In this new reality of life,
we recognize these narcissistic users
where ever they may be.
A pathologically narcissistic user as a coworker is, unfortunately, a possible situation. A sociopath coworker isn’t unheard of by any means. Since the research says one in 25 people is a sociopath, this is bound to happen.
Continue readingLeaving is scary.
Their hounding and hoovering are traumatic.
In a panic, we might think we want a restraining order.
In cases of violence – maybe – we need one.
Thinking of filing a protection order? – Or restraining order as they’re called in the USA? This is often the first thought we have when trying to leave a toxic partner. This is frequently the first advice we hear from others when we tell someone about the fear and trouble we’re having with a breakup from a “narcissist”.
As much as this can seem like the logical thing to do, let’s talk about why filing a protection order is a bad idea.
Continue readingHeartless users are
über devoted to their fantastical lies.
And, when we unwind the lies they’re super mad.
Luckily, we’re so much smarter than they are.
The sociopath behind the mask is a monster. And they love it that way. They love being what they are. They’re also extremely limited in the way they think.
Every sociopath wears a mask of nice, sweet, handsome, awesome-guy or gal until the truth rips it off. All sociopaths are the same, it doesn’t matter if they’re male or female, their age or where they’re from. The pathological user is wired to hate, it isn’t personal, but let them think you’re going to expose them, and they come at you full force.
Continue readingIt’s normal to trust, believe and care.
It’s 100% abnormal not to.
We can’t understand abnormal by looking at it from normal.
So, let’s look at it for their side without our rose-colored glasses.
Narcissistic people who are in the zone of pathological narcissism know that they don’t have relationships. Even though they step up to us with this mesmerizing zinger, I’ve never met anyone like you before. They know they’re not stepping into a real relationship. We think they are; that we are.
The thing is, they aren’t saying what we think they’re saying. We naturally hear one thing, but they mean another. They don’t want a relationship, not even when they say, you’re my soulmate. Want to know why this is…?
Continue readingCan we smell a narcissist?
Does the sociopath have a certain aroma?
As their abnormal brain affects their physiology…
how does it show up?
These are entirely different “humans”. The way they think, speak, and behave is not a “choice”. It’s instinctive. Their fundamental “self” is wired to use and take and get whatever they need and want. This “self” is pathological… meaning they’re driven by their brains which are not normal, yet are quite specific.
I wonder, since the sociopath’s abnormal brain affects their physiology how does this show up in all parts of their being? We know a lot of the things that they each have in common as creatures of this sort. (Or the “narcissist’s” if you’re on that terminology even with all it’s pitfalls and misconceptions.)
They’re fundamentally and pathologically identical monster to monster.
Continue readingCan you smell a sociopath?
Does a narcissist have a certain aroma?
As their abnormal brain affects their physiology…
how does it show up?
These are entirely different “humans”. The way they think, speak, and behave is not a “choice”. It’s instinctive. Their fundamental “self” is wired to use and take and get whatever they need and want. This “self” is pathological… meaning they’re driven by their brains which are not normal, yet are quite specific.
I wonder since the sociopath’s abnormal brain affects their physiology how does this show up in all parts of their being? We know a lot of the things that they each have in common as creatures of this sort.
They’re fundamentally and almost thoroughly identical pathological beast to pathological monster. For example, we know in their heads lies are real and real is made up.
Continue readingMonsters 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
The hoovering narcissistic user
is calling, texting, dropping by.
But, what if they aren’t hoovering?
What if we kind of wish they were?
Hoovering is a con man classic. They all do it, always… Except when they don’t. Whether they do or don’t hoover, neither is random. It seems like it, but it isn’t. There’s nothing a sociopath does that is random.
For all the crazy they drag us through, it all has very specific reasons, that bizarrely, have nothing to do with us. We are in fact, in control.
Antisocial psychopaths – a sociopath or what is truly a psychopath, which is what that person you’re calling a “narcissist” is… usually buzzes around in the aftermath. They’re monitoring, probing, begging, sending messages of all sorts in all kinds of ways.
They’ll beseech, flatter, moan, coax, insult, blame, shame all in one message, flip-flopping like some hyper Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. They email, they drive by, they leave flowers at your door, they call from blocked numbers, and have “friends” call you on their behalf.
