Tag Archives: how to break up with a narcissist

Sociopaths Secretly Love the Holidays

That thing you’re calling a “narcissist”
… the sociopath secretly loves the Holidays.
Storming out because you didn’t make their favorite dish is a cover.
It’s how they get out of the house to hunt…
in the most wonderful time of year.

During the holidays, normal people want things merry and bright. We have family visiting, kids to make memories for, traditions to uphold, trees to decorate, cookies to bake, and presents to wrap.

It’s never easy to grasp the real-deal stark reality of what’s going on in these hijackings. There’re the secrets, the subtext, and the hidden motivations of these creatures that are elusive to us. When we’re in the initial throes of the struggle to clear the fog to confirm the person we love is a monster, the holiday season is the bitterest time of all for decoding what’s up.

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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.

Join the podcast!

Have a listen: 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!

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.
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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.

2019_11_19 2022_11_02

Toxic Language: Limiting Words

We are amazing, awesome and courageous.
We are in control of our destiny
and can change, chose and be free. 

Toxic language and limiting words can limit, stop, misdirect or control us. Those unfortunate words can come from others, or ourselves.

sociopath awareness narcissistic abuse recovery

It might seem too simple to think we can change our lives with words, but amazingly we can.

When we become aware of our words, those we say out loud, and those we say in our own head where no one else is listening we can change our lives.

How deeply would you like to recovery?

Mean Words Hurt: Toxic Words Do Too

Toxic language comes from toxic people. We’re pretty all sure about that. But, how many of us realize that using those same limiting words has a good chance of becoming a habit for healthy people?

Let’s talk about the effect words we oursleves use have within our own lives. We can influence our own outcome and feelings, thoughts and actions with our words. This is so beneficial as we fend our way through discovery-recovery from hell and broken to whole and back to ourselves plus extra.

We are amazing, awesome and courageous. We are in control of our destiny and can change, chose and be free.

The power of words is astonishing! Poison words, toxic words, stop words, dysfunctional words: limiting language makes anyone including ourselves less fun to be around. Language is connected to our thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and actions.

The words we choose affect our feelings, thoughts, emotions and what we do. And all of this package of self affects our life and circumstances. This is an amazing tool for recovery and healing. Our language is tied to living our lives positively, energetically, with hope and reaching our goals.

Toxic Language and Neuro-Linguistic Programing

One thing I’ve realized is a deeper awareness of words; others words but more importantly my own words including those whispsered inside my head that no one else hears.

We can change our thinking, our emotions, and our actions by changing our words. This is a simple place to start when we want to eliminate limits and fill our life with positivity.

Neuro-linguistic programming is the science behind it; common sense when you think about it is how we can think of it, and changing those poison words to phenomenal words is how we experience it.

The Podcast: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

Examples of Limiting Language

Let’s try an experiment; read these words and see how you feel; say them out loud. Here’s the words that stop, limit or end possibility. Words and toxic language that make hope go down, ideas fizzle, positivity wane:

  • Don’t, Doesn’t
  • Can’t, Won’t
  • Always, Never
  • Should, Could
  • Would, Might
  • Try, Need to
  • But, However

What’s Behind Our Thoughts and Actions is Found in Our Language

If this idea of neuro-linguistic programming and how our language both reflects and influences our thoughts, emotions, and actions you might like to know more from the leading theorist in the field of neuro-linguistic programming, Noam Chomsky. Mr. Chomsky does use his theories within political ideas, you may or may not agree with his politics, fair warning.

Let’s agree that we’re concerned with neuro-linguistic programming, and applying it to our benefit in our own lives rather than politics. Plus there are some good books out there about neuro-linguistic programming… even the for Dummies! series has an excellent book on NLP. – It’s on my bookshelf ; )

Language That Moves Us In the Direction of Our Dreams and Goals

Toxic words and poison, limiting language aren’t something I made up! Though I did instinctively use an aspect of NLP in my own recovery and now call Self-Talk and offer as a method in discovery-recovery sessions to support our way out of PTSD.

These toxic words are real and really limit, stop, and leave people flat and without a solution. They stop forward movement. Toxic language limits progress, creativity, going forward, and going for goals.

