Things looking bleak, feeling uninspired,
and just plain worse?
Holiday cheer can turn to holiday blahs
and intermingle with PTSD.
Post “Holiday Season” there’s special brand of the blues that can hit us in our heart and soul. Even mid-holiday season, our emotions can take a nosedive. Though not much is said about it, for most people feel a lag in our energy and inspiration after the holidays. And this year… geez louise.
Continue readingWe’re encouraged and pushed to “move on”.
People give us a look and say,
“Omg, you’re still talking about that guy?”
Don’t let others shove us into thinking
we’re better before we really are.
People ask me, how long will it take before I feel normal again… And my answer is: it takes as long as it takes. And: it’s up to you.
I want to tell you, what you feel is perfect. Whatever you think about them and about what the “relationship” was – is okay. Checking up to see where they live now, or if they moved is cool… If they still take up space in your head, that’s okay.
The scenarios of what you should-have-said-instead-of-what-you-did-say and the replays of what they said… Those are okay as well. They do indicate healing is still in progress. You need all of that because it’s the material that you can combine, mix, and reposition with other key ingredients to reach full recovery.
Continue readingSo ya met a cutie.
And holy-moly, my word do they l-o-v-e- you!
It’s nuts! They can’t stop texting,
calling, messaging…
They are hung-up on you, baby!
Love bombing is the name we give to those flirty texts that don’t stop. The messaging that begins even before a first date and from the moment you meet this gorgeous heart-throb. They often roll-out, day-one with the habitual “good morning beautiful“.
Readers of this website of mine realize that I’m female and can catch bits of my story to know the maniac who I married was male – a male sociopath.
I have however done enough recovery coaching with both males and females pursued by female sociopaths to know that female sociopaths do the same aggressive messaging, initiating the dance of fraud that we think is true love.
Turn the tables… you decide what winning is.
In any case, male, female, non-binary, trans – any gender love has nothing to do with love bombing. Sociopaths have a different brain. Parts of it do not function. The missing part is the part that feels love, connects and bonds with and cares about others.
Sometimes we meet a person who we’re suddenly, magnetically drawn to and it seems like an a-m-a-z-i-n-g person on the face of the earth. Like bananas amazing. This is highly likely a sociopath.
Other times meeting a sociopath right out of the gate we can only think: eeeew, they’re kinda yucky. Sociopaths, as the hunters they are, must persevere and sort through many many people before they hit on that one that clicks.
Love bombing is the way sociopaths drive the hook in and reel in their loot: us. Contact with us from their slimy, slithering hypnotic-self is their only method they have to hunt and ensnare prey.
They lay out this barrage of flattery, query, compliment, suggestive-patter of nonsense, declarations of our beauty and all the rest as are their only verbal tool for reeling in a juicy new human.
Their silent charm is the main and most powerful attribute that hooks their intended target. Though we might feel it rising from them and wrapping into our flesh like a human-eating vine, this “charm” is not a skill. They have it from birth. Some become more practiced than others in the little snips of bait and tricks they learn along the way.
In order to grab us, from moment-one they’ve got to get busy presenting their inherent quality of magnetism (coercive control that we interpret as charm or charisma) through constant contact: that’s all they’ve got.
After all, they’ve been predators and parasites their entire lives. Our response whether immediately tumbling under their inborn quality of hypnotic coercive control, or straining against it in resistance, they are compelled to plunge ahead. – We are the ones who stop it.
Even though we feel they do things skillfully and find their tactics as impressive: they are not. Please, let’s set that notion aside when we catch ourselves feeling it.
We see them and interpret what they do as “genius”, or think, “they’re really good at this” because we’d never think of making such brazen or persistent efforts, and because we wouldn’t have this impact on others if we wanted to.
This is because we aren’t innately endowed with dark-and-evil-coercive control. They were simply born with this quality of mesmerizing others as their way to survive.
We, on the other hand, survive and thrive by our natural and DNA-wired quality of connection to others. In order to end the spell, we must break that connection and stop ourselves from continuing it. – They certainly won’t willingly drop the brand new piece of tasty plump human they’ve got by their fangs. – Why would they?
We’ve got myriad options to stop love bombing: but only one of them is effective. Can you decide which is best from those listed here?
Hilarious as I am, this is the truth. The only way to effectively stop love bombing is to literally: Stop It.
This – blocking – is the only language or message or action a pathological user understands. It means something to them and gets our message across while removing ourselves from the equation of their hunt. So:
Blocking during the early days of initial love bombing or after twelve ragged years of torment – either way and at any time, this is the only way to end the love bombing, hoovering, insults, flattery, promises, lies: stop all that bait.
Set yourself free by blocking, blocking, blocking. That would be the answer. We test many possibilities to end it, from hoping we can just say to them: I’m not interested, to please don’t call me anymore. None of that normal human stuff is going to have an effect. In fact, that simply gives them something to work with to haul us in.
Believe this: they are used to people blocking them. It won’t be a surprise. It will make them rage because they don’t like to lose their toys, but you won’t have to see that – because you blocked them! Congratulations!!!!
