Why do we believe the lies
the narcissist or sociopath tells?
Because we’re normal.
It’s normal to believe what people say.
Here’s the thing, it’s normal to believe other people. Believing others is hard-wired into our normal human hearts. We’re born this way. We trust and believe others as such a regular part of life, it’s something we barely notice.
Continue readingNarcissist or sociopath?
Sociopath or narcissist..? Or just narcissistic?
Please… know what you’re truly facing.
Narcissist or sociopath…? There’s a feeling for many people that a “narcissist” isn’t a sociopath. The category of NPD is thought by lots of people to be different and “better” – meaning not as bad as a sociopath.
It’s normal to hope that someone is not “as bad” as something that’s really horrific. I get that! – But there’s more to it.
To arrive at a real understanding of these escapes and in recovering what you’re facing, you have a better chance of restoring your life.
If you’re wondering about and spinning over someone you’re calling a “narcissist”, you’re best off thinking of them as a sociopath in order to find answers and stop the spinning.
Because while one is annoying and no fun and sometimes mean and icky and can be hateful (a narcissistic person), the other (what you might call a narcissist and the sociopath) is ruinous and can be fatal. – Yes, fatal as in, we could end up dead.
What would the ideal ending to your nightmare be?
Then to add another confusion, there’s the word, “narcissistic”. That’s different again. A human who has some narcissistic glitches is not usually a narcissist as in the kind that is a sociopath. I know that’s confusing. However, coming to terms with what is what and the terms we use to refer to them for the purposes of restoring lives and our freedom from both or either is critical…
Not knowing the “narcissist” you’re scared to death over is actually the same thing as a sociopath or that a “narcissistic person” is like a day at the beach by comparison to them is detrimental to resolving questions. It prolongs the pain.
It’s convenient to fall into what prevails out there in the now-massive information pool available online. It’s easier to imagine that these heinous creatures, this “narcissist” has a “childhood wound”. It’s nicer and more of a human way of thinking to imagine that they’re jealous of us. – And it’s perfectly human to imagine and believe that it’s your “codependency” or low self-esteem that holds you there.
But I’m here to tell you, those things are not true. These beliefs are causing you more harm. Those beliefs are prolonging entanglements with people of zero humanity who wouldn’t mind if you bled out on the floor while they had their lunch.
The fact that we look for good and can’t imagine they could be as bad as it seems like they are is a testament to how gorgeously good you are inside and out. Wanting to see – and seeing – good before evil is because you are made of “good”. Having to step into a place to see that another human is truly bad is difficult for us, especially when this person is someone we’re married to or have a child with, or have spent the last six years or six months of your life with.
The idea of a “narcissist” who has self-esteem that apparently our own, so much so that they only pretend to love, is somehow more “relatable”. Why is this…?
With this explanation, it seems simply then as if the meanie in your life is a human with human problems. We think of them as like us. With this explanation of a “narcissist” who is wounded, has faults like anyone else that can be “fixed”, you can believe that somewhere deep down they also really do love you.
I understand this is more comforting than taking in the reality of a sociopath. If this is where you are with it, that’s okay. But I invite you to go further. To open up to these new ideas that will explain things so that you’re no longer exhausted with the effort of shoving an explanation into place… Answers that don’t fit so that you’re dead tired and still confused…. and still hurting.
There are people who are self-focused – narcissistic – sometimes and only about certain things. They can have narcissistic glitches that we snag ourselves on when we’re in their lives.
Their narcissistic glitches do indeed arise from their lives during childhood or as learned behaviors linked to insecurity, and fears or unmet needs as children. These “self-oriented” tendencies affect others and leave them on the outside of a mutual relationship.
This is the person I refer to as someone who is narcissistic. They have narcissistic glitches. This is non-pathological: they’re a person with narcissistic sticky bits, but a normal person who loves, likes, and cares. It hurts a bit sometimes – or often – to be loved, liked, and cared for by them.
