I just wrote a letter to the spath, that i will not send and will not post for her to see. it was the first time i have addressed her directly since all of this happened – and i shook while writing it and shook after writing it.

4 short paragraphs. seems i don’t have a lot to say – just lots of CAPS and a couple of swear words.

…okay, a few CAPPED swear words

and on i step….

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I like that Buddha quote. It’s exactly right on the projection.

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look at how you might heal this feeling of unworthiness and unattractiveness. think of it as not being in relationship to him. him as not the injurer, just see how you might be able to interact with the injury in some meaningful way. to touch it. to witness it.

‘He confirmed to me how disgusting I really was’
THEY WILL USE WHATEVER THEY CAN – IT IS NOT PERSONAL.
they are quick studies, so they figure out where they can hurt us most, and then they do it.

He is a spath – him taking you less seriously IS A BLESSING.

thank you for your post. it is helpful to me, too.

best,
one step

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Slimone, you bring up an important point for me that I’m struggling with. I’m trying to depersonalize and not feel defective, but I know that the S/P had other women he took way more seriously than me. I know he saw me as easier to abuse because I was more worthless to him, because of age and unattractiveness, which turns my stomach. He confirmed to me how disgusting I really was and that’s taking the longest time to shift. Still making him the measure of my worthiness and coming up short. Ugh. Rationally, I know we can’t be attractive to everyone but he let me know I was nowhere near his benchmark. I’m carrying that and it’s heavy.

Thanks a lot for the book recommendation. My mom was the doormat and Dad the S/N, but I guess it would still help.

Thanks Slimone and I’m glad to hear you’re making progress. I’ve read a lot of your posts and can relate to a lot you’ve said.

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Congratulations on the validation you received from your therapist. Mine looked at the s’s websites and told me the same thing at our next session. It is a wonderful and glorious moment, when we get this kind of validation.

I too, like so many here, had a very abusive background. Sexual/emotional/physical abuse. Like Matt, I was well-groomed for future abusers.

When I was given the language and concepts around abusers and predators it was a leap of consciousness for me. I could finally identify people from my family and my present.

But most helpful of all is the information has enabled me to identify just what the impact on my life/person has been. I can, in some way, depersonalize my problems, look at them as having a cause, and being an ‘effect’, and not some horrible deficit of my personhood. I guess I can now ‘own’ them, instead of being ashamed and blind to my own healing needs. Just the awareness alone has brought about changes that required very little ‘work’.

Another good read is ‘Will I Ever Be Good Enough?’, about daughters of narcissistic mothers. I found it super helpful.

Journey on!

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So many times I have thought I had discovered thhose secrets, and then, let myself get “cocky” and think I AM THERE, when in actuallity I was just beginnig, and I let another P lure me off the road to healing with another “siren song”—this time I am TYING myself to the road so that nothing no matter how beautiful and tempting can lure me off the road to healing, back into that dismal swamp of thinking that someone else can give me “happiness”—-that something external can “make me happy”—I’ve been for way too long like Charlile Brown kicking at the football held by a SERIES of Lucys, all promising NOT to move the ball! Now I know that only I can hold the football for myself.

You deserve a TOWANDA GF! (((hugs))))

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Yes, it’s so true that even if we only have our own gut feeling and research to tell us that they’re psychopaths, that *must be* enough for us to start to heal, but it sure is great for someone else who knows them first hand to tell me that she thinks so too. : )

Matt, thanks so much for the book recommendations. I have just finished ‘The Betrayal Bond’ and it has been more useful to me than any other book I’ve read so far. A ‘must-have’ for anybody who has to visit here, I agree. I will get the Dan Neuharth book too. I am finding John Bradshaw’s ‘Healing The Shame that Binds You’ useful for learning to stop believing all the bad I was told about myself as a child and which has stayed with me. It’s another good one.

Abnegated sense of self, that’s the truth. Told my therapist at the start that I had no idea who I was. Never had the courage or confidence to find out. Just did whatever seemed safest at the time. I’ve only recently realised how traumatised I have been all my life.

Your comment to S was right on.

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I grew up in an extremely abusive home (physical and emotional). I remember telling S one day that he should send my parents a thank you note for grooming me so that S could finish me off.

Two books which helped me immensely in trying to figure out how this all happened were “If You Had Controlling Parents”. Dan Neuharth explains the various kinds of control which parents exert over their children and how that robs you of your ability to assert boundaries and end up with an abnegated sense of self. Then read “The Betrayal Bond” by Patrick Carnes. It explains how the S gains control of us by trauma bonding. The trauma bonding often beings in our childhoods at the hands of abusive parents. That’s why I recommend reading both these books.

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