Psychopath Free (Expanded Edition): Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People

I can truly say without hesitation that this book helped me resolve most - if not all - of the cognitive dissonance that I was STILL experiencing after two and a half YEARS of No Contact... in about 48 hours. I attained more closure (lol!) and insight from this book than from 2 years of intense therapy. Of everything I have ever read on this subject in an attempt to get past it and move forward, this is the last word. This book confirms for me the idea that until you have gone through this exact experience yourself, you cannot help or advise or really understand anyone who has. It is truly a "my life before and my life after" type of experience. Thank you Jackson for writing this book and for the website which was one of the best resources for dealing with the aftermath of a relationship with a toxic/disordered person. Your work is invaluable. Thank you. AN ABSOLUTE REVELATION. A MUST READ. P.S. I am going to comment on a few of the other reviews I read here as I feel there are possibly a few misconceptions. I noticed several people addressing the issue of the website being down. I stumbled across the site two plus years ago, in a completely random attempt to scour the internet for some nebulous answer to what I had just experienced. Blindly reaching for something.. anything to help me ease the pain and quiet my frantic yet relentless thoughts about the relationship. At that time the book was still in ebook form and if I remember correctly was on the brink of being published. The forums and threads were an absolute godsend. The Aha! moments Oprah refers to were washing over me in waves. In addition to the content there, there were links to resources that eventually led me to other immensely helpful sites. Kim Saeed at Let Me Reach and Love Fraud and Melanie Tonia Evans are in my opinion all particularly thorough, lucid and healing. I think that if you have ever really experienced a relationship with a disordered person you may be able to glean the answer as to why the forum portion of the site was taken down after the book was published. Disordered people are all on a spectrum like people with autism. Varying degrees of severity, if you will. Some are particularly dangerous and deranged. They can stalk a target and very often do after the relationship. Adding insult to injury seems a fitting metaphor. Perhaps the site being closed to the public was nothing more than a security and self-protection measure. Just a thought. One specific review was less than kind and although that individual has every right to his or her opinion I cannot even imagine using the term "whiny" to descibe this book. No survivor would ever belittle or minimize the story of another survivor. Yes, fellow reviewer, this experience is most definitely the same for everyone who has actually experienced it. Not every detail assuredly but the emotions, stages, symptoms, YES. Without question. I saw some part of my story in each and every story I have ever read or heard. Hundreds. I know you read the book, but I doubt that you actually had a run in with a psychopath. Enough said.

I am only a couple chapters in but I already feel as if the author knows exactly what I’ve been through! It is a very easy read and it’s helping me go through the motions of healing as well as pointing out what to look for in the future to avoid evil people.

I began working in branch sales for a Fortune 500 company in 2002 and met our division VP in 2003. He brought me on the National Account team and constantly flattered me and my sales performance. It worked. I sold $4 million dollars in new business when the company only projected a $1 million in new growth. I attributed my success to his being a "good boss" rather than my 14-hour work days. Then he promised me a promotion if I moved to our corporate headquarters in Memphis. I moved and soon after he told me he was in love with me, his wife was horrible to him and he couldn't work with me if I didn't return his feelings. What do you do when you're young, naive and your mentor and hero says this to you? If you're an empathetic person like me you try to save them because you think they saved you by giving you a career (what college graduate doesn't want to show their parents that?). Our (fake) love story lasted 10 years and it didn't end in the happy marriage and home life he promised, it ended with him draining me of all my money due to his alleged $150K debt from ID theft, abandoning me with his sick mother in Boston for a VP job in Torrance and beach front apartment in Palos Verdes and then he told police I stole money from his mother when she gave me money as her caregiver to buy her food and medicine and pay her bills while he was away. How did I feel after he destroyed my life? Not angry. Instead, I felt dazed or blamed myself. Why did he have me arrested when he dumped his responsibilities on me and I was only trying to help? What did I do wrong to make him stop loving me? How could he want sex on Friday (fortunately I was too tired after spending two months on renovations he ordered on his mother's house while he was away), dump me on Saturday (an hour after the final walk through with the contractors), scream at me on Sunday he's going to see to it I rot in prison for larceny, and then have me arrested on Monday, catch a plane back to CA for work, tell my crying mother he doesn't have to listen to her sh*t and that night goes on Facebook and likes football photos of my nephews on my brother's page? Furthermore, since my parents foiled his plans to see me rot in prison, he got a restraining order against me so I can't collect my pets, furniture, clothes and personal property for 6 months. Because the judge issued a no contact order with his mother, he left my little dogs with her so I can't call her to ask how they are doing or arrange a pick-up. I am amazed how well he knows how to use the law to continue to hurt me. I never knew justice could be perverted. That's what the soulless do. Fortunately, my parents got me out of jail after 17 days (I've only been before a judge for a speeding ticket so that should tell how good of a storyteller these psychopaths are) and took their suicidal daughter (who suffered a miscarriage her 3rd day in jail) home and immediately got me into counseling. I cried everyday for 3 months and when I broke down and called him he yelled at me how I ruined his life because he has to quit his job and go back to Boston to take care of his mother. That was it. I was a non-person to him. I couldn't understand how this was the same man who love bombed me in 2003 and told me for years he would hunt me down and kill me if I ever left him. I couldn't believe this was the real him. Through therapy I came to understand words like narcissist, sociopath and psychopath. I didn't want to believe he was one but then again the behaviors they engage in was like checklist on our relationship. I couldn't ignore the obvious. It was time to get educated. So far this is my favorite book on the subject. It discusses the psychopath but it also discusses the good hearts of their targets and how what feels like weakness because love is used against the victim it is actually our greatest strength towards recovery and finding the real love we want and deserve. I had to see the ugliness to understand what (TF?!) happened to me but I needed hope too and I think this book offers that. I also recommend yoga as part of this healing process. I'm doing it everyday and yes, my body is as weak (he hated it when I went to the gym because he'd accuse me of flirting with other men so I stopped going to please him instead of seeing how he was erasing my ID) as my spirit feels but being patient with my body as it gets stronger teaches me to be patient with my spirit too. Self care is so important in the recovery stage. Many people who love me want me to hurry up and heal and move on because they hate seeing me hurt but what it does is make me feel guilty because I can't. What my body teaches me is strength takes practice and time and that makes me feel okay that the spirit does do. This whole process hurts like hell and you will be a mess afterwards but this book is like a friend who gets it and walks you through the process. I highly recommend it.

