ptsd recovery therapist Archives - true love scam recovery

Why go no contact?
After a narcissistic user, no contact
is the way to take our life back.
Why does it matter so much?

To make things super-de-duper clear in this horrendously unclear time here’s a handy-dandy list describing what constitutes “contact” and what we want to achieve: “no contact.”

coaching with Jennifer Smith for PTSD and trauma after a sociopath or narcissist and to restore your life and build a future.

Keeping contact – exchanging raging emails and text messages – even “lovey-dovey” ones – not only keeps us in the mess and the lies – it creates new trauma.

Not talking to each other is advised in normal relationship breakups. Not talking gives us a chance to see how we truly feel. How much more critical is it in a true love scam…?!

Each bit of any contact prolongs harm. The sociopath…that creature you might be calling a “narcissist” won’t offer up closure, an apology, or a sincere exchange of any kind.

What Is No Contact?

What is no contact…? It’s more than watching their messages come in and not answering. It’s the one thing that changes everything and that’s going no contact. We end what they started because they won’t.

Though that’s a good start, this isn’t what we call “no contact”… Each message is a zap of new trauma of interaction with them. Every voicemail, email, DM, text, SMS, PM, is a tug at our gut that makes us foggy and keeps us “in it”.

Contact Means We’re Offering Ourselves Up as Lunch

Further contact after a “break up”, or after there’s an “end”, more often inspires the sociopath to be violent or terrorizing. Without a doubt, the second time you come back together, things are worse whether there is violence or not. This escalates each time you “break up” and goes back.

Did you know that contact could lead to our losing legal battles for custody, divorce, annulment, or restraining orders? Staying in contact can make us look as crazy as they say we are.

To the sociopath, or that person you might have decided is a covert, overt or malignant narcissist: any contact is good contact. Any contact, of any kind at all such as responding to a message they drop into your DM, means to the pathological user that they still pull the strings and so can still access you to take what they want, or to use you as they like.

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We Do Need To End It: We Stop It They Don’t

“Time went on quicker, tighter, everything tightened and escalated after I’d lost just about everything and he became overtly disgusted with everything around him. Finally, a combination of numbness and knowledge that my children and I were in very real danger took hold of me and eclipsed the fear of what he’d do if I left or any other fear or worry. As much as I still hated to accept it, I knew that it had to end, and it had to end by me before one of those horrible fears did happen. I had to accept that leaving or staying was life or death.” ~ Chapter 4, Shannon O. Entry No. 08 This Has to End

< Click the book cover to get yours…

Our Emotions Trip Us Up

This is a situation that demands our heads winning over what might linger in our hearts. The sociopath who hijacked us intended no good for us no matter how charming they were – or are. They will never, ever be anything good they promised.

Strictly establishing no contact and keeping no contact will influence our chance of beginning to recover; our safety, and our well-being, and can decide whether or not we win in court.

Staying no contact is to protect our kids. The sooner we go no contact the sooner we can expect a return to happiness in the days to come and long-term.

The Podcast: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

Staying In Contact Makes Us Appear Untrustworthy and Questionable in Court

Attorneys and Judges frown on those standing before them seeking divorce and child custody from a predator spouse and at the same time has kept contact with the user-abuser.

If we maintain contact our credibility shrinks. If there are children the only contact is best as emails and only related to logistics of pick-ups and drop-offs.

Our silence is the loudest, most meaningful thing we can say to them.

Unless specific communication with them is requested by an attorney, staying in contact makes us look unreliable, untrustworthy, unstable, and indecisive to Judges, child services, counselors, police, and attorneys.

Staying in contact makes our claims of abuse, defrauding, theft, and all the rest straight questionable. We lose big-time if we stay in contact. Go no contact. Only stay in contact via email or a court app if told to by the court to do so for the logistics of child visits.

