Why do we believe the lies
the narcissist or sociopath tells?
Because we’re normal.
It’s normal to believe what people say.
Here’s the thing, it’s normal to believe other people. Believing others is hard-wired into our normal human hearts. We’re born this way. We trust and believe others as such a regular part of life, it’s something we barely notice.
Continue readingHoovering nut bags want to “stay in touch.”
But we hesitate, stuck in yet more cognitive dissonance.
We have decisions to make.
Hoovering narcissistic sociopaths (you might be calling them a narcissist without using the sociopath word, but whatever we call them they) keep up the masquerade up and the facade place as long as possible.
They do this even in the face of pure ridiculousness and obvious lying. They don’t care or mind if we know what they are…! Not one jot. They do care what we do once we know.
They mind very much if we “stay in” or bolt. If we kick them to the curb or leave the cookie jar open. If we tell others, or if we’re going to keep our mouths shut.
Any and all of this can only happen through contact. Hoovering is contact… and has the same motivation as any contact they’ve made since day one and the first hello. Isn’t this how the whole thing happened…? Them reaching out?
The real-deal answers and real information
changes the whole scary schemer.
Our stomach churns. They’re in our heads. They stay present at the surface and underneath every moment of the day. This is the antithesis of “over.” And if it isn’t over and zero contact, we’ve not yet put a solid step onto the long road of healing.
At this point in the sham, letting our phone ring with their reaching grasp is all-in from their point of view. If they can reach us, they consider us active prey. This is all it takes: buuzzzz-buuzzzz-buuzzzz. (That’s your phone buzzing.)
Do you feel that? Even the idea of that phone vibrating and jumping on the table is nauseating. Listen to your gut. Trust yourself. What they care about is that we’re still “all-in.” As long as we leave a portal open, the narcissistic user has a chance to seep their way back in. Or step on in. And stay in.
All it takes is one more buzz of a text, one more late-night call. Another email. Facebook messaging. WhatsApp…another call. – Give ourselves every advantage in healing. Peace of mind, a truly fresh start can’t begin when any portal from them to us is open. We block them, we change our number, and also begin again with a new email address.
Oh, I get it. We feel like our life has been turned upside down and, it has. What we want to do is take all our reasoning, and all our decisions and turn them into moments of self-care, embracing our own life and building our lives the way we want them to be.
This is separate from basing our decisions on “fear” or “love” for the sociopath or because of not yet accepting what they really are.
Take no responsibility or blame for the presence of these kinds of pathological predatory humans in your life. You’re not responsible for the inhumanity of a sociopath. Do take your healing and the restoration of your life into your own hands. Take 100% responsibility for healing, recovering, and becoming sociopath (narcissist) user free forever. Let’s look at each of these seemingly reasonable reasons for not getting a new number.
I get how this can seem logical. But. Really….?! Isn’t this the very reason to change your number…? You need your phone. You need your phone. We need to conduct business. To continue building our lives. We need the freedom to create our business without fear, without hoovering, stalking, and mental and emotional torture.
Make this about ourselves. Use this time to change your number so that you can build a business and connect with clients freely; know that none of those incoming calls will be from bozo-the-user.
Have a client email list…? Write a cheery newsletter and send out your new number; maybe with a special offer for your product or service. Most business people strain to find reasons to reach out to clients…! Use this to our advantage. Make it a good thing. Let your phone ring freely.
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.
Fell strong by not answering while the loon rings through…? I do get that. Okay. But, you always were strong, that’s part of why and what about you held their fake life up so well.
Let’s look at this a little. Are you feeling a little flattered that they call? That’s natural, but, does it serve you? Does the experience of the phone buzzing make us feel truly and genuinely good? Or does it leave you feeling pretty rotten over the next few days?
Are you still – somewhere inside yourself still feeling a connection to them that you aren’t ready to disrupt? Are we still in a surreal comfort zone? Are we wanting to see if they call out of fear of them?
We can’t compromise our safety, well-being, and happiness for the benefit of the dark side. It’s a natural, second-nature skill we’ve honed during our time with the sociopath. Painting less-than-good circumstances into reasonable logic is the body’s beautiful, innate ability to make it through hard times.
This is how we survive and adapt to the confusion – technically this is managing cognitive dissonance. We all do this, usually daily. It’s decision-making. Let our decision land on our side.
