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What’s the Smear Campaign All About?

The smear campaign is so painful.
It’s all about the sociopath’s
need to position themselves
to come out smelling like roses.
It doesn’t work. They smell like poop.
Always.

The smear campaign… a nightmare inside the nightmare. They go to great lengths to conjure themselves into the role of “victim” in the eyes of their “fans”.  It’s in order to keep empathy falling into their slimy laps, so they can keep taking and using and getting away with it. It’s all smoke and mirrors.

Smear Campaigns are Born of Basic Sociopath Survival Needs

The sociopath is obsessed with making sure no one ever catches on to just how heinous they are. This is their only goal. Looking like the victim and the “good guy” is their ploy to that end. It has to be.

smear campaign narcissist sociopath

This facade feeds into their survival. When we’re smeared across social media, to their family, to our own family, it can seem like everyone believes them. And, sadly, lots of people do believe them… at first.

The truth is, you’d think it’d be easier to pull a rabbit out of a hat than to make people truly believe any sociopath is a good guy or gal – and yet, it seems everyone around us buys into their malarkey.

And at first, they do… hang on though, because eventually they won’t, but still the liar must conjure up their good-guy story. They’re compelled to for their survival.

 Get answers, gain skills to see the truth, and be free.

A Sociopaths Survival is Always Hanging By a Thread

Everything a sociopath says or does is for their survival. It may not seem so to us, as we’re terrified, mystified, and can’t figure out why they’d say what they say… they seem powerful. It seems that everyone believes them, yet inside the sociopath, their knees are knocking. They know their world is made of lies.

Antisocial psychopaths function from a limited range of cognition and are without emotional intelligence due to their abnormal brains. The few remaining intact parts of their brains do include intense and unwavering survival mechanisms, just as does the brain of a cockroach. These are bizarre and dark creatures who run when the light goes on.

The thing is, though it feels like it, the smear campaign is not designed solely to torture us. As much as it seems like it, the sociopath isn’t thinking about us, they’re doing what they always do: They’re thinking of themselves.

Their Only Concern is for Themselves

The focus of a sociopath is obtaining their desires. Ultimately, their strongest desire is for their own safety. This requires getting people to trust them, and the need to get in quick and hit it hard. And finally to make sure they look innocent when the thing falls apart once they’re done ransacking someone’s life.

To this end, they’re busy planting lies and stories about how wonderful they are, and how awful we are well before that last text, “I’m done.” Or that whaling whine, “I’ve tried as hard as I can to make this work. I can’t live like this anymore,” as they exit the scene.

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.

Why Do Sociopaths Smear Their Targets?

Why do they need to talk so badly about us? We did everything! Gave everything; we were incredible, the best boyfriend or girlfriend, wife or husband anyone could be! Then, after all that, this – this is what we get?!!? Yep.

Sociopaths need to preempt the truth about themselves before it walks in the door as often and as hard as they can. We’ve seen them do this many, many times while we were with them. It’s that storytelling thing. It’s one of their basic tactics.

Smearing is nothing more than more of the same from their limited bag of tricks. The pathological predator’s only way to look good is to make others look bad.

Smear Campaigns Begin from the Millisecond After their First “Hello”

We’ve witnessed “smearing” a zillion times while with the sociopath. In retrospect we shake our heads in disbelief as we clearly see talking badly about other people was pretty much the only “conversation” they ever made.

Since it was while we were entranced by them, wanting to make things work out, and about someone else, it didn’t seem so harsh.

They don’t know when enough is enough since they’re devoid of the emotional sensibility of a normal, limbic brained person.

Remember the tale he told about the guy at work who pocketed the office’s petty cash? Then blamed it on the sociopath, so he got fired? And the further insistence that really he was innocent and the other guy was a liar and a thief?

That’s smearing. Remember the one about the ex who cheated, was a drunk and used him for money? Well, that’s us now. Now we’re the story.

“Someone” is Always Behind the Spot They’re in Now

There has always got to be a “someone” as “the story” in a sociopath’s life that is a sob story, a hardship episode they still suffer from. “Someone” has got to be the one who put them in the tight spot they’re in now.

They need this setup so their new prey feels bad for them. This is what lets them borrow money, move in, or whatever they need in “support”. These stories are not ever the truth. Nothing they say is what we think it is or the full truth. The smear campaign is storytelling. It’s the sociopath’s most used tool.

