5 steps to get the sociopath out of your head

hi everybody and welcome to love fraud live I'm Donna Anderson author of love fraud calm I once heard from a woman whom we'll call Rochelle when Rochelle was in her 50s she went to her high school reunion and reconnected with the first boy she ever loved when she was 14 Rochelle had a crush on him they dated for almost five years at that time although he always seemed to have an eye out for other girls when they broke up Rochelle was heartbroken but she moved on married divorced and life was reasonably good until that first love came back into her life he poured on the charm and Rochelle felt like finally after more than 30 years she had her chance to be with the guy that she always wanted Rochelle left everything to move out of state to be with him and they eventually married well he lied fabricated manipulated accused took her money ruined her credit filed for divorce behind her back and left her with nothing it was the type of behavior that we all know so well sociopathic behavior Rochelle realized that the guy was disordered and she was exploited and he never loved her still she wanted him but she also realized that she was in love with a person who did not exist so Rochelle asked me when does he get to the point where he stops taking up space in my brain that's what we're going to talk about tonight how to get the sociopath out of your head after my short presentation I'll answer your questions so please go ahead and send them to me by chat as we go along so how do you get the sociopath out of your head the first thing to understand is the scope of this question getting the sociopath out of your head is your endgame it is the ultimate goal of everyone who has been betrayed by one of these predators once you've achieved it once you've gotten the person out of your head you've achieved full recovery so cut yourself some slack this individual probably crashed through your life like a battering ram your emotions your finances your home your health your psyche may all be in splinters this is going to take some time to repair so if anyone says to you just get over it this person has no idea of what you're going through so I'm going to go over the five steps of getting the sociopath out of your head the first step is understanding what happened now you were probably blindsided by this experience so in order to move forward you need to educate yourself and we have lots of material on love fraud that can help you I've also written six books here's my most recent that's part of my new series the best of the love fraud blog there's also my first book love fraud that tells my personal story and red flags of love fraud ten signs you're dating a sociopath all of these books are packed with information and examples and you'll quickly realize that you are not alone in your experience so here are some of the key concepts that I talk about in those books first enforcement for most sociopaths exist they are social predators and they live their lives by exploiting people they do not feel remorse for their actions and they will never change so you need to know that the sociopath never loved you you were targeted because you had something that he or she wanted it could have been money sex a place to live business connections or cover while he or she engaged in a secret life or the sociopath messed with you just for the fun of it there is nothing you could have done to make the sociopaths treat you any better the involvement was always about exploitation you were probably targeted because you're good caring giving responsible and in some way vulnerable so the blame for what happened rests squarely with a sociopath this person lied to you and manipulated you and betrayed you you on the other hand were guilty only of being human step number two is acceptance recovering from sociopaths is a process and the key to the process is accepting what happened now this does not mean that you excuse what happened or that you try to forgive and forget but you must believe that yes he or she did it and yes he or she knew exactly what he was she was doing you can't make time go backwards you can wish that your involvement never happened but you can't undo the past so once you come to terms with the fact that yes it did happen you can actually begin the healing process step number three is recognizing that this is an addictive relationship Rochelle said that she still wanted the sociopath actually I don't think that that's quite accurate the truth is that she was addicted to him relationships with sociopaths are highly addictive they actually cause chemical and structural changes in the brain sim - what happens with substance addictions therefore you need to treat leaving the sociopath like kicking an addiction the way to do this is no contact that means you have no further contact with this individual no phone calls no emails no text messages and certainly do not meet in person don't even go to the individuals Facebook page or other social media now if you must have contact with the individual for some reason like perhaps you have children together do your best to implement what I call emotional no contact that means you remain absolutely neutral in any interaction so see past love to get emotional reactions from their targets and will do whatever they can to engage you do not take the bait staying away from the sociopath can be really difficult but the longer you stay away the stronger you will become but on the other hand if you give in and have contact you have to start the process all over again step number four is processing the pain this was not a normal relationship and it's not a normal break up even if you weren't physically or sexually assaulted you suffered massive emotional and psychological injuries you have losses that need to be grieved including your loss of trust I believe that you must allow yourself to feel the pain of the experience although you might not be able to do this right away in the beginning you might just be numb and