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Emotional Abuse and Sociopaths

Emotional abuse is a part of life with a narcissistic user.
This is what life is if we’re ensnared by them.

Emotional abuse comes in many flavors. It always comes along with an entanglement with a narcissistic user, the predatory sociopath.

When a normal person and a sociopath mix, the collision of the normal-human brain, and the sociopath’s brain there’s inevitable harm to the normal person while it’s just another regular day to the sociopath.

The focus of the pathological user is to make use of us. They don’t care about what concerns us.

Our feelings are not anything they can feel or understand… Their work is to be sure we’re hooked, and that we don’t comprehend what they are or the reality of their intention in our lives. They don’t care how we feel… They care what we do because of how we feel.

There are answers to all the confusion.

Emotional Abuse and Sociopathic Users are a Package Deal

Once we’re involved and in love, the fallout of the mix of a normal human and a sociopath is trauma, shock, and only harm to us and not at all hurtful for them.

This mind-bending, confusing, collision of a sociopath and a normal person can make us think there’s something wrong with us. There is not. There’s something very very wrong with a sociopath.

Emotional Abuse Signifies This is Not an Ordinary Relationship

As normal, gorgeous humans, we think we’re in a real relationship. Naturally, we do what normal people do in real relationships. The sociopath does not.

Their odd behavior, unresponsiveness, and sometimes outright meanness trips us up – we try, we try to make things better: as anyone would in a relationship.

In the beginning, a sociopath gauges what matters to us. They fulfill that. As the weeks go by, they discern what we won’t tolerate or forgive, what will keep us trusting, even when they become neglectful or mean. They innately know, or simply guess until they get it right and discover which behavior of theirs will bend us to their will most effectively.

Crimes Rather Than Relationships

In reality, we’ve been hijacked and kidnapped without realizing it. We’re not with a normal person, sociopaths have abnormal brains.

As a sociopath goes about their day in the world they present a false self, even the barista or car wash attendant isn’t seeing a real person.

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.

Normal Relationships are Mutual

We try to keep things harmonious, humans need harmony within their lives and relationships. If both people were normal, both people would contribute to harmony within the relationship, this is not the case with a sociopath.

They lead us to feeling convinced we did something to make it happen, or that it didn’t happen, or they ignore us.

While we pitch in and spend a lot of effort self-reflecting, wondering if “it’s our fault,” and trying to make things right, work out the kinks, adjust our perception of what a relationship – this relationship – should be, and continue to relationship-build, it takes a while to notice, we’re doing it alone.

We don’t get anywhere trying to make things good. There’s always a particular moment when it hits us: something is very wrong here, and normal isn’t working to fix it… because they aren’t normal.

Sociopath’s Minds Collide with Ours

Once hooked in, we’re in a kind of hypnosis in a cloud of confusion. As the whirlwind of good stuff begins to wear off the crazy begins we’re twirling on a merry-go-round emotionally.

We discover if we question them about specific unpleasant or odd things they’ve done, the sociopath gets mad. They lead us to feel convinced we did something to make it happen, or that it didn’t happen, or they ignore us.

A sociopath wants us to stay locked in their spell. They know that an emotional reaction from us is a sign we’re “still in”. They truly do not care which of our emotions makes us stay.

Narcissistic users bent on coercive control to attain their personal gains show rage and even violent behavior if he or she thinks they’re losing their grip on getting the things they want. They like to keep what they take. Though not all sociopaths use physical violence within every predator/prey circumstance, some are incredibly violent.

Normal and Chaos or Trouble Make Us Bond More Deeply

Being in love with a sociopath – what you might call a narc, a narcissist, or “your nee”, isn’t a casual connection. – It isn’t a connection at all as much as a parasite embedded in your life.

While we think it’s a real relationship, we’re all the way in. We want the fairy tale to stay perfect. We hang on tenaciously even as we feel it shifting and disintegrating under our feet. Naturally, when things aren’t building or developing in a relationship, you’re worried about connecting on a deeper level, maybe going to counseling together.

Concerns about maintaining a home, paying bills, not wanting to break up a family, or fearing for our own future all keep us “in”. The things that string us along are subtle and hard to grab a hold of; sociopaths trap us in ordinary conversation by activating our normal emotional responses.

As decent, normal human beings when someone talks we feel we’re meant to listen. When someone asks a question we’re socially, culturally, and innately programmed to give an answer. Never diminish the complete wrongness of any abuse. – Sociopaths are naturals at bringing what amounts to abuse into our lives because they don’t value us, or care for us. There’s absolutely no human connection from this alternate-human and ourselves.

Narcissistic Users, Sociopaths Don’t Care Which Emotion Hooks Us

Our response to their actions is a sign we’re hooked. That’s all they need.