Recovery begins with nailing what your abuser is, especially when he is a psychopath and this book will help you see that, if indeed your abuser is one. Everything in this book is bang on. It will hurt in parts but it will name what you are dealing with, validate your experiences (when likely no one close to you personally can), and it will show you you had no chance against this twisted mind, so stop beating yourself up about where you went wrong. I became the victim of a psychopath in 2010. I was one of the ones who smelled a rather toxic rat and broke things off. Sure enough, 3 years and counting I am still being stalked, terrorised, harrassed, my car is vandalised (resulting in massive car crash through an electricity pylon which I am lucky to survive), my movements constantly monitored on and offline. Yes I agree with this book my stalker took turns to drive me to suicide or provoke/goad me to get back in touch with him (this wasn't because he wanted me to come back to him. He was setting me up as all psychopaths do. He was desperate to tell me he was married now and really really really happy. My psychopath is a callous sadistic stalker, voyeur, pervert and major criminal who enjoys his freedom when he should most certainly be in prison. He is a very dangerous man wrapped up in a bumbling english country gentleman persona, 'what me, why I couldn't even hurt a fly'. He will not only hurt a fly but you, your friends and even your children if it frightens you. His persona is drivel but it is a persona that fools a lot of people. I am paying a high price for sussing him out. This psychopath has done everything, just short of murdering me ( I hope I do not speak too prophetically) though he has goaded me to kill myself and as I say tampered with my car which many times could have resulted in my death. This book covers all of this. This is what psychopaths do and they don't just do it to you. If you are persecuted by them it's because you are stronger than them. In a way it's a compliment. They can't ever have the women they really want because the women they really want will always suss them out so they they have to settle and when they settle and feel entirely unsatisfied in their 'settled' relationship, they boil with anger inside and take it out on the women they couldn't have/keep. YOU! THIS BOOK IS ESSENTIAL READING to begin the process of stopping your mind going over and over and over and over again why it's your fault. What on earth did you do? You must have treated him very badly indeed. You must be a very bad person to attract such awfulness into your life. If only you knew what you had done so you could fix it. Read this book. Forget fixing a monster and concentrate on fixing yourself. Get some validation. No one else except other victims can give you that. So start by getting some from this book. You must firmly root in your mind that these people are inhuman. Inhuman. Completely and utterly inhuman to an extent you will find difficult to believe because you are so entirely human. I remember telling my psycho about a historical TV documentary I watched where scientists had performed cruel experiments on babies. The programme disturbed me and I described one of the dreadful experiments that was performed on a baby boy to my psycho stalker. Instead of being as disturbed as I was he laughed and began to act out how the baby must of looked during the experiment. My blood ran cold. I didn't understand back then what I was dealing with. I do now. A monster. If you are a victim of a psychopath take heart. Read this book over and over. Get some validation for your experiences. Be amazed at how precisely right it is in every way. And firmly root in your mind that they are inhuman. Stop endowing them with normal human qualities. They don't have any. This is what makes you better than them. No matter how it feels, no matter who they are, they are not better than you. Don't believe it when they stop at nothing to brainwash you into thinking that they are superior to you. They are not. They know they are not. That's why they have to work so hard convincing you you are worthless. TOXIC!!! Read this book. It might hurt a bit in parts, but in the end you'll just feel so validated when you do. Eventually you will stop thinking about them in ways that hurt you, you will start to get angry, then you will feel repulsed by them and then finally indifferent to them. I'm not entirely indifferent yet because i maintain a constant dialogue with the police because of the stalking but I am repulsed and certainly harbour not a shred of warm feeling for him, no matter how rosy it seemed at times in the past. Thank god. The bits about this book I suggest heeding most are the bits about looking after yourself. Treat yourself kindly. Look after yourself mentally, physically spiritually and really do apply the rules of no contact which are most vital. I wish I had had more strength during the worst times. This has without doubt been the worst period of my life and it has spoiled a substantial portion of my children's young life too. I don't know how I would have coped had I not found resources such as this book to illuminate the minds of these heinous people terrorists.

Livre intéressant donnant un aperçu des relations toxiques sans trop de complications. Il couvre la psychologie de base de la douleur émotionnelle et comment aller de l'avant.

I would highly recommend this book. It is easy to read and it is full of helpful information. It has helped me to understand what I am going through. It has crossed every T and dotted every i for explaining this type of emotional abuse. The book comes from the standpoint of a lover being a psychopath but I have found that it has helped me even though in my case it is a family member who is the psychopath. I have found it healing and comforting to get such validation for what I am going through. The abuse of these awful people is so underhanded sometimes we don't understand why we hurt so much. Great read!

Muy útil

very interesting book