Tag Archives: how to know if someone is a narcissist

4 Stages of True Love Scam Recovery

Recovery from a con man.
We’re gob-smacked by the discovery our significant other is
a human-soul-ransacking, life-sucking,
parasitic-destroyer.

Recover from a con man…? Wow. I mean…how did this become something we need to know about? This discovery that these shape-shifting beasts of evil exist is nothing we’d ever have imagined for our lives.

For many, the idea that someone would lie to them has not crossed their mind. And then to discover that potentially an entire relationship is a lie…? This is the hardest thing we’ll ever do, no doubt about it.

con man recover

I had so many questions about this phenomenon and found, realized, and discovered answers to every one of them. The recovery and reassembling your life isn’t easy. It takes courage. You will discover how incredibly amazing you are as a fully normal human. – And that all the things you did, said, hoped for, and were confused by are absolutely normal.

We can, you can recover from a con man or the female version of these creatures. Though it’s a winding and challenging and unknown road, have no doubts, after the traumatic fake-lationship, PTSD, and healing we rise.

What is recovered enough for you?
There are four phases we pass through
going from hell to normal again.

Recovery Means Restored Joy

You can come away from this joyful again. You will smile and you will laugh for that genuine place once again. By being thrown into the fire we can forge ourselves to reveal our greater selves.

The most common term used to talk about these life thieves is “narcissist”. This is unfortunately another confusion within the confusion. The reason I say this is because there are people who are narcissistic in this pathological sense in which this person is driven by the way their brain is designed to live as a parasite – to use others rather than connect and care.

Seeing the Sociopath Reveals All Who Are and Those Who Are Not

Then, there are also people who are narcissistic but not of this pathological, evil mind. When both are called “narcissists” there are some truly unfortunate misunderstandings in the way that prolong or prohibit recovery. I will say, that by taking in the full and whole scope of what a sociopath is, the people who are merely dysfunctionally narcissistic also come into clearer light.

If you’ve resonated with the experiences described on my website, you’ve been embroiled and entangled by the pathological kind. The merely dysfunctionally narcissistic person, though sometimes mean or confounding and frustrating, is not motivated by this pathology of sociopathy.

Prey and Parasitic Predator

As targets of a person of this pathology – the pathologically narcissistic, we’ve been targeted by an ASPD, antisocial personality disorder, or what is called an antisocial psychopath in colloquial terms, a sociopath.

As you unwind this and heal grieve, heal, and restore your life, you’re going to be amazed at the depths of emotion and power your life has. And the same applies if you’ve been dragged through hades by a person you’re calling a narcissist. Same thing.

You’re In Trauma Due To a Narcissistic Sociopath

1. Traumatic Event

The prime traumatic event is recognizing the person we love is a monster. This is really a jolt to every bit of our being. We take a physical, mental, and emotional hit. To take in the idea that our life has been a total and complete lie for the length of time we have been married or to living with and in love with or even simply dating this malevolent being is beyond imagining for those who haven’t been here.

As those who have, now know evil. We’re on a first-name basis with a demon that looks like a human. And here’s the good news. This really can become a benefit to your life. And this is meant on a profound level, not mere superficial optimism.

We Decide to Win and We Decide What Winning Is

Right here, at this moment, we determine the outcome of this life-altering event. We can stand up. We take back ourselves and our lives. It’s up to us to find the pathway to resolving each loss, to grieving the loss of what we thought was real but wasn’t … and discovering how amazing we are and how our great human gorgeousness was never lost.

They need us, we do not need them – though that feeling we’ll die without them is elicited from the depths of our souls moments after being hooked in. This is another bizarre effect of the sociopathic-zap.

We have this moment – here, right now – to vow to be victorious in our lives in a way we never would have been without this crisis. This is a bit of a new idea, I’d imagine. This doesn’t mean, “this had to happen for me to be a success in life”. This is: Since this did happen, I’m taking it on and creating value out of it. Winning is our decision to make. It is in our hands.

The Aftermath is PTSD and CPTSD: This is Normal

2. The Unavoidable Fallout of the Traumatic Event

What happens when we realize: The calls are coming from inside the house, as in every scary babysitter there’s-someone-in-the-house movie? What happens when the person we knock boots with is actually the monster? What happens is hell, but I don’t have to tell you that… What we do is decide to restor our lives

Turns out a sociopath and their target are constantly living in two different realities in the same moment. – We’re never in the room for the same reason.

