Finished & Betrayed,
Im really pressed for time this morning, but I just wanted to say that your last few posts brought up alot of things for me to think about. Finished, I checked out the link you gave for the NPD chat, last night, great stuff. My counselor is concerned that I obsess to much on this stuff. But I believe thinking and knowledge is helping me. As I learn more and more, the pull to call the P. gets lesser and lesser. Although, I have my moments. My counselor specalizes with PTSD. I asked him if he had dealt with workplace bullying, and he said yes. I gave him a book to read, and told him i dont think you realize to what extent I was brainwashed. I use to obsess constantly to my counselor about what the P. was currently doing. Now that I am not around the P., I obsess about what I am learning. But I think that is a good obsession, it is getting me further away from the P. The last time I talked to the P. he asked me if I had gotten another job. I said no Im still a ______. I believe he thinks he will or has ran me away from the business. I love my job, but when I look back the whole time I have loved it I was working with the P. The P. gets at me anyway he can. Before I worked with the P. we had mutual companies we dealt with, and I had good working relationships with them. I talked to one friday, that also deals with the P. and I got a P. kind of attitude. I'm sure you know what I mean. Then I question myself, and think I am being paranoid.

>>the "tapes" the "sleeper cells".<< Never heard it said that way, but totally identify.

Gonna Let go, watch me, I mean it, I really will. How much I really, really wish it was that easy.

Thanks everyone,

betterway

Betterway. . .

Me too. . .pressed for time but wanted encourage you. On the site where I found tips for coping etc. One of the first things it mentioned was this. Once you know what you are dealing with, find out as much as you can as fast as you can.

Yes, it seems a little obsessive to me to. Kinda pisses me off that my mind is full of P stuff and he is probably enjoying a nice Sunday morning (I'm sure he isn't obsessing about me). But. . .I'm willing to sacrifice (if that's the word) some time to educate myself throughly and find my own flaws so I can enjoy the future, P-free.

We can change. With knowledge, support and encouragement from those who have "been there, done that"!

Love
finished

to all, i am obessed too. i told one of my friend about my discoveries this week, he told me ok so what don t obsess on that, just move on. I am obsessed because all in a sudden everything seem to be clear. one of you said that you are becoming paranoid, how can we not be? we are just remembering cause and effect. in that sam website there is a test for personality disorder. i tried it last night, nothing serious, but each questions dealing with suspicion, trust and relationship would have been answered differently before i realized that P was a P. it has provoked doubts, dissilussion, depression and on. i am glad that i am not the only one to be obsessed but were you the obessibe type before? I was but never as much.

Hi betterway,

You brought up 3 different issues in 3 different posts I wanted to comment on.

On 12/04/02 11:43 PM you addressed this quote:
>>A psychopath will always reveal himself in the beginning of a relationship<<

I've thought about this quote too. In the beginning when we exchanged letters she [the woman I was involved with I suspect might be a P] wrote something like "with all my problems I never thought that love would come my way". We never talked about her "problems". She never brought it up and neither did I. I thought love would get us through. She was, unfortunately, incapable of love. I scored her a 31 out of a possible 40 on the PCL-R. No, I haven't been trained in adminstering the PCL-R but that's my assessment anyway. Any time any of us says "so and so is a P" we're making a clinical judgement. I don't know what's wrong with trying to be scientific about it.

On 12/06/02 10:26 AM you wrote:
"I know this has probably been answered here before. But I have to ask again. Is it our pasts that make us a target for the P. [...] Is it who we are and what we are looking for subconsiously that allows us to become a target?"

Yes I think so. Before someone complains that I'm blaming the victim please I don't want to hear from you. I want to talk about blind spots we might have that would cause us to be attracted to a P.

Bad experiences have opened up our eyes to the danger of a P. For some people 1 bad experience is enough, for others 2, 3, 100, I don't know. The thing is we were one way before the experience, another way after. So what are we like before that makes us attracted to a P, while after we are not?