A pathologically narcissistic person is a sociopath and exhibits behavior that is involuntary, and pathological, meaning it’s a result of their brain. The way they think and see the world is out of their hands. And behind their thinking is pure and total self…narcissism. They have no room in their consciousness to care about or for other people.
This pathologically narcissistic person is full of delusion and is pure narcissism. There is room for nothing else in their closed-circuit-of-self-house-of-cards lives. They cause ruin, tear people’s lives apart, and do the things we call: love-bombing, gaslighting, devaluing, discarding, ghosting, hoovering, and smearing.
Someone who is narcissistic but non-pathological might gaslight as in the y might deny that they said something mean about your new haircut or how you look in that dress – or that as your parent, they told your sister that you’re lazy behind your back.
They might lie to us. They call us names or make fun of us, however as compared to the pathological sociopath/narcissist it’s quite different. They are not a fraud. Their behavior and effect upon people around them are light years apart from a sociopath aka pathological narcissistic person: the defrauding con man – or woman – who drags us through love scams.
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.
Unless you willingly and deliberately walk into knowing what you’re escaping or recovering from, you stand a chance of staying in pain, confusion, and more hell for many days to come.
Turning away because of the word “sociopath” and its full meaning regrettably slows restoration and healing. It delays the restoration of our lives. Without taking in the real deal we can miss a life of happiness and remain in either a life under the spell of a sociopath – or under the thumb of a narcissistic person. – Or both.
The thing is, unfortunately, confusion mounts with the ever-growing collection of online materials and social media written about narcopaths, narcs, sociopaths, narcissists, and even psychopaths. If you feel lied to, or deceived, if they use more of your money than theirs if you feel confused, uncertain, or sense something is wrong, have fear, discover they use another name sometimes or are physically or sexually used or sexually rejected… think of them as a sociopath.
As normal, limbic-brained whole humans, we had no earthly idea that our new dream man or woman was someone who ensnared us.
That this was a human-looking being who could hypnotize us just by saying “hello” and we’d fall into a maze of a colossal dark and hideous chaotic whirlwind of a nightmare in which we suffer loss beyond description… Voila, the “sociopath”.
For our purposes of living it, understanding it, and recovering, healing, and side-stepping a “narcissistic person” is one thing – and a “sociopath” is another. There are vast differences between the two and lots of confusion about which is what. I admittedly get hot and bothered about it.
I understand the words and references to a “narcissist” either covert, overt or malignant… come from the DSM. That’s nice and makes sense as a place to turn… at first. And these are sociopaths.
But consider this: the DSM is written by scientists. It’s an ever-evolving work of findings from studies. imagine a bunch of nerds found a slew of cockroaches and categorized them by differences in antennae length and wingspan. I mean so what if one roach has a shinier little eye than the other…? At the end of the day: they’re all roaches!!!!
Additionally, imagine they’ve never come upon one of these hideous revolting insects personally. Do the meticulous and tedious results of their measuring and sorting make anyone of these revolting creatures, not cockroach when we come across one in our kitchen?
That would be a huge no. Covert, overt, malignant narcissists have the influence and effect of sociopaths when we find them in our lives. They are in fact sociopaths.
Personally, I have not ever based my own experience in the bowels of freaking horror-show-real-life-hell on the clinical research findings.
Findings meant for the diagnosis of personality disorders mainly for the purpose of making prison sentences, prescription drugs, social services, and all out of the compulsion of scientists and researchers to do their thing… which includes the ongoing need to meet application parameters for grant funding and make the requisite detailed and non-experiential based conservative diagnostics of that questionable person.
I don’t think you’re best served by doing this either. The DSM and all those splinter categories of overt, covert, cluster B. They don’t help us. They aren’t written for us. They muddy the path out of hell.