The first three words refer to stress after trauma. That “D” on the end, stands for “disorder.” Please don’t imagine that “disorder” is more than a clumsy word for meaning anything other than the normal and expected need to heal.

Think about it like this, if we break a leg are we “disordered”? Do we need psych drugs? Do we need antidepressants to be ourselves again?

Usually, we just need healing. Usually, family and friends, even neighbors rally around us with hot meals, pillows, and good books. It’s similar in the PTSD after a sociopath. But different.

We weren’t in relationships, these are scams, and that’s why there’s trauma. Don’t believe me… Read what these nasty creatures say about things like the death of a family member, or maybe their mom.

Recover From a Con Man: You Can Heal, Restore, Renew

3. Healing

In true love scam recovery, it’s common that victims blame themselves. Self-blame is a trait of all post-traumatic stress. Survivors of plane crashes, fires, earthquakes, wars, and certainly wars and genocide suffer from this. In these instances, it’s called survivors guilt. 

They beat themselves up with: Why did I live?! Why am I the one? Why did they die?! – Plagued with feelings of guilt that they could have done something differently to save others. Depression, weight loss, suicidal thoughts, despair, lethargy, exhaustion, physical illness, and grief become daily companions. Sound familiar?

We must actively participate, create, sculpt, define, demand, and find our recovery and restoration. Be aware of what you believe this all was… Sometimes it’s basic beliefs we’ve taken on about this that get in the way of restoring our lives.

For example, if you feel you need to “do the work“ on yourself and become a better person in order to recover, consider that you may be adopting and accepting ideas that place the blame for this happening at your feet.

This represents a skewed and inaccurate recovery model that will take you not to recovered but to more disappointment and despair, and bad feelings about yourself.

While self-improvement is fine, self-improvement or an improved self wasn’t lacking or needed as the cause or the preventative for this life-jacking you were dragged through.

Remember everything they did was about and for themselves. It has nothing to do with you.

Post-Traumatic Stress Is Normal

Yes. Because post-traumatic stress is post-traumatic stress. We think we see him around the corner. These moments we weep, tremble and have nausea anticipating his next move or a court date. In turns we feel stupid, foolish, maybe even think it’s our fault – we aren’t and it isn’t. 

One of the hallmarks of PTSD is having thoughts that have no place in the realness of life. This is a reason to not take our thoughts seriously during this time. To be patient. To embrace ourselves with compassion. We are beautiful.

There Is No Side-Stepping the Post Trauma

Just like accident victims see the airline or car crashing all over again. Veterans hear the screams of battle we think we see them around the corner or across the street or turning left at the light ahead in traffic. Our survivor’s guilt is sometimes: Why did I let him do that to me? – Why? Because we’re human. Because we’re trusting, loving people – who believed a monster in disguise.

There’s no shame in being good. There’s no blame for not being clairvoyant. And news flash – real inside surreal: they didn’t do it to us. We could have been anyone. It wasn’t personal. There’s really nothing about us that made us attract or bring the conning scammer to us – nothing other than being a great person.

True love scam recovery takes specific care, just as with any other PTSD, healing takes time. We are not “disordered”, as in having a mental condition, in any other sense than in the need to heal.

Healing PTSD Takes Time, Patience, and Effective Healing Methods

The Confusion, Sadness, Sleeping… It’s all Part of Healing

The true love scam recovery cycle has ups and downs. Like any endeavor, there are steps forward and a tiny step back, move forward, back, further forward, and a bit back until we are fully healed.

Our physical, mental, and emotional health require restorative and rejuvenating care. Sleep, good nutrition, supplements like B and C, and adrenal support. Walking when we can. Yoga. Hiking. Swimming. Low-impact movement that gets oxygen flowing and our hearts stronger. Spend time only with family and those who love us. Friends who love us. Cuddle kittens and puppies. Don’t listen to love songs.

4. Recover From a Con Man: Rise Up

We Are Everything We Need

Blossoming from PTSD is possible! In complete healing, we rise up like the Phoenix from the ashes; creating a beautiful life because of having gone through the despair.

