Tag Archives: hoovering

Break Up: The Trouble with Getting Rid of Crazy

Break 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.

Break Up or Bust

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.

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?

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.

Break up From Crazy: A Break Up That Goes On For Ages

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.

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.

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?

Breaking Up: Reaction Number One: Nice

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.

Why Can’t They Just Go?

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.

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.

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

Breaking Up with Evil, by Jennifer Smith on Amazon and Good Reads

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.

Break Up: Reaction Number Two: Mean

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.

Everything They Do Serves One Basic Purpose

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.

The Podcast!

Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

It Takes as Long as It Takes

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.

Break Up Pain Galore

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?

Questions Bring Answers: But Which Question?

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?

If you’re the gateway to a group of people they want to use, they’ll hold on hard.

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.

Users Use Others For Everything They Need

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.

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.

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?

Holding on for Goods and Services, Access to Others, or Respectability

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.

A break up awakens the natural (for them) instinct to hold on to and continue to monitor their prey. Monitoring us is what hoovering is all about. In their minds it’s for their own safety.

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.

Break-Up Avoidance on Their Part

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.

In Days of Plenty, We May Be of Little Value

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.

Breaking Up is Gut-Wrenching

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.

Break Up 101: Leaving and Lying: Break Up With Crazy

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.

They Lie and They Believe Lies

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.

“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.

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.

Trust Your Gut

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.

Break Up Bravery Takes Us Through It

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.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

The podcast!

Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

SD Voyager interview

True Love Scam Recovery on Medium

True Love Scam Recovery on Facebook

Add these to your contacts
so you don’t miss a newsletter!
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Subscribe True Love Scam Recovery Jennifer Smith

As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.

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Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you. © 2014 – 2027 All Rights Reserved True Love Scam Recovery www.truelovescam.com

2019_11_19 2025_03_04

My Boyfriend Says Weird Things

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.

They Say Weird Things

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.

100 Kids All Over the World

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.

The Surreal Lift-Up Out of Our Own Body

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!

The Corner in the Attic of Our Minds

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’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.

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

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.

When Our Boyfriends Say Weird Things

Here are examples of true words uttered by real-life lying, using, and defrauding people without a conscience.

  • If I knew I wouldn’t go to jail for it, I’d kill you.
  • Step away, I’m about to get physical, and you don’t want to see that.
  • On the way driving back here every day, all I do is imagine bashing your head against the wall.
  • I don’t care like you do.
  • There are things you don’t know.
  • If you loved me you wouldn’t try to change me.
  • If you love me, you’ll take me as I am.
  • If you knew who I really was, you wouldn’t love me.
  • You’re afraid you’ll never see me again, aren’t you?
  • I knew you’d call me…
  • I can’t do it. I just can’t pretend anymore.
  • You have no idea all the things I’m fooling you about
  • You know this feeling is just a phase, right? It’s going to end. I intend to prolong it as long as I can, but it’s going to end.
  • Don’t tell people about us. It’s good now, but when it’s bad, it’s really bad.
  • I can’t make you do what I want, but I can make you wish you had.
  • I’m not who you think I am.
  • I’m not like other people. I’m a gray skin.

The Attic Corner in Our Mind

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.

These Are Crimes Rather Than Relationships

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 Truth

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.

The Podcast: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

There is Loss, Grieving and Much to Resolve and Heal

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!

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

The podcast!

Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

SD Voyager interview

True Love Scam Recovery on Medium

True Love Scam Recovery on Facebook

Add these to your contacts
so you don’t miss a newsletter!
jennifer@truelovescam.com
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Subscribe True Love Scam Recovery Jennifer Smith

As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.

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True Love Scam Recovery, Narcissistic Abuse Unwound, Jennifer Smith, truelovescam.com, and narcissisticabuseunwound.com, and its agents are not professionally licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. All social media, presentations, publications, podcasts, public speaking, audio appearances, writings, and coaching are carried out under the pseudonym “Jennifer Smith”. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery et al Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you. Founded 2014 © All Rights Reserved.

2019_01_20 2025_10_08

Coaching Sessions: Out of Narcissistic Abuse

Recovery Beyond Any Other: Restore Your Life

Recovery Beyond Any Other: Restore Your Life

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I don’t think I would be where I am if I hadn’t found you and learned from you, and I’m still learning. Thanks for all you are doing to raise awareness of these monsters. ~ J.S.

After our first session, I was left feeling very empowered, and I’m excited to continue the conversation! You’re one of the only people out there who understands this like this; I think maybe you’re the only person. You have a way of simplifying the pieces and elements. I’m very glad to have talked to you. ~ G.D.

As a certified professional coach upholding industry standards and ethics, I strive to inform, educate, co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach and coach people in guided discovery-recovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more.

Heal, recover, trust again: it’s all possible.

As a certified coach and as someone who’s lived through this nightmare and won, I can tell you, there’s nothing wrong with you; there’s everything right with you.

Sessions are a guided journey at your pace through discovery building a deep and expanding recovery. In a combination of questions, information, dialogue, guidance, and coaching together we unwind the tangled mess clearing your way out of the emotional, mind-bending maze.

No two sessions are alike. The dialogues are unique and coaching is improvisational based on where you are and inspired by your needs, your personality, and what’s important to you.

We begin from where you are and find the way to
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Each session is unique to you.

Together we map your way out of hell.
Session notes and summaries become a reminder and guide.

Cancellation Policy

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

The podcast!

Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

True Love Scam Recovery on Medium

True Love Scam Recovery on Facebook

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jennifer@truelovescam.com
info@truelovescam.com

Subscribe True Love Scam Recovery Jennifer Smith

As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.

Visit truelovescam’s profile on Pinterest.

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Affiliate links are in some True Love Scam Recovery articles. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you. © 2027 All Rights Reserved True Love Scam Recovery www.truelovescam.com

2018_10_03 2025_03_19

There Really Are Monsters

Monsters know they’re monsters.
Narcs know they’re sociopaths.
Sociopaths know they’re sociopaths.
We don’t need to act as if they don’t and aren’t.
That’s how we win.

Monsters know what they are. Monsters like who and what they are. And yet, we’re spinning here, seeing our world turn in circles and go nowhere but backward. Because that’s the natural effect they have on normal.

It’s the rest of us – the non-monsters – who have a hard time knowing they exist. The facts are, that monsters in “relationships” don’t want what we want. They aren’t there for the reason we are. Not for one tiny moment, not even one millisecond. Nothing is shamed mutual moment.

Normal is, as Normal Does: Normal Does as Normal Is

RECOVER FROM NARCISSISTIC ABUSE SOCIOPATH NARCISSIST

As any normal person would, when things first went wrong we defined what was happening through our normal ideas about relationships and our normal human point of view.

We’re normal and normal has its own special “lens” we use to look at the world. We might not think much about that, but it’s true.

We assume people are “good” like we are that all people share, for the most part, a core value system that is inspired by, “do unto others…”

Even if we disagree about big things like gun rights, abortion, immigration, or our favorite color. Even if we’re different in other ways we do feel there’s a shared baseline of “good” and rules we all follow about social behavior.

Unexpected answers and resolution.
We decide what winning is.

Monsters and Normal Collide

For this reason, as we fell down the rabbit hole, we naturally and blamelessly endowed the love of our life – the sociopath with a quality of humanity that unfortunately, does not exist inside their bodies, hearts, minds, or souls. (Even if you’re calling them a narc, narcopath, narcissist, psychopath, or any word.)

Sociopaths know they’re sociopaths. Narcs know they’re sociopaths. Most of the creatures we’re calling narcissists are sociopaths. These monsters know they’re monsters. It’s the rest of us who have a hard time knowing they exist. We don’t need to act as if they don’t and aren’t what they are.

Innocently and with pure-hearted hope, we explained away their odd habits and missteps. We found and still find after they’re gone in many cases, reasons, or explanations for those bizarre reveals-from-behind-the-mask.

As normal humans with fully limbic “feeling-based” brains have room to think, maybe, that’s just the way they are. We might decide to give them space based on an “issue” we’d work on as a couple. We give them more time… That’s normal. Because we assumed that the “monster” was a manageable version of “normal”. That assumption is 100% normal and something we do as regular, normal people who bond and care, and connect.

Breaking Up With Evil

Breakign Up with Evil, by Jennifer Smith on Amazon and Good Reads

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.

Monsters Live Off of Our Normal

Antisocial personality disorder is the formal mental health diagnosis for what’s commonly referred to as “sociopathy.” People living with the condition are often labeled “sociopaths.” ~ Hope Gillette, Kendra Kubala, PsyD Psychology

Our natural understanding and compromising give them a hall pass to keep on stomping through our lives. We believed them when they told us about their childhood trauma that left them with PTSD or left them unable to be intimate. We believed their last girlfriend was crazy. This is because we’re good, not because of any special skill or intelligence they have.

