Tag Archives: getting away from a narcissist

8 Reasons to Suspect We’re Dating a Sociopath

Sociopath is a big word.
We shy away from the idea
because it sounds like a movie, not real life.
Taking a second look at this can save us lots of pain.

Dating a sociopath, as it turns out, is something I’ve done a lot of. This wasn’t something I knew I’d done until after I’d married one, kicked him out, and gotten myself an annulment.

After this big-whammy experience with the con man sociopath who hijacked me specifically for a green card to the U.S.A. – and incidentally (as they do) – for all the money he could take, I put the pieces together. I did this with my own instinct, a bold and unwavering determination to take back my life and all he’d taken from me, and reading research. As in neuroscience and psych research.

Dating a Sociopath: The More We Know

After really grasping how their little minds operate and their quirks and foibles, I know that I’ve dated a sociopath more than once. Each of them floated to my memory over the months spent restoring my life in a flash of realization. – I understand you might be wondering what it is about me that “attracted” them, or what could be wrong with me…

There’s nothing wrong with me, There’s everything right with me. I’m a normal gorgeous inside and out living breathing fully limbic-brained human. In other words, this means that I’m normal. Many, many, many of us discover as we take in a real comprehension of what a sociopath is that more than one has knocked at our door.

Is It Raining Sociopaths?

Now I know I’ve briefly dated one of these weirdos twice. And that about eight of them, all told have tried to get into my life. This one particular one got me into a legal marriage. Maybe like me, you went beyond dating a sociopath and married one.

Chances are, you’ve known more than one as well, and certainly at least one, or you wouldn’t be here. I’m glad that you are here…I’m glad you’re seeking answers that truly fit into place. Keep going so that you can solidify a user-proof life since as strange as it is, it’s true – these human predators are out there. – I’ve heard it said that one in 25 people is a sociopath… That makes about one in every classroom.

The Truth Found in The Experience

sociopath narcissist lying

After the harrowing hideous entanglement and then the restoration of my life after the dirtbag who hijacked me for an address in the U.S. along with the legal right to be in the country, I now know one of the first times in my life I came across a sociopath was in elementary school. He was ten years old, and so was I. We were in the 5th grade.

He was super gross. Nobody liked him. He was tough and mean and didn’t fit the profile of that charming sociopath we read about at all. – But maybe crafting that smoothie exterior comes later in life for these creatures.

I was plagued by his attention. What I didn’t yet know was, that there’d been a bet or a joint plot or some such heinous thing among complicit classmates that he could grab me and kiss me on the playground. – Where the heck were the adults…?

What would it mean to feel like yourself again?

The Moment of Attack Sharpens Small Detail

As it goes down, I suddenly realize I’m all alone, sitting on a swing. There’s nobody else playing, no balls bouncing, no laughing… And no one near me. It dawns on me that the entire 5th and 6th grades are divided into two camps on opposite sides of the blacktop.

The optics of the scenario stretch and pull as they do in moments of impending doom. I see or sense one band of kids far, far away in a corner of the now ghostly playground, hovering in a flock by one of the outbuildings.

A Laser Point of Focus

The more nearby knot of whispering, heaving-with-excitement 10-year-olds backs further away as a lone figure slithers towards me. In this moment, the classical traits of the snake-like qualities of a sociopath shimmer off of this kid who’s now floating into the way-too-near-me horizon.

The dirty-haired, pale-skinned predator floats up like on a Z-axis camera dolly, sliding into a close-up position. His mouth is open in anticipation.

Emanating from him was some internal honing device that sucked at me, aligning my body, overriding my resistant mind and soul, right into his orbit. Something like polar opposite magnets that click and snap together when what I wanted to do was hurl away in refusal. I didn’t have control of my body… I was locked in place.

Primal Defenses Kick In: Trust Your Gut

A part of me actively resisted and fought to get away. Brave little me looked the prepubescent beast straight in his eyes. At the millisecond I registered his leer, his curled lip revealing tiny, pointy yellowish teeth, my right arm pulled itself back, my hand in a rock-hard fist ready to smash his face. – Something I’d never done in my life.

In addition to being deceptive about who they are and about their intention in our lives sociopaths don’t heed the natural and normal boundaries we have and that we expect others to have.

His eyes open wide from the slits of a hunter; shock replaces the cocky, shit-bag expression on his ugly freckled face. He leans back from his waist and comes closer all at once. He hisses through a clenched jaw, threatening: Don’t you hit me.

I didn’t hit him. I couldn’t really. I did look straight into his eyes scanning for a person. As in a human to connect with. There wasn’t one. But, he did look scared. Of me. Then I sent out no words, no sounds, but what must have been a telepathic, silent human-to-beast warning, in essence: Don’t you fuck with me.

Those very words weren’t in my head, but surely there were screaming from my less than five-foot 70-pound frame. He backed off. The crowds dispersed… And everything after that is a blur. I was then allowed to spend every recess for the rest of the 5th grade in the nurse’s office or sitting in the school counselor’s room. I was terrified of the playground. I had post-traumatic stress at 10 years old induced by the traumatic events of a sociopath invading my life.

How Does This Happen?

Likely, by now, you’ve heard someone say or read somewhere that you played a part in the “relationship”. That you don’t know how to pick good men or women or partners but are attracted to “bad boys”. That you’re codependent or don’t have boundaries and this is why this happened to you.

This reasoning, though a natural place for people to go with this for a few reasons, is absurd. As a ten-year-old, I guarantee I wasn’t looking for a bad boy, was not codependent, and was not in a relationship with this goober-headed ten-year-old monster. It happened because he was a monster – and I was – and am – normal.

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.

Persistence of Predators: They Don’t Heed Boundaries

And then, either before or after that nice day, another fine day this grimy psycho kid shows me a messed up sketch he’d made. Presented it like a gift.

Smeared pencil on a piece of lined notebook paper; so many creases where he’d feverishly folded and unfolded the page in sweaty hands it was almost tattered. It was a crude drawing of an underground fort. Dug into the earth next to a tree, in and around its roots. He told me this is where he planned to take me…And so by implication keep me.

Sociopaths Need Normal People to Survive: They Count on Us Not Knowing What They Are

Turns out, I used to be the kind of person sociopaths really like. Someone they like to date, marry, and maybe even kidnap. A lot of us are this kind of person because we’re alive and amazing humans, this makes us someone these predators sniff out as delicious prey.

The thing is: somewhere in my body I was already afraid of this stranger I’d married. He too wanted things to seem okay, so he came into the market next door with me. It felt a lot like that encounter with a sociopath child while I was a child, that day on the playground in 5th grade.

And this doesn’t mean we’re stupid, or a doormat, or codependent. — And don’t even go down the road of thinking you’re a sociopath magnet… The very idea of a sociopath magnet implies it’s the targeted prey who are at fault for the fall down the rabbit hole. So not true.

Wanting a relationship and working for it doesn’t mean we’re codependent. Nice does not equal doormat. Dating a sociopath-con-man does not signify that we’re stupid. It does indicate our natural goodness and view of the world from the heart and eyes of normal. From our normally-wired human brain that bonds as survival.

We’re Not Stupid: We Do Need to Know and Accept That Monsters Exist

Sociopaths don’t get far or get much to support their lives out of stupid. Don’t forget, we unwittingly hold up their world; stupid can’t hold up tier own world and another grown person’s too.

Codependent simply does not apply as the case of this criminal hijacking arrangement they set up. It’s more like instant hypnosis, and unless you’ve been in it: Sit down. – That’s what you can all those people who say: Didn’t you know…? Why didn’t you just leave…?

What the Beasts Need

The more we learn about what a sociopath is and how to recognize them, you may realize you’ve known a few. Bleeping onto a sociopath’s radar screen as a potential target doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with us.

What they do work with, and do a lot with, is our emotions. That’s what they’re after… They don’t care really about which emotion; they just want a normal human one.

Our natural normal response from the world of normal. Our human emotions are based on our ordinary and extraordinary kindness. They want open hearts, people who care, and people who don’t know what a predator is and that these revolting creatures exist… Even in 5th grade.

Dating a Sociopath: 8 Reasons to Suspect We’re Dating a Sociopath

Sociopaths don’t respond normally to normal things. For example, when something bad happens… like our pet turtle dies, or our cat gets sick, or we lose a family member they remain kind of neutral, almost bored, or say something like, such a pity and go on watching Netflix. Or, throw off a blast of ice-cold freeze out.

Narcissistic predators say things like I don’t have feelings. Or I’m going to teach you a lesson, and they aren’t talking about tennis or playing the piano. Or when we’re deep in it, as I heard one day from the nut case who hijacked me in marriage, I can’t make you do what I want you to, but I can make you wish you had.

Things Are Unclear and Foggy or Scary or Too Exciting

  • Things feel weird…like they’re lying; what they say doesn’t make sense
  • We spend time coming up with explanations for what they say and defend them to others
  • We’re not sure where they live, or where they are when they’re not with us
  • They talk about doing something for “us” that’s something we’ve always wanted and we’re excited beyond anything
  • The good stuff never happens, but weird stuff does
  • They seem mostly only semi-interested in things you say
  • Certain moments they’re riveted on you, really listening, they answer questions or say things that as “off”
  • Sometimes when you’re trying to talk with them about something important the room goes out of focus and small things come into focus

Lying is Life: Lies Are Real and Real is Made Up

Lying deceivers aren’t where they say they’ll be: We run into them when they said they couldn’t come out with us or they’d be somewhere else.

The invader parasite sociopath has a whole world going on that we aren’t in: We come across them out at a club when they said they were staying home – and then they ignore us, or tell us we should be at home. They don’t join us but freeze us out of their night on the town.

Signs of Dating a Sociopath Include Lots of Disappointment

Being used by a pathological predator involves being stood up with lame explanations or no explanation. If we’re dating a sociopath they might make a date with us and show up two hours late, or not at all. After that, they’re mad that we’re mad, and madder that we ask about it. And more than one of us has heard the sociopath we’re dating say, don’t question me or if you’d trust me everything would be okay.

Trust our gut, we’re experts now. We can see a sociopath a mile away. Look them in the eye. They’ll know that we know and it’s so delightful to watch them scurry away like the rats they are.

Sociopaths busy themselves “dating” us and and about 800 other people at the same time. They keep things close to their vest. They sleep with their phones. Lock their phone. Take their phone into the bathroom. Block us from their Facebook.

Sociopaths who are “dating” often, as in within every single moment of any encounter with a normal human being, overstep the normal social and personal boundaries we all have.

In addition to being deceptive about who they are and about their intention in our lives, sociopaths don’t heed the natural and normal boundaries we have and that we expect others to have.

They Inspire a Sense Of Unease

It’s not uncommon to have a creepy feeling like they’ve been looking through our drawers or catch them looking over our shoulder as we punch in our PIN. There always the quickly shifting and closing of the laptop when we walk into the room.

And, maybe you’ve noticed, predator sociopaths take things. Mysteriously, there’s money missing from our sock drawer, or from that envelope in between the dusty-never-used dictionary and “East of Eden” on the bookshelf. – Especially when they’re gearing up to exit our lives.

Normal Puts Things In Order

When confronted by the impossible the rational mind will grope for the logical.

~ Outlander S1:E1 Sessenach

They Come into Focus for What They Are

One day while my new husband was at a meeting, I went out to buy something delicious for his dinner. Surprisingly, I ran into him at my bank’s ATM just around the corner.

We just didn’t know such beasts existed, there’s no way to conceive of something so beyond normal; sociopaths hide behind this perfectly normal human phenomenon. We can’t know what we don’t know until we know it.

He was stunned and trying not to show it. – Caught red-handed more like. – Wary, surprised, and leering, like a cat that thinks it saw something move, but isn’t sure and so waits and watches for it to happen again, ready to pounce; he asked, Are you following me??

