Binding prey is a 24-hour a day job for predators. Pathological predators and parasites are the slimy creatures we call narcs and narcissists and indeed, they are sociopaths.
When we meet these dirt bags we think we’ve found a perfect match. A relationship made in heaven. It’s a feeling that overwhelms us more than a thought.
It sweeps up from somewhere and blazes through our mind: this guy is more perfect than I ever imagined anyone could be. Sex deepens this impression. This same impression fades as we discover something else is happening here and as we experience harsh things at their hands. And yet, even when we find out bad things, this deeply imbedded first impression clings to us because we’ve been bound up as prey.
Narcissistic sociopaths tell stories upon stories. We hear them tell the same story more than once. Sometimes it’s a little different the second time around.
Narcissistic sociopaths are notorious talkers. When the mood strikes them they yip and yap away – sometimes for hours at a time. There’s a certain “talk” that can be short or long, but it’s got a different quality. A certain perplexing aspect.
Narcissistic sociopaths tell stories. Tales that are entertaining, and then others that are like a bomb being dropped and leaving us scratching our heads. These stories are a stand-out style from the rest of their talk.
The motivation for opening up with story hour of this kind is ultimately founded in the very same concern they have behind everything they say.
That is, they open their yap to get something they want and need and at the same time to keep us hooked in. Also, they’re quite concerned – and at some times more than others – about hiding how they really feel from their black hearts, about putting a lid on what they really think, on what they really intend, and to cover up what they do or have done.
Monsters know they’re monsters. Narcs know they’re sociopaths. Sociopaths know they’re sociopaths. We don’t need to act as if they don’t and aren’t. That’s how we win.
Monsters know what they are. Monsters like who and what they are. And yet, we’re spinning here, seeing our world turn in circles and go nowhere but backward. Because that’s the natural effect they have on normal.
It’s the rest of us – the non-monsters – who have a hard time knowing they exist. The facts are, that monsters in “relationships” don’t want what we want. They aren’t there for the reason we are. Not for one tiny moment, not even one millisecond. Nothing is shamed mutual moment.
Normal is, as Normal Does: Normal Does as Normal Is
As any normal person would, when things first went wrong we defined what was happening through our normal ideas about relationships and our normal human point of view.
We’re normal and normal has its own special “lens” we use to look at the world. We might not think much about that, but it’s true.
We assume people are “good” like we are that all people share, for the most part, a core value system that is inspired by, “do unto others…”
Even if we disagree about big things like gun rights, abortion, immigration, or our favorite color. Even if we’re different in other ways we do feel there’s a shared baseline of “good” and rules we all follow about social behavior.
For this reason, as we fell down the rabbit hole, we naturally and blamelessly endowed the love of our life – the sociopath with a quality of humanity that unfortunately, does not exist inside their bodies, hearts, minds, or souls. (Even if you’re calling them a narc, narcopath, narcissist, psychopath, or any word.)
Sociopaths know they’re sociopaths. Narcs know they’re sociopaths. Most of the creatures we’re calling narcissists are sociopaths. These monsters know they’re monsters. It’s the rest of us who have a hard time knowing they exist. We don’t need to act as if they don’t and aren’t what they are.
Innocently and with pure-hearted hope, we explained away their odd habits and missteps. We found and still find after they’re gone in many cases, reasons, or explanations for those bizarre reveals-from-behind-the-mask.
As normal humans with fully limbic “feeling-based” brains have room to think, maybe, that’s just the way they are. We might decide to give them space based on an “issue” we’d work on as a couple. We give them more time… That’s normal. Because we assumed that the “monster” was a manageable version of “normal”. That assumption is 100% normal and something we do as regular, normal people who bond and care, and connect.
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.
Antisocial personality disorder is the formal mental health diagnosis for what’s commonly referred to as “sociopathy.” People living with the condition are often labeled “sociopaths.” ~ Hope Gillette, Kendra Kubala, PsyD Psychology
Our natural understanding and compromising give them a hall pass to keep on stomping through our lives. We believed them when they told us about their childhood trauma that left them with PTSD or left them unable to be intimate. We believed their last girlfriend was crazy. This is because we’re good, not because of any special skill or intelligence they have.
