The Cracked Vessel

Over the years, I have talked about the frequent 'aftermath' of pathological love relationships, which is often Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  Many women emerge from these relationships either diagnosed, or not yet diagnosed, with PTSD--an anxiety disorder so extreme that the core concept of self is often fragmented.

To demonstrate PTSD, I use the analogy of a cracked vessel.  PTSD causes a fracture to the core concept of self which produces a crack in the soul. However, the soul, mind and body must continue to try to function as it did prior to the damage. The vase can be glued again to function, but push on the crack, and the vessel will break again.

PTSD is a mood disorder, specifically an anxiety disorder.  The common symptoms of PTSD (whether in you or someone you care about who has been in a pathological relationship) includes:

•    Intrusive thoughts about him/relationship/events of the relationship

•    Nightmares

•    Flashbacks or sensing effects reoccurring in the present moment

•    Extreme reactions upon exposure to things that symbolize or resemble parts of the relationship

•    Trying to avoid thinking about him or the relationship

•    Trying to avoid situations that remind you of him or the relationship

•    Blocked recall of all the events that occurred

•    Decreased interest in daily activities

•    Feeling numb, detached, unable to feel loving feelings

•    Difficulty concentrating

•    Hyper-vigilance (startle reflex)

•    Hyper-arousal (feeling keyed up or too alert)

•    Insomnia

•    Anger/Irritability


Some of the biggest concerns for women are the symptoms associated with PTSD because it is interfering with the quality of their lives, their level of functioning, and often their ability to parent effectively.  Many don't realize they have PTSD so they don't seek treatment.  They just feel like 'they're going crazy' or 'I should be over it by now--why am I still having these experiences?'  People are often relieved to find out a name and a reason for their experiences.

Unfortunately, others around them may also not realize what is wrong and may tell them to 'move on', 'get over it', 'just meet someone else', and yet months, and even years later, women can still be having PTSD symptoms.  That's because PTSD does not just 'go away' without treatment.  In fact, it worsens over time when neglected.

PTSD is considered a 'trauma disorder' because you have lived through an abnormal and traumatic life event.  Trauma disorders require specific types of treatment in order to recover.  Untreateded PTSD can lead to chronic anxiety and depression, substance abuse to help cope with the anxiety, other compulsive behaviors like eating, smoking, and sexual acting out, addiction to sleep aids, and chronic stress related medical conditions.  It's not a disorder to be taken 'lightly.'

Those who have already been diagnosed with PTSD may not realize that PTSD is often a life-long condition.  You won't always feel as anxiety-ridden as you do now, but depending on the severity of the PTSD, it can leave the vessel cracked.  Future damage can cause the stress crack to re-fracture.

Survivors either highly identify with the analogy of the cracked vessel, or hate the analogy.  Some have written me and said, "I don't like what you said about being a cracked vessel--anyone can change."  I didn't create the symptoms and effects of PTSD.  I have only learned to live with them....

People with PTSD need to live quiet, gentle lives.  Their households, jobs, environments, and relationships need to reflect the tranquility that an overtaxed body needs.  These are not people who need to have fast-paced, dramatic, traumatic and chaotic jobs, lifestyles or relationships.  These are people whose bodies, minds, and spirits need to exist in a healing environment.

The Illusion of Management

A part of how people convince themselves to stay in the pathological love relationship is that they think they are making “progress” by managing the pathological’s behavior. Once there is a glimmer of doubt about the pathological’s behavior, the partner begins to do one of two things: they either change their belief system or they change their own behavior. Most of them will change their belief system. That means they will tell themselves there are “ways” to manage the pathological’s lying, infidelity, addictions, sexual acting out, or whatever negative behavior they bring to the relationship. If they can manage the behavior, they can change the person. If they change what they don’t like in them, they have a shot at being happy.

That means they will change how they see the pathological. If they are noticing too much negative behavior, they might look the other way, rename it, minimize it, deny it, justify it, or use any other defense mechanism that allows the partner to change how they see the pathological.

