Online "Help" To Avoid

November 18, 2009

When Victims Prey on Victims

The internet is an excellent place to make lots of money.

Over the years on the internet, I've noticed that the narcissism "business" has flourished by leaps and bounds. There is no greater and easier mark than someone reeling in confusion from an encounter with a narcissist/psychopath. There are no more vulnerable people than children and the abused.

Why are we easy marks? Because victims find it hard for anyone in their lives to understand what it means to be on the receiving end of that barbaric craziness. In addition, most of the information tends to centre around the pathologies themselves and not about the impact on the abused. I am not aware of any comprehensive literature on the net regarding the effects on victims and their lives, and ways to healing.

Hence, we are sitting ducks.

I've written exhaustively about the effects of toxic groups and toxic personalities on myself and others in Sites to Avoid. If you're surfing online for answers to your experience, it means you are very desperate to find information that clarifies, explains, and validates what you are going through. Not only are you desperate, but also extremely vulnerable. You've been kept off balance and disoriented for a long time. No doubt you have been emotionally and mentally abused as well. There is almost no one to turn to. No one to explain it to you. You're pretty well open to anyone and anything that gives you some sense of understanding and relief.

You are a sitting duck.

In the case of toxic groups and personalities, victims suffer further abuse and are pathologised. It's a great place for psychological predators. On the net, anyone can be anything and tell any sort of story. They can play victim so they can victimise you further. People with any sort of background can set up a site and if they play their cards right, or better yet, if they are in marketing, advertising, can parlay their sob stories and "insight" by taking it to the next level- a playground swarming with the walking wounded.

Financial predators
The internet is now flooded with victims of narcissists preying on other victims for material gain. As if their experience and insight allow them to speak with authority and some professional veneer to the degree that they can advise people for big bucks.

They come with various self-described titles, Life Coach, Spiritual Counselor/Advisor, fake degrees/diplomas, degrees/diplomas with no relation to mental health, etc.

They create websites and forums on which they advertise one-on-one "counselling" over the net or phone, and/or write and sell books.

Ebooks
Invariably these books are self-published, often in creative ways. E-books, for example, are so convenient for making money. They can be nakedly self-published, or published through a vanity press (where you pay them money to publish your book), or set up their own press/publishing company, or are realised through some small, obscure company that happily solicits manuscripts hoping to make some money. If it's in a book, it should be legitimate and authoritative, right?

And then all one needs to do is spam various sites and emails and Amazon and other online booksellers with positive reviews. Amazon, for example, sells self-published books all the time, in effect giving the books a veneer of legitimacy.

Caveat Emptor
When you surf the net looking for "expert" help ask yourself these questions:

1. What is their background?

2. What are they selling?

3. Why are you entrusting your life to a perfect stranger?


A Sucker Born Every Minute
You have got to question the motives of anyone who parlays their victimhood into big bucks on the net. It's too easy for them. I personally don't want to place my life and sanity in the hands of a person who picked the net to sell their "help". And they answer to no professional or literary body, or code of ethics; they are not liable for anything.

Looking for the Quick Fix

People in extreme pain tend to look for the quick fix. If you're looking for the quick fix, then you will be disappointed. None of your troubles will be answered in one session. Anticipate a long and expensive relationship. At best, you have bought yourself a friend.

The fact is that there are lots of professional bodies on the net and in the world that you can contact. There is lots of legitimate information that will give you direction. You don't need these strangers.

Check Up On Facts

Check credentials, background, publishing sources, etc. You know the drill. If you don't mind being preyed upon, then go ahead. Because you are being preyed upon, just like the narcissist/psychopath preyed upon you. These victims of narcissism have decided to live off your pain. IMO.

The Trap

Imagine this....

You've been invited to a party, but you realize on the day you're pretty sure the party is happening that you're not sure what kind of party it is or what time you should arrive. Well, you're smart and you'll give it your best shot. So you dress in a kind of neutral casual-dressy style and show up at seven.

