After the sociopath: How do we heal? Part 5-Getting Angry
PDF Healing from an emotional trauma or extended traumatic experience is a like a long, intimate dance with reality. Or perhaps a three-act ballet. We are on the stage of our own minds, surrounded by the props of our lives, dancing to the music of our emotions. Our memories flash on the backdrop or float around like ribbons in the air. Down below the stage, in the orchestra pit, a chorus puts words to the feelings and gives us advice drawn from our parents’ rules, our church’s rules, all the rules from the movies and books and conversations that have ever colored our thinking.
And our job is to dance our way through the acts.
The first act is named “Magic Thinking.” We stumble onto the stage, stunned, confused and in pain. Our first dance is denial – the “it doesn’t matter” dance. Our second dance is bargaining – the “maybe I can persuade whoever is in power to fix this” dance. The third and last dance before the intermission is anger.
This article is about anger.
The emotional spine
Everyone here who has gone through the angry phase knows how complex it is. We are indignant, bitter, sarcastic, outraged, waving our fiery swords of blame. We are also — finally — articulate, funny, re-asserting power over our lives. We are hell on wheels, demanding justice or retribution. We are also in transition between bargaining and letting go, so all this is tinged with hope on one side and grief on the other.
Anger really deserves a book, rather than a brief article. It is the end of the first act of our healing, because it really changes everything – our way of seeing, our thinking, our judgments, the way we move forward. Like the element of fire, it can be clarifying, but it can also be destructive. To complicate the situation further, many (if not all of us) tended to repress our anger before we entered this healing process.
So it may be helpful to discuss what anger is, where it comes from. What we call anger is part of a spectrum of reactions that originates in the oldest part of our brain. The brain stem, sometimes called the lizard brain, oversees automatic survival mechanisms like breathing, heartbeat, hunger, sleep and reproduction. It also generates powerful emotional messages related to survival.
These messages travel through increasingly sophisticated layers of our emotional and intellectual processing. One of those layers, the limbic system or mammal brain, is where we keep memories of good and bad events, and work out how to maximize pleasure and avoid pain (often through addictive strategies). The messages pass through this layer on the way to our cerebral cortex.
There in the thinking layer, we name things and organize them. We maintain concepts of community and identity (right and left brain), and we manipulate them continually to run our lives as thinking, self-aware beings. Beyond the thinking brain is the even more advanced area of the frontal cortex, which maintains our awareness of the future, interconnectivity (holistic thinking), and the “high level” views that further moderate our primitive responses into philosophic and spiritual meanings.
What our thinking brains name “anger” is actually a sensation of physical and emotional changes caused by the brain stem in reaction to perceived danger. The spectrum of those danger-related sensations roughly includes alertness, fear and anger. While our higher brain may see a purpose in separating fear and anger into different categories, our lizard brain doesn’t make those distinctions. It just keeps altering our hormones and brain chemicals for all kinds of situations, depending on its analysis of what we need to do to survive.
The point of this long digression is this: alertness-fear-anger responses are a normal part of our ability to survive. They travel “up” into our higher processing as the strong spine of our survival mechanism. There is nothing wrong with feeling them. In fact, paying attention to them is better for us in every way than ignoring our feelings (denial) or trying to delude ourselves about what is happening (bargaining).
The many forms of anger
One of the most interesting things about the English language is its many verb forms, which express various conditions of timeliness and intent. I can. I could. I could have. I would have. I might have. I should have. I will. I might. I was going to.
Those same factors of timeliness and intent can be found in the many facets of anger. Bitterness and resentment are simmering forms of anger related to past and unhealed hurts. Likewise sarcasm and passive-aggressive communications are expressions of old disappointment or despair. Frustration is a low-level form of anger, judging a circumstance or result as unsatisfactory. Contempt and disgust are more pointed feelings associated with negative judgments.
When anger turns into action, we have explosive violence, plans for future revenge and sabotage. When anger is turned on ourselves, we have depression and addictions. The judgments associated with anger foster black-and-white thinking, which can be the basis for bias and all kinds of “ism’s,” especially if the anger is old, blocked for some reason, and thus diffuse or not directed primarily at its source. This typically happens when we feel disempowered to defend ourselves.
All of that sounds pretty terrible and toxic. But, in fact, the most toxic forms of anger are the ones in which the anger is not allowed to surface. The lizard brain does not stop trying to protect us until we deal with the threat, and so we live with the brain chemicals and hormones of anger until we do.
Anger can also be healthy. The anger of Jesus toward the money changers in the temple is a model of righteous anger. In response to trauma, righteous anger is a crucial part of the healing process. Anger has these characteristics:
• Directed at the source of the problem
• Narrowly focused and dominating our thinking
• Primed for action
• Intensely aware of personal resources (internal and environmental)
• Willing to accept minor losses or injuries to win
Anger is about taking care of business. At its most primitive level, anger is what enables us to defend our lives, to kill what would kill us. In modern times, it enables us to meet aggression with aggression in order to defend ourselves or our turf. We expect to feel pain in these battles, but we are fighting to win.
However, anger also has its exhilaration, a sense of being in a moment where we claim our own destiny. For those of us who have been living through the relatively passive and self-defeating agony of denial and bargaining, anger can feel wonderful.
As it should, because anger is the expression of our deepest self, rejecting this new reality. We are finally in speaking-up mode. We are finally taking in our situation and saying, “No! I don’t want this. I don’t like it. I don’t like you for creating this in my life. I don’t like how it feels. I don’t like what I’m getting out of it. And if it doesn’t stop this instant, I want you out of my life.”
