Fearless and free is the opposite of where we land after a sociopath. Long after the loser is gone we might have a lingering fear. This is the opposite of what we want to be, which is: happy as a lark!
Fearless and free is a place we make our way to… Are we still shaking and quaking long after they exit? Our freedom is really, really in our hands. Become fearless and free. And start singing our favorite tune!
There are two reasons why we might still be fearful: one maybe we still know too much about what the nutter is up to at this point in time – the other is not having a handle on what a sociopath really is and what that means – which causes the first.
We can restore our beautiful selves, with a renewed awareness of how amazing we are, new knowledge about life itself and the freedom to be fearless in love.
If we know what he or she is doing, where he is, or who his current main-scam is we know too much. If we know what they’re telling others about us this very week or month… we know way too much – Essentially we’re still in contact. And this means we are not yet fearless or free.
They know when we’ve truly cut them off, and they know when we haven’t. They feel it. Cut them loose completely. In case this has gone unnoticed, we’re the ones who end it, they do not. Only “no contact” stops them and sets us free.
After the masquerade is over, we’re “broken up”, separated, divorced – when the initial shock of ptsd is long past, but we have lingering fear we want to ask ourselves – why?
Though we may not be calling him or texting – if somehow we’re aware of his status and actions – sorry to say but – this constitutes “contact.” We can’t heal or recover while still in contact. This is a roadblock to healing.
For super-duper clarity, read here, What is No Contact? Here’s one tidbit: we’re checking his Facebook page… We’re still in contact, but for a brief period in the aftermath that canned normal for us to do.
How Do We Know What the Nut Job Sociopath is Up To?
Let’s be for real’s here, examining the source of the things we know about his or her doings. Is this info we come across on social media or wherever it might be directly from them… Posted by them? His Facebook? Her Instagram? — If we wanna get better, there comes the day we gotta get a hold of ourselves and get off their social media.
Their Co Called Friends Are Not Our Friends
We also can ask, ourselves, is the source of info about him or her coming from someone we still contact who has contact with him or her?! YIKES. Please consider this… Why are we still in touch with his “friends”?
Even if they were our friends first – sad to say but their trauma and entanglement with the predator means we’re at risk and wide open to the sociopath if we stay in touch with them.
Fearless and Free Includes Closing Every Opening to Them
Sad to say but we really must block them. Remove ourselves from the sociopath’s reach including portholes and windows and doors ajar through our friends who are now ensnared by them, and certainly from all “friends” the pathological user introduced us to. And finally, wherever it’s originating where ever we’re getting the news of his whereabouts – end it.
No Contact is about Freedom and Safety
Block whatever that source is in all our devices, on FB and everywhere. Get a new phone number, block his or her number and the phone number of anyone connected to them.
Sociopaths, and those pathological users some call a narcissist always have to move on, as in leave and change locations, change areas of town and maybe countries. Every scam and love fraud they undertake eventually blows up.Cutting our connection to them weakens their connection to us.
They know when we’ve truly cut them off, and they know when we haven’t. They feel it. Cut them loose completely. In case this has gone unnoticed, we’re the ones who end it, they do not. Only “no contact” stops them and sets us free.
Breaking Up With Evil, Book 1, Caryn: Flat Our Wrong
We’re Our Own Angels
We make the ending of this story… Healing and overcoming lingering fear after a sociopath is very much in our own hands. Find a perspective on the madness that lands things on the right side of “good”.
It’s critical that we begin to take in what a sociopath really is. We can’t allow sentimentality, romanticizing, or misplaced forgiveness to keep us bound to their harm.
Stand up. Take our lives back. Renew. Become whole and better than before. Give this to ourselves. – No one else can. And – we can. We truly are our own saving grace. Decide our lives are valuable enough. Claim them. Be fearless and free.
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
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.
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.
Hardly. Sociopaths are not intelligent. No conscience makes for no limits, not genius.
Are sociopaths intelligent? Geniuses? What sociopaths do in order to con is as old as dirt. Their tactics are similar in concept to what lab rats do to get cheese. They try and try and learn a few tricks to get the cheese. It’s also a bit like a martial art.
Sociopaths use the strengths and weaknesses and the just plain normal of their targeted prey and everyone around them to their own advantage.
They get so mad.
Because sociopaths view other people as an opportunity, as a resource…Part of the trouble is that we don’t know we’re being thought of in this way.
This gives them the leading advantage. So in that way, they have “intelligence”… sort of like a spy who knows something you don’t know they know with an intention you aren’t aware of.
Other than that the sociopath (the narcissist) seriously lacks any real intelligence even though people often call narcissists – sociopaths – intelligent or masters of manipulation. The truth is, they’re dumber than boxes of rocks. They’re about as deep as a potato chip.
Sociopaths’ Intelligence
The thing is they exist on a different level than we do. They’re in a primal survival places as parasitic predators. I’ve seen sociopaths behavior as absolutely ridiculous…laughable if it weren’t profoundly harmful. I can’t call them “intelligent” in the way we normally think of “intelligence”…
I see the sociopaths’ so-called intelligence is comparable to learn tricks like frantic lab rats desperate to push the button that brings cheese. More than intelligence it’s an accumulation of “tricks” fused with cunning driven by the desire to survive. It’s animalistic in essence and focus.
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared, and 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.
We do tend to think of them as “intelligent”, but isn’t this impression or interpretation of them directly linked to them doing things we’d never think of, let alone “do”? Their closed-circuit-world-of-self has no room for genuine intelligence.
I landed on them being described as “cunning” because cunning is fueled by something less elevated than “intelligence”. Cunning lays in a lower level of life-condition, one that’s more simplistic, direct and animalistic. One that’s more self-oriented.