To be honest, it’s lonely and exhausting to keep harping on about how significant this difference is for restoring our lives after a hijacking by a con man who is a sociopath and dripping into psychopath territory when they get pleasure from observing others’ pain. – Not to add more confusion, but fundamentally a sociopath and a psychopath are in the same mental circumstance… The word sociopath is a colloquialism for psychopath… Which is an antisocial psychopath or antisocial personality disorder.
But when I check my website’s stats sometime in the evening and see that eight people in Romania and three people in Malta have been reading my website that day along with the 8,000 others from around the globe… I know I have to keep it up.
For goodness sake… These people kill people who think they love them. This is a sociopath, and if the person you’re calling a narcissist fits this – they are a sociopath – an antisocial psychopath.
A part of the problem in understanding for the purposes of safety and freedom is language. Words. Just plain old not realizing the meaning of words. Nouns, verbs, and their meanings and applications.
Calling someone who is actually a bona fide sociopath (as in a noun; the name of a person, place, or thing) and calling them a narcissist (noun again) is a fairly natural thing to do. This happens for some very reasonable reasons all of which can be dispelled and rectified for a cleaner, faster, better more accurate understanding, and recovery:
Sociopaths are 100% self-focused and self-centered. This is narcissism all the way. The thing is, a sociopath is far more narcissistic than any “narcissistic person” could be.
A sociopath (lump narcissist in there) has an abnormal brain and will never ever be remotely human in any recognizable way. – Though we think they look human in a super cute way when we meet them.
Another sticking point is that we may not all be shown the horrors of what they really are when we’re entrapped by them… However, their full capacity of harm, destruction, and bottomless evil is there, nonetheless.
Keep in mind, narc or narcopath are more euphemisms, colloquialisms, slang – made-up words to handle the nightmare more easily. Kinda like a spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down.
When a sociopath (a narcissist) it’s mixed up with the concept of a narcissistic person, it dangerously dilutes our understanding and leaves us without answers, in pain, suffering, and stuck in trauma and the inevitable post-trauma. What we need is the truth. We cannot heal from anything else. We need to know the truth of what we’re facing.
Yes, these terms like narc are much easier to say than the much uglier truth behind the word: sociopath. These are words that are easier-to-handle, but muddy the situation. Aren’t things crazy enough…?
Don’t we need the fog and confusion to clear, though the reality is harsh? Clear is kind as Brene Brown says. Let’s sort through this hideous maze as simply as possible.
The term sociopath feels harder to swallow and is used far less often than the word narcissist. The word sociopath sounds so much more horrific and ominous, but… a narcissist is a sociopath.
This sociopath has a brain that leaves them with no ability to connect or care and therefore leaves them minus a conscience (this is the thing so many call a narcissist). – A narcissistic person – a regular non-pathological narcissistic person has a conscience and feels love.
Some of them more so than others, true. But unless they cross the line into living off of others by deception, they are not of this abnormal brain that makes a sociopath (narcissist).
Chances are if we call him or her a monster, evil, or the devil, or a demon we’re confronting a sociopath (narcissist). Clinically a sociopath has a specific under-functioning brain that cannot be repaired at this time in the history of humankind.
The bottom line though is this: whatever we call them, we don’t want them. We’re not doctors, we don’t want to be doctors or psychologists or neuroscientists – we do want to be happy. Where the difference between these two – a narcissistic person and a sociopath (narcissist) comes into play for us is in our lives, rather than in mental health medical books.
If you’ve read about a covert narcissist or a malignant narcissist, consider them sociopaths. From our experiential situation, they are. Realize the DSM is not written for us.
Narcissistic people (the nonpathological – not the sociopath aka narcissist, narc, narcopath) have a snarky way about them. They can be nice or nasty one minute to the next, in front of anyone, to anyone, anywhere. The narcissistic person varies in levels of self-absorption. Some are only petty and annoying once in a while, while some seem loony in the extent of their unflinching “me-ness.”