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2020_07_08 2021_03_28
So! You’ve just met someone new!
Out of the blue and you’re on cloud nine.
Vibin’ like crazy!
Have you had that incoming early morning text: good morning beautiful? A few hours later: you’re on my mind. Another text: I miss you. Afternoon text: I can’t stop thinking of your smile… Late-night text: what did you do today? And later night text: sleep tight.
I know how amazing it feels! And also I know that if it had stayed feeling good, you wouldn’t be reading this right now. I’m so sorry you crossed paths with someone who can drop you like a hot potato like it was all nothing. – Because you are not nothing. You’re real and amazing and you’re gorgeous inside and out.
Continue readingBreak up? More like an escape.
And then how to get them off our tail?!
Why don’t they go away?
Break up. Yikes. When we’re in a relationship and the words – I think I need to break up – the first flash in our mind, we cringe. Breaking up is tough. It takes ages to think about, let alone to actually do. Even under the best of circumstances, breaking up is hard. Really hard.
In the kind of situation, you’re likely experiencing since you found this article in your quest for answers… Know you’re in the right place. Landing here after much confusion, sadness, and maybe some huge unresolved or inexplicable fights is the usual way.
And if you’re here because you’re thinking: Wtf is going on…?! Well then, I imagine you’ve been feeling blamed, ignored, frustrated, dissatisfied, mystified, and have even felt used. With all this stuff going on, getting to the place where we really and finally-for-good break up is extra hard to do.
What is recovery for you?
There’s nothing about you that made this happen.
When we arrive here looking for answers and feel an urgent need to break up we’re pretty far down a twisted corridor of hell. You’ve known things were crazy. You know something’s wrong, and that you’re a long way from happy. And likely have been, and are in a maze of pain. A confusing place where nothing really changes for the better or resolves.
My hugest hope for you is that you’ll find yourself a deeper and maybe new way to think about your circumstances; that answers might begin to fill the gaps of wondering what’s wrong. That the thoughts and emotions can begin to make a different kind of sense and shift to benefit you.
In this tiny moment, I hope you can discover more about what it is you’re breaking up from, and how to go about it. – Let’s get to it and talk about the two difficulties in getting rid of crazy.
At the very mention of breaking up from crazy, they suddenly come back around and turn into Mr. Nice. or yes – Ms. Nice. She’s out there too!
Because of this, many of us try to end things many times before the final time and that’s perfectly okay. It really is. It takes as long as it takes.
Let’s say you manage to tell them it’s over. The first issue is that they seem to not want to let go. They fight the break-up with an energy that’s light-years more intense than anything they applied to make things work.
We finally muster the courage to bring up the break-up and here they are sticking to us like chewed gum on the bottom of our flipflop. Where was all this togetherness months ago?
Suddenly we find this self-focused person we’re trying to break up with is not ignoring us and is no longer ambivalent, nor emotionless. They’ve brought up the heat intensely, ramping up to keep us from our break-up goal.
They’re gonna whip out: Nice. Nice will be promises and slogans about how good we are together. This will be familiar. If they’re desperate enough they’ll throw in some begging. They might toss in something extra, tears.
When a pathological user is crying, take that as a guarantee that they’re in a tight position. In this scenario take this to mean that you’re very valuable to them as a resource.
Looking for support and answers?
Recovery is filled with lightbulb moments.
You’re not alone.
From their point of view hanging on and the histrionics make sense. Why would the person who’s using us – making use of us – for their own entertainment or other things easily let us go? Their interest in hanging on to us is primal and fundamental.
The way they react to us breaking up with them is in direct relation to what they gain from us. As always the spot we fulfill in their “needs” determines how they behave towards us. It stands to reason that if they could they’d keep us all in a cupboard forever to pull out whenever they need something.
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.
On the other side of nice is mean. Once it seems we’re sticking to our guns about breaking up, the user brings on the second tool in their arsenal: Mean.
This is where they insult us and criticize us, and for some, this is when the violence comes in. They like to tell us we’re imagining things and that all the malarkey is our fault. This is what many people refer to as gaslighting.
Whatever we call it, this opposition, this word salad, nonsensical, crazy-making, gaslighting soup is extremely simplistic in purpose. Hold on to your hats for this one: insulting and telling us we’re imagining things has the same purpose as being nice. So, what’s it about? It’s to get us to shut up. This is all hot air and their own fear packaged into mean so that we don’t break up – in this case.
Join the podcast!
Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
Here’s what’s going on: They respond with nice or mean depending on our importance to them in that particular moment. Just imagine for a split-second that love’s got nothing to do with it, even if they say it does.
Hold your own hand now, and just for a sliver of time imagine that even though we think they love us… Breathe into the idea that maybe their love isn’t what we think it is. Let that marinate for a flash of a sliver of time.
Questions open up the door to another world of answers: For example, what if we feel and see what’s between ourselves and them as love – because we’re made of love – rather than because they can genuinely express love or feel love?
