Tag Archives: getting away from a narcissist

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

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True Love Scam Recovery on Medium

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jennifer@truelovescam.com
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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.

Visit truelovescam’s profile on Pinterest.

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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.

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4 Stages of True Love Scam Recovery

Recovery from a con man.
We’re gob-smacked by the discovery our significant other is
a human-soul-ransacking, life-sucking,
parasitic-destroyer.

Recover from a con man…? Wow. I mean…how did this become something we need to know about? This discovery that these shape-shifting beasts of evil exist is nothing we’d ever have imagined for our lives.

For many, the idea that someone would lie to them has not crossed their mind. And then to discover that potentially an entire relationship is a lie…? This is the hardest thing we’ll ever do, no doubt about it.

con man recover

I had so many questions about this phenomenon and found, realized, and discovered answers to every one of them. The recovery and reassembling your life isn’t easy. It takes courage. You will discover how incredibly amazing you are as a fully normal human. – And that all the things you did, said, hoped for, and were confused by are absolutely normal.

We can, you can recover from a con man or the female version of these creatures. Though it’s a winding and challenging and unknown road, have no doubts, after the traumatic fake-lationship, PTSD, and healing we rise.

What is recovered enough for you?
There are four phases we pass through
going from hell to normal again.

Recovery Means Restored Joy

You can come away from this joyful again. You will smile and you will laugh for that genuine place once again. By being thrown into the fire we can forge ourselves to reveal our greater selves.

The most common term used to talk about these life thieves is “narcissist”. This is unfortunately another confusion within the confusion. The reason I say this is because there are people who are narcissistic in this pathological sense in which this person is driven by the way their brain is designed to live as a parasite – to use others rather than connect and care.

Seeing the Sociopath Reveals All Who Are and Those Who Are Not

Then, there are also people who are narcissistic but not of this pathological, evil mind. When both are called “narcissists” there are some truly unfortunate misunderstandings in the way that prolong or prohibit recovery. I will say, that by taking in the full and whole scope of what a sociopath is, the people who are merely dysfunctionally narcissistic also come into clearer light.

If you’ve resonated with the experiences described on my website, you’ve been embroiled and entangled by the pathological kind. The merely dysfunctionally narcissistic person, though sometimes mean or confounding and frustrating, is not motivated by this pathology of sociopathy.

Prey and Parasitic Predator

As targets of a person of this pathology – the pathologically narcissistic, we’ve been targeted by an ASPD, antisocial personality disorder, or what is called an antisocial psychopath in colloquial terms, a sociopath.

As you unwind this and heal grieve, heal, and restore your life, you’re going to be amazed at the depths of emotion and power your life has. And the same applies if you’ve been dragged through hades by a person you’re calling a narcissist. Same thing.

You’re In Trauma Due To a Narcissistic Sociopath

1. Traumatic Event

The prime traumatic event is recognizing the person we love is a monster. This is really a jolt to every bit of our being. We take a physical, mental, and emotional hit. To take in the idea that our life has been a total and complete lie for the length of time we have been married or to living with and in love with or even simply dating this malevolent being is beyond imagining for those who haven’t been here.

As those who have, now know evil. We’re on a first-name basis with a demon that looks like a human. And here’s the good news. This really can become a benefit to your life. And this is meant on a profound level, not mere superficial optimism.

We Decide to Win and We Decide What Winning Is

Right here, at this moment, we determine the outcome of this life-altering event. We can stand up. We take back ourselves and our lives. It’s up to us to find the pathway to resolving each loss, to grieving the loss of what we thought was real but wasn’t … and discovering how amazing we are and how our great human gorgeousness was never lost.

They need us, we do not need them – though that feeling we’ll die without them is elicited from the depths of our souls moments after being hooked in. This is another bizarre effect of the sociopathic-zap.

We have this moment – here, right now – to vow to be victorious in our lives in a way we never would have been without this crisis. This is a bit of a new idea, I’d imagine. This doesn’t mean, “this had to happen for me to be a success in life”. This is: Since this did happen, I’m taking it on and creating value out of it. Winning is our decision to make. It is in our hands.

The Aftermath is PTSD and CPTSD: This is Normal

2. The Unavoidable Fallout of the Traumatic Event

What happens when we realize: The calls are coming from inside the house, as in every scary babysitter there’s-someone-in-the-house movie? What happens when the person we knock boots with is actually the monster? What happens is hell, but I don’t have to tell you that… What we do is decide to restor our lives

Turns out a sociopath and their target are constantly living in two different realities in the same moment. – We’re never in the room for the same reason.