When there is the thought that, by enforcing strong “rules” for the relationship, or by “demanding” their own rights, that the pathological will “stop” the behavior, the belief is based on the illusion of management.

When there is the thought that, by enforcing the “three-strike rule” for the relationship, or by “demanding” the pathological attend church, counseling, or treatment which will “stop” the behavior, the belief is based on the illusion of management.

When there is the thought that,by “putting the pathological on a short leash,” and checking on them frequently, calling their cell, sending people out to find them, breaking into the pathological’s phone or computer, that the fear of being caught will “stop” the behavior, the belief is based on the illusion of management.

When there is the thought that the pathological is “now working” or staying at home, or being kind, or saying the kinds of things you always wanted to hear, and that the previous behavior is now gone, the belief is based on the illusion of management.

Pathologicals and/or addicts are not managed. Shortening the leash, making demands, watching them more closely, hiring a P.I.—is not managing a person’s acting out. Pathology is noted for its inability to grow to any emotional or spiritual depth, the inability to sustain the changes that you have demanded, and the inability to develop insight into how their behavior harms others. People with pathological disorders are not managed—not by you, jail, prison, or church. The inability to sustain change means that the pathological will APPEAR to do whatever it takes to stay in the relationship, but the disorder itself means they cannot sustainthe change that will please you.

People embrace the truth of pathology when they realize that the idea they are “managing” the pathological’s negative behavior or addictions is simply an illusion. Jails and prisons are packed full of personality-disordered and pathological individuals because probation “management” or “psychological management” did not work. As they say in 12-step programs, “When nothing changes, nothing changes.” Pathology has an inability to change, which means nothing consistently changes in the pathological individual, except maybe new “ideas” about how to con others.

Managing manipulative behavior, drugs or alcohol, porn or sex addictions, infidelity, lying and conning is an illusion used by the partner in order to “buy a little more time” to try to figure out how to make the pathological be “more normal.” In the end, it’s your defense mechanisms telling you that, by changing your belief system (he can be different, he can do better), you can “help them find the resources they need in order to grow into their full potential.” If you’re over 30, falling in love with “potential” is a crap-game risk. People not living up to their potential in adulthood are called “pathologically disordered.” By adulthood, either you have the ability for life skills and success or you are “life challenged” by addictions or pathology. In either case, partners need to understand that there is no “managing” someone else’s negative and pathological behavior. That’s an illusion!

Additionally, playing with the illusion of management increases cognitive dissonance in you. It causes a miserable symptom of your thinking “ping-ponging” back and forth between “he’s good/he’s bad.” This is simply responding to both sides of his Jekyll/Hyde nature. The longer you play with the illusion, the more cognitive dissonance (C.D.) you overload your mind with.

That’s why The Institute always treats the cognitiv

About Face:Changing the Direction from Which You Seek Happiness

There are times when “internal reflecting” becomes necessary and we are guided to dig in, evaluate, and give thanks. It is a time to ponder ideas and gather insights that might have eluded us during the busyness of everyday life, and slow down to look inward and receive the Light we may not receive at other times during the year. I hope this week’s newsletter is a little piece of Light that you are open to receive.

Several Christmas’ ago, I received a book written by one of my favorite spiritual writers, Thomas Keating. It’s called The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation. Profoundly, he reminds us that we spend much of our lives looking for happiness through avenues that can never produce it. We create our misery by “looking for love in all the wrong places,” as the song goes.  Nothing can be truer when it comes to pathology. Pathology is wired to produce misery, not happiness. Everyone has the same response to pathology—they are harmed, miserable, and eventually try to flee. It’s a true indicator of seeking happiness from a source unable to deliver it.

Your idea of happiness was probably initially developed around the relationship, or the fantasy that was painted for you about him, the relationship, or your future. Instead of understanding that happiness had been sought from someone, whom by the nature of their disorder could never deliver happiness, you were held captive in the compulsion of repeating the same scenario with him. You tried to find happiness in the very person who is hard-wired to NOT produce happiness!