The smear campaign serves another extremely important purpose: it keeps prey, both current and former, from talking to one another. They need us to not band together and piece the truth into the ugly picture that it is. This is the point of the majority of their storytelling and what many call their “triangulation”.

Woven Fantastical Lies Make Up the Tales of Their Past

Every sociopath comes up with a combination of the same things to say about former prey. The basics put out there by a sociopath smearing their prey don’t vary much because, well there are only so many “bad things” you can say about people.

So they call us: crazy, drug addicts, mentally ill, liars, cheaters, or say we beat them. They sometimes like to add in personal jabs such as, we’re fat, lazy, or old and stinky.

The delicious and ridiculous part is their limited skills and tactics come back around to give them away and hang them for the very bad guys they truly are. Let time perform its magic. The truth will out.

They straight out tell stories about our crimes; they say it along with some elaboration, such as, “Don’t talk to Linda. She forged my signature on a check and emptied my bank account… I had to break up with her. And along with all this, they post images of themselves looking happy with a new “wife”, or “boyfriend”. Et voila, abracadabra, we’re bad; they’re good.

Since sociopaths are missing emotional intelligence and haven’t experienced emotions in the way we do, they have no emotional barometer to gauge emotional nuance so they tend to lean into the dramatic.

In other words, they imitate what they think is our genuine experience of emotions in order to seem normal. It’s off the mark and overdone. They don’t know when enough is enough.

Smear Campaign: This is a Time to Defend Ourselves to No One

Sociopaths count on our emotional response. Our emotions in reaction to them can land us right into looking “crazy” so they look “normal” which they need. They wield their pronouncements as “proof” of how yucky and nuts we are.

We run around like a cat chasing its tail trying to defend ourselves and prove them wrong; we get nowhere and for the most part, end up fulfilling their accusations in the eyes of onlookers.

When we defend ourselves on social media posts, to friends of their friends, to their family, it supports their negative false story about us. It makes them look like the good guy and the guy who tells the truth. It just does. Sad but true. Frustrating but real.

Trying to Disprove Their Crazy Makes Us Look Crazy

And more so, defending ourselves tampers with our well-being; when we hop around trying to disprove what they say about us we stay in trauma. If our focus is to disprove the bad things they’ve said we don’t even begin recovery. Because: horror-of-horrors – we’re still in it. They still have us hooked. This is what they want. – Don’t give it to them.

Please: I beg you… explain and defend yourself to no one. If we challenge the things they say where ever those things pop up, speaking out against every story we hear that they’re telling about us, not only will we look crazy – we’ll drive ourselves crazy doing it. Stay no contact. Block them. Keep tales of their stories away from your ears.

Save speaking on your own behalf to where it counts: in court, in legal situations, in reports to authorities that you might make, and your friends or family who fully support you. – The friends and family who don’t get it can be put on the back burner for now.

Smear Campaign and All: We Don’t Stay Their “Story” Forever

Eventually, the sociopath stops and fades into the background. As the days roll by and we stay no contact, they begin to feel smug and certain that we aren’t coming after them or sending people to break their knees or have them arrested or blow their cover to their wife or mom. This is when they lose interest in us and need to put their attention where it bears them fruit.

They have many new people to prey upon, so many juicy, plump, fresh unknowing people to live off of… and more recent “exes” than us. They’ll continue to spin new stories in which the key bad-guy character isn’t us, but some other prey. This is what they do. It isn’t about us. None of any of it was personal. None of it. – This is key to our recovery.

It’s all and only about them using the limited skills they’ve got for their miserable survival. And the delicious and ridiculous part is their limited skills and tactics come back around to give them away and hang them for the very bad guys they truly are. Let time perform its magic. The truth will out.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

Join the podcast!

Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

SD Voyager interview

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Subscribe True Love Scam Recovery Jennifer Smith

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

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.

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8 Reasons to Suspect We’re Dating a Sociopath

Sociopath is a big word.
We shy away from the idea
because it sounds like a movie, not real life.
Taking a second look at this can save us lots of pain.

Dating a sociopath, as it turns out, is something I’ve done a lot of. This wasn’t something I knew I’d done until after I’d married one, kicked him out, and gotten myself an annulment.