He developed a method of opening the fridge door, leaving it half-closed on his own arm, then heaving with one foot against the top of the pig’s head groping to grab his own avocado and tofu. Every single night.
I liken the intelligence of sociopaths to cunning…In part this came to me by observing and experiencing the pet pig that belonged o a friend of mine. This piggy, cute and tiny at first, even soft and cuddly was beloved by my friend.
Deception From Day One
But, the thing is…when anyone takes on a pet pig – marketed as a tea cup or miniature pig -they don’t realize that there’s no such thing. There are pigs, and pigs. What “pig sellers” don’t tell you is that this sweet, tiny piggy, snuggling up as you watch TV on the couch together, will grow bigger. And bigger. And bigger. Because a “tea cup pig” is a farmyard pig.
It will grow to be much, much stronger, harsher, prickly. Then dirty. And stinky. And massively fat. – So here’s the first parallel: if you have a pet pig, you’re living a deception about what the future with this animal will be; you’re deceived about what this animal really is. Same with a sociopath, or that creature you’re calling a narcissist. They are not who or what we think they are.
Pigs sprout a wet, snot-slicked, heaving disc of a snout they use constantly to root, grunt, and grind against anything and everything – including my friend’s leg or any nearby leg – 24-hours a day unless asleep, always looking for food. Perpetually. Relentlessly.
I’ll tell you right now this hard plated skull and snout as it jams into your lower leg hurts incredibly! Just think about 100 pounds of pure skull bored with all the weight of a starving 350-pound animal into your ankle bone.
Calling a Pig and a Sociopath Equally Cunning is Not to Disparage Pigs
Now let’s be clear here: Are pigs sociopaths? No. But sociopaths are pigs. That relentless, primal force of persistence in the face of anything and everything. No other “mode” of operation. In addition, pathological predators are dumb. Ignorant. Conniving. Sneaky. A great pretense of smartness is put forth by them.
Counting On Our Kindness and Soft Hearts
That pig tricked food out of my friend. It stole entire loaves of bread off countertops while my friend made a sandwich, balancing on its hind hooves, grabbing the bread bag with its slimy, little piggy teeth.
It yanked kitchen drawers out of the wall by the handle in his iron clamp of a jaw. Spah-Lllaaaaaahttt! they crashed to the linoleum where piggy-pig snuffled through the contents hoping for a morsel, any crumb to eat; baggies, and aluminum foil flying. Nothing stopped this pig.
Screeching and squealing he snarfed up the Oreo’s, packaging and all. Have you ever heard a pig squeal when you try to take your own Oreo’s back?
When my friend tried to make dinner, the pig routinely knocked into my friend’s legs, causing him to buckle at the knees falling against the edge of the Frigidaire while that pig nabbed goodies: grapes, avocado, tomatoes, strawberries, even ice cubes.
My friend, once again upright, had to devise an alternate route to his own dinner. He developed a method of opening the fridge door, leaving it half-closed on his own arm, then heaving with one foot against the top of the pig’s head groping to grab his own avocado and tofu. Every single night.
My friend was completely terrorized by an animal he’d taken in as a household pet. – His generous, animal-adoring heart was knee-deep in guilt and what some call a trauma-bond which is to say bound up by the soft-pink-innocent-piggy he loved so much.
Emotional intelligence is considered – certainly the most useful form of intelligence if not the highest form. We as highly empathetic people have emotional intelligence by the ton.
You ask why not put the pig in another room, or outside while food is being prepared and eaten by the humans in the household..? That pig had broken the door latches on every door inside the house. The doors between the dining room and the kitchen simply wouldn’t shut. Which meant he couldn’t be contained in the kitchen or corralled for subduing.
Added slide bolts were useless. He’d battered the doors until the added slidey-thing-a-mah-jigs popped out of their screws like gum out of a bubble pack. Even any dining chairs wedged underneath the handles in hopes of holding him had caved under his pressure, the legs cracked right off dangling like broken teeth.
If it was left outside in the gorgeous backyard with a full view of the city below to admire, its own personal mud pit to wallow in, and shoots of plants to nibble, all it could seem to do was screech bloody murder. A porcine human-being-murdered-shrieking sound you’d have to hear to believe. – It had to be let back inside before the neighbors called the cops. – This pig owned that house and the people in it.
Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
Sociopaths are Cunning: Like Pigs
It became an ordinary day that Piggity listened for the front door to open. Raised his snout into the air and sniffed out the booty being carried in from the market.
Heaving and hurling his body into motion, Mr. Pig, ran down the hallway to the foyer, his cloven hooves tappity-scratching, a forewarning of inevitable harm, inspiring dread in the poor human carrying in the groceries. Its rotund, lumbering form clickity-clattered along the bamboo floor at the fastest velocity it could hurtle its 200 pounds, which was shockingly fast.
He was forced to face the fact, after all my friend’s care, love and generosity towards this pig: That pig tried to kick him out of his own home… And had been waiting for the chance to do it.
In a practiced, now ritual gesture it slid to a partial stop as he hit his mark, deftly clamping the brown paper bag from the bottom corner in the steel-vise grip of his yellow, gruesome fang-teeth, yanked backward shifting his massive, quivering weight into his hind-quarters, ripping a gaping wound in the bag: apples, cookies, bananas cascaded in a smacking, tumbling avalanche.
That pig snorted up all it could get its dirty claws and snotty nose on. Single-minded, the top of its metal-plate-of-a-skull bulldozed my friend’s hand out of its way, while screeching and squealing he snarfed up the Oreos, packaging and all. Have you ever heard a pig squeal when you try to take your own Oreos back?