When we love, we give. Monsters make use of, and take advantage of our goodness and our lack of really knowing and understanding that monsters exist. This is truly the psychopath’s only real intelligence.
What’s Love Got to Do with It?
When we fall in love involuntary changes go on in our bodies in we fall in that further mask the intentions and lies of the sociopath. Our zinging, swirling chemicals and altered state of excitement in a new relationship buy the sociopath time.
So, monsters, as in all they do, take advantage of what we are as fully limbic-brained humans. We don’t know about the parallel destructive existence shoving our lives in the wrong direction. They use the fact we don’t know the kind of creature that they really truly exist, let alone that it could be sleeping in our bed.
Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
Their Power Is An Illusion: It’s the Effect Of What They Are
Our “not knowing” about these monsters, is the entirety of their power and “currency.” Since there’s a limited supply of “not knowing” on our part, their dominance and influence falter and they topple.
Monster-predators (sociopaths, psychopaths, and what people refer to as a narcissist) expect this shift from the first, “hello“. Sociopath-monsters do try to override it by getting angry or making more promises… this is so they can hang on as long as possible. It all only lasts so long. Because we’re not dumb. Sociopaths are dumb.
Monsters Have a Mean/Nice Switch: Only Two Options
In between these roller-coaster ups and downs, they’re bored and fishing for a new target. – Their full emotional range is solely in reaction to their own perceived success at taking and using, keeping what they take, and going free.
Monsters have been here since the beginning of time. They’re even mentioned in classic American literature. The author and Nobel Prize winner, John Steinbeck contemplates the existence of sociopaths in his stunningly comprehensive and beautiful award-winning novel, East of Eden, published in 1952, and later made into a film starring James Dean.
A female sociopath comes into the lives of two unmarried brothers by chance. East of Eden tells the odyssey of the brothers’ lives and their children’s lives affected by this sociopath, who plays a minor character but drives their fate. Chapter eight begins:
“Just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?”
~ John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Monsters Need Us for Their Survival: We’re Unwitting Hosts to a Parasite
Narcissistic sociopaths need their emotional response or connection to survive or succeed. To put an end to our vulnerability to sociopaths understand how sociopaths think. Assess and judge what they do, based on their true intentions; use the thinking of a sociopath to evaluate what happened rather than our emotional brain and we set ourselves free.
As more and more of us individually and collectively comprehend what these humans without humanity are they will diminish, and their effect will be neutralized. Monsters know they’re different. They know that if we knew what they really were and are really up to, we would not accept them, this is why they hide.
Seeing What They Are Illuminates Our Great Goodness
As we see what they are, by contrast, we see how gorgeous a fully human person is. The human being as intended, not perfect, but filled with innate trust, goodness, and kindness, living a life interconnected and interdependent with one another.
This is surely the only way to give the existence of the monster-humans meaning or purpose and the way to transform our grief, loss, and pain into something good and to find ourselves more deeply appreciating life itself.
A single word can scar another. A single word can also give comfort and relief or fill one’s spirit with courage. The care with which we use words reflects the depth of our humanity. ~ Daisaku Ikeda
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.
Hope is inherent in life itself. Yes. This they cannot steal.
The horror show of entanglement and entrapment in coercive control by a sociopath or what some call a narcissist is beyond words. Only those who’ve been in it and have come out the other side can begin to understand it.
The thing we need to come out and fully recover is hope. What is hope? It’s the saving grace, the inherent love we feel for life itself. It’s there inside us. We find a way to latch on and keep holding and pull ourselves up from hell.
“Hope is an optimistic attitude of mind based on an expectation of positive outcomes related to events and circumstances in one’s life or the world at large. Its definitions include: expect with confidence and to cherish a desire with anticipation. Among its opposites are dejection, hopelessness and despair.” ~ Wikipedia
What we go through as the target of narcissistic abuse as the prey of a sociopath is indescribable to those who haven’t been through it.
This hijacking, life invasion trauma leaves singular effects. We’re terrorized, left with emotional devastation, loads of sorrow, and unanswered questions. We are the ones pulling children back together from exposure to the tactics of monsters who only pretended to love them and often directly abused them.