I think we're attracted to qualities in the P that we lack in ourselves. The P has a fire in his belly. His heart beats strong in his chest. A P may be jailed and put in the "hole" and suffer deprivation but he will never give in. It's hard not to admire that. After all that he'll still come out and spit on his jailers. Consider the groupies of Ted Bundy and Richard Ramirez (the "Nightstalker"). How can they be attracted to these serial killers? Aren't they aware of their awful crimes against women? Bundy even married one of his fans. We can't believe that anyone, P or not, would be like this, without conscience, without love, without consideration for others.

There's already a polarity in love relationships between men and women. Men and women are so different it's understood there are large parts of each other they will never understand. That's taken for granted. That's part of the allure of the opposite sex, the mystery, associating with something different from you, so you can take a vacation from yourself.

Someone said before that it's easier for a female to spot a female P and a male to spot a male P. We have blind spots about the opposite sex. Bill Clinton isn't exactly a P but he is definitely an N. A lot of women are attracted to him, while most men see into his game and consider him little more than a slick used car salesman.

On 12/06/02 12:51 PM you wrote:
"When you say they elaborate there schemes. Do you belive that all this is planned, or is the P. so sick that he doesn't even realize half of what he is doing?"

Betterway this is such a great question! What is the con man thinking when he is conning his victim. I wonder about this often and it troubles me that I can't figure it out. But let me give it a shot here.

I was watching some true crime show on Court TV recently. A man courted a much younger woman; he 40 she 25, something like that. Lied to her about his past. They got married. He took out a large insurance policy on her. Acquired an untraceable nerve agent. Made sure no one was looking and went with her on horseback to a secluded part of their farm. They dismounted and he laid out a blanket so they could have sex. As she laid there he got out the syringe and surprised her by injecting her with the serum which didn't kill her but paralyzed her as she remained conscious. He then struck her head with a rock to kill her. He ran to a neighbors to say her horse had thrown her. It was very complicated but they finally convicted him by identifying the serum he used to paralyze her with a new test and exhuming the body to look for needle marks.

A local man familiar with the case said the P kept asking women to marry him, and the first one that said "yes" was the subject of this elaborate plan of his. Like leading an animal to the slaughter, the local man said. I have to wonder what the P was thinking when he did this. Suppose you were going to the supermarket to get groceries. You have a list of course, but you don't think much about it. Yes it's true food is necessary for life, but you don't think much about that either. You just go there and get out your list and buy the things on the list. The P in this case probably made a mental list just as we'd make a grocery list:

. Find woman to marry
. Obtain large insurance policy
. Get some kind of poison
. Find opportunity to kill her
. Fake it like she was thrown from her horse
. Collect large insurance reward

What did he feel when he carried out these steps? Just what you would feel when you picked out the items on your grocery list. A cow was killed to get the hamburger you bought but you don't have any personal, emotional connection to the cow. Some rural families might raise a cow and then get emotionally attached to it, and when it was time to slaughter it the children might get all upset. Even the adults might balk at eating their old pet "Charlie the cow". They might sell him to someone else then, or even let it live out it's life. In this case, though, the P didn't have any such emotional connection to his wife, his target, the victim.

The P keeps his plan to himself. Not because he'd feel bad about it, not that he feels guilty about the plan. Not at all. He doesn't reveal his plan to anyone because if he did he'd go to jail! Like, we in the US don't drive on the left side of the road because we'd probably get into an accident. No more complicated than that.

Imagine asking the P about this incident, supposing he was honest. What might he say?

Q. What were you thinking when you married your wife?
A. She seemed nice enough.

Q. You killed her.
A. I treated her great. She felt loved. I was the best thing that ever happened to her. As far as dying, everyone has to die some time.

Q. You killed her for the insurance money. For yourself. For your own selfish reasons.
A. If I'm not going to look out for myself, who will? Everyone does things for selfish reasons. You have to look out for yourself. If you're a chump, that's not my problem.

After he was caught and tried and put on death row, Ted Bundy was quoted as saying "I'm as cold a motherf***** as you've ever put your f***ing eyes on. I don't give a s*** about these people.". Handsome, warm and charming in person. The psychopath is a cold person who doesn't care about others. But he can still think, he can still be intelligent. He's not an idiot. He just doesn't care. He hides it well so other people don't find out and avoid him, because he needs to be around people to get what he wants.