The word crisis in Chinese translates to opportunity. We can, in fact, rewire the synapses in our brains to erase and heal the trauma. There is nothing we could have done differently. What we do now, that’s the thing that matters.

A sociopath aka monster knows quite well that by being themselves, the lives of people they make use of and deceive are shattered into shards. They don’t understand what you’re going through. They don’t care about what you’re going through.

Find every answer.

These Beasts Know What They Are

They are precisely what they are and are severely limited in this. It’s their brain, wired with the inability to feel positive bonding emotions. Like a slithery reptile, they may take pleasure from lying in the sun, but also like a reptile they take pleasure in eating their prey, even their own children.

Sociopaths and what you might think of as a narcissist live every day of their lives needing us. Or someone like us. Some human who thinks they re normal. — That monster needs you for survival… not the other way around.

At times, I thought the malevolent being I married and I were sharing a laugh, a  joyful moment, or a sense of accomplishment over a goal we reached together. None of this is true. Turns out, a sociopath and their target are constantly living in two different realities within the same moment. – We’re never in the room for the same reason.

I’d find myself laughing genuinely, joyful and happy when we accomplished something that was part of what we were trying to achieve. I was the only one.

He was laughing at the ease with which he was scamming me, sickeningly gleeful at his betrayal (not a betrayal in a sociopath’s mind – simply their right), and feeling exaggerated elation at a win behind my back, using me without my awareness. A story you know well if you’re on these pages.

Sociopaths Love No One: Not Even Us, Or Her, Or Him

They’re all the same. – There is no woman, man, or child on the planet they will ever treat genuinely well, they’re incapable. There is no living person on the planet – no other woman who will ever be loved, or loved more, or loved better by them. They do not love… anyone.

There is no woman better for them. There’s no man more suited to them. A narcissistic sociopath’s world – their entire existence – is hell for anyone near them. Learn to reframe the nightmare or you’ll not be free. you can recover from a con man.

Welcome to the club; you’re not alone! There are so many (too many) men and women in the aftermath of a hijacking. Each gorgeous one of you “replaced” even before they met you in essence. There are always several, maybe dozens of simultaneous true love scams going on. The parasitic, predatory sociopath aka narcissist juggles women and men like oranges or tennis balls.

Resources Without Consent

You’re a source: of money, food, shelter, sex, respectability, connections, whatever it is they scammed us for. The sociopath who hijacked me, while we were married and living together as it turns out had at least the following.

Two other wives, 18 kids, three fiances, three other women he lived with, two women sending him money every month, one man sending him money every month, another man sending him $2,000 at a time randomly here and there, nine girlfriends – all who thought he loved them and only them – and ten to fifteen satellite women – and men – at any given time. This is what they are. Even if we don’t discover it all, the rate of shocking information is higher than the sky.

You were, as I was, an ATM. And the thing about ATMs is that there’s always another one around the corner. Sociopaths and what you might think of as a narcissist live every day of their lives needing us. Or someone like us. Some human who thinks they’re normal. — That monster needs you for survival… not the other way around.

You, We as Normal Humans Are Awesome

There’s a healing bright side to all this: It wasn’t personal. They didn’t do it “to us”. Bizarrely we could have been anyone. We are replaceable and interchangeable. So, cut him or her off in our hearts and we are free.

When I saw precisely how cruel, cold, calculated, and hideous this thing standing before me was, all care for him evaporated. 100% gone. Does this mean I was immediately okay? no. Not by a million miles. But I made myself okay. It took intuition, information, time, support, friends, and family, and won back in all ways what winning was in this nightmare for me. You can too.

Kick ’em in the behind and get them gone. Go no contact, be a non-threat. Then repair, rejuvenate and thrive! Embrace our lives. Beam the compassion and empathy, loyalty, and caring they targeted us for on ourselves.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Feel free to email me for coaching at personalized rates, jennifer@truelovescam.com

Time to Thrive!

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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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Con After Con: Movies, Books, Television

Con after con, we’ve got novels,
films, plays from comedies to dramas talking about it.
Entertainment replete with stories
of con men and women
out doing and undoing the normal “guy” or “gal”.

When a con man – a sociopath – gets the best of you – your impulse s to tell someone or several someones. You have too… It’s part of recovering. Personally, I told lots of people. Most people were amazed. All people eager to listen – to a point.