Hoovering sociopaths are in the very moment of hoovering… showing us their genuine absolute nut-so selves.
Hoovering isn’t done out of love, that isn’t a possibility. Sociopaths cannot love. Like reptiles, sociopaths don’t even love their own children.
In no way is this kind of persistent hoovering behavior an expression of “love” from anyone, ever.
And, FYI, in case you still aren’t sure if this person is a sociopath… normal people don’t do this. Normal people don’t send 2:00 am text messages unless the house is on fire. Sociopaths do, and in particular, when they’re in danger of losing their prey. Losing prey is their world on fire.
If we aren’t being hoovered there’s a reason. Everything a sociopath does gives away their current circumstances, their fears, and their current needs. We can use that to free ourselves.
There are a few reasons the pathological user doesn’t Hoover. Or a combination of a few reasons. Nothing they do is random.
Every action a sociopath makes fits their limited mental capacity and true intention. Get on the right track to decoding these beasts. Let’s break it down.
Like everything else about a sociopath – narcissist, narc, narcopath – whatever you’re calling the pathological user: they have very specific and limited brain functionality. The tiny lump of gray-matter pulsating in their skulls leaves them in a constant state of “want”. Wanting to take what they want, and wanting to keep it, and really, really, really wanting to never be exposed.
And that’s it. There is no more. Exploitation is the sociopath’s life-long work. If you’re ever thinking, “He’s doing this just to make me __ fill in the blank __ “, you’re on the wrong track.
The sociopathic brain can only process the world and life around them in very specific and strictly limited ways. They can’t do anything but be what they are. From our perspective, our language for their behavior is that they’re liars, cheaters, thieves, blackmailers, rapists, pedophiles, and criminals. They, from their actual and sincere sense of self, call themselves, amazing.
It’s often said sociopaths are geniuses. To me this is ludicrous… After all, is having no limits in the harm and destruction you carry out on others equal to genius? They think of doing horrible things that aren’t in our scope of possibility. — This does not equal smart. Sociopaths are not smart. They do learn tricks.
And since we see through a lens of good, and have only our experience of human possibility up until this point that we encounter them, we can’t imagine the things they do, and then out of our great good and generosity label their debauchery and evil as “genius”. Oh, no. They are not genius, they aren’t quite sure if what they hope to do will work at each stupid and changeable thing they say. Hence the flip from compliment to scolding and insults, from promises to rage.
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.
The end is when the narcissistic sociopath’s deepest fear kicks in, especially if we kicked them out. Animalistic fear. They become desperate like a cornered demon beast. There’s only this on the sociopath’s mind: Get more and go free. Especially: Go free.
The end of the scam hits the sociopath hard. The pathological predatory user is enraged at their loss. And scared to death they’ll be exposed on a grand scale; or any scale. If we kick them out they’re really, really mad.
When they take off first, they’re not mad, but defending their safety 100% they do everything to not be exposed and to get more if they can even after they’ve “left us”. Their only regret is in not taking more, and they’ll always go for seconds and thirds and…
We end it they don’t. This is what zero contact is all about. Otherwise, any contact and a little bit of our emotional reaction are all it takes for them to stick around!
No one is genuinely valued by a sociopath; they have their own valuation scale. It’s based on the results keeping us hooked brings to their pocketbook, their social standing, a place to sleep, and basics like that. If we aren’t an open window to things they want they “value” us at about 600 minus subzero.
That sounds harsh, right? We’re truly fortunate if we rate subzero. It means they didn’t get what they wanted to enhance their life, their image, or whatever else they covet. The loser-leech couldn’t take the goods. Or we wouldn’t do what they wanted such as sponsor them for a green card, or give them money, buy them a car, or feed them. So our value to them is quite low.
The last place a sociopath wants to be is in prison, yet so many are – and all of them have done things that merit jailing. Without a conscience, narcissistic sociopaths will do anything, including forge signatures, steal, use violence, commit fraud and bigamy, threaten, stalk, carry weapons, use illegal drugs, rape… sociopaths will and do break any law. Laws mean nothing to them.
