After the sociopath: How do we heal? Part 16 – The end of recovery
PDF Because there is so much discussion lately about pity, empathy and compassion in the wake of a relationship with a sociopath, I am writing this article to discuss compassion as it fits into the recovery process.
Before I begin, I would like to humbly remind my readers that recovery, by its nature, is a progression through different stages of emotional learning. If the trauma is major, these emotional states will be intense. And they will color our “sight” or view of the world and ourselves. I’m pointing this out as a warning that, unless you are in late-stage recovery, the material in this article may be irritating and you may find me a holier-than-thou pain in the butt.
If the farthest you have gone in trauma processing is denial, bargaining, anger, or grief and letting go, the related emotions will – and should – dominate your view of things until you learn the lessons of that stage and gaduate to the next one. Each graduation changes your world, and it also alters your perspective on how you felt before. For example, anger looks back at denial as a less empowered, less insightful phase. And denial veiws anger as anger as socially unacceptable or scary. This is just the natural progression of maturing consciousness. We look back from a larger perspesctive. We tend to block or demonize information from levels that are too far beyond where we are now.
So if this article doesn’t make sense to you, or it seems “nice but improbable,” or you find it irritating or nutty, it means it’s not useful to your current learning stage. Typically we can see into the next level of healing, even if we’re not fully there. Beyond that, it’s hard for us to intuitively grasp how it’s going to be.
As we observe on LoveFraud, there is a lot of learning in recovery. This article is about the end of the process. It’s an end so complete that, every “next time” we face a trauma, we know how the processing will end. It changes forever the way we approach healing and the speed at which we do it.
Defining compassion
Most of us grew up in the Judeo-Christian tradition where compassion is understood as a “social” feeling. That is, the feeling is about “we,” not just “I.” It’s associated with ideas about welfare as a community goal, not just an individual one. So we tend to define compassion as concern about someone else’s difficulty plus some level of obligation to help.
This definition of compassion is why the sociopath’s pity ploy is so challenging for us. It’s also why there may be resistance to my statements that I feel compassion for my ex, because I am aware of the painful identity damage he lives with. The assumption, I believe, is that it’s dangerous to feel compassion for an anti-social person, because that feeling comes with implied obligation to help. So it may seem inexplicable that I am aware of his pain, but feel no responsibility for alleviating it.
The concept of compassion that I am presenting to you today is somewhat different. It is more like a Buddhist or Eastern idea of compassion. This compassion is simply a state (of mind), not a process of identifying need and acting on it. This state of compassion may inform our actions — quite literally inform, by providing information – but the actions themselves are driven by other commitments or goals.
That’s all very abstract. Why does it matter?
Here’s why. The state of compassion — which is open-hearted willingness to understand other people’s states and situations and to feel whatever feelings that produces — puts us into full alignment with “what is.” It’s a vibrant awareness that keeps us gathering information, learning, and accepting reality without judgment.
It’s not that we don’t make judgments on other levels of consciousness. In a compassionate state, we may understand what’s driving a person who is dangerous to us. On another level, we may interpret this person as nothing but a threat and be preparing to defend ourselves or flee. But the compassionate level “sees” their state, our state, and many surrounding details. All that information moves “down” the processing ladder to refine what’s going on at the visceral self-defense level, the pleasure-pain level, our community-feelings level, and the cognitive level where we’re doing logical reasoning.
In other words, this compassionate level of awareness feeds all our processes by providing them with information that is detailed, perceptive and based on openness to active states and connections in our environment.
If this sounds like a hierarchy of consciousness, that is exactly what it is. There are lots of models for this hierarchy, which I’m not going to get into now. But I mentioned earlier that this is the end-state of recovery. That means recovery from a specific trauma. It doesn’t mean that we have this compassionate awareness in every area of our lives, but any specific healing process is over when we have processed through to compassion.
Our changing focus in healing
We’ve talked about denial, bargaining, anger, grief and letting go, and finally learning the lesson that changes our perspectives and/or life rules. This follows the Kubler-Ross model of grief processing. But Kubler-Ross was conceived as a model for people facing terminal illness. It described how people come to accept the ending of their lives. The model I’m working with goes farther, because it assumes that recovery is a doorway into a new chapter of life.
To see the whole picture of recovery, it helps to look at the progressive shifts in our focus. Up to anger, and including part of the angry phase, trauma processing is about maintaining personal control — the idea that this is something we can change or affect. First we try to control our reactions (denial), then we try to control how our behavior influenced the situation (bargaining), then we try to control the situation by force of will (anger). In anger, we grasp that the problem is external to us. To control the impact of such externalities in the future, we develop defensive skills and perceptions.
In the later stages of anger — and this is one of the things that moves us out of anger — we become aware that we’re dealing with something that was not in our control at all. While the skills-building makes us feel better about ourselves, we are still reacting to outside threats. This focus on the external continues through the grieving and letting go process.
Turning inward
Grieving what we cannot change leads, eventually, to letting go. We can’t fully let go in anger. Instead, we have to revisit the love or great value we felt toward what we lost. (This may be, and often is, something that we now recognize as an illusion.) Reawakening love, even to say goodbye, relaxes us back into ourselves, and opens us to the “lightbulb” learnings that typically release us from previous attachments or ideas of what we “must” have or do to be happy or whole.
In discovering what we don’t need, we gain freedom – more scope of action, feelings, and even intellect. But to explore the meaning of that freedom, we find ourselves “shaking down” our internal systems to see what makes sense now and what doesn’t. With freedom comes responsibilities, and we have more learning to do about how we will act, what we will expect, and how our feelings work in this new world.