We weigh and balance, and sort through options as a part of life; We regularly feel cognitive dissonance, in many ways, even throughout the day. It’s essentially decision-making.
We need to make decisions in order to maintain working for a boss whose ethics we don’t fully support, for example. We may swallow what we prefer as a good or safe way to spend time when negotiating how late our teen can stay out on Saturday night. It’s simply resolving a conflict between one thought and another.
We settle cognitive dissonance when we’re weighing whether to eat potato chips and cream cheese for dinner or salad with some healthy protein. – We need this life-saving and species-preserving trait. It’s a great and gorgeous thing — it’s time to turn our natural protective instincts truly back onto ourselves in a pure way. Trust our own lives.
Uhmmm. Yes, and no. Not exactly, I know it seems like a relationship. In this circumstance, however, you were absconded heart and soul within a crime. Know what they were up to. Accepting that these beasts exist and what that means and what truly happened is the foundation of truly recovering.
They’re recycled. Yes. That means we get a number someone else didn’t want. Who knows why they needed or wanted a new number?
Maybe the number belonged to someone in shoes similar to yours. This means our phone might ring with strange numbers in calls that are not for us. Anything from debt collectors to who knows who or what. Be prepared… but guess who it won’t be…?
Know that anytime your phone vibrates or chimes that the caller it will not be is the con man you’re dumping out of your life. The relief in this alone is unimaginable you get that new number. Feeling your heart rate stay settled and your blood pressure stay normal when the phone bleeps is incredible!
Follow these guidelines and you’ll fall off the pathological user, nutbag narcissistic sociopath’s radar.
Know those bill-collecting, robo-calls for Javier, Janet, or Dave will stop after a few months. And, P.S. Consider a brand new phone. And leave the old contacts on that old phone. – Start fresh.
Comfort and confidence in decision-making are some of the first things that go out the window in the confusion and chaos of life entangled by a sociopath. (And these people you’re calling some kind of narcissist.) Harmony in what’s around us and in what we believe to be normal or right and the far distant shore of what we experience with them becomes a chasm we straddle.
What we first experience as profound compatibility with these creatures changes drastically. One foot on one side, one on the other as the divide grows wider. As we can’t resolve the things they say into cognitive harmony, holes, and gaps of oddities show up one by one by one.
We end up stepping into those gapping oddities and nearly tottering to the bottom of that canyon. Fortunately, there’s also a ladder there for us to use to climb out. It’s our beautiful need for harmony that takes us into that dark abyss and lends us the way out.
The confusion escalates in post-trauma. I know the place you landed; I was once there too. It’s a hellish quagmire of quicksand and jello that is PTSD. Knowing what to do comes back slowly. It falls into place in great huge, encouraging chunks with each decision we bravely make.
Please make any and each decision rooted in a wish to rebuild your life for your own sake. Focus on and look toward your well-being as a Drishti point. This leeches the terror out of our bones; the terror wrought by the sociopath’s venomous deceit. You will free your bones and heart and soul and life of the maniac.
Join the podcast!
Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
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
Visit truelovescam’s profile on Pinterest.
True Love Scam on Tumblr.
Tweet to @truelovescam.
2017_06_19 2023_07_21
Sociopaths are identical and predictable.
Truly understanding the characteristics
of a sociopath changes everything.
It likely sounds dramatic, an impossibility, and maybe a bit like fear-mongering to say with calm confidence, oh that guy? He’s a sociopath. Or, she’s a sociopath. – The breaking news is, it is neither dramatic nor impossible.
It’s practical and sensible. It is scary. However, calmly knowing sociopaths exist and are real and what that means is huge key to how we unwind the damage of the sociopath-effect and unplug their influence.
I wish. The fact is, a sociopath is a real thing. A common reality. There are humans all around us who function from sociopathy. …And to confuse things even further, many people call them narcissists.
Though sociopath is a big scary word, the characteristics of a sociopath are really tiny and limited. And distinct.
There’s a good reason for this, a sociopath is a sociopath because they have a brain significantly different from the regular brain, that is from yours or mine.
Their brains under-function, so that they have no sensation or experience or feeling of connection. No sense of caring, genuine consideration, love, or even like for people outside of their own body. This pathology gives them very specific and unbelievable traits and qualities.