Getting over our resistance to anger
Of course, we don’t exactly say that when we’re inside the relationship. In fact, we don’t exactly think it, even when we’re out of the relationship. And why is that? Because – and this only my theory, but it seems to be born out here on LoveFraud – people who get involved with sociopaths are prone to suppress their anger, because they are afraid of it, ashamed of it, or confused about its meaning.
When faced with a painful situation, they suppress their inclination to judge the situation in terms of the pain they’re experiencing, and instead try to understand. They try to understand the other person. They try to understand the circumstances. They try to interpret their own pain through all kinds of intellectual games to make it something other than pain. To an extent, this could be described as the bargaining phase. But for most of us, this is a bargaining phase turned into a life strategy. It’s an unfinished response to a much earlier trauma that we have taken on as a way of life.
Which is very good for the sociopath, who can use it to gaslight us while s/he pursues private objectives of looting our lives for whatever seems useful or entertaining. Until we have nervous breakdowns or die, or wake up.
We can all look at the amount of time it took us to wake up, or the difficulty we’re having waking up, at evidence of how entrenched we’ve been in our avoidance of our own anger. It retrospect, it is an interesting thing to review. Why didn’t we kick them out of our lives the first time they lied or didn’t show up? Why didn’t we throw their computer out of the window when we discovered their profiles on dating sites? Why didn’t we cut off their money when we discovered they were conning us? Why didn’t we spit in their eye when they insulted us? Why didn’t we burn their clothes on the driveway the first time they were unfaithful?
Because we were too nice to do that? Well, anger is the end of being nice. It may be slow to emerge. We may have to put all the pieces together in our heads, until we decide that yes, maybe we do have the right to be angry. Yes, they were bad people. No, we didn’t deserve it. And finally, we are mad. At them.
Anger in our healing process
Anger is the last phase of magical thinking. We are very close to a realistic appraisal of reality. The only thing “magical” about it is this: no amount of outrage or force we can exert on the situation can change it. The sociopath is not going to change. We cannot change the past, or the present we are left with.
But anger has its own gifts. First and foremost is that we identify the external cause of our distress. We place our attention where it belongs at this moment – on the bad thing that happened to us and the bad person who caused it.
Second, we reconnect with our own feelings and take them seriously. This is the beginning of repairing our relationships with ourselves, which have often become warped and shriveled with self-hatred and self-distrust when we acted against our own interests in our sociopathic relationships.
Third, anger is a clarifying emotion. It gives us a laser-like incisiveness. It may not seem so when we are still struggling with disbelief or self-questioning or resentment accumulated through the course of the relationship. But once we allow ourselves to experience our outrage and develop our loathing for the behavior of the sociopath, we can dump the burden of being understanding. We can feel the full blazing awareness that runs through all the layers of brain, from survival level through our feelings through our intellect and through our eyes as we look at that contemptible excuse for a human being surrounded by the wreckage s/he creates. Finally our brains are clear.
And last, but at least as important as the rest, is the rebirth of awareness of personal power that anger brings. Anger is about power. Power to see, to decide, to change things. We straighten up again from the long cringe, and in the action-ready brain chemicals of anger, we surprise ourselves with the force of our ability and willingness to defend ourselves. We may also surprise ourselves with the violent fantasies of retribution and revenge we discover in ourselves. (Homicidal thoughts, according to my therapist, are fine as long as we don’t act on them.)
It is no wonder that, for many of us, the angry phase is when we learn to laugh again. Our laughter may be bitter when it is about them. But it can be joyous about ourselves, because we are re-emerging as powerful people.
The main thing we do with this new energy is blaming. Though our friends and family probably will not enjoy this phase (because once we start blaming, it usually doesn’t stop at the sociopath), this is very, very important. Because in blaming, we also name what we lost. When we say “you did this to me,” we are also saying, “Because of you, I lost this.”
Understanding what has changed – what we lost – finally releases us from magical thinking and brings us face to face with reality. For many of us this is an entirely new position in our personal relationships. In the next article, we’ll discuss how anger plays out in our lives.
Until then, I hope you honor your righteous anger, casting blame wherever its due. And take a moment to thank your lizard brain for being such a good friend to you.
Namaste. The healing warrior in me salutes the healing warrior in you.
Kathy
written by Kathleen Hawk • Permalink •
Constantine says:
Dear Panther,
Thanks for putting up that absolutely exquisite example of “sociopathic letter-writing.” Wow, I swear, you just can’t make this stuff up!
A couple of points. Number one, he actually ADMITS that he is an unfaithful, pathological liar with a “God-complex.” As people often say around here: “When someone tells you who they are, BELIEVE THEM!” Indeed, normal people neither think nor say such things. Huge red flags.
Second, before I even saw Skylar’s response, I was also saying to myself, “WORD SALAD”! I often think that many socios (particularly the barely literate ones) are less able to hide their true nature when they are writing. In other words, in person-to-person interactions they can rely on all of the irrational, non-verbal things like “charm,” charisma, “force of personality,” and so on. But when it’s just a matter of words pure and simple, it’s like reading a computer program that we might call, “How to mimick an actual human being with real emotions”–but after it has gone haywire, and is just randomly spewing off complete nonsense! Seriously, it’s chilling to read stuff like that, because every word of that letter just screams out, “I HAVE NO SOUL!”
Oh, and it’s also true that spaths invent their own words like “criticization”–proabaly because they feel themselves superior to the English Language! Not that I want to be “overcriticalious,” but for what it’s worth, my spath made up words like that too. And she was pretty smart.
So yes, I would say you’ve very likely hooked the real thing. However, if nothing else, it’s probably a blessing that he is still a virgin!–Let’s hope he stays that way!