Ask yourselves, rather than, Why doesn’t he do this-instead-of-that? Or, Why does he say these things? For one millisecond ask, What if he doesn’t actually love me? Yep. Try that on. Think about it, What if he doesn’t…? Not even if he brings on the waterworks and cries like a baby. What do things look like then? Is there more room for an answer to their actions?
There are answers; there are logical reasons it’s hard to break up with them: We may come to a place where we realize that within their minds we each fill a spot that answers their varying needs and nothing more.
What they respond to in a break up is in accordance with their needs. If you’re key to them for a cozy place to sleep, or as a resource for money, access to a car, the internet, or a place to shower: They’re gonna balk at parting ways. When you’re the one thing that makes them seem respectable to others, they’re going to hang on.
For example, if it’s their parents who give them money or give them a stamp of approval that keeps them looking normal to the world, the pathological user (aka sociopath, aka narcissist) will hold on hard. If you’re the gateway to a group of people they want to use, they’ll hold on hard.
When we’re the place they eat, shower, hang out, get high, surf the internet, watch porn, jack off, sleep, brood, get their laundry done, are the address on their driver’s license, and serve as their home front to the world. Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t you hang on too?
They hold on hard if you’re the roof over their heads. When they have no one else ready on the side that they can quickly move in with, it’s us or the streets. Additionally, they hold on to us hard if this break up will make them look bad to someone else who provides something important.
Their point will be to get us to stop trying to break up. They want to get us to back off the break-up. to achieve this they’re going to use one or both of the only two tools a user has: Nice and mean. That’s all they got. – News flash: They aren’t geniuses or master manipulators.
The goal behind using these two tools is very simple. Because they need a place to stay, and along with that, likely a shower and that food in your fridge. To keep from being tossed out, they’ll be either nice or mean or more likely, a combination of both or a flip-flop between both.
So, it’ll be more promises; they hope the promises hit the spot in us emotionally leading us to soften and let them stay. Or they whip out accusations. They hurl insults. If this sparks guilt or shame or confusion or fear that it might lead us to cave. Either “nice” or “mean” can lead us to acquiesce and let them stay.
On the other end of things, if they have plenty already, a breakup could potentially go more easily. If they have another place to hang out and play video games, they might easily walk away. If they have a “fiancé” eager to move them in… Well hells-bells, as my grandmother used to say, they’ll be gone before we can blink. – They can walk away so easily that we’re stunned.
Even so, their reaction to us ending the roller coaster with a breakup awakens the natural (for them) instinct to hold on to and continues to monitor their prey. Monitoring us is what hoovering is all about. In their minds, it’s for their own safety.
Looking for support and answers?
Lightbulb moments.
The truth is, breaking up with a pathological predator, a sociopath (quite likely that one you’re thinking of as a narcissist) is gut-wrenching and horrifying.
Here’s the thing: Just as “normal” behavior and thinking didn’t make anything better while we were “together”. Nothing normal is going to work in the breakup. Learn how to be, and do, and say what maneuvers them from our lives. Behaving and thinking from our point of view of “normal” will not work out well for us.
We can learn to do what needs to be done, and say what needs to be said so that they can hear and understand, and so that they respond in the way that we need things to be for a change. Flip the tables.
Here’s a bit of a start to what we can do… Leave ’em: Act as if everything is peachy. Have that (last) pizza together and then without them knowing it’s over, makes this pizza night your last contact.
Kiss ’em goodbye and then block them. Silence… Not a word to them. The effect of no contact is the hugest message we can send. This is not a message they haven’t “heard” before. Zillions of people have gone no contact with them before you.
Lie: Another option is one where we outright lie. Have that “break-up” talk and scenario. And tell them: You’re so great. I know it’s all my fault. – We’re lying.
When we say this line, we don’t really feel this way about all the malarkey that’s gone down. But say this or your version of this so that we aren’t seen as a threat to them. Their perception is that when we break up, then we’re a threat. When we end it they think we just might tell everyone how horrible they are.
Users don’t want us to tell others how horrible they are. Not wanting us to blow up their house of cards existence… They know their life is glued together with our “normal”; with our great goodness and true-blue realness. They do get it that they and their life is BS. – This is exactly what they ensnared us for: To hold their life together.
If we go around talkin’ – this would keep them possibly from grabbing onto other souls to make use of. And they really think that all the things they’ve done – even all that stuff we don’t know about – is going to come tumbling out of the closet. This fear of what we’ll do and say is part of why they hang on. And this fear is what the hoovering and all the smearing is all about.
We’re letting them think they’re amazing. This is deliberate. – this makes us a non-threat and leaves it easier for us to walk away without them hanging on or hoovering.
Find your way back to you.
We know in our gut that we did nothing to make this person do the things they’re doing. We just didn’t. If sometimes you wonder if it was your fault. That simply proves that you’re normal and that you’re doing what “normal” does. We give second chances, and third chances.
“Normal” takes responsibility, and many times even when there is no responsibility to be taken. This is the true place for boundaries. We are not responsible for their inhumanity.
