I've just had a rather jarring experience of how my life with a psychopath has set me apart from the mainstream. I read last night, in a writer's group, six pages from my book, "Psychopath". I ended the reading to the silence of a stunned and speechless audience. I laughed, and someone said something on the order of, "Just give us a moment to regroup." I had carefully chosen the passage because it was one of the least intense.

Most of the feedback I got (once anyone could speak) was inappropriate, most of it having to do with details not explained in six pages out of a 600 page book. Anyone who has ever read a book knows that you don't explain the who, what, where, why and how of everything in every passage of a book, but that these are elements which are built up throughout the book. I realized, as I listened, that the memebers of the group had been unable to hear the piece, as a piece of writing, because they had been so traumatized by it. The crticism just had nothing to do with the writing. Then (thank you God) one woman spoke who had been able to hear it. She thought it was powerful writing and she was able to tell me why, and how she reacted to its parts. There were 12 people in the group. When I got my copies back, I discovered one other woman (who had not spoken, but had written notes) had related to the work.

I suspect this is a representative sample of what percentage of people can relate to me. Not just my writing. Me. Because my writing is me. It is my life experience. It is who I am.

This was my second attendance in this group, and I have heard three other people read their work. So I have a reverse comparison which shows me how much I relate to people in the mainstream of life. How much I relate to people who have lived "normal" safe lives. Not very much. I was bored stiff through the other readings, and couldn't figure out why the writers cared enough to write about the things they wrote about. This is terrible, but I found myself thinking, "Who cares?" through the other readings.

It is simply that my life experience has set me apart. To make a stark comparison...someone who spent 30 years in a concentration camp would hardly find it engaging or relevant to read musings about the aroma of somebody's mother's apple pie. Not if that is the substance of the work. It just doesn't matter very much. In the scope of that person's life, it's too small.

This experience serves as a metaphor, for me, of the plight of psychopath's victim. We cannot relate deeply to most others because most others cannot relate deeply to us. They can't know us. They cannot conjure our internal space. They can't go there with us. They don't know the place, and they are horrified by it. Conversely, we are lonely with them. Their internal space feels limited to the most superficial aspects of our own human experience.

thanks for starting this thread, kris

victims of psychopaths are quite an "ingroup" in themselves because we are the only ones truly capable of understanding one another's experiences on a fundamental level. To paraphrase Hume, it is difficult to think about what we have never felt, either through our internal or external senses. the only thing we can do is welcome more victims into the ingroup and attempt to educate the outgroup. unfortunately the most thorough education in these matters is obtained at the expense of one's psychological well-being.

kris you have inspired me to write a little piece of my own here, tonight. i have done some creative writing in the past on different topics accessible to all, but here is something i am sure only this group could internalize. this one is for all of us. it still needs quite a bit of work, but i really wanted to hear what you guys had to say.

UNDERSTANDING CRYSTALLIZED: AFTERMATH

Seemingly out of nowhere
You plummeted into my world
Something within you extended its warm, icy, beautiful, shoddy, decadent tendrils
Grasped me, held me, drew me in, enticed me
What is that seductive entity within you?
Does it awaken in the presence of insecurity? of love yearning for release? of love yearning for direction, a target?
Become the target, begin to feed, absorb
Potential sustenance for the illusion, you hear your master's call
The dark dance commences
I give you the lead, all questions are silenced, the spell's hands are firmly pressed over my lips, silenced, enthralled
Deciphering me, decoding me, cataloguing the valuables
Reptilian brain processing my signals in incomprehensible ways
Fusing them, integrating them, becoming what I want, need, desire
Reactive droid, select your responses, your smooth speech extracts what you need from me
Stimulate your pleasure centers, pipelines to the illusion, feed the fire
Improbable tales, inconsistencies?
No matter, you are good, you are beautiful, we are interlinked
Dark screenplay, pen in your hand, chapter of my life
What do you want?
Please take whatever you want
Please just serve yourself
You serve only yourself
I serve only yourself
I think I might be losing myself
No need to search for myself
Blissful oblivion
My first failure to follow your script, your precious script
Just a little thing, such a little thing, such a tiny question, such a small doubt, so infinitesimal, i just want a little clarification
I see the mask slip ever so slightly, righteous indignation flits over your features like a barely perceptible shadow
Dismiss it, bury it, forget it, everyone falters after all, do they not?
After all, our souls are securely locked, are they not? our connection unbreakable?
But more questions begin, doubts expressed, snowballing, chipping the mask away proportionately
Piece by carefully constructed piece, constructed from me, built from the inner me, your mask for me and no one but me, i helped build it, it is part of me
No it is all of me
Lies begetting lies begetting lies, insanity or memory loss? what is happening to you? are you losing cohesion?
Already in your mind, you are pulling away
Illusion beginning to die of starvation
I try to ground us in reality, you flee by delivering pain to me
Half-life of beautiful evil has arrived
First using me for me for you, uphill
Now using me against me for you, downhill
Reverse causality, all so confusing
I against I, me against me, you the promoter, the producer, the verbal sorceror, the referee
Back and forth
Give me sporadic love, intermittent love
Just make me press the lever for that food pellet all the faster
Dying of exhaustion, drowning in a vortex
Trying to get you back
The you of brighter times
Futile, futile
Wipe my name from the screenplay, my life from the script
But keep the structure, keep the style
You sight your next target, your pen strikes the page
Psychopath, psychopath
My gaze finally lances through you
Blackness, blackness
Nothing else constitutes you
Only others like me can help me see, clear the waste products from my eyes
The clouds you summoned
Finally losing the last dregs of love I have for you

