Tag Archives: getting away from a psycho

Trauma Bonding Comes from Our Innate Goodness

Trauma bonding is a normal stress response.
Our instinctive human bonding is
another normal human function
sociopaths hijack for their own use.
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Bonding is part of humanity. It’s human at its essence. In times of stress or crisis bonding happens naturally. We see it within families, we see it within countries and groups. Bonding while in trauma is a built-in mechanism to bring us connection with those we love for new-found resilience and strength to handle the crisis.

This marvelous lifesaving mechanism to bond more deeply in times of attack, danger, or trouble occurs even when the one we love is the source of the crisis.

Traumatic bonding isn’t a weakness in our soul. It’s innate, normal and something we can’t not do as healthy human beings. And when we’re ensnared by one of these creatures, we’re under a sticky hypnotic kinda spell holding us in like quicksand. Hanging in is normal.

In the chaos of life with a sociopath, we bond with them because we feel we love them and are in a relationship with them. This is natural.

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Understand Trauma Bonding for Deeper Healing

The bottom of our world drops. The love of your life is a beast from hell. Your stomach lurches, your heart pounds, you choke on your own breath. Adrenaline floods your brain.

The discovery that we were a criminal fraudster’s mark knocks our world out of place, the floor under our feet drops away. The dawning revelation that there is no love and that in fact, we’re in danger with this person and because of this person is like an awakening from a nightmare to find it’s alive and real.

It brings vertigo and laser clarity in equal measure. In one moment we go from the struggle of trying to align an out-of-sync relationship to the blinding truth that there wasn’t one. Nothing is what we thought it was.

The Spell Breaks

In this one crazy single moment for me, I also realized I’d been living at least two worlds all along and that moment the spell broke those two worlds each became more sharply delineated, and yet full still of mud at the same time. The best part was, I’d snapped the ropes that bound me to him. There was much more unwinding to do, but nothing would take away this new insight into this mess.

There’s nothing wrong with us. We are not broken…and believe me, I know you might feel broken. I did. What we are is richly, fully, amazingly human. This is our saving grace. how you’re feeling is not the new you. It isn’t permanent.

When We See Behind the Mask to the Monster

Yes, before the mask completely falls we know things aren’t great – but not in our wildest imagination can we or anyone else yet comprehend the reality we face a seeming meastro of deceit and destruction wearing the skin and clothing of a person we thought was the love of our life.

Courage and connection is found in the alchemy of this life and death traumatic stress in the aftermath of a sociopath. – A stronger, bigger better heart.

Terror floods our veins. Danger stands before us wearing the same shoes that troubled-love stood there wearing only a split second ago. Our heart races. Our mind spins.

We fall into a chasm of terror or lift ourselves to a new life. The stress of seeing the sociopath behind the mask, the narcissist without his fake persona is profound stress.

Trauma Stress and Regular Old Stress Makin’ Folks Sick

We’ve all heard – and have experienced – that stress makes us sick, as in ill from annoying colds to heart attacks. Stress has been something to avoid.

During even one year of lots of stress, a leading health psychologist, Dr. Kelly McGonigal tells us, studies show that stress gives a 43% increased risk of edging us toward our demise – but – that’s old news! Now they know – drum roll: This is the result only if we believe stress is harmful. – Remember, they used to believe the earth was flat?

What if we can make stress help us? There’s a new take on stress. Stress is now known as the “biology of courage.” Trauma bonding and the trauma of life or living with a sociopath is our path to amazingness. It’s one of the cool things about being human.

The rush of blood and adrenaline, the rapid heart rate – the other chemicals made by our bodies under stress – will, rather than defeat us, save our lives.

Stress and Trauma Cause Us to Bond

Stress gives us access to our hearts. The stress of trauma gives us the instinct to reach out to others who love us and — to support those in stress. This connecting factor saves us and brings health and longevity.

Stress – even stress from a monster attack – is our friend. It isn’t the enemy as we’ve been taught; stress isn’t the road to the common cold, but the pathway to more compassion for ourselves and anyone in need of support.

Our pounding heart is preparing us for action, pumping energy into our bloodstream. The increased breathing is getting oxygen to our brains for precise body function.

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Restore Our Lives

When we think of the stress response as on our side rather than something that makes us sick we relax into it and biochemically within our body, the reaction is “like that in moments of joy and courage”.

Courage and connection are found in the alchemy of this life and post-traumatic stress in the aftermath of a sociopath. – A stronger, bigger better heart.

There is a simple hypothesis about what steers the human brain to trust another human: a hormone called oxytocin….our behavior is also influenced by a large number of very complex, yet identifiable, biological processes. Future research should help us understand how cognitive and biological processes interact in shaping our decisions about whom to trust.
~ Brain Trust, by Michael Kosfeld

Stress Leads Us to Others: It’s a Good Thing

Stress makes us social – the chemical reaction in the body from stress makes us reach out to those we love and simultaneously causes us to fight for those we love. That famous hormone: Oxytocin is a neuro-hormone created in the pituitary gland shooting magic sauce through the body when under stress that has a special, purposeful function.

As Dr. McGonigal says, it “fine-tunes our social instincts.” This chemical rush primes us to do things that strengthen close relationships. Stress makes us more willing to help and support people we care about.

Pathological Users Hijack Every Natural Part of Normal Humans

There’s a built-in mechanism within our bodies; a natural response to handling stress that leads us to make a deeper connection. Yes, a deeper bond with the person we’re going through the trauma with. When we’re in this mess entangled by a sociopath and the anxiety and chaos mount, we bond with them. That’s normal.

The thing is, we don’t yet know they’re abnormal. This bonding is called trauma bonding, and then, in this case, our normal human bonding mechanism is seen by “experts” as a weakness or a fault. – Our normal bonding in chaos and trauma is yet another human function the sociopath turns to their advantage.

Initially, the chaos the sociopath whips up in our relationship bonds us to them because of the flood of oxytocin we didn’t even know our body was shooting out.

Trauma Sustained Over Time

The more havoc and imbalance the sociopath makes, the more our body’s involuntary protective stress reaction makes us reach out to them because at least at that moment, we still love them.

Because that’s how humans function biologically, and so we believe them. And so we fight for them, and for us as a couple. – Until we don’t. Until they do something so horrific our body recognizes them for what they are: the enemy from hades. Then things really heat up.

When we see through the sociopath use that fight-or-flight rush of oxytocin for us. Run to the real true love of family and long-time friends. Embrace our own lives. Stress can create resilience and joy.

Trust yourself; we can handle the challenge of the stress in the aftermath of a sociopath – the ability to do this is built into our body – and even our body knows we don’t have to face it alone. Connect with others who don’t judge, and can listen in the aftermath of a sociopath to anchor ourselves to human goodness.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal on Stress as Fuel for Renewal

There’s more.
Introducing, Dr. Kelly McGonigal, TED Talk.
Listen to the doctor, she explains it much better than I do.

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What a Conman Wants More Than Anything on 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.

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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.