*

As you come up the walk, you can hear the sounds of a party: music, laughter and you think, "This is going to be a great party." When you come up the stairs you can smell aromas coming from the house and again you say to yourself, "This is going to be a great party."

*

You ring the bell and your host emerges wearing a bemused, enigmatic smile... and a tuxedo

*

"You're late," he says. "I'm sorry. You didn't tell me what time the party was." "I thought you would figure it out" he says. "Well I am here now," you say . Your host looks you up and down. "That may be true, but you are not dressed properly." You look down at your elegant, if casual, clothing and then at his black-tie formal wear. "Yes, that's true. But I'm not that far from home. I can just go and change quickly and be right back."

*

You desperately think about what's in your closet that would fit with formal wear and how long it will take to press it. You add up the travel time, wonder what you'll have to do to your hair to look right, how to change your make-up.... after all this still seems like it'll be a great party......Your host shakes his head. "But then you'll be really late." Dinner will be over and I was COUNTING on you to sit right beside me at the head table."

*

Your heart sinks. Your one chance and you blew it! Inside your head, you say several unflattering things about yourself, your abilities, your intelligence, and your potential, but out loud you declare, "Honest, I'll be back in 45 minutes. I'll be perfect. Can't you wait? You cannot imagine how you'll be back, but you want so badly to be the guest of honor.

*

Your host shakes his head. "Well, I don't know. But what are you planning to bring to contribute to the dinner? I've told you how much I like those special, individual nineteen-layer cakes you bake. I thought you'd know to bring one for every guest."

*

Behind him you can still hear the laughter and the music; you can still smell the exotic foods, and you can still see the champagne in his glass. And you still think it's the greatest party ever and you still want to be the guest of honor.

*

That is what an emotionally unavailable relationship feels like. You're just never quite good enough to get admitted to the party. You get seduced by the clear, often indirect and unspoken, message that something is just a little wrong. If you can fix that, the implied promise goes, you'll be the guest of honor and win the door prize: love...

*

But when you "fix" what was "wrong" the first time, something else is a little "wrong." And when you fix that, something else will appear.

*

Your host has no intention of making you or anyone the guest of honor. Your host also has no ability to make you the guest of honor - or even to open the door to let you in. Your host is suffering from emotional unavailability. This is the inability of a person to reach out and make a heart connection with another person.

*

What is so unsettling and painful is that you end up with the clear belief that this somehow your fault and that it's your responsibility to fix it by being perfect. If it isn't fixed, you're not perfect enough.

*

You did not break it, you don't have to fix it.

*

You say to yourself that you would never get caught in a situation like that, it seems obvious... until - you are in the middle of it..... it doesn't start out with unreasonable demands of perfection. If it did, you'd walk away after the first five minutes. We all get sucked into emotionally unavailable situations because the process is subtle and progressive.The demands move a little at a time, inching you away from your power base, shifting control of the situation to the emotionally unavailable person. This person doesn't want love as much as he or she wants CONTROL. Emotions are unsafe; control gives the illusion of safety.

It is perfectly reasonable to expect an emotional connection with someone with whom you are in a relationship. We expect police officers to enforce the laws, teachers to teach, etc.. These expectations put us into a particular mind-set when we're around those people.

Over time you expect a relationship to grow and deepen. When your partner turns out not to be making an emotional connection, it causes trauma; that is why these relationships are so painful. The trauma then does further damage as it undermines your expectations about yourself and YOUR abilities to make connections. As illogical as that may seem, it's human nature to look for the flaws in ourselves when things don't go as we expect.

We end up being traumatized twice in these relationships; once by the loss and abandonment and again by the loss of our own confidence in ourselves. That is why the end of these relationships can be so much more painful than the end of a fully realized relationship.. We ruminate about what we could have done differently to make it work...."