Sociopaths, Narcissists Do Anything to Get What They Want: So Do Pigs
That pig tore up my friend’s bedsheets, pooped, and pissed in the house whenever he felt like it. One fateful day, while my friend got the mail from the street-side mailbox, piggy-piglet adorably (maliciously) slammed the front door shut with his dripping, drooling face, and battleship head. The door slammed and locked. My friend had no keys with him. He was only getting the mail.
To get back into his own home he had to clamber over his own 6” fence. Splinters threaded into his hands as he scrambled up the fence, just shy of breaking an arm when he dropped to the backyard mud. (It used to be grass, but the pig ate it.)
Trust Our Heart of Hearts and Our Gut
In his heart knowing, knowing the pig had done this on purpose. And, for all my friend’s dismay, hurt and sweaty gymnastics, scaling those splintering planks would have been fruitless if the back entries hadn’t been sliding glass doors that the pig couldn’t budge. He was forced to face the fact, after all my friend’s care, love, and generosity towards this pig: That pig tried to kick him out of his own home… And had been waiting for the chance to do it.
Think about it this way: sociopaths have no emotional intelligence since their abnormal, under-functioning brains disallow processing or feeling any emotions other than want, anger, fear, deluded superiority, and glee at getting what they want.
Sociopaths’ Intelligence Is Proportional to Us Not Knowing What They Are
The pig stood there inside the house, staring out at my friend across the patio entry. It looked up at my flabbergasted, panting, scrapped up, trembling friend – hair tousled, glasses knocked crooked, arms scraped, hands throbbing with wood slivers. His heart, body, and pride had been through the wringer as he reflected on how close he came to breaking his legs or a hip.
That piggy blinked his wire-like, pale lashes with its usual dumb, innocent expression… but, this time my friend saw this fat, pink face also held a warning: The pig had failed in his take-over this time, but there would be the next time. – Except there wasn’t. Because the very next day my friend sent that piggy away to a farm for unwanted, unmanageable pigs. There are apparently many such pigs on many such farms.
Think of it Like This: Sociopaths are as out of control of their own existence and survival as the most helpless creature on earth. – If we didn’t believe them, where would they be? – Why Do We Believe The Lies of a Sociopath?
Our Empathy Buys Sociopaths Time to Take and Ruin
My friend felt so guilty, he gave that little piglet so many 2nd chances. Oh, that pig knew what he was doing. So do sociopaths. And it’s all riotous improvisation just like with the little piggy. – Snuffling out one opportunity after the next. Never ceasing in the hunt. Leaving us to leap tall fences. – But that’s okay – we’re our own Super Heroes. We are our own Angels. We are awesome!
Pathological Predators Hijack Our Humanity: Shut Down the Candy Store
So a sociopath, like the revolting pig my friend took in as a defenseless, sweet pet (sorry animal lovers) uses our own strengths and weaknesses against us; our normal human gorgeousness – against us. Our own desires for love, a family, a home, a good life – against us.
They are monsters. They aren’t intelligent. Just remorseless. Sociopaths have no wholesome or real emotional connection to us, or to anyone. Not even with that other woman, or that one, or the other one, or two that other guy either.
They Have Pea Brains
We can use the sociopath’s limited brain against them: realize it’s a crime – not a relationship by any means. Know they lie about any and all things. Everything they say or do is to get what they want and not get caught. Understand the meaning behind the stories.
Don’t respond to their emotional harassment and playing sick and sob stories. End the madness that is not a relationship – but a crime asap. Go zero contact and stay there forever. We end it, they won’t. We must reframe the nightmare for a full recovery and to render ourselves sociopath-proof forever.
I’m very sorry to say that this friend of mine, a former success in the music industry, was ensnared by a female sociopath in 2017. He has succumbed in total to her machinations and mesmerizing. Thi sled to divorcing his real wife and his entire life has been taken over by her. She has married him, deleted and blocked all his friends, taken his phone, his money and now his gorgeous home in the Hollywood Hills. – He is older now, and frail and medicated. This will be how his life ends. – these are not relationships. They are crimes.
Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!
Please feel free to reach out, ask a question or comment in the form below. I always respond.
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.
Closure with a sociopath isn’t something to hold our breath over. So many of us crave closure; an apology. An explanation. An end to the ending.
This is a guest post by a true love scam recovery reader. she decided to write the apology she wanted from him. She shares that letter here… Here’s what she wrote for herself, to free herself with her own apology — the one that will never come from a sociopath – and if it does– they’re lying.
By E.R.
The Imaginary Apology from the Lying Sociopath
From E.R. to us: This is the apology letter I wrote to him, right after my break down. I sent it to him, asking him to read it to me. He never did. Instead, I gave him another 6 months to hurt me. It’s hard to accept that I still have loving feelings for someone who only hurt me. I think I just need some time.
Dear E,
I’m so sorry for the pain I caused you. I did not think of the consequences to you from my actions and my choices.
I couldn’t lose your help, so I kept hiding secrets to keep you around. I’m sorry. I thought you’d never know certain things and that it would be enough for you to be happy. I’m sorry I pushed this too far.