As a simple example, a common learning from our experience with a sociopath is that, although we once needed other poeple to confirm our okay-ness, we realize we don’t need external validation to trust our values and perceptions. So flattery and promises, or outside opinons about our dreams or our guilt, may sometimes make us feel good (or bad) but they’re not ultimately as true for us as our own ideas and feelings. So how does that affect every other relationship in our lives? Working this through takes time and experimentation.
More to the point, perhaps, relationships with sociopaths teach us that we have the inborn entitlement and responsibility to take better care of ourselves. To take ourselves more seriously. To assign higher value to not just our survival, but what we do with our lives. And this imperative eventually brings us to a confrontation with how we really feel about ourselves.
Clearing the obstacles to self-love
This confrontation is usually shocking, something like traumatic. It’s mindbending to discover that we’ve been carrying around damage that has caused us to treat ourselves as badly as we accused the sociopath of doing. In fact, we could almost call the sociopath an agent of our own distrust and disrespect for ourselves.
But now we’re experienced enough to know that we didn’t do this to ourselves. We identify the externaliites and note how little control we had. Even working with memories, we can assert our right to our integrity, our right to thrive, and reject the old influences on our lives that once crippled us with feelings of unlovability, unworthiness, insecurity or despair.
This process of restoring self-love is the end stretch of trauma-processing. Our shakedown of our internal beliefs, rules and processes becomes more pervasive and profound. We are in touch with a need that we may have felt before, often masked in background anxiety or in addictive hungers, but we can’t mistake what it really is. We want to clear away anything that keeps us from being in touch with our true self — the bright, good, authentic, perceptive, learning, feeling center that has been the source of our best social impulses and also our self-healing impulses all our lives.
When we understand that this center exists and feel its nature, we come home to something that has always been there. It’s an experience that is impossible to describe, but it is the beginning of making sense of everything in our lives. In particular, we see how much of our life story has been about our attempts to heal traumas and get back to who we are. We become more conscious of how unhealed wounds color our perceptions. Though we cannot resolve everything at once, each resolved trauma illumates more of our authentic self, and helps us tell the differnce between what is authentic in us and what is unfinished trauma-processing. In this knowledge, we become more understanding and able to comfort ourselves, and more accepting of our normal human pains, fears, losses, as well as hungers, attractions, and goals.
We don’t have to be perfect to love ourselves. We can make peace with who we are. We can become more relaxed about new challenges, because we accept that, win or lose, we’re going to learn something great. We can acquire a sense of humor about where we’re still developing and are not so good at being all we could be.
We gain a new perspective, a kind of distance from ourselves that relieves us from fear and criticism, but encourages us in our progess as evolving people. That perspective also gradually aligns all the levels of consciousness behind a new “boss,” a new highest, deepest level that is more open and smart, while being more tolerant and supportive of our humanity. All of it — our need to physically survive, our genetic attachments to family, our drive to bond and reproduce, our dependence on community, our desire to make our lives meaningful, and all the other needs that come with being human. Compassion is like having an angel in the “top office,” influencing the way the whole company works.
But here’s the thing about compassion. As that open-hearted awareness anchors our internal workings, it also changes the way we see the world. Our perceptions are a reflection of our inner lives. We see from where we are in ourselves.
Compassion and Sociopathy
Compassion is a state of awareness. As I said earlier, this definition of compassion does not require us to act or react. It simply provides a new and more refined set of information to the rest of our systems. In the case of identifying a sociopath or finding reason to react, the identification is made with openness to understanding their state, including the wounded pain of their broken humanity. But compassion feels this pain without becoming involved in it. The information made available to our defensive systems may be simply that this person is wounded, extremely needy for personal support, but is apparently unable to heal or return support to other people. His needs are bottomless and not fixable by us.
Sad for him, and sad for us to know this about him. But it clarifies our response. Compassion tells us there is no potential for a mutual relationship and nothing to be gained by trying to help.
People who have read me here for a while, know that I am committed to changing social systems that, in my belief, create the circumstances in which children develop affective disorders – inadequate nurture, environmental violence and direct abuse. Sociopathy is an affective disorder, which may have genetic factors of predisposition, but is powerfully affected by environmental factors. I can’t change sociopaths, but I want to help reduce future suffering (and all the suffering it causes) at the source, where children are learning despair of trusting anything but themselves.
My way to change those systems is to help individuals stop the cycle of damage for themselves. I believe that we can heal our old damage, so we are no longer perpetuating or supporting the transmission of damage through generations, communities and other human systems. If we don’t get well, we are part of the problem. If we do get well, we become living solutions. Some of us will change the world just by being human beacons, people who inspire other people to learn to love themselves and discover with the powerful rationality that compassion brings. Some of us will use the information compassion brings us to actively work on human systems to create a better world where human potential can flourish.
So that is compassion in my view. I hope this clarifies what I mean when I talk about compassion, and why some of you may find my perspectives and my language so different. I hope that, in my voice, some of you hear the voice of your future.
Namaste. My angel high-fives your angel.
Kathy
PS. This article is not about what’s wrong with you, being a more loving person so you’re treated better, or accepting or forgiving bad behavior. If it even seems like that, come back and take another look at it in a year or so. In the meantime, don’t worry, you’re doing fine and exactly where you’re supposed to be on the path.
written by Kathleen Hawk • Permalink •
one_step_at_a_time says:
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verity says:
Thank you Kathleen for this:
“Naming him a thief is a very good start … He was an empty shell who stole everything that looked like personality, power and reputation. The only real thing about him is the dark pit of anger and hunger and grief at the center. You were conned by someone who survives by pretending, conning and trying to convince himself and other people that he has any community value, when he doesn’t even know what that means.