The first three words refer to stress after trauma. That “D” on the end, stands for “disorder.” Please don’t imagine that “disorder” is more than a clumsy word for meaning anything other than the normal and expected need to heal.

Think about it like this, if we break a leg are we “disordered”? Do we need psych drugs? Do we need antidepressants to be ourselves again?

Usually, we just need healing. Usually, family and friends, even neighbors rally around us with hot meals, pillows, and good books. It’s similar in the PTSD after a sociopath. But different.

We weren’t in relationships, these are scams, and that’s why there’s trauma. Don’t believe me… Read what these nasty creatures say about things like the death of a family member, or maybe their mom.

Recover From a Con Man: You Can Heal, Restore, Renew

3. Healing

In true love scam recovery, it’s common that victims blame themselves. Self-blame is a trait of all post-traumatic stress. Survivors of plane crashes, fires, earthquakes, wars, and certainly wars and genocide suffer from this. In these instances, it’s called survivors guilt. 

They beat themselves up with: Why did I live?! Why am I the one? Why did they die?! – Plagued with feelings of guilt that they could have done something differently to save others. Depression, weight loss, suicidal thoughts, despair, lethargy, exhaustion, physical illness, and grief become daily companions. Sound familiar?

At times, I thought the malevolent being I married and I were sharing a laugh, a  joyful moment, or a sense of accomplishment over a goal we reached together. None of this is true. Turns out, a sociopath and their target are constantly living in two different realities within the same moment. – We’re never in the room for the same reason.

We must actively participate, create, sculpt, define, demand, and find our recovery and restoration. Be aware of what you believe this all was… Sometimes it’s basic beliefs we’ve taken on about this that get in the way of restoring our lives.

For example, if you feel you need to “do the work“ on yourself and become a better person in order to recover, consider that you may be adopting and accepting ideas that place the blame for this happening at your feet.

This represents a skewed and inaccurate recovery model that will take you not to recovered but to more disappointment and despair, and bad feelings about yourself.

While self-improvement is fine, self-improvement or an improved self wasn’t lacking or needed as the cause or the preventative for this life-jacking you were dragged through.

Remember everything they did was about and for themselves. It has nothing to do with you.

Post-Traumatic Stress Is Normal

Yes. Because post-traumatic stress is post-traumatic stress. We think we see him around the corner. These moments we weep, tremble and have nausea anticipating his next move or a court date. In turns we feel stupid, foolish, maybe even think it’s our fault – we aren’t and it isn’t. 

One of the hallmarks of PTSD is having thoughts that have no place in the realness of life. This is a reason to not take our thoughts seriously during this time. To be patient. To embrace ourselves with compassion. We are beautiful.

There Is No Side-Stepping the Post Trauma

Just like accident victims see the airline or car crashing all over again. Veterans hear the screams of battle we think we see them around the corner or across the street or turning left at the light ahead in traffic. Our survivor’s guilt is sometimes: Why did I let him do that to me? – Why? Because we’re human. Because we’re trusting, loving people – who believed a monster in disguise.

There’s no shame in being good. There’s no blame for not being clairvoyant. And news flash – real inside surreal: they didn’t do it to us. We could have been anyone. It wasn’t personal. There’s really nothing about us that made us attract or bring the conning scammer to us – nothing other than being a great person.

True love scam recovery takes specific care, just as with any other PTSD, healing takes time. We are not “disordered”, as in having a mental condition, in any other sense than in the need to heal.

Healing PTSD Takes Time, Patience, and Effective Healing Methods

The Confusion, Sadness, Sleeping… It’s all Part of Healing

The true love scam recovery cycle has ups and downs. Like any endeavor, there are steps forward and a tiny step back, move forward, back, further forward, and a bit back until we are fully healed.

Our physical, mental, and emotional health require restorative and rejuvenating care. Sleep, good nutrition, supplements like B and C, and adrenal support. Walking when we can. Yoga. Hiking. Swimming. Low-impact movement that gets oxygen flowing and our hearts stronger. Spend time only with family and those who love us. Friends who love us. Cuddle kittens and puppies. Don’t listen to love songs.

4. Recover From a Con Man: Rise Up

We Are Everything We Need

Blossoming from PTSD is possible! In complete healing, we rise up like the Phoenix from the ashes; creating a beautiful life because of having gone through the despair.