I apologize for everything I did and still do to you…
I apologize for hiding that I had a FB account, the first lie you found out and forgave…
I apologize for:
Rejecting you many times as a friend on my FB after you found out
Hitting on Sandra in front of your eyes and for not admitting it
Asking you for money
Promising I would pay you back when I knew I would never do that
Forgetting your birthday
Switching off my phone without caring about you
Cheating on you with Pauline
Telling her exactly the same things I said to you
Making plans for the future with her while I was with you
Putting pressure on you to bring me to Europe – and then…
Canceling after you planned the trip so I could be with Brie
Cheating on you with Ava
Cheating on you with all the womenI never told you about
Making you beg me for answers I should have begged you to listen to
For making you look like a fool with everyone who saw me with other girls
Not using condoms and giving you two diseases
Teasing you about your body shape
Promising you many times that I would change
What I did with Kate
Bringing her to your home
Contacting Rosanna and hiding it from you
Not giving you the attention and love you deserve
Wasting two years of your life waiting for love I do not feel and cannot give
Blaming you for my troubled life
Sucking up your savings
Not celebrating your birthday
Never buying you a present, flower to show appreciation for you
Searching for Ava again as soon as you left
Saying that I am single
Chatting and for texting with girls in an intimate way
I apologize for Marilyn
Letting you live my lie
Not being the man I told you I was
Leaving you behind with such pain in your heart
Contacting Pauline again yesterday
Manipulating you and playing with your vulnerability
Blaming your pain on you and telling you that you enjoy feeling like a victim
Moving on so fast and so easy
Telling you that I loved you
Making you fall in love in with me
Not being able to change for you
Not writing this letter myself
I apologize, Sheldon
Thank you E.R. for sharing the rough steps along the way of healing.
We End It: They Don’t
Sociopaths offer no closure. They are unable to love and have no feelings of remorse. An apology is something they will never make. They feel no regret, shame, or guilt. There’s only one thing they’re sorry for: that they didn’t get more from us. Closure is ours to find.
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
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.
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.
PTSD is most definitely a thing. After narcissistic abuse, we ride through post trauma. Our friends don’t understand. Maybe we don’t understand. Rest assured, we’re not really broken.
PTSD stands for post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD isn’t permanent. It might surprise some of us that the range of swinging emotions, and thoughts we’re going through is PTSD.
It may surprise our family or friends to realize that the pain, the terror, all the weeping is post-traumatic stress. We’re swinging through a jungle of cognitive dissonance, shock, and more shock.
We’re hard at work grabbing at answers, trying to make sense of what happened, though, for all they can see, we’ve given up to this loser as we sit slumped in a corner in tears or staring into space. We’re thinking and feeling so much we feel like we could die. Many of us feel broken. Rest assured, you are not.
What Is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?
PTSD is a thing after a sociopath or after what sooooo many people call a “narcissist” or a narcissistic abuser. What we’re feeling in the end after these creatures is normal. It wouldn’t be normal to not feel this way. It’s the residual and the aftermath of being spellbound under coercive control. It’s unavoidable, and it is not permanent. There is hope, and healing.
Everything We Feel Is Normal: We Are Not Broken Forever
The awareness of feeling broken came as a quiet whisper. I remember after he was gone, early in restoring my life, one day, I looked up from washing my hands and into my bathroom mirror. On gazing at my own face, now so changed, the word “broken” floated into my mind. Broken. I’m broken, is what I said in my head. I’d never been broken before. Never knew that this was a way that people could feel. But there it was.
When you consider it, this was a raid, a home invasion, a breaking-and-entering through our hearts. This wasn’t a relationship, it was a crime. Please, keep in mind: No one robs an empty house. We are awesome.
We feel broken… This is distinctly different from thinking we are broken. Feeling broken is unfortunately a normal sensation after coercive control… perhaps during it because any time spent under the spell of a sociopath is traumatic. So, after they leave, we go through feelings that are more than uncomfortable. These feelings and thoughts are our body attempting to heal, feeling broken is not the new us.
These intense and so often conflicting thoughts, emotions, and despair are the beginning of healing – the key is to find the way to use these for healing rather than be seen as a pile of disorders. This is not the end of our life as it used to be before we met them.
Breaking Up With Evil
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared, hauled through the confusion, lies, fear and pain and to 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.
People around us are saying things like move on orget over it. And oh my gosh, we really wish we could! None of us are trying to be a mess. Not a single one of us wants to feel this hell! But somehow, we can’t sleep, we lose weight and feel like we’ll never trust again, we’re terrified and have health issues to boot.
Unexpected things go on with our health, things we might not realize are happening, such as high blood pressure. Some of us develop migraines, fall into nightmares, and grab onto coping habits we’d rather not keep… like wine and prescriptions maybe. And nobody wants weight gain, but it’s there, after the rapid “effortless” weight loss.
Post Trauma is Normal and the Way to Recovery
Post-trauma is normal. What you’re feeling is the normal human reaction to this particular trauma. It’s the bodies and minds and hearts response to the sustained influence and entrapment by person of antisocial personality disorder.
The idea that we played “a part” in the suffering we endured is erroneous. These are crimes, not relationships. We owe it to ourselves to give this idea some thought before swallowing it whole.
We couldn’t be expected to have any other response. In fact, this response is where healing begins. It’s a cluster of simultaneous feelings and physical reactions and responses from the body, mind and heart. If you think of it in the way that the flu is a cluster of symptoms you can see this isn’t the new “us”, but a passing situation. We’re still there.
The determination to pull our real self back through this fog, and the time and insight into how to tame these post trauma reactions and emotions, to understand them, to manage them and heal them are all we need. For whatever reason, I did this instinctively and now I help others do it.
PTSD is the Beginning of Healing From Trauma
We’ll feel some or all of the following things in PTSD after this ride in hell: profound fear, self-doubt, lowered trust, suspect people and situations, weepiness, physical weakness, apathy, confusion, indecision, depression.