Not all of this seeking happiness in the wrong place is the result of his pathology. Some of it is the result of our own unknowing about where happiness is found. It is not found in someone else. Instead, happiness is found inside of our self, rooted in our own spirituality through God. It isn’t about them. It is about us.

Keating says, “What we experience is our desperate search for happiness where it cannot possibly be found.” The key to our happiness is not lost outside of our self. It was lost inside our self when we began looking for it in someone else. We need to look for it were it can actually BE found.

The chief characteristic of the human condition is that everyone is looking for this key, and nobody knows where to find it. The human condition is thus poignant in the extreme. If you want help as you look for the key in the wrong place, you can get plenty of help because everybody is looking for it in the wrong place too! They are looking for it where there is more pleasure, security, power, and acceptance by others. We have a sense of solidarity in the search, yet without any possibility of finding what we are looking for.

The religions of the world have discovered the insight that (non-pathological) human beings are designed for unlimited happiness, the enjoyment of truth, and love without end. This spiritual hunger is part of our nature as beings with a spiritual dimension. Here we are, with an unbounded desire for happiness and not the slightest idea of where to look for it.

While we may certainly recognize that looking for happiness in alcohol or drugs is looking in the wrong place, do we recognize that looking for happiness even in relationships can be the wrong place? Certainly looking for love in pathology would never produce the key you were seeking, because it cannot be found where you were seeking it. But sometimes people even look for happiness in what appears to be the RIGHT places—marriage, children, higher education, careers, and service to others, only again to find that they are still seeking happiness in the wrong direction.

In religious language, the word, repent means to “turn away from.” And I like that concept even from a psychological growth standpoint. As you find your own path of recovery from the aftermath of the pathological love relationship, your recovery calls you to turn away from the very thing that has produced so much pain for you—the relationship, the choices, the person. In essence, in order for you to find happiness in yourself, in God, and in your own (often single) life, you must “change the direction from which you are seeking happiness.” This is especially true when everything in you wants to turn back to him, to the routine, to the perceived comfort—just to get through. Changing the direction from which you seek happiness is embracing the truth that happiness cannot be found in pathology. God did not create you for pathology. He created you for Himself—for peace, love, and joy.  It’s not there and will never be there in pathology.

Over the years, I have become pretty good at picking up on those who will “get it” and move on and never repeat the pathological love relationship dynamic again, and those who WILL, unfortunately, not change direction from which they are seeking happiness. They might change the FACE from whom they seek happiness, but they are still facing the same direction seeking it.

The Institute has been involved in helping hundreds and hundreds of people “change the direction from which they are seeking happiness,” and learn how to find recovery, healing, growth, and to make better choices for themselves. To that end, we are always consciously trying to expand the ways to meet the needs of our growing population of wounded readers and bring a wider comprehensive approach to your own health, wellbeing, and healing from the aftermath of pathological love relationships. We hope that we have touched your recovery in a positive way. We hope that we have helped you change direction on your path. If we haven’t, we’re still here!

Although there is much turmoil in the world right now, be reminded again, that we can always change the direction from which we have been seeking happiness and focus on a brighter future for our self and with our self. We look forward to being a bright part of your future. Thank you for entrusting your care and recovery to us. We do not take that privilege lightly.

The Successful Pathological’s Evil Twin: The Parasite

In last week’s newsletter we looked at the Successful Pathological and how he flies in under the radar, while women are looking at his success and missing the red flags concerning his character or behaviors. Women can get sidetracked by his degree or noble career, or blinded by his business bling. The Italian-made shoes aren’t the only loafer—LOL!

Another way pathology manifests is what we call “parasitic” behavior—which means, like a tick, they live off of others. Some pathologically disordered people are underachievers and require much financial assistance, some are not employed at all, and in fact, some are successful AND parasitic.