Emotional Distractions:

  • Says or does things that bring up the emotion of humiliation within you
  • Laughs at you
  • Puts you down
  • Calls you names
  • You feel guilty for things they say
  • Diminishes your feelings
  • Their presence and personality leave you thinking maybe you’re crazy
  • The silent treatment ignores you
  • Takes things, money, plans, or privileges away from you
  • Treats you very well in front of other people
  • Accuses and blames you for their plans and “work” going wrong or failing
  • Talks about a past girl/boyfriend who did things “perfectly”…better than you do.

Intimidation and Isolation:

  • Making us afraid by using looks or gestures.
  • Slams doors, breaks things, throws things
  • Yells, scolds, orders you about
  • Hounds you until you decide to not do something you’d planned
  • Talks about killing and violence
  • Shows weapons to you in text messages or in person
  • Tells you who your friends can be
  • Keeps you from or wedges an emotional separation between you and your family
  • Creates an “us” and “them” existence
  • Seems to be jealous of your time and seems to want attention from you
  • Uses his jealousy to justify rules and limits or conditions they put upon you
  • Limits where you can go, when and when you must be home
  • Texting or calling at intervals to make sure where you are
  • Rules about or insinuating when we can or can’t go out
  • Limits or tells you what you can read, watch
  • Has rules about your social media or phone time
  • Blocks you from their social media
  • Avoids meeting or seeing your family
  • Keeps you from their family or their family seems just as bad
  • Has friends they won’t let you meet, places they won’t let you go with them
  • Holds up a “friend” as an authority about your relationship ought to be

Minimizing, Denying, and Blaming:

  • Belittling your ideas, feelings, opinions
  • Denying that things important to us, matter
  • Dismissing or ignoring or making fun of or being angered at what’s important to us
  • Comments and sets of circumstances that cause you to think everything’s your fault
  • Insulting how we take care of the home, kids, or spend our time
  • Telling you things are going wrong because you don’t trust them
  • Using intimidation or belittling to keep us quiet about what concerns us

Coercion and Threats:

  • Threaten to commit suicide, talk about dying
  • Threats to report us to authorities
  • Making us drop charges against them
  • Sociopaths pretend illness to get out of expectations, events, and conversations
  • Making or carrying out threats to harm, hurt or leave us
  • Telling us we get something only if we do something specific
  • Coercing us or charming us to do illegal or reprehensible things

Financial Monitoring:

  • Takes your money
  • Making you ask them for money
  • Puts you on an allowance
  • Comments negatively and criticizes you for what you spend money on
  • Takes credit cards beyond their limit
  • Opens new credit cards; coerces you to open credit accounts or does so in secret
  • Their money and its source are a mystery
  • Borrows money from you and doesn’t pay it back
  • Takes out loans or borrows money without you knowing they’ve done this
  • Keeps secret credit cards or bank accounts
  • Keeps their income or access to family income from you
  • Uses outbursts of rage to keep you from talking about bills
  • Is enraged or dismissive when you try to talk about financial matters or bills

Male Privilege and Cultural Advantage:

  • Treats you like a servant…even in jest
  • Behaves like the King or Master of the castle
  • Makes big decisions, family decisions without you
  • Uses proclaimed beliefs about how women against you
  • Defines men’s and women’s roles or husband and wife roles in a restrictive way

Female Privilege and Cultural Advantage:

  • If you were a real man you would – blank
  • Threatens domestic abuse charges
  • Stages domestic violence
  • I’m a woman, so you need to: financially support me and the baby

Sexual Abuse and Emotional Manipulation:

  • Bargains with sex
  • Forces you to be sexual with them
  • Hides their STD’s
  • Belittles you for wanting intimacy
  • Puts you down or dismisses you for wanting sex
  • Refuses sexual intimacy
  • Has other husbands, wives, secret kids

Pathological Predators Use Our Emotions for Their Gain

They lie about all things, always hiding what they really are. Every moment of their life is a lie. Everyone they know is someone they’re scamming.

They aren’t a real person, not even to the barista or the car wash attendant. The sociopath is constantly putting on a presentation. When we stop believing them, no one is there. No one human that is.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

Join the podcast!

Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

SD Voyager interview

True Love Scam Recovery on Medium

True Love Scam Recovery on Facebook

Add these to your contacts
so you don’t miss a newsletter!
jennifer@truelovescam.com
info@truelovescam.com

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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2015_03_14 2022_10_12 REPUB: 2023_08_07

Do Sociopaths Know They’re Sociopaths?

Sociopaths know what they are.
The “narcissist” knows they’re a sociopath.
They get annoyed with attempts to “fix” them.
And they don’t want to be fixed even if they could be.

All of us have lots of questions when we’re coming out of this. The questions are rooted in the pain, and disbelief, and for some, it rises – steaming and often with embarrassment or shame – out of the aching yearning they still feel for this monster they escaped.