This is Staying In Contact:

These are the things you want to not do in order to get your life back and to be heard in the most meaningful way by the pathological user, and then have the space to begin your recovery odyssey:

Let their calls ring through to our phones, even if we don’t answer – their number is best blocked so we don’t see any calls or texts
Call their number and hang up
Dial their number to their voicemail
Take their phone calls
Call them
Leave them messages
Listen to their voicemail messages
Let emails from them land in our inbox
Read the emails they send to us
Respond to their emails
Sort through their emails because we have their password
Read the text, SMS, private Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat, or any messages from them
Respond to any messages from them
Initiate any messages to them

Close Every Portal from Us to Them

Deeper no contact: close every portal open from our life to theirs. More things we don’t do in no contact.

Look at their Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or any of their online images, or media
Look at their “friends” social media pages
Sort through their posts looking at their new target or for other prey
Look at old photos of them on our phone or on our FB page or anywhere else
Sort through our wedding photos or other pictures of him or us
Keep things that remind us of him or her
Make an alias FB account so we can look at their page that we blocked

Narcissistic Abuse Unwound: The Podcast

For Court: Save What They’ve Already Sent: Every Message Counts

There’s one exception to keeping contact: we can keep contact when or if an attorney tells us to send a particular message to the sociopath from our email for a legal step in any legal process. These emails are then forwarded as-is to the attorney for the legal process.

Strictly establishing no contact and keeping no contact will influence our chance of beginning to recover; our safety, our well-being, and can be a deciding factor in whether or not we win in court.

Keep old messages: archive old emails and texts that may be needed to show violence, intended violence, marriage fraud, name-calling or harassment, or refusal to follow the procedure in divorce, annulment, or other legal matters. Text messages are best also saved in a chronological series of screenshots showing time/date stamping.

If you print out text messages they lose formatting and are simply line after line of the conversation with no way to tell who said what or when.

We do want to make sure all saved messaging has time date stamps and clearly indicates whose device it’s from (theirs) and to whom (you or other targets.) Keep these as screenshots, printouts, and files on a thumb drive. Save copies for yourself. Forward them to your attorney.

Resist Keeping Tabs Unless It’s to Gather Court Evidence

This is for your safety: Maybe you’ve landed here and are uncertain if the person you’re leaving is a sociopath or a narcissist. I get it that this is unbelievably hard. Please, as soon as you can realize that even though You’re not sure what’s going on, the most important thing to do is to protect yourself and your own well-being. It’s best not to talk about them anywhere to anyone other than privately to a few select people. Leave off any social media posts about our misery in breaking up. And here’s there real-deal and the really tough part: we aren’t breaking up as much as we’re making an escape. – Please don’t tap and type away in Reddit threads about this user we’re breaking away from, please stop yourself from listing them on www.badboyfriend.com. It’s best if you don’t make a FB page dedicated to talking trash about them no matter how true the trash is – and I’m here to tell you, whatever trash you have on them it isn’t even a thimble full of their over-flowing-garbage-can-of-a-life. – This is not to let them get away with it! This is to make you, us, you, and I a “non-threat” to the sociopath. Then go report through the proper channels if there’s something to stand up for your life about. And even I use the word “game” sometimes to talk about this, but in real life: this is not a game.

This is No Contact: This is What We Want to Do

On Facebook

Using the block function in the Privacy settings in Facebook to block them: here’s how
Doing the same with all mutual “Friends” or connections on Facebook
Not looking at their Facebook page
Staying away from their friends’ Facebook pages
Avoiding FB pages of our (now former) friends who are “Friends” on his or her’s Facebook page
Never private message him or her
Not messaging any of his or her “friends”; they don’t have actual genuine friends, and all people are prey to them

Regarding Email

In order to let their email scoop in case you need them for evidence and court or legal matters, we can. However, at the same time these nasty and lying and so freaking crazy emails don’t need to come into our real-life email. We can send them to a special inbox just for the lunatic.

Make a new email address
Don’t give them this new one
Do not email them
Do not read any emails they send you to any email address whatsoever

In addition, consider changing the “channel”, the IP address that your internet is routed through. Simply call your internet provider and ask them to switch the IP address you receive your internet connection through.

