Progress- MY Progress!
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: USA
Posts: 70
Progress- MY Progress!
AH just broke no-contact by emailing me (at work!) to whine about how he can't stay sober for even one day. He keeps going to his using friends' houses, and then keeps being suprised that he spends the evenings "slamming beers as fast as possible and take as many oxycodones as I think I can get away with".
In the past, these 'cries for help' have led to me breaking the no contact rule, and swooping in to try and save him. I leave work, and rush to his side to help him, because he is expressing a desire for help.
Today, I realized that this is just one of the ways that he hooks me back in. He expresses remorse and a desire to change, and I break my own boundaries. He doesn't show any REAL change, just expresses the desire, and I reward him with my love! What a sick and controlling response I have had.
But not today!!! I told him that I hoped that he got the help that he needed, and that I couldn't talk about this because I am at work and need to focus on that. I'm sticking to my no contact boundary, and not rescuing him today!
I am so freaking proud of myself right now, and just had to share with people who would understand!
In the past, these 'cries for help' have led to me breaking the no contact rule, and swooping in to try and save him. I leave work, and rush to his side to help him, because he is expressing a desire for help.
Today, I realized that this is just one of the ways that he hooks me back in. He expresses remorse and a desire to change, and I break my own boundaries. He doesn't show any REAL change, just expresses the desire, and I reward him with my love! What a sick and controlling response I have had.
But not today!!! I told him that I hoped that he got the help that he needed, and that I couldn't talk about this because I am at work and need to focus on that. I'm sticking to my no contact boundary, and not rescuing him today!
I am so freaking proud of myself right now, and just had to share with people who would understand!
Living and Loving Life at Last
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: gods own country
Posts: 12,168
Be strong, if his usual tactics fail he will use others and as they will be new to you, they may be less obvious. My AXH was an expert in emotional manipulation, and I never realised the half of it at the time
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: USA
Posts: 70
Originally Posted by tootsl1 
Be strong, if his usual tactics fail he will use others and as they will be new to you, they may be less obvious. My AXH was an expert in emotional manipulation, and I never realised the half of it at the time
Getting there!!
Join Date: Mar 2012
Posts: 5,750
This was very helpful to me.
STARVE THE VAMPIRE
by Sandra Brown, MA
People with pathological behavior 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?)
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...
* 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, stop using drugs/alcohol.
When you don't respond
* He will get angry again--say you aren't working on the relationship which is why it's going to 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
* 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 kill himself, leave the area, never see you again
When you don't respond
* He will threaten to take the kids, drag your a*ss thru court, threaten to 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.
I know that we all think that our 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. 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 someone doesn’t disconnect once they understand the feeding and maintenance of someone with pathological behavior, they are staying because THEY 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 people not being able to leave. It is a POINTER to a place where the dis-engagment has hit a snag. Simply notice where the snag IS so that something can be done.
STARVE THE VAMPIRE
by Sandra Brown, MA
People with pathological behavior 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?)
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...
* 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, stop using drugs/alcohol.
When you don't respond
* He will get angry again--say you aren't working on the relationship which is why it's going to 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
* 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 kill himself, leave the area, never see you again
When you don't respond
* He will threaten to take the kids, drag your a*ss thru court, threaten to 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.
I know that we all think that our 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. 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 someone doesn’t disconnect once they understand the feeding and maintenance of someone with pathological behavior, they are staying because THEY 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 people not being able to leave. It is a POINTER to a place where the dis-engagment has hit a snag. Simply notice where the snag IS so that something can be done.
Currently Active Users Viewing this Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