Sometimes, it’s like no one else is in the room except the narcissist and their audience of self-approval. Each conversation is a land mine and always reverts back to them. It’s always a sad, frustrating, hard time talking with a narcissistic person. It’s frustrating and can be lonely and hard.
It’s tough to be relaxed or feel okay to say things to them naturally, as one would to a friend, to family to a partner or coworker or boss, or neighbor.
Each narcissistic person has their unique way of being a pain in the derriere; that’s French for the caboose, our behind or rear-end. Each individual narcissistic person, who is what we used to simply call a dysfunctional person, isn’t especially predictable one to the other.
However, when you know a particular narcissistic person well you can begin to guess when their moods will shift from tolerable to caustic to mean. How they manifest caustic and mean varies depending on the individual narcissistic person.
Here’s an example, let’s say a neighbor draws you into a conversation when she sees you getting the mail. You’ve learned to avoid her because it usually goes something like this… Like a slap in the face. Every time.
Here’s a different narcissist, two seconds into a conversation with a big grin they say:
Narcissistic people control the household, everyone is held hostage to their whims and expectations that revolve around themselves and their intense opinions.
If we have a narcissistic parent we might find as we get older there’s a much sweeter world out there where we don’t all have to agree that Siamese cats are ugly or that eggs can’t be digested in the morning.
Eventually, later in life, we realize, if we’re lucky, we aren’t inherently, eternally rotten for ruining their 38th birthday by falling off our training bike at age four and breaking our arm.
Or for robbing them of their “best umbrella” because the friend we loaned it to one rainy day after school twenty-five years ago never returned it.
Narcissistic people are impossible to please in certain areas, they make less than great mates, and can be rotten friends. They can be “okay” to spend time with if we go where they want to go for dinner and agree with them all night.
At worst they make misery everywhere. When someone has nothing invested in any type of relationship with them things are easier. If we’re not particularly close to them they can be fun and seem “okay”.
They can be funny or intelligent or not, their personalities vary. A narcissistic person isn’t usually aware they offend others or make them feel marginalized. Conversation with a narcissistic person is sprinkled with the narcissistic person’s acerbic and self-centered awareness. If they’re drinkers or yellers or violent… it’s so much harsher.
A sociopath (what you might call a narcissist), on the other hand, is using you. Using you entirely for their own purposes and is quite clear this is what they’re doing. They want your money, your beauty, your respectability, and trustworthiness to borrow for a cover for who they are.
The sociopath, the pathological user is using your “normal” to take things, gain things, and make use of you. They’re not who or what they first seem to be or say they are.
While some words used to describe a sociopath and a narcissistic person are similar – the depth and breadth of the manifestation of their narcissism are light-years apart.
You could say sociopaths want control over prey and as targeted prey we do feel controlled… But, on a deeper and more real level, what they want is purely to get away with what they’re doing and to keep taking as long, and as much as possible. This does happen when we don’t understand their fundamental thinking and motivation and concerns.
This is why thinking of a sociopath without incorporating a narcissist, a narc, and a narcopath into the same umbrella and then all on its’ own a narcissistic person is a roadblock to restoring and recovering and healing and learning skills to be pathological predator and user free forever.
Narcissistic people – the ones who are non-pathological, yet have narcissistic hiccups – are not pathological liars. Pathological liars cannot not lie. Pathological means it comes from the way their brain works; it’s their biology rather than a choice.
Nearly all they say and all they say they are is a lie. It means lying even when they don’t have to. They also know they lie and aren’t bothered by it one bit. A non-pathological person, even one with narcissistic glitches, would have trouble with lying.
The people we know who are at times irritating or even hurtful because of their narcissistic glitches are very different from those who are pathologically narcissistic. If someone is doing these things, they are a sociopath (narcissist for those still using that term).
Sociopaths are technically referred to as antisocial psychopaths, or as being of or having antisocial personality disorder. They are 100% pure and only: narcissism. There is no room in their body or brain for consideration of anyone outside their own skin. They think they’re better than anyone on the planet. – Again think of this as the narc, narcopath, narcissist: they are a sociopath.
