We’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.
Post-trauma is rife with too much. Too much to be dealt with. Too much to figure out. Too much to explain. Clear things up for ourselves. Think of it as weeding the garden.
In the post-trauma and even further along in the post-post-trauma we need things streamlined, cleared up, and cleaned out. Make life as simple as possible.
There’s so much to manage. Things that aren’t truly supporting our life and our restoration are simply and truly too much. Dump ’em like sorting out rusty hinges and broken tricycles and tattered stained curtains. Here are some things we can do to weed our garden.
Fearless and free is the opposite of where we land after a sociopath. Long after the loser is gone we might have a lingering fear. This is the opposite of what we want to be, which is: happy as a lark!
Fearless and free is a place we make our way to… Are we still shaking and quaking long after they exit? Our freedom is really, really in our hands. Become fearless and free. And start singing our favorite tune!
There are two reasons why we might still be fearful: one maybe we still know too much about what the nutter is up to at this point in time – the other is not having a handle on what a sociopath really is and what that means – which causes the first.
We can restore our beautiful selves, with a renewed awareness of how amazing we are, new knowledge about life itself and the freedom to be fearless in love.
If we know what he or she is doing, where he is, or who his current main-scam is we know too much. If we know what they’re telling others about us this very week or month… we know way too much – Essentially we’re still in contact. And this means we are not yet fearless or free.
They know when we’ve truly cut them off, and they know when we haven’t. They feel it. Cut them loose completely. In case this has gone unnoticed, we’re the ones who end it, they do not. Only “no contact” stops them and sets us free.
After the masquerade is over, we’re “broken up”, separated, divorced – when the initial shock of ptsd is long past, but we have lingering fear we want to ask ourselves – why?
Though we may not be calling him or texting – if somehow we’re aware of his status and actions – sorry to say but – this constitutes “contact.” We can’t heal or recover while still in contact. This is a roadblock to healing.
For super-duper clarity, read here, What is No Contact? Here’s one tidbit: we’re checking his Facebook page… We’re still in contact, but for a brief period in the aftermath that canned normal for us to do.
How Do We Know What the Nut Job Sociopath is Up To?
Let’s be for real’s here, examining the source of the things we know about his or her doings. Is this info we come across on social media or wherever it might be directly from them… Posted by them? His Facebook? Her Instagram? — If we wanna get better, there comes the day we gotta get a hold of ourselves and get off their social media.
Their Co Called Friends Are Not Our Friends
We also can ask, ourselves, is the source of info about him or her coming from someone we still contact who has contact with him or her?! YIKES. Please consider this… Why are we still in touch with his “friends”?
Even if they were our friends first – sad to say but their trauma and entanglement with the predator means we’re at risk and wide open to the sociopath if we stay in touch with them.
Fearless and Free Includes Closing Every Opening to Them
Sad to say but we really must block them. Remove ourselves from the sociopath’s reach including portholes and windows and doors ajar through our friends who are now ensnared by them, and certainly from all “friends” the pathological user introduced us to. And finally, wherever it’s originating where ever we’re getting the news of his whereabouts – end it.
No Contact is about Freedom and Safety
Block whatever that source is in all our devices, on FB and everywhere. Get a new phone number, block his or her number and the phone number of anyone connected to them.
Sociopaths, and those pathological users some call a narcissist always have to move on, as in leave and change locations, change areas of town and maybe countries. Every scam and love fraud they undertake eventually blows up.Cutting our connection to them weakens their connection to us.
They know when we’ve truly cut them off, and they know when we haven’t. They feel it. Cut them loose completely. In case this has gone unnoticed, we’re the ones who end it, they do not. Only “no contact” stops them and sets us free.
Breaking Up With Evil, Book 1, Caryn: Flat Our Wrong
We’re Our Own Angels
We make the ending of this story… Healing and overcoming lingering fear after a sociopath is very much in our own hands. Find a perspective on the madness that lands things on the right side of “good”.
It’s critical that we begin to take in what a sociopath really is. We can’t allow sentimentality, romanticizing, or misplaced forgiveness to keep us bound to their harm.
Stand up. Take our lives back. Renew. Become whole and better than before. Give this to ourselves. – No one else can. And – we can. We truly are our own saving grace. Decide our lives are valuable enough. Claim them. Be fearless and free.
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.
Our own thoughts during PTSD freak us out. How can we think we’d want someone dead? It’s okay, it is fleeting and fine as long as we aren’t doing any killing.
PTSD after a sociopath is a full and whole body and mind experience. We find ourselves thinking and feeling things we’ve never experienced before. Among the mad and sad we can hardly acknowledge, there are seconds we wish they were d-e-a-d.
PTSD is a tangle of flooding, swirling emotions, and thoughts, and this is one of them. I wish they were just dead.
You don’t have to pretend that you don’t have this feeling if you’ve got it, nor feel guilty for it.
It’s our body is good and mad these life-stealing parasites – and rightly so.
The feeling is within a short phase of recovery, it doesn’t come up all day long in the way other thoughts or memories do and the phase doesn’t last too long. It’s normal. Don’t worry, this sickening thought will soon vanish.
This startling though passing thought, during a certain point in the odyssey of restoring your life which usually hits within in the first months of the recovery from a sociopath con man and the unavoidable PTSD can really freak us out.
This is because we’re normal. So, instead of thinking something is wrong with us for thinking this, rest assured we feel bad for feeling it is reassurance that we’re normal.
This thought comes to almost all our minds and to some of our lips after a sociopath splits the scene and we’re left swirling in a cesspool of lies, deceit, ruin and devastation, shock, and is usually about two months after they’ve gone if we’re moving along, on course in the phases of recovery.
Better Off Dead: Them That Is
We have every right to go through the emotions and the experience of putting our out-of-balance nervous system back together after our life was hijacked by a sociopath con man. Not many people talk about this – you can bet I will.
Images dance through our minds of how: Beaten, chopped up – mostly beaten. We’d kinda like to see them tortured slowly. I even briefly wondered how people hire hitmen.
And instantly knew I’d do no such thing. And if I did I’d be suspect number one: The ex-spouse.
At an odd moment, the thought might run past the viewing screen in your mind that we could maybe hire someone to kill them. That thought and doing something about it are lightyears apart.
We know we can’t; first of all, it’s seriously cost-prohibitive. (Yes, dark humor.) And secondly: We know we won’t do any such thing.
It’s a horrifying idea to feel, but die, sociopath, die are indeed terrible words that float up out of someplace in our body.
And a very normal thought in PTSD after a con man sociopath… Even if you’re calling them a narcopath or narcissist who has torn up our life. This feeling is so normal there’s a name for it: battered women’s syndrome.
Makes inr=e rethink the circumstances under which Lorena Bobbit cut of her sleeping husband’s penis with a kitchen knife in 1993. We all know it now: John Bobbit is a sociopath. Nobody knew or talked about that back then.
We have dreams during which someone – or we – kill them. We picture them being strangled or stoned to death. These life-stealing dirtbags have earned nothing less. Not all sociopaths beat their prey.
But emotional abuse does not go by harmlessly. When discovering we were ensnared by a sociopath; the deception, the mind-f**k, the house of cards. This is more than plenty to make us – naturally, instinctively form a very deep place in our lives – to want them dead during the normal-and-to-be-expected PTSD we go through.