When we love, we give. Monsters make use of, and take advantage of our goodness and our lack of really knowing and understanding that monsters exist. This is truly the psychopath’s only real intelligence.

What’s Love Got to Do with It?

When we fall in love involuntary changes go on in our bodies in we fall in that further mask the intentions and lies of the sociopath. Our zinging, swirling chemicals and altered state of excitement in a new relationship buy the sociopath time.

So, monsters, as in all they do, take advantage of what we are as fully limbic-brained humans. We don’t know about the parallel destructive existence shoving our lives in the wrong direction. They use the fact we don’t know the kind of creature that they really truly exist, let alone that it could be sleeping in our bed.

Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

Their Power Is An Illusion: It’s the Effect Of What They Are

Our “not knowing” about these monsters, is the entirety of their power and “currency.” Since there’s a limited supply of “not knowing” on our part, their dominance and influence falter and they topple.

Monster-predators (sociopaths, psychopaths, and what people refer to as a narcissist) expect this shift from the first, “hello“. Sociopath-monsters do try to override it by getting angry or making more promises… this is so they can hang on as long as possible. It all only lasts so long. Because we’re not dumb. Sociopaths are dumb.

Monsters Have a Mean/Nice Switch: Only Two Options

In between these roller-coaster ups and downs, they’re bored and fishing for a new target. – Their full emotional range is solely in reaction to their own perceived success at taking and using, keeping what they take, and going free.

Monsters have been here since the beginning of time. They’re even mentioned in classic American literature. The author and Nobel Prize winner, John Steinbeck contemplates the existence of sociopaths in his stunningly comprehensive and beautiful award-winning novel, East of Eden, published in 1952, and later made into a film starring James Dean.

A female sociopath comes into the lives of two unmarried brothers by chance. East of Eden tells the odyssey of the brothers’ lives and their children’s lives affected by this sociopath, who plays a minor character but drives their fate. Chapter eight begins:

“Just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?”

~ John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Monsters Need Us for Their Survival: We’re Unwitting Hosts to a Parasite

Narcissistic sociopaths need their emotional response or connection to survive or succeed. To put an end to our vulnerability to sociopaths understand how sociopaths think. Assess and judge what they do, based on their true intentions; use the thinking of a sociopath to evaluate what happened rather than our emotional brain and we set ourselves free.

As more and more of us individually and collectively comprehend what these humans without humanity are they will diminish, and their effect will be neutralized. Monsters know they’re different. They know that if we knew what they really were and are really up to, we would not accept them, this is why they hide.

Seeing What They Are Illuminates Our Great Goodness

As we see what they are, by contrast, we see how gorgeous a fully human person is. The human being as intended, not perfect, but filled with innate trust, goodness, and kindness, living a life interconnected and interdependent with one another.

This is surely the only way to give the existence of the monster-humans meaning or purpose and the way to transform our grief, loss, and pain into something good and to find ourselves more deeply appreciating life itself.

A single word can scar another.
A single word can also give comfort and relief or fill one’s spirit with courage.
The care with which we use words
reflects the depth of our humanity.
~ Daisaku Ikeda

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

Join the podcast!

Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

SD Voyager interview

True Love Scam Recovery on Medium

True Love Scam Recovery on Facebook

Add these to your contacts
so you don’t miss a newsletter!
jennifer@truelovescam.com
info@truelovescam.com

Subscribe True Love Scam Recovery Jennifer Smith

As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.

Visit truelovescam’s profile on Pinterest.

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Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.

2017_08_29 2023_02_17

How to Handle Hoovering

Hoovering nut bags want to “stay in touch.”
But we hesitate, stuck in yet more cognitive dissonance.
We have decisions to make.

Hoovering narcissistic sociopaths (you might be calling them a narcissist without using the sociopath word, but whatever we call them they) keep up the masquerade up and the facade place as long as possible.

They do this even in the face of pure ridiculousness and obvious lying. They don’t care or mind if we know what they are…! Not one jot. They do care what we do once we know.

They mind very much if we “stay in” or bolt. If we kick them to the curb or leave the cookie jar open. If we tell others, or if we’re going to keep our mouths shut.

Any and all of this can only happen through contact. Hoovering is contact… and has the same motivation as any contact they’ve made since day one and the first hello. Isn’t this how the whole thing happened…? Them reaching out?

The real-deal answers and real information
changes the whole scary schemer.

Con Artists Hoover: We Anticipate Hoovering With Mixed Emotions

Please make any and each decision rooted in a wish to rebuild your life… Focus on and look toward your well being… free your bones and heart and soul and life of the maniac.

Our stomach churns. They’re in our heads. They stay present at the surface and underneath every moment of the day. This is the antithesis of “over.” And if it isn’t over and zero contact, we’ve not yet put a solid step onto the long road of healing.

At this point in the sham, letting our phone ring with their reaching grasp is all-in from their point of view. If they can reach us, they consider us active prey. This is all it takes: buuzzzz-buuzzzz-buuzzzz. (That’s your phone buzzing.)

Hoovering Hits the Gut as Trauma and Harassment

Do you feel that? Even the idea of that phone vibrating and jumping on the table is nauseating. Listen to your gut. Trust yourself. What they care about is that we’re still “all-in.” As long as we leave a portal open, the narcissistic user has a chance to seep their way back in. Or step on in. And stay in. 

To Block, or Not to Block the Nut-Bag: Or to Get a New Number?

All it takes is one more buzz of a text, one more late-night call. Another email. Facebook messaging. WhatsApp…another call. – Give ourselves every advantage in healing. Peace of mind, a truly fresh start can’t begin when any portal from them to us is open. We block them, we change our number, and also begin again with a new email address.

Do Know: Sociopaths boomerang; in a year or maybe five they can ring up your same-good-old-number from a new number of theirs and that sickening snake charmer dance begins again with: “Hey! Let’s get coffee…” 
Recovery sessions Jennifer Smith Restore after narcissistic abuse

Top 3 Reasons for Not Blocking or Getting a New Number

  • Many find these points to be an obstacle to blocking them or getting a new number:
    • I can’t change my number because of my clients and my business
    • It makes me feel strong to see his call come in and not take it
    • It’s hard to block him; we were together for so many years

It Can Seem Impossible to Block Them: Consider Again

Oh, I get it. We feel like our life has been turned upside down and, it has. What we want to do is take all our reasoning, and all our decisions and turn them into moments of self-care, embracing our own life and building our lives the way we want them to be.

This is separate from basing our decisions on “fear” or “love” for the sociopath or because of not yet accepting what they really are.

Take no responsibility or blame for the presence of these kinds of pathological predatory humans in your life. You’re not responsible for the inhumanity of a sociopath. Do take your healing and the restoration of your life into your own hands. Take 100% responsibility for healing, recovering, and becoming sociopath (narcissist) user free forever. Let’s look at each of these seemingly reasonable reasons for not getting a new number.

Can’t Change Your Number Because Your Clients Use It?

I get how this can seem logical. But. Really….?! Isn’t this the very reason to change your number…? You need your phone. You need your phone. We need to conduct business. To continue building our lives. We need the freedom to create our business without fear, without hoovering, stalking, and mental and emotional torture.

Make this about ourselves. Use this time to change your number so that you can build a business and connect with clients freely; know that none of those incoming calls will be from bozo-the-user.

Have a client email list…? Write a cheery newsletter and send out your new number; maybe with a special offer for your product or service. Most business people strain to find reasons to reach out to clients…! Use this to our advantage. Make it a good thing. Let your phone ring freely.

Breaking Up With Evil

Breaking Up with Evil, by Jennifer Smith on Amazon and Good Reads

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.

Some Say: I Feel Strong Not Answering the Sociopath’s Calls

Fell strong by not answering while the loon rings through…? I do get that. Okay. But, you always were strong, that’s part of why and what about you held their fake life up so well.

Let’s look at this a little. Are you feeling a little flattered that they call? That’s natural, but, does it serve you? Does the experience of the phone buzzing make us feel truly and genuinely good? Or does it leave you feeling pretty rotten over the next few days?

Are you still – somewhere inside yourself still feeling a connection to them that you aren’t ready to disrupt? Are we still in a surreal comfort zone? Are we wanting to see if they call out of fear of them?

Every Move We Make is Meant to be for Our Well Being

We can’t compromise our safety, well-being, and happiness for the benefit of the dark side. It’s a natural, second-nature skill we’ve honed during our time with the sociopath. Painting less-than-good circumstances into reasonable logic is the body’s beautiful, innate ability to make it through hard times.

This is how we survive and adapt to the confusion – technically this is managing cognitive dissonance. We all do this, usually daily. It’s decision-making. Let our decision land on our side.