this is normal it's a protective measure taken by your psyche because the injury is just so massive and overwhelming but eventually you do need to let yourself feel it you cannot bottle the pain up within you it will either poison your life or it will make you sick you must get the pain being out of your system so cry your eyes out stomp your feet and anger take up boxing and hit a punching bag it can be scary at first to face your own anger embarrassment rage humiliation whatever the sociopath caused but allow yourself to feel the emotions honor them and then let them go finally step number five is to let joy into your life I mean this sounds really counterintuitive I know that when I was given this advice I was like what are you kidding me I was in misery I was obsessing about getting my money back from my sociopathic ex-husband so how was I supposed to feel joy well let me explain draining the negative emotions will leave an energetic void within you so what do you do with the empty space you fill it with joy any kind of joy will do a sunny day letting your pets comfort you having coffee with a friend letting a waitress be nice to you soak up any joy and pleasantness that you encounter as you drain the negative emotions and replace them with instances of joy you'll slowly change your perspective your internal balance will shift and gradually you'll find that the sociopath is no longer renting space in your head when you achieve that you will have achieved your healing so let's see what kind of questions and comments we have today okay you get them out of your head if you're doing no contact but stuck in the house with anxiety making it ten times worse how to fight the temptation of contact that is exactly the crux of the issue is figuring out a way to implement no contact now in all honesty it takes a bit of willpower and since it is very much like getting over any other kind of addiction like an alcohol addiction you can use what happens or what they advise in 12-step programs and and the key to a 12-step program is to take it one day at a time and maybe that's even too much when you start out so you might have to say okay we'll take it one hour at a time and for the first hour I'm not going to contact this person and then you get through that hours okay another hour I won't contact this person and you just set little goals that you can achieve and every time you achieve the goal you move on to the next goal and eventually you get through a whole day and eventually you get through another day the thing is that try not to look at it as something that you have to achieve that it seems so big chop it up into little pieces little achievable pieces and just keep going now the other thing that you you you might want to look at the webinar that I did not too long ago about obsession because I talked about it in this webinar as well but the idea is that to maintain no contact and do what you have to do to distract yourself you know because every it can be difficult there's no doubt about it but if you have to if you're still obsessing about the person okay you let yourself obsess for a little bit of time but then you put an end to it and you find ways to distract yourself you watch movies you read books you I mean anything that you can think of and also if you do have anxiety you want to deal with that as well physical exercise is great if you have an opportunity for therapy that's good as well however if you do seek professional therapy make sure that the therapist understands what you're talking about because love frauds research shows that approximately half of therapists really do not understand what goes on in sociopathic relationships and how the victims are affected so if you try and see someone and they don't seem to get what you're talking about try someone else but it can be hard you do have to make up your mind that you're going to do the work and it requires making a commitment to yourself that you want to recover and this is the path of recovery so you want to make up your mind that you're just gonna walk the path okay what else do we have Veronica Reid says it's hard to believe that someone could take advantage of my kindness for 18 years yeah I've heard from lots of people who were in long-term relationships with these disordered individuals and and it's shocking and you know they do it because we don't know that they're out there and and perhaps we have some maybe we didn't have good role models when we were young as far as what a good relationship looks like they certainly target us because we have vulnerabilities I mean that's what sociopaths do and everybody has a vulnerability this isn't meant to be a criticism at all but because we don't know that they're out there and we don't know that they can maintain a charade of normalcy at least for a while you know it takes a long time to figure out what's going on you know especially if if you were involved for 18 years I mean it was only eighteen years ago that people started realizing that sociopaths existed so I mean this is all new information so no you didn't know about it back then and now you're learning about it but yeah I mean that's why education is so important because so many of us have been through these experiences not realizing what we're dealing with because we didn't know at this point yes it's it's shocking to think that it could have gone on that long but now you know and so now you make changes okay Nayla says can a sociopath truly love or care for a close family member like their mother no the short answer is no the key of the disorder is that sociopaths do not have the ability to love and I have a webinar on that too you might want to take a look at that one they can't I mean that's the whole root of the disorder is that they're they don't have the internal parts to actually care about somebody else's well-being because that's what real love is real love means that you want to be around the person if it's a romantic relationship there's obviously sex involved but the key is that