This isn’t about you. It never was. Except that you had vulnerabilities. And you ultimately will realize that while trying to steal all that was good about you, he also shared his emptiness with you. Feelings are contagious. That’s why these guys want the warmest, most loving and feeling people whose inadequate boundaries just allow them to pig out. They are desperate for the illusion of belonging, of being valued and loved. (And yes, they don’t know what to do with any of this except to consume it to the destruction of the host.) But you have been around someone whose only enduring qualities are self-hatred, resentment, despair, inability to trust or love, and a level of denial that makes them clank like empty suits of armor. And you’ve been going to this person for validation?”
This series in particular, but everything I’ve read here and on sites about NPD, have enabled me to heal. It’s not over but I get it now. I can stop thinking about him and what he was and concentrate on building the new me. My mistake was thinking that this was all I deserved. Never again. I’m even starting to think I might agree to a date with the very much non personality disordered man at choir and I didn’t think I’d be saying that a couple of weeks ago
Thanks LF for everything. You are all lifesavers. xxx
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Buttons says:
What an excellent article!!!!! I’m learning that the reconciliation between what was is a long, thoughtful process for me. Sometimes, I get angry, still other times, I grieve for what “should” have been. What I keep coming away with is simply this: it just was.
Perhaps, it’s the intensity of the damage and the urgent need to put and end to my trauma, but I think that I wasn’t allowing myself time to process all of this damage. I wasn’t “getting over it” quickly enough, according to those around me. It takes time, patience, and diligence. It takes decades for a tree to grow to maturity, and I figure I’ll be spending the rest of my life learning to mature from my experiences, and that’s okay – as long as I’m still learning, life is good.
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Buttons says:
{{{Verity}}} We’re “allowed” to reinvent ourselves! GOOD FOR YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!
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verity says:
Dear Buttons, thanks so much for the hug and have one back. ((((Buttons)))))
I know for me the healing journey isn’t over and that there will likely be more grief and anger that such a thing is even possible and that it happened to me but, as the book Emotional Rape Syndrome says, recovery cannot start until we NAME what happened to us and I’ve only just accepted what he was. The evidence was all around me but it was too hard to believe. I still have PTSD symptoms but now I understand that it’s a perfectly normal response to an abnormal situation I find it easier to bear. The old me was willing to carry his shame as well as my own, but not any more.
I really relate to what you say: “As long as I’m still learning, life is good.” Life IS good, and as we reinvent ourselves I think we’ll attract even more good into our lives.
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one_step_at_a_time says:
Taking just a moment away from the work I set out to do today to write here. Missed an appt this am. Was graceful in my apology and re-booked and am NOT going to beat myself up about it; this is the PTSD reality…there is a part of me that just isn’t in the world yet, too busy inside, too shocked still.
I was checking the date on a group of documents – and saw today’s date – it’s an anniversary time for me with the ppath. It gave me a jolt. I stand with one foot in the world, and one foot in ppath world still, and I work to spend more and more time in the world. In that one tiny second I traveled to ppath world and then yanked myself back. THAT land is a bottomless pit where the light has been shut out and I am worth nothing. Lies and evil.
I was just thinking, ‘what are the qualities of the person NOT in the pit?’ And before I got deep into answering that up came the question, ‘What would I be proud of in myself?’ As in, what goals would I need to be working on? I need to lower my expectations and raise my consistency. I set myself up for failure if I don’t, given the ‘new normal.’ I need to see what and who I am, and focus on having a huge heart for myself and my struggles.
Wow.
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verity says:
Dear one_step, your post has moved me a great deal. Anniversaries are hard. They’re felt viscerally.
One foot in each world, yes, I relate to that very much right now. The lifeline has been thrown across from the non-ptsd world and I’m hanging on, and some days and weeks can swing all the way in. There’s a lot of progress.
Lowering expectations and raising consistency is ringing true with me. I’m still setting the sort of ridiculously high standards for myself that a spath would set. Better to enjoy a little good time each and every day by being loving to ourselves. Being proud for having the courage to face this.
Having a huge heart for yourself, that’s wonderful. It’s the medicine we need. This is an important post you’ve written, I know it.
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learning says:
YES ONE-STEP!!!!!!
Re-mark your calendar!!! Its no longer the anniversary of the date darkness entered your life.
Its the new date and the beginning anniversary of the date the love and lightness between YOU AND YOU, YOURSELF, YOUR WORTH, YOUR VALUE, YOUR TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS AND YOUR GOALS FOR YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU YOU!!!!!
GREAT POST!!!! Realistic expectations can never equate to failure. Only with the resolve to try again until its achieved.
GREAT POST! You are leaving the darkness behind with each passing day! Good for you for choosing to grow and learn and move on!!
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Kathleen Hawk says:
Buttons and verity, I just dropped in and saw your posts. Hooray for you both.
You know, one of the oddities about this process is that, looking back at it later, we realize that it is one of the most engaged, vibrant and creative times of our lives. The years I spent healing from my five-year relationship with a sociopath were different than any other time in my life. Even though I thought it was about him, I was pouring my best energy into myself. It was a huge gift of learning and growing, and I never would have done it, if I hadn’t been so challenged by this person.