Cognitive Dissonance is Normal: We Can Resolve to Cognitive Harmony

We weigh and balance, and sort through options as a part of life; We regularly feel cognitive dissonance, in many ways, even throughout the day. It’s essentially decision-making.

As we can’t resolve the things they say to cognitive harmony, holes show up one by one by one. And we fall into that chasm. There’s a ladder to climb out.

We need to make decisions in order to maintain working for a boss whose ethics we don’t fully support, for example. We may swallow what we prefer as a good or safe way to spend time when negotiating how late our teen can stay out on Saturday night. It’s simply resolving a conflict between one thought and another.

We settle cognitive dissonance when we’re weighing whether to eat potato chips and cream cheese for dinner or salad with some healthy protein. – We need this life-saving and species-preserving trait. It’s a great and gorgeous thing — it’s time to turn our natural protective instincts truly back onto ourselves in a pure way. Trust our own lives.

Think of this: Every time that phone buzzes we’re connected whether we pick it up or not. Each time that phone rings we’re being pinged in the soul. It’s up to us… each time we let that phone ring we’re in a battle with ourselves to pick it up and maybe say: “Hello…?” Is this how we want to carry through each day…?

We Were Together for Years

Uhmmm. Yes, and no. Not exactly, I know it seems like a relationship. In this circumstance, however, you were absconded heart and soul within a crime. Know what they were up to. Accepting that these beasts exist and what that means and what truly happened is the foundation of truly recovering.

How to get a new number: Get a new number by calling your phone service provider. They’re happy to let you pick the new number from a few they’ve got available. We’re welcome to do this every few months. In a big city with multiple area codes, you can even switch that up! Exciting.

Know This About New Phone Numbers

They’re recycled. Yes. That means we get a number someone else didn’t want. Who knows why they needed or wanted a new number?

Maybe the number belonged to someone in shoes similar to yours. This means our phone might ring with strange numbers in calls that are not for us. Anything from debt collectors to who knows who or what. Be prepared… but guess who it won’t be…?

Know that anytime your phone vibrates or chimes that the caller it will not be is the con man you’re dumping out of your life. The relief in this alone is unimaginable you get that new number. Feeling your heart rate stay settled and your blood pressure stay normal when the phone bleeps is incredible!

Follow these guidelines and you’ll fall off the pathological user, nutbag narcissistic sociopath’s radar. 

How to Handle Calls We Don’t Want and Aren’t For Us

  • Never answer a call we don’t recognize
  • Take a deep breath and calmly Google the number after it comes in; you might find it’s a known number for fraud IRS (tax) demands; or just a bakery across town
  • Block all calls from such numbers
  • Never answer any call that says: Unknown Caller, Unavailable or Blocked.
  • Each time, have the confidence to say to ourselves: that call wasn’t for me
  • Trust your gut

Robo Calls That Make Our Gut Churn

Know those bill-collecting, robo-calls for Javier, Janet, or Dave will stop after a few months. And, P.S. Consider a brand new phone. And leave the old contacts on that old phone. – Start fresh.

Cognitive Dissonance is the Basis of Decision Making

Comfort and confidence in decision-making are some of the first things that go out the window in the confusion and chaos of life entangled by a sociopath. (And these people you’re calling some kind of narcissist.) Harmony in what’s around us and in what we believe to be normal or right and the far distant shore of what we experience with them becomes a chasm we straddle.

What we first experience as profound compatibility with these creatures changes drastically. One foot on one side, one on the other as the divide grows wider. As we can’t resolve the things they say into cognitive harmony, holes, and gaps of oddities show up one by one by one.

We end up stepping into those gapping oddities and nearly tottering to the bottom of that canyon. Fortunately, there’s also a ladder there for us to use to climb out. It’s our beautiful need for harmony that takes us into that dark abyss and lends us the way out.

TED Talks to Watch When We Have Big Decisions to Make

The confusion escalates in post-trauma. I know the place you landed; I was once there too. It’s a hellish quagmire of quicksand and jello that is PTSD. Knowing what to do comes back slowly. It falls into place in great huge, encouraging chunks with each decision we bravely make.

Please make any and each decision rooted in a wish to rebuild your life for your own sake. Focus on and look toward your well-being as a Drishti point. This leeches the terror out of our bones; the terror wrought by the sociopath’s venomous deceit. You will free your bones and heart and soul and life of the maniac.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

Join the podcast!

Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

SD Voyager interview

True Love Scam Recovery on Medium

True Love Scam Recovery on Facebook

Add these to your contacts
so you don’t miss a newsletter!
jennifer@truelovescam.com
info@truelovescam.com

Subscribe True Love Scam Recovery Jennifer Smith

As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.

Visit truelovescam’s profile on Pinterest.

True Love Scam on Tumblr.
.

Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.

2017_06_19 2023_07_21

Why Are Sociopaths Called Antisocial?

Why are sociopaths called antisocial?
These freaks love to party and hang.
They chat and charm and dance and joke.
Why do we call them “antisocial” when
they need other people.

Why Are Sociopaths Called Antisocial?

Sociopaths are called antisocial because – hold onto your hats – there’s more than one meaning of the word antisocial! In their case, it doesn’t mean being shy or reluctant to be with others in a group setting. Amazing. Who’d a thunk it.

One of the myriad roadblocks to realizing just what it is we’re facing is misinterpreting or not understanding the meaning of this little word: “antisocial”.

Defining What the Antisocial Is In A Sociopath

guided coaching recovery after narcissistic abuse

This little four-syllable word – that people assume they already know the meaning to – trips people up. It’s natural to think it doesn’t make sense because the guy or gal in their living nightmare is very “social” rather than “antisocial” and doesn’t like parties or have many friends or some such.

This notion that you know what the word means -as applied to this kind of deceptive and ruinous human without a conscience – keeps far too many people from investigating more deeply into who and what it is they have gotten entangled with.

So then, in turn, they look to the other concepts floating around online and on social media to explain this person’s heinous behavior. Most commonly landing on “narcissist”.

Add in these other terms out there: narc, narcopath, and the narcissist in all its varieties, well, this falsely assures far too many people for too long that they’re only in love with a “narcissist” when in fact… It’s much, much worse. And more confusing, because some definitions and platitudes out there are related to a sociopath yet described under the name “narcissist”, and other describing factors are 100% off the mark. Very confusing… and delays recovery.

Want more amazing bits that unlock the confusion and settle the mess?

Defining “Antisocial”

Here it goes, here’s a definition of this sticky little word antisocial from the Oxford English Dictionary – the most massive, most amazing dictionary on the planet. There are two definitions.

  1. Opposed to sociability; averse to companionship.
  2. Opposed to the principles on which society is constituted.

Definition number one above, of the word “antisocial”, is the one we’re most familiar with. It’s the one that gets us saying, no they can’t be a sociopath because they have friends. And also we think, she’s really fun at BBQs! Or, yeah but he’s around people all the time. They love going out! So, they can’t be an “antisocial psychopath”. – I get that. But there’s more.

Definition Number Two Describes the Sociopath

Definition number two pertains to the clinical term related to a sociopath, an antisocial psychopath, or a person of antisocial personality disorder, as defined by the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition).

Breaking Up With Evil

Breaking Up with Evil, by Jennifer Smith on Amazon and Good Reads

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.

Antisocial Psychopaths Are Sociopaths aka Psychopaths

As described by David Porter, MA, LAD: “The term antisocial may be confusing to the lay public, as the more common definition outside of clinical usage is an individual who is a loner or socially isolated.

The literal meaning of the word antisocial can be more descriptive to both the lay public and professionals: to be anti-social, is to be against society; against rules, norms, laws, and acceptable behavior. Individuals with Antisocial Personality Disorder tend to be charismatic, attractive, and very good at obtaining sympathy from others; for example, describing themselves as the victim of injustice. …

Antisocials possess a superficial charm, they can be thoughtful an dcunning and have an intuitive ability to rapidly observe and analyze others, determine their needs and preferences, and present it in a manner to facilitate manipulation and exploitation. They are able to harm and use other people in this manner, without remorse, guilt, shame, or regret.”

~ Theravive, by David Porter, MA, LAD (They also think they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread.)

Modern Languages Come from Latin: Anti Means: Against

Our words for medical diagnosis and terminology as well as a huge part of our everyday English language come from ancient, toga-wearing people who spoke Latin in ye-olde-school, ancient Rome. Lots of beginnings and endings and even middle sections of our words are Latin.

The beginnings of words are called: “prefixes”; here’s a bunch: anti, post, sub, pre, non as beginnings. You can probably think of some right off the bat: Substitute, post-trauma, predetermined, nonexistent. Interested in language, read more about Latin roots, suffixes, and prefixes.