Feeling ungrounded, my brain spun and grasped for something that made sense of finding him, of his words, and to make things right because normal humans need that.

My mind sorted the circumstances: He had no personal bank account here, there was only my account recently-turned-joint-account. He was supposed to be in another area of town at a meeting… since an hour ago.

Their Oddness Leaves Us Without Words

Out of my mouth came a tiny, no. – This was the best answer I could come up with to his very odd question… The most normal response that made me seem not freaked out. I didn’t want him to know that I knew this was very, very weird.

The thing is: Somewhere in my body I was already afraid of this stranger I’d married. He too wanted things to seem okay, so he came into the market next door with me. It felt a lot like that encounter with the sociopath child while I was a child, that day on the playground in 5th grade.

I don’t remember grabbing the grocery items, but I do recall being at the checkout… Where I paid for our groceries while he fiddled with his phone and pretended to reach for his wallet.

Continuing the charade, he came home with me and then left eight minutes later. Truth gathering, observing as if I were a player in a scene revealed him for what he was.

Dating a Sociopath Doesn’t Mean There’s Anything Wrong with Us: Sociopaths Need Good People

Dating a sociopath was a recurring theme in my life. Emphasis on was. Previously, intermingled with great relationships with real people, I found myself dating a sociopath or about three very briefly; I only married one. — Recovery tip: Find humor wherever you can.

The more we learn about what a sociopath is and how to recognize them, you may realize you’ve known a few. Bleeping onto a sociopath’s radar screen as a potential target doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with us.

It means there’s everything right with us. It means we’re good, kind people who trust and love as natural, gorgeous humans innately do. We have every right to be exactly what and who we are.

Knowing is Key

We just plain, flat-out didn’t know such beasts existed, there’s no way to conceive of something so beyond normal; sociopaths hide behind this perfectly normal human characteristic of not knowing that evil exists and what it looks like. We can’t know what we don’t know until we know it.

Trust our gut, we’re experts now. We can see a sociopath a mile away. Look them in the eye. They’ll know that we know and it’s so delightful to watch them scurry away like the rats they are.

Really… I did it just yesterday in the mall. Now, we can add knowledge, wisdom, and courage to the mix of our gorgeous selves!

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

The podcast!

Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

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.
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.

2016_12_22 2024_05_19

3 Dangers of Female Sociopaths

Female sociopaths exist. Big time.
In their empty souls
they’re the same as any sociopath.
They do use feminine charm to take and to ruin.

Female sociopaths aka narcissists and male sociopaths possess the same malfunctioning brain that leaves their hearts barren. They have no love, no genuine care or concern for anyone besides themselves.

img-thing

It’s a reality, no matter what century we’re in, no matter the culture, though in some cultures far more than others that we expect women to be loving and nurturing mothers and loyal and monogamous and assume they are.

The unexpectedness of encountering a woman who is the antithesis of all this to the point of bare evil is traumatic. It sends us spinning into a prolonged state of disbelief.

To be fair, encountering any sociopath is traumatic: even when we don’t know that they’re a sociopath. There is undeniably an extra jolt when we do realize the person in front of us is a sociopath and female. This natural and normal disbelief on our part, buys them further time to wreak havoc in the lives of their prey.

That expectation of women beign sweet and lovig and sugar and spice is used as a tool by female sociopaths. Let me give a shout out to what’s real: most women are nurturing and loving. And – news flash – so are most men.

Normal Sees the World Through Normal: That’s Normal

The gorgeous humans, who fall into the traps of a sociopath aka who fall into the traps of a narcissist, are some of the most amazing humans on the planet.

If they sense you will possibly reveal them publically or to authorities as the wrongdoer expect some kind of deep smear. This is how they protect themselves, by weaving this kind of false and fraudulent set-up, putting you in the guilty seat.

The men who fall into this hell are incredible – as are the women… this though, is a case for so many of us who feel “there are no good men out there“. I’m here to tell you that there are.

There are indeed good men. The one’s who I work with in recovery sessions blow me away with their kindness, their pride in monogamy, their respect for women, and their huge hearts. Good men exist – and the female sociopaths who prey upon them count upon this goodness to twist them around. – This is how every sociopath works. Our normal, our innate goodness and human qualites are snatched up and used to swing us like a cat by its tail.

Restore your life.
There’s nothing about you that made this happen.

Are There Really Female Sociopaths?

Female sociopaths aka female narcissists exist. They’re identical to male sociopaths in their empty souls and evil guts. For them, using feminine charm and lurid sexuality to take and to ruin is fair play. Depending upon our assumptions about what it means to be female, we’re possibly in for a harder and darker ride.

Sociopaths aka narcissists exist in every gender, in every social or economic class. You can find them in any religion, at a University, in any bar, in the laundromat, and at a wine tasting.

Fraudsters comprise about 95% of the profiles on dating apps which are absolutely packed with them. They can be – and are – anywhere and in every walk of life. Some of them even pose as people trying to help the prey of sociopaths to heal and recover. – They’re liars.

The Podcast: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

3 Dangers of Female Sociopaths aka Female Narcissists

Being female gives the female sociopath aka the female narcissist an extra special bit of opportunity to make use of others.

  • Marriage: Community property and access to monetary support and property
  • Pregnancy: Life long financal support and open predatory access to you
  • Criminal charges: Domestic abuse, and rape

Why Do Female Sociopaths Marry?

Female sociopaths marry in order to gain financially or socially, to obtain possessions or respectability – only. There’s no love involved. They sign up with the intention of being supported by their spouse while they do whatever they like including still preying upon other men (or women).

As the predators they are, the female sociopath will push so hard for marriage they’ve been known to buy their own engagement rings. Divorce is usually the ultimate goal; ideally, this brings high alimony, a big settlement, or property.

Traditional Gender Roles Tip Into the Female Sociopath’s Hand

Being 100% supported financially by their male prey is a go-to for female sociopaths; they do hit the jack-pot fairly readily with this one sliding right into this traditional relationship dynamic.

All the while they’re sleeping with a whole team, a fleet, a crew, a slew of other men, women or both just as male sociopaths do. Please, see a doctor and have STD tests done. Female sociopaths are just as evil as male sociopaths. There’s no sugar and spice to be found inside the outwardly female pathological user.

More to Know: Yes, there are both male and female sociopaths. Sociopaths present themselves to the world mainly as their obvious biological gender, but are in fact something we could only call, genderless. Read more about the genderless nature of sociopaths here: Sociopaths Sexual Boundaries.

Heal PTSD from narcissistic abuse.
Breakthroughs and understanding.

Pregnancy: a Smoke Screen for “Normal”

Unexpected or not, pregnancy can bring the sweet scent of “normal” and more importantly big bucks for years and years to a female sociopath. And guess what, it doesn’t matter if she has this innocent child with a male or female target.

Women of antisocial personality disorder, ASPD – also many times called narcissists and thoght to be NPD, have fewer children than male sociopaths. The male sociopath aka narcissist populates the earth indiscriminately with many children that they leave by the wayside. Female sociopaths want to bear children in limited quantities for some pretty basic reasons:

  • The annoyance of pregnancy; it puts a damper on scamming
  • Pregnancy makes changes in their looks perceived to reduce their seductiveness
  • Children are not genuinely wanted and are not loved; they are a meal ticket

Every Sociopath aka Narcissist Cares Only About Personal Gain

Aside from possessing a child creating the necessary public persona of “normal”, female sociopaths have children for these other reasons: money, money, and money. Once a child is on the scene they can legitimately demand support and whether married or not, they take men to court to get it. In marriage and in divorce this plot includes taking your property.

All the while they’re sleeping with a whole team, a fleet, a crew, a slew of other men, women or both just as male sociopaths do.

Unwanted and surprise pregnancies or coerced “plans” for children all have the same motivation and result. Poking holes into condoms and lies about birth control or infertility are basic for a sociopath. If you have children with a female sociopath, consider DNA testing the babies. The results might not change your feelings for the children, but they can absolutely change court orders.

Children can bring big-bank to the female sociopath, and while you may be willing to voluntarily support financially in some way, the court-ordered maintenance is extortion when the pregnancy is a surprise, or attributed to the wrong man. 

Domestic Violence: Staged, Forced, and Faked to Cry “Victim”

Female sociopaths commonly create a wife-beater scenario. It dovetails with the sociopath’s need to seem like the victim, and further this is a style of self-defense as is any kind of smear campaign.

In this kind of attack the sociopath – male or female or any gender – is attempting to make their case for this so that their story is the one that is believed and the focus is shifted to their prey – that is to you – as the wrongdoer.

Self-Harm to Blame You

They do this in two ways. She will become violent to incite a response of violence. By hitting first, the hope is that the man – or woman – will hit them back. If this doesn’t work, they have other options.

Female sociopaths are just as evil as male sociopaths. There’s no sugar and spice to be found inside the outwardly female pathological user.

Female sociopaths aka narcissists are known to inflict self-injury and claim that you did it to them…they could throw themselves into the edge of the coffee table. Bang their heads on the shower wall. Smash their own arms with a hammer… Blacken and bruise their own body and legs.

They might call the cops at the moment of beating themselves up or instead they take pictures of the blood and bruises, then later file police reports of abuse based on this craziness. – Each of these examples is a situation I’ve seen.

Claim Rape to Set Themselves Free

It is not at all beyond the female sociopath aka narcissist to claim rape. This makes staying away from them crucial. Keeping them away from your home, and not going to theirs is critical. If this is a co-worker, never be alone with them in an office or other room at your place of work. If this is unavoidable, leave the doors open.

Not meeting anywhere at all becomes serious for you as prey when the sociopath is ramping up into trying to subdue you. this occurs as they begin to see you as a threat to their own facade and freedom. If they sense you will possibly reveal them publically or to authorities as the wrongdoer expect some kind of deep smear. This is how they protect themselves, by weaving this kind of false and fraudulent set-up, putting you in the guilty seat.

Protect Yourself from Court and Jail

There are, unfortunately, restraining orders, and wins in domestic violence, or rape charge legal battles based on false allegations staged by female sociopaths. – Take the prospect of court or legal charges seriously. Find out how to position yourself to win against false claims.

Save every email, every text, and SMS. These can become proof of their lies. Do not respond to them. Go no contact and keep no contact as the only real protection against this. No contact is life-saving.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

Join the podcast!

Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

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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.

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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.

2016_11_06 2023_07_21

How Do I Know I’m Dating a Sociopath?

If you’re Googling for answers.
…and confused or uneasy
about someone you’re dating,
…if you’ve started wondering what’s wrong
it’s likely you’re dating a sociopath…dating a narcissist.

I’m going to get right into it here. There are very specific traits every sociopath shares. If you call this person a “narcissist” and see these traits, maybe pull back a bit on what you feel you know, and plug in a stricter view of them with parameters that fit a sociopath… I know that’s a big and scary word. Paradoxically, it can make things simpler. So, how do we know if we’re dating a sociopath?

dating a sociopath dating a narcissist

First of all, most of us – let’s admit – begin a new romantic possibility, by looking online for things about this person we just met. That’s good, but not enough to detect a sociopath.

Here’s why: when we’re dating someone who is a pathologically narcissistic person – a sociopath – we see the good things. Believe it or not, the bad things about them don’t show up or aren’t seen as bad.

Tune in to yourself in this search. If there’s a tugging in your gut – that gut feeling that something is wrong – this means there’s something wrong. If you’re looking up things that brought you to this article, yes – that person you’re dating or maybe now not dating is one of these creatures.


Be user-proof forever.

Humans Want Proof

But most of us won’t end a romance at this point. We usually want to know more, that’s just human. It’s not necessarily a bad human quality, it is after all, born of the same human inquisitiveness that got us to the moon and discovered penicillin. And at the end of this dating fest – if it goes badly enough, it’s the same natural human quality that will eventually activate our escape from this person.