when you love somebody you're willing to take care of them and sociopaths can't do it they simply cannot put somebody else's interests before their own now they can fake it sometimes and he might he or she might be able to fake you know caring for their mother or caring for their kids but there's always an ulterior motive and a hidden agenda they simply do not have the capacity to truly love someone else the addiction was trying to fix him yeah that's actually fairly common especially among women who are cooperative and invested in relationships you can be addicted to trying to solve the problem and trying to fix the relationship and that's part of what you need to give up I mean if you have you know looked at our other information and the other videos and and and you're pretty certain that what you're dealing with us is a sociopath there is no recovery from this personality disorder and so you're just throwing your good time after your bad time everything that you've invested it's just simply it there is no recovery so the best thing you can do is figure out how to extricate yourself from this situation and yeah you have to give up you have to give up it's you're not going to be able to fix this person no matter what you do or what type of pretzel you turn yourself into or how much you accommodate how much you change to suit their changing demands it's never going to work so yes you can be addicted to trying to fix the person and it's fruitless so then that becomes the action that you need to take is to break your own addiction okay okay so Desiree says my issue is wrapping my head around that this was all a lie so are you saying that he never loved me at all and what about the children does he love them that's exactly what I'm saying yes if the person is associate path he doesn't love you he doesn't love the kids now sometimes they can pretend to be father of the year or mother of the year when you're dealing with a female sociopath but the kids are always about them it's always about making them look good or having some little minimis to boss around or something like that they are not authentically concerned about the health and well-being of the children so it is a lot to take in but unfortunately it's the truth okay so flower wolf says how do I know if I can trust someone again if they become a partner since my ex basically destroyed my trust in men that's what the recovery is about the recovery is about getting over the emotional wounds and also looking at what made you vulnerable in the first place and healing from that as well so the answer is always internal the answer is always your own healing and I would certainly recommend that you not attempt to date anyone until you've gone pretty far down the healing path but you can heal and once you do then you'll be able to trust yourself and men also and keep in mind this isn't a gender thing I mean there are men who are disordered but there are also women who are disordered so the key is for you to recognize what a sociopath is learn the warning and then be able to recognize it and the key is being able to trust your intuition because your intuition will tell you I mean if you look back at your experience I'm willing to bet that there were times where you were getting misgivings or the bad feeling or you thought something was off but you didn't know what it meant and we aren't taught to listen to our intuition so you didn't and you stayed in the situation and here you are but that's why the healing process is so important because once you do it you'll be able to recover and then you'll be able to move forward okay all right so Veronica says how do I handle all the people around us that believe my sociopath husband they see him as such a great person he also posted on his Facebook that he has mental issues as an excuse yeah that's a pretty common situation because a lot of sociopaths can run this magnificent charade and put on an act for other people and then when they're behind closed doors or with you everything's different unfortunately this is pretty common and it can be kind of difficult to deal with so what you need to do is figure out who is important to you and who needs to understand what's truly going on and figure out a way to tell them but there's an awful lot of people that you just may not be able to convince in those cases you may have to lose some relationships you may have to let go of some people because sociopaths are just that good and you you you're not going to be able to win everybody over you you may suffer some reputation loss so that's why it's important to set your priorities figure out who is important figure out who can support you and some other people you just gonna have to let them go okay is it possible that a sociopath actually knows he's a sociopath something he's discovered on his own or in therapy looking back makes me wonder if he was trying to save me from becoming his victim well yes it is certainly possible there are sociopaths who know what they are in fact I have a webinar on that also you might want to take a look at our playlist sometimes they do sometimes they have been to therapy sometimes they've been diagnosed sometimes they've been in jail and they've been diagnosed and sometimes they are actually proud of themselves you know because a lot of sociopaths feel like they're superior to the rest of us I mean all us stupid people you know marks that have conscience and emotions that they don't have but they recognize that they can take advantage of our conscience and conscience and emotions to manipulate us so quite a few sociopaths are proud of themselves but on the other hand I have heard of sociopaths who have warned their victims and saying something to the fact like I'm a really bad person or you really should leave me because it's just gonna get bad and of course our reaction is uh it can't be that bad you know that we all have baggage we all have problems and so yeah it's possible that a sociopath may have told you what was going on and I would say that if