Also here are some endings you know in everyday language but might not have known that they’re Latin. We call these “suffixes”. Here’s a few: ment, as in “supple-ment”; ify, as in ver-ify and ident-ify; ation, as in perfor-ation and restor-ation; able, as in “cap-able”. There are tons.

English is Derived from Older English and Latin

Anti is a word straight out of Latin and Rome. If you put the word anti into Google Translate and select the translation from English into Latin, you know what you get? – Anti.

Anti in English is anti in Latin. In old-school Latin anti means: to be or to go against (something), to be outside (of something), or opposed (to something).

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4nf8gnREsoc7HGdhQTibHv?si=pnj6AVvpSGW2UmUefMRmwA

ASPD and Antisocial Psychopaths Refer to Con Artists, Scammers, and Yes: Killers

So…antisocial psychopaths or persons of antisocial personality disorder, don’t mind parties at all, they kinda thrive on being social and any place with lots of people, including online, is the prime hunting ground. They need us and others so, so much.

Sociopaths are called antisocial because they function against and outside of normal, expected behavior. These people do things without thinking twice that we’d never even conceived of doing, much less do and behave in an anti- (against) social- (society) manner. Their behavior goes against the grain of what’s okay. And boy-howdy… Don’t they…?

Our Safety Is Most Important

So let me ask you… Does it help to get to the bottom of your bizarre, painful, and dire situation to think of them as just a narcissist? Or would there be more life-saving, pain prevention, and protection in diving in and stripping things down?

Ponder the realities and consider if this view would get more done for your safety and recovery: Looking at it from the point of view that this person will do anything they can think of doing in order to make use of you, or to get whatever they want, and to have things their way and to not be stopped. – That my friend is a sociopath: they function outside of and against the expected and accepted norms of society.

We Win

They need us. We do not need them. This is the hardest thing you’ll ever go through. The number one concern is that you clear the fog and protect your life. They have been through this break-up many, many, many times before and will again and again long after they’ve ridden off into the sunset.

As we explore removing them from our lives and then restoration: we don’t need to pretend they’re normal; they know what they are. – That said, keep your discoveries to yourself and end the entanglement safely. They need us; we don’t need them.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

Join the podcast!

Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

SD Voyager interview

True Love Scam Recovery on Medium

True Love Scam Recovery on Facebook

Add these to your contacts
so you don’t miss a newsletter!
jennifer@truelovescam.com
info@truelovescam.com

Subscribe True Love Scam Recovery Jennifer Smith

As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.

Visit truelovescam’s profile on Pinterest.

True Love Scam on Tumblr.
.

Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.

2017_01_31 2022_11_13

8 Reasons to Suspect We’re Dating a Sociopath

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.

Dating a Sociopath: The More We Know

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.

Is It Raining Sociopaths?

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.

The Truth Found in The Experience

sociopath narcissist lying

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?

The Moment of Attack Sharpens Small Detail

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.

A Laser Point of Focus

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.

Primal Defenses Kick In: Trust Your Gut

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.

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.

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.

How Does This Happen?

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

Breaking Up with Evil, by Jennifer Smith on Amazon and Good Reads

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.

Persistence of Predators: They Don’t Heed Boundaries

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.

Sociopaths Need Normal People to Survive: They Count on Us Not Knowing What They Are

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.

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 a sociopath child while I was a child, that day on the playground in 5th grade.

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.

We’re Not Stupid: We Do Need to Know and Accept That Monsters Exist

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 the Beasts Need

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.

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 are 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.

Dating a Sociopath: 8 Reasons to Suspect We’re Dating a Sociopath

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.

Things Are Unclear and Foggy or Scary or Too Exciting

  • Things feel weird…like they’re lying; what they say doesn’t make sense
  • We spend time coming up with explanations for what they say and defend them to others
  • We’re not sure where they live, or where they are when they’re not with us
  • They talk about doing something for “us” that’s something we’ve always wanted and we’re excited beyond anything
  • The good stuff never happens, but weird stuff does
  • They seem mostly only semi-interested in things you say
  • Certain moments they’re riveted on you, really listening, they answer questions or say things that as “off”
  • Sometimes when you’re trying to talk with them about something important the room goes out of focus and small things come into focus

Lying is Life: Lies Are Real and Real is Made Up

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 going on that 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.

Signs of Dating a Sociopath Include Lots of Disappointment

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.

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.

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.

They Inspire a Sense Of Unease

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.

Normal Puts Things In Order

When confronted by the impossible the rational mind will grope for the logical.

~ Outlander S1:E1 Sessenach

They Come into Focus for What They Are

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.

We just didn’t know such beasts existed, there’s no way to conceive of something so beyond normal; sociopaths hide behind this perfectly normal human phenomenon. We can’t know what we don’t know until we know it.

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.

Their Oddness Leaves Us Without Words

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 Doesn’t Mean There’s Anything Wrong with Us: Sociopaths Need Good People

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 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.

Knowing is Key

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!

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

Ranked Feedspot’s #1 Podcast on Coercive Control!

The latest episode: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

Subscribe True Love Scam Recovery Jennifer Smith

As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
True Love Scam Recovery, Narcissistic Abuse Unwound, Jennifer Smith, truelovescam.com, and narcissisticabuseunwound.com, and its agents are not professionally licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. All social media, presentations, publications, podcasts, public speaking, audio appearances, writings, and coaching are carried out under the pseudonym “Jennifer Smith”. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery et al Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Founded 2014 © All Rights Reserved. Thank you.

2016_12_22 2025_06_06

What is No Contact?

Why go no contact?
After a narcissistic user, no contact
is the way to take our life back.
Why does it matter so much?

To make things super-de-duper clear in this horrendously unclear time here’s a handy-dandy list describing what constitutes “contact” and what we want to achieve: “no contact.”

coaching with Jennifer Smith for PTSD and trauma after a sociopath or narcissist and to restore your life and build a future.

Keeping contact – exchanging mundane, or raging emails and text messages – even “lovey-dovey” ones – not only keeps us in the mess and the lies – it creates new trauma.

Not talking to each other is advised in normal relationship breakups. Not talking gives us a chance to see how we truly feel. How much more critical is it in a true love scam…?!

Each bit of any contact prolongs harm. The sociopath…that creature you might be calling a “narcissist” won’t offer up closure, an apology, or a sincere exchange of any kind.

What Is No Contact?

What is no contact…? It’s more than watching their messages come in and not answering. It’s the one thing that changes everything and that’s going no contact. We end what they started because they won’t.

Though that’s a good start, this isn’t what we call “no contact”… Each message is a zap of new trauma of interaction with them. Every voicemail, email, DM, text, SMS, PM, is a tug at our gut that makes us foggy and keeps us “in it”.

Contact Means We’re Offering Ourselves Up as Lunch

Further contact after a “break up”, or after there’s an “end”, more often inspires the sociopath to be violent or terrorizing. Without a doubt, the second time you come back together, things are worse whether there is violence or not. This escalates each time you “break up” and goes back.

Did you know that contact could lead to our losing legal battles for custody, divorce, annulment, or restraining orders? Staying in contact can make us look as crazy as they say we are.

To the sociopath, or that person you might have decided is a covert, overt or malignant narcissist: any contact is good contact. Any contact, of any kind at all such as responding to a message they drop into your DM, means to the pathological user that they still pull the strings and so can still access you to take what they want, or to use you as they like.

Dive deep for complete freedom.

We Do Need To End It: We Stop It They Don’t

Time went on quicker, tighter, everything tightened and escalated after I’d lost just about everything and he became overtly disgusted with everything around him. Finally, a combination of numbness and knowledge that my children and I were in very real danger took hold of me and eclipsed the fear of what he’d do if I left or any other fear or worry. As much as I still hated to accept it, I knew that it had to end, and it had to end by me before one of those horrible fears did happen. I had to accept that leaving or staying was life or death.” ~ Chapter 4, Shannon O. Entry No. 08 This Has to End

< Click the book cover to get yours…

Our Emotions Trip Us Up

This is a situation that demands our heads winning over what might linger in our hearts. The sociopath who hijacked us intended no good for us no matter how charming they were – or are. They will never, ever be anything good they promised.

Strictly establishing no contact and keeping no contact will influence our chance of beginning to recover; our safety, and our well-being, and can decide whether or not we win in court.

Staying no contact is to protect our kids. The sooner we go no contact the sooner we can expect a return to happiness in the days to come and long-term.

The Podcast: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

Staying In Contact Makes Us Appear Untrustworthy and Questionable in Court

Attorneys and Judges frown on those standing before them seeking divorce and child custody from a predator spouse and at the same time has kept contact with the user-abuser.

If we maintain contact our credibility shrinks. If there are children the only contact is best as emails and only related to logistics of pick-ups and drop-offs.

Our silence is the loudest, most meaningful thing we can say to them.