(Report abusive comment)
Constantine says:
PS Panther,
I haven’t looked it up yet, but I wonder if that’s perhaps the root of the word “pathology”? That is, where “pathos” = sick and “logos” = word(s)?
Hmmmm. I’ll have to get back to you after I go and research that!
(Report abusive comment)
Ox Drover says:
Constantine,
YOU CRACK ME UP! ROTFLMAO I think you have hit on something about the word pathology, it is sure SICK! Nasty sick.
Yea, that “word salad” is something no one could make up, there just has to be that arrogance inside someone who is that pathological to put together that “carp!” I also think you are on to something about someone being more able to con you “in person” than in words, but I have also seen some psychopaths that could SPIN THE WRITTEN WORD as well….I’ve been conned by one who could and doggone if she wasn’t absolutely GREAT at that spin!
(Report abusive comment)
Constantine says:
Well, I checked, and guess it is actually “Logos” = study. And “Pathos” = sickness. But I think that is a later derivation; and in any case, I like my own etymology better! Moreover, logos is literally “word” rather than “study.” I’m just not sure if “pathos” is closer to “suffering” or “sickness.” Any Greek scholars here?
But either way, I think we can all agree that socios turn normal language into something damnably convoluted and painful!
(Report abusive comment)
Constantine says:
Hey Oxy,
Haha–I didn’t see your post there. Yes, I’ve been reading a several books on ancient Greek philosophy, and I guess it is having an effect on me!
Hope all is well with you.
(Report abusive comment)
Ox Drover says:
Constantine, I’ve been reading another one on the origins of “what we think of as good and evil” as seen through an anthropologist’s eyes (he is also a philosopher as well) and it is quite interesting to see how humans developed “morals” and philosophy. He quotes a lot from the Greeks. It is interesting to me how what is considered “moral” or “good” or “evil” changes with cultures and with time. How religion and morality is reflected in our laws and codes. It is amazing too look at the thoughts and ideas of our ancestors and see how “we” have changed in how “we” view right and wrong.
From a standpoint of women’s studies as well, it is amazing how different cultures even today view the role of women differently. I first saw this when I was in east Africa during the 1960s, a man actually tried to buy me from the sperm donor. I thought it was all a “big joke” until afterward when I was told it was NO JOKE. About that same time an American teacher was kidnapped and sold into a harem in Egypt and she only escaped about 20 years later. At age 18 that was my first exposure to another culture and it was sure eye opening for me. I wish I had been more mature at the time, enough to really appreciate the opportunities I had to be where I was at the time I was there. Most of the places I was then you would not be safe to go there now. At least I would not go there now under any circumstances.
(Report abusive comment)
Constantine says:
Oxy,
Well, I hope the guy was at least offering a decent price! At any rate, I’ll bet a young and vivacious American “Ox-drover” would have brought in a pretty respectable sum!
As for different cultures having different systems of morality, that’s hard to deny. Immanuel Kant was probably the smartest of the great philosophers to attempt to prove that there is something like “objective morality”– and even he is rather unconvincing to most people. At the same time, I think he was right in principle (i.e. that there are certain “ethical universals,” etc.)–only I’m not foolish enough to believe that one can logically demonstrate it!
(Report abusive comment)
Ox Drover says:
Constantine,
There are a lot of truths that cannot be logically demonstrated!
Actually, my sperm donor “agreed” to the deal but convinced the man that he had to deliver the cows to the US since sperm donor had delivered me to Africa….the guy couldn’t figure out how to do that so the deal was off. I didn’t realize that the guys with the machine guns and the cocked hats with the red feathers in them were not just “window dressing” either….but could have “enforced” the sale if sperm donor had insulted the man and I’d be hoeing corn to this day in a hut somewhere in east Africa. Well, actually, with my attitude and big mouth, especially as a know-it-all-teenager, he would probably have slit my throat before long though if he had bought me! It is amazing now then I knew all the answers, and now I don’t know even 1% of the questions, much less the answers.
(Report abusive comment)
Constantine says:
Good grief, Oxy!
For all his remarkable flaws, I have to admit that your P-sperm donor sounds like an amazingly flamboyant and “larger-than-life” character! I’ve read about people like him, though I don’t know if I’ve ever met one in real life. (One guy, maybe….) You really should write a volume of “Character Sketches” to make the world better acquainted with these sorts of people. And what are the odds– they’re all in your family!
That reminds me. There’s John LeCarre novel called “The Perfect Spy,” where the guy’s father sounds a little like your P-sperm donor–at least in some of the general outlines, perhaps. But it’s been a while since I read it, so I just have a general impression…. Anyhow, with an MO like that, he must have caused some real misery and havoc during his time here!
Very well–I’m off to the movies with my girlfriend! Hope you have a great night!
(Report abusive comment)
skylar says:
Oxy, isn’t it ironic that you were going to be traded for cows!
Hi Constantine!
I like your pathology definition. Sick words. It’s perfect.
Panther’s spath has that part in spades. The projection and the tells are classic.
(Report abusive comment)
Ox Drover says:
Sky, Yea, that was the “currency” for bride prices….I never did know HOW MANY the man offered.
Constantine, Yea, there have been numerous articles and books written about him, he eventually became VERY rich and famous (infamous at least) and his 6th wife has proven very bright and done well for herself post-Psychopath. Most of his wives ended up leaving with STDs or broken noses, and he outlived the last one. He was definitely an “character” all right and many of the things he did are REMARKABLE. Many of the things he did were also HORRIBLE. In so many ways he did not “get it” about what “normal” people thought,, and he SO wanted to impress people, yet he also DESPISED others as “beneath” him. That was the “Catch 22″ of his personality I guess, he CRAVED attention and adoration from the very people that he viewed as vermin.