Now, when I’ve gone back to my “real” life, albeit with a lot of lessons learned and changes made, the reverberations of that time keep coming. It’s a very big deal to change some of our most embedded beliefs and personal habits. The fact that I’ve become more aware — of who I really am and what I want in my life — helps me see more of how I sabotage myself in large and small ways. And the skills I acquired in processing my feelings open up new possibilities of learning how to deal with problems and challenges.
But the challenges and the learning don’t stop Here’s an example. My ex is about to publish a book of his short stories. At least a third of them are, in some way, about our relationship or its aftermath in his life. His thoughts and feelings, as you might expect, are misogynistic, self-indulgent, insensitive, and generally romanticizing of despair, chaos, predation and betrayal. The idea that someone is publishing this paean to destruction and that impressionable people will be reading it just nauseates me. And I find myself daydreaming about how to add my comments wherever people are discussing it. And even to identify myself as the woman who lived through the experiences of “Shelly” and “Kate” and “Carol” and other women in his stories.
Writing this makes me think about the scene in “Godfather” when Michael Corleone said, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” Which makes me laugh at myself.
Michael also said, “Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.” Because it keep you in a reactive state. Fighting. Resisting. Creating an identity for yourself that is really about someone or something else. Rather than approaching the world with an eye toward what we can do that is good, what we can create that is beautiful, what we can leave behind that makes it better for those who come after us.
It’s a subtle distinction. Sometimes cleaning up a mess is a creative act. But only if we are not focused on the mess, but on a vision of what it could be.
I thought this was the last article in the series, but perhaps I should write one more about the power of where we place our attention.
Thank you both for making me think about this again. And congratulations on recovering your life in such important and joyful ways.
Kathy
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witsend says:
One Step,
Realistic expectations are really important, especially when dealing woth the PTS. At the end of the day we need to look at what we accomplished for ourselves in the day rather than focus on what we didn’t.
When dealing with PTSD, our accomplishments aren’t always the “physical work” we accomplish in a day, but the EMOTIONAL work we accomplished in that day.
Being true to ourselves.
Finding another piece of the puzzle in the reworking of the new improved One Step, is far more important at the end of the day than any appointment you might have missed.
Your kind heart can be used to show kindness towards yourself, not only towards others.
xxxx
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Rosa says:
“Godfather”…..one of the all-time GREATS….a cinematic masterpiece….
“You broke my heart, Fredo…..You broke my heart!!!”
I love that line.
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verity says:
Kathy, thank you for all you’ve written here on LF. I hope you know how important your work is and how much you’ve helped me to heal. At the beginning I used to read and re-read until I felt better but not feel up to working it. Now it’s time for action.
“Sometimes cleaning up a mess is a creative act. But only if we are not focused on the mess, but on a vision of what it could be.” YES! This is it. Pleeeease write more.
It’s that shift one-step was talking about when we’re between worlds. I always describe it as being in or out of the trance. Inside the trance is their world and their (or our projected?) view of us, but outside is where we can create something new that they have never had their grubby little hands on.
Oy! Stories about your relationship! That is HARD and I feel for you. Nauseating is right. My spath is a writer and it’s possible it could happen to me too but I won’t ever know, I’ve made sure of that.
My sincere thanks to you Kathy.
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Kathleen Hawk says:
One step, you sound good. It’s only a year, isn’t it?
You’re very welcome, Verity. I like what you said about the trance. There’s an amazing book called “Trances People Live” by Stephen Wolinsky that talks about how we hypnotize ourselves with everything we say and think, thereby creating the realities we live with.
I’m trained in NLP, and one of the things they talk about is being conscious or unconscious. Unconscious is when we get emotionally triggered, and start relating through our feelings, seeing the world through our private stuff, rather than having our senses open to take in the world as it is.
I don’t know if I wrote this in one of the articles (I have written it elsewhere here), but a Buddhist friend of mine gave me a great piece of advice when I was in the early stages of recovery, suffering almost more than I could stand, and writing and talking endlessly about what happened and my theories about it. He suggested that I shut down the word factory. Just feel the feelings, but not create stories around them.
It’s not easy to do. Or rather it’s easy, but the mind keeps wanting to manufacture all its stories, so it takes some discipline to keep shutting down the word factory. But it’s a fascinating exercise, because it turns out that the feelings actually have their own voices. Non-verbal usually, often fully of images or other sensory content from memory. But it gives us an opportunity to give real attention to the feelings, and discover what they are telling us about ourselves.
Later studying non-violent communication (NVC) and learning self-compassion,and then finding the work of Arjuna Ardagh (“Let Yourself Go: The Freedom & Power of Life Beyond Belief’”), I found new ways of relating to my feelings. And gradually, I got that sense that you are talking about — being out of the trance, but solidly inside myself. And therefore really conscious of my capacity to sense and affect the world outside me. Not in desperate reactivity as I was before, but as a conscious creative being.
It’s almost impossible to talk about this with someone who hasn’t go through it. My therapist used to talk about time spent in the inner landscape. I tried to write about it on Live Journal, because I was so excited about the work I was doing, but people just wanted to sympathize and tell me they hoped I felt better soon. It was interesting to see how the group consciousness is simply not working at the level of deep emotional involvement. Except perhaps for love relationships with other people. But not involvement with our own emotions. And in fact, there seems to be a lot of fear and criticism about being self-involved or sappy.
