Wtf is going on…?! Well then, I imagine you’ve been feeling blamed, ignored, frustrated, dissatisfied, mystified, and have even felt used. With all this stuff going on, getting to the place where we really and finally-for-good break up is extra hard to do.
What is recovery for you?
There’s nothing about you that made this happen.
When we arrive here looking for answers and feel an urgent need to break up we’re pretty far down a twisted corridor of hell. You’ve known things were crazy. You know something’s wrong, and that you’re a long way from happy. And likely have been, and are in a maze of pain. A confusing place where nothing really changes for the better or resolves.
My hugest hope for you is that you’ll find yourself a deeper and maybe new way to think about your circumstances; that answers might begin to fill the gaps of wondering what’s wrong. That the thoughts and emotions can begin to make a different kind of sense and shift to benefit you.
In this tiny moment, I hope you can discover more about what it is you’re breaking up from, and how to go about it. – Let’s get to it and talk about the two difficulties in getting rid of crazy.
At the very mention of breaking up from crazy, they suddenly come back around and turn into Mr. Nice. or yes – Ms. Nice. She’s out there too!
Because of this, many of us try to end things many times before the final time and that’s perfectly okay. It really is. It takes as long as it takes.
Let’s say you manage to tell them it’s over. The first issue is that they seem to not want to let go. They fight the break-up with an energy that’s light-years more intense than anything they applied to make things work.
We finally muster the courage to bring up the break-up and here they are sticking to us like chewed gum on the bottom of our flipflop. Where was all this togetherness months ago?
Suddenly we find this self-focused person we’re trying to break up with is not ignoring us and is no longer ambivalent, nor emotionless. They’ve brought up the heat intensely, ramping up to keep us from our break-up goal.
They’re gonna whip out: Nice. Nice will be promises and slogans about how good we are together. This will be familiar. If they’re desperate enough they’ll throw in some begging. They might toss in something extra, tears.
When a pathological user is crying, take that as a guarantee that they’re in a tight position. In this scenario take this to mean that you’re very valuable to them as a resource.
Looking for support and answers?
Recovery is filled with lightbulb moments.
You’re not alone.
From their point of view hanging on and the histrionics make sense. Why would the person who’s using us – making use of us – for their own entertainment or other things easily let us go? Their interest in hanging on to us is primal and fundamental.
The way they react to us breaking up with them is in direct relation to what they gain from us. As always the spot we fulfill in their “needs” determines how they behave towards us. It stands to reason that if they could they’d keep us all in a cupboard forever to pull out whenever they need something.
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.
On the other side of nice is mean. Once it seems we’re sticking to our guns about breaking up, the user brings on the second tool in their arsenal: Mean.
This is where they insult us and criticize us, and for some, this is when the violence comes in. They like to tell us we’re imagining things and that all the malarkey is our fault. This is what many people refer to as gaslighting.
Whatever we call it, this opposition, this word salad, nonsensical, crazy-making, gaslighting soup is extremely simplistic in purpose. Hold on to your hats for this one: insulting and telling us we’re imagining things has the same purpose as being nice. So, what’s it about? It’s to get us to shut up. This is all hot air and their own fear packaged into mean so that we don’t break up – in this case.
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Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
Here’s what’s going on: They respond with nice or mean depending on our importance to them in that particular moment. Just imagine for a split-second that love’s got nothing to do with it, even if they say it does.
Hold your own hand now, and just for a sliver of time imagine that even though we think they love us… Breathe into the idea that maybe their love isn’t what we think it is. Let that marinate for a flash of a sliver of time.
Questions open up the door to another world of answers: For example, what if we feel and see what’s between ourselves and them as love – because we’re made of love – rather than because they can genuinely express love or feel love?
Ask yourselves, rather than, Why doesn’t he do this-instead-of-that? Or, Why does he say these things? For one millisecond ask, What if he doesn’t actually love me? Yep. Try that on. Think about it, What if he doesn’t…? Not even if he brings on the waterworks and cries like a baby. What do things look like then? Is there more room for an answer to their actions?
There are answers; there are logical reasons it’s hard to break up with them: We may come to a place where we realize that within their minds we each fill a spot that answers their varying needs and nothing more.
What they respond to in a break up is in accordance with their needs. If you’re key to them for a cozy place to sleep, or as a resource for money, access to a car, the internet, or a place to shower: They’re gonna balk at parting ways. When you’re the one thing that makes them seem respectable to others, they’re going to hang on.
For example, if it’s their parents who give them money or give them a stamp of approval that keeps them looking normal to the world, the pathological user (aka sociopath, aka narcissist) will hold on hard. If you’re the gateway to a group of people they want to use, they’ll hold on hard.
When we’re the place they eat, shower, hang out, get high, surf the internet, watch porn, jack off, sleep, brood, get their laundry done, are the address on their driver’s license, and serve as their home front to the world. Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t you hang on too?