He was extremely bright, had almost no formal education past grade school, but did educate himself to expert levels in several fields of technical expertise. Yet he lied about everything, including where he got his “education” and even his birth date. LOL He “told lies when the truth would fit better.”
At one point in time I wanted so badly to “out” him by writing a book, and I actually wrote it….but decided after I had written it that I no longer CARED. He trashed me in his autobiography, but I realized that 1) anyone who knew ME wouldn’t believe a word of it and 2) anyone who knew HIM wouldn’t believe a word of it and 3) for the people who read it and did believe it, WHO CARES what they believe? The only people I EVER cared about that his trashing me destroyed my relationship with them was with my half sibs who are not Ps, and he did trash that, I was never again able to have an adult relationship with them (their choice because of him) but they also went NC with him as well because he abused them as well. So that was a lose/lose situation, but I have come to accept that.
As for the rest of his family, cousins, father, uncles, I have a close relationship with most of them though most of his cousins are in their 80s and 90s now, I keep in contact with them via FB and visits and phone calls and e mails. They are amazing folks, and still have all their marbles. Their support and “family” connections were wonderful when I needed them the most. I never knew his mother as she died before I was born, but from all the stories I have had about her and her father, they were both big time Ps and everyone who knew them despised them univerally. My grandfather even said, “I stayed with her for the sake of the kids, but I should have left her and taken the kids even if it broke me completely financially.”
It really is a “shame” that anyone with the intelligence my sperm donor had was not someone who used that for the betterment of mankind….or my son who idolizes him (though he never met him). They are so much alike in so many ways, but my son didn’t have the street smarts to keep out of prison that my P sperm donor did, though I know of at least two men he murdered. He did claim to have killed more than two though but I don’t know whether to believe him or not. He lied about everything else. The two men I know P sperm donor killed I have other evidence, but nothing that could have led to a conviction. Both took place outside the US and the bodies were never found. Like Travis (that wrote on here about his serial killer father who is on death row) it was difficult for me to come to grips with, and only in the last 8 or 10 years have I done so, but I no longer feel the shame of it, but place it where it belongs, on his head, not mine.
(Report abusive comment)
Hens says:
oh my
(Report abusive comment)
skylar says:
Panther,
I was talking to my BF about spath projection and he says he has a theory about why they project:
Since the spaths are all narcissists, the only thing they know is, themselves. So they can only speak about what they know: themselves. Spaths lack imagination because the only thing that interests them is: themselves. That’s why they project. They really have no imagination to come up with anything new. So they simply accuse everyone of being what they are.
I found this an interesting theory.
(Report abusive comment)
Constantine says:
Oxy,
Well, I’m back from my “old persons’ night out”….. (by the way, just saw a good, half-foreign movie about the Holocaust called “Sarah’s Key”: not perfect, but certainly in the “respectable excuse for getting out of the house” category!)
Anyhow, I was going to point out that guys like your P-sperm donor often exert a kind of magical fascination over their young daughters — almost like they are superhuman beings who can do no wrong, etc. The guy I know who is sort of like that, had something pretty near to a flirtatious relationship with his starry-eyed daughter — as though he needed to win her adulation or something. But when he did, he tired of that pretty quickly and then discarded her! So it’s to your credit that you were able to escape from all that and see him for what he was. All the same, I wish you would have published that memoir! — I certainly would have read it.
Hi Sky! — Yes, and speaking of “sick words,” I’m glad you finally decided to dust off that venerable old classic: “The Campfire of Love Love-Letter”!
Perhaps on some dull night, we could have a contest where everyone combines phrases from the top 5 “spath letters,” and turns them into a rambling post-modern prose-poem! Imagine what perverse fun that would be! I’ll have to work on that; but for now, I have no doubt that you’ll get the unanimous vote for using “Campfire of Love” as the title!
Of course, that might be a little devious and mean-spirited on our part (heh heh)–but also very cathartic!
(Report abusive comment)
skylar says:
ROTFLMAO! Constantine!
That’s a great idea.
A book is in order: Short stories from the land of spath.
With the right introduction, it could be a best seller and we could all contribute.
(Report abusive comment)
Ox Drover says:
Dear Constantine,
“Campfire of love” LOL ROTFLMAO Yep, that is a good one. Do you guys remember the man who came here and his GF had dumped him and he wanted help writing a letter TO HER….and he kept putting up letters and we kept telling him to NOT WRITE HER and he kept “explaining” why it was important that he did and that his MOTIVE for the letter was to GAIN CONTROL OVER HER AGAIN….and at that point we realized that the guy was a PPD. I’m not sure if he was just “putting us on,” or if he was “for real” but his letters were very much like the “campfire of love” type. Back when he was here posting there were trolls coming by from time to time from the sociopathworld trying to put us on and get us to interact with them. Some of them were OBVIOUS and others were some how “odd” but some of US are “odd” when we first come here and for some time after that as well. LOL “All except me and you, and I’m not real sure about you!” LOL (remember that old joke?)
What is a “half foreign” movie??????
(Report abusive comment)
one/joy_step_at_a_time says:
Panther: he said: ‘ Oh, the sweet flames of being misunderstood, being feared when you stand in front of the woman you love with arms wide open! What a monumental feeling!‘ TELL!!!!