A sociopath is a whole different nightmare than a non-pathologically narcissistic person. – If you’re having a horrific nightmare experience, you might reconsider who or what you might really be facing and how you think of them. Information about a no-pathological narcissistic person won’t be any help and can in fact be a hindrance to your recovery and restoring your life.
Sociopaths – the pathologically narcissistic – are far worse. At the top of the list and at the bottom and all through it is that they can never change. Some are savvier and have garnered more tricks for tapping our human emotions so they can use us than others. at the end of the day, and from the first hello, they’re more dangerous than I’d ever really hope you know.
Their brains are missing the element that registers feelings of love, like, care, concern, or compassion for anyone. Anyone. – They are incapable of positive bonding feelings. Zero.
If we think they have a heart we’re missing some of the puzzle pieces. We’re buying into the mask, which is natural and what they count on.
The sociopath’s mask is largely held in place by our own great goodness. It’s glued up there to their sickening faces by our understanding of the world as a place of only goodness. We have a very hard time seeing evil and accepting that evil exists. That’s normal. And there is far more good than evil and good does win.
Pathological lying isn’t lying sometimes, or on some occasions, or to some people; it’s lying all the time to everyone about all things because that’s how they’re wired. Sociopaths are pathological liars, even if we don’t yet see it.
And in addition, this means they believe lies others tell them and behave as if the lie were true. We can maneuver them when we understand that in their heads: lies are real and real is made up.
And I’ve said way too much already for one little article: but much of the time they’re actually telling the truth, but we can’t understand it as such because we’re pure goodness as normal humans who don’t know monsters exist.
Sociopaths have an abnormal brain. This can be seen in brain scans of children as young as three years of age. Their cold behavior stands out as young children. The portion of the brain that registers any positive bonding emotions doesn’t function.
They feel no love, care, concern, compassion for any person. Not their mom, their dad, their, sister, brother, uncle, aunt, grandparents, spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends, or their own children. Not strangers, coworkers, or neighbors.
The sociopath-brain leaves a sociopath experiencing the same lack of care or connection to the postman as to their own mother or children. The younger they are the less experience… and so they’re less skilled at conning typically.
They learn more about scamming and conning from each target and improve their bag of knowledge about what affects normal humans as time goes by.
The very presence or contact with a sociopath destroys lives; we might not see all this at the moment, but it becomes evident in the direction our lives go in. Our lives become darker. Our ruin continues in a spiral downward and deeper. We fall further from our own real selves and our true potential as time goes by. Disasters, illness, bad things ensue.
Every target is not shown the full resume of the sociopath who hijacked them. Don’t wait for more proof. Read more about what sociopaths are here. 20 Characteristics of a Sociopath.
Yes, sociopaths know that they are sociopaths, maybe they don’t use the word, but they know what they are. Narcissists though aren’t aware of their narcissism. Sociopaths are.
They all have a varied combo of this and hide it, we won’t necessarily ever see any or all of this in the con man who hijacked us. And, geez, that’s great because it’s horrible and shocking to find out about.
On the other hand, not experiencing or finding proof of some of these horrible things they do can keep us in and trying to make things work longer. And, even if we do see some of this, we have doubts that they could really be a sociopath or that the things we find are as bad as they really are.
Sociopaths have but hide: Other identities, different names, alternate FB accounts, have secret kids, wives, husbands, divorces, and annulments.
Crimes such as forgery, blackmail, fraud, false claims, nonpayment of taxes, porn, scary sex habits, hidden money, debt, prostitution, violence, assault, rape, gambling, jail time, pedophilia, heavy alcohol use, and drug habits and lots more of this ilk.
Remember: You may not be shown all of this or discover all the hideous dark deeds of the sociopath whose spell you’ve been drawn into. That’s okay. We don’t need to see and know it all. In fact, heck – that’s super traumatic. It does not mean, however, that they are not a sociopath.