After this big-whammy experience with the con man sociopath who hijacked me specifically for a green card to the U.S.A. – and incidentally (as they do) – for all the money he could take, I put the pieces together. I did this with my own instinct, a bold and unwavering determination to take back my life and all he’d taken from me, and reading research. As in neuroscience and psych research.

Dating a Sociopath: The More We Know

After really grasping how their little minds operate and their quirks and foibles, I know that I’ve dated a sociopath more than once. Each of them floated to my memory over the months spent restoring my life in a flash of realization. – I understand you might be wondering what it is about me that “attracted” them, or what could be wrong with me…

There’s nothing wrong with me, There’s everything right with me. I’m a normal gorgeous inside and out living breathing fully limbic-brained human. In other words, this means that I’m normal. Many, many, many of us discover as we take in a real comprehension of what a sociopath is that more than one has knocked at our door.

Is It Raining Sociopaths?

Now I know I’ve briefly dated one of these weirdos twice. And that about eight of them, all told have tried to get into my life. This one particular one got me into a legal marriage. Maybe like me, you went beyond dating a sociopath and married one.

Chances are, you’ve known more than one as well, and certainly at least one, or you wouldn’t be here. I’m glad that you are here…I’m glad you’re seeking answers that truly fit into place. Keep going so that you can solidify a user-proof life since as strange as it is, it’s true – these human predators are out there. – I’ve heard it said that one in 25 people is a sociopath… That makes about one in every classroom.

The Truth Found in The Experience

sociopath narcissist lying

After the harrowing hideous entanglement and then the restoration of my life after the dirtbag who hijacked me for an address in the U.S. along with the legal right to be in the country, I now know one of the first times in my life I came across a sociopath was in elementary school. He was ten years old, and so was I. We were in the 5th grade.

He was super gross. Nobody liked him. He was tough and mean and didn’t fit the profile of that charming sociopath we read about at all. – But maybe crafting that smoothie exterior comes later in life for these creatures.

I was plagued by his attention. What I didn’t yet know was, that there’d been a bet or a joint plot or some such heinous thing among complicit classmates that he could grab me and kiss me on the playground. – Where the heck were the adults…?

What would it mean to feel like yourself again?

The Moment of Attack Sharpens Small Detail

As it goes down, I suddenly realize I’m all alone, sitting on a swing. There’s nobody else playing, no balls bouncing, no laughing… And no one near me. It dawns on me that the entire 5th and 6th grades are divided into two camps on opposite sides of the blacktop.

The optics of the scenario stretch and pull as they do in moments of impending doom. I see or sense one band of kids far, far away in a corner of the now ghostly playground, hovering in a flock by one of the outbuildings.

A Laser Point of Focus

The more nearby knot of whispering, heaving-with-excitement 10-year-olds backs further away as a lone figure slithers towards me. In this moment, the classical traits of the snake-like qualities of a sociopath shimmer off of this kid who’s now floating into the way-too-near-me horizon.

The dirty-haired, pale-skinned predator floats up like on a Z-axis camera dolly, sliding into a close-up position. His mouth is open in anticipation.

Emanating from him was some internal honing device that sucked at me, aligning my body, overriding my resistant mind and soul, right into his orbit. Something like polar opposite magnets that click and snap together when what I wanted to do was hurl away in refusal. I didn’t have control of my body… I was locked in place.

Primal Defenses Kick In: Trust Your Gut

A part of me actively resisted and fought to get away. Brave little me looked the prepubescent beast straight in his eyes. At the millisecond I registered his leer, his curled lip revealing tiny, pointy yellowish teeth, my right arm pulled itself back, my hand in a rock-hard fist ready to smash his face. – Something I’d never done in my life.

In addition to being deceptive about who they are and about their intention in our lives sociopaths don’t heed the natural and normal boundaries we have and that we expect others to have.

His eyes open wide from the slits of a hunter; shock replaces the cocky, shit-bag expression on his ugly freckled face. He leans back from his waist and comes closer all at once. He hisses through a clenched jaw, threatening: Don’t you hit me.

I didn’t hit him. I couldn’t really. I did look straight into his eyes scanning for a person. As in a human to connect with. There wasn’t one. But, he did look scared. Of me. Then I sent out no words, no sounds, but what must have been a telepathic, silent human-to-beast warning, in essence: Don’t you fuck with me.