Quite a few had been in relationships with sociopaths themselves but didn’t realize it. Most were sympathetic, but empathy (really feeling it) was nowhere in sight. Who can know what this madness is…?

Then there was that just didn’t get it at all. They had questions, like: How did you fall for that!?… Like it was a joke; kinda laughing or incredulous. And Didn’t you know he was a scammer?

And one of my favorites when I’d say we met and married within seven days, OooOOOohhhh, while they nod their heads. As if that makes hijacking my life in deceptive crime, okay, and clearly: My fault. – Wrong. But none the less everyone was interested in the story and that’s why there are so many such stories in our pop culture and media.

Fact or Fiction: Everyone Loves a Good Story as Long as It Isn’t Happening to Them

In addition to stories of cons in the news constantly, our entertainment is swollen with con stories. Many of them based on true stories. And yet at a real-life, personal level the one scammed can come into question and – we ourselves can hold onto doubt. We run thoughts through our minds like, Did I do something to make it happen? Here are the answers to both: Anyone can fall for a con. No one can recognize a con man and fall for the con! We did nothing to “make it happen”.

Tales from Real Life or Pure Non-Fiction: Con After Con

con artists sociopath in movies books

It’s a common thought that writers can only write about what they know, so how come so many writers are very aware of cons and yet life targets and prey have another shock and often find the real betrayal in the face of this horrific trauma at the hands of a conman?

Keep in mind, if a friend you’re confiding in isn’t empathetic they are not “bad” – just unaware – and, at this time, not right for you to tell your story to or look to as a shoulder or a rock.

Please, sweet girl or guy – move on to someone who is empathetic, sympathetic, non-judgmental and loves you, as your support person while discovering the surreal reality and resolving your losses and in restoring your gorgeous self.

Discover lightbulb moments.
Find your way back to you.

Antisocial Psychopaths: From Killers to Con Artists

Scary stuff and some laughs involving the scariest creatures on earth. They’re here everywhere: Both Sociopaths and Psychopaths are born with the same abnormal brain landing them in the mental health category “antisocial psychopath”, ASP. The psychopath has an extra bit that overrides the rest: They love other’s pain.

And don’t be fooled this Halloween… a covert, overt, or malignant narcissist is a sociopath within our experience of them, just not in that DSM, medical manual – ’cause that thing isn’t written for us. It’s written by researchers who like to categorize things into many splinter descriptions.

It’s constantly changing. It’s for prison sentencing determinations, drug prescriptions and social services allotments. For us, we need to get to the root of their motivation and how they’re alike vs. how they’re each dissimilar for our recovery and freedom.

A Classic Comic Film Example of How a Con Artist Thinks

In the Steve Martin, Michael Caine comedy classic: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the first 13 minutes of the film reveals the utter truth about con artists. At 11 minutes and 52 seconds in, we hear the kernel of a con artist’s functioning affably, nonchalantly voiced by kind, goofy, and lovable funnyman, Steve Martin.

See Steve Martin on The David Letterman Show on YouTube

As the audience we have seen both Michael Caine and Steve Martin set up and pull off mini-scams, The two men are strangers to one another, both passengers on a train to a village in France populated by notoriously wealthy inhabitants.

Michael Caine has observed Steve Martin’s scenario scamming a woman out of an abundant meal in the dining car using a story about his sick grandmother. Finally, they meet in a private passenger car. Michael Caine hiding his own true-scamming-self feels out Steve Martin – con man to con man:

Mr. Martin, a “regular, good-hearted guy”
entering the train compartment where
Mr. Caine, a “dapper nobleman” reads a newspaper:


Mr. Martin:   …Forgot I had a first-class ticket. (Opens blinds.) That bother you?
Mr. Caine:      No.

Mr. Martin:    (Blithely singing) “I love to love you in the night…”

Mr. Caine:      I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation in the dining car.
  My condolences to your grandmother.
Mr. Martin:    Hhuuuh? Oh! (Chuckles.) Oh Ha… Right.

Mr. Caine:      Didn’t you say she was taken ill?

Mr. Martin:    I tell ’em what they wanna hear if it gets me what I want.

Mr. Caine:      Rather a shabby trick isn’t it?

Mr. Martin:    I can tell you’ve got a lot to learn about women.

Mr. Caine:      Yes, I’m afraid I am a bit naive when it comes to the weaker sex.