They hold on hard if you’re the roof over their heads. When they have no one else ready on the side that they can quickly move in with, it’s us or the streets. Additionally, they hold on to us hard if this break up will make them look bad to someone else who provides something important.
Their point will be to get us to stop trying to break up. They want to get us to back off the break-up. to achieve this they’re going to use one or both of the only two tools a user has: Nice and mean. That’s all they got. – News flash: They aren’t geniuses or master manipulators.
The goal behind using these two tools is very simple. Because they need a place to stay, and along with that, likely a shower and that food in your fridge. To keep from being tossed out, they’ll be either nice or mean or more likely, a combination of both or a flip-flop between both.
So, it’ll be more promises; they hope the promises hit the spot in us emotionally leading us to soften and let them stay. Or they whip out accusations. They hurl insults. If this sparks guilt or shame or confusion or fear that it might lead us to cave. Either “nice” or “mean” can lead us to acquiesce and let them stay.
On the other end of things, if they have plenty already, a breakup could potentially go more easily. If they have another place to hang out and play video games, they might easily walk away. If they have a “fiancé” eager to move them in… Well hells-bells, as my grandmother used to say, they’ll be gone before we can blink. – They can walk away so easily that we’re stunned.
Even so, their reaction to us ending the roller coaster with a breakup awakens the natural (for them) instinct to hold on to and continues to monitor their prey. Monitoring us is what hoovering is all about. In their minds, it’s for their own safety.
Looking for support and answers?
Lightbulb moments.
The truth is, breaking up with a pathological predator, a sociopath (quite likely that one you’re thinking of as a narcissist) is gut-wrenching and horrifying.
Here’s the thing: Just as “normal” behavior and thinking didn’t make anything better while we were “together”. Nothing normal is going to work in the breakup. Learn how to be, and do, and say what maneuvers them from our lives. Behaving and thinking from our point of view of “normal” will not work out well for us.
We can learn to do what needs to be done, and say what needs to be said so that they can hear and understand, and so that they respond in the way that we need things to be for a change. Flip the tables.
Here’s a bit of a start to what we can do… Leave ’em: Act as if everything is peachy. Have that (last) pizza together and then without them knowing it’s over, makes this pizza night your last contact.
Kiss ’em goodbye and then block them. Silence… Not a word to them. The effect of no contact is the hugest message we can send. This is not a message they haven’t “heard” before. Zillions of people have gone no contact with them before you.
Lie: Another option is one where we outright lie. Have that “break-up” talk and scenario. And tell them: You’re so great. I know it’s all my fault. – We’re lying.
When we say this line, we don’t really feel this way about all the malarkey that’s gone down. But say this or your version of this so that we aren’t seen as a threat to them. Their perception is that when we break up, then we’re a threat. When we end it they think we just might tell everyone how horrible they are.
Users don’t want us to tell others how horrible they are. Not wanting us to blow up their house of cards existence… They know their life is glued together with our “normal”; with our great goodness and true-blue realness. They do get it that they and their life is BS. – This is exactly what they ensnared us for: To hold their life together.
If we go around talkin’ – this would keep them possibly from grabbing onto other souls to make use of. And they really think that all the things they’ve done – even all that stuff we don’t know about – is going to come tumbling out of the closet. This fear of what we’ll do and say is part of why they hang on. And this fear is what the hoovering and all the smearing is all about.
We’re letting them think they’re amazing. This is deliberate. – this makes us a non-threat and leaves it easier for us to walk away without them hanging on or hoovering.
Find your way back to you.
We know in our gut that we did nothing to make this person do the things they’re doing. We just didn’t. If sometimes you wonder if it was your fault. That simply proves that you’re normal and that you’re doing what “normal” does. We give second chances, and third chances.
“Normal” takes responsibility, and many times even when there is no responsibility to be taken. This is the true place for boundaries. We are not responsible for their inhumanity.
Now that you’ve mustered up the courage to leave or tell them to hit the road dig deep to understand the truth of their intense reaction.
Hopefully, we truly discover what this all was so that our cognitive dissonance and confusion can resolve. We all want to resolve each loss and heal the very specific trauma from this relationship that isn’t. ‘Cause you are real. You are normal, and you get to be exactly what you are, which is beautiful inside and out.
Join the podcast!
Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
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2019_11_19 2022_11_02
Bread crumbs and promises.
Odd things we might or might not discover are lies.
And, then there’s the truth.
To really heal, we need to know
how to decode their meaning.
What is it with the boyfriend and the weird things they say? What is it when they talk a lot. They toss out what turns out to be garbage in glittery promises in the form of hints. Mutterings about marriage, kids, a house, something they’ll never do again, or never would do – like cheat or lie. These are the bread crumbs, the dangling carrot.
Then, the majority of their words are more lies and misdirects, and gaslighting. Sometimes we discover the truth of the lies, sometimes we don’t.