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.
By now you’ve heard the word narcissist and maybe call the person who hauled you through hell a narcissist. The thing is a “narcissist” is most often a sociopath. If you’re thinking of them as a “narcissists” read about and research sociopaths for real answers.
There’s lots of material and many memes and so many Insta accounts that talk about the more mundane narcissistic person who is not pathological and who is not a scammer. If you found yourself in a life where you were working harder than you’ve ever worked to keep your life and their life afloat only to find it constantly sinking, you were ensnared by the pathological narcissist…. that is, a sociopath.
Sociopaths are 100% narcissistic. They’re in your life for a reason that is not normal or genuine in any way. There’s no one more narcissistic on the planet than the sociopath… the antisocial psychopath aka sociopath or psychopath. Read here about why the clinical terminology uses the word “antisocial”.
Join the podcast!
Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
“Narcissistic Abuse Unwound” is on Spotify, Pandora, Audible, AmazonMusic, iHeartRadio, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, RadioPublic, Castbox and more!
Look for
Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
on your favorite podcast platform!
Though sociopath is a big scary word, the characteristics of a sociopath are really tiny and limited. And distinct. There’s a good reason for this: a sociopath is a sociopath because they have a brain significantly different from the regular brain… yours or mine.
Their brains are structured so that they have no sensation or experience of feeling any bonding, love, care, or consideration for other people — or animals. – They do pretend to.
The attachment or interest they display for others is where we begin to feel horrified because it’s not like ours. And it’s not good.
Other people hold no meaning to them aside from using that person for the sociopath’s personal gain. This means they’re what’s commonly called a con man or con artist, or scammer. And they come in male or female versions.
What depth of recovery do you want?
There’s hard science to demonstrate the difference in their brains. Brain scans by neuroscientists reveal the portions of the brain attributed to feeling love, and compassion just doesn’t function.
There’s nothing we can recognize as normal once the mask hits the floor. So what is going on inside of them? There’s basically nothing there. Where love would be there’s white noise. The connection between themselves and others isn’t made of concern or care.
Though they can create what we first feel is intimacy and deep interest in us, calling what they put out towards us a real “connection” isn’t quite the thing. This is because they see us as an object to grab-and-smash; something like a natural resource they hold the rights to.
They truly believe that they have every right to make use of humans as you or I would make use of a vacuum cleaner or a blender to get something done.
The thing is, we care more about the well-being of our vacuum cleaner than a sociopath does about us or any other human. They make use of others in absolutely any way they like. The word, “exploitation” comes to mind.
This is really hard for us to believe. It’s humanly impossible to absorb in one single moment the reality that there are people who look human, just like us, but are missing the “humanity chip”. Taking this in is a process.
Find out here: The Podcast: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
People without a conscious are bereft of good as if they’ve scorched the very roots of goodness within their own lives. They aren’t “choosing” to not care; this in itself would come from a place of caring. They have no place of caring within them. These are people who embed themselves into people’s lives to take, to use, and to do whatever they want. This is their real “work” whether they have an actual paycheck or not.
Jennifer Smith, True Love Scam Recovery
When individuals operate without a conscience they are able to do horrible things we would never dream of doing, and there is no moral compass or guilt feelings to stop them.
Dr. Deborah Ettel, PhD Psychology
In order to hook, use and take from targets, (that would be you or I, just regular people) every sociopath uses the same little tricks and misleads and lies. This takes effect in one-on-one relationships, in romantic or work situations, towards religious leaders or politicians; anywhere you find and admire or like someone who is a sociopath this hook will take hold.
Where ever there’s a sociopath in a group, a family, or an organization. The predator gets busy in a true love faux-lationship or superior-acolyte in any setting. The arc of hell and the crazy plays out in five stages. Always, and also in every one of these set-ups.
There’s no deviation from this pattern of hook and use and break-away. It might be carried out over five days or 50 years with any particular morsel of prey — but there’s no variation in the way a sociopath functions or affects prey.
Everything they do and say is in an effort to make use of those around them is for their survival. We are their livelihood. This survival is dependent upon us believing they’re normal. This is not easy for us to see. It takes time and taking in a new perspective to see this thing we never imagined existed.
Our experience with them is traumatic and so is coming to terms with what they are. Not all trauma is bad!