(Report abusive comment)
one/joy_step_at_a_time says:
i need to do some more research on my grandfather – my mom’s dad. the homicidal depressive philandering alcoholic. What more research you ask, haven’t i got everything I need? LOL
constantine’s remark to oxy makes me wonder. because that girl he describes IS my mom: ‘Anyhow, I was going to point out that guys like your P-sperm donor often exert a kind of magical fascination over their young daughters — almost like they are superhuman beings who can do no wrong, etc. The guy I know who is sort of like that, had something pretty near to a flirtatious relationship with his starry-eyed daughter’
and it’s interesting that even though i knew that my uncle had killed him when he was trying to kill my gm, my mother imbued a sense of fondness, nay love, in me for this man i never met. that’s shows the power her delusional thinking has over her. years later i started to know more about him – besides the fact we look alike…..oh crikey, now i have gone and scared MYSELF.
(Report abusive comment)
skylar says:
OneJoy,
my father’s mother was evil. Extremely.
But dad can’t see that. He tells me stories of when she had a nervous breakdown. He tells me things she would say and do. My mother has clarified that grandma was an envious and manipulitive witch. But dad still calls her his sainted mother. He swears that it was her prayers which kept him alive and prosperous. (In fact, she took all his money and kept us in poverty while she lived. She used the Illness Pity Ploy)
The reason for his devotion to his mom, is simply the trauma bond. I expect that is also the reason for your mom’s attachment to her dad. Remember that the abuser gets the most love of all.
(Report abusive comment)
Ox Drover says:
One/Joy, Constantine had it right on. Though I did not even meet my P sperm donor until I was 16, I was always fascinated by him and tales of him and CURIOUS about this “bigger than life’ person who traveled the world. He showed up out of the blue one day when I was 16, came by the house where we lived, spent maybe 5 minutes with me, in the presence of my egg donor and my step father, and then spent 3 hours closeted with them telling them what a big success he was. I remember being very confused and crying.
So, let me get this straight, One/Joy, your uncle killed your grandfather, your mom’s dad, because grandpa was trying to kill Grandma, but yet your mom has these “fond memories” of her father, your grandpa? Hummmmm. Interesting family dynamics. Are you SURE we aren’t kin to each other? LOL
(Report abusive comment)
one/joy_step_at_a_time says:
yup, you have it right oxy. my mom was away at nursing school at the age of 17 after what she called a year of some disease, but my gm has confirmed was a nervous breakdown. my 15 year old uncle save my gm life by shooting his father between the eyes, (with my gm’s head in a vise lock inches from it.) this was after years of beatings – both uncle and gm. gf was away alot – worked on the trains – lots of opp to philander.
my mom blames my gm for her father’s ways – gm was a flirt…bllah blah. yes gm was a flirt and is to this day – but she flirts with EVERYONE. she’s quite lovely in that way and people are drawn to her. her 2nd husband was in the army and they traveled a lot, (and did for years afterward also) and they made friends wherever they went, in part because my gm was so outgoing.
my uncle is VERY odd – I suspect an n. our root stock SUCKS!
fortunately i am a hybird and didn’t propagate more little ns and spaths. my god, i can’t imagine, it would have killed me. oh, but it damn near did kill you oxy.
my gfather was by all accounts (i keep typing accounts incorreclty – keep forgetting the ‘o’ – thank fully i catch it most of the time, but it makes me laugh every time i see it in relationship to spaths/ ns) very scientifically minded and very bright.
mom – peacekeeper, nerd, enabler. married an n. sigh.
backt o uncle – became a world class marksman. creeeepy.
amended to say: always WAS a world class marksman!
he was tried and didn’t go to jail. joined the army at 16. you know, that safe place where there are no spaths or abuse of power.
(Report abusive comment)
one/joy_step_at_a_time says:
sky – oh, don’t get me started on my dad’s mom!
i feel like i am assembling a family tree of evil – all rotted and poisoned. there is a tree in the tv series ‘carnivale’ (long gone) that keeps flashing in my mind. It’s a good show about evil sky. think you might like it.
(Report abusive comment)
one/joy_step_at_a_time says:
sky – i always wanted to save my mom. always. i wanted her to have the life she never did. i am finally giving up.
and if she didn’t have dementia i would challenge her on her dad stuff – but it is of no use. when she wistfully talks of him now (with the dementia) it’s like she goes to a far off place where she is ‘at home’. well, she is, but she doesn’t see it as dysfunctional. it is this quality in her – that transferred to me, and made the spath possible. she and i share this need to be and rarely having been ‘at home’. i felt like i had come home with the spath (on a couple of important levels). I love my mother’s connection to the magical, just not the magical thinking. some things have faces that we cannot see until we are seared with knowledge. the apple therefore should be a symbol of wisdom, as should the snake. in paganism the apple is a symbol of fertility and the snake, of the often fallow nature transition, eternity, healing and life in harmony.
(Report abusive comment)
skylar says:
One,
I also felt like I wanted to save my mom. I wanted to give her everything that my selfish father never did. One year, for her birthday, I gave her pearls. She cried.
that’s why it was soooo difficult to see her as sabotaging and envious of me.
But then the spath was the same: my overgrown child that needed me to rescue him.
Can you imagine how I felt when I saw my spath sister borrowing the pearls? I never even borrowed her pearls.
(Report abusive comment)
skylar says:
One Joy,
does your mom know about what happened with your spath?
I know she has dementia, but the spath episode was a couple of years ago, so I’m wondering what you told her.