Now that you’ve mustered up the courage to leave or tell them to hit the road dig deep to understand the truth of their intense reaction.
Hopefully, we truly discover what this all was so that our cognitive dissonance and confusion can resolve. We all want to resolve each loss and heal the very specific trauma from this relationship that isn’t. ‘Cause you are real. You are normal, and you get to be exactly what you are, which is beautiful inside and out.
Join the podcast!
Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
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2019_11_19 2022_11_02
Bread crumbs and promises.
Odd things we might or might not discover are lies.
And, then there’s the truth.
To really heal, we need to know
how to decode their meaning.
What is it with the boyfriend and the weird things they say? What is it when they talk a lot. They toss out what turns out to be garbage in glittery promises in the form of hints. Mutterings about marriage, kids, a house, something they’ll never do again, or never would do – like cheat or lie. These are the bread crumbs, the dangling carrot.
Then, the majority of their words are more lies and misdirects, and gaslighting. Sometimes we discover the truth of the lies, sometimes we don’t.
There are lots of stories about other people, things they did and said, along with lots of bad things about others while they are so, so good. There’s denying something that happened, or that was said, or done. There’s telling us we’re crazy.
I asked the man I was about to marry if he had any kids. We were standing together in the kitchen.
His head down, bent over the stove, stirring the dinner he was making for us. I waited.
A slow smile peeked from his profile. As he turned his face up, not towards me, but up somewhere between the stove-top vent and the top of the kitchen wall.
And lastly, there’s the truth. The bizarre, surreal, incomprehensible-in-the-moment truth. Truth to weird to make sense.
Knowing the truth breaks the bond.
His gaze seemed to look out into the distance beyond the kitchen, a distance I couldn’t see. In a throaty, dreamy voice he murmured, I have hundreds of kids all over the world. Then, his attention went straight back to the stew his strange trance broken.
I didn’t understand. I stood, waiting on pause, looking at him. Waiting for him to say more… He said nothing but stirred the simmering tomatoes and chillis. He didn’t speak, didn’t look at me, just stood there cooking.
I tried to imagine what he meant… Then, still bowed over the stew pot, with gravity and a touch of what read from my angle as regret, he said, I had a four-year-old boy once, but I gave him back. – This did not clear things up.
This made no sense. I needed it to make sense. We all need what people say to make sense. I thought, maybe he had a foster kid or… something…or… I factored in that his English wasn’t great… Ticking gears clicked, and whirled until I landed on, oh, he must mean that he loves kids like I do!
More comments that made me tilt my head in wonder, like a dog at a high-pitched noise came along throughout the time I knew him.
That quiet moment of oddness at the stove got swept up into some kind of attic space in my mind, some odd corner where we keep the odd things they say.
There are so many nutty words that come out of their mouths. Most of it is lies, but some of it, the really strange stuff, that’s something else. The words they say that leave us unsure of what they’re saying… those words are true.
When we metaphorically and literally scratch our heads in wonder, when we’re at a loss for words over their words… That’s when their words are pure truth. Their truth about their lives… not ours.
For instance, months later I discovered that while he did exaggerate, he was telling the truth about having “100s of kids all over the world”, in several countries as it turns out, and that estimate short only by about 75 kids.
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.
Here are examples of true words uttered by real-life lying, using, and defrauding people without a conscience.
All these words of naked, bald, pure truth from a narcissistic sociopath glide right by our normal interpretation and comprehension of life.
As far as the weird thing my then “boyfriend” said at the stove, “I have 100’s of kids all over the world.” He did. He does. At last count, there are 16.
Three of them are the same age, in the same town, from three different women who each thought they were the only one while he was married to me, while another woman was getting an annulment from him, while another wife somewhere else waited at home for him as each of these three women with these three children did.
How many phrases can you recall that rang strangely, but can now be flipped to ring true? It takes courage, but if we can take a look at these memories of these odd moments tucked into the attic, the cellar, and the back of the closet of our mind from a new angle, we can begin to see see what really went on.
If we can look at these hijackings for the crimes they are rather than a genuine relationship, we have a chance at deep recovery and can become user-proof forever.
Do your best not to get stuck in the lies. Walkthrough to the truth. The truth is a deliberate deception by a person who is, in truth, not at all who we thought they were. That person, the one we met, doesn’t exist.
Be open to the hideous truth. It’s how we step away from this being a personal relationship and realize we were targeted in fraud. A crime we can heal from. Someone we thought loved us and lied is something we might never get over.
Listen for it. They’ll tell you the truth, and we can hear it much, much later in the aftermath in the echos of their words. Those words, that truth is the key to healing, recovering, and healing.
You’ll cry, and feel so, so bad that there are no words to describe the feeling. Go ahead and sry those tears that contort your face and come from the gut and the soul. Do your best to not get stuck in the lies, the promises, the moments they were “nice”. Know they are not good, they are not nice, and that the worst moment you saw in them…That is who they are.
That person, the one we met, doesn’t exist. Grieve what there is to grieve; with self-compassion, and awareness, gradually move into grieving not the person, but the crime.