Words build us up or bring us down. Language, the finest snip of a collection of words, or one word all on its own inspire or deflate us.

Here’s an example: Let’s say you’re talking with a friend:

  • You: I might try to lose some weight; I need to lose 25 pounds.
  • Friend: You always say that. You’re never going to do it whether you might try or not.

Okay, so not the best friend in the world, that’s a possible conclusion after this brief exchange. But, did that friend repeat and reflect our own sentiment, and thinking or did they make it up…?

How many of us could have had this conversation alone, both sides of it in our own head in two seconds flat? How many of us do this … maybe daily, weekly, often about some desire, goal, dream or wish we have? Let’s take this example part word by word.

Toxic Language Limits Us: Even When it Comes From Us

  • I might = There is a lack of determination in this word: Substitute: I will
  • try = Hesitancy and uncertainty: Substitute: Leave this word out altogether.
  • to lose = Humans can’t act on a “negative”: Substitute: What we want to achieve.
  • I need = What’s the motivation “to lose”? (Or think, “to be” size 10, or be 130)
  • to lose = The goal is framed in “the negative”: Think of goals in terms of what you desire to achieve, be, or do rather than what you’ll get rid of, undo, or lose.
As an example, we can rephrase things such as, “Don’t wait for them to go no contact”, can be turned into a more open and easier to hear idea such as, “Rather than waiting for them to go no contact, we can block them.” – or – “You shouldn’t do that!”, we can transform into more uplifting concern that also conveys compassion, “Please consider doing what feels right for your well being.”

Toxic Language Replaced By Words That Enrich Our Lives

Let’s take a look at this list of toxic language and come up with an alternate for each.

  • Don’t – Substitute a “do” concept: don’t run, becomes: walk
  • Doesn’t – Substitute what does
  • Can’t – I can’t make Friday, becomes, can: I can make Wednesday at Noon or Tuesday.
  • Won’t – Shift what won’t to will. I won’t talk to you anymore: I will keep it to myself
  • Always – Always is a huge concept. Use it sparingly
  • Never – You never, they never, it will never…? See always above
    • Oddly, never and always do fit all things related to a sociopath/narcissists ways of behaving. Due to their mental limitations their behavior is fixed.
  • Should – You should, he should, I should have. Should expresses an order or regret
  • Could – Could can be a great substitute for should. Other times it’s doubt-filled
  • Would – Usually followed by “if”. I would do it if… bargaining, blackmail, expecting someone else to do it. And “it” is often something we’re trying to get out of.
  • Might – I might if… dependent upon someone or something else
  • Try – As NIKE says… (Just) do it (More on the word “just” in another article.)
  • Need to – Use need to sparingly
  • But – But negates or disregards what came before the word but
  • However – Same effect as but

Freedom From Limitations Begins in our Language

Coming out of a nightmare after a predator is unbelievable. There’s no one who understands it unless they’ve been in it. There’s a bizarre exception to the above toxic language examples. You can guess when that is.

It’s when it comes to the behavior and thinking and actions of people who are without our limbic brain which connects and feels love.

This limiting and toxicity is natural within people who have an abnormal, under-functioning brain that is sociopathy. Essentially, a reptilian brain. They do always and never many things.

We can learn to use their limitations to maneuver them out of our lives and gain our safety, and absolute freedom from pathological predators. We are amazing, awesome, and courageous. We are in control of our destiny and can change, chose, and be free.

Sending all good things…

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.

2019_08_25 2023_01_30

Breaking Up With Evil: No One Understands

Breaking up with evil is an odyssey through hell on steroids.
It seems that no one understands what we’re going through.
How do we cope and recover when we feel so alone?

So, you got to the day when you knew you had to break away, and you did it! Congratulations! You’re amazing, courageous, incredible and gorgeous inside and out. But then: the aftermath… When the real hell breaks loose. Everyone of us finds this shocking since we’d been living in hell for a while by the time we ended this “relationship”.

…A relationship is hardly what we ought to call it at this point, and for good reason, which we’ll get to a little later. Let’s reserve that peek into the heart of the deep-darkside of this mess.