There are lots of stories about other people, things they did and said, along with lots of bad things about others while they are so, so good. There’s denying something that happened, or that was said, or done. There’s telling us we’re crazy.
I asked the man I was about to marry if he had any kids. We were standing together in the kitchen.
His head down, bent over the stove, stirring the dinner he was making for us. I waited.
A slow smile peeked from his profile. As he turned his face up, not towards me, but up somewhere between the stove-top vent and the top of the kitchen wall.
And lastly, there’s the truth. The bizarre, surreal, incomprehensible-in-the-moment truth. Truth to weird to make sense.
Knowing the truth breaks the bond.
His gaze seemed to look out into the distance beyond the kitchen, a distance I couldn’t see. In a throaty, dreamy voice he murmured, I have hundreds of kids all over the world. Then, his attention went straight back to the stew his strange trance broken.
I didn’t understand. I stood, waiting on pause, looking at him. Waiting for him to say more… He said nothing but stirred the simmering tomatoes and chillis. He didn’t speak, didn’t look at me, just stood there cooking.
I tried to imagine what he meant… Then, still bowed over the stew pot, with gravity and a touch of what read from my angle as regret, he said, I had a four-year-old boy once, but I gave him back. – This did not clear things up.
This made no sense. I needed it to make sense. We all need what people say to make sense. I thought, maybe he had a foster kid or… something…or… I factored in that his English wasn’t great… Ticking gears clicked, and whirled until I landed on, oh, he must mean that he loves kids like I do!
More comments that made me tilt my head in wonder, like a dog at a high-pitched noise came along throughout the time I knew him.
That quiet moment of oddness at the stove got swept up into some kind of attic space in my mind, some odd corner where we keep the odd things they say.
There are so many nutty words that come out of their mouths. Most of it is lies, but some of it, the really strange stuff, that’s something else. The words they say that leave us unsure of what they’re saying… those words are true.
When we metaphorically and literally scratch our heads in wonder, when we’re at a loss for words over their words… That’s when their words are pure truth. Their truth about their lives… not ours.
For instance, months later I discovered that while he did exaggerate, he was telling the truth about having “100s of kids all over the world”, in several countries as it turns out, and that estimate short only by about 75 kids.
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.
Here are examples of true words uttered by real-life lying, using, and defrauding people without a conscience.
All these words of naked, bald, pure truth from a narcissistic sociopath glide right by our normal interpretation and comprehension of life.
As far as the weird thing my then “boyfriend” said at the stove, “I have 100’s of kids all over the world.” He did. He does. At last count, there are 16.
Three of them are the same age, in the same town, from three different women who each thought they were the only one while he was married to me, while another woman was getting an annulment from him, while another wife somewhere else waited at home for him as each of these three women with these three children did.
How many phrases can you recall that rang strangely, but can now be flipped to ring true? It takes courage, but if we can take a look at these memories of these odd moments tucked into the attic, the cellar, and the back of the closet of our mind from a new angle, we can begin to see see what really went on.
If we can look at these hijackings for the crimes they are rather than a genuine relationship, we have a chance at deep recovery and can become user-proof forever.
Do your best not to get stuck in the lies. Walkthrough to the truth. The truth is a deliberate deception by a person who is, in truth, not at all who we thought they were. That person, the one we met, doesn’t exist.
Be open to the hideous truth. It’s how we step away from this being a personal relationship and realize we were targeted in fraud. A crime we can heal from. Someone we thought loved us and lied is something we might never get over.
Listen for it. They’ll tell you the truth, and we can hear it much, much later in the aftermath in the echos of their words. Those words, that truth is the key to healing, recovering, and healing.
You’ll cry, and feel so, so bad that there are no words to describe the feeling. Go ahead and sry those tears that contort your face and come from the gut and the soul. Do your best to not get stuck in the lies, the promises, the moments they were “nice”. Know they are not good, they are not nice, and that the worst moment you saw in them…That is who they are.
That person, the one we met, doesn’t exist. Grieve what there is to grieve; with self-compassion, and awareness, gradually move into grieving not the person, but the crime.
There’s no need to change who you are, or how much you love. They take advantage of our misunderstanding of their words that come from our great goodness.
This doesn’t make our marvelous goodness bad. It does reveal just how bad they are. We are awesome!
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Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
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2019_01_20 2022_10_12
Sociopath is a big word.
We shy away from the idea
because it sounds like a movie, not real life.
Taking a second look at this can save us lots of pain.
Dating a sociopath, as it turns out, is something I’ve done a lot of. This wasn’t something I knew I’d done until after I’d married one, kicked him out, and gotten myself an annulment.
After this big-whammy experience with the con man sociopath who hijacked me specifically for a green card to the U.S.A. – and incidentally (as they do) – for all the money he could take, I put the pieces together. I did this with my own instinct, a bold and unwavering determination to take back my life and all he’d taken from me, and reading research. As in neuroscience and psych research.