Sincerely, Boo

Boo

You have some thought provoking comments here.

>>We can't believe that anyone, P or not, would be like this, without conscience, without love, without consideration for others.<<

If one does not know P's are a general part of the human landscape, one would not be looking for them. Like being in a war and not aware of landmines. After youv'e been blown up by a few then you get yourself armed for war. If you were sent into battle and didn't know who the enemy was OR that the enemy WAS the enemy it wouldn't reach your awareness until you were "blown up".

>> Is it who we are and what we are looking for subconsiously that allows us to become a target?" <<

Could be true. I hope I know myself well enough to know I am not looking to be tortured. I my case, I thought I was going to get a mutual love relationship. I have only now discovered. . .P. . .is like all others in my past. . .a P.

I appreciated your comments Boo.
Thanks for your post.
finished

Hopeful

>> were you the obessibe type before?<<

Not until P#2.

finished

>>>What they don't realize is that these tapes are "foreign objects"
implanted by the narcissist in their mind. Time bombs waiting to explode. Kind of "sleeper cells" or post-hypnotic suggestion<<<

Thank you for the validation. My psychologist who specializes in working with cult survivors, talks about these sleeper cells, being deliberately implanted in cult members. Some were children, when it happened, and were deliberately made to split off into multiple personalities. The sleeper bombs, which can contain all sorts of messages, sometimes contain suicide implants, if the children ever go to tell on the cult or their abusers. This article from Sam is the first I had read on psychopaths deliberately implanting the sleeper cells, although I was familiar with it from reading about cults.

The P hung many of the things in our store, by nooses. Exactly the kind you see in the movies, where people hang themselves. At the first store,that first year, he had spread rumours around that I did drugs, and also that I was on medication for mental illness. They tried to convince him, that I do not do drugs. ( I found all this out much later). None of this was true. One woman who, (who was severely mentally ill, a consigner at the first store, who had been stalking one of our local dentists, and was in and out of our local psych ward ), one time came out of the basement, after talking with the P who was down there working, and announced to the owner and one of the sales people that I was dead. That I had died of a heroin overdose. They just shook their heads, and laughingly told me about it later.

During the stalking, after the police were called to get him out of my store, one morning I came to open the store, and he had written around the doorway outside. "Heroin, my secret."
One of his friends, told me ( during the stalking) that the P had told him, that I was a drug addict, an alcoholic, and that I was mentally ill.

The P, one morning at our store, had said those same words to me. At the time, I couldn't understand why he would say that to me. He knew, I don't even associate, with anyone like that. ( Little did I know, at the time, the description fit him to a T. )

He was deliberately implanting these suggestions to anyone who knew me.

All these little pieces, had to be joined together to make sense, some of them were months or years apart from each other.

Each on their own, do not make much sense, but joined together, are absolutely chilling and paint a horrific picture.

Betrayed.

Finished,

Same here! I guess that we probably became obssesed as we understood it was time for introspection. Do you think that if we weren't obssesed we would have push our research? In my case,no. If I was not obssesed I wouldn't have understood.

Betrayed,

>>>What they don't realize is that these tapes are "foreign objects"
implanted by the narcissist in their mind. Time bombs waiting to explode. Kind of "sleeper cells" or post-hypnotic suggestion<<<

Where can I more documentation on that? I really think that the way that P made my head spin was that way. I started being interested months and months after those bombs were placed.

>>> My counselor is concerned that I obsess to much on this stuff. But I believe thinking and knowledge is helping me<<<

My psychologist encouraged me to continue reading everything, when I mentioned about my obsession on learning. To truly heal your brain from trauma, you have to put all those little pieces into a whole. Eventually, it does slow down, I now can read ordinary stuff, watch television, etc., etc... You will let go when you are ready and have learned all you need to know.

>>>But I think that is a good obsession, it is getting me further away from the P.<<<

You are absolutely right. it is a good obsession. The ones I have seen, who do not go this route, who just let go, end up back with another P.

This stuff IS REALLY IMPORTANT. I had people telling me the same thing, just let it go, stop talking about abuse. All these ones, are either abusers or in abusive relationships.

Betrayed.