The word crisis in Chinese translates to opportunity. We can, in fact, rewire the synapses in our brains to erase and heal the trauma. There is nothing we could have done differently. What we do now, that’s the thing that matters.

A sociopath aka monster knows quite well that by being themselves, the lives of people they make use of and deceive are shattered into shards. They don’t understand what you’re going through. They don’t care about what you’re going through.

Find every answer.

These Beasts Know What They Are

They are precisely what they are and are severely limited in this. It’s their brain, wired with the inability to feel positive bonding emotions. Like a slithery reptile, they may take pleasure from lying in the sun, but also like a reptile they take pleasure in eating their prey, even their own children.

Sociopaths and what you might think of as a narcissist live every day of their lives needing us. Or someone like us. Some human who thinks they re normal. — That monster needs you for survival… not the other way around.

At times, I thought the malevolent being I married and I were sharing a laugh, a  joyful moment, or a sense of accomplishment over a goal we reached together. None of this is true. Turns out, a sociopath and their target are constantly living in two different realities within the same moment. – We’re never in the room for the same reason.

I’d find myself laughing genuinely, joyful and happy when we accomplished something that was part of what we were trying to achieve. I was the only one.

He was laughing at the ease with which he was scamming me, sickeningly gleeful at his betrayal (not a betrayal in a sociopath’s mind – simply their right), and feeling exaggerated elation at a win behind my back, using me without my awareness. A story you know well if you’re on these pages.

Sociopaths Love No One: Not Even Us, Or Her, Or Him

They’re all the same. – There is no woman, man, or child on the planet they will ever treat genuinely well, they’re incapable. There is no living person on the planet – no other woman who will ever be loved, or loved more, or loved better by them. They do not love… anyone.

There is no woman better for them. There’s no man more suited to them. A narcissistic sociopath’s world – their entire existence – is hell for anyone near them. Learn to reframe the nightmare or you’ll not be free. you can recover from a con man.

Welcome to the club; you’re not alone! There are so many (too many) men and women in the aftermath of a hijacking. Each gorgeous one of you “replaced” even before they met you in essence. There are always several, maybe dozens of simultaneous true love scams going on. The parasitic, predatory sociopath aka narcissist juggles women and men like oranges or tennis balls.

Resources Without Consent

You’re a source: of money, food, shelter, sex, respectability, connections, whatever it is they scammed us for. The sociopath who hijacked me, while we were married and living together as it turns out had at least the following.

Two other wives, 18 kids, three fiances, three other women he lived with, two women sending him money every month, one man sending him money every month, another man sending him $2,000 at a time randomly here and there, nine girlfriends – all who thought he loved them and only them – and ten to fifteen satellite women – and men – at any given time. This is what they are. Even if we don’t discover it all, the rate of shocking information is higher than the sky.

You were, as I was, an ATM. And the thing about ATMs is that there’s always another one around the corner. Sociopaths and what you might think of as a narcissist live every day of their lives needing us. Or someone like us. Some human who thinks they’re normal. — That monster needs you for survival… not the other way around.

You, We as Normal Humans Are Awesome

There’s a healing bright side to all this: It wasn’t personal. They didn’t do it “to us”. Bizarrely we could have been anyone. We are replaceable and interchangeable. So, cut him or her off in our hearts and we are free.

When I saw precisely how cruel, cold, calculated, and hideous this thing standing before me was, all care for him evaporated. 100% gone. Does this mean I was immediately okay? no. Not by a million miles. But I made myself okay. It took intuition, information, time, support, friends, and family, and won back in all ways what winning was in this nightmare for me. You can too.

Kick ’em in the behind and get them gone. Go no contact, be a non-threat. Then repair, rejuvenate and thrive! Embrace our lives. Beam the compassion and empathy, loyalty, and caring they targeted us for on ourselves.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

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

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. © 2014 – 2027 All Rights Reserved True Love Scam Recovery www.truelovescam.com

2015_07_25 2025_01_26

What a Conman Wants More Than Anything on Earth

More than anything on earth, they want us to shut up.
They need us but they don’t want us.
They need things like citizenship or all our money.

To survive they need us to believe they’re normal.

These creatures need everything we’ve got. And to get all that we’ve got what they need above all else is for us to just shut up. Sound too simplistic because of how bad you feel when they lie, gaslight, and turn hot and cold?

Well, there is more to it… They first – and for as long as possible – need us to believe them. And to “trust them”. Along with that bit of malarkey, then they get to take from us and use us… for food, a place to sleep, and permission to walk the earth.