(Report abusive comment)
one/joy_step_at_a_time says:
same with me sky – wanted to give her what my dad didn’t emotionally. sigh. i tried sooooo hard.
no, i have never told her. she would not be able to comprehend it (as it’s hard for those of us without dementia!). she knows nothing about computers, and she would completely not understand me falling for a ‘boy’. not that i did, actually. and then there is the type of forum it was….a lot of TMI in the story.
she has got to have slowest onsetting dementia(s). she was first diagnosed with TIAs and a hereditarty dementia (not Alhzs.) in the mid 90′s. She is also diagnosed with Alhzs. now.
I have told her about the chemical exposures – because of my sib (severe MCS) and because she has medical knowledge (albeit outdated by decades) she can kind of grasp that one. I am pretty sure my having MCS actually validates my sib’s claim – thye have always dismissed her as ‘out there’. but as they are the king and queen of denial, it’s easy to dismiss anything.
you sister’s and mother’s lack of attaching significance to the pearls (both in their own way – your mom lending and your sib borrowing) speaks volumes.
(Report abusive comment)
Ox Drover says:
Sky, literally “pearls before swine” LOL
guys I think I can see the stuff coming down the generations, especially in One/Joy’s family like mine….violence and blame placing. Grandma was the designated victim (but of course it was her fault he beat her because she was a flirt and brought it on herself—ah yes the days of blame the victim) but Junior came to her rescue and killed the Evil man who was beating her and then was banished from the family home into a far away country….and One’s mom had learned how to be a victim just like Mommy and married an N/P to abuse her and trained little One/Joy to want to defend her from the evil man she married and oh, boy, then it passes through the generations…..so One/Joy goes NC with the evil N Sire (effectively killing him off) and everyone lives dysfunctionally ever afterward…except One/Joy is messing up the story by GETTING HEALTHY. Oh, Darn, what can we do about that! Can’t let someone in the family get healthy, that would destroy the dynamics built up over generations.
Well, healthy is better, and even better late than never. None of our mothers is going to change at this stage in the game of life because they are either unwilling or unable to realize they need to change, they see no need, therefore no effort in that direction. WE see a need to change, but we can’t change them so we have to change how we respond or react to them.
There was a time when I SO WANTED To change my egg donor and I remember how Sky was just dying to educate her parents about her N brother and all the other information she was figuring out…I had (by that point) given up on educating or changing mine and I knew that Sky’s quest would never fly, but I think we all have to figure that out for ourselves and realize it IS WHAT IT IS.
I still WISH sometimes, when I am in a “wishing” mood, that I’d had a lovely, supportive, caring mother, but what the heck, I got what I got and I am what I am, and I’m gonna make my life better by being good to myself. At least she kept a roof over my head and clothes on my back and that’s a lot more than some parents do. So while I might have wished for comfort and love in addition to financial support til I was 17, at least I realize it could have been worse.
(Report abusive comment)
one/joy_step_at_a_time says:
sky – if i were around her all the time i would probably figure out what i could tell her. but at this time my visits are like hit and run accidents, and i have deal with not talking to dad everytime i am there – it’s just too much.
the email from dad still sits on the server. i figured out why i don’t want to open it. i don’t want to get a blast of anger. i don’t care if it’s manipulative or anything else – i don’t want anger. i feel like it would pierce my heart to my soul. right now, i am hurting myself with my hatefullness, the gateway is open, so i cannot let him anywhere near me. hearing his voice – his tone of voice when he was talkng to her 2 visits ago, i felt repulsed. he is a bad man, and i dont’ know how i stood being around him. as a teen i did a LOT of drugs to numb myself, and he wasn’t nearly the obvious shit he is now.
(Report abusive comment)
panther says:
Wow! I have a lot of catching up to do. Constantine, I really value your feedback. The women on here are fantastic reads with great mental backbones. But hearing some of this from another man has its way of driving the point home a bit further.
The reason I say this is because he managed to convince me for a long time that every man on earth was just like him, but they were all hiding it, so I should be lucky he is not hiding his true nature from me. I would always argue that NO I have met nice guys who didn’t say or do half the crap I’ve put up with from you! And he’d say stuff like, “Yes, but inside, they thought you were just a used sock and worth nothing. They hid their true nature from you and all women because they think you are all too weak and stupid to find the truth. We men managed to trick you all. That’s why I’m telling you these things. To protect you and make you stronger.” Now, I don’t….even….want to go there if that is a TELL (my new very helpful vocab word/concept). But to have Constantine in here saying this guy has no soul is so nice to hear from a guy!
By the way, I have FINALLY achieved the NO CONTACT and he put 6 emails in my inbox since this morning. I haven’t opened a single one. I created a folder called “John” and dumped every email of his in there. I’ll hang on to them in case I need evidence one day (I really hope I won’t though). But the titled of these emails were huge letters proclaiming, “I WILL NOT GIVE UP ON YOU!” and the like.
I think my instincts are starting to return, because I interpret that as, “I am gonna stalk you, b**ch.”
(Report abusive comment)
Ox Drover says:
Dear One/Joy,
((((One))))) once we SEE them for what they are (TOXIC) it becomes more and more difficult to stay around them. It actually makes NC easier….except for the collateral damage when they are “connected” to someone we want to be around (like your mom)
I also understand about the ANGER….anger takes a LOT OF ENERGY to keep up and control and it makes us TIRED. I think you are doing some important “work” though on yourself and you will come out the other end of the tunnel stronger and more resilient.
(Report abusive comment)
one/joy_step_at_a_time says:
oxy – thanks for your little parable – going to look at that for the structure of some writing I am gathering source material for.
now, i have to say it also made me laugh – and immediately after laughing i do my best learning. and what i saw was – one joy could eff herself up. that’s how we keep the parable rolling over generations of ugly. SO AGAIN, ANOTHER PIECE OF SUPPORT OF THE FACT THAT IT IS ONE JOY’S JOB TO NOT DO THAT.