What Do Sociopaths Do in Relationships?

In the beginning it seems magic. There’s an unexpected, unhinged kind of compatibility.

  • They want to see us often or text or talk once a day or more
  • We find them interesting and are impressed with what they do or talk about
  • It seems they have a good job, are respected, maybe have a-lotta money
  • Or they drop things that lead us to assume they do
  • They make a lot of promises
  • Make a sense of “us” and “we” almost immediately
  • They offer us something we want: a job, love, a new life – from day one, or three
  • Start sexual activity

Call It Like It Is: Truth is Where the Freedom Is

The reality is, most times when someone is talking about dating a “narcissist”, the person they’re facing is a sociopath. That’s fine. However, the information out there about a “narcissist” mixes together accurate ideas about a non-pathologically narcissistic person, and extremely inaccurate ideas about this very scary pathological one. This leads to problems when that person is actually pathologically narcissistic…a sociopath.

When dating a sociopath or when wanting to know if you’re dating a person who’s much more than “just a narcissist”, the best way to make this determination is to think of them as a being a sociopath…to look at them through this lens in order to see them clearly.

Dating a Sociopath (a Pathological Narcissist) Goes…

  • The person who promised so much breaks those promises
  • They say something really strange like, you only think you love me, or I’m not average
  • Super confusing and heartbreaking… they’re strange or get weird about sex
  • They tell us we can’t be a part of some part of their life
  • They have days they’re grumpy for no reason
  • Their mood changes up to down, nice to mean, or active to flat on the couch
  • And something feels off, uneasy, unsettled and unsettling
  • Somewhere in your mind, you wonder if they’re lying

Sociopath / Narcissist, Po-tay-to / Po-tah-to

Dating a sociopath… dating a narcissist. You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to. Why does it matter? Why do I talk about this much? Because being unclear in this can prolong the “relationship”, which prolongs the pain, and inhibits recovery. It can interfere with safety of you and any children that are part of the picture.

Here’s one example: If you think of them as a “narcissist’ and read all about that, then you might believe they have a narcissistic wound. – This will lead you down a garden path of empathy for the “narcissist” who is in fact a sociopath, who has no wound, but has an abnormal brain – and would sooner watch you bleed out on the floor while they eat their lunch than give you money to take care of your child.

People have fallen into calling them “narcissists” for lots of reasons. One reason is that the word “antisocial” as in “antisocial psychopath” the technical name for a sociopath, trips them up. So, read here to find the answer to why sociopaths are called antisocial.

And of course, the other reason for shying away from the much bigger words sociopath or psychopath is because it’s hard to believe this infinite evil exits. I’m so sorry for this. This is the hardest part to take in. The first moment this reality came to me, is one I’ll never forget.

Sociopaths Think Differently: They Have a Different Brian

As things progress:

  • They don’t talk to you, they ignore your texts, or get mad at you for contacting them
  • They disappear for days
  • The pathological user will tell us everything is our fault
  • To shut up your questions, they tell you to just trust them or call you fat
  • We feel they’re mad at us and try to explain ourselves
  • We find out they’re seeing other people
  • Dating a sociopath or narcissist can turn violent
  • And now, you feel deceived though you still might have no “proof”
  • If questioned, they act as if nothing happened and like we’re still chill
  • You feel fear
  • You think maybe they’re mentally unstable
  • Something very wrong is going on, but you can’t put our finger on it

Dating a Sociopath (a Pathologically Narcissistic Person) is Fixable: They Are Not

By the way, did you know that it’s against mental health professional guidelines to diagnose someone underage – someone 18 or younger – as a sociopath aka a psychopath? That’s how serious it is. It’s the last thing a therapist or psychiatrist wants to officially diagnose anyone with.

This diagnosis, this condition of this abnormal and under-functioning brain of the sociopath is permanent. It’s a very strong statement for a therapist or psyche professional to make. This diagnosis is one that many licensed mental health professionals are not willing to make.

I’ve known of cases where they feel the person in question is a sociopath, but not be willing to give testimony to this in court in abuse cases that could save a child from visitations or a spouse from sharing custody. – There are of reasons for this. The point is you need to know.

Dating a Sociopath, Dating a “Narcissist” is a Life of Hell

Sociopaths are very different than we are. They actually have a different brain – they process human relations completely differently than we do. They look at other people as objects. People are merely utility devices to use and to take things from or to use to get their kicks from…in a really bad way.

Sociopaths don’t ever change. They cannot. And they wouldn’t want to if they could, they like being sociopaths and know what they are.

Sometimes they’ll tell us they’re a sociopath. They don’t mind if you know this. They care what you do because fo this knowledge. And most times this sickening intimate uttering does not send people running away, its isn’t usually what snaps the spell, but becomes a part of the coagulating weirdness.

Know the truth. Know how amazing you are.

Dating a Sociopath Only Has One Outcome

Things can only go from bad to worse to much, much worse. They’re nice, then harsh then not as nice, then harsher. Call you names and some pull out the violence. They take anyone they can get their hooks into through five stages of true love scam…always and only.

Why? Why can’t they just be normal? – Connectors between segments in their brains are missing so that they can’t feel or process emotions as we do. Sociopaths – psychopaths – don’t feel the emotions we feel. They have a very limited set of emotions, none of which are comparable to ours. They don’t understand our emotions and never will.

There are lots of differences in our brains and in how they see the world compared to hoe we see the world because of this missing but. They’re missing care and connection, and so they’re missing a conscience. We have a conscience because we care. They have other differences, for example, in dating a sociopath or dating a what you’ve been calling a narcissist, you might notice that they don’t process the meanings of words the way we do. They even lie when they don’t need to.

Here’s a very detailed YouTube video with Dr. Hare, a leader
in research and studies on the antisocial psychopath.

We End the Damage They Can Bring to Our Lives

If you’re on this website wondering if you’re dating a sociopath, please don’t wait looking for proof from them…you’re here because you already know. Trust your gut.

Your suspicion, your fear, confusion, and self-doubt is proof. We already know. Please, embrace your own life. Protect yourself. Find out how to leave them. Go no contact.

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.

True Love Scam on Tumblr.
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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.

2016_10_10 2022_10_12

Jennifer Smith

October 5, 2016

Hidden traits, under the mask,
behind the charm lurks the real-deal Monster.
The sociopath-demon comes into view.
Then he slips to hide
behind a curtain of pretty
only to flash a thigh of evil.

Hidden traits cover what at first blush in a true love scamming sociopath appears charming. They seem kind. Gentle. Genuine. Unique. Incredible. And so sincere our hearts hurt.

The predator can come across so devastatingly moving we’re humbled in openings into views and moments in life we’ve never seen before; under their uncanny power of influence, we reach what seem to be realizations about ourselves, about them – about how to be human – that endear us more deeply to them.

Honeymoon Hoovering

4a67a6b64637481bea52e414428d5704

In the “honeymoon” phase with these creatures in tiny, brief, weirdly intimate moments with the sociopath, there’s a shimmer, a quiver that lasts no more than mere seconds.

This bone-deep shiver is subtle and unfamiliar so that if we notice it at all, we feel the ground move under our feet.

Our brains freeze, while we watch a small moment of confusion that feels like hours waggle and wave in front of us, like the way you can see heat waves radiating in the air. And then, it vanishes and we think maybe that oddness didn’t happen at all.

Knowing the truth sets you on the path to a restored life.

Mesmerizing, Hypnotizing, Pied Pipers

In stunned awe, an elevated in-and-out-of-focus sensation overtakes us – an infusion of imaginings washes through us, and we wonder: what is this…? And because we’re just people, regular normal people…we only have our normal real-life experiences to measure this new-whatever-it-is by.

Later as the odd things build up our friends might start to make comments. Or we might even begin Googling. Maybe a few things we’ve heard or read, or something a friend said slides into place and makes sense…and right back out again.

While we’re good and tied up under their spell, nothing offers a real answer that seems possible: and so we do what humans do: we come up with one. We create an explanation for the odd stuff. This is normal. Humans need cognitive harmony. We need the world around us to match up with what we believe in, feel is right, and what is accepted and expected. – Our bodies do this for us.

Breaking Up With Evil

Breakign 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.

True crime. Told in their own words with nothing unsaid. Find validation, and see new glimpses of truth as these five women share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.

Goodness Through Our Eyes

The millisecond flare of doubt is so quick – and we’re interpreting from our own goodness – with no clue that something as vile as a sociopath walks the earth. It’s no wonder we can’t see it for what it is… until we do.

If we could revisit those times – we might more easily see that gaping slit in the fabric of reality, that: opening to hell. A black cavernous infinite hole into the pits of despair. The place they truly live; the thing they truly are.

We Can’t Recognize Something We Don’t Know Exists

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It’s said we can see only what we know. And so it goes that the inhabitants couldn’t see the ships of invaders into North America on the shore because no one had known such a thing existed – until a Shaman divined them shimmering from mirage into a shape.

An unrecognizable something. An unknown – assumed good and even God-like from their own benevolent perspective giving the strange-strangers the generosity of benefit of the doubt.

They had to learn the hard way that these shiny beings, rather like them, but entirely unlike them in these gigantic fantastical floating vessels, emerging up and toward them from the watery horizon as if delivered by the unseen beneficent powers of life were not benevolent, but were bearers of rage, disease, and destruction.

We do finally see them, the hidden traits and all. The thing is like the shamans, and like any human… We can see only what we know. Then, we pull one thing up from the inner realms of recall and place it next to the other, grab this other shard from that corner of our mind and then connect the dots.

Hidden Traits Lurk Not Far From their Sickening Surface

Sociopaths live in a paradoxical reality – a contradictory flip-flopping and internal push-me-pull-you in reaction to who’s present or what’s going on around them in a constant attempt to stay hidden, stay unrecognizable to keep people trusting them and keep getting the things they need to survive.

Sociopaths are unstable. Their world is house-of-cards fragile. Their posing is easy to topple. Here are five hidden traits of a sociopath that are their Achilles heel. – Traits we know well, though we might not have named them if we’ve lived through the nightmare of knowing one. And in the case of a sociopath – knowing one – truly is knowing all.

Five Hidden Paradoxical Traits of a Sociopath

  • The constant fear of being caught. Alternating with flamboyant confidence in fooling people with their bragaddociousness.
  • Mentally inflexible. Are greatly startled by unfamiliar situations causing them to flail and change course or alter previously stated beliefs or convictions. And can hold onto a point of contention like a wild dog with a bone.
  • Easily distracted. Fixated on one target then distracted by another and another from moment to moment juxtaposed with an underlying unwavering fantastical “goal” derived from their grandiose perception of themselves and follow an improvisational rather than planned approach to the “goal”.
  • No nuance of emotion. Swings between highs and dark lows with their home-based state of mind is a vapid, bored nothing.
  • Believe other people’s lies. Their world is lies. If presented with a lie from someone else rather than act on it or call it out as a lie they go along with it as a reality. – The more fantastical the lie the more they buy into it.

Use the Sociopaths Weakness to Break Free Forever

Use their myopic minds against them for our safety. Let’s transform the experience. Let’s make use of it. We cannot be defeated by it. Because for all our compassion and empathy — isn’t it useless or even harmful without wisdom…?

Let’s embrace ourselves with compassion. Understand there’s much to stand up for: our very lives, our goodness. Humanity. We must win always, just as the sun outshines the night sky stars to bring us a bright and lovely day.

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.

True Love Scam on Tumblr.
.

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.

2016_10_05 2022_10_12

Are Sociopaths Intelligent?

Hardly. Sociopaths are not intelligent.
No conscience makes for no limits, not genius.