Wealthy and parasitic pathologicals have all the radar-busting combinations to come gliding in under a woman’s relationship radar. Wealthy pathologicals may be as parasitic as the poor ones, but are usually less identified. It’s not that wealthy ones need the housing assistance by living with you—it’s that they are able to get you to let them. It’s a power game and when you say “yes,” he wins. It’s a ridiculous game that most women don’t even pay attention to in the beginning, until it begins to happen over and over again. Most women don’t care about power struggles; not so with him, because it’s his source of entertainment.

Parasites can latch on for the ride, the entertainment, or to drain you dry. The “financially challenged” ones try to hide that they are broke and underemployed until they are already living off of you. Or they get in by playing the pity trump card—needing a “little time to get on his feet.” Many of them appear to have “the worst luck” when it comes to getting or keeping a good job or somehow manage (according to him) to always find horrible bosses. In any case, it’s never his fault, and a new potential turn of events is “just around the corner,” if you will just “wait it out” with him.

The interesting thing about the parasitic life is that it has more to do with conning than it has to do with any legitimate need. The proof is that even the wealthy ones play the same game.

For the overt parasite, a red flag for women would be men who always are living with someone else, including family. Of course they have a good reason usually associated with what appears to be “helping others” (older parents, helping with rent for a single mother, sister, etc.).

What is suspicious is that you never see where he lives or how he lives. Why? That “great condo with the roof deck” is really a room in someone’s mobile home. Or there’s a wife and three kids at the house, which are his. Or his house is really a meth lab. Pick a reason … the bottom line is there is a reason why you don’t see it. And it normally has to do with living a different life, perhaps living off of others, that he hasn’t quite disclosed to you.

A huge red flag would be that he wants to move in or marry quickly. Is it because he is so into you? Nope. It’s because he wants to betroth your checkbook before you can verify his income, his job status, his debt load, or anything else. In a blink of an eye you are sipping rum drinks with umbrellas in glasses in the Bahamas (oh, and did I mention, on your credit card?).

A flashing billboard would be when he asks you to invest in his potential business (with your love bundle!) so that you can help finance the “rest of your lives together” business.  Here’s a clue: If he’s over 28 years old and not living up to any part of his potential, there’s a reason and it’s usually pathology or addiction or both. If you are over 30, don’t fall in love with anyone’s potential. Either they’ve got the goods or they don’t. And if they don’t, there’s a reason bigger than the sad, empathy-producing story they have.

The more covert parasite, if wealthy, may give a storyline that he is “giving you an opportunity to invest in his business,” so you can make some of that return capital that you see him living on. He’s successful—so he must be doing something right. Right? Do you remember Bernie Madoff?

Pete the Parasite sometimes needs money to send his ailing mother out of the country to see relatives. Or he may need money to cover the costs of his children’s needs because his “psycho ex-wife” is not using the child support she receives. (Uh-huh …)

If these tactics and lines didn’t work, he wouldn’t use them and I wouldn’t know them. Parasites need hosts. The body where a parasite lands (like a tick on a dog) is called the “host.” Here’s a time where being a BAD HOST is a good thing!

(**If we can support you in your recovery process, please let us know.  The Institute is the largest provider of recovery-based services for survivors of pathological love relationships. Information about pathological love relationships is in our award-winning book, Women Who Love Psychopaths, and is also available in our retreats, 1:1s, or phone sessions. See the website for more information.)

© www.saferelationshipsmagazine.com

The Successful Pathological

Pathology Education teaches that pathological partners come in all levels of social and economic success.

Survivors say, "He's a doctor" to which I respond "SO?" So what. Doctors, attorneys, clergy, law enforcement---it's not the job that's pathological--- it's the character and personality disorders underneath.

Pathologicals flock to all types of careers. Those with high levels of narcissism and psychopathy flock to areas where they are experts, heroes, or are able to climb high up the career ladder. These disorders 'want' adoration. You don't get a lot of that on the back end of garbage truck as a worker.

Paul Babiak and Robert Hare wrote about this in their book 'Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work.' The book examines the rise of white collar psychopathy in our country and in the work place.  Some forms of pathology hide very well within their careers and success. A subconscious belief system is "If they are successful, they must be ok."

