Hoovering Happens: Understand What's Up

Like the Cat in the Hat,
the troublemaker comes back.
Hoovering.
What’s a person to do?

Hoovering is annoying and scary. The threat of hoovering is beyond the imagination of anyone who hasn’t been in this kind of nightmare. Anyone leaving a relationship replete with narcissistic abuse knows that in the end, things get scary. We can put an end to hoovering.

The “narcissist” – that is to say, the sociopath – lets out a side of themselves that might be our first glimpse at their genuine absolute wack-o-self. It’s all in the name of attempting to keep us locked in and to be sure we aren’t getting them in trouble.

Hoovering is Hell: Why Don’t They Just Go Away?

Their inability to know exactly what will work in their hoovering attempts explains why they flip back and forth from “nice” to “mean”. Their hopes that things will go their way shows up in messages, phone calls, and other forms of contact flying at us. – I even had a postcard left under my windshield wiper!

In some cases, these narcissistic parasites might show up in person, in tears, begging us to take them back.

You can find yourself with a slew of haunting messages and missives that swing wildly between proclamations of love and longing, to threats and scary-berry nuttiness.

Trying to make sense of this whirlwind of contradictory nonsense ties us in knots so that we’re left more of an emotional wreck than before the “break-up”.

We Call It Hoovering

There’s a name for the relentless, nonsensical jibber-jabber, hoovering, as in the hoover brand vacuum. Pathological users notoriously hoover when the whole thing crashes. And we wonder, why can’t he just leave me alone…!

When it’s over, they’re super, super mad.

By the time they’ve flown the scene, it’s pretty obvious for some that this intense anger, the rage on their part isn’t over a lost love. This doesn’t mean we aren’t left in a heap on the floor wondering why they left and what happened. No matter what they say, they aren’t sorry for the things they’ve done, the birthdays they’ve ignored, or the late nights we didn’t know where they were.

So, what’s it all about? Hoovering serves a very specific and necessary function for every narcissistic, pathological user a.k.a. for every sociopath/psychopath.

The Break-Up Brings Out the Crazy

What are they doing with all the hoovering? We feel the vibrations of their rage through the whizzing texts, and cards on our car. Maybe they send flowers with little notes. Stick a message on our door. Text, DM, PM, send a LinkedIn message starting with, I don’t even know if you’ll read this… like some pathetic and victimized sad little Eeyore.

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Accusations, Promises, Declarations, and Blame

Hoovering is exhausting, scary, and leaves us anxious. Worse yet, sometimes it pulls you straight back in. And by “back in” I mean any reply to them at all. If you do try to talk, to reason with them it will go nowhere but in circles. You’ll become more crazed, blamed, baited, and tossed more bread crumbs and baited with more carrots that end with pain.

Hoovering includes all the things we’ve heard all along from them and can go beyond, far down the line to name-calling or hate such as they have not yet shown us. It dawns on the horizon of our mind, that they don’t love us, or even like us… and that they might be insane.

Making Sense Outside of What We Know Is Normal

In their messaging, they might ask how our day went or how our mom is doing. They might promise a plan to pay us back all the money they borrowed… You’re left in a quagmire of confusion and a gripping in your gut that’s quite familiar by now.

It’s natural to try on meanings to the messages. Trying to find the meaning and reasons for their words. This is where people land on, it’s just to make me jealous or why is he saying he loves me, and then tells me I’m the one who ruined it? And that’s usually as far as you get trying to understand their weird words.

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.

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Three Reasons Sociopaths Hoover

To keep the doorway open to more goodies
To monitor us to see if we’re making trouble for them
They straight up don’t like to lose prey

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What’s Going On In Their Minds?

Keep the Doorway Open to More Goodies: It’s pretty hard on the poor little sociopath when we break up and then go no contact. They need us. We’re their survival; it may not be clear yet, but truly, we’re their permission slip and hall pass to walk the earth: If we believe them, believe in them, trust them, and are by their side: others trust them.

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

They need as many people as they can get to use, take from, and live off of. They need us as a respectability facade, as bank ATMs, as places to live, and doorways to yet other people to use.