Sociopaths live off of other peopple as parasites. – Even when they have a “job”, and this can be confusing. They live off people’s perceptions of them. They have no constructive or nurturing human emotions.
Any expression of care, like, love; the connection is faked. They mimic normal humans to create trust and bonding with people they target for the purpose of taking from them.
Normal human emotions of fear, hope, guilt, shame, love, like, empathy, care, compassion, desire, need, magnanimity, charity, concern are the sociopath’s entryway to taking and using. Then taking more. Using more, then smearing the people they just used to make themselves look like a victim.
Sociopaths are entirely self-absorbed and have a myopic view that they’re separate from others; better than others by a zillion miles, and that they deserve whatever they take from anyone, and that we as their prey deserve whatever they do to us.
They tell stories that paint themselves as victims in business, at work, by lovers, strangers, by “haters”…
Essentially – they’re nuts. They’re charming and deluded monsters. They carry out new ploys on a whim and constantly have a stable, a collection of multiple targets, sociopaths are always looking for more targets.
Sociopaths who do hold actual jobs stay in them on the backs of others and do little aside from taking credit for other’s accomplishments and ideas and attempting to make themselves look amazing. These use others for every aspect of their survival.
They’re improvisational, they’ll switch main prey suddenly if something changes, or they come up with a different idea. They do impulsive things to protect themselves.
These scumbags will put themselves at risk of being arrested or caught by impulsive things they do that are attemps to keep themselves safe. Such as murder soemone to keep that person quiet. They cross lines – or walk a very fine line between legal and illegal like balancing a tight rope wire.
What they say and do is to get what they want. It’s a lie or misleading. Even when they let out bizarre snips of truth about themselves. This is also to pull empathy by seeming vulnerable, or pulling out trust by seeming to be able to admit weaknesses such as, I try to have empathy, I just don’t.
They’re life-long career scammers. It’s how they live. They’re often addicted to a drug, alcohol or porn or gambling. They hide this. An antisocial psychopath, the sociopath is genderless in horrifying reality.
They hide this. Sex as love or connection in a real relationship is not part of their lives, sex is a control tactic and as an animalistic release.
They’re life-long career scammers. It’s how they live. They’re often addicted to a drug, alcohol, or porn, or gambling. They hide this. An antisocial psychopath, the sociopath is genderless in their full horrifying reality. They need to hide this.
Chances are, many of us who thought we were breaking up with something or someone we called a narc, a narcissist, or a narcopath may find more answers in reading up on escaping an antisocial psychopath, a sociopath.
The sociopath mimics normal human emotions in attempts to gain trust and then take from and make use of any and every person they can ensnare. They leave destruction and ruin in their wake. We can break free, heal, and be whole again. I promise.
Join the podcast!
Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
True Love Scam Recovery on Medium
True Love Scam Recovery on Facebook
Add these to your contacts
so you don’t miss a newsletter!
jennifer@truelovescam.com
info@truelovescam.com
Visit truelovescam’s profile on Pinterest.
True Love Scam on Tumblr.
Tweet to @truelovescam.
2024_01_05
Holiday hoovering is painful and a lie. The importance of no contact
becomes crystal clear as the temperature drops,
leaves fall and the seasonal decorations and
eggnog lattes come on the scene.
Holiday hoovering is happening! Read all about it: Here we are again in the thick of the holiday season. It arrives in songs about sleighbells in the grocery store, decorations, and television commercials, nowadays sadly, well before the last Halloween ghost has faded away and the last lone foil-wrapped chocolate witch is eaten.
Continue readingEmotional abuse is a part of life with a narcissistic user.
This is what life is if we’re ensnared by them.
Emotional abuse comes in many flavors. It always comes along with an entanglement with a narcissistic user, the predatory sociopath.