Are sociopaths intelligent? Geniuses? What sociopaths do in order to con is as old as dirt. Their tactics are similar in concept to what lab rats do to get cheese. They try and try and learn a few tricks to get the cheese. It’s also a bit like a martial art. Sociopaths use the strengths and weaknesses and the just plain normal of their targeted prey and everyone around them to their own advantage.

sociopaths intelligence is minimal
They get so mad.

Because sociopaths view other people as an opportunity, as a resource…Part of the trouble is that we don’t know we’re being thought of in this way.

This gives them the leading advantage. So in that way, they have “intelligence”… sort of like a spy who knows something you don’t know they know with an intention you aren’t aware of. – Other than that the sociopath (the narcissist) seriously lacks any real intelligence.

You wouldn’t be here reading this otherwise… They’re not smart. Let’s face it, sociopaths are dumber than boxes of rocks. They’re about as deep as a potato chip.

Sociopaths are ridiculous. Sociopaths’ so-called intelligence is comparable to the cunning of pigs. Give yourself the methods and skills to decode their minds, their words, and heal. The truth is, sociopaths’ intelligence is low. Conmen, predators in coercive control learn tricks like frantic lab rats desperate to push the button that brings cheese. Or cunning like hungry pigs.

Narcissistic abuse recovery.
Unexpected hope.

Breaking Up wIth Evil

Breakign 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, and 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.

Traits of a Sociopath

Often listed among traits of a sociopath we see the word intelligent. The more appropriate term is cunning, at least that’s what’s on my list. Are sociopaths intelligent? No.

He developed a method of opening the fridge door, leaving it half-closed on his own arm, then heaving with one foot against the top of the pig’s head groping to grab his own avocado and tofu. Every single night.

Their closed-circuit-world-of-self has no room for genuine intelligence. People say pigs are intelligent, and they say sociopaths are intelligent. So first, let’s define what we mean by intelligence.

I liken the intelligence of sociopaths to cunning. I have a friend who had (yes: had) a pet pig. Cute and tiny at first, even soft and cuddly. My friend loved that adorable, tender, pink piggy.

But, what people don’t tell you is that this sweet, tiny piggy, snuggling up as you watch TV on the couch together, will grow bigger. And bigger.

And much, much stronger, harsher, prickly. Then dirty. And stinky. And massively fat.

Pigs sprout a wet, snot-slicked, heaving disc of a snout they use constantly to root, grunt, and grind against anything and everything – including my friend’s leg or any nearby leg – 24-hours a day unless asleep, always looking for food. Perpetually. Relentlessly.

I’ll tell you right now this hurts incredibly! Just think about 100 pounds of pure skull bored with all the weight of a starving 350-pound animal into your ankle bone.

Calling a Pig and a Sociopath Equally Cunning is Not to Disparage Pigs

Now let’s be clear here: Are pigs sociopaths? No. But sociopaths are pigs. That relentless, primal force of persistence in the face of anything and everything. No other “mode” of operation. In addition, pathological predators are dumb. Ignorant. Conniving. Sneaky. A great pretense of smartness is put forth by them.

Counting On Our Kindness and Soft Hearts

That pig tricked food out of my friend. It stole entire loaves of bread off countertops while my friend made a sandwich, balancing on its hind hooves, grabbing the bread bag with its slimy, little piggy teeth.

It yanked kitchen drawers out of the wall by the handle in his iron clamp of a jaw. Spah-Lllaaaaaahttt! they crashed to the linoleum where piggy-pig snuffled through the contents hoping for a morsel, any crumb to eat; baggies, and aluminum foil flying. Nothing stopped this pig.

Screeching and squealing he snarfed up the Oreo’s, packaging and all. Have you ever heard a pig squeal when you try to take your own Oreo’s back?

When my friend tried to make dinner, the pig routinely knocked into my friend’s legs, causing him to buckle at the knees falling against the edge of the Frigidaire while that pig nabbed goodies: grapes, avocado, tomatoes, strawberries, even ice cubes.

My friend, once again upright, had to devise an alternate route to his own dinner. He developed a method of opening the fridge door, leaving it half-closed on his own arm, then heaving with one foot against the top of the pig’s head groping to grab his own avocado and tofu. Every single night.

A Good Relationship Doesn’t Elicit Terror

My friend was completely terrorized by an animal he’d taken in as a household pet. – His generous, animal-adoring heart was knee-deep in guilt and what some call a trauma-bond which is to say bound up by the soft-pink-innocent-piggy he loved so much.

Emotional intelligence is considered – certainly the most useful form of intelligence if not the highest form. We as highly empathetic people have emotional intelligence by the ton.

You ask why not put the pig in another room, or outside while food is being prepared and eaten by the humans in the household..? That pig had broken the door latches on every door inside the house. The doors between the dining room and the kitchen simply wouldn’t shut. Which meant he couldn’t be contained in the kitchen or corralled for subduing.

Added slide bolts were useless. He’d battered the doors until the added slidey-thing-a-mah-jigs popped out of their screws like gum out of a bubble pack. Even any dining chairs wedged underneath the handles in hopes of holding him had caved under his pressure, the legs cracked right off dangling like broken teeth.

If it was left outside in the gorgeous backyard with a full view of the city below to admire, its own personal mud pit to wallow in, and shoots of plants to nibble, all it could seem to do was screech bloody murder. A porcine human-being-murdered-shrieking sound you’d have to hear to believe. – It had to be let back inside before the neighbors called the cops. – This pig owned that house and the people in it.

Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

Sociopaths are Cunning: Like Pigs

It became an ordinary day that Piggity listened for the front door to open. Raised his snout into the air and sniffed out the booty being carried in from the market.

Heaving and hurling his body into motion, Mr. Pig, ran down the hallway to the foyer, his cloven hooves tappity-scratching, a forewarning of inevitable harm, inspiring dread in the poor human carrying in the groceries. Its rotund, lumbering form clickity-clattered along the bamboo floor at the fastest velocity it could hurtle its 200 pounds, which was shockingly fast.

He was forced to face the fact, after all my friend’s care, love and generosity towards this pig: That pig tried to kick him out of his own home… And had been waiting for the chance to do it.

In a practiced, now ritual gesture it slid to a partial stop as he hit his mark, deftly clamping the brown paper bag from the bottom corner in the steel-vise grip of his yellow, gruesome fang-teeth, yanked backward shifting his massive, quivering weight into his hind-quarters, ripping a gaping wound in the bag: apples, cookies, bananas cascaded in a smacking, tumbling avalanche.

That pig snorted up all it could get its dirty claws and snotty nose on. Single-minded, the top of its metal-plate-of-a-skull bulldozed my friend’s hand out of its way, while screeching and squealing he snarfed up the Oreos, packaging and all. Have you ever heard a pig squeal when you try to take your own Oreos back?

Sociopaths, Narcissists Do Anything to Get What They Want: So Do Pigs

That pig tore up my friend’s bedsheets, pooped, and pissed in the house whenever he felt like it. One fateful day, while my friend got the mail from the street-side mailbox, piggy-piglet adorably (maliciously) slammed the front door shut with his dripping, drooling face, and battleship head. The door slammed and locked. My friend had no keys with him. He was only getting the mail.

To get back into his own home he had to clamber over his own 6” fence. Splinters threaded into his hands as he scrambled up the fence, just shy of breaking an arm when he dropped to the backyard mud. (It used to be grass, but the pig ate it.)

Trust Our Heart of Hearts and Our Gut

In his heart knowing, knowing the pig had done this on purpose. And, for all my friend’s dismay, hurt and sweaty gymnastics, scaling those splintering planks would have been fruitless if the back entries hadn’t been sliding glass doors that the pig couldn’t budge. He was forced to face the fact, after all my friend’s care, love, and generosity towards this pig: That pig tried to kick him out of his own home… And had been waiting for the chance to do it.

Think about it this way: sociopaths have no emotional intelligence since their abnormal, under-functioning brains disallow processing or feeling any emotions other than want, anger, fear, deluded superiority, and glee at getting what they want.

Emotional intelligence is considered – certainly the most useful form of intelligence if not the highest form. We as highly empathetic people have emotional intelligence by the ton.

Sociopaths’ Intelligence Is Proportional to Us Not Knowing What They Are

The pig stood there inside the house, staring out at my friend across the patio entry. It looked up at my flabbergasted, panting, scrapped up, trembling friend – hair tousled, glasses knocked crooked, arms scraped, hands throbbing with wood slivers. His heart, body, and pride had been through the wringer as he reflected on how close he came to breaking his legs or a hip.

That piggy blinked his wire-like, pale lashes with its usual dumb, innocent expression… but, this time my friend saw this fat, pink face also held a warning: The pig had failed in his take-over this time, but there would be the next time. – Except there wasn’t. Because the very next day my friend sent that piggy away to a farm for unwanted, unmanageable pigs. There are apparently many such pigs on many such farms.

Think of it Like This: Sociopaths are as out of control of their own existence and survival as the most helpless creature on earth. – If we didn’t believe them, where would they be? – Why Do We Believe The Lies of a Sociopath?

Our Empathy Buys Sociopaths Time to Take and Ruin

My friend felt so guilty, he gave that little piglet so many 2nd chances. Oh, that pig knew what he was doing. So do sociopaths. And it’s all riotous improvisation just like with the little piggy. – Snuffling out one opportunity after the next. Never ceasing in the hunt. Leaving us to leap tall fences. – But that’s okay – we’re our own Super Heroes. We are our own Angels. We are awesome!

Pathological Predators Hijack Our Humanity: Shut Down the Candy Store

So a sociopath, like the revolting pig my friend took in as a defenseless, sweet pet (sorry animal lovers) uses our own strengths and weaknesses against us; our normal human gorgeousness – against us. Our own desires for love, a family, a home, a good life – against us.

They are monsters. They aren’t intelligent. Just remorseless. Sociopaths have no wholesome or real emotional connection to us, or to anyone. Not even with that other woman, or that one, or the other one, or two that other guy either.

They Have Pea Brains

We can use the sociopath’s limited brain against them: realize it’s a crime – not a relationship by any means. Know they lie about any and all things. Everything they say or do is to get what they want and not get caught. Understand the meaning behind the stories.

Don’t respond to their emotional harassment and playing sick and sob stories. End the madness that is not a relationship – but a crime asap. Go zero contact and stay there forever. We end it, they won’t. We must reframe the nightmare for a full recovery and to render ourselves sociopath-proof forever.

I’m very sorry to say that this friend of mine, a former success in the music industry, was ensnared by a female sociopath in 2017. He has succumbed in total to her machinations and mesmerizing. Thi sled to divorcing his real wife and his entire life has been taken over by her. She has married him, deleted and blocked all his friends, taken his phone, his money and now his gorgeous home in the Hollywood Hills. – He is older now, and frail and medicated. This will be how his life ends. – these are not relationships. They are crimes.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

As long as one has hope, there is nothing one cannot achieve; everything is born from hope. ~ Daisaku Ikeda

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.

True Love Scam on Tumblr.
.

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.

2016_04_20 2023_02_18

What is No Contact?

Why go no contact?
After a narcissistic user, no contact
is the way to take our life back.
Why does it matter so much?

To make things super-de-duper clear in this horrendously unclear time here’s a handy-dandy list describing what constitutes “contact” and what we want to achieve: “no contact.”

coaching with Jennifer Smith for PTSD and trauma after a sociopath or narcissist and to restore your life and build a future.

Keeping contact – exchanging raging emails and text messages – even “lovey-dovey” ones – not only keeps us in the mess and the lies – it creates new trauma.

Not talking to each other is advised in normal relationship breakups. Not talking gives us a chance to see how we truly feel. How much more critical is it in a true love scam…?!

Each bit of any contact prolongs harm. The sociopath…that creature you might be calling a “narcissist” won’t offer up closure, an apology, or a sincere exchange of any kind.

What Is No Contact?