Those very words weren’t in my head, but surely there were screaming from my less than five-foot 70-pound frame. He backed off. The crowds dispersed… And everything after that is a blur. I was then allowed to spend every recess for the rest of the 5th grade in the nurse’s office or sitting in the school counselor’s room. I was terrified of the playground. I had post-traumatic stress at 10 years old induced by the traumatic events of a sociopath invading my life.

How Does This Happen?

Likely, by now, you’ve heard someone say or read somewhere that you played a part in the “relationship”. That you don’t know how to pick good men or women or partners but are attracted to “bad boys”. That you’re codependent or don’t have boundaries and this is why this happened to you.

This reasoning, though a natural place for people to go with this for a few reasons, is absurd. As a ten-year-old, I guarantee I wasn’t looking for a bad boy, was not codependent, and was not in a relationship with this goober-headed ten-year-old monster. It happened because he was a monster – and I was – and am – normal.

Breaking Up With Evil

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

Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon

Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.

Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.

Persistence of Predators: They Don’t Heed Boundaries

And then, either before or after that nice day, another fine day this grimy psycho kid shows me a messed up sketch he’d made. Presented it like a gift.

Smeared pencil on a piece of lined notebook paper; so many creases where he’d feverishly folded and unfolded the page in sweaty hands it was almost tattered. It was a crude drawing of an underground fort. Dug into the earth next to a tree, in and around its roots. He told me this is where he planned to take me…And so by implication keep me.

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

Turns out, I used to be the kind of person sociopaths really like. Someone they like to date, marry, and maybe even kidnap. A lot of us are this kind of person because we’re alive and amazing humans, this makes us someone these predators sniff out as delicious prey.

The thing is: somewhere in my body I was already afraid of this stranger I’d married. He too wanted things to seem okay, so he came into the market next door with me. It felt a lot like that encounter with a sociopath child while I was a child, that day on the playground in 5th grade.

And this doesn’t mean we’re stupid, or a doormat, or codependent. — And don’t even go down the road of thinking you’re a sociopath magnet… The very idea of a sociopath magnet implies it’s the targeted prey who are at fault for the fall down the rabbit hole. So not true.

Wanting a relationship and working for it doesn’t mean we’re codependent. Nice does not equal doormat. Dating a sociopath-con-man does not signify that we’re stupid. It does indicate our natural goodness and view of the world from the heart and eyes of normal. From our normally-wired human brain that bonds as survival. https://cornellsun.com/2020/02/13/the-science-of-human-bonding/

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

Sociopaths don’t get far or get much to support their lives out of stupid. Don’t forget, we unwittingly hold up their world; stupid can’t hold up tier own world and another grown person’s too.

Codependent simply does not apply as the case of this criminal hijacking arrangement they set up. It’s more like instant hypnosis, and unless you’ve been in it: Sit down. – That’s what you can all those people who say: Didn’t you know…? Why didn’t you just leave…?

What the Beasts Need

The more we learn about what a sociopath is and how to recognize them, you may realize you’ve known a few. Bleeping onto a sociopath’s radar screen as a potential target doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with us.

What they do work with, and do a lot with, is our emotions. That’s what they’re after… They don’t care really about which emotion; they just want a normal human one.

Our natural normal response from the world of normal. Our human emotions based on our ordinary and extraordinary kindness. They want open hearts, people who care, and people who don’t know what a predator is and that these revolting creatures exist… Even in 5th grade.

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

Sociopaths don’t respond normally to normal things. For example, when something bad happens… like our pet turtle dies, or our cat gets sick, or we lose a family member they remain kind of neutral, almost bored, or say something like, such a pity and go on watching Netflix. Or, throw off a blast of ice-cold freeze out.

Narcissistic predators say things like I don’t have feelings. Or I’m going to teach you a lesson, and they aren’t talking about tennis or playing the piano. Or when we’re deep in it, as I heard one day from the nut case who hijacked me in marriage, I can’t make you do what I want you to, but I can make you wish you had.

Things Are Unclear and Foggy or Scary or Too Exciting

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

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

Lying deceivers aren’t where they say they’ll be: We run into them when they said they couldn’t come out with us or they’d be somewhere else.

