Tag Archives: how do i know I’m being groomed by a sociopath?

Jennifer Smith

October 5, 2016

Hidden traits, under the mask,
behind the charm lurks the real-deal Monster.
The sociopath-demon comes into view.
Then he slips to hide
behind a curtain of pretty
only to flash a thigh of evil.

Hidden traits cover what at first blush in a true love scamming sociopath appears charming. They seem kind. Gentle. Genuine. Unique. Incredible. And so sincere our hearts hurt.

The predator can come across so devastatingly moving we’re humbled in openings into views and moments in life we’ve never seen before; under their uncanny power of influence, we reach what seem to be realizations about ourselves, about them – about how to be human – that endear us more deeply to them.

Honeymoon Hoovering

In the “honeymoon” phase with these creatures in tiny, brief, weirdly intimate moments with the sociopath, there’s a shimmer, a quiver that lasts no more than mere seconds.

This bone-deep shiver is subtle and unfamiliar so that if we notice it at all, we feel the ground move under our feet.

Our brains freeze, while we watch a small moment of confusion that feels like hours waggle and wave in front of us, like the way you can see heat waves radiating in the air. And then, it vanishes and we think maybe that oddness didn’t happen at all.

Knowing the truth sets you on the path to a restored life.

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Mesmerizing, Hypnotizing, Pied Pipers

In stunned awe, an elevated in-and-out-of-focus sensation overtakes us – an infusion of imaginings washes through us, and we wonder: what is this…? And because we’re just people, regular normal people…we only have our normal real-life experiences to measure this new-whatever-it-is by.

Later as the odd things build up our friends might start to make comments. Or we might even begin Googling. Maybe a few things we’ve heard or read, or something a friend said slides into place and makes sense…and right back out again.

While we’re good and tied up under their spell, nothing offers a real answer that seems possible: and so we do what humans do: we come up with one. We create an explanation for the odd stuff. This is normal. Humans need cognitive harmony. We need the world around us to match up with what we believe in, feel is right, and what is accepted and expected. – Our bodies do this for us.

Breaking Up With Evil

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

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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.

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Goodness Through Our Eyes

The millisecond flare of doubt is so quick – and we’re interpreting from our own goodness – with no clue that something as vile as a sociopath walks the earth. It’s no wonder we can’t see it for what it is… until we do.

If we could revisit those times – we might more easily see that gaping slit in the fabric of reality, that: opening to hell. A black cavernous infinite hole into the pits of despair. The place they truly live; the thing they truly are.

We Can’t Recognize Something We Don’t Know Exists

It’s said we can see only what we know. And so it goes that the inhabitants couldn’t see the ships of invaders into North America on the shore because no one had known such a thing existed – until a Shaman divined them shimmering from mirage into a shape.

An unrecognizable something. An unknown – assumed good and even God-like from their own benevolent perspective giving the strange-strangers the generosity of benefit of the doubt.

They had to learn the hard way that these shiny beings, rather like them, but entirely unlike them in these gigantic fantastical floating vessels, emerging up and toward them from the watery horizon as if delivered by the unseen beneficent powers of life were not benevolent, but were bearers of rage, disease, and destruction.

We do finally see them, the hidden traits and all. The thing is like the shamans, and like any human… We can see only what we know. Then, we pull one thing up from the inner realms of recall and place it next to the other, grab this other shard from that corner of our mind and then connect the dots.

Hidden Traits Lurk Not Far From their Sickening Surface

Sociopaths live in a paradoxical reality – a contradictory flip-flopping and internal push-me-pull-you in reaction to who’s present or what’s going on around them in a constant attempt to stay hidden, stay unrecognizable to keep people trusting them and keep getting the things they need to survive.

Sociopaths are unstable. Their world is house-of-cards fragile. Their posing is easy to topple. Here are five hidden traits of a sociopath that are their Achilles heel. – Traits we know well, though we might not have named them if we’ve lived through the nightmare of knowing one. And in the case of a sociopath – knowing one – truly is knowing all.

Breakthroughs you can’t imagine

Five Hidden Paradoxical Traits of a Sociopath

The constant fear of being caught. Alternating with flamboyant confidence in fooling people with their bragaddociousness.
Mentally inflexible. Are greatly startled by unfamiliar situations causing them to flail and change course or alter previously stated beliefs or convictions. And can hold onto a point of contention like a wild dog with a bone.
Easily distracted. Fixated on one target then distracted by another and another from moment to moment juxtaposed with an underlying unwavering fantastical “goal” derived from their grandiose perception of themselves and follow an improvisational rather than planned approach to the “goal”.
No nuance of emotion. Swings between highs and dark lows with their home-based state of mind is a vapid, bored nothing.
Believe other people’s lies. Their world is lies. If presented with a lie from someone else rather than act on it or call it out as a lie they go along with it as a reality. – The more fantastical the lie the more they buy into it.

Use the Sociopaths Weakness to Break Free Forever

Use their myopic minds against them for our safety. Let’s transform the experience. Let’s make use of it. We cannot be defeated by it. Because for all our compassion and empathy — isn’t it useless or even harmful without wisdom…?