This is the way disorientation works. And the gradual erosion of all we understand and know by messing with our normal expectations and reality, by subtly shifting the goalposts. Why, in the end, we can no longer trust ourselves. Our psyches were gradually shaped to respond in a certain hostage-like manner, and our cell kept getting smaller and smaller. ~Invicta

Excerpted from "EMOTIONAL UNAVAILABILITY" by Bryn C. Collins

Thanks to Kim of the Passive Agressive Site for her labour.

Healing Facts

Over the past year, I've discovered that the path of healing is singular for everyone. This article fits my experience and what I have observed in others; it also strengthens that conviction, that we all do what we need to do in order to heal and, yeah, we make mistakes, but without them, we'd be robots. Healing is an ongoing creative process, imo, and so, we stumble and fall..... and rise up again and again. ~Invicta, MA, July/02

Common Misconceptions about Healing

---Dee Ann Miller, RN, BS ---

---

Before leaving psychiatric nursing to devote more time to advocacy work, I wrote some hand-outs for my patients. No matter what the trauma, no matter what the diagnosis, no matter if the patient was suffering from a chronic or an acute condition, I found that many profited from one that helped clarify some of the common myths about healing. Hopefully, these myths can help you, as well:

MYTH #1. Emotional healing is a process that's needed only occasionally, when one has been deeply hurt. NO! Healing is a constant on-going part of daily living. For everyone! It is required whenever we face a change or crisis. Much of it takes place without us being consciously aware that it is going on. Survivors often feel "different" or permanently "damaged" when, in reality, they are waging an internal war because of cognitive distortions that constitute unwelcome changes in the way things are perceived. Healing requires the adjustment to new understandings, new ideas, new skills, new behaviors, and a new self-concept that, in time, has the potential to produce a healthier person than ever before.

MYTH #2. There is a magic formula that I have to find if I'm going to recover. Sorry, there are no magic formulas! When I worked with children, I frequently sang a little song to them: "Look all the world over. There's no one like me." It's true for adults, just as much as children. In fact, life's circumstances can make adult processes even more complex. The way you heal and how fast you do it can depend on your personality, past experiences with trauma, how you perceive your present situation, your support system, and many other factors. There is absolutely no right or wrong way to heal. There is no normal timetable, no measuring stick. You are not in competition with anyone else.

MYTH #3. Professionals are the most important people on the healthcare team. NO! You are! Professionals have a lot of knowledge, but they are not God. They alone cannot bring healing, no matter how much they try. Their work, and yours, can be undermined by circumstances beyond their control. All of us have our limitations. The most important thing a professional can do for you is to provide a listening ear and an accepting, empathetic spirit.

MYTH #4. Healing is an event with a definite beginning and ending. Unfortunately, problems tend to recycle periodically, requiring one to face new issues related to the trauma, years after saying: "I think I'm over that." This can be scary, especially if one is not warned of the possibility. The stages of grieving may have to be repeated when reminders or other traumatic events trigger old garbage. This is not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of normality. Our losses often involve sub-losses that may not be recognized until years after the initial trauma.

MYTH #5. Time heals all things. No, again! Ignoring pneumonia usually brings a slow, painful death. So does ignoring emotional or spiritual pain. While healing is an individual process, finding well-informed professionals, friends and other survivors who are able to support you can go a long ways. So can reading material. You DO need time, but time alone isn't the answer. Healing involves a lot of grieving over changes and losses. And grieving is very hard work. It's exhausting. So set realistic goals. Take vacations away from the active process, from time to time. Be kind to yourself. Expect things to get better slowly as you are able to take time for the pain.

http://www.advocateweb.org/hope/healing.asp

Surviving Emotional Abuse

Whatever kind of abuse, whether physical, or persistent, insidious psychological and emotional abuse, you are not to blame! ~Invicta, MA, 09/02

SHRAPNEL

By Lily DeVilliers

One of the real problems that I have with the current societal view of abuse survivors is the heavy emphasis on self-help-centered 'healing' and 'recovery' from the abuse.