Wishing the Narcissistic Sociopath Would Die is Normal: It’s Part of Healing
While it’s true the sociopath has no conscience, the fact is we do have a conscience. And feelings. And we really would not ever come remotely close to killing the bastard or bastardette. As surprised as we are at this thought… allow it. It’s okay. It’s natural. — This feeling passes quite quickly.
These out-of-character flashing thoughts occur during a brief part of the reaction to the trauma at their hands. It’s got a name. It’s called Battered Person Syndrome. Lorena gave her husband’s penis a whack 20 years ago, June 23, 1993.
Lorena faced court charges and trials and public scrutiny and then it was judged that she was under temporary insanity when she chopped off her hubby’s little, sleepy, dangling thingy with a kitchen knife.
The Trauma of The Hijacking Took Over Lorena Bobbit
Can you picture it? — Did she drop the knife and run when her cheating-beating-husband woke from a dead sleep screaming and spurting blood from his little sausage? Or, rather – from where it used to be? – We know she held onto his penis – later it was sewn back on.
Have questions and want real answers…? Think about recovery sessions.
We Feel Kinda Crazy and Kinda Guilty
If we’re smirking and enjoying this scenario does this make us cold and heartless?? No. It means we’re alive, and thank goodness we have a sense of humor.
Temporary insanity… For some of us, on some days, it feels like we might be losing our minds… But, really you’re going to be okay. Let’s open our hearts toward ourselves. Think of how you were genuine, sincere, and doing what normal people do. That’s all good.
What We Believe Makes Our Lives
And John Bobbit came out okay. He even got to star in a couple adult movies; all due to his hacked-off, patched-up penis. Yes, irony. Humor heals.
Be careful what you believe about your experience. Anything telling you it’s your fault is flat-out wrong. If the answers you find make more pain and confusion rather than a shock but a feeling in your gut of truth and resolution: Keep looking. There are real answers.
Go Beyond Answers or Explanations That Point to Fault in You
Seek out an accurate perspective on what these soul-jackings are. (Yes, that perspective is all over this website.) These are crimes. We were not in relationships and likely, neither was Lorena Bobbit.
Did you see that Bobbit guy’s photo? The face of a sociopath if there ever was one. John Bobbit has a criminal record before Lorena, during, and after Lorena for violence against women.
Know the Real Deal: Be Free
We want to refocus and look at it for what it was, a crime. The sociopath has a simplistic, myopic mind. They only care about two things: 1) getting what they want, and 2) not getting caught.
All the emotional upheaval we go through is the fallout of the way they bulldoze through countless targets’ worlds with their permanent view of life, which is: “I am better than everyone. I deserve whatever I want. I will take it. You will be grateful. You will shut up.”
Sociopaths believe they are fantastic. We know they’re monsters, and that we are not. So, no… No matter the dark surprising thoughts that rise up in a phase of the recovery. We won’t go around killing anyone.
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control by Jennifer Smith
We’re going to look toward rebuilding our lives and using the madness to hopefully, ideally create something of value for ourselves and our loved ones. Within Nichiren Buddhism this is called: turning karma into mission. Transform the icky karma of meeting Mr. Poopy-pants into value – Lorena did it.
Lorena started an organization, called Lorena’s Red Wagon, that helps victims of domestic abuse with profoundly simple and equally significant things – like providing birthday cakes for the children of victims who have escaped, but are say, maybe in a shelter. I officially love Lorena Bobbit.
Our actions in challenging our destiny become examples and inspiration for countless others… When we change our karma into mission, we transform our destiny from playing a negative role to a positive one… Therefore those who keep advancing, while regarding everything as part of their mission proceed toward the goal of transforming their destiny. ~ Daisaku Ikeda, Living Buddhism, August 2003
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.
Trauma bonding is a normal stress response. Our instinctive human bonding is another normal human function sociopaths hijack for their own use. Lets take back our lives.
Bonding is part of humanity. It’s human at its essence. In times of stress or crisis bonding happens naturally. We see it within families, we see it within countries and groups. Bonding while in trauma is a built-in mechanism to bring us connection with those we love for new-found resilience and strength to handle the crisis.
This marvelous lifesaving mechanism to bond more deeply in times of attack, danger, or trouble occurs even when the one we love is the source of the crisis.
Traumatic bonding isn’t a weakness in our soul. It’s innate, normal and something we can’t not do as healthy human beings. And when we’re ensnared by one of these creatures, we’re under a sticky hypnotic kinda spell holding us in like quicksand. Hanging in is normal.
In the chaos of life with a sociopath, we bond with them because we feel we love them and are in a relationship with them. This is natural.
The bottom of our world drops. The love of your life is a beast from hell. Your stomach lurches, your heart pounds, you choke on your own breath. Adrenaline floods your brain.
The discovery that we were a criminal fraudster’s mark knocks our world out of place, the floor under our feet drops away. The dawning revelation that there is no love and that in fact, we’re in danger with this person and because of this person is like an awakening from a nightmare to find it’s alive and real.
It brings vertigo and laser clarity in equal measure. In one moment we go from the struggle of trying to align an out-of-sync relationship to the blinding truth that there wasn’t one. Nothing is what we thought it was.
The Spell Breaks
In this one crazy single moment for me, I also realized I’d been living at least two worlds all along and that moment the spell broke those two worlds each became more sharply delineated, and yet full still of mud at the same time. The best part was, I’d snapped the ropes that bound me to him. There was much more unwinding to do, but nothing would take away this new insight into this mess.
There’s nothing wrong with us. We are not broken…and believe me, I know you might feel broken. I did. What we are is richly, fully, amazingly human. This is our saving grace. how you’re feeling is not the new you. It isn’t permanent.
Yes, before the mask completely falls we know things aren’t great – but not in our wildest imagination can we or anyone else yet comprehend the reality we face a seeming meastro of deceit and destruction wearing the skin and clothing of a person we thought was the love of our life.
Courage and connection is found in the alchemy of this life and death traumatic stress in the aftermath of a sociopath. – A stronger, bigger better heart.
Terror floods our veins. Danger stands before us wearing the same shoes that troubled-love stood there wearing only a split second ago. Our heart races. Our mind spins.
We fall into a chasm of terror or lift ourselves to a new life. The stress of seeing the sociopath behind the mask, the narcissist without his fake persona is profound stress.
Trauma Stress and Regular Old Stress Makin’ Folks Sick
We’ve all heard – and have experienced – that stress makes us sick, as in ill from annoying colds to heart attacks. Stress has been something to avoid.
During even one year of lots of stress, a leading health psychologist, Dr. Kelly McGonigal tells us, studies show that stress gives a 43% increased risk of edging us toward our demise – but – that’s old news! Now they know – drum roll: This is the result only if we believe stress is harmful. – Remember, they used to believe the earth was flat?
What if we can make stress help us? There’s a new take on stress. Stress is now known as the “biology of courage.” Trauma bonding and the trauma of life or living with a sociopath is our path to amazingness. It’s one of the cool things about being human.
The rush of blood and adrenaline, the rapid heart rate – the other chemicals made by our bodies under stress – will, rather than defeat us, save our lives.
Stress and Trauma Cause Us to Bond
Stress gives us access to our hearts. The stress of trauma gives us the instinct to reach out to others who love us and — to support those in stress. This connecting factor saves us and brings health and longevity.