What is no contact…? It’s more than watching their messages come in and not answering. It’s the one thing that changes everything and that’s going no contact. We end what they started because they won’t.

Though that’s a good start, this isn’t what we call “no contact”… Each message is a zap of new trauma of interaction with them. Every voicemail, email, DM, text, SMS, PM, is a tug at our gut that makes us foggy and keeps us “in it”.

Contact Means We’re Offering Ourselves Up as Lunch

Further contact after a “break up”, or after there’s an “end”, more often inspires the sociopath to be violent or terrorizing. Without a doubt, the second time you come back together, things are worse whether there is violence or not. This escalates each time you “break up” and goes back.

Did you know that contact could lead to our losing legal battles for custody, divorce, annulment, or restraining orders? Staying in contact can make us look as crazy as they say we are.

To the sociopath, or that person you might have decided is a covert, overt or malignant narcissist: any contact is good contact. Any contact, of any kind at all such as responding to a message they drop into your DM, means to the pathological user that they still pull the strings and so can still access you to take what they want, or to use you as they like.

Dive deep for complete freedom.

We Do Need To End It: We Stop It They Don’t

Time went on quicker, tighter, everything tightened and escalated after I’d lost just about everything and he became overtly disgusted with everything around him. Finally, a combination of numbness and knowledge that my children and I were in very real danger took hold of me and eclipsed the fear of what he’d do if I left or any other fear or worry. As much as I still hated to accept it, I knew that it had to end, and it had to end by me before one of those horrible fears did happen. I had to accept that leaving or staying was life or death.” ~ Chapter 4, Shannon O. Entry No. 08 This Has to End

< Click the book cover to get yours…

Our Emotions Trip Us Up

This is a situation that demands our heads winning over what might linger in our hearts. The sociopath who hijacked us intended no good for us no matter how charming they were – or are. They will never, ever be anything good they promised.

Strictly establishing no contact and keeping no contact will influence our chance of beginning to recover; our safety, and our well-being, and can decide whether or not we win in court.

Staying no contact is to protect our kids. The sooner we go no contact the sooner we can expect a return to happiness in the days to come and long-term.

The Podcast: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

Staying In Contact Makes Us Appear Untrustworthy and Questionable in Court

Attorneys and Judges frown on those standing before them seeking divorce and child custody from a predator spouse and at the same time has kept contact with the user-abuser.

If we maintain contact our credibility shrinks. If there are children the only contact is best as emails and only related to logistics of pick-ups and drop-offs.

Our silence is the loudest, most meaningful thing we can say to them.

Unless specific communication with them is requested by an attorney, staying in contact makes us look unreliable, untrustworthy, unstable, and indecisive to Judges, child services, counselors, police, and attorneys.

Staying in contact makes our claims of abuse, defrauding, theft, and all the rest straight questionable. We lose big-time if we stay in contact. Go no contact. Only stay in contact via email or a court app if told to by the court to do so for the logistics of child visits.

This is Staying In Contact:

These are the things you want to not do in order to get your life back and to be heard in the most meaningful way by the pathological user, and then have the space to begin your recovery odyssey:

  • Let their calls ring through to our phones, even if we don’t answer – their number is best blocked so we don’t see any calls or texts
  • Call their number and hang up
  • Dial their number to their voicemail
  • Take their phone calls
  • Call them
  • Leave them messages
  • Listen to their voicemail messages
  • Let emails from them land in our inbox
  • Read the emails they send to us
  • Respond to their emails
  • Sort through their emails because we have their password
  • Read the text, SMS, private Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat, or any messages from them
  • Respond to any messages from them
  • Initiate any messages to them

Close Every Portal from Us to Them

Deeper no contact: close every portal open from our life to theirs. More things we don’t do in no contact.

  • Look at their Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or any of their online images, or media
  • Look at their “friends” social media pages
  • Sort through their posts looking at their new target or for other prey
  • Look at old photos of them on our phone or on our FB page or anywhere else
  • Sort through our wedding photos or other pictures of him or us
  • Keep things that remind us of him or her
  • Make an alias FB account so we can look at their page that we blocked

Narcissistic Abuse Unwound: The Podcast

For Court: Save What They’ve Already Sent: Every Message Counts

There’s one exception to keeping contact: we can keep contact when or if an attorney tells us to send a particular message to the sociopath from our email for a legal step in any legal process. These emails are then forwarded as-is to the attorney for the legal process.

Strictly establishing no contact and keeping no contact will influence our chance of beginning to recover; our safety, our well-being, and can be a deciding factor in whether or not we win in court.

Keep old messages: archive old emails and texts that may be needed to show violence, intended violence, marriage fraud, name-calling or harassment, or refusal to follow the procedure in divorce, annulment, or other legal matters. Text messages are best also saved in a chronological series of screenshots showing time/date stamping.

If you print out text messages they lose formatting and are simply line after line of the conversation with no way to tell who said what or when.

We do want to make sure all saved messaging has time date stamps and clearly indicates whose device it’s from (theirs) and to whom (you or other targets.) Keep these as screenshots, printouts, and files on a thumb drive. Save copies for yourself. Forward them to your attorney.

Resist Keeping Tabs Unless It’s to Gather Court Evidence

This is for your safety: Maybe you’ve landed here and are uncertain if the person you’re leaving is a sociopath or a narcissist. I get it that this is unbelievably hard. Please, as soon as you can realize that even though You’re not sure what’s going on, the most important thing to do is to protect yourself and your own well-being. It’s best not to talk about them anywhere to anyone other than privately to a few select people. Leave off any social media posts about our misery in breaking up. And here’s there real-deal and the really tough part: we aren’t breaking up as much as we’re making an escape. – Please don’t tap and type away in Reddit threads about this user we’re breaking away from, please stop yourself from listing them on www.badboyfriend.com. It’s best if you don’t make a FB page dedicated to talking trash about them no matter how true the trash is – and I’m here to tell you, whatever trash you have on them it isn’t even a thimble full of their over-flowing-garbage-can-of-a-life. – This is not to let them get away with it! This is to make you, us, you, and I a “non-threat” to the sociopath. Then go report through the proper channels if there’s something to  stand up for your life about. And even I use the word “game” sometimes to talk about this, but in real life: this is not a game.

This is No Contact: This is What We Want to Do

On Facebook

  • Using the block function in the Privacy settings in Facebook to block them: here’s how
  • Doing the same with all mutual “Friends” or connections on Facebook
  • Not looking at their Facebook page
  • Staying away from their friends’ Facebook pages
  • Avoiding FB pages of our (now former) friends who are “Friends” on his or her’s Facebook page
  • Never private message him or her
  • Not messaging any of his or her “friends”; they don’t have actual genuine friends, and all people are prey to them

Regarding Email

In order to let their email scoop in case you need them for evidence and court or legal matters, we can. However, at the same time these nasty and lying and so freaking crazy emails don’t need to come into our real-life email. We can send them to a special inbox just for the lunatic.

  • Make a new email address
  • Don’t give them this new one
  • Do not email them
  • Do not read any emails they send you to any email address whatsoever

In addition, consider changing the “channel”, the IP address that your internet is routed through. Simply call your internet provider and ask them to switch the IP address you receive your internet connection through.

This will knock off any device from access to your internet that may have at one time or another signed in to your internet service on a device of their own.

Think Zero Contact and Non-Threat: We Need to Seem Invisible and Nonexistent

Cell Phones

  • There’s a block function on smartphones per each phone number; use it with his or her’s
  • Alternatively, call your service provider and have them block this number for you from being able to call into your phone
  • No calls or texts from that number can come in after that; alternately, login to our online account with our service provider and block the numbers
  • Do not ever answer any calls in the future coming in as blocked or unavailable or restricted
  • Don’t answer calls from an unknown number or unidentified caller
  • Block the unknown numbers that call you and don’t leave a voicemail that shows they’re a legitimate caller

Consider getting a new or used-new phone and a new number. A used-new phone can be just the ticket right now. Do not load old contacts.

Enter the old-school one by one… Only the good ones. – In cases where this seems appropriate, consider a prepaid burner phone for six months or so.

More About No Contact

Believe this: we might want the sociopath to hurt as we did – sure, me too, we might even we might even wish them dead, that’s normal. Some of us stay in contact thinking if we call them names and fight with them it will hurt them, or they’ll finally apologize.

We want them to “understand” that they’re hurting us. This is not going to happen in the way we’re looking for. For one, they know they hurt us; this doesn’t bother them.

News Flash: sociopaths (narcissists) do not “hurt” in the way we do; they “hurt” when things are taken from them or there’s a threat of being exposed. When we leave we become a threat to them as far as their concern about who we’ll tell all about them.

They experience trauma when highly valuable prey takes off. As strange as this is, the pathologically narcissistic (sociopaths aka psychopaths aka narcissists) have no feelings that are relatable to our emotional range of concern and experience as fully limbic-brained – normal – humans.

It’s only us who’s hurt by contact. Us going no contact is what hurts them. Please, go and stay no contact.

From their point of view: if we’re texting, calling, emailing or responding, arguing, crying, talking… no matter how we feel, no matter what the words flying out of our mouths are: to them, it means they still own us if we say anything at all. It’s only us who’s hurt by contact. Us going no contact is what hurts them. Please, go and stay in no contact.

No Contact On Other Platforms

  • Instagram, Pinterest: Nothing. Nope. Don’t look at theirs. Block theirs and all associated with them. Period. Instagram has a new feature called “Restrict”
  • Twitter: No
  • LinkedIn: Ditto as above
  • Snap Chat: Nope. We “blocked” their number on our phone; see Cell Phones above
  • FaceTime: See Cell Phones above – their number is blocked!
  • Skype: No; no Skype, zero, zip, nadda, zilch
  • Zoom: No Zoom
  • TikTok: No TikTok
  • WhatsApp: No
  • Signal or Telegraph: No
  • Land Lines: Change our voice greeting to the default anonymous greeting and screen calls
  • Cell and Landline: change your number either over the phone or online with your provider, you can select a new number.
  • FAX Number: Again if we have a landline for faxing – change the number.

Understand: No Contact is For Us: It’s How We Win

Hopefully, it’s becoming meaningful on a real-deal-critical level, that we can’t meet them for coffee, to trade back our belongings, or to have sex. We don’t go out to dinner, meet them at a club, meet them with friends. Follow the best practices for our well-being when leaving a sociopath aka narcissist.

Be sure to re-key your doors. This involves changing out the locking mechanism. This works perfectly well rather than getting the whole new doorknob which means their old key doesn’t fit your lock anymore.

And neither does the one they might have copied on the sly. If there’s a knock at your door the way to get them gone is to not answer. Additionally, make no reply, not even talking to them from behind the door.

We Bring This to an End

Let’s never see their smirky, ugly face again. I know we all know this, but I’m just sayin’. Go no contact… zero contact, hardcore. Our silence is the loudest, most meaningful thing we can say to them. And let’s be real. You might reach out or wish they would. That’s normal until we fully know what a sociopath is and what that means.

For our own well-being, our safety, and our future; for finding ourselves again, we go zero contact, radio silent. And… You drop off their radar. And goodbye to the nut-job.

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.

True Love Scam on Tumblr.
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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.

2016_04_05 2022_12_09

Bored Nomads: Heartless Hobos

Bored heartless nomads.
They don’t connect or care,
have no sentimental or nostalgic idea of “home”
so, one place is much like another
and where ever they are isn’t “home”, it’s a hideout.

Sociopaths are bored nomads. Empty souls, empty brains, absent hearts. And no place they truly call “home.”

The part of the brain that registers like, love, care, concern, compassion is – unplugged. It doesn’t operate normally. They’re just kind of blah. They don’t “attach” to anyone, anything, or any place.

No matter how much we might not notice at first, no matter how many promises they make about our life together: for them, “home” is no place, while for us “there’s no place like home.”