Unless specific communication with them is requested by an attorney, staying in contact makes us look unreliable, untrustworthy, unstable, and indecisive to Judges, child services, counselors, police, and attorneys.

Staying in contact makes our claims of abuse, defrauding, theft, and all the rest straight questionable. We lose big-time if we stay in contact. Go no contact. Only stay in contact via email or a court app if told to by the court to do so for the logistics of child visits.

This is Staying In Contact:

These are the things you want to not do in order to get your life back and to be heard in the most meaningful way by the pathological user, and then have the space to begin your recovery odyssey:

  • Let their calls ring through to our phones, even if we don’t answer – their number is best blocked so we don’t see any calls or texts
  • Call their number and hang up
  • Dial their number to their voicemail
  • Take their phone calls
  • Call them
  • Leave them messages
  • Listen to their voicemail messages
  • Let emails from them land in our inbox
  • Read the emails they send to us
  • Respond to their emails
  • Sort through their emails because we have their password
  • Read the text, SMS, private Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat, or any messages from them
  • Respond to any messages from them
  • Initiate any messages to them

Close Every Portal from Us to Them

Deeper no contact: close every portal open from our life to theirs. More things we don’t do in no contact.

  • Look at their Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or any of their online images, or media
  • Look at their “friends” social media pages
  • Sort through their posts looking at their new target or for other prey
  • Look at old photos of them on our phone or on our FB page or anywhere else
  • Sort through our wedding photos or other pictures of him or us
  • Keep things that remind us of him or her
  • Make an alias FB account so we can look at their page that we blocked

Narcissistic Abuse Unwound: The Podcast

For Court: Save What They’ve Already Sent: Every Message Counts

There’s one exception to keeping contact: we can keep contact when or if an attorney tells us to send a particular message to the sociopath from our email for a legal step in any legal process. These emails are then forwarded as-is to the attorney for the legal process.

Strictly establishing no contact and keeping no contact will influence our chance of beginning to recover; our safety, our well-being, and can be a deciding factor in whether or not we win in court.

Keep old messages: archive old emails and texts that may be needed to show violence, intended violence, marriage fraud, name-calling or harassment, or refusal to follow the procedure in divorce, annulment, or other legal matters. Text messages are best also saved in a chronological series of screenshots showing time/date stamping.

If you print out text messages they lose formatting and are simply line after line of the conversation with no way to tell who said what or when.

We do want to make sure all saved messaging has time date stamps and clearly indicates whose device it’s from (theirs) and to whom (you or other targets.) Keep these as screenshots, printouts, and files on a thumb drive. Save copies for yourself. Forward them to your attorney.

Resist Keeping Tabs Unless It’s to Gather Court Evidence

This is for your safety: Maybe you’ve landed here and are uncertain if the person you’re leaving is a sociopath or a narcissist. I get it that this is unbelievably hard. Please, as soon as you can realize that even though You’re not sure what’s going on, the most important thing to do is to protect yourself and your own well-being. It’s best not to talk about them anywhere to anyone other than privately to a few select people. Leave off any social media posts about our misery in breaking up. And here’s there real-deal and the really tough part: we aren’t breaking up as much as we’re making an escape. – Please don’t tap and type away in Reddit threads about this user we’re breaking away from, please stop yourself from listing them on www.badboyfriend.com. It’s best if you don’t make a FB page dedicated to talking trash about them no matter how true the trash is – and I’m here to tell you, whatever trash you have on them it isn’t even a thimble full of their over-flowing-garbage-can-of-a-life. – This is not to let them get away with it! This is to make you, us, you, and I a “non-threat” to the sociopath. Then go report through the proper channels if there’s something to  stand up for your life about. And even I use the word “game” sometimes to talk about this, but in real life: this is not a game.

This is No Contact: This is What We Want to Do

On Facebook

  • Using the block function in the Privacy settings in Facebook to block them: here’s how
  • Doing the same with all mutual “Friends” or connections on Facebook
  • Not looking at their Facebook page
  • Staying away from their friends’ Facebook pages
  • Avoiding FB pages of our (now former) friends who are “Friends” on his or her’s Facebook page
  • Never private message him or her
  • Not messaging any of his or her “friends”; they don’t have actual genuine friends, and all people are prey to them

Regarding Email

In order to let their email scoop in case you need them for evidence and court or legal matters, we can. However, at the same time these nasty and lying and so freaking crazy emails don’t need to come into our real-life email. We can send them to a special inbox just for the lunatic.

  • Make a new email address
  • Don’t give them this new one
  • Do not email them
  • Do not read any emails they send you to any email address whatsoever

In addition, consider changing the “channel”, the IP address that your internet is routed through. Simply call your internet provider and ask them to switch the IP address you receive your internet connection through.

This will knock off any device from access to your internet that may have at one time or another signed in to your internet service on a device of their own.

Think Zero Contact and Non-Threat: We Need to Seem Invisible and Nonexistent

Cell Phones

  • There’s a block function on smartphones per each phone number; use it with his or her’s
  • Alternatively, call your service provider and have them block this number for you from being able to call into your phone
  • No calls or texts from that number can come in after that; alternately, login to our online account with our service provider and block the numbers
  • Do not ever answer any calls in the future coming in as blocked or unavailable or restricted
  • Don’t answer calls from an unknown number or unidentified caller
  • Block the unknown numbers that call you and don’t leave a voicemail that shows they’re a legitimate caller

Consider getting a new or used-new phone and a new number. A used-new phone can be just the ticket right now. Do not load old contacts.

Enter the old-school one by one… Only the good ones. – In cases where this seems appropriate, consider a prepaid burner phone for six months or so.

More About No Contact

Believe this: we might want the sociopath to hurt as we did – sure, me too, we might even we might even wish them dead, that’s normal. Some of us stay in contact thinking if we call them names and fight with them it will hurt them, or they’ll finally apologize.

We want them to “understand” that they’re hurting us. This is not going to happen in the way we’re looking for. For one, they know they hurt us; this doesn’t bother them.

News Flash: sociopaths (narcissists) do not “hurt” in the way we do; they “hurt” when things are taken from them or there’s a threat of being exposed. When we leave we become a threat to them as far as their concern about who we’ll tell all about them.

They experience trauma when highly valuable prey takes off. As strange as this is, the pathologically narcissistic (sociopaths aka psychopaths aka narcissists) have no feelings that are relatable to our emotional range of concern and experience as fully limbic-brained – normal – humans.

It’s only us who’s hurt by contact. Us going no contact is what hurts them. Please, go and stay no contact.

From their point of view: if we’re texting, calling, emailing or responding, arguing, crying, talking… no matter how we feel, no matter what the words flying out of our mouths are: to them, it means they still own us if we say anything at all. It’s only us who’s hurt by contact. Us going no contact is what hurts them. Please, go and stay in no contact.

No Contact On Other Platforms

  • Instagram, Pinterest: Nothing. Nope. Don’t look at theirs. Block theirs and all associated with them. Period. Instagram has a new feature called “Restrict”
  • Twitter: No
  • LinkedIn: Ditto as above
  • Snap Chat: Nope. We “blocked” their number on our phone; see Cell Phones above
  • FaceTime: See Cell Phones above – their number is blocked!
  • Skype: No; no Skype, zero, zip, nadda, zilch
  • Zoom: No Zoom
  • TikTok: No TikTok
  • WhatsApp: No
  • Signal or Telegraph: No
  • Land Lines: Change our voice greeting to the default anonymous greeting and screen calls
  • Cell and Landline: change your number either over the phone or online with your provider, you can select a new number.
  • FAX Number: Again if we have a landline for faxing – change the number.

Understand: No Contact is For Us: It’s How We Win

Hopefully, it’s becoming meaningful on a real-deal-critical level, that we can’t meet them for coffee, to trade back our belongings, or to have sex. We don’t go out to dinner, meet them at a club, meet them with friends. Follow the best practices for our well-being when leaving a sociopath aka narcissist.

Be sure to re-key your doors. This involves changing out the locking mechanism. This works perfectly well rather than getting the whole new doorknob which means their old key doesn’t fit your lock anymore.

And neither does the one they might have copied on the sly. If there’s a knock at your door the way to get them gone is to not answer. Additionally, make no reply, not even talking to them from behind the door.

We Bring This to an End

Let’s never see their smirky, ugly face again. I know we all know this, but I’m just sayin’. Go no contact… zero contact, hardcore. Our silence is the loudest, most meaningful thing we can say to them. And let’s be real. You might reach out or wish they would. That’s normal until we fully know what a sociopath is and what that means.

For our own well-being, our safety, and our future; for finding ourselves again, we go zero contact, radio silent. And… You drop off their radar. And goodbye to the nut-job.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Please feel free to reach out,
ask a question or comment in the form below.
I always respond.

Time to Thrive!

