Escape Abuse!

FROM: http://narc-attack.blogspot.com/2007/12/forgiving-one-who-deserves-forgiveness.html

_ _ _ _ _

The most important thing to keep in mind is that your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you have.

The same things can damage it that damage your other human relations. The deal-breaker is BETRAYAL.

Have you ever felt betrayed? If so, then you know that it is the blackest feeling a human being can have. It is devastating. It is what makes people want to just turn their face to the wall and die.

Because it shows you what you and your suffering mean (are worth) to your betrayer = nothing.

Betrayal severs any human relationship. It puts the betrayed through Hell.

Just think what this means in terms of your relationship with yourself. If you betray yourself to abuse, that betrayal severs your relationship with yourself.

How can this be? Easily. We are composite beings. We are a combination of true inner self and ego. The ego views us as others do. It’s that little voice in the head that takes the viewpoint of bystanders and berates you IN THE SECOND PERSON, by saying such things as, “Why can’t you hit a stupid backhand in? You are pathetic! Here you are, choking again in a big match!”

That’s you (if you’re a tennis player having a bad tennis day) talking to you. But why aren’t you saying, “Why can’t I hit a stupid backhand in? I am pathetic! Here I am, choking again in a big match!”

Answer: You address yourself as “you” instead of “I” to distance yourself from yourself. Because you don’t like yourself at the moment and are disowning yourself, relating to yourself as though talking to a different person.

See what’s happening to your relationship with yourself? You’re not on your side, are you?

This happens to everyone, and it should serve as a strong warning of how easily our composite personality can breakdown, split.

Don’t go there. Never, never, never betray yourself to bad treatment. You sin against yourself when you do, and the act WILL destroy your relationship with yourself.

Unfortunately, if you are the victim of a narcissist, it is safe to say that you have already done so.

THIS is what threatens the victim’s mental health. You have allowed yourself to be abused. You see that for what it is - bending over for it, laying down for it. No matter how blessed people say that is, you know it’s not. You know it is abject. You are profoundly ashamed of doing that.

You hate yourself for it, no matter how hard you work to repress awareness of that to live in denial of it. So, you have committed an offense against yourself (your human dignity). You can never be friends with yourself until you make peace with yourself.

Repair that relationship with yourself. The fruit of forgiveness is reconciliation (ask any theologian).

1. Admit that you have allowed the narcissist to abuse you.

2. Admit that it was wrong to do so, though be fair with yourself and consider the reasons why you were driven to do so.

3. Be sorry that you betrayed yourself to abuse.

4. Make whatever amends are possible and appropriate.

5. Most important - repent = promise to never betray yourself again.

You may recognize those as the 5 formal steps of repentance. They make you forgivable. They allow reconciliation to take place.

Indeed, how can you be reconciled with any offender who doesn’t at least stop offending and give you some assurance that he won’t keep right on doing it? It is absurd to to think that you can.

And just because it’s 3AM and he is sound asleep, unable to offend at the moment, doesn’t mean that a state of war doesn’t presently exist bewteen you. What he did yesterday counts. What he has always done and never promised to stop doing COUNTS.

“Forgive and forget” is a line penned in Hell, not Heaven.

It is absurd to think you can have any but a hostile relationship with someone offending you in any way, especially when they have refused to stop it.

Hey, if the offender stops doing it, you can be friends again. But ONLY if he stops doing it. You don’t have to be friendly to people attacking you or stealing from you in any way. It’s called the human right to self-preservation, self-defense. It’s a Law of Nature. The very idea that you should like and be nice to someone doing things hostile to you is bizarre and absurd.

To the contrary: You stay away from people like that. You build walls between yourself and people like that. You answer their attacks to make their attacks cost them dearly, so as to deter future aggression that you might live in peace instead of under constant attack by them. This is just common sense.

And it holds just as true in your relationship with yourself as in your relationship with others. Simply say, “I betrayed myself to abuse in the past, but I will never do so again, so I am no longer a doormat to be ashamed of.”

Be on your side.

Take those 5 steps to repair your relationship with yourself - especially the last one in which you establish a firm purpose of amendment to never betray yourself to abuse again.

Now you are forgivable. So, forgive yourself. Embrace yourself.

YOU are the one who deserves and needs your forgiveness. And chances are that you are the only one who deserves and wants it.