Sociopaths Want Us to Shut Up

It’s when we start to see the odd things, the weird stuff, the lies that they want us to shut up. Meaning they don’t want us to challenge them, ask them any questions like, where are you going? Why didn’t you come home last night?

This is so that they can get all the things they need and want while they keep doing whatever they want to do. Like us, they need shelter. They need money, cars, and someone who will defend them to others when the p**p hits the fan at various points in time.

For this, they need to get us to believe they’re normal. They cling to their goal to keep what they are hidden and keep on taking so tenaciously it’s almost awe-inspiring – until it’s frightening … and eventually, laughable.

You Might be Calling A Sociopath a “Narcissist”

Sociopaths are con men, con women, con artists, scammers…criminals. Beyond getting us to like them and be quiet, a scammer’s main need from any specific prey varies. It depends on the circumstances and situations they have going on in their lives that we likely won’t know about, and others they tell us a huge story about.

Paradoxically these pathological users can happily live in a box on the side of the road while they wait for something cozy to jump onto.

Some need a place to stay more than others. Some want political recognition, and they all need a respectability facade, we serve as hall passes and entreé to groups of our friends, maybe to what they see as big-money, or property, or just super good drugs, or just hard-core and depraved sex.

They do whatever they think they need to do to get whatever it is they want.

A con man wants what a con man wants because a con man is a sociopath. Even if we call them a “narc”, “narcopath”, “narcissist”, or a malignant narcissist. It’s amazing to think this is real. We can hardly believe it, and sadly many others won’t believe us when we talk about it.

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Sociopaths Need Normal, Strong, Amazing People

Each target or prey holds a key to an aspect of what the con man wants including a good breakfast once in a while. We each fit nicely into their needs like candy in a row on a vending machine. Our presence is a piece of their survival, otherwise, they wouldn’t give us – or any of their other prey – the time of day.

Sometimes the function of a target is to lend the sociopath credibility. The façade of a family and children is popular with sociopaths – so popular, that most have more than one all at the same time. Some targets are a main-line money supply. Others are access to a country or a group of people.

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.

A Sociopath, a “Narcissist” Tries It On With Everyone

A sociopath juggles targets, all of whom are part of the supply chain for food and shelter, an internet connection, a shower, a bed, and a gym membership.

They need all the mundane basics, as well as any material possession they need, laptops, phones, watches, cars, entrée to private nightclubs and VIP social settings, fundraisers, wine tastings at the German consulate, or the best meth around.

More Than One At a Time: Scamming By the Dozens

These heinous rapscallions covet anything they think fits their persona of “cool” or “good guy”. They covet any person who can get them inside the velvet ropes of any realm.

Paradoxically these pathological users can happily live in a box on the side of the road while they wait for something cozy to jump onto. – The reality of what they are is hard to take in and difficult to fully comprehend in a deeper way than with our “intellect”.

Sociopaths, Narcs, Narcopaths Want Anything and Everything

You name it, they scam it. An address is a number one priority, even if the address they use is not where they live… in fact all the better. You might have experienced that scamming an address for IDs and mail delivery for things such as Passports and for other faux business purposes, is Con Man 101.

Maybe you’ve witnessed how much they like to be untraceable. There’s often more than one phone, email, or social media account. You’ll find variations of their name – or brand new ones they’re using all at once with different prey.

We might not see all these bits of their reality. They sure hope not, because when we do we don’t do what they need most which are for us: to shut up. Con men, narcs, narcopaths, covert narcissists aka sociopaths have delusions of their own importance and glamour.

Know this: all and any gender of sociopath is no different. All here applies to all of them.. There are some special features to female sociopaths. Read here: 3 Dangers of Female Sociopaths.

They Promise Many Things: And “Real” is Never on the List

They’ll promise us the moon to get what they want. The fact is, promises a narcopath – meaning a sociopath – or narc (if you’ll them that) are bait and remain unfulfilled.

They hang like popped balloons on a limp, dirty string. Yet they keep us hanging on for so much longer than we want to as a part of the inexplicable influence of a sociopath.

Their driving force never falters. Their ambitions never wane. Memorize and keep in mind always the real inner workings of a con man or con woman – or con person – when faced with getting away from them.

While there’s pretty much no such thing as a “narcissist”…It doesn’t matter what you call them – what matters is that we understand what we’re truly facing. This is a difficult discovery. What matters is that we know what truly motivates them – and what that means – and how to break away safely and recover fully.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

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

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