As for now, in the aftermath, when the “break up” has happened, after we’ve gotten either them or ourselves out of a shared home, we’re struggling. Confused, grasping, frozen, and so, so scared. This is the emotional landscape pathological predators and users inspire without their trying – it just is the way it is. Who can we turn to?

We Know Somethings Wrong: We Don’t Know What

evil sociopath narcissist break up

Let’s start at the beginning of the whole schemer. We, each, naturally, entered into what we thought was a relationship with a kindred spirit. These hijackings are most often described as a dream-come-true kind of soul-mate match.

And to the next person that tells you this malarkey: That you had to know they and the amazingness of them was fishy because, if it seems too good to be true, it isn’t…You tell them from me: There are very, very good things that are very true.

Don’t let anyone tell you the reason this happened is because you missed something, or have a broken picker, or don’t have boundaries. It isn’t. This happens because evil people exist.

It happens like this: An ordinary day, our usual routine – or maybe we’re out somewhere we usually don’t go. We meet someone, like them, believe them, trust them. This is all normal and our right as humans on planet earth.

And with this person, we had a certainty that we’d met a person of amazing character and quality. As it turns out, we didn’t and they aren’t: and they know it. And further they know that we don’t know that they’re a lying, deceiving snake, and that’s just how they want it for as long as possible so they can use us and take things from us. That makes them rotten and wrong: not us.

The trauma and post trauma of being scammed by a pathological user that we loved and trusted our life with is singular.

Naturally, as we became a couple – still not realizing the pull of their influence of natural dark and hellish coercion – we stick with them and stay in what we think is a side-by-side love-match. We look forward to our bright future together. Yet unbeknownst to us, rather than side-by-side, we’re not on the same page…Not in the same book. Heck, not in the same time warp or galaxy.

It’s fairly early on that we feel weird. There are inconsistencies, odd things that happen, that they say… And we rationalize. Or ask and are rebuffed or worse. Or don’t ask at all. Because of what we are as normal humans – mixed with, colliding with what they are as sociopathic entities: we stay, we continue to rationalize or set questions aside. This is the normal way of things when someone is ensorcelled under coercive control by a sociopathic “person”.

This kind of entrapment can happen to anyone at any time in life. There are even those of us who have a sociopath parent, sibling, or child. For some of us, we met this evil as teenagers. We might have spent our teenage years to now, living in a slow simmering turmoil and chaos until landing here; arriving puzzled, in pain, and oh, so, so sad and exhausted.

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.

There is resolution and full restoration.
What is recovery for you?

The End is Its Own Kind of Hell

This pile of steaming confusion is something we can barely breathe inside of, or comprehend as our minds and bodies and stomachs churn every minute. Our friends…?

They didn’t understand when we were in it, and now, now that we’re making an exit, and mining discoveries that burn our eyeballs and bring up breakfast, they will understand far less.

It feels like we’re at the onset of a walk through the fire, a ride through a tsunami on a piece of cardboard.

Though We Can Barley Stand, We Need to Talk

We want, need and deserve answers that are real. Our chance at full recovery is within knowing the truth. A truth beyond the standard explanations.

As we go through the mind-bending maze of breaking up with evil, we need to talk and tell and retell…. because: we’re trying to figure out why this happened, what happened and how someone could do this to someone they professed to love. We’re mid-traumatic-event with more life-shaking discoveries ahead.

Real Answers: Real Recovery

Post Traumatic Stress is Real

We’re in post-trauma because the time spent as “a couple” when that other person is an antisocial psychopath is a traumatic event, yet not a typical traumatic event. Rather than a short-lived one-time event it’s sustained trauma and is in our daily life.

By typical traumatic event, I mean a natural disaster, a car accident, or physical attack by a stranger, or in war. The events which people often don’t want to talk about, can’t talk about and might be told by some not to talk about… yet these events are accepted. No one questions someone about the validity of having their house robbed, but sustain a life-jacking…? Somehow it’s supposed that we’re to blame.

Post Trauma is Where Healing Starts

The trauma and post-trauma of being scammed by a pathological user that we loved and trusted our life with are singular. This is someone we loved, yet now we’re absorbing: that they didn’t love us after all.