Domestic violence falls under the category of 'traumatic shock' - any event that destroys the internalized set of assumptions, patterns and understandings that we all use to operate in the world every day. Along with combat veterans, earthquake victims, hostages and prisoners of war, survivors of spousal abuse have to tear down their entire understanding of the world, people and love, and rebuild the whole system from the ground up to incorporate the new information that the people closest to you can actually be the most dangerous.

The problem with self-help overall in this context - the 12-step programs, soul-soothing books, meditation and general emphasis on moving on, moving forward and leaving behind - is that it may be working directly against the best interests of anyone suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Self-help seems to assume what the name already implies: that the source of the problem is in the victim's perception of her own self, not of the external world, and can be fixed or addressed by applying personal change. For a survivor who has already had her world-view profoundly altered by domestic abuse, forcing a re-assessment of the self before the world-view is reintegrated may appear to produce good results, but in many cases it may be working against permanent long-term recovery.

Self-help urges several things that make sense individually, but which add up to a tangle of contradictions when taken together. The survivor is variously urged to 'move on at once' but also not to 'repeat patterns'; to 'learn from the experience' but not to 'blame others'; to 'empower herself' so as to avoid further abuse and at the same time to 'accept responsibility' for her part in it. She's to 'examine what happened' but not to 'brood' or to 'dwell'. None of these directives makes sense.

Traumatic shock and the genuine need to rebuild a new world view make these conflicting instructions seem reasonable, but overall they add up to greater confusion and psychic splitting rather than less. If a survivor is to figure out what was missing from her reality before the abuse, but she's not allowed to be 'overly negative' or 'play the victim' by blaming anyone else, then the only person she can end up finding responsible is herself. And yet being 'empowered' is supposedly the key to avoiding further abuse. So does that mean a survivor who takes responsibility for being abused the first time is sending a firm message to future abusers? And if it happens again, is it her fault again for not being 'empowered' enough to avoid it?

It makes a great deal more sense to just allow the survivor to speak clearly about the abuser: what he appeared to be, what she sees him as now, and what actions, issues and behaviours from him might account for the difference, rather than turning her eyes in towards her own self. It makes more sense to allow her to compare that difference to what she's previously believed to be true about men, and then to expand that knowledge to include pathologies like battering, rather than insisting that she just change the view of herself. It would make more sense to allow her to develop anger and force and clarity, rather than urging transcendence and imposed serenities.

The trouble with the self-help approach for spousal abuse is that in this context, responsibility does belong elsewhere than the victim. And learning from the experience does inevitably involve increased negativity about human nature. These are the real tools that will allow survivors to rise again with increased strength, not hamper them.

Source

A Soul With No Footprints

* Narcissism is considered a less severe form of psychopathy.

This opinion piece arises from my experiences in several support groups and the concerns that survivors bring to them and how those concerns are treated. It is also based on my own experience in healing.

Healing is a mysterious process. We use the word, but what does it mean? Does it mean the scars don't show, that we forget, that all is forgiven? Does it mean we just move on as best we can and try to put things behind us? My experience has pretty well fit the process as outlined by the article:Healing Facts. This means that there is no definable process except that healing seems like a neverending spiral.

Looking for Answers

It would be great if we had answers, if we could chart a course in healing that would give us certainty in our path, but I don't think that life is ever that simple and rarely that certain. Because we are unique, with different sensitivities and needs, how can our healing be anything but unique? And as for certainty? Perhaps that is the crux of the matter. Perhaps that is what is most horrifying about the effects of our encounters with evil.

Out of our disorientation and confusion, more than ever, we want life to be certain. We want the certainty of answers. But what we find, having encountered a character disordered person, is that all of our certainty crumbles. We become disoriented as if the world has gone awry, and all our most precious beliefs are smashed against the granite-faced reality of a psychopath/disordered N. It is a reality so alien to us and so twisted, and the psychopath's/N's being so deformed, that we are sent spinning and wobbling like a satellite loosened from earth's gravity out into deepest, darkest, unfathomable, unexplored space, with no way, it seems, to get back. Or, in my case, as if I had been thrown into a clothes dryer and left on the tumble dry cycle- knocking against the side of my walls of disbelief, erratically, bruising, being knocked and jolted about some more, not knowing where the next blow will come from.

