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.
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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.
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.
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2015_03_14 2022_10_12 REPUB: 2023_08_07