persistent

Kris-
I'm new here, but until you have lived through it, is boggles the human mind to think there are people that commit the atrocities they do. Our physe (spelling?) was not designed to accept this. It is so unspeakable.
They were obviously so "tramatized" from the content they couldn't get past it.
I read with interest all your postings. Your postings have ministered to me so much. It comes through very clearly, but only because I had this recent experience.
Your book will be embraced by those who are going through or have been where you are struggling to get out of the snake pit.. I never saw this kind of information before and even though I just went through that horrendeous experience, it is still unbelievable to think that was actually inside that person. vile, contemptable...dispicible. If it were me in the audience ten days ago, even with P#1, without my recent experience and how it related to practically all the posting I may have had the same reaction.
You and many others on the forum have been my lifeline.
Your postings with the information and sharing your personal history has literally saved my life. I know I'll move on eventually, but not until I have educated myself well on the nature of the snake. That's why I'll keep coming here and keep learning. . .Thank you for sharing. I've learned so much in just a few days.
Sincerely,
Finished

persistent,

Ha ha. I can't resist. I'll do a little critique. This piece has great potential.

First, I think it needs editing, paring down to poetic bones, less words. An example:

"Seemingly out of nowhere
You plummeted into my world
Something within you extended its warm, icy, beautiful, shoddy, decadent tendrils
Grasped me, held me, drew me in, enticed me"
See how this sounds:

Out of nowhere
You plummeted into my world
Extended your warm, icy, beautiful, shoddy, decadent tendrils
Grasped me, held me, drew me in

Another example:

"Reptilian brain processing my signals in incomprehensible ways
Fusing them, integrating them, becoming what I want, need, desire"

Shorter version:

Reptilian brain processing my signals
Fusing, integrating, becoming my want, need, desire

Listen to the sound and rhythm of it, in your head.

You have some beautiful phrases to work with. Some of my favorites:

warm, icy, beautiful, shoddy, decadent tendrils

you hear your master's call
The dark dance commences

the spell's hands are firmly pressed over my lips, silenced, enthralled
(this one needs a slight change in order to maintain a consistent voice, for example:)
the spell's hands are firmly pressed over my lips, I am silenced, enthralled

Deciphering me, decoding me, cataloguing the valuables

Half-life of beautiful evil

I against I, me against me, you the promoter, the producer, the verbal sorceror, the referee (but this one sounds better if you drop the word "verbal"...and should it be you against me?)

Give me sporadic love, intermittent love

Blackness, blackness
Nothing else constitutes you
(I like this, but would shorten it:)
Blackness, blackness
constitute you

Those are just a few of the great phrases.


I think, in the swtiching between the victim's experience and his subjective experience of what the psychoapth is doing to him, the "me" and "you" needs a bit more clarifying. For example:

"Reactive droid, select your responses, your smooth speech extracts what you need from me
Stimulate your pleasure centers, pipelines to the illusion, feed the fire"

I, reactive droid, you select your responses, extract what you need from me
To stimulate your pleasure center, pipeline to the illusion, feed the fire

Those are the 2 things I see: paring down, and making transitions between "you" and "me" clearer.