The discovery that they lied is traumatic. We do want and need to tell our story because we’re looking for answers at every retelling. We’re stunned and unwinding the maze to see more of what happened… we need to. We talk about it a lot. We need to.

This is No Ordinary Break Up: It’s a Life-Saving Escape

As we’re in real trauma, and post-trauma, trying to make sense of what happened, we go over and over and over it. It’s the only thing on our minds. After about three weeks, people tell us to move on, thinking we’re in a normal break-up.

Not only does this not help, but it also isn’t possible: not until we do get the answers to what happened and how. We want, need, and deserve answers that are real. Our chance at full recovery is within knowing the truth. A truth beyond the standard explanations.

Defend and Explain Ourselves to No One

The inevitable and unavoidable post trauma has set up camp in our lives. The good news is: this is not the new us. How we’re feeling is normal; normal and not permanent.

Our impatient friends might tell us we’re obsessed. We might have taken on the idea that we’re obsessed, or that we’re ruminating or fixated. Anyone who suggests that is wrong. They don’t understand what breaking up with evil is.

We need to replay what happened until we find the answers. It’s the natural healing process the body is searching for answers our friends don’t have, and neither do we, yet. Believing we’re ruminating or obsessing blinds the truth. – Our body s doing what it does to find answers. Plug in new information and answers will seem to fall from the sky…

So, keep looking, turn it over and over. Please keep asking questions and looking for answers that slow and then stop the merry-go-round in our heads. Add the real information and truth about this phenomenon, realign the view of ourselves with compassion and facts about what normal is and we’re on the way.

It’s Too Unbelievable and Just too Much

Not only do people around us not understand our agitation, the way our hand tremors as we try to take another sip of tea and tell more, well… it frightens them. It’s all too much for them from the outside looking in at us breaking up with evil.

We can see that they can’t believe that we could’ve believed this person. They don’t understand that it’s normal to believe people. It’s not at all in their awareness that evil people exist even if they didn’t like the person we just broke up with.

We try to explain. What comes back eventually or immediately from others is most commonly along the lines of, You gotta admit, you made a bad choice. The response of friends and family blasts us with another shock, another punch in the gut.

We explain again, It wasn’t like that, it’s just not a regular break-up… this is more than that! We see a silent sideways glance and a look between or between our friends or our coworkers or our parents for the 500th time. Another punch in the gut and still, we want to explain, again

They Can’t Take It

What if we’re on the threshold of a new discovery? As if we’re a part of the team that discovered the earth was round rather than flat?

Try to stop explaining it to others. No matter how profound and accurate about these beasts what you discover is, it’s exhausting. Keep in mind that no matter what, there’s no need to explain ourselves to anyone. There’s no call ever to defend yourself to those who don’t understand.

And sad to say but our explaining can take us to more loss, rather than support. After landing on more explanations for the behavior and more discoveries about what they’ve done we want to tell our friends. Instead, we look up and see that after about three months of this that our friends, even the best of our besties, have vacated the premises.

And – truth be told, nothing, none of those partial answers or standard explanations has stopped the room from spinning or eased the pain. We notice one of these sad days, that our pants are sliding down, and we weigh about 20-pounds less than we used to.

Post-Trauma Sits Down With Us and Stays Awake All Night With Us

In post-trauma, part of us is floating somewhere off to the right side of our head, another part of us is heavy in our gut, another part is aware of movements all around us… like thinking he’s about to show up around the corner.

It could be, that we barely notice the exodus of our friends, or weep when we notice, but really, we’re too busy trying to figure out what happened and why we’re in a ball on the floor, and can’t seem to even do the laundry.

We’re Hit Hard in Every Realm

We suffer emotional confusion, anxiety, fear… And possibly face real physical danger. We’re hit hard financially, and all but collapsed under the two-ton truck sucker-punch to the heart, body, mind, and soul. No one can begin to understand what this was or why we stayed unless they’ve been in it too. – And even then, real understanding is eluisve.