In that dryer, I remember. In retrospect, I gather the evidence and recount the signposts that I missed, the history of my abuse that I did not know was abuse, the slow, insidious, sadistic rape of my mind and heart and soul. As the proof accrues, and unspeakable reality dawns, I am finally knocked senseless by it, the shock is so great.

"Obsession": The Beginning of Healing

Some call this preoccupation "obsession" which I think pathologises the thought processes of the individual. Many years ago I was in a motor accident (I was in a bus) where I saw someone die in their car in a fireball; I felt the need to go over and over that scenario in my head- I was in shock, in disbelief. I wanted to find out the victim's name, who he was, what family he had. I needed to tell my story over and over again, to anyone who would listen. I didn't know why I had this desire to do this. Then I read a study of burn victims who had survived terrible fires who were in intensive care. That same pattern emerged, the need to repeat their stories endlessly. This, to me, is the beginning of healing. Our beings, I realise, have been created in such a manner that mechanisms of infinite wisdom fall into place to start the process.

We can give psychological reasons- that it is the shock and that the mind and emotions have been sent reeling and that this is their way of reworking their worldview in a new way, because that world can never be the same. We can talk about 'cognitive dissonance' as Healing Facts does, or about 'paradigm shift'. All this is true. In layman's terms, we need to rework, recreate what happened until it becomes not alien to us, but a part of our ongoing and renewing selves. We need to integrate the experience bit by bit as part of our healing and that may take a life time. But in an encounter with a psychopath/pathological N, I think that there is more.

Failure of Beliefs

We need to recreate the past because we suddenly realise that all that we thought and knew, all that we believe, has failed us. FAILED us. And so, first of all, we need to retrace the steps of the relationship with our newfound perspective, our knowledge- that they were mentally disordered. It doesn't matter how long that past, or how short, what matters is the intensity, the severity, and the sensitivity of the individual. Like survivors with 3rd degree burns, we need to go over it again and again until it becomes real. We need to reorient ourselves with a new and revised knowledge base, where once the psychopath/N had turned the bedrock of all our cherished beliefs, and all that we knew, into quicksand.

But I also believe that we make a natural, predictable mistake: We believe that by changing ourselves that we can change the past. We believe that by changing ourselves we can find a reason we can live with for what happened to us. We believe that by focussing on ourselves, we can take control over what happened to us and what is happening. I think that none of this is true. None of this is true!

A Soul With No Footprints

It happened and there was nothing there. The relationship was one-sided and we were relating to a 'soul with no footprints', a shade, a ghost, a wisp, that leaves no trail because he never was. Our love was unrequited. The relationship did not exist. That, I believe, is the unvarnished truth.

Why is it easier to blame ourselves? Why do we need to engage in further self-abuse? What we can control, I believe, is in the work- of reremembering by thinking back, reframing, facing, changing, with our newfound knowledge.....that is control- but we cannot get back what we never had- we cannot get it back by blaming ourselves, even in part.......for as long as we blame ourselves, we hang onto a relationship, one that never WAS......as long as we blame ourselves, we cannot let go....we may have issues (and who doesn't) that we may wish to work on and that may have been sparked by the encounter, but we did not CAUSE the encounter- other than the human foibles we all carry, our strengths and weaknesses.......we were not remotely at fault- but to see and acknowledge these things it would mean that we would have to GIVE UP the idea that there was a relationship and that we had ANY control!

Blaming Ourselves

It is intolerable for us to realise that we were relating to this soul with no footprints. We would, then, need to give up the certainty of closure, of healing in a prescribed and predictable manner; we would need to chart our own course and find answers for ourselves that no one else can give us; we would have to give up the belief that we have any control over our lives and that there is certainty in life.

