My very first post!
Hello, readers.
First of all, thank you for reading. Starting a blog is something that I’ve been considering doing for a long time. For ages; I believed that nobody would want to read, or would believe, what I have to say. Now I realise how very important it is to me that I get my story out there. Psychopathic abuse and the aftermath of these “relationships” that psychopaths lure their victims into are very real issues that are misunderstood. They are swept under the rug in many cases. This needs to stop.
I was abused by a psychopath, who was many years older than me. This nightmare went on for over a year, and it was the darkest period of my life. When the dictatorship…errr…”relationship” ended, and I was discarded in true pathological fashion, nobody wanted to know about what had happened to me. So called friends laughed at me, minimised my experiences, and dismissed them as “not that bad”. I was told I had “chosen” abuse. That I must have enjoyed it. That I must be weak, needy, desperate, damaged, and masochistic to have “allowed” it. That I must be “co-dependent”. That I was at fault, and that they found it hard to believe me.
I maintain to this very day that the rejection and ridicule I was met with in the aftermath of my disastrous relationship was as damaging as the abuse the psychopath subjected me to. It compounded all the shame, confusion, and despair that I was already suffering. It seemed to validate certain things my abuser had told me, which made me wonder if he had been onto something when he called me unstable. I believe that this reaction was a contributing factor to me developing PTSD.
I can recall some of the things that were said to me back then and still feel sick about them. They shook me to the core. I believe that no survivor should have their pain minimised and belittled. I believe that no survivor should have doubt cast upon their story. I believe that all survivors deserve compassion, respect, and understanding. Not victim blaming.
Abuse survivors are stronger together. When we all raise our voices as one, we make so much noise that people are forced to notice us. The aim of my blog is to bring abuse survivors together, particularly survivors of psychopathy, and to raise awareness. Why am I especially focused on psychopathic abuse? Because it is so misunderstood. Coercive control destroys lives, yet it is so difficult to prove. We’ll never know how many suicides have been a direct result of this particularly cruel form of psychological torture.
I’m getting my life back together now. There were times when I thought I was going to die, and indeed, WANTED to. It took a LOT of hard work to get myself back on my feet. I hoped I could get through this bone chilling PTSD, and still be intact enough to lead some sort of human existence, but I realised that if I wanted to recover then I would have to be an active participant in my recovery. It was something that I would have to force. I wasn’t at all sure I had the inclination, or the energy. I was at a crossroads. It came down to two choices:
a) Lie down and die
Or;
b) Get up and fight.
It sounds very simplistic, and dramatic, but that is truly what it came down to. It was not the sort of thing that was going to resolve itself naturally. I had to make it happen, but I didn’t know where to start when I could barely function.
I was beyond broken. Every part of me had been smashed into small pieces. Nothing made sense anymore, and nothing in my world could be taken for granted as credible and safe anymore. I challenged everything around me. My identity and self esteem had been assimilated, chewed up, and spat back out. Who was I? What was the point of me? I knew I had been abused, but the full extent of the abuse eluded me. Educating myself about psychopathy was a revelation. It killed me to realise that my abuser never loved me, and had put on a phoney persona and pretended to care just so he could get me where he wanted me; which was: Under. His. Thumb. But knowledge is power, and reading about psychopathic abuse and realising I was NOT alone, helped me a great deal in the long run.
Every day was marred by fear, chronic worry, and a feeling of detached deadness that made me feel like an alien. I felt as though nobody could relate, that I was forever alone, and that my troubles were a burden to others around me. I was deeply depressed. I couldn’t trust anybody. I couldn’t trust my own perceptions. The world appeared to be against me. Cognitive Dissonance kept me swinging from one extreme to the other: “I love my abuser”. “No, I hate him”. ” I love him AND hate him”. My interactions with others ended with me feeling either especially sad (because I considered myself to not be human anymore), or especially angry; with me lashing out at them over something they said, or did, that had inadvertantly triggered me. Friends started to drop like flies.
I missed my abuser so much. I missed him unashamedly, and without any pride or pretence. I freely admitted that I felt like I was nothing without him; and that his abuse, his discard, the lack of support I received, and the psychopath revelations were killing me. But very, very gradually, after what seemed like decades, I found myself being able to wake up in the morning and NOT think of my abuser very first thing. Nope. Now he was relegated to second thing, or even third thing. Yes, these were baby steps. But like they say: “every journey starts with a single step”.
I went to the doctor..and found myself being laughed at. He referred me to a local domestic abuse service, who sighed at me, and didn’t want to have any truck with someone who had “only” been emotionally and sexually abused. This set me back several hundred steps. NOBODY UNDERSTOOD, I was sure of it! After several more months of mental anguish, I eventually found myself a decent domestic abuse servive, and a decent therapist.
IT’S A LONG HARD ROAD OUT OF HELL.
Recovery involved digging through several layers of trauma that pre-dated my abuser. It involved exploring my feelings, setting boundaries, and building my confidence. It was a struggle that involved many arguments, panic attacks, and tears; but my new friends understood what I was going through. THEY UNDERSTOOD! They held my hand and led me towards the light at the end of the tunnel. I know, I know – cringe time, cliché alert. But in this case, the old cliché works perfectly.
I got involved in helping other survivors. There was something incredibly fulfilling about helping someone who wasn’t as far along in her recovery journey as I was. I loved volunteering, it gave my life purpose again. I’m now a coordinator of a group that trains domestic abuse services and supports survivors. Yes, I have very bad days. Dreadful, in fact. But they pass. Now I know that a few sparks inside of me must have survived throughout everything that happened; enabling me to get through those first few months, when I was contemplating gulping down a load of pills and ending it all. I believe that those sparks have now burst into flames and passion burns inside me once more. A passion for life. A passion to prevent anyone else feeling the way that I was made to, when I had just been through the unimaginable hell of loving a psychopath.
You are not alone.
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Survivors of Psychopaths 