After really grasping how their little minds operate and their quirks and foibles, I know that I’ve dated a sociopath more than once. Each of them floated to my memory over the months spent restoring my life in a flash of realization. – I understand you might be wondering what it is about me that “attracted” them, or what could be wrong with me…
There’s nothing wrong with me, There’s everything right with me. I’m a normal gorgeous inside and out living breathing fully limbic-brained human. In other words, this means that I’m normal. Many, many, many of us discover as we take in a real comprehension of what a sociopath is that more than one has knocked at our door.
Now I know I’ve briefly dated one of these weirdos twice. And that about eight of them, all told have tried to get into my life. This one particular one got me into a legal marriage. Maybe like me, you went beyond dating a sociopath and married one.
Chances are, you’ve known more than one as well, and certainly at least one, or you wouldn’t be here. I’m glad that you are here…I’m glad you’re seeking answers that truly fit into place. Keep going so that you can solidify a user-proof life since as strange as it is, it’s true – these human predators are out there. – I’ve heard it said that one in 25 people is a sociopath… That makes about one in every classroom.
After the harrowing hideous entanglement and then the restoration of my life after the dirtbag who hijacked me for an address in the U.S. along with the legal right to be in the country, I now know one of the first times in my life I came across a sociopath was in elementary school. He was ten years old, and so was I. We were in the 5th grade.
He was super gross. Nobody liked him. He was tough and mean and didn’t fit the profile of that charming sociopath we read about at all. – But maybe crafting that smoothie exterior comes later in life for these creatures.
I was plagued by his attention. What I didn’t yet know was, that there’d been a bet or a joint plot or some such heinous thing among complicit classmates that he could grab me and kiss me on the playground. – Where the heck were the adults…?
What would it mean to feel like yourself again?
As it goes down, I suddenly realize I’m all alone, sitting on a swing. There’s nobody else playing, no balls bouncing, no laughing… And no one near me. It dawns on me that the entire 5th and 6th grades are divided into two camps on opposite sides of the blacktop.
The optics of the scenario stretch and pull as they do in moments of impending doom. I see or sense one band of kids far, far away in a corner of the now ghostly playground, hovering in a flock by one of the outbuildings.
The more nearby knot of whispering, heaving-with-excitement 10-year-olds backs further away as a lone figure slithers towards me. In this moment, the classical traits of the snake-like qualities of a sociopath shimmer off of this kid who’s now floating into the way-too-near-me horizon.
The dirty-haired, pale-skinned predator floats up like on a Z-axis camera dolly, sliding into a close-up position. His mouth is open in anticipation.
Emanating from him was some internal honing device that sucked at me, aligning my body, overriding my resistant mind and soul, right into his orbit. Something like polar opposite magnets that click and snap together when what I wanted to do was hurl away in refusal. I didn’t have control of my body… I was locked in place.
A part of me actively resisted and fought to get away. Brave little me looked the prepubescent beast straight in his eyes. At the millisecond I registered his leer, his curled lip revealing tiny, pointy yellowish teeth, my right arm pulled itself back, my hand in a rock-hard fist ready to smash his face. – Something I’d never done in my life.
His eyes open wide from the slits of a hunter; shock replaces the cocky, shit-bag expression on his ugly freckled face. He leans back from his waist and comes closer all at once. He hisses through a clenched jaw, threatening: Don’t you hit me.
I didn’t hit him. I couldn’t really. I did look straight into his eyes scanning for a person. As in a human to connect with. There wasn’t one. But, he did look scared. Of me. Then I sent out no words, no sounds, but what must have been a telepathic, silent human-to-beast warning, in essence: Don’t you fuck with me.
Those very words weren’t in my head, but surely there were screaming from my less than five-foot 70-pound frame. He backed off. The crowds dispersed… And everything after that is a blur. I was then allowed to spend every recess for the rest of the 5th grade in the nurse’s office or sitting in the school counselor’s room. I was terrified of the playground. I had post-traumatic stress at 10 years old induced by the traumatic events of a sociopath invading my life.
Likely, by now, you’ve heard someone say or read somewhere that you played a part in the “relationship”. That you don’t know how to pick good men or women or partners but are attracted to “bad boys”. That you’re codependent or don’t have boundaries and this is why this happened to you.
This reasoning, though a natural place for people to go with this for a few reasons, is absurd. As a ten-year-old, I guarantee I wasn’t looking for a bad boy, was not codependent, and was not in a relationship with this goober-headed ten-year-old monster. It happened because he was a monster – and I was – and am – normal.
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.
And then, either before or after that nice day, another fine day this grimy psycho kid shows me a messed up sketch he’d made. Presented it like a gift.
Smeared pencil on a piece of lined notebook paper; so many creases where he’d feverishly folded and unfolded the page in sweaty hands it was almost tattered. It was a crude drawing of an underground fort. Dug into the earth next to a tree, in and around its roots. He told me this is where he planned to take me…And so by implication keep me.