Stress – even stress from a monster attack – is our friend. It isn’t the enemy as we’ve been taught; stress isn’t the road to the common cold, but the pathway to more compassion for ourselves and anyone in need of support.
Our pounding heart is preparing us for action, pumping energy into our bloodstream. The increased breathing is getting oxygen to our brains for precise body function.
When we think of the stress response as on our side rather than something that makes us sick we relax into it and biochemically within our body, the reaction is “like that in moments of joy and courage”.
Courage and connection are found in the alchemy of this life and post-traumatic stress in the aftermath of a sociopath. – A stronger, bigger better heart.
There is a simple hypothesis about what steers the human brain to trust another human: a hormone called oxytocin….our behavior is also influenced by a large number of very complex, yet identifiable, biological processes. Future research should help us understand how cognitive and biological processes interact in shaping our decisions about whom to trust.
Stress makes us social – the chemical reaction in the body from stress makes us reach out to those we love and simultaneously causes us to fight for those we love. That famous hormone: Oxytocin is a neuro-hormone created in the pituitary gland shooting magic sauce through the body when under stress that has a special, purposeful function.
As Dr. McGonigal says, it “fine-tunes our social instincts.” This chemical rush primes us to do things that strengthen close relationships. Stress makes us more willing to help and support people we care about.
Pathological Users Hijack Every Natural Part of Normal Humans
There’s a built-in mechanism within our bodies; a natural response to handling stress that leads us to make a deeper connection. Yes, a deeper bond with the person we’re going through the trauma with. When we’re in this mess entangled by a sociopath and the anxiety and chaos mount, we bond with them. That’s normal.
The thing is, we don’t yet know they’re abnormal. This bonding is called trauma bonding, and then, in this case, our normal human bonding mechanism is seen by “experts” as a weakness or a fault. – Our normal bonding in chaos and trauma is yet another human function the sociopath turns to their advantage.
Initially, the chaos the sociopath whips up in our relationship bonds us to them because of the flood of oxytocin we didn’t even know our body was shooting out.
Trauma Sustained Over Time
The more havoc and imbalance the sociopath makes, the more our body’s involuntary protective stress reaction makes us reach out to them because at least at that moment, we still love them.
Because that’s how humans function biologically, and so we believe them. And so we fight for them, and for us as a couple. – Until we don’t. Until they do something so horrific our body recognizes them for what they are: the enemy from hades. Then things really heat up.
When we see through the sociopath use that fight-or-flight rush of oxytocin for us. Run to the real true love of family and long-time friends. Embrace our own lives. Stress can create resilience and joy.
Trust yourself; we can handle the challenge of the stress in the aftermath of a sociopath – the ability to do this is built into our body – and even our body knows we don’t have to face it alone. Connect with others who don’t judge, and can listen in the aftermath of a sociopath to anchor ourselves to human goodness.
Dr. Kelly McGonigal on Stress as Fuel for Renewal
There’s more. Introducing, Dr. Kelly McGonigal, TED Talk. Listen to the doctor, she explains it much better than I do.
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.
After the sociopath, we’re left with many things. Mostly super icky things. We need to find the good after the sociopath walks out.
After the sociopath walks out we’re each left with a basket of garbage and rubble we need to turn to great good for ourselves.
We might be left with some good things we can spot right off the bat; definitely, we’re left with some not-so-good things that require persistent and courageous attention.One of those such things that I haven’t gotten a grip on yet is fat.
I’m not a woman who strives for Skinny-Minnie. The opposite: the idea of being too thin freaks me out. Seeing so many size-two and under tiny, little boyish-waifs who refuse to eat pasta, bread, French fries, cheese – no nuts unless they’re raw, organic almonds. It’s exhausting.
Certainly, they eat no butter, bananas (too much sugar content), or heaven forbid – ice cream – at least not in public, I can’t handle that. Ice cream…? Who doesn’t need ice cream once in a while?
Find the way back to you. Get them out of your bones.
Rapid and scary weight loss is part of the ride out of hell after a sociopath. First I dropped two clothing sizes practically overnight after the monster checked out. Then gained those and two more.
Yes, count ‘em, that’s an upswing of four clothing sizes. Yikes, so I’m carrying around an extra two-sizes of behind. Let’s say two and a half. I don’t know my weight in numbers; I don’t have a scale. I find them brutally demeaning. I weigh heavy, meaning I can carry more weight than I look like I do.
PTSD and Sustained Trauma Make Us Ill
Many of us are left with our health torn apart after the sociopath walks out. Do what works. Bit by bit life gets better after the sociopath walks out.
I also battled being sick a lot after the sociopath, so there were days – weeks at a time that I skipped exercise because of migraines, outbreaks on my hands of blisters that bloom with stress, or a cold, which I started getting every three to four months v.s. once in three to four years pre-sociopath.
The Return to Exercise and Health
As chub-lade and sluggish as I am, I barely make it through a yoga class. I tried. The teacher kept singling me out to ask if I was alright, as my belly fat blocked me from bending and gyrating myself into a crescent side twist. Under her yoga-perfect scrutiny, my size grew alarmingly.
My now super-huge thighs and extra-fat feeling knees left me unable to rest in child’s pose. At every solicitous query into my okay-ness I wanted to knock her in the head. Or scream, No. I’m not okay. I’m fat! – And out of breath. And nearly collapsing to the floor.
Heavy and Lumpy
After the yoga class humbling, I tried walking for exercise outdoors. Embarrassingly, I feel too fat to walk! There’s a rolling sensation from ample ass and back-side through my hips and groin and thighs rendering a rhythmic, lumpy duck waddle.
It’s disheartening living in stretchy jeans (in a size I abhor) and long-sleeved tee-shirts in a world where women wear skinny jeans and tiny body-skimming tops that show their exercised and tanned arms and short or long sundresses – called town gowns – year-round.
Fatty-Fatty Two by Four
And sometimes, alone, at home where no one can see me, I think I’m still beautiful and wonder why it matters. Then someone asks me to go to a concert or a show – and I say, “No.” – Because I truly have nothing to wear.
I’ll not buy a little black dress to cover this. It would look so bad to my eye that I would crumple and cry before I got out the door. And heels make the impression of a huge, lumpy olive on top of a spindly toothpick. Horrible aesthetics. Sigh.
The Bright Side
I console myself that I have nice feet and a good pedicure in year-round sandal country. Killer hair too. Sorry to be so superficial, but every bit counts right now. But, neither of those are health risks.
I know, I know, we might say all of this is ego, or superficial. Maybe. But I feel it all in quiet agony. And – the thing is – I feel my body freezing up; I used to do all this close-to-impressively-advanced yoga, and walk, and feel like a dancer, a swan – able, competent.
Health Matters Most
What if the roots of some serious illnesses are developing here? High blood pressure and high cholesterol or heart disease or diabetes. Surely it’s best to lose weight. But… dieting? It makes me nervous. It makes me eat… more.
So on a significant day for me, I took myself in hand. December 4th marks the day I began practicing the Buddhism I practice with SGI… something to celebrate.
But, on this year when December 4th came around, I was bedridden with a cold; it looked like a dismal day of defeat. I decided this would not be the case. I vowed that despite outward appearances, despite not feeling like moving, I decided today would be the day I became an athlete.