There’s no need to change who you are, or how much you love. They take advantage of our misunderstanding of their words that come from our great goodness.
This doesn’t make our marvelous goodness bad. It does reveal just how bad they are. We are awesome!
Join the podcast!
Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
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2019_01_20 2022_10_12
Recovery Beyond Any Other: Restore Your Life
Recovery Beyond Any Other: Restore Your Life
Do my articles
books, or podcast
resonate with you?
Then recovery coaching
with me
is likely a great fit.
Together, we unwind
the confusion
and take back your life.
What do others who were in your shoes
say about recovery coaching with me?
What would it mean to you
to have your life back?
Choose any number of session hours:
Supporting your recovery with reduced fees:
Book a Six-Pack: Six session hours at a 25% reduction from the usual hourly rate! Six hours used like a punch card, dedicated to restoring your life for $562.
Six coaching hours for 25% fewer dollars! To encourage your recovery. Each hour at $93. rather than $125!
After choosing your number of session hours, use the calendar below to set your appointment times.
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Testimonials and Client Comments:
I don’t think I would be where I am if I hadn’t found you and learned from you, and I’m still learning. Thanks for all you are doing to raise awareness of these monsters. ~ J.S.
After our first session, I was left feeling very empowered, and I’m excited to continue the conversation! You’re one of the only people out there who understands this like this; I think maybe you’re the only person. You have a way of simplifying the pieces and elements. I’m very glad to have talked to you. ~ G.D.
Heal, recover, trust again: it’s all possible.
As a certified coach and as someone who’s lived through this nightmare and won, I can tell you, there’s nothing wrong with you; there’s everything right with you.
Sessions are a guided journey at your pace through discovery building a deep and expanding recovery. In a combination of questions, information, dialogue, guidance, and coaching together we unwind the tangled mess clearing your way out of the emotional, mind-bending maze.
No two sessions are alike. The dialogues are unique and coaching is improvisational based on where you are and inspired by your needs, your personality, and what’s important to you.
We begin from where you are and find the way to
where you want to be.
Each session is unique to you.
Together we map your way out of hell.
Session notes and summaries become a reminder and guide.
Join the podcast!
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2018_10_03 2023_10_12
Monsters know they’re monsters.
Narcs know they’re sociopaths.
Sociopaths know they’re sociopaths.
We don’t need to act as if they don’t and aren’t.
That’s how we win.
Monsters know what they are. Monsters like who and what they are. And yet, we’re spinning here, seeing our world turn in circles and go nowhere but backward. Because that’s the natural effect they have on normal.
It’s the rest of us – the non-monsters – who have a hard time knowing they exist. The facts are, that monsters in “relationships” don’t want what we want. They aren’t there for the reason we are. Not for one tiny moment, not even one millisecond. Nothing is shamed mutual moment.
As any normal person would, when things first went wrong we defined what was happening through our normal ideas about relationships and our normal human point of view.
We’re normal and normal has its own special “lens” we use to look at the world. We might not think much about that, but it’s true.
We assume people are “good” like we are that all people share, for the most part, a core value system that is inspired by, “do unto others…”
Even if we disagree about big things like gun rights, abortion, immigration, or our favorite color. Even if we’re different in other ways we do feel there’s a shared baseline of “good” and rules we all follow about social behavior.
Unexpected answers and resolution.
We decide what winning is.
For this reason, as we fell down the rabbit hole, we naturally and blamelessly endowed the love of our life – the sociopath with a quality of humanity that unfortunately, does not exist inside their bodies, hearts, minds, or souls. (Even if you’re calling them a narc, narcopath, narcissist, psychopath, or any word.)
Innocently and with pure-hearted hope, we explained away their odd habits and missteps. We found and still find after they’re gone in many cases, reasons, or explanations for those bizarre reveals-from-behind-the-mask.
As normal humans with fully limbic “feeling-based” brains have room to think, maybe, that’s just the way they are. We might decide to give them space based on an “issue” we’d work on as a couple. We give them more time… That’s normal. Because we assumed that the “monster” was a manageable version of “normal”. That assumption is 100% normal and something we do as regular, normal people who bond and care, and connect.
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.
Antisocial personality disorder is the formal mental health diagnosis for what’s commonly referred to as “sociopathy.” People living with the condition are often labeled “sociopaths.” ~ Hope Gillette, Kendra Kubala, PsyD Psychology
Our natural understanding and compromising give them a hall pass to keep on stomping through our lives. We believed them when they told us about their childhood trauma that left them with PTSD or left them unable to be intimate. We believed their last girlfriend was crazy. This is because we’re good, not because of any special skill or intelligence they have.
When we love, we give. Monsters make use of, and take advantage of our goodness and our lack of really knowing and understanding that monsters exist. This is truly the psychopath’s only real intelligence.
When we fall in love involuntary changes go on in our bodies in we fall in that further mask the intentions and lies of the sociopath. Our zinging, swirling chemicals and altered state of excitement in a new relationship buy the sociopath time.