And here’s the thing: These super-creeps have done things we know nothing about to people we’ve never heard of – but they know what they’ve done. If they get busted and investigated for one initial thing, the unraveling begins. Pull one thread and their world disintegrates.
The threat of this can send them running quietly, so we miss out on the Hoovering. When they know, we know a particular dastardly thing they’ve done, or when they’ve done it to us they really get scared because of what we know.
They aren’t sure what we’ll do about it. They do hideous things like file (false) protection orders against us. Ultimately, they go away because they can’t risk getting in more hot water.
Priorities shift quickly for the improvisational sociopath-snake. Since normal people are the way a sociopath survives, they need a steady stream of bountiful pastures; normal people who trust and believe them and don’t suspect a thing – yet.
And they’re lazy. They want everything to be easy. If we’re a bit too much work or unyielding, they smell out a more pliable target right next door. They’re distracted by the nearest shiny object (aka a person.)
If they’re not getting what they want, and think we won’t blab our suspicions they just might slither away without a peep.
Sociopaths are notoriously bored and boring and they do move on simply for that reason. Or they didn’t like our shag carpeting. It could be the way we fry their chicken. Maybe they don’t like the perfume we wear. Or maybe we buy wine they don’t like. It’s all about them. If something isn’t to their taste, they hit the road.
Give it a year, or two sometimes ten or even twenty years later a sociopath reaches out their slimy claws to try again. – Yep. Old college or high school or childhood sweethearts show up for round two. Or that creature who FB messages a year later as if nothing ever went bad: Hey! Let’s go out. I miss you. They’re lying. Do not doubt ourselves, second guessing ourselves is natural when the sociopath lies.
Sociopaths always want more. Their abnormal brains feel no remorse, love, guilt, sympathy, compassion, or positive concern. These users do feel regret: regret at not taking more. At not lying better. Regret not using us more deeply. And not being able to take more makes them mad – at us – because true to form everything is someone else’s fault.
So, hoovering, not hoovering it all comes from the same motivation: sucking in and tying up normal humans’ emotions, either in love, or fear to be sure the sociopath can take and get away with it.
Sociopaths drop hoovering a specific target for three reasons: 1) Out of boredom, 2) Once our value to them hits subzero, 3) they are too busy with a full load of prey and new targets, 4) Out of fear of being exposed, captured and locked up when they know we have direct proof of their crimes, 5) They’re saving us for a major boomerang in a few years time.
Never let a departing sociopath know that we intend to report a marriage scam to immigration, turn in a police report, or go to other authorities. Never make online or public disparaging or revealing remarks – even when they’re true.
Ratting them out publicly as we’re escaping serves no purpose other than to incite their rage and put ourselves in danger – and makes us look questionable – even to normal people. This can also hurt our divorce or annulment outcome or a domestic violence case. Just zip it and handle our lives. Do what it takes to be safe and give evidence where it’s appropriate.
Go no contact 100%. Really accept there are two kinds of humans on the planet. Good ones and bad ones. Know how to recognize each. Stay human, remain humane.
.
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2017_07_06 2022_11_14
Sociopaths have sex, a lot.
Sociopaths have sex for only two reasons.
Love’s got nothing to do with it.
So what is it exactly?
Sociopaths have sex – or refuse to have sex for precisely two reasons. Pretty much for the same two reasons they do and say anything and everything they do or say. The reality as well as the rumors of great sex with a sociopath fall short.
There’s no “love life” with a narcissistic sociopath. We genuinely think we feel love for them and perceive their feelings toward us as love (at least in the beginning). They know that they don’t love us, and they know that we don’t know that they don’t love us.
They depend on us not knowing. We assume it’s real because, well that’s what normal people do. We don’t know there’s an option for evil predator rather than really amazing person.
Predatory parasites swoop in and make grand declarations of love and devotion. Here’s the deal any presentation of emotional interest or caring or attraction that the overwhelmingly amazing person you can’t believe you were lucky enough to meet makes: is fake.
We believe the relationship is real… until we don’t. The weirdness and the danger of sex with a sociopath is one of the holes in the picture-perfect life we thought we were building. This becomes one of the very painful pieces that lets us know things are very, very wrong.