Professionals in the Helping Industries & Their Personal Pathological Relationships

Are you a doctor, nurse, therapist, social worker,female clergy, medical personnel, paramedic, teacher, psychiatrist, Certified Nursing Assistant, day care worker, guidance counselor, speech therapist, missionary, physical therapist, psychology grad student, art therapist, writer, artist, musician, or work with at-risk kids?

Welcome aboard to the group of people MOST LIKELY to end up in a pathological relationship. Can your career be a risk factor for finding/staying with a narcissist or psychopath? Unfortunately, YES!

Look at that list again… all the ‘hearts of gold’ kind of people — the salt of the earth women — the ‘Mother Teresa’s’ of the world — AT RISK for attracting and staying with dangerous, dark, and pathological men. Seems unfair doesn’t it? Normally, narcissists and psychopaths don’t migrate to their own kind. On rare occasions they do and you end up with a sensationalized case of a new Bonnie & Clyde. But in most cases, they migrate to you!

During a recent media interview I said,“I think understanding this represents one of the largest breakthroughs in our understanding of dangerous intimate relationship dynamics. For so long we understood him but we didn’t really understand her. She was wrongly labeled codependent but codependency treatment didn’t help her. She was wrongly labeled a relationship or even sex addict and addiction treatment didn’t help her.

She was wrongly labeled as mutually pathological and yet she was never diagnosed with her own personality disorder. Nothing fit and nothing explained her until we found the missing key… her ‘off-the-Richter-scale traits’ that put it all in perspective. Once we can understand her, we can help her.”

What we do understand is that by nature of your own tender and helpful personality traits you migrated to a career in which you could use your abundant traits of empathy, helpfulness, compassion, resourcefulness, cooperation, and tolerance. Where best do these great humanitarian traits get used? In helping professions like social work, ministry, nursing, other medical professions, psychology, teaching, child workers… all people with big hearts trying to give out of their own abundance. By virtue that you even ENDED up in one of these professions means you are probably more at-risk for these types of relationships than others.

In almost ALL circumstances, the women from these relationships are either IN these types of professions or are trying to get in to them… (they are in school or trying to move out of their job into a more giving field).

Many of the women who are in these types of professions ended up with the narcissist or psychopath during the course of their actual jobs. Nurses hooked up with patients, doctors married someone they met in the field, psychologists dated mentally ill men, missionaries dated someone from one of the street missions where she worked. Every once in a while we got stories from very left-brained women like CPA’s but even then, she’s not a typical left-brainer. She’s still got a lot of the abundant humanitarian traits.

This has a lot of implications for possible prevention work. Knowing that women in these professions are more likely to have the high risk personality traits means education can begin within these professions. Women need to know that sometimes even their career selection is indicative of what their relationship selection might be as well. Please email us at saferelationships (at) yahoo and tell us what your profession is if you were in a relationship with a pathological man, a narcissist or sociopath/psychopath.

We’re curious!!
_ _ _ _ _

Article written by Sandra L. Brown, M.A., Director of The Dangerous Relationship Institute and author ‘How to Spot a Dangerous Man Before You Get Involved’ and ‘Counseling Victims of Violence.’ The Institute is involved in helping women achieve relational harm reduction.

Visit our site at http://www.HowToSpotADangerousMan.com or http://www.saferelationships.com for advice and resources on changing your dating patterns of selection. Change your choices, change your life.

(this is a follow-on to the previous article on Why Abusers Can’t Change / Pathology)
_ _ _ _ _

How Pathological is “Too Pathological”?

In other words, ‘How sick is TOO sick?’

One of the characteristics of women who have been in pathological relationships is that they are very ‘forgiving’ and ‘tolerant’ of less than stellar mental health qualities in their intimate relationships. That’s because the women tested very high in traits like compassion, empathy, tolerance, and acceptance. These are excellent and humanitarian traits to have… except in a relationship with a pathological person in which these traits create ’super glue’ that keeps you in a relationship you should NOT be tolerating, accepting, or being empathetic about. The problem is… women often don’t realize that someone can simply have ‘narcissistic traits‘ or ‘psychopathic traits‘ and STILL be a danger to her in a relationship.

That’s because it doesn’t take much pathology to dramatically negatively effect her and the relationship. It only takes a ‘drop’ of abnormal psychology to really screw up the relationship and the others around him. This is why even ‘just traits’ are important to identify. ‘Just traits’ means he has SOME of the criteria for, lets say narcissism or psychopathy but not enough to fully qualify for the full diagnosis. But let’s not split hairs here… a few traits are enough to qualify for ‘too’ pathological.