So, monsters, as in all they do, take advantage of what we are as fully limbic-brained humans. We don’t know about the parallel destructive existence shoving our lives in the wrong direction. They use the fact we don’t know the kind of creature that they really truly exist, let alone that it could be sleeping in our bed.
Our “not knowing” about these monsters, is the entirety of their power and “currency.” Since there’s a limited supply of “not knowing” on our part, their dominance and influence falter and they topple.
Monster-predators (sociopaths, psychopaths, and what people refer to as a narcissist) expect this shift from the first, “hello“. Sociopath-monsters do try to override it by getting angry or making more promises… this is so they can hang on as long as possible. It all only lasts so long. Because we’re not dumb. Sociopaths are dumb.
In between these roller-coaster ups and downs, they’re bored and fishing for a new target. – Their full emotional range is solely in reaction to their own perceived success at taking and using, keeping what they take, and going free.
Monsters have been here since the beginning of time. They’re even mentioned in classic American literature. The author and Nobel Prize winner, John Steinbeck contemplates the existence of sociopaths in his stunningly comprehensive and beautiful award-winning novel, East of Eden, published in 1952, and later made into a film starring James Dean.
A female sociopath comes into the lives of two unmarried brothers by chance. East of Eden tells the odyssey of the brothers’ lives and their children’s lives affected by this sociopath, who plays a minor character but drives their fate. Chapter eight begins:
“Just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?”
~ John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Narcissistic sociopaths need their emotional response or connection to survive or succeed. To put an end to our vulnerability to sociopaths understand how sociopaths think. Assess and judge what they do, based on their true intentions; use the thinking of a sociopath to evaluate what happened rather than our emotional brain and we set ourselves free.
As more and more of us individually and collectively comprehend what these humans without humanity are they will diminish, and their effect will be neutralized. Monsters know they’re different. They know that if we knew what they really were and are really up to, we would not accept them, this is why they hide.
As we see what they are, by contrast, we see how gorgeous a fully human person is. The human being as intended, not perfect, but filled with innate trust, goodness, and kindness, living a life interconnected and interdependent with one another.
This is surely the only way to give the existence of the monster-humans meaning or purpose and the way to transform our grief, loss, and pain into something good and to find ourselves more deeply appreciating life itself.
A single word can scar another.
A single word can also give comfort and relief or fill one’s spirit with courage.
The care with which we use words
reflects the depth of our humanity. ~ Daisaku Ikeda
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2017_08_29 2023_02_17
Hoovering nut bags want to “stay in touch.”
But we hesitate, stuck in yet more cognitive dissonance.
We have decisions to make.
Hoovering narcissistic sociopaths (you might be calling them a narcissist without using the sociopath word, but whatever we call them they) keep up the masquerade up and the facade place as long as possible.
They do this even in the face of pure ridiculousness and obvious lying. They don’t care or mind if we know what they are…! Not one jot. They do care what we do once we know.
They mind very much if we “stay in” or bolt. If we kick them to the curb or leave the cookie jar open. If we tell others, or if we’re going to keep our mouths shut.
Any and all of this can only happen through contact. Hoovering is contact… and has the same motivation as any contact they’ve made since day one and the first hello. Isn’t this how the whole thing happened…? Them reaching out?
The real-deal answers and real information
changes the whole scary schemer.
Our stomach churns. They’re in our heads. They stay present at the surface and underneath every moment of the day. This is the antithesis of “over.” And if it isn’t over and zero contact, we’ve not yet put a solid step onto the long road of healing.
At this point in the sham, letting our phone ring with their reaching grasp is all-in from their point of view. If they can reach us, they consider us active prey. This is all it takes: buuzzzz-buuzzzz-buuzzzz. (That’s your phone buzzing.)
Do you feel that? Even the idea of that phone vibrating and jumping on the table is nauseating. Listen to your gut. Trust yourself. What they care about is that we’re still “all-in.” As long as we leave a portal open, the narcissistic user has a chance to seep their way back in. Or step on in. And stay in.
All it takes is one more buzz of a text, one more late-night call. Another email. Facebook messaging. WhatsApp…another call. – Give ourselves every advantage in healing. Peace of mind, a truly fresh start can’t begin when any portal from them to us is open. We block them, we change our number, and also begin again with a new email address.
Oh, I get it. We feel like our life has been turned upside down and, it has. What we want to do is take all our reasoning, and all our decisions and turn them into moments of self-care, embracing our own life and building our lives the way we want them to be.
This is separate from basing our decisions on “fear” or “love” for the sociopath or because of not yet accepting what they really are.
Take no responsibility or blame for the presence of these kinds of pathological predatory humans in your life. You’re not responsible for the inhumanity of a sociopath. Do take your healing and the restoration of your life into your own hands. Take 100% responsibility for healing, recovering, and becoming sociopath (narcissist) user free forever. Let’s look at each of these seemingly reasonable reasons for not getting a new number.
I get how this can seem logical. But. Really….?! Isn’t this the very reason to change your number…? You need your phone. You need your phone. We need to conduct business. To continue building our lives. We need the freedom to create our business without fear, without hoovering, stalking, and mental and emotional torture.