There are three primary questions I’m asked by clients in guided recovery sessions with me. 1) Do sociopaths know they’re sociopaths?

Along these same lines, I’m asked, Do sociopaths know they’re lying? And the third primary question is, Can they be fixed? These questions are a reflection and the product of what we are as normal gorgeous humans who are wired to give other’s the benefit of the doubt and believe in the goodness of others.

So, Do They Know…?

My answers to the three: 1) Do sociopaths know they’re sociopaths, 2) Do they know they’re lying and 3) Can they be fixed are: yes, yes, and no. And then I explain why this is so and hopefully, I’ll bring home the reality of the impossibility that they can be fixed. Here’s an unbelievable tidbit: they wouldn’t want to be fixed if they could. The fact is, they adore being what they are and all that this means.

Please, even if you’re calling them a “narcissist”… Please open up your mind to the notion that there’s something more than a wounded human here. The word “narcissist” as a term for these creatures drags with it a pile of misconceptions about what you’re likely facing if this website is where you landed. I’d go so far as to suggest you finally found the real answers. Please shed the terms and ideas of a “narcissist” and step into the reality that sociopaths exist and they know what they are: we need to as well.

Do Sociopaths Know They’re Sociopaths?

The short answer is “yes”. They know what they are. They might not all use or know the word “sociopath”, but yes. Even as children they know they’re “different”, and “not like other people”.

In the words of a socioapth: I was no stranger to manipulating situations and people in order to get what I wanted, and strangely enough, all these extremely educated adults were extremely easy to manipulate circles around.

In my experience resolving the pain of entanglements for people all over the globe, I see it proven over and over and over again that they indeed know what they are and are this from youngest childhood.

I’ve had mothers write to me who have seen the strangeness of a baby who can’t connect in freshest infancy, and in toddlers with cruel behavior. I’ve had siblings of these alternate-children tell me of the fear at night that this brother or sister would creep into their room and kill them.

They do know what they are. And they simply are what they are. While you or I are thrown into a surreal nightmare under the spell of a sociopath and suffer profound trauma at the hands of a sociopath, the very same interaction is mundane to them. It’s even boring for a sociopath. They feel no trauma or harm or upset during the hijackings… The trauma for them is when we break away.

And for those wondering, why the heck is she saying they know this in childhood…? Because scientific research points to sociopaths being what they are due to very specific parts of the brain that don’t function from birth and as a result of what we would call abnormal microgenetic coding. It’s in their genes. There is no research I’ve found saying this is hereditary, but it’s in the genes of that embryo as it forms.

Sociopaths Are All They Can Be

At the same time, the sociopath feels a sense of achievement in these hijackings, deceptions, and misleads. This is because the way they are wired to behave and to survive: is to make use of others rather than connecting or caring. – When they entrap you they’re living out their purpose.

The pathological taker-user has pride in a job well done when they capture prey. They find not only money and places to stay and more, but also find pleasure and entertainment in scamming people. They’re in need of food to eat, and money in their grimy hands, this is so even for those dirtbags who also bring in some kind of paycheck.

A Pathological “Narcissist” is a Sociopath: There is Only One Monster

To get to the root of your situation, if you’re calling him or her a “narcissist”, consider throwing that idea away. The problem is found in the commonly attached beliefs about what a “narcissist” is.

Please keep looking, turning the kaleidoscope for the view that snaps missing puzzle pieces into place so that you can see them clearly and separately from your own great goodness.

If you believe that they’re jealous of us, want to be us, have a narcissistic wound, or have no self-love, toss that out before it takes you further from realizing what you really faced, and what you can truly do to recover and get them out of your bones.

I know this sounds scary to think they’re a sociopath, but I guarantee, it makes things easier, and clearer and allows for restoration of your life.

What is recovery for you?
What is winning in this nightmare?

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.

Therapy is School for a Pathological Narcissist aka Sociopath

For the sociopath, therapy is at best an education in what matters to us and teaches them little tricks. They discover buttons to use us more. Agreeing to go to therapy makes them look normal and look good, or at least vulnerable and willing to get “help” which amounts to normal and good to nice, real people… and that is required in the sociopath’s way of life.

Going to counseling or therapy gets the sociopath (the pathologically narcissistic which some refer to as a narcissist) some pats on the head, dinners, and ice cream. They don’t want to be fixed. A sociopath doesn’t feel that there’s anything about them that needs fixing. They don’t think that the things they do are wrong. Not one bit of it.

Narcissistic Abuse Unwound: The Podcast

A Real-Life 30-Something Sociopath Tells their Story

Let’s see what a real-life 30-something sociopath has to say about therapy and “fixing” them with this pithy snip of reality in their own words complaining about being sent to therapy throughout their lives:

I’ve been through several therapists and in several psychiatric wards multiple times. In my youth one of my therapists would take me out for ice cream if I was good, so I “confessed” issues I was having and he took me to get double chocolate chip, but apparently he fell asleep on me once and so my parents didn’t let me see him anymore.