Good work.

This critique may not survive the admisistrators. Hee hee. And I promise not to do it, again.

kris

finished,

Yes, and I had been careful to choose a piece not so loaded. I didn't know how much the general audience could assimilate, and I was off by a mile. I don't know if a writer's group will work for me. My goal is to get feedback on this book. This is the one I am attempting to sell, the one I need feedback on right now. I had wondered if it would be possible, at all, to share this writing in a group, and I think it is not really possible. Which leaves me with the problem of having to pay a professional consultant if I want this kind of feedback. A professional, at least, would disconnect from the content.

You and persistent are both right. People cannot relate to an experience which they have not had. Nor can they hear it, if it is terrible, without being shocked into silence.

You also speak to a fact about this experience, which contributes to the denial of the victim...sometimes longterm denial. We can't believe it, and so we don't believe it. When I look back, I am stunned by the outrageous behaviors which I did not assimilate, at the time. Events that were so "out there" that I had no place to put them, within my perspective, so they just dribbled away into outer space. It took me decades to finally gather up all that stuff, assimilate it, and let the whole picture speak to me the irrational truth of what a psychopath is. First, I had to know there was such a thing. I had to have a frame of reference.

I am encouraged to hear that my writng has helped you. God willing, my book will get out there, and help others.

And I just have to accept that my writing or talking about this will never lend itself to being heard by those in the mainstream of life. It is an isolating factor. But I am blessed to not be completely isolated as I was before I found this forum.

kris

kris, persistent,

This is great! Before I continue with discussing the helpful critique of persistent's offering, I would like to chime in and add my voice to the testimony regarding kris's gift of writing and knowlege of psychopathy and how much it has helped me personally on my journey of growth and healing. Thanks for your great generosity in sharing it with us, (((kris))). An oasis to a parched soul, a rare jewel. And I'm so happy that you've decided to show the world. You bravery is an inspiration to me. Reading your work to a bunch of strangers. Now that takes major guts, lol! It won't take long now for you to be "discovered".

Persistent, lots of interesting imagery. Thanks for showing us. And aren't you the special one to have kris's commentary! lol

Cherie

Oh, Cherie, Thank you, thank you. I'd be in deep waters if I didn't have the validation I get on this forum, from souls marked by parallel experience.

Reading my work to a bunch of strangers either took guts or incredible naivete, I think more of the latter. In that sense, my psychopath experience has not changed me enough.

Here's a hug back ((Cherie)).

kris

Kris

In some ways our experience reminds people of the Holocast at a lesser level. No value on a human life. We exist for their pleasure. When we veiw the atrocities it is incomprehensible to believe humans could reach this level of degradation. Everytime I have ever veiwed this kind of history, I have to shove it down, somewhere. It shakes me to the core. If I allow myself to think on it to much it would "mess up my mind" ALOT.

I could so identify with your story (as with many others) and your answers seemed well thought out. You took the topic, expound and followed with examples. Anybody really affected by a p could relate to. The others, it just wouldn't compute. I pray! And I will pray God lead you to the right place, right time, right people who can see the value of your material and provide you the resources you need to complete your work. I never thought I would need information like this, see. . .you never know.

You wrote "You also speak to a fact about this experience, which contributes to the denial of the victim. . .sometimes long term denial. We can't believe it, and so we don't believe it"

I told my brother last night. He has a masters degree in physcology (spelling?). My brother knows all my history with p#2. He had never judged or critized and all he has said to me in my questionings, why, why, why? He would say It is all about sex. I'd say I don't see it, I don't see it. P#2 and I had not been together for a long time. I told him, p#2, 18 or 20 months ago, I couldn't do this anymore, it was to hard on me. So it came as a shock to my brother to hear I went to him.


He told me I was at a place where I could have split and detached (I don't know this kind of jargon)
In a very stern tone, he said good. You need to feel it all of it. He went on to tell me I had stepped out somewhere HUGE. Spoke SERIOUSLY to me about my own selfishness and desire for self gratification. The jepardary and example I was setting for my family (even if it had been a secret).

He said, you need to feel all of it. The consequeses of your part. Just earlier that day a friend had called and asked how I was. I told here not so good. She said you sound good. I said, "I have on my game face" a survivial skill I learned in my p history.