A yoga-lete, I coined the name – unless that already exists somewhere out there – because I want to live my life doing yoga and walk-jogging and hiking. So, that day I got myself together. I’ve heard so many times that you can “walk yourself fit”. So. Here I go. I will let nothing stop me. Start where I am and walk it off. Grateful for moving.
I went for a 30-minute walk in the neighborhood avoiding people. I ignored my rolling rear-end. At a mid-height garden wall, I lifted my legs and used it to stretch. I said, “I’m an athlete; a yoga-lete.
This is the first day of being an athlete.” The following day I said, “This is day two of being an athlete; a yoga-lete!” – and did some stretches. I felt good keeping my word to myself and said, “It may not look like it, but I’m a yoga-lete.”
The next morning, I woke up smiling. Looking forward to how cool it’ll be to see my tummy shrink back into its proper place.
On that day – Day three – I went for a 30-minute walk, more vigorous, though nothing truly athletic, but outside, where people could see me. I passed The Peninsula Club on South Santa Monica Blvd, and witnessed a man and woman climbing out of a Ferrari. He lifted her with a hand leveraged in his.
He looked typical Beverly Hills with jeans, a Kitson-perfect tee-shirt, and the right hat and sunglasses. She looked ridiculous-ish. She was über slender, short, as is the norm here in HollywoodLand, but made tallish in extreme platform heels of 5 inches giving her feet the flexibility of a horse hoof.
She wore all black. A short black dress, her black hair in a meticulous up-do. Dark, updated, Breakfast at Tiffany’s sunglasses, and because it’s winter in Beverly Hills – a black fluffy wrap held close around herself, clutched in her hands in front of her rail-thin body.
As we can all now recognize a sociopath when we see one – we can read people in general. The “read” evoked involuntary laughter – after she walked by. She had her head held as if in mockery of a high fashion model’s fish lip, sunken cheek haughtiness as if to telegraph “I’m so beautiful.”
Vapid, empty, like a cutout paper-doll. She took it all so seriously walking the same attitude; one foot placed directly in the path of the previous step, the far-apart, inner edges of her thighs only striving to meet.
She rolled forward in awkward rotation, roiling from her hips and back-side as I did! – So. Wow. I walk like a faux-fashion model without even trying!
Day 4. I did a two-mile walk exercise video with closing yoga stretches in my apartment hosted by Leslie Sansone. I even broke a sweat. I’m an athlete. I’m a yoga-lete. I’m a fashion model, yoga-lete walkin’ It off after the sociopath walks out. We’re pretty awesome…
And, you know what? Now neuroscientists have proof: diets don’t work. Eat intuitively. Live intuitively. Trust out lives. Here’s a TED Talk about this…
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.
PTSD is most definitely a thing. After narcissistic abuse, we have it. Our friends don’t understand. Maybe we don’t, but: we’re not really broken.
PTSD stands for post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD isn’t permanent. It might surprise some of us that the range of swinging emotions, and thoughts we’re going through is PTSD.
It may surprise our family or friends to realize that the pain, the terror, all the weeping is post-traumatic stress. We’re swinging through a jungle of cognitive dissonance, shock, and more shock.
We’re hard at work grabbing at answers, trying to make sense of what happened, though, for all they can see, we’ve been slumped in a corner in tears. Many of us feel broken. Rest assured, you are not.
PTSD is a thing after a sociopath or a narcissistic abuser. What we’re feeling is normal, unavoidable, not permanent and there are hope and healing. It wouldn’t be normal to not feel this way. It’s the residual and the aftermath of being spellbound.
Everything We Feel Is Normal: We Are Not Forever Broken
I remember – after he was gone, at some point early in restoring my life, I looked in the bathroom mirror… the word “broken” floated up to my mind. Broken. I’m broken, is what I said in my head. I’d never been broken before. Never knew that was a way people could feel. It made sense though.
In the aftermath of nearly getting into a head-on collision, our emotions kick in and keep swirling. Now here’s what happens when humans have emotions: As we feel all these emotions, the emotions turn to thoughts.
Here’s the thing, any time spent around a sociopath is traumatic. So, after they leave, we’re going to go through feelings that are more than uncomfortable. These feelings and thoughts are our body attempting to heal, they are not the new us.
These intense and so often conflicting thoughts, emotions, and despair are the beginning of healing – the key is to find the way to use these for healing rather than be seen as a pile of disorders. This is not the end of our life as it used to be before we met them.
Breaking Up With Evil
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared, hauled through the confusion, lies, fear and pain and to breaking away.
True crime. Told in their own words with nothing unsaid. Find validation, and see new glimpses of truth as these five women share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.
We’re Really Going to be Okay: PTSD is Not Permanent
So many people around us tell us to: Move on. Or, Get over it. We try to do that, but somehow instead we can’t sleep, have lost weight, feel like we’ll never trust again and a whole bunch of other not great feelings, worries and fears, and health issues to boot.
There’s high or elevated blood pressure, weight gain, weight loss, headaches, and much more that might visit us in the aftermath, along with coping habits we’d rather not keep.
Memories of this creep won’t stop. We’re so worn out of thinking about this loser, yet we can’t not think about this loser. – That’s normal. And it’s because we need answers to what the heck happened.
PTSD and CPTSD are Part of Healing: The Beginning of Healing
Imagine we just got hit by a freight train, a bus, or a piano just fell on our toes; no one just gets up and walks away from that without needing to recover.
Here’s a tiny example of what PTSD is, think of this: Have you ever almost been in a car accident? Driving along normally and suddenly, there’s almost a smash-up? Then you keep driving but tingles run through your hands, and they shake on the steering wheel, palms sweating, breathing shallow.
“Post-trauma is normal. It’s the normal human reaction to the trauma of this particular sustained influence and entrapment by person of ASP – antisocial personality disorder. We couldn’t be expected to have any other response. In fact, this response is where healing begins. It’s a cluster of simultaneous feelings and physical reactions and responses from the body, mind and heart. If you think of it in the way that the flu is a cluster of symptoms you can see this isn’t the new “us”, but a passing situation. We’re still there. The determination to pull our real self back through this fog, and the time and insight into how to tame these post trauma reactions and emotions, to understand them, to manage them and heal them are all we need. For whatever reason, I did this instinctively and now I help others do it.“ ~ Jennifer Smith
Post Trauma Feels Worse than the Traumatic Event
When you consider it, this was a raid, a home invasion, a breaking and entering through our hearts. This wasn’t a relationship, it was a crime. Please, keep in mind: No one robs an empty house. We are awesome.
Driving along because traffic lights are green, and we have somewhere to be, we try to act normally; we try to have normal control of our body and the car, and our mind. But our heart pounds, our blood rushes, and images of what just happened run on a loop in our minds. Which is only partly there and is off on its own someplace kind of floaty and yet we feel sharply aware at the same time.
Then, in the aftermath of nearly getting into a head-on collision, our emotions kick in and keep swirling. Now here’s what happens when humans have emotions: As we feel all these emotions, the emotions turn to thoughts.
This concept of “our part” in it could only possibly apply if these had been relationships. We owe it to ourselves to give this idea some thought before swallowing it whole.