But I think that it’s a core part of becoming okay with ourselves, and then being able to take care of ourselves, and then being able to tap our great creative centers. We have to break loose of what people think about us, and all the ideas about how we “should” be, before we can discover who we really are. It’s why at the end of this long struggle to recover from a level of predation that we finally realize is threatening our lives and destroying our identities, we discover it is a spiritual journey.
Gosh, I’m going on and on. And have to get back to work. Thank you again for the kind words and the encouragement. I will write more soon.
Kathy
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one_step_at_a_time says:
all – when i used the term anniversary here today i meant that this was a time of significant experiences with the spath last year, not that this was an anniversary of meeting – that is longer ago.
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shana31 says:
Kathleen, this is a beautiful article. In the end, it really is all about loving ourselves.
I am 5 months out of a relationship with a man I am sure is a sociopath, but the self-discovery started years ago. Pregnant and unwed at 17, ended up marrying my son’s father a year later, only to divorce within 3 years. Married again at 28 and with this new awareness, he may just find himself described on these pages. He put me and my son through 9 kinds of hell, drank to the point where all the demons were unleashed and the next day wondered what my problem was and why I was so cold to him, had a sense of entitlement that allowed him to spend money we did not have and didn’t even begin to see a problem until I threw the checkbook at him and said You tell me where the money is going to come from. After our second child was born I slowly sank into a depression that I became intimate friends with for 3 years. I seriously questioned the meaning of life and when no answers were apparent, contemplated suicide, but could not fathom leaving my children in the hands of the man that I had chosen to let become their father. On her 5th birthday, in the course of a conversation my daughter said to me, I just want you to stop talking about marriage. Marriage is stupid, I’m never getting married. That is something I will never forget and was the catalyst for me sticking to my plan of finding out just what was wrong with me, With a counselor and Zoloft, the fog began to lift, I felt the beautiful release of HOPE. I could smell it, taste it, feel it, but it couldn’t be that easy. As I started to come alive, it was a world that felt so foreign to me, so outside my level of comfort, I stopped taking the Zoloft. This was not the ticket I needed. Back on ‘em girl! I started feeling stronger, and with this, came the anger. This was something the exH could not deal with. I had become his whipping post and he did not like me fighting back. Years later, we divorce…I date off and on, have a few relationships, read till I think I cannot read anymore, “party” with Dr. Phil, Oprah, John Gray, Greg Behrendt, whatever it takes to make sure that the next guy is going to be the right guy, no matter what it takes, I will not lose myself to another loser. In walks the sociopath. Answer to my prayers, treats me like a princess, and I proceed to live the fairytale life. Nice restaurants every night, romantic getaway weekends, honey-dripping emails that had me salivating for more. Flags start flying, but he treated me SO well. So he drinks way more than I am comfortable with? He keeps his cool, can still drive well. He seems a bit clingy? I say you don’t have to try so hard, I really like you. He tones it down. Surely this was the 80/20 rule Dr. Phil was talking about, never mind the fact that one of my dealbreakers is anything more than a social drinker. Another Dr. Philism, pay attention to what comes after the “but”.
I thought I was ready for a real relationship, one with mutual care, understanding, compassion, I got the lie. Of the seven survival signals discussed in The Gift of Fear, he used 6 of them against me. He never had to worry about misunderstanding the word No, because I never told him No.
“It’s mindbending to discover that we’ve been carrying around damage that has caused us to treat ourselves as badly as we accused the sociopath of doing. In fact, we could almost call the sociopath an agent of our own distrust and disrespect for ourselves.”
So are you perhaps saying, we almost Need them to show us what we think we are, but are not. I thought I had it all down, I knew that the choices I had made had led me down a dark road and I had come out victorious. He showed me that I still had lessons to learn.
“When we understand that this center exists and feel its nature, we come home to something that has always been there. It’s an experience that is impossible to describe, but it is the beginning of making sense of everything in our lives.”
I used to say that being with him felt like coming home. In his arms was where I was “supposed” to be, it just felt so right. I am thinking now that I just needed to come home to myself. I was almost there, but hadn’t finished the journey.
“Compassion tells us there is no potential for a mutual relationship and nothing to be gained by trying to help.”
I finally am realizing this. I have said it to myself, had my very best friend tell me countless times, and still I didn’t get it. And Oxy, if you are reading this, you were right. They just don’t understand, they can’t understand. They have not been there. It is our cross to bear.
This was the first of the healing articles I found, and felt compelled to post. Now I will go back and read the others.
Thank you.
Shana
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mo152 says:
When do the dreams stop??!!! After over a month of no contact and feeling stronger every day, I have started having dreams about the N/S and some are very intense and more like nightmares. I wake up in a terrible mood also and the feeling takes hours to shake off.
Most of the dreams are rehashing situations with him, things that he did or said that I now see may have been lies. It’s like my mind is sorting through everything. the dreams are dredging up stuff I hadn’t really thought about in years, at least not consciously.
It’s a very emotional process and there is really no one I can talk to about this. I’m out of therapy (after several years) and my two closest friends hate the N/S and don’t want to hear his name. They think I should have moved on long ago. Those who have never been there really cannot understand the trauma.
I am really over the desire to see or talk to this man ever again. After eight years of push-pull, and reeling me in only to discard or disappoint me again.. in a sick way that I think he enjoyed, I just want him out of my head! Any suggestions or similar experiences??
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ErinBrock says:
Mo152:
It is your mind processing.
It could also be a bit of PTSD rearing up.
Dreams are very telling……and we do process through them, I believe.
I still have days when he appears in my dreams…..and I find it helpful to write my dreams out.
It gives me another perspective of ‘what’ I lived.