The invader parasite sociopath has a whole world we aren’t in: We come across them out at a club when they said they were staying home – and then they ignore us, or tell us we should be at home. They don’t join us but freeze us out of their night on the town.

Signs of Dating a Sociopath Include Lots of Disappointment

Being used by a pathological predator involves being stood up with lame explanations or no explanation. If we’re dating a sociopath they might make a date with us and show up two hours late, or not at all. After that, they’re mad that we’re mad, and madder that we ask about it. And more than one of us has heard the sociopath we’re dating say, don’t question me or if you’d trust me everything would be okay.

Trust our gut, we’re experts now. We can see a sociopath a mile away. Look them in the eye. They’ll know that we know and it’s so delightful to watch them scurry away like the rats they are.

Sociopaths busy themselves “dating” us and and about 800 other people at the same time. They keep things close to their vest. They sleep with their phones. Lock their phone. Take their phone into the bathroom. Block us from their Facebook.

Sociopaths who are “dating” often, as in within every single moment of any encounter with a normal human being, overstep the normal social and personal boundaries we all have.

In addition to being deceptive about who they are and about their intention in our lives, sociopaths don’t heed the natural and normal boundaries we have and that we expect others to have.

They Inspire a Sense Of Unease

It’s not uncommon to have a creepy feeling like they’ve been looking through our drawers or catch them looking over our shoulder as we punch in our PIN. There always the quickly shifting and closing of the laptop when we walk into the room.

And, maybe you’ve noticed, predator sociopaths take things. Mysteriously, there’s money missing from our sock drawer, or from that envelope in between the dusty-never-used dictionary and “East of Eden” on the bookshelf. – Especially when they’re gearing up to exit our lives.

Normal Puts Things In Order

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

~ Outlander S1:E1 Sessenach

They Come into Focus for What They Are

One day while my new husband was at a meeting, I went out to buy something delicious for his dinner. Surprisingly, I ran into him at my bank’s ATM just around the corner.

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

He was stunned and trying not to show it. – Caught red-handed more like. – Wary, surprised, and leering, like a cat that thinks it saw something move, but isn’t sure and so waits and watches for it to happen again, ready to pounce; he asked, Are you following me??

Feeling ungrounded, my brain spun and grasped for something that made sense of finding him, of his words, and to make things right because normal humans need that.

My mind sorted the circumstances: He had no personal bank account here, there was only my account recently-turned-joint-account. He was supposed to be in another area of town at a meeting… since an hour ago.

Their Oddness Leaves Us Without Words

Out of my mouth came a tiny, no. – This was the best answer I could come up with to his very odd question… The most normal response that made me seem not freaked out. I didn’t want him to know that I knew this was very, very weird.

The thing is: Somewhere in my body I was already afraid of this stranger I’d married. He too wanted things to seem okay, so he came into the market next door with me. It felt a lot like that encounter with the sociopath child while I was a child, that day on the playground in 5th grade.

I don’t remember grabbing the grocery items, but I do recall being at the checkout… Where I paid for our groceries while he fiddled with his phone and pretended to reach for his wallet.

Continuing the charade, he came home with me and then left eight minutes later. Truth gathering, observing as if I were a player in a scene revealed him for what he was.

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

Dating a sociopath was a recurring theme in my life. Emphasis on was. Previously, intermingled with great relationships with real people, I found myself dating a sociopath or about three very briefly; I only married one. — Recovery tip: Find humor wherever you can.

The more we learn about what a sociopath is and how to recognize them, you may realize you’ve known a few. Bleeping onto a sociopath’s radar screen as a potential target doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with us.

It means there’s everything right with us. It means we’re good, kind people who trust and love as natural, gorgeous humans innately do. We have every right to be exactly what and who we are.

Knowing is Key

We just plain, flat-out didn’t know such beasts existed, there’s no way to conceive of something so beyond normal; sociopaths hide behind this perfectly normal human characteristic of not knowing that evil exists and what it looks like. We can’t know what we don’t know until we know it.

Trust our gut, we’re experts now. We can see a sociopath a mile away. Look them in the eye. They’ll know that we know and it’s so delightful to watch them scurry away like the rats they are.

Really… I did it just yesterday in the mall. Now, we can add knowledge, wisdom, and courage to the mix of our gorgeous selves!

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

The podcast!

Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

Subscribe True Love Scam Recovery Jennifer Smith

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

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