In other words, sociopaths (narcissists) have sex as a useful means to get what they want, or for their own entertainment. Having sex brings us in, bonded, and right where they need us. And their own personal fun can run a gamete of variations and is essentially what their entire life is about: themselves.
Sociopaths initiate sex with prey or reject targets sexually as the circumstances require. They don’t have sex with anyone unless they need to to get things, or want to for their own fun.
These pathological users commonly reject their target’s sexually once the “relationship” is established. This happens a lot, especially within marriages or live-together scenarios, and comes with a bag full of excuses.
It’s another paradox in the madness; a sociopath refusing or rejecting prey in the sex department has the effect of keeping us at their side and trying even harder.
The refusal to engage sexually with us also arises from nay sociopaths’ chronic boredom. Out of their lack of connection and because after the marriage or the move-in the sociopath’s main goal has been completed. They’ve nabbed a roof, a bed, an address, a retreat, a home base, a legal foundation, and coverage for access to money, cars, and green cards.
They aren’t sticking close to hearth and home. Along with no attachment emotionally to anyone in their lives, a higher than average testosterone level and a profound need for distraction compel them sexually and like all things for the sociopath, there are no limits. Sociopaths have no sexual or any other boundaries.
Though they’ve tapped someone for some major gains, they are constantly focusing their attention on gaining other things, like more money, more of anything and everything. They cannot not be what they are.
For this reason, on the top of their to-do list is securing a place to live before we begin to see through them too deeply and before we kick them out. Sometimes this backup joint already exists and the unbelievable truth is they live with two or more women (or men) at the same time. In other instances, the next place they hop is a new spot, a new conquest, fresh prey.
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.
Kissing is very intimate and sociopaths are not truly able to be intimate. Though some prey may be given the “pleasure” of being kissed by the sociopath who ensnared them; sociopaths avoid kissing many of their targets.
The sociopath (the narcissist) has no interest in being intimate and more so, has no physiological capability to be intimate or feel or express intimacy or love. They have no idea what intimacy is beyond getting inside people’s lives to make use of them.
Kissing is deeply personal and intimate. We see it in the movies, that age-old trade rule that sex workers won’t kiss because it’s the one thing they preserve for real intimacy rather than their work. The sociopath’s narcissism – and inability to be intimate – never takes a vacation, not even during sex.
Find out the real deal. Heal PTSD. Be free.
Sociopaths love to make sex videos. The digital evidence that remains in their hands makes so many of us panic at the end; terrorized that the nut-job might post these online or give them to our family, or somehow use them against us.
In most cases those images are long-lost. Dumped, deleted, in a phone they don’t have anymore; and are of such lame quality and “production value” that no one can make out what’s going on or who’s in it anyway.
The taping is yet another way to remove intimacy, to further objectify the target. This distance and non-intimacy are the sociopath’s true feelings. We are objects to sociopaths.
Intimacy in sex is absent and faked by sociopaths. It’s buried in the request for “special sex” Super intimate because it’s things they’ve, “never done before with anyone.” Liars.
There’s absolutely no positive, genuine, emotional care or attraction or depth from a sociopath towards their prey. So, there’s no difference for them between males or females or children or dogs or cats for that matter. Yes. Sociopaths have sex with adults, kids, and animals if they feel like it. Nothing is off bounds.
The absence of boundaries and the absence of love or care or intimacy anal sex is high on the sociopath’s list as sexual activity with its impersonal aspects. Additionally, they’re notorious for not wearing condoms – ever – with anyone they have sex with – and that means a whole heck of a lotta people.
When anal sex is demanded or expected by the sociopath, a lot of other things often go along with this. It can be forced, rough, coerced, or bribed.
The normal person is usually put in a situation where they feel this option is the last resort as far as making a connection with what we still believe is a true husband or boyfriend, girlfriend, or wife. Instead, the outcome is sadness, isolation, rejection, depression, shame, disappointment, despair, and health problems.