So many give credit to the sociopath as a master manipulator, a genius liar. I beg to differ. It’s time to look again from another angle, so we can stop giving them the power. They claim to be amazing and talented geniuses — and we do at first see them as masterly wizards of manipulation and at the antics that they pull.
In reality, sociopaths have very limited thinking. They are severely limited, have specific thinking and feelings, and have no other way to think or feel.
What they feel as raw emotions is desire or need, and then glee when they get what they want, anger when it’s threatened or taken away, rage when their scam is being seen through or put to an end, and fear. They have a great fear of being exposed which fuels endless rage at being caught or exposed.
Answer these very basic questions that lead to an estimation of whether someone is a sociopath aka a psychopath… or that person you’re calling a “narcissist”. I
After all, never forget, understanding what you’re facing isn’t about diagnosing them… this discovery serves the purpose of finding your safety, keeping your sanity, and restoring your well-being.
If they’re at risk of exposure they lose it; when exposed they risk not getting what they want or getting away with it they become wild-cornered animals.
They frantically and erratically hop from one tactic to another trying to get their house of cards back in place. They come up with elaborate stories, fake illnesses, disappear, kill, cry spontaneous sheets of tears… rage and threaten and blackmail (like, if I lose, I’ll leave the United States…). The nearer they are to losing it all, the more they lose it.
The profound fear they live with is one of the things they don’t want us to realize about them. If their fear was not incredibly deep, why would they rage so when we get close to the truth?
The reason we feel so confused is that this is nothing like anything we’ve known before. And… It isn’t anything we can see by using the way we normally think to look at it.
The whole mess is a fake-lationship. A faux-lationship. We think we’re in a real relationship; the sociopath knows it’s not a real mutual human relationship.
Sociopaths do their best to embed themselves into people’s lives in order to take, use, make use of us, and do whatever they want in that person’s life. Making these attempts and making this effort is how they spend every single day; this is their “work”. It’s how they survive.
As a confused and hurt person trying to find answers, to decipher what’s going on, understanding the characteristics of a sociopath lets us see from an angle that supports our understanding. This also saves our mental and emotional – as well as physical – health and allows for healing.
It’s not easy to fully comprehend and takes time to see it, but the fact is, we’re nothing more than a piece of equipment or an object to the sociopath. Beyond that, we’re despised and held in contempt.
This is so hard to grasp because we’re fully human. We love and support those we love; we don’t view them as expendable resources. Sociopaths are the antithesis of loving and giving; they only take and as the fallout of their taking, destruction is all they bring to the table.
Because pathological users are anywhere we might be, we need to learn how to recognize them. Their real power when you think about it is that we can’t recognize them and so not be affected by them.
Sociopaths exist in every social, regional, and economic realm. Most crave riches with insatiable desire. Paradoxically they can handle living in a box on the side of the road until the next target with a nice warm nest comes along. Why…? It’s the result of having no emotional connection to things, people, or places.
Without any emotional connection aside from holding someone up to measure if that person – seen as an object – fits into their needs – and every one of us has something they need – sociopaths are isolated and isolating in their effect.
Predatory parasites dwell in trailer parks in Wyoming, on ski slopes in the Alps, in board rooms across the world, within the profiles of online dating sites, at church, in bars and clubs, in the grocery store, at the dog park.
Sociopaths hunt prey in the workplace, on Facebook, in chat forums, at a party. We can meet them at the grocery store, in line at the post office, getting gas or through friends.
It’s said one-in-25 people are sociopaths and are either male or female. We’ve all heard the phrase: hiding in plain sight. We’ve got to change how we “see” – our “sight” – they’re plain as day.
Since their state of mind is based on the limited and abnormal brain that makes someone a sociopath, there are more characteristics that are identical sociopath to sociopath.
You wouldn’t be the only one to discover porn, beyond porn – and their participation in shocking sexual practices. They avoid paying taxes, skip paying child maintenance altogether in cases of divorce, and cheat at absolutely everything. Even if they seem successful career-wise, you’ll find they don’t do their own work if you scratch the surface. Even with seemingly legit employment they ultimately live off of others’ lives, others’ efforts, finances, respectability, and magnanimity.