We mourn their innocence and the betrayal of our own hearts; sorrow lays heavy in our bones. Where is the hope after a sociopath or a narcissist? How do we pull ourselves from the quicksand of coercive control?
Hope Within the Darker Moments
Where do we find hope in the middle of despair? Depression and despair seem constant companions. We wake with them, sleep with them. How is there hope after a sociopath or a narcissist?
Post-traumatic stress keeps us in fight or flight. New challenges facing court and restraining orders and child custody battles keep us in ongoing shock. How, how, how is there hope after a sociopath or a narcissist?!
Hope After a Narcissistic Sociopath
Hope after a sociopath or a narcissist is harder to envision when he or she may have turned our own family against us. They may not understand what we’re going through. They may be mesmerized by him/her. Our friends may have become his friends as they are influenced by the games of the socialized psychopath. We may feel entirely alone.
“No matter how hopeless or bleak things appear, the moment always comes when suddenly our spirit revives, and hope is reborn. That is why we must never give up.” ~ Dr. Daisaku Ikeda
Five Tips to Finding Hope After a Sociopath: Some People Call Them Narcissists
Turn self-blame to the place it belongs: On them, the user.
Accept they were not real, that they will not change.
Mark the one boundary that matters: Go zero contact.
Find your reason for being.
Move forward and fly.
We were recognizing and turning away from self-blame. There’s nothing we could have done differently. It was not our fault. We were targeted for our kindness, loyalty, warmth, magnanimity, faithful nature, respectability, and loving hearts. Loving is not a crime. Defrauding is. We were hijacked and robbed.
Understand What a Sociopath Is Or Risk Falling Again
Accept they were not who or what we thought; they will not change. They are wired differently. change. A sociopath does not have the capacity to love or care for anyone. On the other hand, a narcissist may love in their way, but their way causes great damage.
For our own well-being, we want to sweep away confusion. We want things clear; in simple terms for our discovery and recovery for these experiences narcissist and a sociopath represent two different things. We’re not diagnosing. We’re looking at it for what goes on.
They will not change. With them, there’s no fair discussion, no apology, no remorse. This was not a relationship. There is no healthy resolution other than creating our own life without them – beyond them.
Post Trauma Stress is There After a Narcissistic Sociopath
We are left in post-traumatic stress which includes a state of hopelessness. But within that dark realm there is a light to reach toward. Here’s an easy test for PTSD; take it now and later, or periodically, maybe at three-month intervals.
It’s encouraging to move from scoring in the highest segment of indicators for PTSD after a sociopath to living entirely free of PTSD. We do finally land in the category of those who know, those who have won, those who are free and healthy but can help others because of our journey. We’re on this earth to help others. This is love. This is joy.
Mark Our Territory: Stand Up For Our Lives
No contact is essential. No joking around. We make zero contact happen – they do not. Establishing no contact is of primary importance. It’s simple — if there is no contact, there’s no way for them to grab our emotions and use them to get things they want or bring us pain; no more defrauding.
If there’s no contact there’s no control, except our own. We’re in charge. As each day and each week and each month passes we see the episode with clearer eyes.
We see the monster behind the mask. This sets us free, and in some moments, makes us feel discouraged. For this reason, we must stop self-blame. There’s nothing we could have done differently. We were chosen because we are awesome. Stay awesome.
Find our reason for being. A golden rope to pull us up and out. Keep pulling no matter what. Love scam recovery comes in stages. Use patience, self-love, and kindness with ourselves.
Hope After a Narcissist Especially When They’re Really a Sociopath
Move forward and fly. Each day, every hour. Sometimes minute by minute. We don’t need to have the solution, and the fix, and the answer and have it all resolved at once. Take each bit— bit by bit. We don’t need all the answers today. Only one.
We’ll feel the moment when suddenly our spirit revives, and hope is reborn. Look for it. Find it. Expect – demand – positive outcomes, expect with confidence and cherish a desire with anticipation. The desire to be free. To laugh again, and see the future as a bright open space — a place we welcome.
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.