It seems the inevitable and unavoidable post-trauma has set up camp in our lives and is here to stay. The good news is: this is not the new us. How we’re feeling is normal; normal and not permanent: if we take in the information and new perspectives that answer every question, and can resolve every loss.

Everything you’re feeling is normal and healing is possible.

Self Doubt, Doubt in Every Corner Knocks us Back

Most of us shiver in vacillating doubt of everything we think and feel. Most of all, we’re wondering if maybe we’re wrong and maybe after all they are the amazing people we first thought they were and that all this is in our head. Or, worse yet thoughts that we’re the problem, that we’re the evil.

The Room Stops Spinning When We Understand

Who feels like they’re going mad? Did every hand in the dark, reading this in bed go up? This is exactly how you would feel right now.

We’re solely occupied with replaying the scenes and conversations with them. Rewinds and reviews of even those moments we thought of as “fun” cycle on repeat… Because we must know what that confusion, the head-spinning upheavals, and the gut-punch actually meant.

One thing we know for sure: no one understands as we do battle in breaking up with evil. We didn’t and don’t understand… that’s why we got online… that’s what led us here, to this page. Finally, we’ve found a place where understanding this is the pathway to restoring your life. All those questions, all those replays hold the answer when we find the keys to unlock them.

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Knowing Ends the Madness

We’re doing something big here, we’re effecting paradigm shifts that will redirect the trajectory of our own lives, and of all humanity.

These vivid and haunting images and revamps with new endings of a happier ending (if only we’d done something differently), is an effort by the body to find answers. Please know, this is normal, and this will continue until we get real answers.

Talking about it, and seeking reasons that make sense is a necessary piece to unwinding the madness. Each of us is spinning, retching, crying, confused, panicked, maybe scared out of our minds. Frantically, we’re wondering if we are losing it and if all this isn’t our fault.

All of this is normal under the circumstances. How many of you are doubting your selves? – That’s normal too. Please don’t acquiesce in shame under the popular opinion that we allowed this. Please, don’t stop until you get answers that make real sense, and honor you.

There Are Answers: The Most Healing Answers of All

The thing is, if we keep looking at it purely from our emotional pain, we might not see the answers. We’ll want something to crack the mystery of the crazy… new information that plugs into our replay to reveal the pure and simple truth of what happened and why.

There’s more to this than gaslighting. Hoovering happens, or doesn’t happen for a very specific reason. Deflection, projection, and the silent treatment are not random nor what they seem. Every piece of this has two combined paradoxical and very simple explanations; a hideous one, and a gorgeous one. Those are the only two sides to the breakup.

The fact is, getting to this new point of knowing the answers and certainty of them and the why is full healing, but it’s a long walk from here to there. We need someone to talk to. There are answers. Real answers that leave us whole again, all of them, right here.

Discovery and Awakening

We’re each on a mission, together; and together, we’re not alone, and we do understand.

For most of us, breaking up with evil is a solo journey. The impending isolation and alone-ness are colossal on one hand, yet we’re among hundreds-of-thousands who’ve gone through this, and are part of a mass awakening: an awakening to the brutal depths of the sinister-side of humanity; we’re advancing all together, and alone as we evolve as humans.

Together, yet as individuals. Interconnected and interdependent and each on our own. There’s a collective transformation of consciousness underway, and we’re leading as the advance guard, as pioneers. So, no, everyone won’t understand, but we must; we must have answers.

Together We Understand, Heal, and Make Change

In breaking up with evil, others from the outside looking in, might think we’re only breaking up with some really bad guy or really awful woman… and have lost our minds, or should have known better… Think again world, because that’s no kind of answer; that’s founded in grave misunderstanding and missed opportunity.

What if we’re on the threshold of a new discovery? As if a part of the team that discovered the earth was round rather than flat? What if we’re part of a human revolution to avert the world from crumbling under self-absorbed destruction, and toward a unified realization that we’re of infinite value; that we each create our lives, and can make love-not-war, peace and joy, and happiness for all a reality?

We’re doing something big here. By finding the real answers behind these sickening traumas, we’re effecting paradigm shifts that will redirect the trajectory of our own lives, and of all humanity. – As I see it, we’re each a part of a much larger situation. We’re each of us who’ve been through this on a mission together, and together, we’re not alone.