Also an inability to concentrate on daily things like laundry or food, our minds will be flooded with replays of conversations and things that went on. This is all normal. The replays wind down, the confusion abates, the indecision clears as we get real answers. – If the answers you’re finding aren’t helping; keep looking
PTSD is a Cluster, a Package of Feelings, Signs and Symptoms
The aftermath of trauma affects our body and mind. Post-trauma can include fear of going out of our home. The terrorizing recall of scenarios with them. Confusion, indecision, and doubt, even doubting our doubt.
There can be an emphatic impulse to leave, to move, to change jobs, or make a drastic change. We might miss them so much or feel like we could die. We feel broken. – As heavy and numb and broken as you feel, none of this is permanent.
Physically there are signs and symptoms of trauma, such as a loss of appetite and extreme sudden weight loss. Hypertension. Serious illnesses or chronic conditions can develop including STIs. The inability to “move”; physically to become heavy and dull, numb.
Sleep patterns are all over the place in varied forms of insomnia. We might sleep in the day and can’t sleep at night, some of us wake in the early morning and can’t fall back to sleep. Maybe you can’t sleep at all or sleep all the time. You might be having nightmares.
We Decide to Recover: We Chose How Fully We Recover
The thing is, any time spent with a “narcissist”, the pathological parasitic predatory con man – a sociopath – is traumatic. We can’t help but experience prolonged trauma. Then we go through post-trauma – the natural next phase after a trauma. This is unavoidable. We decide what’s next. Post-trauma isn’t the new us.
It’s up to us, to gather our courage, and to step around the answers that leave us without real answers. We decide to take on the task of learning how to manage the post-trauma. It’s our own decision to come out whole, healed, and with every answer to what happened. We decide what winning is for our life in the aftermath, and post-trauma. You can do it. And, the good news is, the answers are here.
Post Trauma Feelings Can Become False Thoughts, and Beliefs
The emotional soup in the midst of the post-trauma takes many of us to a conclusion or belief about what happened and about ourselves. Many of us conclude it was our fault. This is not so.
There are atmospheric rivers of false beliefs in post trauma, and indeed throughout the suspended traumatic “event” of being “with” them. Things like “I’ll never be the same”, “I can’t trust anyone ever again”, and “I”m codependent” are examples of such false beliefs inspired by post trauma combined with a mistaken understanding of what happened.
Though we aren’t sure exactly what just happened for most of us, our natural first thoughts are related to taking responsibility for what happened. When you consider it, this was a raid, a home invasion, a breaking-and-entering through our hearts. This wasn’t a relationship, it was a crime. Please, keep in mind: No one robs an empty house. We are awesome. – Let me show you how to redirect those “hellish mirage” emotions inspired by the trauma and resolve the loss and grief.
The Memories we Replay are Where Recovery is Found
No matter how much we want to “move on”, we’re hounded daily, well, hourly by memories of this creep that just won’t stop. We can’t stop thinking of the things they did, replays circle in our minds and end with the same confusion and questions and circle around again. We’re so worn out thinking about this loser, yet we can’t not think about this loser. – Guess what, gorgeous-one? This is normal.
Not only is this constant replay normal, the memories, these replays are our ticket out of this hell. Really. The thing is replaying them endlessly is exhausting, the key is in learning to translate the memories, one by one into the reality they represent. Translating them to truth is the key element to restoring your life.
I guide people to unwind and find the truth, and all the answers…because we need answers to what the heck happened and these memories are the gateway. Once we translate one memory it stops. Then the next one, then the next until there are no more. And with each resolved memory we recover further and further, taking back our lives in this way. Email me and ask me about guided recovery sessions; it’s like nothing else out there: jennifer@truelovescam.com
Healing Takes Time and Unsettling Discoveries
Recovering our lives, taking back our selves is for the courageous. Once we begin to shift from some of the conflicting and misconstrued ideas behind the word “narcissist” and take the leap to sociopath… there is more. Taking on the word “sociopath” is only the beginning. That’s when recovery can begin.
After the trauma of this whole event, which we could think of as a hijacking, our emotions and thoughts are all over the place. We’re spinning and floating and feeling almost out of body because the trauma deregulates our nervous system. If we’re willing, we can take in effective methods of re-regulating our nervous system and other specific insights, and fully recover.
Post trauma is an emotional soup andconfusion. It isn’t who we are, but how we feel. It’s the body’s natural next step after a traumatic event and is the beginning of into healing.
Healing Comes in Stages: Time is On Our Side
As annoying and frustrating as it is, this takes time. Lots of time. recovering is going to take more time than you want it to.
What you’re experiencing is the only way a person can feel after a collision and entanglement with a conman, a sociopath. We’ve experienced a profound clash with our emotional and normal way of life. That’s traumatic and is what they call cognitive dissonance.
Patience and self-love are necessary. Spending time only with those who truly love us and don’t judge us is a part of the cure. Establishing and keeping no contact with the con artist who hijacked our lives is essential. There is without a doubt hope after a sociopath or a “narcissist”.
It Really Isn’t Us: It Really Is Them
Many definitions out there regarding this phenomenon will try to tell us it happened because we’re codependent or that we need to look at our “part in it”. The idea that we played “a part” in the suffering we endured is erroneous. We owe it to ourselves to give this idea and others such as “this happened because we’re codependent” some thought before swallowing them whole.
When you consider it, this was a raid, a home invasion, a breaking and entering through our hearts. In this situation the predator knows what’s happening we as prey do not.
We’ve been defrauded, deceived by a pathological parasitic predator. This wasn’t a relationship. It was the dynamic of predator and prey. These are crimes. While we carry on as wonderful loving people believing and behaving as if we’re in a relationship we’re robbed blind. Please, keep in mind: No one robs an empty house. You are awesome.
Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!
Please feel free to reach out, ask a question or comment in the form below. I always respond.
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.
No contact is the pathological users’ Achilles heel. When we don’t respond it scares them to pieces. That’s why they rage.
In a sociopath’s perfect world, there would be no such thing as no contact. Without contact, they have nothing. The thing is, for a narcissistic predator, their agenda is only possible with contact. The more consistent and deep the contact, the more harm we’re in for.
Pathological predators, that is a sociopath, or what you might be calling a narcissist, depend on keeping contact for their success. Their success is measured, by them in what they get, what they can take and what they can do and how little we oppose them.
Contact Keeps the Hunt Going
They must keep contact in order to get what they want and when we’re in contact, we’re balls of emotions. We’re in confusion and off balance which means there’s an open door for them straight into our lives. The success of their mind-bending effect on us is only possible through contact.
No contact is our freedom. Safety and freedom from a narcissistic user, a sociopath depends on establishing and keeping no contact. – Let’s look at the effect of contact from the first hello, to the day we go no contact.
In the early moments we meet them for the first time, they bombard us, overwhelm us, spin us off the ground, and into “love” with them. This is a quick process. Once they hook us, they need to keep yapping whenever they notice that the hook is slipping.
We take their words at face value. This is normal. Normal and natural for us, as fully functioning limbic-brained humans. In other words, it’s normal for us to believe what people say, to trust, bond, care, and feel connected.
The unfortunate thing we don’t know at this point is that the meaning of the words of this pathological predator is not found in the words themselves. Their words don’t have a normal meaning or a normal subtext. This is because their intention and their goal and purpose for being in our lives are far, far from normal… And love has nothing to do with it.
Their intention in our lives is not represented by the nice things they say… Nor by the mean things they say. Underneath it, all is a desire and purpose we can’t even imagine… And they need it this way.
They don’t want us to understand their actual meaning. In this effort they make sure, as best they can, to fake their intent and meaning. And they do their best to keep others from tipping us off. So, they separate us from family and friends. They keep us away from people who aren’t under their spell and see that they aren’t what they’re pretending to be.
They Separate Us from Others Who See Through Them
Everything they say is in hopes of their very simplistic and unwavering needs and wants. This is instinctive, it’s literally how their brains are wired, while a lot of other normal human things are missing from their brains. One of the qualities of their limited brains is limited language skills.
Even if they learn some big words and can string a long sentence together it’s nonsense. They usually use very short sentences. Even three-word sentences to nail us in place. Understanding the effect of their words on our emotions and thoughts is essential. They can’t have anyone interfering with the effect of their words upon us. This is a reason they separate us from our family, our friends, and others.
Please put aside the common interpretation that this isolation or separation is done out of their jealousy. It’s that they can’t have others alerting us to how full of hot air, and how creepy and weird they are. This is why the sociopath immediately creates an “us and them” existence.
The Subtle Separation
One such example… My sister lives three miles down the road for me. At the root of things, we’re very close. Really tight. We grew up almost as twins, yet we’re very different in relational dynamics. I’m open and smiling and laugh easily and talk to people everywhere I go. She’s more reserved, can seem stern, and isn’t as warm. She also doesn’t reach out the way that I do… So:
The fraudulent lying dirtbag I married used to say, your sister doesn’t love you. She didn’t even call you back. Pinging on the fact that, indeed, it is me who keeps my sister and I connected. It takes me calling or texting her three times or so before she calls me back.
And, he wasn’t exactly wrong… I could count on fewer fingers than I have on one hand the number of times in my life that my sister has called me spontaneously.
Because of their uncanny quality that causes us to have an exaggerated experience of normal emotions, this comment tapped hard at a raw little place inside me. If a normal human had said this, I’d have said, my sister loves me, she’s different than I am in how she shows it, but she’d kill for me... And that would have been the end of it.
Instead – because he’s a sociopath – this sideways comment led me to quickly and inefficiently sort through my mind asking myself: does she love me? doesn‘t she love me…? she doesn’t…or..? In this way, here I was suddenly teetering on the brink of stepping into the mush of bottomless ruinous quicksand of believing him. – this is how our world changes because of what they are.
And for all the hate they have for us, because they need us, the narcissistic-user-sociopath will hold on as long as possible.
The sore spot of truth inside my life that this comment hit metaphorically knocked me to my knees in a deep psyche kind of way. When we’re under their spell, sociopaths can tap our core with a single comment due to their natural malevolent influence. This strike shocks us and leaves us breathless and vulnerable, self-doubting and confused.
In the case of my sister and I, she’s also brutally direct. I imagine he sensed she’d blow him down and break him into pieces. As it turns out she said to me when I kicked him out, I knew it! – She never liked him for one second and saw him as bad news. Naturally, he could read this. – Consequently, he drove in a separation.
Contact with us, and severing contact with our families and friends is how they drive the wedge in. They keep yammering to us at high velocity, they keep in contact via texts, Snapchat, and the like, even when they live with us! That’s as deep as they get. It’s only that. It’s how they keep inside our heads, hearts, and bank accounts; it comes down to one practical material thing: contact.
Throughout our “relationship” (the one we think we’re in together) their attention comes in cycles related to what they perceive as how deeply or loosely we’re bound-in to them. They spike attention to reel us back in from time to time. Routinely they do an all-points-bare-minimum in maintenance.
When they sense we’re seeing through the smokescreen, they either pour on the nice in charm and promises or get mean becoming nasty, grumpy, and mad. Both nice and mean require contact and are bait to hook us in place.