This will knock off any device from access to your internet that may have at one time or another signed in to your internet service on a device of their own.

Think Zero Contact and Non-Threat: We Need to Seem Invisible and Nonexistent

Cell Phones

There’s a block function on smartphones per each phone number; use it with his or her’s
Alternatively, call your service provider and have them block this number for you from being able to call into your phone
No calls or texts from that number can come in after that; alternately, login to our online account with our service provider and block the numbers
Do not ever answer any calls in the future coming in as blocked or unavailable or restricted
Don’t answer calls from an unknown number or unidentified caller
Block the unknown numbers that call you and don’t leave a voicemail that shows they’re a legitimate caller

Consider getting a new or used-new phone and a new number. A used-new phone can be just the ticket right now. Do not load old contacts.

Enter the old-school one by one… Only the good ones. – In cases where this seems appropriate, consider a prepaid burner phone for six months or so.

Guided coaching out of the maze of confusion

More About No Contact

Believe this: we might want the sociopath to hurt as we did – sure, me too, we might even we might even wish them dead, that’s normal. Some of us stay in contact thinking if we call them names and fight with them it will hurt them, or they’ll finally apologize.

We want them to “understand” that they’re hurting us. This is not going to happen in the way we’re looking for. For one, they know they hurt us; this doesn’t bother them.

News Flash: sociopaths (narcissists) do not “hurt” in the way we do; they “hurt” when things are taken from them or there’s a threat of being exposed. When we leave we become a threat to them as far as their concern about who we’ll tell all about them.

They experience trauma when highly valuable prey takes off. As strange as this is, the pathologically narcissistic (sociopaths aka psychopaths aka narcissists) have no feelings that are relatable to our emotional range of concern and experience as fully limbic-brained – normal – humans.

It’s only us who’s hurt by contact. Us going no contact is what hurts them. Please, go and stay no contact.

From their point of view: if we’re texting, calling, emailing or responding, arguing, crying, talking… no matter how we feel, no matter what the words flying out of our mouths are: to them, it means they still own us if we say anything at all. It’s only us who’s hurt by contact. Us going no contact is what hurts them. Please, go and stay in no contact.

No Contact On Other Platforms

Instagram, Pinterest: Nothing. Nope. Don’t look at theirs. Block theirs and all associated with them. Period. Instagram has a new feature called “Restrict”
Twitter: No
LinkedIn: Ditto as above
Snap Chat: Nope. We “blocked” their number on our phone; see Cell Phones above
FaceTime: See Cell Phones above – their number is blocked!
Skype: No; no Skype, zero, zip, nadda, zilch
Zoom: No Zoom
TikTok: No TikTok
WhatsApp: No
Signal or Telegraph: No
Land Lines: Change our voice greeting to the default anonymous greeting and screen calls
Cell and Landline: change your number either over the phone or online with your provider, you can select a new number.
FAX Number: Again if we have a landline for faxing – change the number.

Understand: No Contact is For Us: It’s How We Win

Hopefully, it’s becoming meaningful on a real-deal-critical level, that we can’t meet them for coffee, to trade back our belongings, or to have sex. We don’t go out to dinner, meet them at a club, meet them with friends. Follow the best practices for our well-being when leaving a sociopath aka narcissist.

Be sure to re-key your doors. This involves changing out the locking mechanism. This works perfectly well rather than getting the whole new doorknob which means their old key doesn’t fit your lock anymore.

And neither does the one they might have copied on the sly. If there’s a knock at your door the way to get them gone is to not answer. Additionally, make no reply, not even talking to them from behind the door.

We Bring This to an End

Let’s never see their smirky, ugly face again. I know we all know this, but I’m just sayin’. Go no contact… zero contact, hardcore. Our silence is the loudest, most meaningful thing we can say to them. And let’s be real. You might reach out or wish they would. That’s normal until we fully know what a sociopath is and what that means.

For our own well-being, our safety, and our future; for finding ourselves again, we go zero contact, radio silent. And… You drop off their radar. And goodbye to the nut-job.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

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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.