Turns out, I used to be the kind of person sociopaths really like. Someone they like to date, marry, and maybe even kidnap. A lot of us are this kind of person because we’re alive and amazing humans, this makes us someone these predators sniff out as delicious prey.
And this doesn’t mean we’re stupid, or a doormat, or codependent. — And don’t even go down the road of thinking you’re a sociopath magnet… The very idea of a sociopath magnet implies it’s the targeted prey who are at fault for the fall down the rabbit hole. So not true.
Wanting a relationship and working for it doesn’t mean we’re codependent. Nice does not equal doormat. Dating a sociopath-con-man does not signify that we’re stupid. It does indicate our natural goodness and view of the world from the heart and eyes of normal. From our normally-wired human brain that bonds as survival. https://cornellsun.com/2020/02/13/the-science-of-human-bonding/
Sociopaths don’t get far or get much to support their lives out of stupid. Don’t forget, we unwittingly hold up their world; stupid can’t hold up tier own world and another grown person’s too.
Codependent simply does not apply as the case of this criminal hijacking arrangement they set up. It’s more like instant hypnosis, and unless you’ve been in it: Sit down. – That’s what you can all those people who say: Didn’t you know…? Why didn’t you just leave…?
What they do work with, and do a lot with, is our emotions. That’s what they’re after… They don’t care really about which emotion; they just want a normal human one.
Our natural normal response from the world of normal. Our human emotions based on our ordinary and extraordinary kindness. They want open hearts, people who care, and people who don’t know what a predator is and that these revolting creatures exist… Even in 5th grade.
Sociopaths don’t respond normally to normal things. For example, when something bad happens… like our pet turtle dies, or our cat gets sick, or we lose a family member they remain kind of neutral, almost bored, or say something like, such a pity and go on watching Netflix. Or, throw off a blast of ice-cold freeze out.
Narcissistic predators say things like I don’t have feelings. Or I’m going to teach you a lesson, and they aren’t talking about tennis or playing the piano. Or when we’re deep in it, as I heard one day from the nut case who hijacked me in marriage, I can’t make you do what I want you to, but I can make you wish you had.
Lying deceivers aren’t where they say they’ll be: We run into them when they said they couldn’t come out with us or they’d be somewhere else.
The invader parasite sociopath has a whole world we aren’t in: We come across them out at a club when they said they were staying home – and then they ignore us, or tell us we should be at home. They don’t join us but freeze us out of their night on the town.
Being used by a pathological predator involves being stood up with lame explanations or no explanation. If we’re dating a sociopath they might make a date with us and show up two hours late, or not at all. After that, they’re mad that we’re mad, and madder that we ask about it. And more than one of us has heard the sociopath we’re dating say, don’t question me or if you’d trust me everything would be okay.
Sociopaths busy themselves “dating” us and and about 800 other people at the same time. They keep things close to their vest. They sleep with their phones. Lock their phone. Take their phone into the bathroom. Block us from their Facebook.
Sociopaths who are “dating” often, as in within every single moment of any encounter with a normal human being, overstep the normal social and personal boundaries we all have.
In addition to being deceptive about who they are and about their intention in our lives, sociopaths don’t heed the natural and normal boundaries we have and that we expect others to have.
It’s not uncommon to have a creepy feeling like they’ve been looking through our drawers or catch them looking over our shoulder as we punch in our PIN. There always the quickly shifting and closing of the laptop when we walk into the room.
And, maybe you’ve noticed, predator sociopaths take things. Mysteriously, there’s money missing from our sock drawer, or from that envelope in between the dusty-never-used dictionary and “East of Eden” on the bookshelf. – Especially when they’re gearing up to exit our lives.
When confronted by the impossible the rational mind will grope for the logical.
~ Outlander S1:E1 Sessenach
One day while my new husband was at a meeting, I went out to buy something delicious for his dinner. Surprisingly, I ran into him at my bank’s ATM just around the corner.
He was stunned and trying not to show it. – Caught red-handed more like. – Wary, surprised, and leering, like a cat that thinks it saw something move, but isn’t sure and so waits and watches for it to happen again, ready to pounce; he asked, Are you following me??
Feeling ungrounded, my brain spun and grasped for something that made sense of finding him, of his words, and to make things right because normal humans need that.
My mind sorted the circumstances: He had no personal bank account here, there was only my account recently-turned-joint-account. He was supposed to be in another area of town at a meeting… since an hour ago.
Out of my mouth came a tiny, no. – This was the best answer I could come up with to his very odd question… The most normal response that made me seem not freaked out. I didn’t want him to know that I knew this was very, very weird.
The thing is: Somewhere in my body I was already afraid of this stranger I’d married. He too wanted things to seem okay, so he came into the market next door with me. It felt a lot like that encounter with the sociopath child while I was a child, that day on the playground in 5th grade.
