Like the Cat in the Hat, the troublemaker comes back. Hoovering. What’s a person to do?
Hoovering is annoying and scary. The threat of hoovering is beyond the imagination of anyone who hasn’t been in this kind of nightmare. Anyone leaving a relationship replete with narcissistic abuse knows that in the end, things get scary. We can put an end to hoovering.
The “narcissist” – that is to say, the sociopath – lets out a side of themselves that might be our first glimpse at their genuine absolute wack-o-self. It’s all in the name of attempting to keep us locked in and to be sure we aren’t getting them in trouble.
Sociopaths, even though you might be calling them “narcissists”, must hook prey. They’re constantly baiting… Casting a “line” in order to hook prey.
Hooking prey is a user’s full-time job, no matter if you call them a sociopath or a narcissist. They hook prey with bait. Every time they open their mouth they’re tossing bait. Pretty much everything single thing they say or do is bait.
The hoovering narcissistic user is calling, texting, dropping by. But, what if they aren’t hoovering? What if we kind of wish they were?
Hoovering is a con man classic. They all do it, always… Except when they don’t. Whether they do or don’t hoover, neither is random. It seems like it, but it isn’t. There’s nothing a sociopath does that is random.
For all the crazy they drag us through, it all has very specific reasons, that bizarrely, have nothing to do with us. We are in fact, in control.
You’ve Heard About Hoovering
Antisocial psychopaths – a sociopath or what is truly a psychopath, which is what that person you’re calling a “narcissist” is… usually buzzes around in the aftermath. They’re monitoring, probing, begging, sending messages of all sorts in all kinds of ways.
They’ll beseech, flatter, moan, coax, insult, blame, shame all in one message, flip-flopping like some hyper Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. They email, they drive by, they leave flowers at your door, they call from blocked numbers, and have “friends” call you on their behalf.
Hoovering sociopaths are in the very moment of hoovering… showing us their genuine absolute nut-so selves.
In no way is this kind of persistent hoovering behavior an expression of “love” from anyone, ever.
Normal People Don’t Do These Things
And, FYI, in case you still aren’t sure if this person is a sociopath… normal people don’t do this. Normal people don’t send 2:00 am text messages unless the house is on fire. Sociopaths do, and in particular, when they’re in danger of losing their prey. Losing prey is their world on fire.
If we aren’t being hoovered there’s a reason. Everything a sociopath does gives away their current circumstances, their fears, and their current needs. We can use that to free ourselves.
There are a few reasons the pathological user doesn’t Hoover. Or a combination of a few reasons. Nothing they do is random.
We end it they don’t. This is what zero contact is all about. Otherwise, any contact and a little bit of our emotional reaction is all it takes for them to stick around!
Every action a sociopath makes fits their limited mental capacity and true intention. Get on the right track to decoding these beasts. Let’s break it down.
Like everything else about a sociopath – narcissist, narc, narcopath – whatever you’re calling the pathological user: they have very specific and limited brain functionality. The tiny lump of gray-matter pulsating in their skulls leaves them in a constant state of “want”. Wanting to take what they want, and wanting to keep it, and really, really, really wanting to never be exposed.
A Quick Refresher on The Real Reasons Sociopaths Hoover
Sociopath maniacs don’t want to lose prey or objects they take.
This makes them want to keep our emotional connection to them alive.
So they can take and use more.
Ant to monitor what we’re saying to others about them after it’s over.
And that’s it. There is no more. Exploitation is the sociopath’s life-long work. If you’re ever thinking, “He’s doing this just to make me __ fill in the blank __ “, you’re on the wrong track.
Pathological Users Do Not Have Humanity
The sociopathic brain can only process the world and life around them in very specific and strictly limited ways. They can’t do anything but be what they are. From our perspective, our language for their behavior is that they’re liars, cheaters, thieves, blackmailers, rapists, pedophiles, and criminals. They, from their actual and sincere sense of self, call themselves, amazing.
Their only regret is in not taking more, and they ‘ll always go for seconds and thirds and… We end it they don’t.
It’s often said sociopaths are geniuses. To me this is ludicrous… After all, is having no limits in the harm and destruction you carry out on others equal to genius? They think of doing horrible things that aren’t in our scope of possibility. — This does not equal smart. Sociopaths are not smart. They do learn tricks.
And since we see through a lens of good, and have only our experience of human possibility up until this point that we encounter them, we can’t imagine the things they do, and then out of our great good and generosity label their debauchery and evil as “genius”. Oh, no. They are not genius, they aren’t quite sure if what they hope to do will work at each stupid and changeable thing they say. Hence the flip from compliment to scolding and insults, from promises to rage.
Breaking Up With Evil
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.
Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.
The end is when the narcissistic sociopath’s deepest fear kicks in, especially if we kicked them out. Animalistic fear. They become desperate like a cornered demon beast. There’s only this on the sociopath’s mind: Get more and go free. Especially: Go free.
They do hideous things like file (false) protection orders against us. Ultimately, they go away because they can’t risk getting in more hot water.