Nobodies Home Inside There Aside from Evil

Sociopathic predators pretend to feel things they don’t, such as “love” or “concern” because they know their emptiness is something we can’t accept and it freaks us out.

If we’re freaked out, they need to move on sooner and don’t get as much stuff.

So they fake it to get stuff and to keep that cozy couch to sleep on. Unfortunately, they have an uncanny power of influence and get lots unless we already – fully – know what a sociopath is.

When normal humans take in a moment in life or interact in human exchange, our bodies respond by making a chemical mix that rushes to our bloodstream and brain and animates us in emotional responses of gratitude, empathy, delight, joy, or reverent awe, or an endless combo of sensation.

There is resolution and full restoration.
What is recovery for you?

Bonding is Normal: It’s Absent in Pathological Predators

This grand cocktail of life forges deeper connections with others around us and to our very selves. In a sociopath this function is absent. They switch emotional responses on and off – sort of. But not really…

It’s that there’s just no one human home. Though a sociopath might say, we feel emotions. Ours is just different. – Well, yeah, that’s the point; they’re the feelings of a monster. Very, very different than ours.

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.

Sociopaths Have No Emotional Connection

Sociopaths mimic the emotions they see us go through. They don’t feel feelings like we do or understand ours. It’s all bars and tone – or desire and rage in the sociopath’s brain.

We get attached to our home and the simple things that take our breath away, illicit tears, smiles, giggles, or a sigh weigh in as a heavy clunk of next-to-nothingness in the sociopath’s “heart”.

The pride in our home, our lives, our child’s college graduation, first prom, first steps, or our teary-eyed satisfaction at giving the perfect gift to a loved one are experiences a sociopath will never have. Nope. Sociopaths have white noise where love should be.

When We Feel…

  • Delight: at our child’s achievements
  • Pleasure: in helping someone besides ourselves
  • Joy: at a the birth of a new baby
  • Compassion: for another’s sorrows
  • Satisfaction: in a job well done

A Sociopath Registers Personal Gain…

  • Delight: gloating at ensnaring a new victim
  • Pleasure: in a well-told lie
  • Joy: in scamming a new place to live
  • Compassion: there is none for anyone
  • Satisfaction: in a smear campaign well done… And otherwise, they’re bored

The Sociopath aka Narcissist Desires Only to Take and Use

The sociopath, as a bored nomadic parasitic predator moves on to shake trouble from their tail and stir up glittery resources. They make a get-away to fresh territory and ripe untapped prey.

A sociopath scum bag’s sole desire is to suck us in, to take, and to use us and all we have and all those around us if possible. They make up lots of “good reasons” to live together. They might say something like, “I need to move by Friday because my roommate stopped paying rent…” – It’s a hint at what they want. They toss out bait hoping we’ll bite out of our ordinary and gorgeous human empathy and compassion and social conditioning in order to – in this case – take over our space.

They’re laser-focused on this. They don’t want to pay rent or share in the bills. They make promises of work they’re getting, money coming in, and they’ll do the dishes later.

Haus-Maus or Man In Pants: It’s all Fraud

Some sociopaths have the persona of man-around-the-house and get bossy while others play Mr. Mom and do laundry, cook, clean, and pick up the kids. This is the way this type of sociopath gets the cheese. Yes, like rats in a lab as they go through life they learn which button to push to get dinner.

I call this errand running, dinner making, kid caring sociopath the haus-maus – or house-mouse. It’s all bait. This is what they hope will hook their room and board. Their shelter from the storms. Storms both outside falling from the sky, and quite likely the storm anger of the last person they messed with who’s now after them.

The Provider

Some others, averse to chores and dirty work, flash cash instead and foot the bill for a bit to secure their place in our home. From the beginning – or by the end – they don’t pay, won’t pay, and get mad if asked to pay. – Be aware there are those who pay big-bucks all throughout keeping us in mani-pedies, vacations, and designer clothes. However, it comes at a price.

A sociopath dirtbag (even if you’re calling them a narcissist) is never the person we think they are until we see the devil in their eyes. Then – and only then, are we seeing who they are. Since no one with a heart wants to live with a devil they try their best to hide it. Their best is not very good.

Con Men Predators Get So Bored and Need Places to Hide

The ironic trap of needing the person they don’t care about pisses them off. Without emotional attachment, pretending to be in love with someone would get old. And bothersome. Their hatred of us begins to show itself.

Sociopaths are bored nomads, their boredom makes it hard to keep up their facades.

They drop the act at any random moment, then shove the mask back in place, drop it, put it up again and it falls once more.

This inconsistency is how we see through them. That’s okay with them. Ultimately, these scum bag inhuman users don’t care about the longevity of a scam as much as they care about taking what they’re after and going free.

Getting What They Want and Getting Away

The getaway is important. And these predators do indeed have many people are after them. Lots of people on their tail. Always.

They’ve got people they owe money to, women with babies they’ve left to support on their own, someone’s husband who wants to beat the living-day-lights out of them, bench warrants, they’ve skipped parole, evaded taxes, jumped debts, stolen cars to ride off in. They’re so, so busy; so busy running in fear.

Changing Location is Essential to Surviving as a Sociopath

And so, sociopaths, con men change geographic locations over and over. Every three to ten months, the predator needs new prey, and often new hunting grounds.

They pack light and leave things behind, as they skip and hop from place to place without their name registered on a lease or posted on a mailbox. The scampiest of these I call the backpackers. – All they have is a dirty backpack, easy to pick up and go.

They hide behind their prey for official things like rental contracts. If we think they “own” a house, a condo, or a boat, but look closely, they mostly don’t own anything, and always there’s more to it than meets the normal human eye.

Where Ever They Are They Are The Same

Whether a sociopath skulks in a low-rent district or a high-rise, through all the lies they’re hard to trace and difficult to pin down.

The sociopath, as a bored nomadic parasitic predator moves on to shake trouble from their tail and stir up glittery resources. They make a get-away to fresh territory and ripe untapped prey. “Want” never leaves them, ever on the search for more money and more fun… otherwise they get so bored.

Boredom and Fear Are Forefront in Their Black Hearts

Boredom isn’t the only reason sociopaths, con men, narcissistic users need to move on down the road. It’s those people after them and those scams that blow up that lead them to a new location. Sociopaths are bored and boring and make terrible, monster, roommates. Who needs ’em?

There are many great books here to read more about these traveling monsters. Understand what’s really going on and set ourselves free!

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

Narcissistic Abuse Unwound, the podcast

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.
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True Love Scam Recovery and www.truelovescam.com, Narcissistic Abuse Unwound, Jennifer Smith 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.

2015_12_19 2024_08_22

Breaking No Contact

A True Love Scam Reader’s Guest Post, written by E.R.
Breaking no contact can bring us freedom too.
That peek back into where we were is not all bad.
– Depends on why and then what we do next.

A True Love Scam Reader’s Guest Post

Written by: E.R.

E.R. was a young college student and this entanglement was her very first relationship. Her parents couldn’t understand her trauma. She yearned for closure, for a natural and mutual ending, for explanations, as do we all when the end arrives.

Through a willingness to take in more, and through sessions with me to begin to shed the assumptions we make about them from the point of view of how we look at the world, E. was able to piece her life back together.

That healing and recovery process is an odyssey of disbelief after disbelief giving way to discovery and relief and resolution if we can step into seeing things we never thought possible.

Going Contact for Peace of Mind

I fell in love with a cute, charming, tender, sensual, simple, strong man. We met on a beach holiday that I took abroad. We emailed and talked and sent texts when I was back home. I went back to that beach every six months to visit him, to get to know him better. I was in love.

Instead of the happiness I expected or first felt, after a lot of pain, I ended our relationship. I went no contact, but then I broke no contact.

In defense of breaking no contact: I learned a lot. I learned who he really was by spying on his life on social media. – By breaking no contact I learned that his Facebook is a sort of display of his love-conquests.

He has friends – other guys – who live at that tourist beach too for the same reason: to live as parasites off tourists; women traveling for vacations and a little fun.

I learned that if he was offline for a few days and I couldn’t reach him… it meant he was having an affair with some new tourist. He was busy love-bombing and paying them attention, fake affection in exchange for whatever he could get.

I learned from his Facebook that he randomly ‘friends’ people he does not know, among which I saw: one Brazilian gay man and a too-young girl from Indonesia.

I learned that when he checked into a city on Facebook, it meant that was the city a prey was living in. his full active prey was never pictured on his Facebook. But he did check-in to the cities they were from giving away their existence as part of his catch..

I learned that liking the page of a club or group or a business, or a soccer team was the sign he was engaging in cheating with a woman related to that activity or in that group.

His email taught me a lot too; I learned his email was full of online dating emails.

And that he subscribed to a website to win a U.S. green card from.

I discovered from his email and SMS that he was still missing and loving his ex-girlfriend for the first 8 months I was in his life.

The Sociopath’s Email Account Tells a Story

His email revealed to me that he had another ‘official girlfriend’ for 6 months when he was already ‘official’ with me. And he sent her exactly the same loving messages he used with me. He even re-used a little poem I sent to him, sending it to her.

Now that I broke up and went no contact, and then behind his back spied on his Facebook, I am learning that he is still the same. Despite the (fake) apologies and pathetic attempts to keep me in his crazy life, he never even stopped for a second to enjoy pornographic images, ‘friend’ new lovers, and say what he said to me to anyone else who would listen.

LADY ON PHONE MEME

This is teaching me that all that happened had nothing to do with me; He cheated and lied when I was sweet as much as when I broke up with him.

When I was questioning him as much as when I blindly trusted him; when I was The One and when I am no longer in his life.

Benefits of Looking: When We Turn Pain to Our Advantage

Although I am not fully respecting no contact by spying on his social media, although the first reaction to seeing him with other girls is still painful, I learned something for me. I learned to rationalize for my benefit. I had rationalized giving him the benefit of the doubt for a very long time, in order to put some logic in his nonsense; now I am using what he ‘taught’ me to rationalize in my favor!

Looking at him now helped me look beyond my emotions and repeat to myself like a mantra that he is still the same, will always be the same. A good-looking heartless-cheater.

Thank you, E.R. for sharing the sweet inside the bitter.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Feel free to email me for coaching at personalized rates, jennifer@truelovescam.com

Time to Thrive!

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
zoom support group ptsd therapy for coercive control narcissistic abuse coaching 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 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.
.

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.

2015_12_18 2021_07_17

D.I.Y. Guide to a Sociopath’s Brain and Psyche

Sociopaths, narcissists as in the pathologically narcissistic,
the pathological users and liars, predators
don’t think as we do.
Their hearts are colder than ice; harder than stone.
The trouble lies within their brains.

Sociopaths are known for their charm if you like that particular sociopath. Then, along the way, there’s that hairpin turn to nightmare behavior. This D.I.Y. Guide to a sociopath’s brain and psyche cracks the code. So… what’s going on in those heads of theirs?

Sociopaths – the pathologically narcissistic, the predatory parasitic user – don’t think as we do because they can’t. The vast chasm of difference between “normal” and “sociopath” is found in the brain.

Sociopaths Have a Brain That Works Very Differently than Ours

These pathological users can act in ways we’d never imagine. Making use of others is their normal.

Sociopaths’ and psychopaths’ brains don’t work a bit like ours. It’s confusing and frustrating to try to build relationships with them because they’re missing the building blocks of bonding.

We get caught up in our own emotional reactions to what’s happening between us and them. We go to emotions and to talking things out to correct conflict and confusion and to bond. We “feel” our way through life.

We Are Normal Through and Through

sociopaths' brains are underfunctioning #malignantnarcissist #sociopath

And that’s normal… and really great, except these narcissistic pathological users aren’t normal and don’t care what we feel, so it doesn’t help us at all.