They’re so comically mad (if it weren’t so scary) because they know this means we found out they’re liars. They know our unresponsiveness means the end of getting the things they want. Now, this means they have to actually work hard to stir up and bring some of their other prey up to full results. Read about this right here, Sociopaths’ Other Women

Monitoring Us is Serious Business

Hoovering is to Monitor Us: The pathological user is monitoring our intent to spread the word that they’re big fat liars, or report them to police and authorities. They need to know who we’re talking to, and what we’re saying. We might be in a position to expose them, to get them fired, or ruin their other set-ups with other prey.

They’re angry at being found out and scared out of their minds that now there’s a loose cannon; a threat to their facade and fraud on the lose: that’s us. Monitoring us is absolutely 100% necessary for the user.

Losing Prey is Not in The Pathological User’s Nature

Sociopaths Don’t Like to Lose Prey: They hate to lose what they’ve ensnared. Ideally, they’d keep every person they entrapped since age five and keep us all collected in a harem, and a gaggle ready and waiting at their convenience.

And as a supportive fan club to encourage others to believe they’re “good guys”. Hoovering is the pathological user’s attempt to keep their world intact; it’s their attempt to keep their very existence validated.

The Sociopath Cannot Not Target and Prey Upon People

Hanging on to current and former prey is something they aspire to. They want us as a fan, even if it’s only in the form of FB “likes”. A cluster of seeming groupies allows new targets… this is the pool they might be focusing on for a start.

There are also many random others who exist only in the sociopath’s imagination, to form the impression that they’re “good” people and all the other things a sociopath needs people to think they are: Cool, popular, and awesome. Really, they’re just poop.

Sociopaths Are a Closed Circuit System of Self

“When individuals with psychopathy imagine others in pain, brain areas necessary for feeling empathy and concern for others fail to become active and be connected to other important regions involved in effective processing and decision-making.”
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

Hoovering Sociopaths Rage in The Aftermath

The rage of a narcissistic user, sociopath flares because they’re mad. So gross, but so true… They’re mad at having to secure a new living situation or a new main-vein house mouse. The user is pissed and freaked that we’re now out there possibly running around talking trash about them. In other words, as soon as it ends, we’re a threat to their continued exploits.

What the sociopath wants – or narcissist if you use that term, is a second chance to dip into the cookie jar. And this would mean, our bank accounts. Sociopaths – those narcissists who are pathologically narcissistic – have no remorse. No guilt. They aren’t sorry. They’re mad when we go no contact.

Hoovering Ends: No Contact is The Beginning of Saving Our Lives

Want to know what they’re up to? Take a look at Sociopaths and No Contact. Their anger isn’t based on them being sorry or desperately wanting to apologize because they see the error of their ways. They aren’t hurling insults just to hurt us.

If you’re ever thinking of anything they do or says a punishment, or just to _____ fill-in-the-blank, then you’re on the wrong track. They don’t care about how we feel. They don’t care what we think or what we know… they only care about what we do about how we feel, what we think, and what we know.

Additionally, they aren’t making promises – or raging – because they love you or miss you. They’re raging because you took the cookie jar away and they can no longer freely make use of you and your life. It’s true, their brain does not feel remorse.

They do feel colossal regret that they can’t get more. Really. Read about it here: Sociopaths – including that mook you might be thinking of as a narcissist – lack empathy and compassion (which means that mook is in fact, a sociopath).

How Can We Get Them to Stop..? We End It

To stop hoovering we must go no contact. What exactly is no contact…? It’s far more than not licking up their calls. And more than not answering their messages or texts. It does include blocking them from reaching us in every way.

In no contact, we don’t reach out to them or respond if they manage to get a message or flowers or a threat through to us. – I call it zero contact. And it is the single most necessary bit if you want to break the connection and have any chance of recovering.

To bring the hoovering to an end, we must go – and stay, no contact, or zero contact. Our no contact and removal of our energy towards them takes us bit-by-bit off their radar.

Without Normal People and Empaths, Sociopaths Can’t Survive

Since we don’t believe them anymore, in a sense: they don’t exist. I mean if we don’t believe them, are they really even there? Imagine if no one believed the lies they tell, who would they be since it’s all made up? These pathological users aren’t who we thought they were; that person doesn’t exist. We’d have better luck looking for love according to our zodiac sign than with them.

We can do it. Go zero contact and non-threat. Let the con man dirtbag fail and flail. Ignore the hoovering. Block them, and – ideally – get a new number… Stay safe and strong. We are awesome.

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

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