We start forming ideas and thoughts that make words in our heads. Then those words, those thoughts: become beliefs. Beliefs about what just happened. Why, how, who’s a fault it was… And, significantly, these ideas and thoughts and beliefs in our head are pulled from and formed in conjunction with things we already “know” and “believe” about life and about ourselves.
Healing and Calming the PTSD Takes Time and Discoveries That Are Unsettling
Hearing the word “sociopath” or similar is only the beginning. That’s when recovery can begin. After the trauma of this whole event, one we could think of as a hijacking, our emotions and thoughts are all over the place because the trauma deregulates our nervous system. If we take in the effective methods of re-regulating our nervous system and other specific insights, we can fully recover.
Feelings Become Thoughts Become Beliefs: We Can Decide What We Think and Believe
For example, from the feeling of fear, our brains might make the thought such as, “Wow, what an idiot that driver is!” Or maybe, “I almost hit that guy! What’s wrong with me?!“
The emotional soup in the midst of the post-trauma takes us to a conclusion or belief about what happened and about ourselves. We might likely conclude it was our fault, and we just did something stupid. At the same time in another part of our mind, we wonder what our mom would say about our (bad) driving.
Or what would have happened if our child had been in the car with us? We consider the reactions or judgments of people who aren’t present but matter to us. We automatically think of worse things that could have happened.
We Know Somethings Wrong But We Don’t Know What: This is Normal
In the case of leaving one of these “relationships”, though we aren’t sure exactly what just happened as we walk and run and get away any way we can from a pathological user, for most of us, our natural first thoughts are related to taking responsibility for what happened.
We’re usually really hard on ourselves when things go wrong in life. We worry about what could have happened (but didn’t) and think about what we should have done instead of whatever it was we just did.
All this is going on while we’re aware we need to refocus on driving… so this won’t happen again. Sound familiar…?
This is what post-trauma is. This new emotional soup and confusion aren’t who we are. It’s the body’s natural delay from the traumatic event into healing. It’s a kind of debriefing. We take in and review the trauma so that we can feel safe again, and skip another such close call in the future.
We Decide to Recover: We Chose How Fully We Recover
It’s up to us, in this case with a con man to learn how to manage this natural mental and emotional “debriefing”, that is the post-trauma so that we come out whole, healed, and with every answer to what happened. And, the good news is, the answers are here.
The thing is, any time spent with a con man, a sociopath, is traumatic, we sustain a prolonged traumatic injury. Then we go through post-trauma afterward. This is unavoidable. We decide what winning is for our life in the aftermath, and post-trauma. We decide what’s next. Post-trauma isn’t the new us.
There’s So Much Going On at Once
Post-traumatic feelings and thoughts and the whole schemer is the unavoidable fallout and aftermath of time spent with a sociopath. We aren’t permanently broken. This is temporary. – returning to normal and even better is a deliberate consistent effort that sometimes looks from the outside like nothing other than laying on the couch.
PTSD is the normal result of trauma, and we can recover. There are specific, effective methods and perspectives that heal PTSD after a sociopath, what many may be called a narcissist.
Hearing the word “sociopath” is only the beginning. That’s when recovery can begin. After the trauma of a hijacking by a sociopath, our emotions and thinking are all over the place because the trauma deregulates our nervous system. If we take in the effective methods of re-regulating our nervous system and other specific insights, we can fully recover.
We’ll feel some or all of the following things in PTSD after this ride in hell: profound fear, self-doubt, lowered trust, suspect people and situations, weepiness, physical weakness, apathy, confusion, indecision, depression.
Also an inability to concentrate on daily things like laundry or food, our minds will be flooded with replays of conversations and things that went on. This is all normal. The replays wind down, the confusion abates, the indecision clears as we get real answers. – If the answers you’re finding aren’t helping; keep looking
PTSD is a Cluster, a Package of Feelings and Symptoms
There’s extreme and sudden weight loss or weight gain. Sleep patterns are all over the place. We might sleep in the day, but unable to sleep at night, waking in the early morning and not being able to sleep again, can’t sleep at all or sleep all the time. You might be having nightmares.
Post-trauma can include fear of going places that hold memories related to them. Terrorizing recall of scenarios with them. Confusion, indecision, and doubt. Emphatic desire to leave, move, change jobs, or make a drastic change… it affects our body and mind. We might miss them so much or feel like we could die. We feel broken. – As heavy and numb and broken as you feel, none of this is permanent.
In PTSD we’re in shock, scared to death, sad, confused, wanting to die, crying all the time. We feel alone, or want to isolate ourselves. There’s a heavy feeling in our bones and hearts; it’s overwhelming and the word “stress” doesn’t begin to describe it.
We’re grief-stricken and wondering why this happened. Feelings that it’s our fault haunt us as we also wonder if we’ll ever smile again, or ever love again.
We wonder how to get from broken to normal. There’s no other way a person can feel after a collision and entanglement with a sociopath. This is the only possibility when we’re ensnared by one of these people – a conman, a sociopath – and experience the inevitable and profound clash with our emotional way of life.
Patience and self-love are necessary. Spending time only with those who truly love us is a part of the cure. Establishing and keeping no contact with the con artist who hijacked our lives is essential. There is without a doubt hope after a sociopath doubtor a narcissist.
There’s Nothing Wrong with Us: There’s Everything Right with Us
Hearing the word “sociopath” or similar is only the beginning. That’s when recovery can begin. After the trauma of this whole event, one we could think of as a hijacking, our emotions and thoughts are all over the place.
The inevitable and unavoidable post trauma has set up camp in our lives. The good news is: this is not the new us. How we’re feeling is normal; normal and not permanent.
This is because trauma deregulates our nervous system. So that we’re basically thinking and feeling scary things most of the day. If we take in the effective methods of re-regulating our nervous system and other specific insights, we can fully recover.
We can recover, we do heal when we find answers. One of the most important things we can do is find a way to gradually realize that, though this happened in our lives, to us, this wasn’t personal. Love, affection, and then betrayal had nothing to do with it. It looked like love, but it wasn’t.
It Really Isn’t Us: It Really Is Them
Many definitions of this phenomenon out there will try to tell us it happened because we’re codependent or we need to look at our “part in it”. This concept of “our part” in it could only possibly apply if these had been relationships.
We owe it to ourselves to give this idea some thought before swallowing it whole. It’s time to trust our gut and to give the benefit of the doubt to ourselves.
When you consider it, this was a raid, a home invasion, a breaking and entering through our hearts. This wasn’t a relationship, if anything it was a crime. Please, keep in mind: No one robs an empty house. You are awesome.
It is not how you compare to others that is important, but rather how you compare to who you were yesterday. If you’ve advanced even one step, then you’ve achieved something great. ~ Daisaku Ikeda
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.
Whether you call them a “narcissist”, sociopath, predator, or plain jerk, they reveal their truly malevolent hearts when they break up with us.
How sociopaths break up with us can be just as confusing as the time spent “with” them. The breakup can be abrupt or long and slow. There’s a period where it can feel almost like they’re coaxing us or almost daring us to break up. A breakup is usually littered with threats, sarcasm, and smirks.
Sociopaths break up in text messages, FB messages, and other times without a word. In some scenrrios, when sociopaths break up is, that they go to the store and never come back. We’re left wondering, “Where did all the love go?”