It does take time…..it’s a process.
It’s not all cake and roses, as you know.
There is so much info and chatter about what you just asked about…..in LF.
Go through the archives in articles and find things and read all of it…..and the comments…..
You will find what you are experiencing is like others. You may find connection in others experiences and you can feel free to post about whatever it is that is on your mind…..and someone will respond to you here.
We have been through the ringer…..and we are on the rollercoaster with you……some of us in the front some of us in the back. But I have found writing on LF to be very cathartic as the process unfolds.
I’m NC for over 2.5…..and the dreams still sometimes show up.
But….on the other hand….I still am doing spath cleanup too……
Keep your strength…..there IS hope…..and there IS an end to this all!
XXOO
EB
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bluebell1341 says:
mo152: I’ve been NC with the S for 4 months. I’m just now starting to reach a point where I’m not spending every last minute agonizing over…something. Now, it’s more like every OTHER minute. Just kidding…kind of. My point is, I guess, that I’m still having dreams at 4 months, but they are becoming less just like the thoughts are becoming less. I can tell it will be an underlying current for me for a LONG time to come, but it’s moving in some kind of right direction. Hang in there. I know how awful you feel after waking up from those. *hugs* I’m with Erin- posting on here has been cathartic for me, because it is oh-so-hard to make anyone understand or listen to you as much as you want to talk about it.
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healingfast19 says:
@ErinBrock,
Thanks so much for your reminder about the fact that it is a process of recovery. Just like it was a process to reduce us to our current states, there’s a process to reverse the damage that has been done.
I’m focusing on allowing myself to FEEL everything, whenever it comes up. I’m so used to suppressing what I feel and think for fear of being perceived unlikeable. So some days I feel real strong, and other days I’m like I really want to call the buzzard, not say anything and just hang up, knowing full well that it will send him in a paranoid tailspin. I would do it just because I could and would enjoy seeing him sufffer like he made me suffer. I used to think “Oh, no those are bad thoughts and that makes me a bad person.” But now, I allow myself to feel those things, without self-judgement. I then look at how I feel and figure out, whether or not that action or those feelings can help me achieve my goal of a healthier, more wholesome me. If not, I find a way to reconcile those feelings and replace them with more positive, self-directed and self-focused energy.
What I love is that we are all in different stages of our recovery. So I gather strength from you all when I’m weak. As I hope to share with all of you. This board is my therapy.
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ErinBrock says:
Healing:
I can’t even tell you the pleasure I derived from those thoughts……
Sometimes it was all I had to hold onto……and it doens’t even need to be followed up on.
But it gave me pleasure…..
I decided, when it came to spath….I was NOT ever going to feel guilty again!
I was not going to allow him to play on my guilt and feel confident I wouldn’t do something, because I was a good person and would have guilt over it! NUH UH!
I lived like this for 28 years…..guilty of hurting his feelings, guilty of being fat, not the wife he wanted, not pretty enough, not good enough, not a good mother yadayada……
When I realized I had been feeling projected guilt…..it changed things……
Since I didn’t have any sekeletons in my closet…..I would throw guilt aside….and do whatever it was I HAD TO DO to get what I needed/wanted in our divorce!
Screw them…….I turned the backspath on bigtime……with no guilt necessary.
I KNOW who I am, I am confident in my person……and I had to keep my reminder of the balance……ME…..but then counter control of this spath.
It’s all about keeping the balance…….and learning how to ‘re-dupe’ or ‘backspath’ the spath!
We CAN step outside of what we ahve always done….and learn new tricks!!!!
THis dog did!
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one_step_at_a_time says:
first day of work – not great. but no one died. my anxiety was pretty high, and so was the pain in my back.
the org was very disorganized and they seem to work like satellites, not as a team. poor HR and communications skills in the place. scary for the ptsd girl.
i made $184. before taxes.
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ErinBrock says:
One:
As long as there is no funeral tomorrow…….that’s a good start!
Hey…..if they didn’t hire you to reorganize them…..just show up and do what they ask……try and morph into the same attitude as them….(as hard as it is)….I know……but sometimes we gotta know…we can’t change the world.
Take that 184.00 and call it a day….go back tomorrow and take another 184.00……and do it until March! That’s a lot of 184′s ya know…..
I’m glad your working….it’ll be a great thing for you!!!! In sooooo many ways!
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one_step_at_a_time says:
tiny little offices shared – if there isn’t some organization forthcoming tomorrow i will have to run screaming…
i have been living out of boxes for a year, my place is a nightmare – can’t do it at work too…yet,
because i can lay claim to nothing; because i have lost health, friends, family, the fake fucking lover, the use of my body, being able to count on my mind or body, my mental acuity, safety in my physical environment, etc…i fear even cleaning up. make sense? can’t lay claim – everything dissolves….
one day at a time. one painful fear at a time. smells like authenticity.
fear #4 they will fire me. not saying it’s rational – just had too much ripped away from me and my first impression of the place….
just realized…i feel like a battered kid. and that i have resources within the people of lf, and i am not alone. battered or not. not alone.
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one_step_at_a_time says:
i am sooo excited about all those 184s; i can pay down my debt.
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shabbychic says:
one, you made it through the first day!
That’s the tough one!