I think that that is why we need to blame ourselves in some way, and to work to change things in ourselves that may need changing but which did not cause the encounter with a psychopath/disordered N. We want to believe that we had some control. Yet, it is known and proven that if a psychopath/disordered N targets you, no one is immune (Robert Hare). And that if it happened to you once, it could happen to you again, even after you know what there is to know, if you remain uneducated about psychopathy/narcissism. This is also the opinion of Robert Hare. It isn't because you are an "N-magnet" but because you don't know any better, like most of the population.

Even if you are used to abusive relationships, from your childhood, you may tolerate the abuse of a psychopath,/N but this has nothing to do with that person being a psychopath/N- it just means you're even more vulnerable to such familiar abuse, but none of your weaknesses caused you to be the target of the disordered. It is NOT your fault. In our need to control events, even in the past, we blame ourselves, look for faults in ourselves which supposedly made us an "easy" target. We ignore anything which suggests that we have strengths that could have been attractive to the psychopath/N, who usually love a challenge. We pathologise ourselves with impunity, for the world is built on pathologising. We will always find someone to tell us what is wrong with us, rather than what is right with us.

Psychology, I find, is particularly adept at shaping our beliefs about ourselves. And it is frightening to be reeling out there in the cosmos, unhinged from the worldview that did not save us when we needed saving. So, we look to psychology to save us. But instead of stopping at the dysfunction of the perpetrator, the psychopath, the character disordered, the morally insane, the type that we should learn about and commit to memory for the rest of our lives, we focus once again upon ourselves and our "faults" as if that will somehow make the memory of our abuse more palatable. We depend on gurus and "experts", those who have never endured such devastation, who can only describe perhaps, but certainly not connect, with the survivors, to tell us who we are and to tell us how we should think about our encounter.

Losing Ourselves, Gaining Ourselves

There is an old adage, "for the want of a nail ........a kingdom was lost". For the want of a soul/relationship, the kingdom that is the person is lost, the nobility, the dignity of loving, of trying to love, of being human and having weaknesses, of being tempted and seduced, of being caring and giving and believing in a just and merciful world. Of hating. All these things, the kingdom of the human being, is slowly lost when we give ourselves up to beating ourselves up further with our 'faults and weaknesses'. It is not weakness to want love and to love, or to care. Even in the extreme. The greatest weakness is to give up ourselves to the worldviews of another. The unrequited love was still, love. And even though we beat ourselves up over it, the love remains and even our own self-contempt cannot erase that spirit, that soul. In truly loving, we are "captains" of our soul. But we would rather forfeit that and let others steer us right back into a worldview that will fail us once again.

Acceptance

Bottomline: we need to self-abuse because the alternative seems unthinkable. How does one wrap their hearts and minds around the idea that there was no relationship? That the months or many years we spent with the psychopath/N simply existed in our own minds, because we assumed the other was normal and they let us fill in the gaps with our own humanity? All those wasted years and energy. For nothing. Who can gaze into that abyss and not flinch? Who can live without certainty? Who can live without certainty of closure? If it was one big fat lie, what will fill the hole? We need to fill the hole, connect the gap, in order to heal. How will we do it? How much disbelief can we bear? We tell ourselves, perhaps it is better to hear that we are defective in some manner. We are echoes. In time they will make a new personality disorder just for us, let's say, for example, "echo personality disorder" and then we can finally understand.

And yet, the world and the survivors will never understand the Holocaust. And targets of true psychopaths/disordered Ns survive an emotional and psychic holocaust. Our greatest and hardest path to healing is to accept that it happened, that some things have no answers. That evil exists. That we don't know why. To accept that we are dealing with someone truly from another world, a soul with no footprints.

©2002-2010 InvictaMA

Obsession

~obsession~

I've written about this to some extent in "A Soul with No Footprints". People tend to look upon continuous, seemingly circular thinking about the abusive/disordered ex or soon-to-be ex as pathological. Sure we can get stuck in the same old stuff, but I think that that has more to do with the way we think about ourselves and the situation. Instead of realising we are trying to learn something new from it all (after all, a lot of our beliefs have been destroyed or challenged), we castigate ourselves over our thoughts and feelings- that this rumination is bad and that we are losers.