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.

2019_05_04 2022_10_12

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

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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.

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

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.

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

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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.

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!

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.
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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.

2016_10_05 2022_10_12

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 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!

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.
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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.

2016_04_05 2022_12_09

How To Break Up With a Sociopath or Narcissist

When we see through the façade
we reach a moment when we want to
breakaway and end it.

Ending it with a narcissist or a sociopath is a very scary hell of its own. They seem so all-powerful and in control. In truth, sociopaths’ lives are shallow and transparent. They fall apart as we begin to glimpse their empty souls. The scary part is what they do to hang on.

They let us think we’re in a relationship and we feel we are. Therefore, naturally, we do what normal people do: We give it our all. And then as time passes we see that things aren’t adding up.

We’ve had enough promises, sob stories, chaos. Enough lies. When the malarkey outweighs the good we thought was there, we come to a point where we’re ready to toss out the trash.

When We’ve Had Enough of the Lies and Abuse from a Sociopath

Trash is all they are, but because we’re normal people, the thing is, it takes as long as it takes for us to absorb this. As they take what they want, lives are destroyed for their own survival and it not only doesn’t faze them, they take it as a personal accomplishment.

They spend our money. Want sexual things we don’t. Include us. Exclude us. Entrust us. Suspect us. Play sick. Stay out late. Keep us from our family or friends. Don’t work. Are gone a lot.

They pretend to work very hard. Don’t answer our texts. Don’t pick up our calls. Block us from their Facebook. Keep us from our faith. Cry fake tears. Lie even more. And more. Then lie some more.

We begin to not quite believe them… We have doubts. We then rationalize more, because that is normal. And then, more doubts, more nuttiness…. And then. Snap. No more. Nope. The spell breaks. This is when it’s suddenly more terrifying to stay than to leave.

Making your way out? Find the safest, swiftest way back to yourself.

End it With a Sociopath: Sociopaths aka Narcissists Know Every Scam Relationship Will End

If you’re not convinced these are scams rather than relationships, read these words from a self-professed sociopath about how we can get how to get rid of them. They want out too.

They know each scam will end, and if we want them out before they fail and bail – which most people think of as being devalued and discarded – but is not in fact what’s happening at all… We can do this:

“The best thing to do is to make the breakup seem like it was his or her choice. Like with ticks or other parasites, you want to “poison the well” so the sociopath willingly leaves. Become a helpless, emotionless, reactionless burden. Start being useless or contrary, without being openly defiant… Pretend you’re tired, sick, depressed, say you forgot your keys, you forgot to feed the goldfish, be incompetent but make everything seem like an accident. If the sociopath gets mad, say sorry, but don’t fight back. Say “I don’t know what’s come over me.” Have long phone conversations with your mother or other people the sociopath hates. In general, let yourself go completely and be as intolerable to live with as possible without being confrontational. After about three months (give or take), the sociopath will be out of your life. You should be in the clear after your sociopath has been gone three to six months. By that time the sociopath will not need you to satisfy any of her basic needs.”

~ Advice on how to make them leave, from a sociopath

Guidelines to Break Free of the Sociopath Nut Case

If you’ve been lied to, used for your money, they won’t lift a finger, they’ve stopped being physically intimate with you… that’s a sociopath laying up there on your couch.

Here are guidelines to end it with a sociopath safely and as quickly as can be and with the least fallout. There will be fallout. We will be frightened. It will feel like eons before they go. After they go we’ll go through post-traumatic stress. Doing nothing would be much, much, much, much, much, much, much worse. We can protect ourselves. We can take immediate action. We can end this.

How to Leave a Narcissistic Sociopath

You’re going to become useless. Cut off goods and services. The sociopath will be baffled, taken aback, and pissed….That dinner isn’t on the table so to speak. And leave within weeks. Keep loving. Keep living like a real human. We are awesome. You are awesome.