I don’t remember grabbing the grocery items, but I do recall being at the checkout… Where I paid for our groceries while he fiddled with his phone and pretended to reach for his wallet.
Continuing the charade, he came home with me and then left eight minutes later. Truth gathering, observing as if I were a player in a scene revealed him for what he was.
Dating a sociopath was a recurring theme in my life. Emphasis on was. Previously, intermingled with great relationships with real people, I found myself dating a sociopath or about three very briefly; I only married one. — Recovery tip: Find humor wherever you can.
The more we learn about what a sociopath is and how to recognize them, you may realize you’ve known a few. Bleeping onto a sociopath’s radar screen as a potential target doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with us.
It means there’s everything right with us. It means we’re good, kind people who trust and love as natural, gorgeous humans innately do. We have every right to be exactly what and who we are.
We just plain, flat-out didn’t know such beasts existed, there’s no way to conceive of something so beyond normal; sociopaths hide behind this perfectly normal human characteristic of not knowing that evil exists and what it looks like. We can’t know what we don’t know until we know it.
Trust our gut, we’re experts now. We can see a sociopath a mile away. Look them in the eye. They’ll know that we know and it’s so delightful to watch them scurry away like the rats they are.
Really… I did it just yesterday in the mall. Now, we can add knowledge, wisdom, and courage to the mix of our gorgeous selves!
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Sociopaths are identical and predictable.
Truly understanding the characteristics
of a sociopath changes everything.
It likely sounds dramatic, an impossibility, and maybe a bit like fear-mongering to say with calm confidence, oh that guy? He’s a sociopath. Or, she’s a sociopath. – The breaking news is, it is neither dramatic nor impossible.
It’s practical and sensible. It is scary. However, calmly knowing sociopaths exist and are real and what that means is huge key to how we unwind the damage of the sociopath-effect and unplug their influence.
I wish. The fact is, a sociopath is a real thing. A common reality. There are humans all around us who function from sociopathy. …And to confuse things even further, many people call them narcissists.
Though sociopath is a big scary word, the characteristics of a sociopath are really tiny and limited. And distinct.
There’s a good reason for this, a sociopath is a sociopath because they have a brain significantly different from the regular brain, that is from yours or mine.
Their brains under-function, so that they have no sensation or experience or feeling of connection. No sense of caring, genuine consideration, love, or even like for people outside of their own body. This pathology gives them very specific and unbelievable traits and qualities.
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.
By now you’ve heard the word narcissist and maybe call the person who hauled you through hell a narcissist. The thing is a “narcissist” is most often a sociopath. If you’re thinking of them as a “narcissists” read about and research sociopaths for real answers.
There’s lots of material and many memes and so many Insta accounts that talk about the more mundane narcissistic person who is not pathological and who is not a scammer. If you found yourself in a life where you were working harder than you’ve ever worked to keep your life and their life afloat only to find it constantly sinking, you were ensnared by the pathological narcissist…. that is, a sociopath.
Sociopaths are 100% narcissistic. They’re in your life for a reason that is not normal or genuine in any way. There’s no one more narcissistic on the planet than the sociopath… the antisocial psychopath aka sociopath or psychopath. Read here about why the clinical terminology uses the word “antisocial”.
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Though sociopath is a big scary word, the characteristics of a sociopath are really tiny and limited. And distinct. There’s a good reason for this: a sociopath is a sociopath because they have a brain significantly different from the regular brain… yours or mine.
Their brains are structured so that they have no sensation or experience of feeling any bonding, love, care, or consideration for other people — or animals. – They do pretend to.
The attachment or interest they display for others is where we begin to feel horrified because it’s not like ours. And it’s not good.
Other people hold no meaning to them aside from using that person for the sociopath’s personal gain. This means they’re what’s commonly called a con man or con artist, or scammer. And they come in male or female versions.
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There’s hard science to demonstrate the difference in their brains. Brain scans by neuroscientists reveal the portions of the brain attributed to feeling love, and compassion just doesn’t function.
There’s nothing we can recognize as normal once the mask hits the floor. So what is going on inside of them? There’s basically nothing there. Where love would be there’s white noise. The connection between themselves and others isn’t made of concern or care.
Though they can create what we first feel is intimacy and deep interest in us, calling what they put out towards us a real “connection” isn’t quite the thing. This is because they see us as an object to grab-and-smash; something like a natural resource they hold the rights to.
They truly believe that they have every right to make use of humans as you or I would make use of a vacuum cleaner or a blender to get something done.
The thing is, we care more about the well-being of our vacuum cleaner than a sociopath does about us or any other human. They make use of others in absolutely any way they like. The word, “exploitation” comes to mind.
This is really hard for us to believe. It’s humanly impossible to absorb in one single moment the reality that there are people who look human, just like us, but are missing the “humanity chip”. Taking this in is a process.