It is better, I think, to focus less on ourselves at this stage, and more on what the situation meant. If we look for the meaning, we are less likely to follow the path of least resistance- getting stuck beating ourselves up and hanging on to what cannot be; that's easy.

After all, I think that we are all artists of our own life- the creators, sculptors, painters, poets. I believe we all have the capacity to, not rise above, as much as to find a new way to relate to the situation and ourselves. Our psyches "obsess" because they are trying to find a way to heal....they have kickstarted healing. Whether we like it or not.

If we don't like it, we will reject it by labelling it pathological. If we can see that it is, indeed, healing whispering in our ears, suffusing our minds and hearts, (and all wounds, at the beginning stages, hurt like hell, and we can't get our minds off the pain), we may not like the pain but we may begin to flow with it a little more.

We have survived, and not only survived, but have not been destroyed and we are being told by our psyche and soul that there is meaning in it all, and the seed of creation in it, and that we are being carried along by a natural and cosmic wisdom within us to a new state of being.

I think we make a choice, whether we know it or not.

I came across the following article:

excerpt from "In Praise of Positive Obsessions" by Eric Maisel -

in Eric Maisel's Creativity Newsletter, #28, October, 2002. ericmaisel.com

The common wisdom of therapy has it that obsessions are always bad things. As a feature of its namesake disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or as a feature of some other disorder, an obsession is a sign of trouble and a problem to be eliminated.

But the main reason therapists find themselves obliged to consider obsessions invariably negative has to do with language: an obsession is invariably negative because clinicians have defined it as negative.

Clinicians define "obsession" in the following way: an obsession is an intrusive thought, it is recurrent, it is unwanted, and it is inappropriate. Defined this way, it is obviously always unwelcome.

But suppose a person is caught up thinking day and night about her current painting or about the direction she wants to take her art? Thoughts about painting "intrude" as she balances her checkbook or prepares her shopping list. She can hardly wait to get to her studio and her rhythms are more like Picasso's on painting jags than like the rhythms of a "normal" person.

This artist is obsessed in an everyday sense of the word - and more than happy to be so! ...

For a contemporary intelligent, sensitive person, it may well make more sense to opt for a life of positive obsessions that flow from personal choices about the meanings of life than to attempt to live a more modest and less satisfying normal-looking life that produces dissatisfaction and boredom.

After all, no one can say how normal ought to be defined. In what sense is it normal to work at a job that constricts you and bores you rather than risking everything on a life that challenges you, even as it frustrates you?

Much of what we call normal behavior is simply based on fear. Indeed, the average person might even prefer a negative obsession, despite its horrors, to a positive obsession rooted in excitement, passion, and active meaning-making, so wild and unafraid would he feel if he were obsessed that way.**

**There are ruminations that outlive their usefulness as well. Sometimes, we find outselves getting nowhere, and seem stuck in an endless cycle of bitterness or self-blame or wondering- it is wearing and boring and steeps us in hopelessness. In those cases (and it happens to all of us) I have found that limiting yourself to 15 minutes per day (and you must time it) seems to ameliorate the effects. Some things can never be understood.

Often, life is unfair. Sometimes, you have to take some of the nasty stuff on faith, cause sometimes there are no answers, in order to move on. It does take a bit of self-discipline and determination. And, from what I have seen, those who have loved the disordered show more than average determination!

~InvictaMA 07/05/04

Ways To Healing

(Article based on my experience)

You begin in shock. In disbelief. You may suffer from Post Traumatic Stress (I did). As you are beginning to re-remember, the feelings are going to be overwhelming. Every emotion under the sun. Chaotic feelings. Tremendous ambivalence. Anger, hatred, vengefulness, murder, all the really nasty stuff. Terrible, soul-tearing loneliness. This is normal, this is you being human. Feel all the feelings, cry an ocean. This is grieving. I cried for 3 years, almost every day. I was comforted by this saying from mystical Judaism, "G-d counts the tears of women" (and men, I'm sure).
At the same time,

Learn everything you can about psychopathy and pathological narcissism. We are not talking just immature jerks here, or the abusive, but hardcore pathology.