When a normal person and a sociopath mix, the collision of the normal-human brain, and the sociopath’s brain there’s inevitable harm to the normal person while it’s just another regular day to the sociopath.
The focus of the pathological user is to make use of us. They don’t care about what concerns us.
Our feelings are not anything they can feel or understand… Their work is to be sure we’re hooked, and that we don’t comprehend what they are or the reality of their intention in our lives. They don’t care how we feel… They care what we do because of how we feel.
There are answers to all the confusion.
Once we’re involved and in love, the fallout of the mix of a normal human and a sociopath is trauma, shock, and only harm to us and not at all hurtful for them.
This mind-bending, confusing, collision of a sociopath and a normal person can make us think there’s something wrong with us. There is not. There’s something very very wrong with a sociopath.
As normal, gorgeous humans, we think we’re in a real relationship. Naturally, we do what normal people do in real relationships. The sociopath does not.
Their odd behavior, unresponsiveness, and sometimes outright meanness trips us up – we try, we try to make things better: as anyone would in a relationship.
In the beginning, a sociopath gauges what matters to us. They fulfill that. As the weeks go by, they discern what we won’t tolerate or forgive, what will keep us trusting, even when they become neglectful or mean. They innately know, or simply guess until they get it right and discover which behavior of theirs will bend us to their will most effectively.
In reality, we’ve been hijacked and kidnapped without realizing it. We’re not with a normal person, sociopaths have abnormal brains.
As a sociopath goes about their day in the world they present a false self, even the barista or car wash attendant isn’t seeing a real person.
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.
We try to keep things harmonious, humans need harmony within their lives and relationships. If both people were normal, both people would contribute to harmony within the relationship, this is not the case with a sociopath.
While we pitch in and spend a lot of effort self-reflecting, wondering if “it’s our fault,” and trying to make things right, work out the kinks, adjust our perception of what a relationship – this relationship – should be, and continue to relationship-build, it takes a while to notice, we’re doing it alone.
We don’t get anywhere trying to make things good. There’s always a particular moment when it hits us: something is very wrong here, and normal isn’t working to fix it… because they aren’t normal.
Once hooked in, we’re in a kind of hypnosis in a cloud of confusion. As the whirlwind of good stuff begins to wear off the crazy begins we’re twirling on a merry-go-round emotionally.
We discover if we question them about specific unpleasant or odd things they’ve done, the sociopath gets mad. They lead us to feel convinced we did something to make it happen, or that it didn’t happen, or they ignore us.
A sociopath wants us to stay locked in their spell. They know that an emotional reaction from us is a sign we’re “still in”. They truly do not care which of our emotions makes us stay.
Narcissistic users bent on coercive control to attain their personal gains show rage and even violent behavior if he or she thinks they’re losing their grip on getting the things they want. They like to keep what they take. Though not all sociopaths use physical violence within every predator/prey circumstance, some are incredibly violent.
Being in love with a sociopath – what you might call a narc, a narcissist, or “your nee”, isn’t a casual connection. – It isn’t a connection at all as much as a parasite embedded in your life.
While we think it’s a real relationship, we’re all the way in. We want the fairy tale to stay perfect. We hang on tenaciously even as we feel it shifting and disintegrating under our feet. Naturally, when things aren’t building or developing in a relationship, you’re worried about connecting on a deeper level, maybe going to counseling together.
Concerns about maintaining a home, paying bills, not wanting to break up a family, or fearing for our own future all keep us “in”. The things that string us along are subtle and hard to grab a hold of; sociopaths trap us in ordinary conversation by activating our normal emotional responses.
As decent, normal human beings when someone talks we feel we’re meant to listen. When someone asks a question we’re socially, culturally, and innately programmed to give an answer. Never diminish the complete wrongness of any abuse. – Sociopaths are naturals at bringing what amounts to abuse into our lives because they don’t value us, or care for us. There’s absolutely no human connection from this alternate-human and ourselves.