As the sociopath’s weirdness, deception and betrayal come into focus, we want an end. We, as their prey, want out of the nightmare.
If it’s nice they offer something, make a promise…Or even are simply neutral. Our naturally good-hearted nature and the effects of their mesmerizing venom does the work. We interpret and imbue their off-handed glances, and bare-bones contact with deep and positive meaning, full of love and commitment and, so we stay in it. No such thing as genuine nice is happening, but thinking that it is, is normal.
If it’s mean they pick up as the tool, they use anger andscream out, we naturally react in fear and then stay out of this fear. Not to mention our sense of guilt, shame, and our confusion. This is normal. We all give them the benefit of the doubt and stay. Or we stay out of fear. This is the way it goes until that one moment when the spell finally breaks.
Every bit of any contact a sociopath makes is to take and use and keep taking… It’s bait, from the “love bombing”, the common term for the contact, that reels us in, to the lies and devastating gossip in the smear campaign. As well as during hat time in between, in the middle of the arc of the fraud… When they aren’t around, they disappear, they don’t answer or texts and we’re in unbelievable pain trying to make sense of it all through our normal human view of life.
Breaking Up With Evil
Breaking Up with Evil: 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.
One thing about these predators we can’t forget: they can’t not be like this. And they do what they do 24/7. They’re on the prowl constantly. Out of our being normal humans, we give credit to their scanty presence, oh, he’s been so busy, and he called me finally, he must care! And, he left flowers at the door last night! He really does love me! – This is normal. – We’re under their spell.
And, alternately, fear of them freezes us right where we are, so we “stay in it”. This too is normal. It’s the natural normal effect of this type of predator upon us as normal humans, their prey.
We don’t understand why we believe their lies, and then we tend to blame ourselves long after for staying so long. Please don’t. There’s nothing about you that made this happen. You ge to be who you are… And you get to establish no contact because even one more millisecond of contact and access to rampage and ransack our lives is a millisecond too many.
Contact Means They Can Get Back In: Contact Is How Any and All of it Happens
When we want out, a sociopath’s drive to keep us in their grasp intensifies. Just as they smell fresh prey, they can sense it when we’re beginning to see through them to the point that things are going to end.
They know when we’ve caught a glimpse behind the veil of lies and they go to work to regain our trust, to keep us locked in place. Mean or nice…everything, all the things they do, is an attempt to keep things going and require: contact. They fear losing prey. They become enraged when we slip free.
Their Concern is Survival and Nothing Else
Out of the simple need for survival, antisocial psychopaths despise losing their bagged targets. And for all the hate they have for us – they need us – and the narcissistic-user-sociopath will hold on as long as possible.
It’s the things, the status, and the opportunities we provide that compel them to hang on with just enough contact. Thye swing back-and-forth, hot-and-cold, nice-and-mean, to keep us in place by our own emotional responses to them combined with our misunderstanding of what is actually happening.
Manipulation, Bait, and Tricks Ramp Up in the Fear of Losing Contact
Eventually, that day comes for us when the “magic” is gone, and so when they whip out their standard bait: make coffee for us or put air in the tires or murmur — again — without eye contact, you’re special to me. — This time, our emotional response is flat or numb. We can see them more clearly as the snake they are.
Stand up and protect our lives, even in this overwhelming disaster, don’t give in to defeat. Instead, only continue to build treasures of the heart.
There’s a moment for each of us when their signature weak and familiar gesture, is measured up against all the odd, the confusion, and just plain sad and it just isn’t enough. Suddenly, we are done.
As the sociopath’s weirdness, deception, and betrayal come into focus, we want an end. We, as their prey, want out of the nightmare. Once we say: I’m leaving or, you have to go, we’re treated to Mr. Hyde and narcissistic rage. — The big-bad-monster will not really leave our lives until we establish no contact.
Sociopaths and Narcissistic Users Fear No Contact
What do sociopaths fear losing when the jig is up? After “the well” has truly run dry, they fear losing their physical freedom and their “good reputation”. This deluded idea that they have a “good reputation” is something they think they need to keep intact so they can continue using others.
So, to keep tabs on what we say to others, they continue to hang on even if they “break-up” with us. As we’re breaking away and after contact is really important to them for three reasons.
We call this after “break-up” contact, Hoovering.It lands as texts, emails, and phone calls; it may be messages or notes on our car or on the door, and it’s scary. There are plenty of reasons that this is scary. It’s normal to be in fear of the narcissistic user after the “break up”. This is all a part of PTSD.
Breaking Away Means to the Sociopath We’ve Gone Rogue
Once we’ve stepped away from the pathologically narcissistic user isn’t sure if they’re safe anymore, We’re an unknown factor. – We’ve gone rogue.
Not only have they lost their entertainment, or your car keys, cell phone bill payments, their arm candy, or entree into a particular social group: they don’t know what we’re going to do about what they’ve done to us.
This is where “hoovering” comes in. For your safety, if they use actual words in person or by phone, at that moment go ahead and verbally apologize. Soothe them by saying one plain sentence like, I know…it’s all my fault…Not because this is true. But because it’s wisdom; it’s for your safety.
This simple utterance stops hoovering in many cases, as the nutter then believes you aren’t a threat. They are enraged that you broke away, but they believe they can now go freely about their gruesome ways.
This isn’t “enabling” them. They are what they are with or without you.
Don’t worry, you’re lying… but they’ll believe you. This isn’t because this is true. It’s because sociopaths aka narcissists believe anything we say and act on it as if it is true.