Return to the past and remember and review in detail. This is not obsessing- this preoccupation is very necessary for healing because you are starting from square one -- what you thought existed, did not. So you must find out what really existed- replace the pathway of emotion laden remembrance with the stark, unyielding reality.

It is through the above 3 ways that we emotionally detach-separate ourselves from the psychopath-character disordered, when we begin to grasp the massive deception and subtle, practised erosion of our beings. Always we must trust our gut as we work this out and thru.

Rehearse and reinforce that this was not a normal person, that it was a lie, that it had nothing to do with you (the hardest)- but it did happen to you- and there is no psychological rhyme nor reason to it because psychopaths-character disordered are in a mysterious class by themselves, not really from this planet as we know it.

Know that they wanted something good from you. Remember it.

You will question yourself and that is normal- people who are normal, have consciences, examine themselves, ask themselves what they could have done differently- this is part of reviewing- What could you have done? nothing- you didn't know they were disordered- now you know- learn all you can about how they work-how they did it- that is your task- to see that they manipulated you and that you were no match for them (nor were some "experts" where psychopaths were concerned).

Discipline yourself to stop looking at your 'faults' as connected to the psychopath-character disordered specifically - any encounter with anyone can trigger a desire to re-evaluate one's life and behaviour- this is normal and progressive- it's a testament to your desire and ability to grow and transcend, to move forward and blossom- the encounter may provide the spark, the seed- your 'faults' or 'weaknesses' did not cause you to be targetted and manipulated by the character disordered.

Try not to psychologise yourself- do it with a therapist but only one who lays the blame where it belongs- on the perpetrator-abuser. Trust no one on the net to psychologise you- they have no right; and it's the blind leading the blind, imo.

Hang out with people who emotionally support you but do not make you doubt yourself- people who try to tell you or imply that you are somehow at fault - do not confide in anyone who pathologises your behaviour or brings you pathologising theories- a psychopath-character disordered is a relationship anomaly/aberration- normal rules don't apply and neither do theories (for that's all they are, and largely uncompassionate, I think) about us, the survivors. As long as you continue to psychologise yourself about this (non)relationship, you remain attached.

Know that you did not have control over the encounter, that you do not have control over anything except what you choose to believe and do- choose to elevate everything around you. Choose life.

Repair what is broken- Force yourself to Turn away from the face of evil and add something to the world- even while you are in shock, take a moment to be kind to someone, some small thing or kind thought, and take charge of your soul- be the captain. I have overcome a lot of damage just by putting one step in front of the other and laying a new foundation bit by bit in repairing a bit of the world. No one can take that away from me. When you see what you can do to make the world a better place, how the world responds to you, you won't listen to anyone who is only looking to fix you by telling you how you are broken. You have a broken,shattered heart and you already know that. End of story.

What is your goal now that you are moving away from this damaging environment? It's important to have an elevating goal that will inspire you to greatness, spiritual and otherwise. Also see: RegretAndWellbeing

If you are reading this, you are a person of considerable character and thought. You are not willing to lie down and die. You will not allow what happened to defeat you. You survived to get to this place- there is great strength in that.

Know what you stand for, what you are willing to live and to die for. Learn this about yourself as you work things through.

Know that this too shall pass and that the other side is wonderful, is amazing, something that you can't imagine right now. You will amaze yourself. In moments of despair and moments of soul searing loneliness, know that you are not alone. You are supported. And others have gotten through this and you will too. And you will do it with the dignity that is your birthright- in a perfectly human way.

1/28/03, ©2003-2009, InvictaMA, Counseling Psychology.