Tiny little offices shared…
oh, I remember those so well!:
Your right, you’re not alone,
we’ll all be looking over your shoulder tomorrow…
here we are:
:0 :0 :0 :0 :0 :0 :0 :0 :0 :0 :0 :0
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one_step_at_a_time says:
okay, i’m taking you with me today!
up with the humidity. damn i wish this heat wave would break. could have used a bit more sleep.
thinking about the conversations with the ppath – how did she do that? that fake accent, that fake voice, laughing and funny all the time…i see her moving around all those chunks of speech and i just marvel/ shake my head….how did she do that, how did she keep up that facade? (caught in a tom waits song.) one of the great mysteries of the world.
okay, day 2. didn’t think this would be such a trial. but it is. and it’s day 2…i think i have 2 speeds now – hide or present. i was in hide yesterday. i was at the 2nd interview also. maybe that’s my thing now? overwhelmed and i hide. well, it’s the wonderful land of ptsd. thanks bunches spath. just bunches.
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Delta1 says:
hello Oxy
I find that I have been thinking alot about how wonderful my ‘online’ friends are and how strange and amazing the world is. I am very curious indeed about your early life. I wish I knew more peeps like u as u’r rare and lovely. I feel like u’re someone close to me, tho u are far away.
Canada’s wilderness is uncompromising and marvellous.
xx ~Delta 1
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OxDrover says:
Dear Delta1,
Why thank you sweetie! The LF peeps are wonderful aren’t we!!! I spent the weekend acting volunteer nurse for a friend who had surgery Friday a.m. and that was nice. Also we loved the night nurse, she is “our kind of folks,” great woman and wonderful nurse!
I’m glad that you feel “close” to not only me but to others here at LF too, this is such a wonderful community and gives so much support. I’m not sure how I would have survived without LF, I know it wouldn’t have been very easy, at least now we have an opportunity to spread the word, pass on to others the gifts we have been given here to help others heal. “Pay it forward” is the expression I think is used now. I always said “pass on the gift” but whatever you call it….it is comforting to get to “know” the wonderful people here. Thank you so much! Your cool head and good logic add so much to the conversations here! Thank you for sharing!!! ((((Hugs)))) and my prayers!
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pollyannanomore says:
One Step =- just look at how far you’ve come. Your body hurts and you feel anxiety and fear and you still keep going! Three cheers for you! I remember when you didn’t want to leave the house (I bet those feelings still come up from time to time, but you’re working through them). Life will be so much more with structure to the hours and a good income coming through the door.
Congratulations to you darling – you’ve struggled through so much to get to this point. The weirdness of the organisation will fade in a little while as you relax and the environment becomes more familiar – everyone goes through that weird period where they think ‘What the heck have I done in taking this job???” and want to run away.
Stick with it lovely and plan a gorgeous treat as a reward for the first pay – a stunning velvet scarf or a song you’ve been wanting on CD or a new moisturiser … you’ll get through it. You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for
What an inspiration to others 
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one_step_at_a_time says:
polly – that’s such a nice thing to say; thank you.
i have had 2 paychecks and you know what one step got? car rental. and i have promised myself one per month.
days are still up and down – today i didn’t have much energy, but it has gotten better incrementally. my first event is this week. (part of my job) it’s going to go well…if it doesn’t freaking rain.
the nuerofeedback is helping A lOT. went today, but it was too long and i have been wiped out. rats. the other times i walk away energized. been laying here for 4 hours, waiting for energy to return. think it’s gone for the night. too bad, those dishes don’t seem to be willing to do themselves…no matter how long i leave them to it.
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one_step_at_a_time says:
it’s the quiet hour – before the west coasters and southern hemisphere folks show up. i am sometimes here alone at this time of night. it’s kind of like being in a house of friends and everyone else is asleep…and you just enjoy that.
this place is my safe place. i see as i move out in to the world and embark on my healing path, that i feel more at home here than in the world, and i am glad to have ‘here’. i am moving into the world. not hampered by coming here, just feel like it is a soft place to fall.
one friend who ran off came back and asked to meet. i said sure and tried to arrange something. but we were both a bit tentative, and he was unclear, and i am no longer my accommodating try so hard old self. so we didn’t connect and he is upset. and i have NO time for this kind of game. i don’t mean that he is trying to play a game. not at all. my new thing seems to be – people need to take responsibility for themselves and their actions. fine, but i am also telling folks when i think they don’t (with me) – which is a wee bit arrogant. my n ex was all about THAT. and f, i hated that about her. but, she was also a bully. i just need to work to not be bully.
i feel freed by this holding others responsible. and responsible to MY STANDARD. i am always so f*****worried about meeting other people’s standards….
well, i suppose that over time i will become more even. i am still real odd and reactive. when i become responsive i will know i have control of myself again. i don’t now, not yet. it’s scary and okay.
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skylar says:
Hi one step I’m up late tonight too.
Kathy, I had not seen this post of yours until just today. The way you think is why I love you. Compassion. so much to think about. Not having to react with compassion , just feeling it. It seems like I go through the stages too fast. I felt compassion on the first day that I felt anger. feeling them together is hard. I was angry but I just wanted to help him stop being such a sick creature. Last nite I dreamt that he was human.
But you are right, I can’t change him. He believes that everyone he ever hurt (and there are many) will try to retaliate, but I told him, “I can’t do anything worse to you than what you have done to yourself, my God!” He chose to become a slithering “it”. It saddens me, and that, unfortunately, takes my focus off of my self-protection and my potentional for making a change in the world. Being sad is not helpful, but compassion does that to me.
thanks for putting these important concepts into words.
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shabbychic says:
Hi. Well it’s 1:21am here, I already took my sleeping pills. My daughter has been here visiting, so just been spending time with her. I know I was always worried about everybody else, can’t do that anymore. It’s scary and ok, that makes a lot of sense right now.