They lie about all things, always hiding what they really are. Every moment of their life is a lie. Everyone they know is someone they’re scamming.
They aren’t a real person, not even to the barista or the car wash attendant. The sociopath is constantly putting on a presentation. When we stop believing them, no one is there. No one human that is.
Join the podcast!
Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
True Love Scam Recovery on Medium
True Love Scam Recovery on Facebook
Add these to your contacts
so you don’t miss a newsletter!
jennifer@truelovescam.com
info@truelovescam.com
Visit truelovescam’s profile on Pinterest.
True Love Scam on Tumblr.
Tweet to @truelovescam.
2015_03_14 2022_10_12 REPUB: 2023_08_07
Holiday hoovering is about
the sociopath’s need to restock.
They replenish their stores using our sentimentality
of the season as a trap.
For us, it’s annoying, disturbing, and dangerous.
It can land as back to square one.
Let’s side-step that malarkey.
Holiday hoovering puts a bitter twist and a gut-wrenching anxiety into our holiday season. For us, holiday hoovering is torture. The sociopath – or the “narcissist” if that’s the word you use for them invests in holiday hoovering. It’s necessary; it’s to assure their future.
…And then there’s the boomerang. That “old friend” who pops back up…The Holiday hoover or boomerang can land as back to square one. Straight in the figgy pudding. Let’s side-step that malarkey.
Continue readingThat thing you’re calling a “narcissist”
… the sociopath secretly loves the Holidays.
Storming out because you didn’t make their favorite dish is a cover.
It’s how they get out of the house to hunt…
in the most wonderful time of year.
During the holidays, normal people want things merry and bright. We have family visiting, kids to make memories for, traditions to uphold, trees to decorate, cookies to bake, and presents to wrap.
It’s never easy to grasp the real-deal stark reality of what’s going on in these hijackings. There’re the secrets, the subtext, and the hidden motivations of these creatures that are elusive to us. When we’re in the initial throes of the struggle to clear the fog to confirm the person we love is a monster, the holiday season is the bitterest time of all for decoding what’s up.
Continue readingOh. He’s a psychopath, a sociopath, an antisocial psychopath.
That’s what A psychotherapist friend of mine told me he was
while she casually munched her salad.
I didn’t know what that meant,
but I knew it was true.
Sociopath… Now there’s a big scary word. I remember the first time I heard it in connection to the man I was married to. It was a friend’s attempt to explain the nightmare “relationship” I was escaping. I recall my heightened senses and the hesitance with which I took that word in. Sociopath…psychopath…
The weirdness of the first time I held the idea of a sociopath…whatever that was because I certainly didn’t know, up next to the nutbag I was kicking out of my life is something I haven’t forgotten.
Continue readingCo-parenting in even the best of divorce circumstances is a juggling act with some dropped balls. In the ideal co-parenting set-up both parents are amiable and respectful.
No one says anything nasty about the other parent, and exchanges run smoothly and easily in cooperation. Both adults are focused on the well-being of the children whether visitation is court-ordered or voluntary.
Continue readingTrauma response is real. It’s also normal.
There’s nothing wrong with us.
In fact, our bodies are protecting us.
Go with it.
We’re truly amazing! Trauma response is normal, valid and to be honored. When our eyes are at half-mast, and it’s only 11:00 am. That time in the afternoon when our brain is mush… and by afternoon, I mean 1:04 pm. The wish from deep in our bones to curl up with Netflix or just nothing and do nothing but sleep…
Continue readingRewire trauma sustained during
the relationship that wasn’t.
Bring up stored deep brain patterns of feeling good.
Rewire trauma sustained during what we thought was a real relationship. During these hijackings, trauma is sustained and prolonged. We undergo an overload on our nervous and adrenal systems.
Simple methods bring us from the dark side and into the healing zone. Humans are amazing. We can rewire our emotional experience for both health and well-being.
Continue reading