Make this about ourselves. Use this time to change your number so that you can build a business and connect with clients freely; know that none of those incoming calls will be from bozo-the-user.
Have a client email list…? Write a cheery newsletter and send out your new number; maybe with a special offer for your product or service. Most business people strain to find reasons to reach out to clients…! Use this to our advantage. Make it a good thing. Let your phone ring freely.
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.
Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.
Fell strong by not answering while the loon rings through…? I do get that. Okay. But, you always were strong, that’s part of why and what about you held their fake life up so well.
Let’s look at this a little. Are you feeling a little flattered that they call? That’s natural, but, does it serve you? Does the experience of the phone buzzing make us feel truly and genuinely good? Or does it leave you feeling pretty rotten over the next few days?
Are you still – somewhere inside yourself still feeling a connection to them that you aren’t ready to disrupt? Are we still in a surreal comfort zone? Are we wanting to see if they call out of fear of them?
We can’t compromise our safety, well-being, and happiness for the benefit of the dark side. It’s a natural, second-nature skill we’ve honed during our time with the sociopath. Painting less-than-good circumstances into reasonable logic is the body’s beautiful, innate ability to make it through hard times.
This is how we survive and adapt to the confusion – technically this is managing cognitive dissonance. We all do this, usually daily. It’s decision-making. Let our decision land on our side.
We weigh and balance, and sort through options as a part of life; We regularly feel cognitive dissonance, in many ways, even throughout the day. It’s essentially decision-making.
We need to make decisions in order to maintain working for a boss whose ethics we don’t fully support, for example. We may swallow what we prefer as a good or safe way to spend time when negotiating how late our teen can stay out on Saturday night. It’s simply resolving a conflict between one thought and another.
We settle cognitive dissonance when we’re weighing whether to eat potato chips and cream cheese for dinner or salad with some healthy protein. – We need this life-saving and species-preserving trait. It’s a great and gorgeous thing — it’s time to turn our natural protective instincts truly back onto ourselves in a pure way. Trust our own lives.
Uhmmm. Yes, and no. Not exactly, I know it seems like a relationship. In this circumstance, however, you were absconded heart and soul within a crime. Know what they were up to. Accepting that these beasts exist and what that means and what truly happened is the foundation of truly recovering.
They’re recycled. Yes. That means we get a number someone else didn’t want. Who knows why they needed or wanted a new number?
Maybe the number belonged to someone in shoes similar to yours. This means our phone might ring with strange numbers in calls that are not for us. Anything from debt collectors to who knows who or what. Be prepared… but guess who it won’t be…?
Know that anytime your phone vibrates or chimes that the caller it will not be is the con man you’re dumping out of your life. The relief in this alone is unimaginable you get that new number. Feeling your heart rate stay settled and your blood pressure stay normal when the phone bleeps is incredible!
Follow these guidelines and you’ll fall off the pathological user, nutbag narcissistic sociopath’s radar.
Know those bill-collecting, robo-calls for Javier, Janet, or Dave will stop after a few months. And, P.S. Consider a brand new phone. And leave the old contacts on that old phone. – Start fresh.
Comfort and confidence in decision-making are some of the first things that go out the window in the confusion and chaos of life entangled by a sociopath. (And these people you’re calling some kind of narcissist.) Harmony in what’s around us and in what we believe to be normal or right and the far distant shore of what we experience with them becomes a chasm we straddle.
What we first experience as profound compatibility with these creatures changes drastically. One foot on one side, one on the other as the divide grows wider. As we can’t resolve the things they say into cognitive harmony, holes, and gaps of oddities show up one by one by one.
We end up stepping into those gapping oddities and nearly tottering to the bottom of that canyon. Fortunately, there’s also a ladder there for us to use to climb out. It’s our beautiful need for harmony that takes us into that dark abyss and lends us the way out.
The confusion escalates in post-trauma. I know the place you landed; I was once there too. It’s a hellish quagmire of quicksand and jello that is PTSD. Knowing what to do comes back slowly. It falls into place in great huge, encouraging chunks with each decision we bravely make.
Please make any and each decision rooted in a wish to rebuild your life for your own sake. Focus on and look toward your well-being as a Drishti point. This leeches the terror out of our bones; the terror wrought by the sociopath’s venomous deceit. You will free your bones and heart and soul and life of the maniac.
Join the podcast!
Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
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jennifer@truelovescam.com
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2017_06_19 2023_07_21
Why are sociopaths called antisocial?
These freaks love to party and hang.
They chat and charm and dance and joke.
Why do we call them “antisocial” when
they need other people.
Sociopaths are called antisocial because – hold onto your hats – there’s more than one meaning of the word antisocial! In their case, it doesn’t mean being shy or reluctant to be with others in a group setting. Amazing. Who’d a thunk it.
One of the myriad roadblocks to realizing just what it is we’re facing is misinterpreting or not understanding the meaning of this little word: “antisocial”.
