Archives for January 2015

We live in an instant society: instant messaging, twitter, drive through food, microwaves, text messaging, ipods/ipads and smart phones–just about anything we want NOW we can have in an instant. No wonder we have confused the speed of technology with relational speed. After all, isn’t this the decade of speed dating and fast relationships?

The problem is that there is no way to rush REAL intimacy. Speed dating does not = relationship security and knowledge about the other person. There is only one way to know someone and that is through adequate time. There are no short cuts.

Many people think that if you substitute the time you would spend with someone over a year in a relationship of knowing them and squeeze that time into a 24/7 relationship, then you will get the same results. Very often there is an inappropriate pacing in relationships in which people early on begin to spend 24/7 with a new person. They give up their outside hobbies, friends, families, other relationships, and lifestyles. They think that if someone WANTS to spend 24/7 with them, they must be ‘really into them.’

Over the years as a mental health counselor, I have found there are a number of reasons why people want to rush relationships. Sometimes it’s because they want to usher you into the center of their lives before you find out their history. They want you really tied-in to the relationship before you find out why no one else has wanted a relationship with them. Other times it is because the person has a hard time being alone. That is never a good sign.

The inability to be alone is often related to other mental health issues. Fast paced relationships can be a distraction away from their own feelings and issues.

I always suggest that the woman be in charge of the pacing of the relationship. If she has been 24/7 with someone, stop! Not only because it’s unhealthy but also to see what he will do with the change of pace in the relationship. Make other plans, see friends, don’t be so available. Healthy persons will accept the pacing change. They may not like it, but they will honor it. Unhealthy and even dangerous persons will blame, shame, and guilt you. This should be a red flag as to whether this person is someone safe to date.

Rushing a relationship–whether it’s dating 24/7, moving in early together, or marrying within the first year is a mistake that renders not enough time to truly know a person. This includes the persons ‘true’ (as opposed to ‘stated’) background, their character, and maybe their own dangerousness. It takes time to build a healthy relationship. It takes no time at all to imitate one.

(**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, on-on-ones, or phone sessions. See the website for more information).

 © www.saferelationshipsmagazine.com

Recovery and finding your path to emotional wellness from pathological love relationships isn’t a quick and easy ‘done deal’. When women get mild relief from the unrelenting symptoms of the aftermath with a pathological, it can be very palatable to them.  The relief from the intrusive thoughts, obsessions, PTSD, poor sleep, hyper-vigilance, or any other problematic symptom can feel “healing” to them.  But it doesn’t always mean they ARE healed.

Over and over again, I have learned how damaging, how unrelenting, the aftermath is from pathological relationships.  For some women, it reaches all the way back to childhood with pathological parents.  For others, it has only been in their intimate relationships during adulthood, yet it has left its distinguished mark.

Mild relief can often be mistaken for recovery.  Recovery is a lifelong journey of self-care.  Recovery can begin at the moment you recognize the damage done to you by pathological individuals, but it doesn’t end with a counselor or a group.  For many women, the symptoms have crept into their worldview—how they see others, their environment, and themselves.  I learn again and again, as I meet with women, that the damage is widespread.  This isn’t a quick fix or often, a quick treatment.  While your mild relief of symptoms instills relief or hope, it isn’t the end of your recovery journey.  It’s the beginning.

Like peeling an onion, each layer shows a level of damage that needs care.  All the way down to the core are layers of unperceived and unrecognized aftermath symptoms.  At the core are boundary issues—those necessary limits that show that someone understands what is your’s, someone else’s, or God’s.  From the center of boundaries are gates that must be developed to serve as limits saying what one will and will not tolerate.

Boundaries are the bedrock of all recovery.  Anything that is built will be built from the issue of healthy or unhealthy boundaries.  Many women don’t realize that pathological people target women with poor boundaries.  The pathological tests this out early in the relationship, and when small boundary violations are not managed, they proceed with bigger violations. Every violation is a green light to the pathological. Learning how to establish healathy boundaries is the first step in recovery.

In another layer of the onion lays hyper-vigilance issues. High harm avoidance from PTSD weaves a level of distrust in new environments, people, and situations.  It affects fear of the future and even fear of the present.

Yet another layer of the onion is communication—the ability to listen in the midst of upset. Since pathological individuals have skewed communication, this area is often seriously affected. Long-term exposure to pathological people produces the same type of skewed communication patterns and linguistics in women who have normalized the abnormal behavior of pathologicals.

A layer of emotional regulation is most assuredly part of the aftermath— many women experience anxiety, depression, irritability, the overflow of pent-up emotions, and the inability to control their emotions.

In layer after layer are aftermath symptoms that must be peeled away and treated in recovery.  Everyone knows there are many layers in an onion.  While it may be disconcerting to see all those layers, the layers are translucent and show the wounding in each level that recovery must touch.

Women who have begun recovery may be surprised at what feels like the unending layers of an onion, and wonder when they will reach the core.  Mild relief from anxiety or sleeplessness is welcomed, but should not be viewed as more than it is.  Reaching to the core is deep work and should be respected for the lengthy process it is likely to be.  What other choice is there?

Whether you begin at the core with boundaries, or start at the outer edge with symptom management and work into the core, allow the process because there is no healing without it.  We must never underestimate the damage done by pathological individuals at a deep emotional, and, even spiritual, level.

(**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

On New Year’s Eve, I had a silent burning bowl ceremony. I burned everything that hurt me–just burnt that crap into ashes. Every cyberstalker, every hateful word, every hurtful person, everything that kept me looking over my shoulder, every lack.

I thought, “What would Joyce say?” She’d say, ‘Screw fear.’

So I got a beautiful crystal bowl to say good bye to every horrible yet familiar thing from my life. And I sat on my porch laying to rest everything broken in me and in my life. I set the crap on fire. I said a prayer and wrote all the pain on a piece of paper and watched it burn into crinkled ribbons of memory that only God should have.

It wasn’t a resolution. It was as Emily Dickinson said, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” It was feathers for my future. And with feathers and hope I wrote a list, which was a prayer with tears, to God for 2014. Asking for things that are so simple, especially for a God so big….simply heal my body, simply heal my heart, simply heal my life, simply heal my mind, simply heal my needs–all the ones I don’t even know I need. Open your feathers and let me snuggle under your wing–hide me in the Shadow like the scripture says—the favorite one that I run to when I am scared, which is all the time.

On January 1st I took a tiny table to the corner of my room and turned a chair towards it. Facing a corner that, in school, would have been punishment, but for me, now, was really the edge of the Wing I asked for. I put a candle in a glass that was Joyce’s so that I was not alone when I prayed “Where two are more gathered….” and I set an alarm on my phone, the sound of a harp, to remind me every day that the angels call me to the feathers and the wing to pray.

I sit there every day under the Shadow and I simply breathe in gratitude and breathe out whatever that crap was that burned up in the bowl that night. I suck in, deep into my lungs, every provision for friendships, for community. I thank in advance for every restorative touch to what cyberstalkers took from me. For every love that will pour into my life that has been gone. For every book that will be sold, for every cell in my body to be blessed with holiness that can cure anything….

The Shadow, the feathers, the edge of the wing changed my life that January. Each day I laugh out loud as grace and mercy drops fall like rain into a parched dry life. Feathers everywhere…feathers in my email, feathers in my mail, feathers in my phone, feathers in my heart. When the harp calls, I run to the corner with Joyce and fall under the wing in gratitude and drink….That’s all I have to do — breathe and drink.

(**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