End Scene. – And Con Man 101 Class.

But what the thing is here… Both of them, both characters in Dirty Rotten Scoundrel’s played by Steve Martin and Michale Caine are con men. And they team up, and con one another and a woman comes into the picture and she’s con artist too… and

For fun: Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman,
Alan Arkin, directed by Zach Braff,
cast members of a bank robber caper movie, “Going In Style”,
interviewed by The Guardian

Films and Novels

Films: Con Artists… People Who Aren’t Who They Say They Are and Can and Do Kill, but Killing Isn’t their Main Jam

  • Paper Moon, Starring Ryan O’Neal and Oscar winner, nine-year-old, Tatum O’Neal
  • The Grifters, starring Annette Bening, John Cusack
  • Academy Award-winning, The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio
  • The Sting, starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman, 70’s magic
  • For Julia Roberts fans, there’s the 80’s thriller, Sleeping with the Enemy
  • Catch Me if You Can, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks
  • The Talented Mr. Ripley, starring Matt Damon, and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman
  • Big Eyes, starring Amy Adams
  • Black Mass, about Whitey Bulger, played by Johnny Depp
  • Fracture, with the gorgeous Ryan Gosling, in an incredible performance, and the ever-perfect-psychopath, Sir Anthony Hopkins

Episodic Television Chock Full of Sociopaths

  • Dirty John, the first season is based on a real-life situation in Newport California
  • Succession
  • Sneaky Pete, with Giovanni Ribisi
  • Game of Thrones, King Joffrey
  • The character Smurf, played by Ellen Barkin in Animal Kingdom
  • Peaky Blinders, though they tone it down, show them “loving” and you love them all.

Films and TV with the Psychopath Bent

  • Joker, Joaquin Pheonix, playing the most current psychopath
  • American Psycho, starring Christian Bale, on the psychopath end of Antisocial Psychopath
  • The Silence of the Lambs, a classic, of the Chianti and fave beans and Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster
  • Mindhunter
  • Dexter, though in real life Dexter would not genuinely love anyone

Norman Bates, from Bates Motel, is often confused with a psychopath… He isn’t. He’s schizophrenic and psychotic.

Documentaries Showing the Effect and Ruin of Sociopaths

  • FYRE, The Biggest Party That Never Happened, Netflix: an amazing non-romance scam that shows us everything we went through objectively
  • Gringo, The Dangerous Life of John McAfee, on Netflix: about security software developer and gazillionaire, John McAfee
  • Leaving Neverland
  • Surviving R Kelly, Netflix: this one is definitely haunting, I thought of it for three days after; view with caution and the stop button handy
  • Holy Hell, on Netflix: still out and bout functioning as a predator, another self-appointed guru, and spiritual leader; only Andreas (or whatever name he’s using today) can show you God
  • Wild, Wild Country, on Netflix: Bhagwan Shri Ragneesh who now days goes by Osha. Yah, I grew up in Oregon, these orange garbed followers were everywhere
  • Bikram, on Netflix: a Beverly Hills-based “hot” yoga instructor and self-appointed guru, prosecuted for sexual harassment and rape

Know any great videos or books?

Books Centered on Sociopath Characters

  • Tess of the D’Ubervilles, written by Thomas Hardy
  • East of Eden, written by John Steinbeck
  • The Lodger, written by Marie Belloc Lowndes – This one’s a psychopath
  • Match Stick Men, written by Eric Garcia also a film with Nick Cage
  • Catch Me if You Can, written by Frank W. Abagnale
  • The Talented Mr. Ripley, written by Patricia Highsmith

Watching These Can Be Upsetting or Informative

As you can and want to, watch anything that helps you sort through the crazy and come to terms that these kinds of people exist. That they’re like this and will be for the foreseeable future. They aren’t here for the same reason we are.

Once we get into accepting and profoundly understanding their quite simplistic motivation that is unrelated to our interpretations most often… We can be free. When we know what they are and recognize them we’ll not fall into their hypnotic vortex. We won’t be lunch. The predator moves on to other things. – We win.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

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SOS Partners
As a certified coach upholding ICF standards and ethics, I strive to inform, educate, co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach 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. We decide what winning is. We win.

 Mental Health News Radio Network
Interview, 2017

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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 Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.