This little four-syllable word – that people assume they already know the meaning to – trips people up. It’s natural to think it doesn’t make sense because the guy or gal in their living nightmare is very “social” rather than “antisocial” and doesn’t like parties or have many friends or some such.
This notion that you know what the word means -as applied to this kind of deceptive and ruinous human without a conscience – keeps far too many people from investigating more deeply into who and what it is they have gotten entangled with.
So then, in turn, they look to the other concepts floating around online and on social media to explain this person’s heinous behavior. Most commonly landing on “narcissist”.
Add in these other terms out there: narc, narcopath, and the narcissist in all its varieties, well, this falsely assures far too many people for too long that they’re only in love with a “narcissist” when in fact… It’s much, much worse. And more confusing, because some definitions and platitudes out there are related to a sociopath yet described under the name “narcissist”, and other describing factors are 100% off the mark. Very confusing… and delays recovery.
Want more amazing bits that unlock the confusion and settle the mess?
Here it goes, here’s a definition of this sticky little word antisocial from the Oxford English Dictionary – the most massive, most amazing dictionary on the planet. There are two definitions.
Definition number one above, of the word “antisocial”, is the one we’re most familiar with. It’s the one that gets us saying, no they can’t be a sociopath because they have friends. And also we think, she’s really fun at BBQs! Or, yeah but he’s around people all the time. They love going out! So, they can’t be an “antisocial psychopath”. – I get that. But there’s more.
Definition number two pertains to the clinical term related to a sociopath, an antisocial psychopath, or a person of antisocial personality disorder, as defined by the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition).
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.
As described by David Porter, MA, LAD: “The term antisocial may be confusing to the lay public, as the more common definition outside of clinical usage is an individual who is a loner or socially isolated.
The literal meaning of the word antisocial can be more descriptive to both the lay public and professionals: to be anti-social, is to be against society; against rules, norms, laws, and acceptable behavior. Individuals with Antisocial Personality Disorder tend to be charismatic, attractive, and very good at obtaining sympathy from others; for example, describing themselves as the victim of injustice. …
Antisocials possess a superficial charm, they can be thoughtful an dcunning and have an intuitive ability to rapidly observe and analyze others, determine their needs and preferences, and present it in a manner to facilitate manipulation and exploitation. They are able to harm and use other people in this manner, without remorse, guilt, shame, or regret.”
~ Theravive, by David Porter, MA, LAD (They also think they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread.)
Our words for medical diagnosis and terminology as well as a huge part of our everyday English language come from ancient, toga-wearing people who spoke Latin in ye-olde-school, ancient Rome. Lots of beginnings and endings and even middle sections of our words are Latin.
The beginnings of words are called: “prefixes”; here’s a bunch: anti, post, sub, pre, non as beginnings. You can probably think of some right off the bat: Substitute, post-trauma, predetermined, nonexistent. Interested in language, read more about Latin roots, suffixes, and prefixes.
Also here are some endings you know in everyday language but might not have known that they’re Latin. We call these “suffixes”. Here’s a few: ment, as in “supple-ment”; ify, as in ver-ify and ident-ify; ation, as in perfor-ation and restor-ation; able, as in “cap-able”. There are tons.
Anti is a word straight out of Latin and Rome. If you put the word anti into Google Translate and select the translation from English into Latin, you know what you get? – Anti.
Anti in English is anti in Latin. In old-school Latin anti means: to be or to go against (something), to be outside (of something), or opposed (to something).
So…antisocial psychopaths or persons of antisocial personality disorder, don’t mind parties at all, they kinda thrive on being social and any place with lots of people, including online, is the prime hunting ground. They need us and others so, so much.
Sociopaths are called antisocial because they function against and outside of normal, expected behavior. These people do things without thinking twice that we’d never even conceived of doing, much less do and behave in an anti- (against) social- (society) manner. Their behavior goes against the grain of what’s okay. And boy-howdy… Don’t they…?
So let me ask you… Does it help to get to the bottom of your bizarre, painful, and dire situation to think of them as just a narcissist? Or would there be more life-saving, pain prevention, and protection in diving in and stripping things down?
Ponder the realities and consider if this view would get more done for your safety and recovery: Looking at it from the point of view that this person will do anything they can think of doing in order to make use of you, or to get whatever they want, and to have things their way and to not be stopped. – That my friend is a sociopath: they function outside of and against the expected and accepted norms of society.
They need us. We do not need them. This is the hardest thing you’ll ever go through. The number one concern is that you clear the fog and protect your life. They have been through this break-up many, many, many times before and will again and again long after they’ve ridden off into the sunset.
As we explore removing them from our lives and then restoration: we don’t need to pretend they’re normal; they know what they are. – That said, keep your discoveries to yourself and end the entanglement safely. They need us; we don’t need them.
Join the podcast!
Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
True Love Scam Recovery on Medium
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jennifer@truelovescam.com
info@truelovescam.com
Visit truelovescam’s profile on Pinterest.
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Tweet to @truelovescam.
2017_01_31 2022_11_13