The end of the scam hits the sociopath hard. The pathological predatory user is enraged at their loss. And scared to death they’ll be exposed on a grand scale; or any scale. If we kick them out they’re really, really mad.
When they take off first, they’re not mad, but defending their safety 100% they do everything to not be exposed and to get more if they can even after they’ve “left us”. Their only regret is in not taking more, and they’ll always go for seconds and thirds and…
We end it they don’t. This is what zero contact is all about. Otherwise, any contact and a little bit of our emotional reaction are all it takes for them to stick around!
Five Reasons A Sociopath Doesn’t Hoover
1. You weren’t of high value to the sociopath.
No one is genuinely valued by a sociopath; they have their own valuation scale. It’s based on the results keeping us hooked brings to their pocketbook, their social standing, a place to sleep, and basics like that. If we aren’t an open window to things they want they “value” us at about 600 minus subzero.
That sounds harsh, right? We’re truly fortunate if we rate subzero. It means they didn’t get what they wanted to enhance their life, their image, or whatever else they covet. The loser-leech couldn’t take the goods. Or we wouldn’t do what they wanted such as sponsor them for a green card, or give them money, buy them a car, or feed them. So our value to them is quite low.
More Reasons the Sociopath Isn’t Hoovering
2. They know you have hard evidence that could land them in the clink. This makes them think you know all the horrible crimes they’ve committed.
The last place a sociopath wants to be is in prison, yet so many are – and all of them have done things that merit jailing. Without a conscience, narcissistic sociopaths will do anything, including forge signatures, steal, use violence, commit fraud and bigamy, threaten, stalk, carry weapons, use illegal drugs, rape… sociopaths will and do break any law. Laws mean nothing to them.
These users do feel regret: regret at not taking more. At not lying better. Regret at not using deeper. And not being able to take more makes them mad – at us – because true to form everything is someone else’s fault.
And here’s the thing: These super-creeps have done things we know nothing about to people we’ve never heard of – but they know what they’ve done. If they get busted and investigated for one initial thing, the unraveling begins. Pull one thread and their world disintegrates.
The threat of this can send them running quietly, so we miss out on the Hoovering. When they know, we know a particular dastardly thing they’ve done, or when they’ve done it to us they really get scared because of what we know.
They aren’t sure what we’ll do about it. They do hideous things like file (false) protection orders against us. Ultimately, they go away because they can’t risk getting in more hot water.
3. They’re busy with juice-ie prey in their net and on the horizon.
Priorities shift quickly for the improvisational sociopath-snake. Since normal people are the way a sociopath survives, they need a steady stream of bountiful pastures; normal people who trust and believe them and don’t suspect a thing – yet.
And they’re lazy. They want everything to be easy. If we’re a bit too much work or unyielding, they smell out a more pliable target right next door. They’re distracted by the nearest shiny object (aka a person.)
If they’re not getting what they want, and think we won’t blab our suspicions they just might slither away without a peep.
4. They’re just done. And bored with the game we represented.
Sociopaths are notoriously bored and boring and they do move on simply for that reason. Or they didn’t like our shag carpeting. It could be the way we fry their chicken. Maybe they don’t like the perfume we wear. Or maybe we buy wine they don’t like. It’s all about them. If something isn’t to their taste, they hit the road.
5. They’re saving us for later. Sociopaths boomerang.
Give it a year, or two sometimes ten or even twenty years later a sociopath reaches out their slimy claws to try again. – Yep. Old college or high school or childhood sweethearts show up for round two. Or that creature who FB messages a year later as if nothing ever went bad: Hey! Let’s go out. I miss you. They’re lying. Do not doubt ourselves, second guessing ourselves is natural when the sociopath lies.
Hoover Proof Our Lives
Sociopaths always want more. Their abnormal brains feel no remorse, love, guilt, sympathy, compassion, or positive concern. These users do feel regret: regret at not taking more. At not lying better. Regret not using us more deeply. And not being able to take more makes them mad – at us – because true to form everything is someone else’s fault.
So, hoovering, not hoovering it all comes from the same motivation: sucking in and tying up normal humans’ emotions, either in love, or fear to be sure the sociopath can take and get away with it.
Sociopaths drop hoovering a specific target for three reasons: 1) Out of boredom, 2) Once our value to them hits subzero, 3) they are too busy with a full load of prey and new targets, 4) Out of fear of being exposed, captured and locked up when they know we have direct proof of their crimes, 5) They’re saving us for a major boomerang in a few years time.
Keep Your Intentions to Yourself
Never let a departing sociopath know that we intend to report a marriage scam to immigration, turn in a police report, or go to other authorities. Never make online or public disparaging or revealing remarks – even when they’re true.
Ratting them out publicly as we’re escaping serves no purpose other than to incite their rage and put ourselves in danger – and makes us look questionable – even to normal people. This can also hurt our divorce or annulment outcome or a domestic violence case. Just zip it and handle our lives. Do what it takes to be safe and give evidence where it’s appropriate.
Go no contact 100%. Really accept there are two kinds of humans on the planet. Good ones and bad ones. Know how to recognize each. Stay human, remain humane.
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.