Then the second one I had seen twice, and I didn’t like how she always sided with my parents and I always got blamed for everything, so I told my parents I didn’t want to see her anymore.

The third one was a really nice guy, but was too nice and optimistic, and not very much of a realist. I genuinely liked the guy. But as a therapist he fed me too much happy bullshit. I ended up asking him more about his life and career. Talking about subjects that were irrelevant, and manipulating him to help me with my homework in his computer because we didn’t have one at home until I got into community college.

The fourth one I saw while I was homeless. I actually didn’t originally want to see, but she was very useful for things other than therapy, and she was extremely nice, so I consistently saw her. When I started seeing her in the transitional home I was in she was less attentive. And was on her phone most of the time. I had less use for her as time progressed, so I stopped seeing her. I completely forgot about her until just now.

Therapy never got me to address any issues, for me, it was always about blowing off steam, and then maybe my parents taking me out to eat afterward, my parents never actually gave a shit about working on anything, so I didn’t either.

Medications didn’t work either. It seemed like they would for one or two weeks then I’d stop feeling their effects all together, like I was actually controlling myself, but the medications made my thoughts hazy and made me moody and irritable. I’m actually much worse on meds than off.

In psychiatric wards, by the time I was 13 years old, I’d been to three psychiatric wards, two of them multiple times, so I had been to them enough to know the system and subconsciously that allowed me to be released because I hated it there. They were all about control and just suppressing your issues, not actually getting you to change for the better. And there was tons of violence and bullshit in there as well, and they were so filthy.

So, I just acted normal and complied to get what I wanted while in there, then I would get released in like a week or two every time. It was just going through the motions, as they say. I was always an exceptionally intelligent kid, and since I was constantly in these situations, I was no stranger to manipulating situations and people in order to get what I wanted, and strangely enough, all these extremely educated adults were extremely easy to manipulate circles around.

So in summation, the answer to your question is, yes, we don’t like having to devote our free time to therapy. It’s all purely a damn waste of our time and we don’t want to be there, so we will act normal to get out. ~ E.B., Self-Proclaimed Sociopath and Diagnosed Personality Disorder

Sociopaths Learn Tricks Like Lab Rats Learning Which Lever Gets the Cheese

Please notice the Subject above refers to the following situations that are indicative and an aspect of all sociopaths: “one of my therapists would take me out for ice cream when I was good so I “confessed” to issues I was having”, making up things he thinks the therapist wants to hear. And casually as if it’s unimportant: “when I was homeless”. And conscious deliberately “manipulated him to help me with my homework” and “…in order to get what I wanted…all these extremely educated adults were extremely easy to manipulate circles around”. These reflect the traits I mention frequently. That sociopaths don’t mind where they live, they don’t do their own work at school or on a job, and that they learn to use “buzz words” they pick up from us to sound “real” or normal. And that anyone can be drawn in by them, not understand what they are or not recognize them: even by those considered experts in the psych professions.

We’re Humans: The Sociopath Is Without Humanity

These abnormal-brained and therefore, pathological users aka pathological predators – sociopaths – know they think differently. This is not because they have any mental disability. – The sociopath – that life-stealing “narcissist” has a biologically different body and brain.

The “malignant narcissist”, the “overt” and the “covert”, and all the endlessly misleading NPD categories, are meant for clinical observations and medical prescriptions and prison sentencings rather than for your recovery… These entities function as sociopaths. Someone you think of as “having NPD” is a sociopath.

We’re much better off when we get to this reality and don’t expect them to be something they aren’t. They aren’t wounded souls. They don’t suffer from childhood abuse no matter the stories they tell you. If they were abused it didn’t make them what they are.

They Aren’t Who We Thought They Were

Here’s the surreal but freeing good news: there was no one who loved us and then treated us badly. There was a pathological parasitic predator who stunned us under their spell, invaded and used our lives in a deliberate, intentional fraud.

They truly live in a different universe than ours, while standing right next to us. They need you to not know what they are so that they can live and thrive.

Please, don’t give them that. Please keep looking, turning the kaleidoscope for the view that snaps missing puzzle pieces into place so that you can see them clearly and separately from your own great goodness.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

The Podcast: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

SD Voyager interview

True Love Scam Recovery on Medium

True Love Scam Recovery on Facebook

Add these to your contacts
so you don’t miss a newsletter!
jennifer@truelovescam.com
info@truelovescam.com

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.

True Love Scam on Tumblr.
.

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. © 2026 All Rights Reserved True Love Scam Recovery www.truelovescam.com

OG: 2018_09_20 REPUB 2023_07_26 UPDATE:11_09_2024