A degree from Yale means he's smart. It doesn't mean he's safe. A doctor that saves 'others lives' doesn't mean he won't take yours. Clergy who will pray for others souls doesn't mean he isn't soul-deadening in a personal relationship.

We only have to look at the nightly news to see examples in our culture of those within the 'helping profession' who were really predators. Pediatricians who sexually abused children, religious leaders who led the sheep astray, psychologists who had sex with their clients, trusted financial advisers who stole people blind, loving partners who murdered their wives and children.
People who appeared 'normal' or 'successful' to others were disguised dangerous and disordered persons.

Pathologicals with a lot of success and money are often the hardest ones to leave according to their partners. They have more connections, can pay off more bribes,get better outcomes in court, skip on retraining orders, talk their way out of all sorts of legal issues because of who they are, what they have, or who they know. Partners are at a disadvantage when leaving the wealthy pathological.

'They are sicker than we are smart' is a logo we have long taught in Pathology Education. Leaving a successful pathological is often difficult because non-pathological partners can never be as deceitful, conning, or manipulative to fight on their turf. Non-pathologicals don't think in those terms so their sickness ends up as gain for them--up the career ladder, out of the marriage, or anywhere else they want to go.

In the end, success, career, or wealth has NOTHING to do with mental health or your safety. Career is just that. It's what they do for a living or the vehicle in which they hunt their prey.

Just Because You Believe It, DOESN'T Make It True

I am reminded frequently that this statement is so true when it comes to denial in pathological love relationships. There’s something about a narcissist and psychopath that can make you forget all about their pathology and return to your previous ‘fog’ of beliefs.  F.O.G.–Fear, Obligation and Guilt.

Entrenched in the partner is the dire desire to have a normal partner. Couple that with the NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) and PP’s (Psychopath’s) ability to convince you of their, at least, fleeting normalcy and you have a woman who has dug her finger nails into the nano-second of his normal behavior and she’s not gonna let it go! Otherwise highly educated, bright, and successful women can be reduced to blank-stared-hypnotized-believers when it comes to believing he is normal, can be normal, or that it’s her that is really the messed up one.

Many therapists miss this process in working with the partners–they feel they have made substantial headway in helping her (or him) understand the nature of the unchangeable-ness of the disorder and then what appears to be out of nowhere, she’s blank-staring and hypnotized yet again.

The only thing that has changed is her belief system. Obviously an NPD and/or PP is not capable of true sustainable change. He didn’t change. But her desire to believe his normalcy and to deny his pathology is the only thing that has changed.  It’s not so much a ‘change’ per se, as it is a return to straddling the fence about the belief system.

Most partners live a life of cognitive dissonance–this conflict between ‘He’s good/He’s bad’ that is so distracting they never resolve the internal conflict of whether he is MORE good than bad, or MORE bad than good. They live in a fog of circulating remembrances that support both view points–remembering the good, but still feeling the bad. This circulating remembrance keep them straddling the fence with the inability to resolve a consistent belief system about him.

This inability to hold a consistent belief system is what causes cognitive dissonance, it’s also what increases it and causes intrusive thoughts. Dissonance is caused by thought inconsistency which leads eventually to her behavioral inconsistency–she breaks up and makes up constantly.  Thought and behavioral inconsistency increase Dissonance which increases Intrusive Thoughts. No wonder she can’t get symptom relief!

Her desire to ‘believe it’ doesn’t make it true. It doesn’t make him normal. It doesn’t cure his NPD or Psychopathy. It only keeps her stuck straddling a belief system that has caused her emotional paralysis.  In a crude way of understanding this–the only thing that happens when you’re straddling a fence is you get a fence post up your butt! Try moving when your paralyzed by a fence post!

Just because you believe it, doesn’t mean he’s ok, he’s going to stop doing the thing he said he’d stop, that counseling is going to work, that there never was anything wrong with him, that it’s probably you….or any of  the other items you tell yourself in order to stay in a relationship of pathological disaster.