It can happen in a mundane moment, our phone pings with a text: I’m done. Or we walk in the door and find their things are gone. (Yes, also the dirtbag you’re calling a “narcissist”.)
The break up happens regularly, routinely. What you’re going through dpesn’t phase them and they’ve done this a thousand times before.
And most painfully, the break up comes with name-calling, accusations and preposterous smear campaiging. – Because these aren’t really break-ups. What has happened here is, the sociopath has failed and is bailing. And now they need ot be sure the coast is clear to exit.
What’s Going On When a Sociopath Breaks Up With Us?
Sociopaths break up with us and we’re wondering what about all the promises? The sacrifices? What about the good times and the moments when they held us and laughed with us?!
How could they leave when we had so much in common, we wanted the same things! There was never such love! Everything and every part of us went into this relationship, we never loved so hard.
We gave it our all, we gave, and gave, and gave – just as they hoped we would. And they took. The more we gave the more they took, or the more they took the more we gave. Sociopaths “break up” with us because they’re done. And, When they’re “done”, when they bail, they need of all things, to make sure they’re safe.
If this article makes lightbulbs go off, think about recovery coaching sessions.
We only think it’s a break-up because we think we’re in a relationship. What we’re in is a true love scam with a con artist. Sociopaths, psychopaths – narcissists – use everyone in their lives… And yes, could be also those people you might be referring to as a narcissist.
This may be the first time a sociopath broke up with us but, they’ve done this a million-zillion times. Every predator knows the end of the run will come.
There will be the day we see too much, there will be the moment our bank account is empty, the day will arrive when newer, fresher more plump prey is lined up for the take-and-use.
It’s Critical for Healing That We Take In What Truly Happened
Let’s look at it for what it is: we were a resource not a partner in a relationship. The sociopath invaded our life to support their own.
They used us either as a piece of their public persona of respectability or as a ticket to a nice car, a cool place to live, a place to hide out, for food, laundry services, and the internet.
We’re not responsible for their inhumanity. We’re allowed to be exactly as we are.
Sociopaths, “Narcissists” Know the Fake-lationship Will End
When sociopaths break up with us, they’re not breaking up so much as bailing – because they failed. They’re leaving when we’ve seen too much when we’re pushing too hard with expectations and dragging them to therapists and pushing for answers.
In their minds we’ve become too annoying, we’re seeing too much. Think of it like in their minds, the candy store is going out of business. Or the bank is closing before they can make all the withdrawals they want to make.
What they get in the way of a mask and a halloas…a gateway to whatever they want. These jokers didn’t value us from the beginning aside from our value as an ATM. They’re just done. Plus, they know we’re getting close to catching on to what they really are, so they “break up” with us. Becaseu, they have, in fact, failed and so they must bail.
They prepare for the end, they expect the end. All along the way, they talk trash about us this isn’t something they do only at the end of it all. Along the way, it’s the setup for the end in which they need to look good, and so that we look bad once they bail.
They Tell Others We’re Evil, Crazy, Liars
Oh, they all, and I mean all, talk about us to make us look crazy and themselves look “innocent”; the trash-talking contributes, it’s called the smear campaign at the end, but rest assured it’s happening from day one.
Instead of giving them extra ammunition, to protect ourselves stay silent. This keeps our words from coming back to haunt us. These parasitic nut-bags tend to “re-purpose” our sincere and genuine pain for their gain.
Sociopaths Use Our Confusion to Their Advantage
They show our heartbroken, confused, and even angry text messages around to mutual friends… or post them on Facebook.
You know the messages I mean, these kinds of messages from us: “What are you saying? I don’t understand! What about next Friday, my parents are in town?! I love youuuuu!” – These end up reinterpreted on Facebook in posts to make their emphatic claim, “She’s crazy.” hold weight.
Seek Answers That Stop The Room From Spinning
Some of the people they try to convince we’re “crazy”will be people who hardly know them. These people won’t give what they say about us a second thought.
Most who hear the sociopath who broke up with us yammer on about how bad we were will have no desire to be caught in the strange heat of the whirlwind caused by sociopaths bellowing. You’re going to lose friends. There’s much loss in this madness. Find resolution to every loss.
The Loss of Friends and Family from Our Lives is Real
There will, unfortunately, be those who believe every word they say about us. As painful as this is, remember, these people are wrapped up in and blinded by the sociopath’s charms, remember when we were under his spell?
Sooner than later, those poor souls will have their own recovery to do when he leaves them holding whatever bag of loss he made in their lives.
Healing PTSD After a “Narc” or Sociopath Invasion is Possible
As soon as they go we are thrown into post-trauma because our time with them was traumatic. We’ll begin the suffering ride through post-traumatic stress. PTSD after a sociopath is no joke. – It is real. It is brutal. It is horrific, despairing, and gut-wrenching with a vat of utter aloneness and self-doubt on the side.
You know what? – For all that, PTSD after a monster is no match for us as the amazing, strong, loving women and men that we are. We are Super Heroes. We’re our own Angels. Blossom, expand our lives, embrace ourselves. Overcome the trauma and live fully in our greatness, as stellar human beings with colossal hearts.
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
Hope is inherent in life itself. Yes. This they cannot steal.
The horror show of entanglement and entrapment in coercive control by a sociopath or what some call a narcissist is beyond words. Only those who’ve been in it and have come out the other side can begin to understand it.
The thing we need to come out and fully recover is hope. What is hope? It’s the saving grace, the inherent love we feel for life itself. It’s there inside us. We find a way to latch on and keep holding and pull ourselves up from hell.
“Hope is an optimistic attitude of mind based on an expectation of positive outcomes related to events and circumstances in one’s life or the world at large. Its definitions include: expect with confidence and to cherish a desire with anticipation. Among its opposites are dejection, hopelessness and despair.” ~ Wikipedia
What we go through as the target of narcissistic abuse as the prey of a sociopath is indescribable to those who haven’t been through it.
This hijacking, life invasion trauma leaves singular effects. We’re terrorized, left with emotional devastation, loads of sorrow, and unanswered questions. We are the ones pulling children back together from exposure to the tactics of monsters who only pretended to love them and often directly abused them.
We mourn their innocence and the betrayal of our own hearts; sorrow lays heavy in our bones. Where is the hope after a sociopath or a narcissist? How do we pull ourselves from the quicksand of coercive control?
Hope Within the Darker Moments
Where do we find hope in the middle of despair? Depression and despair seem constant companions. We wake with them, sleep with them. How is there hope after a sociopath or a narcissist?
Post-traumatic stress keeps us in fight or flight. New challenges facing court and restraining orders and child custody battles keep us in ongoing shock. How, how, how is there hope after a sociopath or a narcissist?!
Hope After a Narcissistic Sociopath
Hope after a sociopath or a narcissist is harder to envision when he or she may have turned our own family against us. They may not understand what we’re going through. They may be mesmerized by him/her. Our friends may have become his friends as they are influenced by the games of the socialized psychopath. We may feel entirely alone.
“No matter how hopeless or bleak things appear, the moment always comes when suddenly our spirit revives, and hope is reborn. That is why we must never give up.” ~ Dr. Daisaku Ikeda
Five Tips to Finding Hope After a Sociopath: Some People Call Them Narcissists
Turn self-blame to the place it belongs: On them, the user.
Accept they were not real, that they will not change.
Mark the one boundary that matters: Go zero contact.