Find out here: The Podcast: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
People without a conscious are bereft of good as if they’ve scorched the very roots of goodness within their own lives. They aren’t “choosing” to not care; this in itself would come from a place of caring. They have no place of caring within them. These are people who embed themselves into people’s lives to take, to use, and to do whatever they want. This is their real “work” whether they have an actual paycheck or not.
Jennifer Smith, True Love Scam Recovery
When individuals operate without a conscience they are able to do horrible things we would never dream of doing, and there is no moral compass or guilt feelings to stop them.
Dr. Deborah Ettel, PhD Psychology
In order to hook, use and take from targets, (that would be you or I, just regular people) every sociopath uses the same little tricks and misleads and lies. This takes effect in one-on-one relationships, in romantic or work situations, towards religious leaders or politicians; anywhere you find and admire or like someone who is a sociopath this hook will take hold.
Where ever there’s a sociopath in a group, a family, or an organization. The predator gets busy in a true love faux-lationship or superior-acolyte in any setting. The arc of hell and the crazy plays out in five stages. Always, and also in every one of these set-ups.
There’s no deviation from this pattern of hook and use and break-away. It might be carried out over five days or 50 years with any particular morsel of prey — but there’s no variation in the way a sociopath functions or affects prey.
Everything they do and say is in an effort to make use of those around them is for their survival. We are their livelihood. This survival is dependent upon us believing they’re normal. This is not easy for us to see. It takes time and taking in a new perspective to see this thing we never imagined existed.
Our experience with them is traumatic and so is coming to terms with what they are. Not all trauma is bad!
So many give credit to the sociopath as a master manipulator, a genius liar. I beg to differ. It’s time to look again from another angle, so we can stop giving them the power. They claim to be amazing and talented geniuses — and we do at first see them as masterly wizards of manipulation and at the antics that they pull.
In reality, sociopaths have very limited thinking. They are severely limited, have specific thinking and feelings, and have no other way to think or feel.
What they feel as raw emotions is desire or need, and then glee when they get what they want, anger when it’s threatened or taken away, rage when their scam is being seen through or put to an end, and fear. They have a great fear of being exposed which fuels endless rage at being caught or exposed.
Answer these very basic questions that lead to an estimation of whether someone is a sociopath aka a psychopath… or that person you’re calling a “narcissist”. I
After all, never forget, understanding what you’re facing isn’t about diagnosing them… this discovery serves the purpose of finding your safety, keeping your sanity, and restoring your well-being.
If they’re at risk of exposure they lose it; when exposed they risk not getting what they want or getting away with it they become wild-cornered animals.
They frantically and erratically hop from one tactic to another trying to get their house of cards back in place. They come up with elaborate stories, fake illnesses, disappear, kill, cry spontaneous sheets of tears… rage and threaten and blackmail (like, if I lose, I’ll leave the United States…). The nearer they are to losing it all, the more they lose it.
The profound fear they live with is one of the things they don’t want us to realize about them. If their fear was not incredibly deep, why would they rage so when we get close to the truth?
The reason we feel so confused is that this is nothing like anything we’ve known before. And… It isn’t anything we can see by using the way we normally think to look at it.
The whole mess is a fake-lationship. A faux-lationship. We think we’re in a real relationship; the sociopath knows it’s not a real mutual human relationship.
Sociopaths do their best to embed themselves into people’s lives in order to take, use, make use of us, and do whatever they want in that person’s life. Making these attempts and making this effort is how they spend every single day; this is their “work”. It’s how they survive.
As a confused and hurt person trying to find answers, to decipher what’s going on, understanding the characteristics of a sociopath lets us see from an angle that supports our understanding. This also saves our mental and emotional – as well as physical – health and allows for healing.
It’s not easy to fully comprehend and takes time to see it, but the fact is, we’re nothing more than a piece of equipment or an object to the sociopath. Beyond that, we’re despised and held in contempt.
This is so hard to grasp because we’re fully human. We love and support those we love; we don’t view them as expendable resources. Sociopaths are the antithesis of loving and giving; they only take and as the fallout of their taking, destruction is all they bring to the table.
Because pathological users are anywhere we might be, we need to learn how to recognize them. Their real power when you think about it is that we can’t recognize them and so not be affected by them.
Sociopaths exist in every social, regional, and economic realm. Most crave riches with insatiable desire. Paradoxically they can handle living in a box on the side of the road until the next target with a nice warm nest comes along. Why…? It’s the result of having no emotional connection to things, people, or places.
Without any emotional connection aside from holding someone up to measure if that person – seen as an object – fits into their needs – and every one of us has something they need – sociopaths are isolated and isolating in their effect.
Predatory parasites dwell in trailer parks in Wyoming, on ski slopes in the Alps, in board rooms across the world, within the profiles of online dating sites, at church, in bars and clubs, in the grocery store, at the dog park.
Sociopaths hunt prey in the workplace, on Facebook, in chat forums, at a party. We can meet them at the grocery store, in line at the post office, getting gas or through friends.