That was his point, he wanted me to be sure I was done with this p#2 and if I started detaching I soon minimizing, rationaling and could be drawn into joining p#2 in his world of darkness. And me putting on a "Christian" personna. ie; MY personality would be split.

It was like a shock rippling though my whole being when he said it. Then he said, you. . .figure out a way to bring closure.

He said if I continued to participate there was a chance I was also a p.

Talk about scary.. me a p! Oh dear God no. The point, for me. . .when I compromised my core values, as I did, these are the predators I attract. It was directly like this. . .don't learn here. . .no help for you. You have established a pattern. The point from him being I was already starting to detach from it, and that was a DANGER. I guess thats where the splitting was. Detach and go back, put on your game face (chirpy cheerleader) and deny this nightmare REALLY happened. Don't deal with the root problem which was the flaw in my character. . .yes there are lots of reasons I got to be the way I am. . .but. . .there was something in me that drew these snakes to me.

Here is what I told me brother. The more I thought about it today, it is true. P#2 murdered that girl, October 1,2002. He drugged her, sexually assalted her, and when he was done using her, put her out on a dark loney road to find her way out of the maze. It was like Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Let's put on the blindfold, spin her around, put her it the car and bye bye. When I drove out, I was already as good as dead. That's the truth.

This has been a bad day for me. This probably doesn't even make sense.

Thank you for providing this outlet for me to express.. .
Gratefully
Finished

Kris-
I echo Cheries thoughts.
Bravo!
Finished

Finished:

We have to name the experience. When I called it sexual assault, and suggested that he had drugged you,it became clearer in your mind, about what had happened. Instead of your brother attacking you, why couldn't he have just acknowledged the horror of the expereience, that you had been hurt, and hugged you.
Yes, you split, disassociated, went into shock. Call it what you will.
Yes, you have to look at what family dynamics brought you into relationships like this. But not now. It's too soon.
It first has to be acknowledged and named, what that monster did to you.
After what happened to me, telling friends in bits and pieces, I could not put it into a whole picture. I kept trying to get them to tell me, "what happened ?, what happened?, trying to get them to give me a whole picture. But they were unable to. Either because it was so horrific or because I had them as confused as I was. I don't know.
To this day, I can't tell a clear short, overall view of what happened.
I was hurt horribly, severly traumatized and I needed comforting, a hug, kind words. Instead I was forced to prove, what had happened, explaining and explaining what he had done in bits and pieces.
Going to an abuse counsellor, 6 months after the police were called, was the first acknowledgement, I had about what had happened. However, even they said, they had never had dealt with such a severe case of abuse. They were used to "regular" abusive husbands and the abuse they did to their wives.
Stalking, child sex abuse, cons, manipulations, stealing, lies, psychotic behavior, multi-sexual,bestiality peeping, brainwashing, isolating me and my child, psychophrenic behavior, he had people watching my home (telling them I was having an affair with the boss, and to watch for the bosses vehicle at my home to prove it, LIES, LIES, LIES) he had plans to kill me for my business, he's done it before. Power and control.
All of these I had to study and learn to figure out what had happened, what he had meant by the odd weird things he had said and done.
Even though I can relate to everything people say on this board,it's all so familiar, he seemed to encompass the behaviors all of you talk about. I am still so cautious about who is trying to make friends with me, he had people he knew doing this to get information about me. I still feel so alone. To have someone do this, has just been devastating to me. For me to say all the things he did, makes me sound like the crazy one.


A word to Kris:
I couldn't understand why the P who came into my life, was trying to make me jealous all the time with really ugly,repulsive, not nice women. This was before, he had had ever made any sexual moves on me. I'd sit back and wonder, why is he doing that? I never felt any jealousy, why would I? After everything came down, I realized he'd been F***ing them. I almost threw up at the thought of it.

Some people who have been sexually abused as children, will deliberately seek out repulsive people or things to have sex with, almost like they are repeatedly traumatizing themselves, with the original trauma. Feeling the shame, and disgust that they originally felt as children towards the sexual abuse. That old repetion compulsion.
It also serves another purpose, to humilate their partner, break their spirit, make us feel their feelings, to have their partner wonder why they would rather have something so repulsive, than their partner. To make us feel we are less than desirable. Take our sexuality away, and leave us with disgust towards sex, as they feel.
To this day, I can't handle seeing sexual intimacy on television, in books. Even something as innocent as people kissing. Major triggers.

Now I understand why he said he could not watch movies with sex or violence in them.