Find your reason for being.
Move forward and fly.
We were recognizing and turning away from self-blame. There’s nothing we could have done differently. It was not our fault. We were targeted for our kindness, loyalty, warmth, magnanimity, faithful nature, respectability, and loving hearts. Loving is not a crime. Defrauding is. We were hijacked and robbed.
Understand What a Sociopath Is Or Risk Falling Again
Accept they were not who or what we thought; they will not change. They are wired differently. change. A sociopath does not have the capacity to love or care for anyone. On the other hand, a narcissist may love in their way, but their way causes great damage.
For our own well-being, we want to sweep away confusion. We want things clear; in simple terms for our discovery and recovery for these experiences narcissist and a sociopath represent two different things. We’re not diagnosing. We’re looking at it for what goes on.
They will not change. With them, there’s no fair discussion, no apology, no remorse. This was not a relationship. There is no healthy resolution other than creating our own life without them – beyond them.
Post Trauma Stress is There After a Narcissistic Sociopath
We are left in post-traumatic stress which includes a state of hopelessness. But within that dark realm there is a light to reach toward. Here’s an easy test for PTSD; take it now and later, or periodically, maybe at three-month intervals.
It’s encouraging to move from scoring in the highest segment of indicators for PTSD after a sociopath to living entirely free of PTSD. We do finally land in the category of those who know, those who have won, those who are free and healthy but can help others because of our journey. We’re on this earth to help others. This is love. This is joy.
Mark Our Territory: Stand Up For Our Lives
No contact is essential. No joking around. We make zero contact happen – they do not. Establishing no contact is of primary importance. It’s simple — if there is no contact, there’s no way for them to grab our emotions and use them to get things they want or bring us pain; no more defrauding.
If there’s no contact there’s no control, except our own. We’re in charge. As each day and each week and each month passes we see the episode with clearer eyes.
We see the monster behind the mask. This sets us free, and in some moments, makes us feel discouraged. For this reason, we must stop self-blame. There’s nothing we could have done differently. We were chosen because we are awesome. Stay awesome.
Find our reason for being. A golden rope to pull us up and out. Keep pulling no matter what. Love scam recovery comes in stages. Use patience, self-love, and kindness with ourselves.
Hope After a Narcissist Especially When They’re Really a Sociopath
Move forward and fly. Each day, every hour. Sometimes minute by minute. We don’t need to have the solution, and the fix, and the answer and have it all resolved at once. Take each bit— bit by bit. We don’t need all the answers today. Only one.
We’ll feel the moment when suddenly our spirit revives, and hope is reborn. Look for it. Find it. Expect – demand – positive outcomes, expect with confidence and cherish a desire with anticipation. The desire to be free. To laugh again, and see the future as a bright open space — a place we welcome.
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.
Recovery from a con man. We’re gob-smacked by the discovery our significant other is a human-soul-ransacking, life-sucking, parasitic-destroyer.
Recover from a con man…? Wow. I mean…how did this become something we need to know about? This discovery that these shape-shifting beasts of evil exist is nothing we’d ever have imagined for our lives.
For many, the idea that someone would lie to them has not crossed their mind. And then to discover that potentially an entire relationship is a lie…? This is the hardest thing we’ll ever do, no doubt about it.
I had so many questions about this phenomenon and found, realized, and discovered answers to every one of them. The recovery and reassembling your life isn’t easy. It takes courage. You will discover how incredibly amazing you are as a fully normal human. – And that all the things you did, said, hoped for, and were confused by are absolutely normal.
We can, you can recover from a con man or the female version of these creatures. Though it’s a winding and challenging and unknown road, have no doubts, after the traumatic fake-lationship, PTSD, and healing we rise.
What is recovered enough for you? There are four phases we pass through going from hell to normal again.
You can come away from this joyful again. You will smile and you will laugh for that genuine place once again. By being thrown into the fire we can forge ourselves to reveal our greater selves.
The most common term used to talk about these life thieves is “narcissist”. This is unfortunately another confusion within the confusion. The reason I say this is because there are people who are narcissistic in this pathological sense in which this person is driven by the way their brain is designed to live as a parasite – to use others rather than connect and care.
Seeing the Sociopath Reveals All Who Are and Those Who Are Not
Then, there are also people who are narcissistic but not of this pathological, evil mind. When both are called “narcissists” there are some truly unfortunate misunderstandings in the way that prolong or prohibit recovery. I will say, that by taking in the full and whole scope of what a sociopath is, the people who are merely dysfunctionally narcissistic also come into clearer light.
If you’ve resonated with the experiences described on my website, you’ve been embroiled and entangled by the pathological kind. The merely dysfunctionally narcissistic person, though sometimes mean or confounding and frustrating, is not motivated by this pathology of sociopathy.
Prey and Parasitic Predator
As targets of a person of this pathology – the pathologically narcissistic, we’ve been targeted by an ASPD, antisocial personality disorder, or what is called an antisocial psychopath in colloquial terms, a sociopath.
As you unwind this and heal grieve, heal, and restore your life, you’re going to be amazed at the depths of emotion and power your life has. And the same applies if you’ve been dragged through hades by a person you’re calling a narcissist. Same thing.
You’re In Trauma Due To a Narcissistic Sociopath
1. Traumatic Event
The prime traumatic event is recognizing the person we love is a monster. This is really a jolt to every bit of our being. We take a physical, mental, and emotional hit. To take in the idea that our life has been a total and complete lie for the length of time we have been married or to living with and in love with or even simply dating this malevolent being is beyond imagining for those who haven’t been here.
As those who have, now know evil. We’re on a first-name basis with a demon that looks like a human. And here’s the good news. This really can become a benefit to your life. And this is meant on a profound level, not mere superficial optimism.
We Decide to Win and We Decide What Winning Is
Right here, at this moment, we determine the outcome of this life-altering event. We can stand up. We take back ourselves and our lives. It’s up to us to find the pathway to resolving each loss, to grieving the loss of what we thought was real but wasn’t … and discovering how amazing we are and how our great human gorgeousness was never lost.
They need us, we do not need them – though that feeling we’ll die without them is elicited from the depths of our souls moments after being hooked in. This is another bizarre effect of the sociopathic-zap.
We have this moment – here, right now – to vow to be victorious in our lives in a way we never would have been without this crisis. This is a bit of a new idea, I’d imagine. This doesn’t mean, “this had to happen for me to be a success in life”. This is: Since this did happen, I’m taking it on and creating value out of it. Winning is our decision to make. It is in our hands.
The Aftermath is PTSD and CPTSD: This is Normal
2. The Unavoidable Fallout of the Traumatic Event
What happens when we realize: The calls are coming from inside the house, as in every scary babysitter there’s-someone-in-the-house movie? What happens when the person we knock boots with is actually the monster? What happens is hell, but I don’t have to tell you that… What we do is decide to restor our lives
Turns out a sociopath and their target are constantly living in two different realities in the same moment. – We’re never in the room for the same reason.
The first three words refer to stress after trauma. That “D” on the end, stands for “disorder.” Please don’t imagine that “disorder” is more than a clumsy word for meaning anything other than the normal and expected need to heal.
Think about it like this, if we break a leg are we “disordered”? Do we need psych drugs? Do we need antidepressants to be ourselves again?