Even Benjamin Franklin said “We hold these truths to be self evident…”  For us in the field of psychopathology, these self evident truths are that pathology is permanent whether you believe it or not.

Learn How to Starve The Vampire

STARVE THE VAMPIRE–WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT….Pathological persons are energy and emotional vampires. They live off of your emotional content. Part of their personality deficit is the lack of a stable and consistent inner core of a self concept so they need constant attention, distraction, and identity management from which they draw their identity.   Lots of their identity is acquired from their relationships since internally there is so little core self to draw from. This is part of the reason they are so exhausting. In order to get their emotional ‘blood supply’ from you, they ‘hook you’ into conversations or arguments or any kind of response they can get from you. They live vicariously thru your own emotional expressions of love, frustration, confusion, etc. It doesn’t always matter ‘what’ emotion is fed to the vampire (although narcissists like adoration) but just that there is SOME content is enough for them–even your tears, or your screams, or your insults. It doesn’t matter…they just ‘need’ something, anything from you in the way of content. If they don’t get the blood supply/emotional content from you, they will seek elsewhere. (Remember Dracula? He just moved from town to town taking it where he could get it?)When you begin to break up (read my How to Break Up with a Dangerous Man E-book) he will fear the loss of emotional supply.

He won’t fear losing you so much as he will miss getting his identity and his sense of self from you and/or the relationship. He fears the loss of self or ‘who am I without her?’ This is a very fragmented ego state –one which only exists thru relationships with others.

So when you try to break up, he will continue to contact you, which is why they are hard to break up with. They are predictable in their approaches to get you to respond to them (you are feeding the vampire his emotional blood supply every time you talk to him). These are some of his approaches and if you can get a bag of popcorn and just watch it like it was a LifeTime for Women movie and detach from it, you will see a whole movie pan out like this:

* One contact he’s angry, blaming, shaming
When you don’t respond to that verbally or emotionally (think like you are lobotomized with no facial expression…that’s what I want women to do with these men)


* Then one contact will be sweet, loving, buy you things
When you don’t respond


*He will promise to do what you’ve asked for years…go to counseling, church, take meds, be nice, go to anger management
When you don’t respond


*He will get angry again–say you aren’t working on the relationship which is why it’s gonna fail
When you don’t respond


*He will quit calling for a while to make it look like he’s moved on (They are boomerangs, they ALWAYS come back a few times.)
When you don’t respond


*He will indicate he found someone else or had sex with someone else
When you don’t respond
(Are you enjoying the popcorn and movie about now??)


* He becomes ’sick’ — he doesn’t know what this mysterious illness is, or he has prostate cancer, MS, some other lethal disease
When you don’t respond


* He will just go back to drinking/drugging/dealing/driving too fast/etc.
When you don’t respond


* He will threaten to kill himself, leave the area, never see you again
When you don’t respond


* He will take the kids, drag your a*ss thru court, threaten to physically harm you
When you don’t respond


* He will tell you he’s dating someone you hate or his previous girlfriend/wife
When you don’t respond


* It will come full circle and will begin again, at the top of this list.

It’s always the same stories. I know that women think that their experiences are unique. But pathology is all the same–these people aren’t very creative and don’t deviate much from the strict internal structure that is associated with pathology. They ONLY react in certain ways so, it’s pretty easy to predict. Once you are able to understand this, you can predict his sad/silly/stupid reactions to a break up.

Since they live off of your emotion and NEED it, the sooner you starve him out by having no contact and if you have to because of your kids, no words exchanged and no emotional content on your face, the vampire will flee to the next available source to be fed.

When women don’t disconnect once they understand the feeding and maintenance of pathologicals, they are doing it because SHE wants to remain. The ball is then in your court to figure out where you are still hung up so you can disconnect. This is not a judgment about women not being able to leave. It is a POINTER to a place where the dis-engagement has hit a snag. Simply notice where the snag IS so that something can be done.