I am so exhausted today. one of my business colleagues helped me go get some things i need and put some things in storage in my quest to get ready for the seemingly real roommate i will have in a few days. funny, not taking stuff out of the boxes until she arrives – fool me once….
i hadn’t moved that much since i got injured, and i am so sore today. i read over the side effects of the antibiotics last – ‘may cause muscle and tendon problems’ hahahahaha….no no that’s where I STARTED and one of the reason I fell. life is stupid.
(Report abusive comment)
Ox Drover says:
Dear Panther,
YOU ARE SO RIGHT, “I will not give up on you” in psychopathic language DOES MEAN “I’m gonna stalk you bIatch” YOu have just now received your TRANSLATOR CERTIFICATION for being bi-linguial in both PSYCHOPATH SPEAK and ENGLISH.
That is what we must do is to translate what the words are in to what they are MEANING…..
Good for you, the “John” file, why don’t you rename it THE TOILET. LOL
Good for you for the NC too…..and it will be hard to keep up sometimes because he will poke your buttons and you will want to respond, but DO NOT GIVE IN, come here instead and we will hold your hand!
(Report abusive comment)
one/joy_step_at_a_time says:
panther – thinking about your screen name. i have been around real panthers. he might stalk you but panthers are amazingly good at ‘grey rock’.
(Report abusive comment)
Ox Drover says:
One, yep, it is easy enough to STEP BACK and see the generational pattern, even when there is difficulty in seeing the more recent one. I think taking a look at who is playing WHAT ROLE in the family dynamics– VICTIM, PERSECUTOR, RESCUER….and of course they are interchangeable from day to day and person to person, and each person at one point plays ALL the different roles. Grandpa quit being the persecutor and became the victim when his son Killed him, and the son became the persecutor of grandpa, but the rescuer of grandma….ring around the rosey….but I swear in my family, it STOPS HERE WITH ME. Maybe only with me, but I can’t tolerate the anger, the drama any more. I don’t want to be either the rescuer, or the victim and won’t be the persecutor either….though my egg donor interprets NC as “abuse of her” by neglect. So what the term is (P-R or V) depends on whose ox is gored I guess to some extent. LOL But I intend to be the one to VALIDATE my truth if no one else does that’s okay too.
(Report abusive comment)
superkid10 says:
SKYLAR
I agree with you, spaths are the ultimate “navel gazers”. They can not imagine what it’s like to be anybody else, so they project on everybody else. It’s an absence of emotional intelligence.
My spath didn’t trust anybody. He could only imagine that the rest of the world was as evil as he is. We argued about it constantly. He couldn’t imagine a trustworthy world.
A snake in a suit is still a snake.
Superkid
(Report abusive comment)
panther says:
OneJoy: Nice to meet you and thanks for your feedback. Every time someone points something out, I hear myself going DUH that was pretty obvious, too, now wasn’t it? I read your quoted line over and over again. There are so many layers there, and I can heaf the tone in his voice, which would have been this aching irony like something outa Shakespeare (he does literally recite his words when he is working his magic), but when I read without assuming his tone aka the charisma that Constantine mentions, it’s waaayyy more obvious.
Skylar: Your bf makes a great point. I also like hearing that people on her have bfs and gfs and spouses. Gives me hope!
About their projection, I also noticed many times that he was quoting me back to myself and claiming it as his own feelings or views, which is classic manipulation, but I always thought that if I could feel that way, then who am I to tell someone else that they cannot feel that way? He mimics people around him in this way a lot. It’s almost like they patchwork a personality together by watching others in order to fill that huge gap between their true nature and that of those around them.
(Report abusive comment)
one/joy_step_at_a_time says:
oxy – i need to do an overlay of the karpman triangle on all of these scenarios, starting with my mom’s family as you just did.
i have always had huge rescuer energy – and not just emo, but physical. i had an intake assessment for the mood disorder clinic on monday (had to call the crisis line afterwards, i got so messed up). the intake person was asking me about trauma experienced or witnessed. i looked at him and asked him to define trauma. he talked about different sorts of abuse experienced or witnessed, and seeing bloody or gorey scenes. He stopped me after 10 minutes. Felt he had enough to work with.
(Report abusive comment)
panther says:
Oh OneJoy, it’s because of a dream/revelation I had right before I decided to cut contact with him. Me and my entire family were out in an ancient European graveyard having a family reunion picnic (even dead ancestors I had never met were there).
Then, five black panthers circled us. I remember staring a few of them in the eyes as they crouched down like they were going to attack. But then I just got this instinctive feeling that they wouldn’t, despite the fact that we were prey, they had surrounded us, and they were all in the “pounce” position. In the dream, I trusted my gut, and the panthers didn’t attack us, but rather a went scurrying after a bunch of rodents (which strongly translated as danger for some reason symbolically in my subcon) all around us. They jumped onto the table, sprung over us, but didn’t even scratch a single person.
I’m still trying to figure out what my subcon was trying to tell me, but for now, my screen name is panther
Yeah, kittehs can has a hide!
(Report abusive comment)
panther says:
Oh, and Ox Drover, thank you for my certificate!!!!
And thank you for confirming that translation. I think I will rename that file toilet just to remember you if I ever think of peeking
(Report abusive comment)
one/joy_step_at_a_time says:
adendum to my above post: one counselor in my life (the one that figured out the boy was fake weeks before i did) has challenged me on my bravery and calm under duress. I am the perosn you want on the island, i am the person who takes control in crisis, i am the person who assesses accident scenes (early training) long before the appropriate authorities arrive or spring to action, i am the person who steps in when i see DV (either by calling the police) or if necessary, i slide in and distract the abusers myself.