Sociopaths are happy to – and diabolical enough, to have sex with anyone, male or female yet, we can’t really call them “bisexual” or “pansexual” since all sexual interaction is without true positive emotional bonding, like, love, care, or concern or connection; it isn’t based in a healthy attraction but in the goal of self-survival and ensnaring another target or simply for a high.
Sickening to say, but there are no age or family relationship barriers as far as who a sociopath might see as a likely sex object or entice or force into sexual activity. – Do all sociopaths do this… how can we know the answer to that? What we do know is better safe than sorry.
Learn what a sociopath really is. Accept it. Take it in. Know it in our bones. View their actions, and words from their tiny sick little mind. Let’s appreciate how amazing we are as fully functioning humans. Once we understand this we can spot a sociopath from a zillion miles away. Stay sociopath-free – forever.
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Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
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2017_05_07 2024_05_19
Sociopath is a big word.
We shy away from the idea
because it sounds like a movie, not real life.
Taking a second look at this can save us lots of pain.
Dating a sociopath, as it turns out, is something I’ve done a lot of. This wasn’t something I knew I’d done until after I’d married one, kicked him out, and gotten myself an annulment.
After this big-whammy experience with the con man sociopath who hijacked me specifically for a green card to the U.S.A. – and incidentally (as they do) – for all the money he could take, I put the pieces together. I did this with my own instinct, a bold and unwavering determination to take back my life and all he’d taken from me, and reading research. As in neuroscience and psych research.
After really grasping how their little minds operate and their quirks and foibles, I know that I’ve dated a sociopath more than once. Each of them floated to my memory over the months spent restoring my life in a flash of realization. – I understand you might be wondering what it is about me that “attracted” them, or what could be wrong with me…
There’s nothing wrong with me, There’s everything right with me. I’m a normal gorgeous inside and out living breathing fully limbic-brained human. In other words, this means that I’m normal. Many, many, many of us discover as we take in a real comprehension of what a sociopath is that more than one has knocked at our door.
Now I know I’ve briefly dated one of these weirdos twice. And that about eight of them, all told have tried to get into my life. This one particular one got me into a legal marriage. Maybe like me, you went beyond dating a sociopath and married one.
Chances are, you’ve known more than one as well, and certainly at least one, or you wouldn’t be here. I’m glad that you are here…I’m glad you’re seeking answers that truly fit into place. Keep going so that you can solidify a user-proof life since as strange as it is, it’s true – these human predators are out there. – I’ve heard it said that one in 25 people is a sociopath… That makes about one in every classroom.
After the harrowing hideous entanglement and then the restoration of my life after the dirtbag who hijacked me for an address in the U.S. along with the legal right to be in the country, I now know one of the first times in my life I came across a sociopath was in elementary school. He was ten years old, and so was I. We were in the 5th grade.
He was super gross. Nobody liked him. He was tough and mean and didn’t fit the profile of that charming sociopath we read about at all. – But maybe crafting that smoothie exterior comes later in life for these creatures.
I was plagued by his attention. What I didn’t yet know was, that there’d been a bet or a joint plot or some such heinous thing among complicit classmates that he could grab me and kiss me on the playground. – Where the heck were the adults…?
What would it mean to feel like yourself again?
As it goes down, I suddenly realize I’m all alone, sitting on a swing. There’s nobody else playing, no balls bouncing, no laughing… And no one near me. It dawns on me that the entire 5th and 6th grades are divided into two camps on opposite sides of the blacktop.
The optics of the scenario stretch and pull as they do in moments of impending doom. I see or sense one band of kids far, far away in a corner of the now ghostly playground, hovering in a flock by one of the outbuildings.
The more nearby knot of whispering, heaving-with-excitement 10-year-olds backs further away as a lone figure slithers towards me. In this moment, the classical traits of the snake-like qualities of a sociopath shimmer off of this kid who’s now floating into the way-too-near-me horizon.
The dirty-haired, pale-skinned predator floats up like on a Z-axis camera dolly, sliding into a close-up position. His mouth is open in anticipation.
Emanating from him was some internal honing device that sucked at me, aligning my body, overriding my resistant mind and soul, right into his orbit. Something like polar opposite magnets that click and snap together when what I wanted to do was hurl away in refusal. I didn’t have control of my body… I was locked in place.