First Things First:

  1. Do not tell them we want out, and do not attempt a “break up talk”
  2. Do not confide in them, confess to them how you’re feeling
  3. Keep your feelings to yourself
  4. Don’t confront or question them about anything; be silent or passively agreeable
  5. Keep generally behaving as you have been
  6. Be a calm, pleasant, passive blank when they’re in the same room
  7. Do not allow your thoughts and plans of escaping roll through your mind in their presence
  8. Pretend to still like them just the same as before

The Next Thing We Can Do is Lie to Them

As unbelievable as it might seem, sociopaths are each and all alike. Identical tactics and the same limited thinking. We can use their weaknesses to get them gone. – You might be thinking of them as a narcissist and reading up on narcissists – that’s okay, but if you’ve been lied to or used for your money, they won’t lift a finger, and they have stopped being physically intimate with you… That’s a sociopath laying up there on your couch.

Sociopaths steal. Consider getting a Post Office Box and redirecting all your mail there.

Keep our plan to ourselves. Protect ourselves and our belongings immediately – secretly. Don’t hesitate. Do this now. Why…? – Because sociopaths steal and destroy at the end. They’re thieves. And liars. Psychopaths like to take things like a dog pissing on a fire hydrant – just to say: I was here. They want last-minute funding, a car, a credit card – and to leave us holding the bag.

They steal or sell identities. Do they all steal? Every time? If they feel like it – yes. They have no conscience. No guilt. No love. They’re criminals. And they’re mean. Better to protect ourselves than be tragically sorry.

Sociopaths Steal: Especially at the End of a “Relationship”

Remove all of the following from your home to a safe location such as a friend’s house, your workplace, or a safe deposit box. Use this checklist:

  1. Anything we care about for its sentimental or monetary value: The first items that come to mind are the ones. If he knows you treasure them, protect them. They go through our things – our drawers, closets, cupboards, dressers – that secret p! ace – they’ll sniff it out, to find things to take.
  2. Valuable jewelry in gold, silver, precious stones, watches, etc. Things they can pawn or sell.
  3. Cameras, laptops, audio gear, guns, anything easy to lift, and take away.
  4. Photographs of the two of you. Including evidence of his abuse, your marriage, and anything compromising.
  5. Documents. All of them. Anything legal. Copy his. Make copies of ours and the kids. Then, along with the originals secure them safely out of the house.

You don’t believe they’d steal…? Think again before it’s too late. Protect yourself.

Secure Originals & Copies Where the User Cannot Find Them

  • Passports
  • Social Security cards and numbers
  • Birth Certificates
  • Marriage Certificates
  • Mortgage papers
  • Car registrations
  • Auto insurance
  • Credit card information and statements and all numbers
  • Bank account information
  • Stocks, bonds, CDs, and all banking, investment, or monetary records
  • Immigration papers
  • Change all our passwords, PINS, and logins
  • Have extra house or apartment, even car keys made and give them to a trusted friend to hold
  • Write down numbers or better yet photocopies or take pictures of:
    • The sociopath’s Passport, IDs, driver’s licenses, credit cards
    • Bank or credit card statements
    • Social Security number
    • Receipts or pics or copies of wire money transfers from or to him or her
    • If he has a car write down his license plate number, car make and model, take photos of it, take down the VIN number
    • Keep photos of his face to ID him in case law enforcement, FBI, DEA or immigration become involved

Community Property in Marriage

If we’re married to them, in eight states within the United States, all of our belongings – belong to them. They can take them and do anything with them if we’re married. Really. They call it community property. — This works both ways, what’s theirs is ours.

There’s another thing called common property. Look up your state. If he or she steals while you’re married chances are nothing is a police matter or considered a crime. – Take care of ourselves.

Take your property. Whether married or not, transfer your personal savings and checking to another account. You can open a new account in a new bank or whatever feels most secure. Sociopaths steal. Consider getting a Post Office Box and redirecting all your mail there.

There’s nothing wrong or lacking in you that made this happen.

Be Safe When Leaving a Sociopath

Here’s what I did: Hands shaking I took his credit cards out of his wallet. – MY credit accounts that I’d made him an “authorized user” on – while he was in the shower. My heart was pounding out of my chest. Then – I lied. I said: The credit cards (three cards altogether) had been canceled by the card companies for going over the limit. –

He’d taken them over the limit – but I made no accusation, I gave no detail, no other explanation – I said it apologetically, but with conviction. I said I did it to protect him – I said if he used them in public they’d be confiscated by the retailer and, with a pathetic fake concern for him I passively whined, I wouldn’t want you to be embarrassed like that.