RESUCER!!
(Report abusive comment)
one/joy_step_at_a_time says:
PANTHER – I have to go right now, but i want to come back to your dream post -
(Report abusive comment)
panther says:
See ya later.
(Report abusive comment)
panther says:
By the way….I also remembered that my ex spath showed up in the dream during the panther vs rodent massacre, and he started getting very upset over a small cat that had its belly slashed open by one of the panthers. He was trying to convince me to help him save it, but I told him that we shouldn’t get in the way of this panther business, since they were from nature and nature had its ways.
BG info: My cat mysteriously disappeared 2 days before I moved out of the place we were living in together and he went to great lengths to convince me that if I didn’t stay and look for the cat, that this meant I would make a horrible mother and that I didn’t have what it takes to keep my promises to those I love.
I didn’t mention all this additional info cause I didn’t wanna bore anyone with dream stuff
I have this new fascination with black panthers, though.
(Report abusive comment)
candy says:
Panther – Hi. Have you ever thought that he disposed of the cat on purpose? Spaths can be very cruel to animals – as I’ve witnessed, to satisfy their own needs. That way he gets you to stay on the pretence of guilt tripping you about the cat! Spaths are warped, never underestimate what they will do..
(Report abusive comment)
panther says:
Hi Candy,
I have more than just thought of it. I have outright accused him and he denied it. He has had his own cat for as long as I’d known him, and he actually is very affectionate with cats — in front of me at least. He puts cats into the small and helpless category with children and women, by his own admission. I hate to think of it, because that cat was my child. Also, even if it were the case, there would still be nothing I could do about it without any evidence. I cannot even think of it. The fury of this thought is too much.
Yes, he is warped. Very warped and I wouldn’t put it past him even for a moment.
(Report abusive comment)
Constantine says:
Dear Panther,
I’m glad to hear that you are ignoring this guy. He sounds incredibly immature and spathy.
I forgot to point out in my earlier post that, in my experience, “socio letters” tend to be more impressive during the “wooing” phase than later on. With mine, at least, she was pretty adept at the, “I love you so much it hurts!” type of stuff. But when it all started to fall apart and I began to figure out what she was up to, that’s where her “mimicking” abilities really began to deteriorate and get downright sloppy. In other words, at that point, everything was always just a little “off,” and somehow not quite appropriate. It’s hard to explain, but it was like she lacked the necessary emotional dexterity to even “play along” after a certain point. (And I’m not talking about when I completely called her out. Then it was obvious. No, I mean at the very early stages of the “bad times.”)
At any rate, don’t give any importance to this guy’s fatuous generalizations about us males! That’s just how people who don’t think think!
Okay, I’m off to do some errands. Have a nice “NC day” and I’ll talk to you later!
C.
(Report abusive comment)
Constantine says:
PS Oxy,
A “half foreign movie” is literally just that: half spoken English and half French subtitles!
(Report abusive comment)
skylar says:
Panther,
I love dream interpretation and will often just google to figure them out. Here’s what I found for you:
Elsewhere, I’ve found the panther is a symbol of death and rebirth as well as the “shadow side”, the subconscious.
The rat came up as:
So it seems to me that your subconscious is very observant. It KNOWS that your rat is a spath, or your spath is a rat, whichever. Since there is more than one rat, there are many and they are everywhere, it seems you are aware that this is a big problem of spath infestation since ancient egypt – in other words: throughout history. Since your family is there, it signifies that you know you have spaths in your family.
The Panthers are your protection and they signify that you are coming into a rebirth of awareness with this new knowledge. But what is the number 5? I’m curious.
I found this,
In my experience, the proximity of a spath causes a lot of activity in the subconscious in the form of vivid dreams and freudian slips and other leakage from the subconscious. It’s our amygdala trying desperately to warn us, but it has no words, so it uses symbols and emotions.
I’m so glad you woke up so quickly and it didn’t take decades, like it did for me.
(Report abusive comment)
skylar says:
Hi Candy,
haven’t seen you for a bit. How is everything?
(Report abusive comment)
coping says:
Yes, dreams are very interesting. I’ve had several in the past weeks About giant alligators. People swimming with them as amusement.. And me thinking why are they doing that.. Dong they know that’s dangerous. I even had one where I was getting married by a pond and a giant alligator came to the surface with a giant maternity bra on it’s head? I
Whats really wierd is i also had this crazy dream which for the life of me I can’t understand. It was or felt religious and has stuck in my mind for days. I’ve never had such a dream.. Well there’s a first for everything I guess. In the dream I was going to work at a bar (I guess I was a bartender- which I am not) when I got there the owner was a woman who everyone seemed intimidated by. However she said that tonight there was going to be a book reading I remember being afraid but asking her if I should stay.. Since I wasn’t going to be working would I get paid. She said yes. As it turns out it was a new book they were talking about and the place was packed with bible groups. ?. I remember looking over to the man next to me and seeing his book which looked old ( beat up yellow pages) and thinking that doesn’t look like a new book. What hit me was all I saw were the page numbers of the book which were 237. Then I woke up. All I rember was thinking old- religious- 237. It meant nothing to me. I did a quick google thinking old testament 237 and all that came up was stuff about trinity- and how it can’t be explained- it said explaining the trinity to someone would be like explaining a microchip to a 2 year old.? Very stance. I don’t know the bible so this dream has baffled me beyond belief. Any ideas what that could have been about? Too wierd!!!
(Report abusive comment)