The Podcast! Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

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The latest episode: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

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As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.

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True Love Scam Recovery, Narcissistic Abuse Unwound, Jennifer Smith, truelovescam.com, and narcissisticabuseunwound.com, and its agents are not professionally licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. All social media, presentations, publications, podcasts, public speaking, audio appearances, writings, and coaching are carried out under the pseudonym “Jennifer Smith”. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery et al Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you. Founded 2014 © All Rights Reserved.

2016_04_05 2025_06_13

DIY Guide to a Sociopath’s Brain and Psyche

Sociopaths, narcissists as in the pathologically narcissistic,
the pathological users and liars, predators
don’t think as we do.
Their hearts are colder than ice, harder than stone.
The trouble lies within their brains.

Sociopaths are known for their charm if you like that particular sociopath. Then, along the way, there’s that hairpin turn to nightmare behavior. This D.I.Y. Guide to a sociopath’s brain and psyche cracks the code. So… what’s going on in those heads of theirs?

Sociopaths – the pathologically narcissistic, the predatory parasitic user – don’t think as we do because they can’t. The vast chasm of difference between “normal” and “sociopath” is found in the brain.

Sociopaths Have a Brain That Works Very Differently than Ours

These pathological users can act in ways we’d never imagine. Making use of others is their normal.

Sociopaths’ and psychopaths’ brains don’t work a bit like ours. It’s confusing and frustrating to try to build relationships with them because they’re missing the building blocks of bonding.

We get caught up in our own emotional reactions to what’s happening between us and them. We go to emotions and to talking things out to correct conflict and confusion and to bond. We “feel” our way through life.

We Are Normal Through and Through

sociopaths' brains are underfunctioning #malignantnarcissist #sociopath

And that’s normal… and really great, except these narcissistic pathological users aren’t normal and don’t care what we feel, so it doesn’t help us at all.

Sociopaths and psychopaths do not have the brain capacity to feel any social or personal positive connection or bond. We can look into their eyes searching for a connection and find nothing but empty, or worse. – This is also likely that person you might be calling a ‘narcissist”.

Though in human skin and bones, they’re empty and hollow aside from destructive forces and utterly devoid of humanity. This is really difficult to realize, to see, to take in, to accept, and to understand.

What is recovered for you?

How Can Sociopaths Do What They Do?

Whether we call them sociopaths, malignant narcissists, con artists, scammers, covert narcissists, liars, or users – they’re all alike. It’s incredibly hard for us to imagine the vast emptiness inside their heads.

Without any human connection, they have only one thing going on in their upstairs hamster wheel of a brain: survival.

The way a predator, a parasite such as a sociopath survives is like any parasite, they live through the efforts of others and off of others. They know this about themselves. They count on us not knowing this.

Breaking Up With Evil

Breakign Up with Evil, by Jennifer Smith on Amazon and Good Reads

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.

True crime. Told in their own words with nothing unsaid. Find validation, and see new glimpses of truth as these five women share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.

We Can Only Be Normal

We, as normal humans who do bond and care, have limbic brains. This is the brain of a mammal. A mammal is an animal – including us humans – that gives vaginal birth. Yah! I know, right! This includes in part cows, bunnies, dogs, cats, monkeys, elephants, dolphins, and whales. Each of these, including humans, bonds, loves, nurtures, creates family groups, and can even bond with one another.

Antisocial psychopaths are referred to as a sociopath, sometimes a narcissist or a psychopath. The sociopath has what’s called a “reptilian brain”. Think of creatures with a reptilian brain, such as snakes, lizards, and crocodiles.

They lay eggs, do not create a family, and even eat their young both before or after the eggs hatch. – There are a few exceptions here, but this is to give an idea of the fundamental difference that matters: no nurturing, no parenting, no bonding, no pairs, or family group.

Sociopaths Can Only Be Sociopaths

What the sociopath is wired by their brain to do in order to live, to survive, to exist has the effect of destroying others. They know this. It doesn’t faze them. This sounds farfetched unless you’ve been in it.

There’s Really No One Home: Aside From Evil

Sociopaths are without any bonding capability, therefore they’re without genuine concern or care for any human or for any animal though they pretend to have either or both.

They have no moral, ethical, or spiritual concern for others or for the effect on others as fall out and as deliberate effect. imagine if you can: they have no conscience. – They do however make use of our conscience and our emotions and normal bonding impulses to prolong their parasitic stay in any person’s life.

With this primal urge to survive, which we all share, when the brain doesn’t bond or care then what’s left in these simple creatures is spartan. It’s purely and the only motivation to make use of other people, to take whatever they want, and get away with it. – There is nothing else there.

Sociopaths Don’t Feel What We Feel

A narcissist is the same thing as a sociopath, and a sociopath is in reality a psychopath. Sociopaths are all alike. I settled on the term “sociopath” because it’s more palatable than “psychopath” and has much more meaning as to their real nature than “narcissist”.

If you’re thinking of them as a covert, overt or malignant narcissist or borderline, please shift how you think of them through the concept of a sociopath and things will make more sense. – These DSM categories are irrelevant at best to those solving the crimes of a life invasion.

Collectively, these vast wastelands of humanity do not “feel” or experience any of the normal emotions that we do. Not at all, no matter how hard they pretend to. And definitely no matter how much we project our experience of human emotions onto them. – In fact, it’s this assumption that they feel like we do that causes us further harm and pain.

Sociopaths Do Not Feel The Way We Do

All the very normal human emotions we experience aren’t felt by them. We assume these emotions are felt by them. This is from our world. They do not feel any of these feelings in the way we do.

Limbic Brained Normal: Trust, Bonding, and Connection

We, on the other hand, have limbic brains; the brain of a mammal that bonds, cares, and makes connected family groups.

Their reptilian brain is a primal self-survival brain. We walk into what we think is a friendship or relationship with our limbic brain. Essentially, we’re jumping like little puppies expecting things to be good. This then is where the real trauma lives when ensnared by a sociopath. We can heal our traumatized brains.

Sociopaths aka psychopaths and some of the ones you might still be referring to as a narcissist, genuinely do not like others or feel part of a group, they have no love for their parents, no love for their children, no love at all. These parasites can be disarmed before they start.

D.I.Y. Guide to the Inside of the Dark-Dark Noggin

A Sociopath’s or a Pathological Predator’s Behaviors are Identical and Predictable

  • They don’t really tell much about their lives other than highlights of being used or heroic things they’ve done
  • They try to show themselves as humanitarians, fighters for justice, or do-gooders
  • Surprisingly, they are naive
  • They get restless and bored
  • Predators give the impression of being sincere and humble
  • When meeting someone new they want to hear about the other person
  • Agree with us to inspire our trust and feelings of intimacy
  • They create a forced “we”; create an “us and them”
  • Go through periods of hyperactivity contrasted with heavy downtime. There’s a significant reason for this and it’s not because they have PTSD or are bi-polar or other malarkey
  • When threatened personally that their toys will be taken, they experience trauma and lash out

The Podcast: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

There’s Still More

  • Say one thing then another
  • Tell tall tales of being used by others
  • Some “play dead” like a kid; talk about death, dying, or suicide
  • Say odd things that are in reality when they’re telling the truth of how they feel
  • Hesitate before responding, looking at us in a paused mode
  • Give inappropriate or disjointed, off the mark response in emotional situations that call for empathy, sympathy, or compassion such as someone’s death, accident, or illness
  • Have hidden sexual activity; hedonistic, BDSM, sex industry, pedophilia, porn
  • Employment is sparse, shortlived, or a long-term professional setting or claim they have their own business; under the surface, all is fraud
  • Though sociopaths – because of the inherent sociopath power of influence – can have a huge scope of influence in politics, law, criminal justice, and religious settings
  • Careless with material possessions yet seem attached to some items to obsession
  • Can be very entertaining and hold sway with a crowd, paradoxically quite hermit-like
  • They can sound and seem like two different people in different situations
  • Have the ability to morph age-wise, genderwise
  • A sociopath can cross over, shift in what they seem to be in terms of where they’re from, their economic status, and more

Sociopaths Have Different Brains Than Normal People

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National Geographic made an informative video about antisocial psychopaths aka sociopaths in our midst.

Antisocial in this context is Latin medical terminology referring to their abnormal brains. it means they behave outside of the expected or the accepted social behaviors and norms. It’s got nothing to do with being uncomfortable or shy socially.

Sociopaths aka psychopaths are within this category, but the full-blown psychopath is more focused on the entertainment they feel at other’s pain than on scamming a place to sleep.  Watch it here.

We might not all experience all of the kinds of horrific things a sociopath can potentially do, say, their darkest thinking may not be seen by all of us, in many cases, they are not shown to all of us. Some of you have the “relationship” crumble and end without a harsh word between you. – This is great you were spared and yet this also becomes a stumbling block to seeing what they are.