somebody said that to you that you should believe them because that's the best warning you're ever going to get okay Veronica says I agree I didn't listen to my intuition because I was insecure that's a common problem I mean in our society none of us are taught to listen to our intuition so do not beat yourself up for that it's it's just the way it goes but now you know and you can practice you can actually train yourself to listen to your intuition and I know just a few weeks ago there was something that came up that I didn't listen to my intuition and it turned out to be a problem and then on the same day I did listen to my intuition on something else and it turned out to be great so yes we have to train ourselves to listen to our intuition but the empirical knowledge that you know that they're out there will help you to interpret what your intuition is telling you so that's why it's also important to educate yourself okay Desiree says my husband said he was above me and better he said he wanted to get help but he never did that's kind of typical sociopathic interaction so you're not alone all right any more questions let's see I have only been away from the sociopath for five weeks I am doing no contact my heart still physically aches and I want to know if there are any tips to move through the pain you know the pain is how you heal and you know there's a saying the only way out of the pain is through it so even though it hurts and I understand it physically hurts recognize that as your the process of feeling the pain is how it is released so I mean it's no fun I recognize that you probably would be better off doing you know experiencing the pain by yourself or perhaps if you have a good therapist who understands what's going on but endure it you know just just get through it and it will ease five weeks isn't a really long time so you are still pretty much early in the healing process you're going to have ups downs and and you just got a surfeit you just got a ride with it and you know it'll it'll dissipate but just hang in and but what you can do is do whatever you can to be good to yourself make sure you're eating well you know get some exercise find ways to alleviate the stress stress and exercise is great for that especially vigorous exercise if you're I mean fast walking whatever you can do exercise will really help and or you you may also want to consider yoga because yoga the movements can help you access the different spots in your body where the pain is being stored and and can let it come out but I mean it is gonna be bumpy and you just gotta roll with it for a while and until it starts to dissipate okay here's a question from Karen she says does being raised by these types make us more susceptible to this abuse absolutely yes in fact I've spoken to quite a few people when I do personal consultations and there's always something in the past that makes us vulnerable and which can be a lot of things but lots and lots of people have told me that they recognize that the person they got involved with romantically was very much like their mother or father who they now realize it was disordered and so yes absolutely if you grew up in a situation with disordered parents they really do skew your perspective and the thing is of course when you're a child you don't know this and you don't know that you're being mistreated or that you're being denigrated or that you're being treated like a slave or whatever went on so it's it requires extra healing for that situation so you definitely want to go through this whole process and and what you want to do is if you've had experiences in your relationship that were painful you know allow yourself to remember them and process the pain of those experiences and then look and see if it's linked back to something that you endured before that and it could be some experiences with your parents and and what you want to do is allow yourself to process the pain of those original experiences also and but yes recognize that if you grew up with disordered parents that it definitely does make you vulnerable so just recognize that recognize that it's not your fault but now that you know what has happened you can take steps to proceed on your own healing path all right laptop lifestyle says I met a woman online with a connection never felt before with anyone else a soulmate and she said she's not ready for a relationship focusing on her biz yet jealous I talked to other girls what do you do well I don't know if that woman is a sociopath but is definitely doesn't sound like a good partner you know if if she is too busy for you she has absolutely no business being jealous if you pursue other women so I would say that at the very least it's not a good match I mean you haven't said enough to see if she's disordered but she's not a good match and and I would move on you know even though it feels like you may have met your soulmate the soulmate wouldn't treat you that way now when a real relationship is give and take and both people being involved and no one's trying to control the other person so essentially what she's trying to do is have it both ways and that's not a good idea okay Mary chef says dumper that is the short version of what I just said so okay it looks like I I think I got through most of the questions here if I missed any because it was scrolling please feel free to go to love fraud where this video is also posted in the law fraud forum so if you have any other questions that I didn't get to because they scrolled by and I don't see them anymore post them there and I'll respond to them in the love fraud forum but anyway thank you very very much everybody I hope this was helpful and we'll see you next Tuesday bye bye

Channel: LovefraudLessons

Views: 11,969

Keywords: sociopath, psychopath, narcissist, con artist, Lovefraud, Donna Andersen, personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, antisocial, bigamy

Id: sjcLS8cQ1z4

Length: 32min 51sec (1971 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 25 2020