Usually, we just need healing. Usually, family and friends, even neighbors rally around us with hot meals, pillows, and good books. It’s similar in the PTSD after a sociopath. But different.
We weren’t in relationships, these are scams, and that’s why there’s trauma. Don’t believe me… Read what these nasty creatures say about things like the death of a family member, or maybe their mom.
Recover From a Con Man: You Can Heal, Restore, Renew
3. Healing
In true love scam recovery, it’s common that victims blame themselves. Self-blame is a trait of all post-traumatic stress. Survivors of plane crashes, fires, earthquakes, wars, and certainly wars and genocide suffer from this. In these instances, it’s called survivors guilt.
They beat themselves up with: Why did I live?! Why am I the one? Why did they die?! – Plagued with feelings of guilt that they could have done something differently to save others. Depression, weight loss, suicidal thoughts, despair, lethargy, exhaustion, physical illness, and grief become daily companions. Sound familiar?
We must actively participate, create, sculpt, define, demand, and find our recovery and restoration. Be aware of what you believe this all was… Sometimes it’s basic beliefs we’ve taken on about this that get in the way of restoring our lives.
For example, if you feel you need to “do the work“ on yourself and become a better person in order to recover, consider that you may be adopting and accepting ideas that place the blame for this happening at your feet.
This represents a skewed and inaccurate recovery model that will take you not to recovered but to more disappointment and despair, and bad feelings about yourself.
While self-improvement is fine, self-improvement or an improved self wasn’t lacking or needed as the cause or the preventative for this life-jacking you were dragged through.
Remember everything they did was about and for themselves. It has nothing to do with you.
Post-Traumatic Stress Is Normal
Yes. Because post-traumatic stress is post-traumatic stress. We think we see him around the corner. These moments we weep, tremble and have nausea anticipating his next move or a court date. In turns we feel stupid, foolish, maybe even think it’s our fault – we aren’t and it isn’t.
One of the hallmarks of PTSD is having thoughts that have no place in the realness of life. This is a reason to not take our thoughts seriously during this time. To be patient. To embrace ourselves with compassion. We are beautiful.
Just like accident victims see the airline or car crashing all over again. Veterans hear the screams of battle we think we see them around the corner or across the street or turning left at the light ahead in traffic. Our survivor’s guilt is sometimes: Why did I let him do that to me? – Why? Because we’re human. Because we’re trusting, loving people – who believed a monster in disguise.
There’s no shame in being good. There’s no blame for not being clairvoyant. And news flash – real inside surreal: they didn’t do it to us. We could have been anyone. It wasn’t personal. There’s really nothing about us that made us attract or bring the conning scammer to us – nothing other than being a great person.
True love scam recovery takes specific care, just as with any other PTSD, healing takes time. We are not “disordered”, as in having a mental condition, in any other sense than in the need to heal.
Healing PTSD Takes Time, Patience, and Effective Healing Methods
The Confusion, Sadness, Sleeping… It’s all Part of Healing
The true love scam recovery cycle has ups and downs. Like any endeavor, there are steps forward and a tiny step back, move forward, back, further forward, and a bit back until we are fully healed.
Our physical, mental, and emotional health require restorative and rejuvenating care. Sleep, good nutrition, supplements like B and C, and adrenal support. Walking when we can. Yoga. Hiking. Swimming. Low-impact movement that gets oxygen flowing and our hearts stronger. Spend time only with family and those who love us. Friends who love us. Cuddle kittens and puppies. Don’t listen to love songs.
Blossoming from PTSD is possible! In complete healing, we rise up like the Phoenix from the ashes; creating a beautiful life because of having gone through the despair.
The word crisis in Chinese translates to opportunity. We can, in fact, rewire the synapses in our brains to erase and heal the trauma. There is nothing we could have done differently. What we do now, that’s the thing that matters.
A sociopath aka monster knows quite well that by being themselves, the lives of people they make use of and deceive are shattered into shards. They don’t understand what you’re going through. They don’t care about what you’re going through.
They are precisely what they are and are severely limited in this. It’s their brain, wired with the inability to feel positive bonding emotions. Like a slithery reptile, they may take pleasure from lying in the sun, but also like a reptile they take pleasure in eating their prey, even their own children.
Sociopaths and what you might think of as a narcissist live every day of their lives needing us. Or someone like us. Some human who thinks they re normal. — That monster needs you for survival… not the other way around.
At times, I thought the malevolent being I married and I were sharing a laugh, a joyful moment, or a sense of accomplishment over a goal we reached together. None of this is true. Turns out, a sociopath and their target are constantly living in two different realities within the same moment. – We’re never in the room for the same reason.
I’d find myself laughing genuinely, joyful and happy when we accomplished something that was part of what we were trying to achieve. I was the only one.
He was laughing at the ease with which he was scamming me, sickeningly gleeful at his betrayal (not a betrayal in a sociopath’s mind – simply their right), and feeling exaggerated elation at a win behind my back, using me without my awareness. A story you know well if you’re on these pages.
Sociopaths Love No One: Not Even Us, Or Her, Or Him
They’re all the same. – There is no woman, man, or child on the planet they will ever treat genuinely well, they’re incapable. There is no living person on the planet – no other woman who will ever be loved, or loved more, or loved better by them. They do not love… anyone.
There is no woman better for them. There’s no man more suited to them. A narcissistic sociopath’s world – their entire existence – is hell for anyone near them. Learn to reframe the nightmare or you’ll not be free. you can recover from a con man.
Welcome to the club; you’re not alone! There are so many (too many) men and women in the aftermath of a hijacking. Each gorgeous one of you “replaced” even before they met you in essence. There are always several, maybe dozens of simultaneous true love scams going on. The parasitic, predatory sociopath aka narcissist juggles women and men like oranges or tennis balls.
Resources Without Consent
You’re a source: of money, food, shelter, sex, respectability, connections, whatever it is they scammed us for. The sociopath who hijacked me, while we were married and living together as it turns out had at least the following.
Two other wives, 18 kids, three fiances, three other women he lived with, two women sending him money every month, one man sending him money every month, another man sending him $2,000 at a time randomly here and there, nine girlfriends – all who thought he loved them and only them – and ten to fifteen satellite women – and men – at any given time. This is what they are. Even if we don’t discover it all, the rate of shocking information is higher than the sky.
You were, as I was, an ATM. And the thing about ATMs is that there’s always another one around the corner. Sociopaths and what you might think of as a narcissist live every day of their lives needing us. Or someone like us. Some human who thinks they’re normal. — That monster needs you for survival… not the other way around.
You, We as Normal Humans Are Awesome
There’s a healing bright side to all this: It wasn’t personal. They didn’t do it “to us”. Bizarrely we could have been anyone. We are replaceable and interchangeable. So, cut him or her off in our hearts and we are free.
When I saw precisely how cruel, cold, calculated, and hideous this thing standing before me was, all care for him evaporated. 100% gone. Does this mean I was immediately okay? no. Not by a million miles. But I made myself okay. It took intuition, information, time, support, friends, and family, and won back in all ways what winning was in this nightmare for me. You can too.
Kick ’em in the behind and get them gone. Go no contact, be a non-threat. Then repair, rejuvenate and thrive! Embrace our lives. Beam the compassion and empathy, loyalty, and caring they targeted us for on ourselves.
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As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
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