In the world of psychology, they’re called antisocial psychopaths, or sociopaths. And lately as having an antisocial personality disorder. This newer contemporary term diminishes the damage they do and casts them in the light of hapless wrong-doer.
They’re not innocents suffering from a disorder. They know they cause harm. With pleasure and pride, they do terrible things to people. – Another delay in finding what we’re really facing is getting hung up on terminology and ideas of “narcissists”.
Sociopaths can’t help themselves from bragging. They like to chatter about the things they do. . These elaborate boasts represent their made-up life. It’s all lies. The traits and tricks of a sociopath never waver.
They’re consistent with all their prey whether in pursuit for ten days or we’re captive for ten years or 30 years. It’s the same for each of us from the first “hello”, to the way they break up with us.
In popular culture, movies, and books sociopaths are referred to as con artists or con men. In real life, they are strictly Mr. Hyde with a very shallow cover of Dr. Jekyll.
Sociopaths lie easily. Lying is normal for them. They feel no guilt or shame about lying. If one lie doesn’t work they whip out another one. They know they lie. For the pathological, lies make up what’s real, and real is made up. How’s that for mind-bending?
Since they are not connected to the world, to their own life to anything through emotions in the way that we are, sociopaths forget what they say one moment to another moment, and can only manage the moment in front of them.
Consequently, we can lie to them, they can know that we’re probably lying, and yet, they act on the lie as if it’s the truth.
The sociopath (or that person you might be calling a narcissist) lies in a way that’s called “pathological”. This means that lying comes as a result of their brain. In other words, they can’t not lie. They do not get better or change.
At this point in time in the history of humankind, there is no known “cure.” They wouldn’t want to “get better” or “be better” if they could. They enjoy every minute of what they are. They adore themselves while knowing full well that they’re monsters.
The sociopath’s ruse is deception upon deception. Since people are seen as objects, they are disposable to the sociopath. It’s hard to say, but not all allow their prey to live to tell the tale.
Dr. Deborah Ettel, Phd Psychology
The characteristics of a sociopath include pride in the things they do. They consider nabbing prey an achievement. They’re boastful and feel great, and an exaggerated gleeful accomplishment in scamming, lying, taking, stealing, using, and worse.
Remember the exciting, exhilarating start to all the mess? Recall when they have that grin…and are sparked and energized? – It’s an exhibit of the glee and sense of pride they feel for capturing you.
They make off-handed comments that reveal their inner workings. Knowing the characteristics of a sociopath exposes them for what they are and includes eventually, being able to see them as boring and even laughable. Only when we don’t recognize them or we believe them do we find ourselves ensnared.
In these flashing moments of truth our heads spin. The truth always stands out. But in the confusing, bizarre world of the con, actual truth only cuts a fleeting crack in the lunacy and looks like lunacy itself.
A sociopath’s influence has us doubt the truth, and be soothed by their lie. Sociopaths influence us in such a way, that it’s natural for us to defend and protect their lies.
All in all, anytime we spent in the presence of a sociopath, wasn’t what we thought it was. There’s never any mutual moment aside from maybe sitting down to eat because both of us want a good dinner.
Any limbic-brained person in the presence of a sociopath in any dynamic such as a personal relationship of love, of family members, of neighbor and neighbor or boss and employee or coworker… they all involve sustained trauma and harm and a period of PTSD in the aftermath.
Why they’re at dinner with us, is not the same reason we’re at dinner with them. We were targeted and hijacked for the sociopath’s own use.
The most devastating thing a sociopath creates is disunity. Disunity from self and from others we love…from others in general. Even a sense of separation from others we don’t know shrouds us as our life shuts down and closes into a very small thing centered on them and appeasing them. We end up in a spinning place of off-kilter confusion, more than walking on eggshells.
Like any normal human would without positive connection and unity, in isolation and separation we get lost. We can bring ourselves back. We reunite with ourselves, with all and everyone around us. Recovering from this trauma takes non-judgemental support and encouragement.
With accurate and true information and understanding of what a sociopath is – and what we are as gorgeous, loving humane, human beings, we can heal and get our lives back. We can trust again, laugh again, and love again.
Answers to every question, and then some!
Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
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
Visit truelovescam’s profile on Pinterest.
True Love Scam on Tumblr.
Tweet to @truelovescam.
2014_11_05 2023_07_22