Let’s embrace ourselves with compassion. Understand there’s much to stand up for: our very lives, our goodness. Humanity. We must win always, just as the sun outshines the night sky stars to bring us a bright and lovely day.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

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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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My Friend is Dating a Sociopath

2 Replies

What can I do?
My friend thinks she’s engaged to her dream man.
They moved in together. He cheated, she kicked him out.
He got arrested. She ran back to him. Classic.

Sociopaths suck us back in with their needs and trouble. They come up with fake illnesses or bogus victim stories – or create major and very real drama. They are more important than us.

Sociopaths, or narcissists are a whirlwind of chaos when they’re in our lives. The deception has no limits, they know no boundaries. They steal and lie and assault and abuse. They ruin lives.

I can’t believe my friend has fallen into the clutches of a freak-sociopath! – And, then again, I can.

She’s exactly the kind of woman a sociopath hunts: magnanimous, loyal, determined, strong, smart, loving. She’d recently been through other loss and grief. Paradoxically she was at a peak in the game of life.

She’s at a pivotal point in making a career and finishing huge accomplishments. Sociopaths, predators are attracted to the upswing in our lives – so they can suck the life out of it and get all the goodies.

Sociopaths Target Strong Achievers Not Doormats

Sociopaths go for targets who are loyal, trusting, forgiving. They victimize those who invest in relationships above having casual relationships. They look for empathy. In other words, they’re looking for regular normal humans who are wired as such. Empathy is one of the first things they need to tap. In the early moments there’s a “test” for empathy; they tell a story about their own victimization, such as abuse as a child. It’s usually a lie, and certainly not a piece of what makes them what they are.

This particular lie is an to probe for and to test our reaction. If we’re sympathetic to the correct degree they know they can leach us dry. Sociopaths – and the ones you might be calling a narcissist who are actually pathological – are attracted to strong, loving, responsible, hard workers who strive as achievers. Very often the nab us when we’re at a good place in their lives. They are drawn to the smell of our success… it equals pay-day and jack-pot to them.

“Often very smart, successful people fall for their scams — and then the sociopath has more to gain. What is socially seen as more respect, more money, entree to broader circles of a caliber they might not reach on their own; associates and colleagues of the person they’re scamming.”
~ Dr. Deborah Ettel, PhD Psychology

My Friend is Dating a Sociopath: Now What?

Sociopaths scramble the brains of their prey. It’s a brainwashing. A hostage set-up. What do we do when people we love, love sociopaths? What do we do when we have the horrible realization: my friend is dating a sociopath. Would a friend dating a sociopath believe us if we bring out the truth behind the sociopath’s lies?

It seems to me if my friend is dating a sociopath and I make negative reports of her beloved – she’s going to ignore me or feel betrayed by me and in both cases hold tighter to the sociopath.

Damage All-Around

It breaks my heart to know first hand the damage being done and the grief to come. Should we just tell our friends: Hey, by the way, he’s a sociopath. – And then point out all the obvious things like sociopaths are liars and bad actors. Sociopaths have a zillion women at once.

And the difference between just supporting our friend, hinting he’s not good enough for her, or straight out breaking the: your man is a sociopath, significant news. Do we say something?

Here’s What I Watched Happen: My friend hung onto him, she got fired from her job. She was evicted from the house they were renting. Her phone was cancelled for non-payment. Some of her belongings were “stolen.” She lost friends. She got pregnant by him, then had a miscarriage. She ignored her own life in favor of doing his bidding – without being asked. She spent all her energy on him. Chaos and drama were on the menu night and day.

Friends Dating a Sociopath Need True Friends

Stand by. Listen. Be there. Never judge. Study what a sociopath is. Study up on what normal humans do in normal relationships and realize our friend believed this was normal and while participating in “normal” the road became more and more twisted because – without them knowing it – nothing was normal.

With a sociopath we start out on a road we think is a mutual path paved with love into our own gorgeous land of harmony and possibility that exists because that’s what the two of us are “together.” There’s sunshine, birds singing, rainbows – but no rain – pots of gold, blue skies, and hearts dancing and flitting around our heads like butterflies.

We Feel Like Heaven

Our world feels like nirvana, heaven – the jackpot – the perfect life. We’re all in. Our new address is cloud nine. We relationship build, give, make, bake, create, fix, move forward, climb mountains to make things happen for us – because that’s what one does in fantastic relationships.

Without realizing it, we’re not making a magnificent masterpiece of a life on a bicycle built for two – we’re digging a gnarled, dark, deep, tangled hole into the center of hell – where we’re headed all by ourselves.

A View From the Rear

We see this just as the sociopath trips off into his own disgusting future with all our things on his back in a rotting knapsack we mistook for his beautiful soul. The life-shattering shock of realizing all was a lie has no words to tell it.

Maintain confidence in our friends and their life. Give them the benefit of the doubt. – Have hope that is unshakable – a hope that is utter confidence that the very traits of goodness and loyalty he chose her for will save her escape from him. And I remember: There is always possibility in the morning.