Sociopaths and psychopaths do not have the brain capacity to feel any social or personal positive connection or bond. We can look into their eyes searching for a connection and find nothing but empty, or worse. – This is also likely that person you might be calling a ‘narcissist”.

Though in human skin and bones, they’re empty and hollow aside from destructive forces and utterly devoid of humanity. This is really difficult to realize, to see, to take in, to accept, and to understand.

What is recovered for you?

How Can Sociopaths Do What They Do?

Whether we call them sociopaths, malignant narcissists, con artists, scammers, covert narcissists, liars, or users – they’re all alike. It’s incredibly hard for us to imagine the vast emptiness inside their heads.

Without any human connection, they have only one thing going on in their upstairs hamster wheel of a brain: survival.

The way a predator, a parasite such as a sociopath survives is like any parasite, they live through the efforts of others and off of others. They know this about themselves. They count on us not knowing this.

Breaking Up With Evil

Breakign 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.

True crime. Told in their own words with nothing unsaid. Find validation, and see new glimpses of truth as these five women share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.

We Can Only Be Normal

We, as normal humans who do bond and care, have limbic brains. This is the brain of a mammal. A mammal is an animal – including us humans – that gives vaginal birth. Yah! I know, right! This includes in part cows, bunnies, dogs, cats, monkeys, elephants, dolphins, and whales. Each of these, including humans, bonds, loves, nurtures, creates family groups, and can even bond with one another.

Antisocial psychopaths are referred to as a sociopath, sometimes a narcissist or a psychopath. The sociopath has what’s called a “reptilian brain”. Think of creatures with a reptilian brain, such as snakes, lizards, and crocodiles.

They lay eggs, do not create a family, and even eat their young both before or after the eggs hatch. – There are a few exceptions here, but this is to give an idea of the fundamental difference that matters: no nurturing, no parenting, no bonding, no pairs, or family group.

Sociopaths Can Only Be Sociopaths

What the sociopath is wired by their brain to do in order to live, to survive, to exist has the effect of destroying others. They know this. It doesn’t faze them. This sounds farfetched unless you’ve been in it.

There’s Really No One Home: Aside From Evil

Sociopaths are without any bonding capability, therefore they’re without genuine concern or care for any human or for any animal though they pretend to have either or both.

They have no moral, ethical, or spiritual concern for others or for the effect on others as fall out and as deliberate effect. imagine if you can: they have no conscience. – They do however make use of our conscience and our emotions and normal bonding impulses to prolong their parasitic stay in any person’s life.

With this primal urge to survive, which we all share, when the brain doesn’t bond or care then what’s left in these simple creatures is spartan. It’s purely and the only motivation to make use of other people, to take whatever they want, and get away with it. – There is nothing else there.

Sociopaths Don’t Feel What We Feel

A narcissist is the same thing as a sociopath, and a sociopath is in reality a psychopath. Sociopaths are all alike. I settled on the term “sociopath” because it’s more palatable than “psychopath” and has much more meaning as to their real nature than “narcissist”.

If you’re thinking of them as a covert, overt or malignant narcissist or borderline, please shift how you think of them through the concept of a sociopath and things will make more sense. – These DSM categories are irrelevant at best to those solving the crimes of a life invasion.

Collectively, these vast wastelands of humanity do not “feel” or experience any of the normal emotions that we do. Not at all, no matter how hard they pretend to. And definitely no matter how much we project our experience of human emotions onto them. – In fact, it’s this assumption that they feel like we do that causes us further harm and pain.

Sociopaths Do Not Feel The Way We Do

All the very normal human emotions we experience aren’t felt by them. We assume these emotions are felt by them. This is from our world. They do not feel any of these feelings in the way we do.

Limbic Brained Normal: Trust, Bonding, and Connection

We, on the other hand, have limbic brains; the brain of a mammal that bonds, cares, and makes connected family groups.

Their reptilian brain is a primal self-survival brain. We walk into what we think is a friendship or relationship with our limbic brain. Essentially, we’re jumping like little puppies expecting things to be good. This then is where the real trauma lives when ensnared by a sociopath. We can heal our traumatized brains.

Sociopaths aka psychopaths and some of the ones you might still be referring to as a narcissist, genuinely do not like others or feel part of a group, they have no love for their parents, no love for their children, no love at all. These parasites can be disarmed before they start.

D.I.Y. Guide to the Inside of the Dark-Dark Noggin

A Sociopath’s or a Pathological Predator’s Behaviors are Identical and Predictable

  • They don’t really tell much about their lives other than highlights of being used or heroic things they’ve done
  • They try to show themselves as humanitarians, fighters for justice, or do-gooders
  • Surprisingly, they are naive
  • They get restless and bored
  • Predators give the impression of being sincere and humble
  • When meeting someone new they want to hear about the other person
  • Agree with us to inspire our trust and feelings of intimacy
  • They create a forced “we”; create an “us and them”
  • Go through periods of hyperactivity contrasted with heavy downtime. There’s a significant reason for this and it’s not because they have PTSD or are bi-polar or other malarkey
  • When threatened personally that their toys will be taken, they experience trauma and lash out

There’s Still More

  • Say one thing then another
  • Tell tall tales of being used by others
  • Some “play dead” like a kid; talk about death, dying, or suicide
  • Say odd things that are in reality when they’re telling the truth of how they feel
  • Hesitate before responding, looking at us in a paused mode
  • Give inappropriate or disjointed, off the mark response in emotional situations that call for empathy, sympathy, or compassion such as someone’s death, accident, or illness
  • Have hidden sexual activity; hedonistic, BDSM, sex industry, pedophilia, porn
  • Employment is sparse, shortlived, or a long-term professional setting or claim they have their own business; under the surface, all is fraud
  • Though sociopaths – because of the inherent sociopath power of influence – can have a huge scope of influence in politics, law, criminal justice, and religious settings
  • Careless with material possessions yet seem attached to some items to obsession
  • Can be very entertaining and hold sway with a crowd, paradoxically quite hermit-like
  • They can sound and seem like two different people in different situations
  • Have the ability to morph age-wise, genderwise
  • A sociopath can cross over, shift in what they seem to be in terms of where they’re from, their economic status, and more

Sociopaths Have Different Brains Than Normal People

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National Geographic made an informative video about antisocial psychopaths aka sociopaths in our midst.

Antisocial in this context is Latin medical terminology referring to their abnormal brains. it means they behave outside of the expected or the accepted social behaviors and norms. It’s got nothing to do with being uncomfortable or shy socially.

Sociopaths aka psychopaths are within this category, but the full-blown psychopath is more focused on the entertainment they feel at other’s pain than on scamming a place to sleep.  Watch it here.

We might not all experience all of the kinds of horrific things a sociopath can potentially do, say, their darkest thinking may not be seen by all of us, in many cases, they are not shown to all of us. Some of you have the “relationship” crumble and end without a harsh word between you. – This is great you were spared and yet this also becomes a stumbling block to seeing what they are.

Easy-Peasy: Criminal is Their Normal

A sociopath will claim to be a great parent, especially on FB. Steal money or possessions from a spouse, friend, or stranger. Have affairs with married people. Impregnate and abandon. Hide money from a partner. Lie to authorities. “Cheat” while in a “relationship”. For a sociopath aka narcissist, immigration and marriage fraud are as ordinary as it is for them to have us do the laundry and pay their phone bill.

It’s a possibility they have two phones – or more – and keep those hidden. Or pretend one or the other phone is for work because they’re so big and important. If you noticed they don’t genuinely pay their own way financially, even if they work, the work is fraud. They use a different name. Hide where they go, and the things they buy.

Their World Is Nothing Like Ours

What we think we know about the sociopath who hijacked us is usually not nearly the tip of the iceberg. Don’t wait to find out more. Go no contact.

Sociopaths separate groups of people and their “second” family, along with their second or third or fourth alias, alternate versions of their names or completely different identities.

These pathological users will fake illness. Leave for days. Stop talking, or talk so much our eyes cross. They marry only for houses, cars, property, and borrowed respectability. Sociopaths aka narcissists use online social media and dating sites to fish for prey. Primary prey suffers pain and confusion when the sociopath-predator withholds sex. Change phone numbers frequently.

They make bold claims about glorious accomplishments. Promise many things. Place their prey in the position of being liable for their crimes. These are criminals: read more about that in this NY Times story on one of the latest sociopaths put behind bars.

Let’s Withdraw the Magnanimous, Generous Credit we Give these Beasts

Personal sessions! Recovery for narcissistic abuse Jennifer Smith True Love Scam Recovery

We tend to give the sociopath’s machinations and ability to lie more flattering significance than it’s worth. We imagine their ploys require “intelligence”.

We think what they do requires some kind of genius because they’re doing things we’d never think of doing in a million years or ever dare to do if we could think of it.

In reality, they can do what they do because they don’t care. I don’t mean they decide not to care. Deciding not to care would require the ability to care and then to weigh and discern caring more about one thing than another. They don’t have “care” for others in their lexicon of emotion.

When there’s no concern or consideration for other people, no sense of responsibility, no obligation to society, family, friends, humanity, or any living being other than self allowing one to carry out any action to gain a desire – is this intelligence or genius? Or is it simply a kind of diabolical freedom? When caring is absent, what’s left?

~ Jennifer Smith


Sociopaths Fake Next to Everything

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Sociopaths avoid work. Pass STDs. Demand a partner to stop practicing a religious faith. Ruin others with lies. Lie in court. Lie to immigration. Block wives, and girlfriends from their social media.

Abandon their children. Scam and lie to their children. Obtain fake passports. Use fake IDs. Never have a real address.

Use two or more Facebook accounts with different identities. Control and abuse children just as they do adults. Claim fame that doesn’t exist.

Use someone else’s social security number. Fake their educations. Cheat through school. Leave others holding the bag for their debts.

What Sociopaths Don’t Want Us to Know About Them

Sociopaths don’t like us to know their vulnerabilities and darker secret behaviors. and Their genderless sexuality and promiscuous nature. In reality, for these omnisexual, asexual creatures, anyone will do as a sexual “partner” since there is no love or emotional connection.

There is a concerted effort to hide their alcohol use, porn, prostitution, and gambling or drug use. It’s important for the pathological predator to hide their deep fear of being discovered as what they are because the fear is connected to what it is we’ll do when we see what they are. They huge fear of losing their prey, though they know every false connection will eventually end from the moment they’ve said “hello”. namazon

Violence, Secrets, and Things We Can’t Imagine

They try to keep their violent behavior under wraps – at least in the beginning. Their bar fights might become stories you hear about how someone attacked them. They’ll do their best to hide their stealing and criminal records. Sociopaths separate their “second” and “third” families and any social groups associated with each as best they can. They hide their assorted aliases, identities, and alternate versions of their names.

These pathological users can act in ways we’d never imagine. Making use of others is their “normal”. This can be hard to see even when we feel they’re lying, not completely honest, and we feel suspicious of them.

Things we might be missing are that they act out in impulsive violence. and have uncontrollable rage. They defraud governments and agencies. Embezzle funds or property. Blackmail. Commit forgery. Sell drugs. Pimp. And, really and truly couldn’t care less.

Sociopaths try to cover up that they know what they’re doing. These creatures know that by being what they are, others are hurt.

Sociopaths, Even if you Call them Narcissists, Narcopaths or Narcs, Need Others to Believe Them

Here’s the best part: they need us. And they know they do. Their success is dependent upon us not knowing any of this. And they don’t have a chance of using others or surviving unless we believe them and believe they’re at least within some range of normal. Maybe normal but troubled.

Recognize them for what they are. Put aside our emotional investment and connection. Shut down the sociopath’s ability to use and abuse. Exit stage left or get them gone. Go no contact, trust our gut! We are our own angels! We are Super Heroes!

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.