It DOES matter that he is a ‘tad bit’ pathological because any of the traits of pathology are negative and harmful.

Would it matter that he had a little or a lot of ‘no empathy?’ No — the end result is the same — no empathy for the pain he causes others. ‘None’ is none — it doesn’t matter if he is a little unempathetic or a lot. Not being able to have empathy is the bottom line.

Would it matter if he had a little or a lot of poor impulse control? I doubt it if his poor impulse control effected his sexual acting out, his drug use, or his wild spending habits. A little goes a long way in poor impulse control.

Would it matter if he had a little or a lot of rebellion against laws, rules, or authority? Probably not… even just a little bit of rebellion has the propensity of getting him arrested or fired, ignoring a restraining order or refusing to pay child support. How about ‘just pathological enough’ to really screw up your children with his distorted and warped world view, his chronic inconsistency, his wavering devotion to you or them, his role modeling of his addictions, or his display of ‘the rules aren’t for me’ attitude?

I watch women ‘look’ for loopholes to minimize the pathology he DOES have instead of looking for ways and reasons to get out. They find reasons ‘it’s not THAT bad.’

But just a little bit of a ‘bad boy’ is probably too pathological… too sick for a normal relationship. Since pathology is the ‘inability to change/sustain change, grow to any meaningful depth, or develop insight about how one’s behavior effects others’ even just ’some’ pathology is too much. Because if he can’t sustain change (you know… all those things he promises to change about himself) or grow or have insight about how and why he hurts you… he’s TOO pathological — TOO sick — TOO disordered to have anything that resembles a normal relationship. Why would you ‘want’ a relationship that has NO capacity to grow, change, or meet your needs?

Bad boy enticement is very real… that edginess he has makes many women highly attracted to him. But beyond the edginess can be anything from ‘just traits’ to ‘full blown pathology.’ Nonetheless, women must learn to draw a line in the sand that even ‘just’ traits is enough to guarantee their unhappiness and harm in the hands of a guy who is ‘too pathological’ for her!

_ _ _ _ _

Article written by Sandra L. Brown, M.A., Director of The Dangerous Relationship Institute and author ‘How to Spot a Dangerous Man Before You Get Involved’ and ‘Counseling Victims of Violence.’ The Institute is involved in helping women achieve relational harm reduction.

Visit our site at http://www.HowToSpotADangerousMan.com or http://www.saferelationships.com for advice and resources on changing your dating patterns of selection. Change your choices, change your life.

Personality disorders are a form of pathology. That word ‘pathology’ does NOT mean a psychopath. Psychopaths are ONE category under the personality disorders but there are lots of OTHER ways to be permanently disordered through pathology or a personality disorder. I suggest you read in the book about these. I hear women saying her guy, for instance, has Narcissistic Personality Disorder and she’s waiting for him to ‘get better’ or ‘get it’ about the relationship.Personality Disorders are characterized by the inability to : change, grow, or develop insight about their own behavior. That is also a good definition of pathology no matter WHICH personality disorder they have. If they have one, there is no big change and absolutely no cure. Personality disorders are actually a description of deficits in the personality (all the things he doesn’t have that are normal to have). It describes how the personality DID NOT develop in childhood.

Since there is no going back to your childhood and re-developing your whole personality structure and emotional DNA, there is nothing clinically we can do about their condition, thus, it’s permanent. Some that ‘attempt counseling’ rarely stay in it because by nature of their disorder, they are hard-wired AGAINST change so counseling is either boring, stupid, or threatening. Any changes are temporary and fleeting and cannot be held consistently as a long term change in their behavior. That’s why whatever they say they are ‘going’ to change doesn’t much matter because they may ‘want to’ but they are hard-wired against it.

No one expects the mentally retarded to one day not be mentally retarded. But women consistently think one day a permanently personality disordered pathological will one day not be that. He can no more undo his disorder than a mentally retarded person can. They are the same types of pervasive disorders that are permanent structures internally. One is the cognitive function (mentally retarded) and one in the personality function (pathological).

_ _ _ _ _

Article written by Sandra L. Brown, M.A., Director of The Dangerous Relationship Institute and author ‘How to Spot a Dangerous Man Before You Get Involved’ and ‘Counseling Victims of Violence.’ The Institute is involved in helping women achieve relational harm reduction.

Visit our site at http://www.HowToSpotADangerousMan.com or http://www.saferelationships.com for advice and resources on changing your dating patterns of selection. Change your choices, change your life.

“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”