Easy-Peasy: Criminal is Their Normal

A sociopath will claim to be a great parent, especially on FB. Steal money or possessions from a spouse, friend, or stranger. Have affairs with married people. Impregnate and abandon. Hide money from a partner. Lie to authorities. “Cheat” while in a “relationship”. For a sociopath aka narcissist, immigration and marriage fraud are as ordinary as it is for them to have us do the laundry and pay their phone bill.

It’s a possibility they have two phones – or more – and keep those hidden. Or pretend one or the other phone is for work because they’re so big and important. If you noticed they don’t genuinely pay their own way financially, even if they work, the work is fraud. They use a different name. Hide where they go, and the things they buy.

Their World Is Nothing Like Ours

What we think we know about the sociopath who hijacked us is usually not nearly the tip of the iceberg. Don’t wait to find out more. Go no contact.

Sociopaths separate groups of people and their “second” family, along with their second or third or fourth alias, alternate versions of their names or completely different identities.

These pathological users will fake illness. Leave for days. Stop talking, or talk so much our eyes cross. They marry only for houses, cars, property, and borrowed respectability. Sociopaths aka narcissists use online social media and dating sites to fish for prey. Primary prey suffers pain and confusion when the sociopath-predator withholds sex. Change phone numbers frequently.

They make bold claims about glorious accomplishments. Promise many things. Place their prey in the position of being liable for their crimes. These are criminals: read more about that in this NY Times story on one of the latest sociopaths put behind bars.

The Podcast: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

Let’s Withdraw the Magnanimous, Generous Credit we Give these Beasts

Personal sessions! Recovery for narcissistic abuse Jennifer Smith True Love Scam Recovery

We tend to give the sociopath’s machinations and ability to lie more flattering significance than it’s worth. We imagine their ploys require “intelligence”.

We think what they do requires some kind of genius because they’re doing things we’d never think of doing in a million years or ever dare to do if we could think of it.

In reality, they can do what they do because they don’t care. I don’t mean they decide not to care. Deciding not to care would require the ability to care and then to weigh and discern caring more about one thing than another. They don’t have “care” for others in their lexicon of emotion.

When there’s no concern or consideration for other people, no sense of responsibility, no obligation to society, family, friends, humanity, or any living being other than self allowing one to carry out any action to gain a desire – is this intelligence or genius? Or is it simply a kind of diabolical freedom? When caring is absent, what’s left?

~ Jennifer Smith


Sociopaths Fake Next to Everything

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Sociopaths avoid work. Pass STDs. Demand a partner to stop practicing a religious faith. Ruin others with lies. Lie in court. Lie to immigration. Block wives, and girlfriends from their social media.

Abandon their children. Scam and lie to their children. Obtain fake passports. Use fake IDs. Never have a real address.

Use two or more Facebook accounts with different identities. Control and abuse children just as they do adults. Claim fame that doesn’t exist.

Use someone else’s social security number. Fake their educations. Cheat through school. Leave others holding the bag for their debts.

What Sociopaths Don’t Want Us to Know About Them

Sociopaths don’t like us to know their vulnerabilities and darker secret behaviors. and Their genderless sexuality and promiscuous nature. In reality, for these omnisexual, asexual creatures, anyone will do as a sexual “partner” since there is no love or emotional connection.

There is a concerted effort to hide their alcohol use, porn, prostitution, and gambling or drug use. It’s important for the pathological predator to hide their deep fear of being discovered as what they are because the fear is connected to what it is we’ll do when we see what they are. They huge fear of losing their prey, though they know every false connection will eventually end from the moment they’ve said “hello”. namazon

Violence, Secrets, and Things We Can’t Imagine

They try to keep their violent behavior under wraps – at least in the beginning. Their bar fights might become stories you hear about how someone attacked them. They’ll do their best to hide their stealing and criminal records. Sociopaths separate their “second” and “third” families and any social groups associated with each as best they can. They hide their assorted aliases, identities, and alternate versions of their names.

These pathological users can act in ways we’d never imagine. Making use of others is their “normal”. This can be hard to see even when we feel they’re lying, not completely honest, and we feel suspicious of them.

Things we might be missing are that they act out in impulsive violence. and have uncontrollable rage. They defraud governments and agencies. Embezzle funds or property. Blackmail. Commit forgery. Sell drugs. Pimp. And, really and truly couldn’t care less.

Sociopaths try to cover up that they know what they’re doing. These creatures know that by being what they are, others are hurt.

Sociopaths, Even if you Call them Narcissists, Narcopaths or Narcs, Need Others to Believe Them

Here’s the best part: they need us. And they know they do. Their success is dependent upon us not knowing any of this. And they don’t have a chance of using others or surviving unless we believe them and believe they’re at least within some range of normal. Maybe normal but troubled.

Recognize them for what they are. Put aside our emotional investment and connection. Shut down the sociopath’s ability to use and abuse. Exit stage left or get them gone. Go no contact, trust our gut! We are our own angels! We are Super Heroes!

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

The Podcast! Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

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As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.

Visit truelovescam’s profile on Pinterest.

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True Love Scam Recovery, Narcissistic Abuse Unwound, Jennifer Smith, truelovescam.com, and narcissisticabuseunwound.com, and its agents are not professionally licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. All social media, presentations, publications, podcasts, public speaking, audio appearances, writings, and coaching are carried out under the pseudonym “Jennifer Smith”. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery et al Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you. Founded 2014 © All Rights Reserved.

2015_09_20               2025_10_07

Sociopaths, Users, and No Contact

No contact is the pathological users’ Achilles heel.
When we don’t respond it scares them to pieces.
That’s why they rage.

In a sociopath’s perfect world, there would be no such thing as no contact. Without contact, they have nothing. The thing is, for a narcissistic predator, their agenda is only possible with contact. The more consistent and deep the contact, the more harm we’re in for.

Pathological predators, that is a sociopath, or what you might be calling a narcissist, depend on keeping contact for their success. Their success is measured, by them in what they get, what they can take and what they can do and how little we oppose them.

Contact Keeps the Hunt Going

no contact

They must keep contact in order to get what they want and when we’re in contact, we’re balls of emotions. We’re in confusion and off balance which means there’s an open door for them straight into our lives. The success of their mind-bending effect on us is only possible through contact.

No contact is our freedom. Safety and freedom from a narcissistic user, a sociopath depends on establishing and keeping no contact. – Let’s look at the effect of contact from the first hello, to the day we go no contact.

How far will you take your recovery?

The First Contact is What We Call “Love Bombing”

In the early moments we meet them for the first time, they bombard us, overwhelm us, spin us off the ground, and into “love” with them. This is a quick process. Once they hook us, they need to keep yapping whenever they notice that the hook is slipping.

We take their words at face value. This is normal. Normal and natural for us, as fully functioning limbic-brained humans. In other words, it’s normal for us to believe what people say, to trust, bond, care, and feel connected.

The unfortunate thing we don’t know at this point is that the meaning of the words of this pathological predator is not found in the words themselves. Their words don’t have a normal meaning or a normal subtext. This is because their intention and their goal and purpose for being in our lives are far, far from normal… And love has nothing to do with it.

Their intention in our lives is not represented by the nice things they say… Nor by the mean things they say. Underneath it, all is a desire and purpose we can’t even imagine… And they need it this way.

They don’t want us to understand their actual meaning. In this effort they make sure, as best they can, to fake their intent and meaning. And they do their best to keep others from tipping us off. So, they separate us from family and friends. They keep us away from people who aren’t under their spell and see that they aren’t what they’re pretending to be.

They Separate Us from Others Who See Through Them

Everything they say is in hopes of their very simplistic and unwavering needs and wants. This is instinctive, it’s literally how their brains are wired, while a lot of other normal human things are missing from their brains. One of the qualities of their limited brains is limited language skills.

Even if they learn some big words and can string a long sentence together it’s nonsense. They usually use very short sentences. Even three-word sentences to nail us in place. Understanding the effect of their words on our emotions and thoughts is essential. They can’t have anyone interfering with the effect of their words upon us. This is a reason they separate us from our family, our friends, and others.

Please put aside the common interpretation that this isolation or separation is done out of their jealousy. It’s that they can’t have others alerting us to how full of hot air, and how creepy and weird they are. This is why the sociopath immediately creates an “us and them” existence.

The Subtle Separation

One such example… My sister lives three miles down the road for me. At the root of things, we’re very close. Really tight. We grew up almost as twins, yet we’re very different in relational dynamics. I’m open and smiling and laugh easily and talk to people everywhere I go. She’s more reserved, can seem stern, and isn’t as warm. She also doesn’t reach out the way that I do… So:

The fraudulent lying dirtbag I married used to say, your sister doesn’t love you. She didn’t even call you back. Pinging on the fact that, indeed, it is me who keeps my sister and I connected. It takes me calling or texting her three times or so before she calls me back.