A part of me actively resisted and fought to get away. Brave little me looked the prepubescent beast straight in his eyes. At the millisecond I registered his leer, his curled lip revealing tiny, pointy yellowish teeth, my right arm pulled itself back, my hand in a rock-hard fist ready to smash his face. – Something I’d never done in my life.
His eyes open wide from the slits of a hunter; shock replaces the cocky, shit-bag expression on his ugly freckled face. He leans back from his waist and comes closer all at once. He hisses through a clenched jaw, threatening: Don’t you hit me.
I didn’t hit him. I couldn’t really. I did look straight into his eyes scanning for a person. As in a human to connect with. There wasn’t one. But, he did look scared. Of me. Then I sent out no words, no sounds, but what must have been a telepathic, silent human-to-beast warning, in essence: Don’t you fuck with me.
Those very words weren’t in my head, but surely there were screaming from my less than five-foot 70-pound frame. He backed off. The crowds dispersed… And everything after that is a blur. I was then allowed to spend every recess for the rest of the 5th grade in the nurse’s office or sitting in the school counselor’s room. I was terrified of the playground. I had post-traumatic stress at 10 years old induced by the traumatic events of a sociopath invading my life.
Likely, by now, you’ve heard someone say or read somewhere that you played a part in the “relationship”. That you don’t know how to pick good men or women or partners but are attracted to “bad boys”. That you’re codependent or don’t have boundaries and this is why this happened to you.
This reasoning, though a natural place for people to go with this for a few reasons, is absurd. As a ten-year-old, I guarantee I wasn’t looking for a bad boy, was not codependent, and was not in a relationship with this goober-headed ten-year-old monster. It happened because he was a monster – and I was – and am – normal.
Breaking Up with Evil: 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.
And then, either before or after that nice day, another fine day this grimy psycho kid shows me a messed up sketch he’d made. Presented it like a gift.
Smeared pencil on a piece of lined notebook paper; so many creases where he’d feverishly folded and unfolded the page in sweaty hands it was almost tattered. It was a crude drawing of an underground fort. Dug into the earth next to a tree, in and around its roots. He told me this is where he planned to take me…And so by implication keep me.
Turns out, I used to be the kind of person sociopaths really like. Someone they like to date, marry, and maybe even kidnap. A lot of us are this kind of person because we’re alive and amazing humans, this makes us someone these predators sniff out as delicious prey.
And this doesn’t mean we’re stupid, or a doormat, or codependent. — And don’t even go down the road of thinking you’re a sociopath magnet… The very idea of a sociopath magnet implies it’s the targeted prey who are at fault for the fall down the rabbit hole. So not true.
Wanting a relationship and working for it doesn’t mean we’re codependent. Nice does not equal doormat. Dating a sociopath-con-man does not signify that we’re stupid. It does indicate our natural goodness and view of the world from the heart and eyes of normal. From our normally-wired human brain that bonds as survival.
Sociopaths don’t get far or get much to support their lives out of stupid. Don’t forget, we unwittingly hold up their world; stupid can’t hold up tier own world and another grown person’s too.
Codependent simply does not apply as the case of this criminal hijacking arrangement they set up. It’s more like instant hypnosis, and unless you’ve been in it: Sit down. – That’s what you can all those people who say: Didn’t you know…? Why didn’t you just leave…?
What they do work with, and do a lot with, is our emotions. That’s what they’re after… They don’t care really about which emotion; they just want a normal human one.
Our natural normal response from the world of normal. Our human emotions are based on our ordinary and extraordinary kindness. They want open hearts, people who care, and people who don’t know what a predator is and that these revolting creatures exist… Even in 5th grade.
Sociopaths don’t respond normally to normal things. For example, when something bad happens… like our pet turtle dies, or our cat gets sick, or we lose a family member they remain kind of neutral, almost bored, or say something like, such a pity and go on watching Netflix. Or, throw off a blast of ice-cold freeze out.
Narcissistic predators say things like I don’t have feelings. Or I’m going to teach you a lesson, and they aren’t talking about tennis or playing the piano. Or when we’re deep in it, as I heard one day from the nut case who hijacked me in marriage, I can’t make you do what I want you to, but I can make you wish you had.