They only need to feel like they’re getting away with all the lies and scamming. Never give this kind of impression or apology in writing, only in spoken words. Let them think they can go freely. Let them feel at ease in exiting. They don’t want us, or their kids – and we don’t want them.
Be Sociopath or Psychopath and Narcissist Free Forever
Really, get the skinny on what’s happening, in your specific circumstances. There’s more to this than an article can convey.
For a clearer and faster pathway back to restoring your life, step into recognizing how amazing you are. This makes the dust settle faster, and the debris and damage fall at their feet where it belongs rather than at yours.
Stand up and protect your life, even in this overwhelming disaster, don’t give in to defeat. Instead, only continue to build treasures of the heart.
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
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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More than anything on earth, they want us to shut up. They need us but they don’t want us. They need things like citizenship or all our money. To survive they need us to believe they’re normal.
These creatures need everything we’ve got. And to get all that we’ve got what they need above all else is for us to just shut up. Sound too simplistic because of how bad you feel when they lie, gaslight, and turn hot and cold?
Well, there is more to it… They first – and for as long as possible – need us to believe them. And to “trust them”. Along with that bit of malarkey, then they get to take from us and use us… for food, a place to sleep, and permission to walk the earth.
Sociopaths Want Us to Shut Up
It’s when we start to see the odd things, the weird stuff, the lies that they want us to shut up. Meaning they don’t want us to challenge them, ask them any questions like, where are you going? Why didn’t you come home last night?
This is so that they can get all the things they need and want while they keep doing whatever they want to do. Like us, they need shelter. They need money, cars, and someone who will defend them to others when the p**p hits the fan at various points in time.
For this, they need to get us to believe they’re normal. They cling to their goal to keep what they are hidden and keep on taking so tenaciously it’s almost awe-inspiring – until it’s frightening … and eventually, laughable.
You Might be Calling A Sociopath a “Narcissist”
Sociopaths are con men, con women, con artists, scammers…criminals. Beyond getting us to like them and be quiet, a scammer’s main need from any specific prey varies. It depends on the circumstances and situations they have going on in their lives that we likely won’t know about, and others they tell us a huge story about.
Paradoxically these pathological users can happily live in a box on the side of the road while they wait for something cozy to jump onto.
Some need a place to stay more than others. Some want political recognition, and they all need a respectability facade, we serve as hall passes and entreé to groups of our friends, maybe to what they see as big-money, or property, or just super good drugs, or just hard-core and depraved sex.
They do whatever they think they need to do to get whatever it is they want.
A con man wants what a con man wants because a con man is a sociopath. Even if we call them a “narc”, “narcopath”, “narcissist”, or a malignant narcissist. It’s amazing to think this is real. We can hardly believe it, and sadly many others won’t believe us when we talk about it.
Each target or prey holds a key to an aspect of what the con man wants including a good breakfast once in a while. We each fit nicely into their needs like candy in a row on a vending machine. Our presence is a piece of their survival, otherwise, they wouldn’t give us – or any of their other prey – the time of day.
Sometimes the function of a target is to lend the sociopath credibility.The façade of a family and children is popular with sociopaths – so popular, that most have more than one all at the same time.Some targets are a main-line money supply. Others are access to a country or a group of people.
Breaking Up With Evil
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.
Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.
A Sociopath, a “Narcissist” Tries It On With Everyone
A sociopath juggles targets, all of whom are part of the supply chain for food and shelter, an internet connection, a shower, a bed, and a gym membership.
They need all the mundane basics, as well as any material possession they need, laptops, phones, watches, cars, entrée to private nightclubs and VIP social settings, fundraisers, wine tastings at the German consulate, or the best meth around.
More Than One At a Time: Scamming By the Dozens
These heinous rapscallions covet anything they think fits their persona of “cool” or “good guy”. They covet any person who can get them inside the velvet ropes of any realm.
Paradoxically these pathological users can happily live in a box on the side of the road while they wait for something cozy to jump onto. – The reality of what they are is hard to take in and difficult to fully comprehend in a deeper way than with our “intellect”.
Sociopaths, Narcs, Narcopaths Want Anything and Everything
You name it, they scam it. An address is a number one priority, even if the address they use is not where they live… in fact all the better. You might have experienced that scamming an address for IDs and mail delivery for things such as Passports and for other faux business purposes, is Con Man 101.
Maybe you’ve witnessed how much they like to be untraceable. There’s often more than one phone, email, or social media account. You’ll find variations of their name – or brand new ones they’re using all at once with different prey.
We might not see all these bits of their reality. They sure hope not, because when we do we don’t do what they need most which are for us: to shut up. Con men, narcs, narcopaths, covert narcissists aka sociopaths have delusions of their own importance and glamour.
Know this: all and any gender of sociopath is no different. All here applies to all of them.. There are some special features to female sociopaths. Read here: 3 Dangers of Female Sociopaths.
They Promise Many Things: And “Real” is Never on the List
They’ll promise us the moon to get what they want. The fact is, promises a narcopath – meaning a sociopath – or narc (if you’ll them that) are bait and remain unfulfilled.
They hang like popped balloons on a limp, dirty string. Yet they keep us hanging on for so much longer than we want to as a part of the inexplicable influence of a sociopath.
Their driving force never falters. Their ambitions never wane. Memorize and keep in mind always the real inner workings of a con man or con woman – or con person – when faced with getting away from them.
While there’s pretty much no such thing as a “narcissist”…It doesn’t matter what you call them – what matters is that we understand what we’re truly facing. This is a difficult discovery. What matters is that we know what truly motivates them – and what that means – and how to break away safely and recover fully.
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
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.