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True Love Scam Recovery, Narcissistic Abuse Unwound, Jennifer Smith, 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. Founded 2014 © 2026 All Rights Reserved True Love Scam Recovery www.truelovescam.com

2015_09_20 2024_08_22

PTSD is a Thing After Life with a Sociopath

PTSD is most definitely a thing.
After narcissistic abuse, we have it.
Our friends don’t understand.
Maybe we don’t, but:
we’re not really broken.

PTSD stands for post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD isn’t permanent. It might surprise some of us that the range of swinging emotions, and thoughts we’re going through is PTSD.

ptsd cptsd recover heal

It may surprise our family or friends to realize that the pain, the terror, all the weeping is post-traumatic stress. We’re swinging through a jungle of cognitive dissonance, shock, and more shock.

We’re hard at work grabbing at answers, trying to make sense of what happened, though, for all they can see, we’ve been slumped in a corner in tears. Many of us feel broken. Rest assured, you are not.

PTSD is a thing after a sociopath or a narcissistic abuser. What we’re feeling is normal, unavoidable, not permanent and there are hope and healing. It wouldn’t be normal to not feel this way. It’s the residual and the aftermath of being spellbound.

We Can Heal. We Win.

Everything We Feel Is Normal: We Are Not Forever Broken

I remember – after he was gone, at some point early in restoring my life, I looked in the bathroom mirror… the word “broken” floated up to my mind. Broken. I’m broken, is what I said in my head. I’d never been broken before. Never knew that was a way people could feel. It made sense though.

In the aftermath of nearly getting into a head-on collision, our emotions kick in and keep swirling. Now here’s what happens when humans have emotions: As we feel all these emotions, the emotions turn to thoughts.

Here’s the thing, any time spent around a sociopath is traumatic. So, after they leave, we’re going to go through feelings that are more than uncomfortable. These feelings and thoughts are our body attempting to heal, they are not the new us.

These intense and so often conflicting thoughts, emotions, and despair are the beginning of healing – the key is to find the way to use these for healing rather than be seen as a pile of disorders. This is not the end of our life as it used to be before we met them.

Breaking Up With Evil

Breakign 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 to breaking away.

True crime. Told in their own words with nothing unsaid. Find validation, and see new glimpses of truth as these five women share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.

Join the podcast!

Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

We’re Really Going to be Okay: PTSD is Not Permanent

So many people around us tell us to: Move on. Or, Get over it. We try to do that, but somehow instead we can’t sleep, have lost weight, feel like we’ll never trust again and a whole bunch of other not great feelings, worries and fears, and health issues to boot.

There’s high or elevated blood pressure, weight gain, weight loss, headaches, and much more that might visit us in the aftermath, along with coping habits we’d rather not keep.

Memories of this creep won’t stop. We’re so worn out of thinking about this loser, yet we can’t not think about this loser. – That’s normal. And it’s because we need answers to what the heck happened.

PTSD and CPTSD are Part of Healing: The Beginning of Healing

Imagine we just got hit by a freight train, a bus, or a piano just fell on our toes; no one just gets up and walks away from that without needing to recover.

Here’s a tiny example of what PTSD is, think of this: Have you ever almost been in a car accident? Driving along normally and suddenly, there’s almost a smash-up? Then you keep driving but tingles run through your hands, and they shake on the steering wheel, palms sweating, breathing shallow.

“Post-trauma is normal. It’s the normal human reaction to the trauma of this particular sustained influence and entrapment by person of ASP – antisocial personality disorder. We couldn’t be expected to have any other response. In fact, this response is where healing begins. It’s a cluster of simultaneous feelings and physical reactions and responses from the body, mind and heart. If you think of it in the way that the flu is a cluster of symptoms you can see this isn’t the new “us”, but a passing situation. We’re still there. The determination to pull our real self back through this fog, and the time and insight into how to tame these post trauma reactions and emotions, to understand them, to manage them and heal them are all we need. For whatever reason, I did this instinctively and now I help others do it. ~ Jennifer Smith

Post Trauma Feels Worse than the Traumatic Event

When you consider it, this was a raid, a home invasion, a breaking and entering through our hearts. This wasn’t a relationship, it was a crime. Please, keep in mind: No one robs an empty house. We are awesome.

Driving along because traffic lights are green, and we have somewhere to be, we try to act normally; we try to have normal control of our body and the car, and our mind. But our heart pounds, our blood rushes, and images of what just happened run on a loop in our minds. Which is only partly there and is off on its own someplace kind of floaty and yet we feel sharply aware at the same time.

Then, in the aftermath of nearly getting into a head-on collision, our emotions kick in and keep swirling. Now here’s what happens when humans have emotions: As we feel all these emotions, the emotions turn to thoughts.

This concept of “our part” in it could only possibly apply if these had been relationships. We owe it to ourselves to give this idea some thought before swallowing it whole.

We start forming ideas and thoughts that make words in our heads. Then those words, those thoughts: become beliefs. Beliefs about what just happened. Why, how, who’s a fault it was… And, significantly, these ideas and thoughts and beliefs in our head are pulled from and formed in conjunction with things we already “know” and “believe” about life and about ourselves.

Healing and Calming the PTSD Takes Time and Discoveries That Are Unsettling

Hearing the word “sociopath” or similar is only the beginning. That’s when recovery can begin. After the trauma of this whole event, one we could think of as a hijacking, our emotions and thoughts are all over the place because the trauma deregulates our nervous system. If we take in the effective methods of re-regulating our nervous system and other specific insights, we can fully recover.

Feelings Become Thoughts Become Beliefs: We Can Decide What We Think and Believe

For example, from the feeling of fear, our brains might make the thought such as, “Wow, what an idiot that driver is!” Or maybe, “I almost hit that guy! What’s wrong with me?!

The emotional soup in the midst of the post-trauma takes us to a conclusion or belief about what happened and about ourselves. We might likely conclude it was our fault, and we just did something stupid. At the same time in another part of our mind, we wonder what our mom would say about our (bad) driving.

Or what would have happened if our child had been in the car with us? We consider the reactions or judgments of people who aren’t present but matter to us. We automatically think of worse things that could have happened.

We Know Somethings Wrong But We Don’t Know What: This is Normal

In the case of leaving one of these “relationships”, though we aren’t sure exactly what just happened as we walk and run and get away any way we can from a pathological user, for most of us, our natural first thoughts are related to taking responsibility for what happened.

We’re usually really hard on ourselves when things go wrong in life. We worry about what could have happened (but didn’t) and think about what we should have done instead of whatever it was we just did.

All this is going on while we’re aware we need to refocus on driving… so this won’t happen again. Sound familiar…?

This is what post-trauma is. This new emotional soup and confusion aren’t who we are. It’s the body’s natural delay from the traumatic event into healing. It’s a kind of debriefing. We take in and review the trauma so that we can feel safe again, and skip another such close call in the future.

We Decide to Recover: We Chose How Fully We Recover

It’s up to us, in this case with a con man to learn how to manage this natural mental and emotional “debriefing”, that is the post-trauma so that we come out whole, healed, and with every answer to what happened. And, the good news is, the answers are here.

The thing is, any time spent with a con man, a sociopath, is traumatic, we sustain a prolonged traumatic injury. Then we go through post-trauma afterward. This is unavoidable. We decide what winning is for our life in the aftermath, and post-trauma. We decide what’s next. Post-trauma isn’t the new us.

There’s So Much Going On at Once

Post-traumatic feelings and thoughts and the whole schemer is the unavoidable fallout and aftermath of time spent with a sociopath. We aren’t permanently broken. This is temporary. – returning to normal and even better is a deliberate consistent effort that sometimes looks from the outside like nothing other than laying on the couch.

PTSD is the normal result of trauma, and we can recover. There are specific, effective methods and perspectives that heal PTSD after a sociopath, what many may be called a narcissist.

Hearing the word “sociopath” is only the beginning. That’s when recovery can begin. After the trauma of a hijacking by a sociopath, our emotions and thinking are all over the place because the trauma deregulates our nervous system. If we take in the effective methods of re-regulating our nervous system and other specific insights, we can fully recover.

PTSD is the Beginning of Healing  From Trauma

We’ll feel some or all of the following things in PTSD after this ride in hell: profound fear, self-doubt, lowered trust, suspect people and situations, weepiness, physical weakness, apathy, confusion, indecision, depression.

Also an inability to concentrate on daily things like laundry or food, our minds will be flooded with replays of conversations and things that went on. This is all normal. The replays wind down, the confusion abates, the indecision clears as we get real answers. – If the answers you’re finding aren’t helping; keep looking

PTSD is a Cluster, a Package of Feelings and Symptoms

There’s extreme and sudden weight loss or weight gain. Sleep patterns are all over the place. We might sleep in the day, but unable to sleep at night, waking in the early morning and not being able to sleep again, can’t sleep at all or sleep all the time. You might be having nightmares.

Post-trauma can include fear of going places that hold memories related to them. Terrorizing recall of scenarios with them. Confusion, indecision, and doubt. Emphatic desire to leave, move, change jobs, or make a drastic change… it affects our body and mind. We might miss them so much or feel like we could die. We feel broken. – As heavy and numb and broken as you feel, none of this is permanent.

There’s nothing about us that makes this happen.

Trauma is… “Anything less than nurturing. An event or experience that changes your vision of yourself and your place in the world.”

Judy Crane

Healing Comes in Stages: Time is On Our Side

In PTSD we’re in shock, scared to death, sad, confused, wanting to die, crying all the time. We feel alone, or want to isolate ourselves. There’s a heavy feeling in our bones and hearts; it’s overwhelming and the word “stress” doesn’t begin to describe it.

We’re grief-stricken and wondering why this happened. Feelings that it’s our fault haunt us as we also wonder if we’ll ever smile again, or ever love again.

We wonder how to get from broken to normal. There’s no other way a person can feel after a collision and entanglement with a sociopath. This is the only possibility when we’re ensnared by one of these people – a conman, a sociopath – and experience the inevitable and profound clash with our emotional way of life.

Patience and self-love are necessary. Spending time only with those who truly love us is a part of the cure. Establishing and keeping no contact with the con artist who hijacked our lives is essential. There is without a doubt hope after a sociopath doubt or a narcissist.

There’s Nothing Wrong with Us: There’s Everything Right with Us

Hearing the word “sociopath” or similar is only the beginning. That’s when recovery can begin. After the trauma of this whole event, one we could think of as a hijacking, our emotions and thoughts are all over the place.

The inevitable and unavoidable post trauma has set up camp in our lives. The good news is: this is not the new us. How we’re feeling is normal; normal and not permanent.

This is because trauma deregulates our nervous system. So that we’re basically thinking and feeling scary things most of the day. If we take in the effective methods of re-regulating our nervous system and other specific insights, we can fully recover.

We can recover, we do heal when we find answers. One of the most important things we can do is find a way to gradually realize that, though this happened in our lives, to us, this wasn’t personal. Love, affection, and then betrayal had nothing to do with it. It looked like love, but it wasn’t.

It Really Isn’t Us: It Really Is Them

Many definitions of this phenomenon out there will try to tell us it happened because we’re codependent or we need to look at our “part in it”. This concept of “our part” in it could only possibly apply if these had been relationships.

We owe it to ourselves to give this idea some thought before swallowing it whole. It’s time to trust our gut and to give the benefit of the doubt to ourselves.

When you consider it, this was a raid, a home invasion, a breaking and entering through our hearts. This wasn’t a relationship, if anything it was a crime. Please, keep in mind: No one robs an empty house. You are awesome.

It is not how you compare to others that is important, but rather how you compare to who you were yesterday. If you’ve advanced even one step, then you’ve achieved something great. ~ Daisaku Ikeda

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

The podcast!

Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

SD Voyager interview

True Love Scam Recovery on Medium

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.
.

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.

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