Lying deceivers aren’t where they say they’ll be: We run into them when they said they couldn’t come out with us or they’d be somewhere else.
The invader parasite sociopath has a whole world going on that we aren’t in: We come across them out at a club when they said they were staying home – and then they ignore us, or tell us we should be at home. They don’t join us but freeze us out of their night on the town.
Being used by a pathological predator involves being stood up with lame explanations or no explanation. If we’re dating a sociopath they might make a date with us and show up two hours late, or not at all. After that, they’re mad that we’re mad, and madder that we ask about it. And more than one of us has heard the sociopath we’re dating say, don’t question me or if you’d trust me everything would be okay.
Sociopaths busy themselves “dating” us and and about 800 other people at the same time. They keep things close to their vest. They sleep with their phones. Lock their phone. Take their phone into the bathroom. Block us from their Facebook.
Sociopaths who are “dating” often, as in within every single moment of any encounter with a normal human being, overstep the normal social and personal boundaries we all have.
In addition to being deceptive about who they are and about their intention in our lives, sociopaths don’t heed the natural and normal boundaries we have and that we expect others to have.
It’s not uncommon to have a creepy feeling like they’ve been looking through our drawers or catch them looking over our shoulder as we punch in our PIN. There always the quickly shifting and closing of the laptop when we walk into the room.
And, maybe you’ve noticed, predator sociopaths take things. Mysteriously, there’s money missing from our sock drawer, or from that envelope in between the dusty-never-used dictionary and “East of Eden” on the bookshelf. – Especially when they’re gearing up to exit our lives.
When confronted by the impossible the rational mind will grope for the logical.
~ Outlander S1:E1 Sessenach
One day while my new husband was at a meeting, I went out to buy something delicious for his dinner. Surprisingly, I ran into him at my bank’s ATM just around the corner.
He was stunned and trying not to show it. – Caught red-handed more like. – Wary, surprised, and leering, like a cat that thinks it saw something move, but isn’t sure and so waits and watches for it to happen again, ready to pounce; he asked, Are you following me??
Feeling ungrounded, my brain spun and grasped for something that made sense of finding him, of his words, and to make things right because normal humans need that.
My mind sorted the circumstances: He had no personal bank account here, there was only my account recently-turned-joint-account. He was supposed to be in another area of town at a meeting… since an hour ago.
Out of my mouth came a tiny, no. – This was the best answer I could come up with to his very odd question… The most normal response that made me seem not freaked out. I didn’t want him to know that I knew this was very, very weird.
The thing is: Somewhere in my body I was already afraid of this stranger I’d married. He too wanted things to seem okay, so he came into the market next door with me. It felt a lot like that encounter with the sociopath child while I was a child, that day on the playground in 5th grade.
I don’t remember grabbing the grocery items, but I do recall being at the checkout… Where I paid for our groceries while he fiddled with his phone and pretended to reach for his wallet.
Continuing the charade, he came home with me and then left eight minutes later. Truth gathering, observing as if I were a player in a scene revealed him for what he was.
Dating a sociopath was a recurring theme in my life. Emphasis on was. Previously, intermingled with great relationships with real people, I found myself dating a sociopath or about three very briefly; I only married one. — Recovery tip: Find humor wherever you can.
The more we learn about what a sociopath is and how to recognize them, you may realize you’ve known a few. Bleeping onto a sociopath’s radar screen as a potential target doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with us.
It means there’s everything right with us. It means we’re good, kind people who trust and love as natural, gorgeous humans innately do. We have every right to be exactly what and who we are.
We just plain, flat-out didn’t know such beasts existed, there’s no way to conceive of something so beyond normal; sociopaths hide behind this perfectly normal human characteristic of not knowing that evil exists and what it looks like. We can’t know what we don’t know until we know it.
Trust our gut, we’re experts now. We can see a sociopath a mile away. Look them in the eye. They’ll know that we know and it’s so delightful to watch them scurry away like the rats they are.
Really… I did it just yesterday in the mall. Now, we can add knowledge, wisdom, and courage to the mix of our gorgeous selves!
The podcast!
Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
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