It absolutely worked: they believe anything you say. Was it scary…? Yes. Terrifying. I was saving my life.

Nothing Stops Them: We End It, We Stop It

Then a few days later I lied again. I said I’d lost my wallet so the checking account debit card had been canceled. I stopped putting my paycheck in our joint bank account – then I closed it. – Guess what? He knew how to reopen it.

I had to have the bank keep an eye out for 24 hours to make sure it stayed closed. I watched him stay in the game no matter what lie I told. The surreal mounts, but now we’re in control. Ride it out. The way will open.

There’s Nothing They Won’t Do or Say

Here’s the thing: sociopaths make all kinds of preposterous claims as they lie their way through life. – Amazingly I found I could say anything and he played along as if it were true, though I was sure he knew it wasn’t.

Simply say: Oh, gosh. Sorry, hon. And nothing else. That tiny line will do it all. Delivering it means you just graduated to “expert in deceiving a sociopath.” Be proud.

I’d stumbled on sociopath-magic-rules-of-engagement: any lie is true. It was almost a high to fly so near the fringes and outsmart this being I now called in my head: The Monster. It was pure improvisation – life-saving improvisation on my part… it was normal live-by-the-seat-of-his-pants-all-is-a-lie for him.

Underneath it, we both knew our dynamics were shifting like silently colliding tectonic plates deep within the foundations bringing inescapable unpredictable and life-threatening upheaval that I determined – no matter what – would settle as a forced departure for him – and freedom for me.

Protect Ourselves When a Sociopath Leaves

Passwords and PINS and logins. Change them. All. If we can – block him or her on social media. As in using the actual “block” function on Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, and all the rest. They won’t be notified, but they’ll also no longer see any of our Facebook, or other social media activity. – We also will not be able to see theirs. It’s called going no contact.

Shut Down the Things the Sociopath is Enjoying

Become absolutely useless to them. If we usually make dinner. Stop. If we normally take out the garbage and make the bed. Don’t. Forget his dry cleaning. Stop doing his laundry or leave it lumpy and half-damp in the laundry basket. Passively, quietly, humbly, meekly, say, “Oh, my gosh. I’m so sorry, hon.” And nothing else. Period You just gave a lifesaving Academy Award-winning performance. Keep it up.

Forget his favorite food. Sleep late, Stop cleaning. Disappear after work without calling him. Leave the car without gas. Forget to pay the internet bill – tell him it’s being shut off. Tell him your savings account is empty. Don’t talk at home. Keep to yourself. Sleep. Go into your room. Leave unexpectedly. Talk to your sister even though they hate it when we do.

Focus on Your Well Being From This Moment On

Do whatever truly lifts you up and leads to breakthroughs. Go back to church if that was your thing pre-nutbag. Or step into meditation, wok out, make art, attend your book club meetings, or whatever faith or strength-giving endeavor they tried to stop you from practicing. When they talk look away, bored. Walk out of the room.

Think about replacing, swapping out the time you spent with them for an activity that you love… Something else. When they ask: Have something else to do at the times you used to spend with them. Add to that, zero cash to hand out. Pay no more of their bills. Simply say: Oh, gosh. Sorry, hon, implying vapid, passive stupidity on your part. Say nothing else. That tiny line will do it all. Delivering that kind of deflecting new reality for your safety and to maneuver them out of your life means you just graduated to “expert in deceiving a sociopath.” Be proud.

Prepare For Safety and a Smooth Exit

Consider carrying a change of clothes and overnight things or having spares at work. Just a precaution. – Again this is without their knowledge. – If the sociopath invading your life is already violent with you – all the more so take this precaution.

Make extra house keys. Give some to a really trusted good friend who had no connection to the sociopath. If you’re leaving the clutches of an actively violent sociopath please check with professional advisers on domestic violence.

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.

2016_02_13 2023_08_05