It’s said one-in-25 people are sociopaths and are either male or female. We’ve all heard the phrase: hiding in plain sight. We’ve got to change how we “see” – our “sight” – they’re plain as day.
Since their state of mind is based on the limited and abnormal brain that makes someone a sociopath, there are more characteristics that are identical sociopath to sociopath.
You wouldn’t be the only one to discover porn, beyond porn – and their participation in shocking sexual practices. They avoid paying taxes, skip paying child maintenance altogether in cases of divorce, and cheat at absolutely everything. Even if they seem successful career-wise, you’ll find they don’t do their own work if you scratch the surface. Even with seemingly legit employment they ultimately live off of others’ lives, others’ efforts, finances, respectability, and magnanimity.
In the world of psychology, they’re called antisocial psychopaths, or sociopaths. And lately as having an antisocial personality disorder. This newer contemporary term diminishes the damage they do and casts them in the light of hapless wrong-doer.
They’re not innocents suffering from a disorder. They know they cause harm. With pleasure and pride, they do terrible things to people. – Another delay in finding what we’re really facing is getting hung up on terminology and ideas of “narcissists”.
Sociopaths can’t help themselves from bragging. They like to chatter about the things they do. . These elaborate boasts represent their made-up life. It’s all lies. The traits and tricks of a sociopath never waver.
They’re consistent with all their prey whether in pursuit for ten days or we’re captive for ten years or 30 years. It’s the same for each of us from the first “hello”, to the way they break up with us.
In popular culture, movies, and books sociopaths are referred to as con artists or con men. In real life, they are strictly Mr. Hyde with a very shallow cover of Dr. Jekyll.
Sociopaths lie easily. Lying is normal for them. They feel no guilt or shame about lying. If one lie doesn’t work they whip out another one. They know they lie. For the pathological, lies make up what’s real, and real is made up. How’s that for mind-bending?
Since they are not connected to the world, to their own life to anything through emotions in the way that we are, sociopaths forget what they say one moment to another moment, and can only manage the moment in front of them.
Consequently, we can lie to them, they can know that we’re probably lying, and yet, they act on the lie as if it’s the truth.
The sociopath (or that person you might be calling a narcissist) lies in a way that’s called “pathological”. This means that lying comes as a result of their brain. In other words, they can’t not lie. They do not get better or change.
At this point in time in the history of humankind, there is no known “cure.” They wouldn’t want to “get better” or “be better” if they could. They enjoy every minute of what they are. They adore themselves while knowing full well that they’re monsters.
The sociopath’s ruse is deception upon deception. Since people are seen as objects, they are disposable to the sociopath. It’s hard to say, but not all allow their prey to live to tell the tale.
Dr. Deborah Ettel, Phd Psychology
The characteristics of a sociopath include pride in the things they do. They consider nabbing prey an achievement. They’re boastful and feel great, and an exaggerated gleeful accomplishment in scamming, lying, taking, stealing, using, and worse.
Remember the exciting, exhilarating start to all the mess? Recall when they have that grin…and are sparked and energized? – It’s an exhibit of the glee and sense of pride they feel for capturing you.
They make off-handed comments that reveal their inner workings. Knowing the characteristics of a sociopath exposes them for what they are and includes eventually, being able to see them as boring and even laughable. Only when we don’t recognize them or we believe them do we find ourselves ensnared.
In these flashing moments of truth our heads spin. The truth always stands out. But in the confusing, bizarre world of the con, actual truth only cuts a fleeting crack in the lunacy and looks like lunacy itself.
A sociopath’s influence has us doubt the truth, and be soothed by their lie. Sociopaths influence us in such a way, that it’s natural for us to defend and protect their lies.
All in all, anytime we spent in the presence of a sociopath, wasn’t what we thought it was. There’s never any mutual moment aside from maybe sitting down to eat because both of us want a good dinner.
Any limbic-brained person in the presence of a sociopath in any dynamic such as a personal relationship of love, of family members, of neighbor and neighbor or boss and employee or coworker… they all involve sustained trauma and harm and a period of PTSD in the aftermath.
Why they’re at dinner with us, is not the same reason we’re at dinner with them. We were targeted and hijacked for the sociopath’s own use.
The most devastating thing a sociopath creates is disunity. Disunity from self and from others we love…from others in general. Even a sense of separation from others we don’t know shrouds us as our life shuts down and closes into a very small thing centered on them and appeasing them. We end up in a spinning place of off-kilter confusion, more than walking on eggshells.
Like any normal human would without positive connection and unity, in isolation and separation we get lost. We can bring ourselves back. We reunite with ourselves, with all and everyone around us. Recovering from this trauma takes non-judgemental support and encouragement.
With accurate and true information and understanding of what a sociopath is – and what we are as gorgeous, loving humane, human beings, we can heal and get our lives back. We can trust again, laugh again, and love again.
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Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
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