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hens says:
Just woke up from a stressful bad ass dream and he wasnt in it Towanda~’ in the dream my motherless was trying to kill me – hey I can deal with that….and my father was in the dream – I rarely dream about him – he was taking note’s about everything the mother was doing and he was on my side – a little too late daddy..
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geminigirl says:
Hi, hens!Ive been having bad nightmares too, really wierd ones with people Ive never met and dont even recognise. Maybe Im getting beamed up to a different solar system! I think its just our brains {subconscious} way of sifting thru, processing, re-filing analysing all the crapola weve been thru with the spaths in our lives, for so long. Kind of like the hard disc reprogramming itself!
Maybe the new files will be better, and will lead us to better , calmer, more peaceful lives! lots of love, Mama Gem.
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hens says:
Hi Gem
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geminigirl says:
Hens, Hi, darlin!! Short and sweet mesage from you!Hope your doing OK, your great, I love you. Mama GemXX
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pollyannanomore says:
Hi Hens and Gem and Skylar and Shabbychic and Gem
Hope you’re all having a great week@! Even with disrupted sleeps. Over here it is freezing at night so I’m rugged up in bed with my warmest pjays and the little dog has burrowed right under the bedclothes and is snoring by my leg lol
One Step – you’re most welcome and I mean every word. You’re awesome
Good on you for treating yourself … maybe you’ll find the perfect car to own soon … synchronicities sometimes come along at the sweetest times.
Kathleen I read again through this article and some of the messages you wrote way back in January. I’m pleased that I’ve made more progress in my understanding now. Whilst I haven’t ventured into the territory of romantic relationships, I have greatly enjoyed the honest process of mutual disclosure in getting to know new friends. It’s like unwrapping gifts and rediscovering how wonderful life is. I had forgotten how fantastic conversation can be when held with someone who actually undestands feelings and is responsive lol
I’m getting back empathy and some flashes of a wish to help people. This was definitely a feature of me before the psycho, but I’m able to pause now before jumping in to offer my help. I recognise that a portion of this behaviour is selfish in motive and is a ‘people pleasing’ tactic. So I make myself reflect now before acting and I consider what my motive is. If it’s to make someone like me then I don’t do it though it almost kills me not to! If it’s a genuine desire to do a no strings joyous thing for someone I care for then I do it and get the pleasure of seeing their happiness.
So many aspects of me has changed and are changing right now. I hadn’t really noticed but it was obvious in reading and comparing the old self with the present one.
Many thanks for your guidance
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Wini says:
PollyAnnaNoMore, 1st thing you need to find out when helping anyone is to find out what they did to resolve the situation in the first place. Checks and balances on your part. Did they attempt to do anything or are they just users and abusers who use this ploy to play on people?
Honest people will tell you several ways they tried to resolve their issue. Dishonest people usually don’t resolve any issues because they are constantly focused on being selfish, greedy, spend their money instead of saving to resolve any issue that should come along. It’s a way of life for them … screw up and have others resolve the problems for them.
Be careful out there. Too many folks today are in the selfish mode.
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one_step_at_a_time says:
shabby – we both siad the same thing! ‘it’s scary and okay.’ Well, TOWANDA to us!!
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one_step_at_a_time says:
polly – meeting new people is fraught, but what an adventure!
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Delta1 says:
Hi everyone
Particularly ErinBrock, Wini, Oxy, Hens, Behind Blue Eyes, Shabbychic, Tartan, Erin 1972 and others who I’ve posted losts with over that last few weeks.
I’m just doing a little ‘goodbye for now’ post. I have learned so much on this site and have taken several steps forward. I really feel at a point where I want to ‘put it all behind me’ for a bit and just enjoy life.
Had amazing weekend with my family in Scotland recently and also my band is doing brilliantly. I’m real busy with work and generally doing great.
I have found that day-to-day I am really not thinking about my ex N at all – except when I come on LF really – then it is churning & triggering ‘old stuff’ that’s healed really. It’s actually a testiment to the folks here that I’ve moved very far, very fast since being on the site. I have literally no emotion about exN at all these day. I reckon he could come to the door right now – and I wouldn’t feel a thing except mild irritation before closing the door politely in his face.
I will carry on using what I’ve learned here on LF in my work day to day, so it won’t be wasted! I’ve also tried to give back to other new posters coming to the site for the first time too whilst I’ve been here.
I have genuinely made good ‘friends’ here and I wish there was a way of keeping in touch ‘outside the topic’ in a way. If I could go to the movies or do something else then I would!
I will think of everyone, and probably check in from ‘time to time’ – but gonna go LF cold turkey for a while.
((Hugs)) to all
Delta 1 x
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ErinBrock says:
Delta:
I’m thrilled for your progress!!!
I wish you the best, and yes….do check in and let us know how your doing as time passes.
You’ve got a lot to offer others…..and I know those UK children are better off having you advocate for them.
Good luck….and you’ll always know where to find us.
May you have peace from here on out…..
XXOO
EB
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OxDrover says:
Bye, Delta, sorry you’re going away before we got better acquainted, but I do understand. I loved your posting here to newbies. You gave a wonderful component here, but the words you have posted will remain to remind us what a super gal you are!
Go with God and may the wind be at your back and all your roads down hill! ((((hugs))) and God bless.
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shabbychic says:
Delta, love u, have a blast with the band,
I am very happy to hear that you are feeling good,
you’ve been a wonderful friend!!!
(((hug)))) xoxoxoxo
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