And, he wasn’t exactly wrong… I could count on fewer fingers than I have on one hand the number of times in my life that my sister has called me spontaneously.

Because of their uncanny quality that causes us to have an exaggerated experience of normal emotions, this comment tapped hard at a raw little place inside me. If a normal human had said this, I’d have said, my sister loves me, she’s different than I am in how she shows it, but she’d kill for me... And that would have been the end of it.

Instead – because he’s a sociopath – this sideways comment led me to quickly and inefficiently sort through my mind asking myself: does she love me? doesn‘t she love me…? she doesn’t…or..? In this way, here I was suddenly teetering on the brink of stepping into the mush of bottomless ruinous quicksand of believing him. – this is how our world changes because of what they are.

And for all the hate they have for us, because they need us, the narcissistic-user-sociopath will hold on as long as possible.

The sore spot of truth inside my life that this comment hit metaphorically knocked me to my knees in a deep psyche kind of way. When we’re under their spell, sociopaths can tap our core with a single comment due to their natural malevolent influence. This strike shocks us and leaves us breathless and vulnerable, self-doubting and confused.

In the case of my sister and I, she’s also brutally direct. I imagine he sensed she’d blow him down and break him into pieces. As it turns out she said to me when I kicked him out, I knew it! – She never liked him for one second and saw him as bad news. Naturally, he could read this. – Consequently, he drove in a separation.

Contact with us, and severing contact with our families and friends is how they drive the wedge in. They keep yammering to us at high velocity, they keep in contact via texts, Snapchat, and the like, even when they live with us! That’s as deep as they get. It’s only that. It’s how they keep inside our heads, hearts, and bank accounts; it comes down to one practical material thing: contact.

recovery sessions with Jennifer Smith for recovering after coercive control and ptsd and  narcissistic abuse

True Love Scam Recovery on Medium

No Contact Ends the Game

Throughout our “relationship” (the one we think we’re in together) their attention comes in cycles related to what they perceive as how deeply or loosely we’re bound-in to them. They spike attention to reel us back in from time to time. Routinely they do an all-points-bare-minimum in maintenance.

When they sense we’re seeing through the smokescreen, they either pour on the nice in charm and promises or get mean becoming nasty, grumpy, and mad. Both nice and mean require contact and are bait to hook us in place.

As the sociopath’s weirdness, deception and betrayal come into focus, we want an end. We, as their prey, want out of the nightmare.

If it’s nice they offer something, make a promise…Or even are simply neutral. Our naturally good-hearted nature and the effects of their mesmerizing venom does the work. We interpret and imbue their off-handed glances, and bare-bones contact with deep and positive meaning, full of love and commitment and, so we stay in it. No such thing as genuine nice is happening, but thinking that it is, is normal.

If it’s mean they pick up as the tool, they use anger and scream out, we naturally react in fear and then stay out of this fear. Not to mention our sense of guilt, shame, and our confusion. This is normal. We all give them the benefit of the doubt and stay. Or we stay out of fear. This is the way it goes until that one moment when the spell finally breaks.

Every bit of any contact a sociopath makes is to take and use and keep taking… It’s bait, from the “love bombing”, the common term for the contact, that reels us in, to the lies and devastating gossip in the smear campaign. As well as during hat time in between, in the middle of the arc of the fraud… When they aren’t around, they disappear, they don’t answer or texts and we’re in unbelievable pain trying to make sense of it all through our normal human view of life.

Breaking Up With Evil

Breaking Up with Evil, by Jennifer Smith on Amazon and Good Reads

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.

No Contact Isn’t Normal or Easy for Normal People

One thing about these predators we can’t forget: they can’t not be like this. And they do what they do 24/7. They’re on the prowl constantly. Out of our being normal humans, we give credit to their scanty presence, oh, he’s been so busy, and he called me finally, he must care! And, he left flowers at the door last night! He really does love me!  – This is normal. – We’re under their spell.

And, alternately, fear of them freezes us right where we are, so we “stay in it”. This too is normal. It’s the natural normal effect of this type of predator upon us as normal humans, their prey.

We don’t understand why we believe their lies, and then we tend to blame ourselves long after for staying so long. Please don’t. There’s nothing about you that made this happen. You ge to be who you are… And you get to establish no contact because even one more millisecond of contact and access to rampage and ransack our lives is a millisecond too many.

Contact Means They Can Get Back In: Contact Is How Any and All of it Happens

When we want out, a sociopath’s drive to keep us in their grasp intensifies. Just as they smell fresh prey, they can sense it when we’re beginning to see through them to the point that things are going to end.

They know when we’ve caught a glimpse behind the veil of lies and they go to work to regain our trust, to keep us locked in place. Mean or nice…everything, all the things they do, is an attempt to keep things going and require: contact. They fear losing prey. They become enraged when we slip free.

Their Concern is Survival and Nothing Else

Out of the simple need for survival, antisocial psychopaths despise losing their bagged targets. And for all the hate they have for us – they need us – and the narcissistic-user-sociopath will hold on as long as possible.

It’s the things, the status, and the opportunities we provide that compel them to hang on with just enough contact. Thye swing back-and-forth, hot-and-cold, nice-and-mean, to keep us in place by our own emotional responses to them combined with our misunderstanding of what is actually happening.

Manipulation, Bait, and Tricks Ramp Up in the Fear of Losing Contact

Eventually, that day comes for us when the “magic” is gone, and so when they whip out their standard bait: make coffee for us or put air in the tires or murmur — again — without eye contact, you’re special to me. — This time, our emotional response is flat or numb. We can see them more clearly as the snake they are.

Stand up and protect our lives, even in this overwhelming disaster, don’t give in to defeat. Instead, only continue to build treasures of the heart.

There’s a moment for each of us when their signature weak and familiar gesture, is measured up against all the odd, the confusion, and just plain sad and it just isn’t enough. Suddenly, we are done.

As the sociopath’s weirdness, deception, and betrayal come into focus, we want an end. We, as their prey, want out of the nightmare. Once we say: I’m leaving or, you have to go, we’re treated to Mr. Hyde and narcissistic rage. — The big-bad-monster will not really leave our lives until we establish no contact.

Sociopaths and Narcissistic Users Fear No Contact

What do sociopaths fear losing when the jig is up? After “the well” has truly run dry, they fear losing their physical freedom and their “good reputation”. This deluded idea that they have a “good reputation” is something they think they need to keep intact so they can continue using others.

So, to keep tabs on what we say to others, they continue to hang on even if they “break-up” with us. As we’re breaking away and after contact is really important to them for three reasons.

We call this after “break-up” contact, Hoovering. It lands as texts, emails, and phone calls; it may be messages or notes on our car or on the door, and it’s scary. There are plenty of reasons that this is scary. It’s normal to be in fear of the narcissistic user after the “break up”. This is all a part of PTSD.

Breaking Away Means to the Sociopath We’ve Gone Rogue

Once we’ve stepped away from the pathologically narcissistic user isn’t sure if they’re safe anymore, We’re an unknown factor. – We’ve gone rogue.

Not only have they lost their entertainment, or your car keys, cell phone bill payments, their arm candy, or entree into a particular social group: they don’t know what we’re going to do about what they’ve done to us.

This is where “hoovering” comes in. For your safety, if they use actual words in person or by phone, at that moment go ahead and verbally apologize. Soothe them by saying one plain sentence like, I know…it’s all my fault…Not because this is true. But because it’s wisdom; it’s for your safety.

This simple utterance stops hoovering in many cases, as the nutter then believes you aren’t a threat. They are enraged that you broke away, but they believe they can now go freely about their gruesome ways.

This isn’t “enabling” them. They are what they are with or without you.

Don’t worry, you’re lying… but they’ll believe you. This isn’t because this is true. It’s because sociopaths aka narcissists believe anything we say and act on it as if it is true.

They only need to feel like they’re getting away with all the lies and scamming. Never give this kind of impression or apology in writing, only in spoken words. Let them think they can go freely. Let them feel at ease in exiting. They don’t want us, or their kids – and we don’t want them.

Be Sociopath or Psychopath and Narcissist Free Forever

Really, get the skinny on what’s happening, in your specific circumstances. There’s more to this than an article can convey.

For a clearer and faster pathway back to restoring your life, step into recognizing how amazing you are. This makes the dust settle faster, and the debris and damage fall at their feet where it belongs rather than at yours.

Stand up and protect your life, even in this overwhelming disaster, don’t give in to defeat. Instead, only continue to build treasures of the heart.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

Join the podcast!

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As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.

Visit truelovescam’s profile on Pinterest.

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Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.

2015_07_12 2022_11_12