http://country-of-liars.com/6667/character-assassination-2/
From the comments:
Becca:
I am so sad that my world of associates continues to dwindle because of the subtle words, set ups and comparisons to unlikable TV/Movie characters that my soon to be ex husband continues to make about me when around others.
He trashed my reputation to such lengths that I don’t even know where to even begin to try and 1) show these people that I am not the person he is making me out to be. . . .
I would appreciate something that may work. His behaviors and tall tales are also having an effect on my son’s social life too. I am an attractive person, a caring nice person, have always been popular and well liked. People that don’t have any idea who I am hate me because of my ex husband. He has done this to me even before we were divorcing. But now it has begun and taken hold in my new town and school district. What can I do? Something please !
Larry:
@ Becca …
I know the sadness all too well. I only know a fraction of what has been said about my life and character, but those who do know the lies will never tell. I came to the conclusion after believing I could spread the truth about me that it was all too late. Those people, even family members, didn’t want to listen to me. In the eyes of many, I am an true outcast.
I eventually came to terms with what I was faced with, and instead of taking the route of continually being so depressed and not achieving anything positive, I accepted I had to let go, and erase them from my life. That included my two daughters.
In my experience, I’ve never heard a victim turn things around, though I would hope it’s happened. That has the effect of taking you down, but do not let it. Come to peace with your life and future, and the new people you will meet.
Well that’s depressing. Why are these character assassinations so believed, that the victim himself is never told the accusations? Amazing. The effects are not small, the victim’s life is absolutely devastated.
From another comment, David:
Believe me moving away does not help to much, because I believe what people go through you still live with it. I to have the same problem. The whole thing of just turning off. When I wake up everything that has happened to me starts all over again. I think about it every moment. I make bad decisions because of what’s on my mind. There are times, when I too can’t get a breath in.
It not only extends through every moment of the victim’s life, but extends outward. The victim’s stress is brought home to their family. Marriages founder. Divorces result. The victim’s preoccupation (or spreading cancer of anxiety) distorts the victim’s judgement, and causes the victim to miss cues from others, sometimes important ones. Sleep is hard, activated anxiety centers never go to sleep.
Imagine what Becca must have felt in her new town as she felt it all happening again. Her silent screams as though she were on thin ice watching the cracks seek her out, following her from her past locations, powerless to affect or stop them. Or perhaps she felt she was being pursued by ghosts that could strike her at will, but that she could neither see nor defend against.
We are all social animals. We need secure communities of friends and believe we have them. Victims of psychopathic character assassination know that is not true. For them, what was once solid ground becomes a thin crust over a sea of acid. They never know when a footfall will break through.
It should be pointed out that the psychopath’s aim is murder, murder by suicide.
The daisy chain of evil has to be broken. Or perhaps a better metaphor would be the paper cutout doll chain needs to be broken lest it unfold into infinity, damaging all it touches.
But no one helps. The psychopath’s whispering campaign is absolutely and totally believed. The victim is almost never even told, ‘the word on the street about you is . . . ., thought you should know.’ Sad.
August 10, 2015: I am simply stunned that no one has ever communicated the character assassination allegations against myself. I once offered a woman who, from one day to the next, turned her head to the wall rather than say hello to me (and we had been workplace friends for years – this pattern happened repeatedly but slowly over the years, the psychopathic perp couldn’t risk my inner circle telling me), a hundred dollars if she (or her husband if she preferred) would tell me the whyfor. Plenty of people who know me read this blog. Comments can be totally anonymous. There is no need to fill out any identifying field. Further to protect their IP address, if desired, anyone can simply go to a copy center or internet cafe. Comments are moderated so it is a private communication. If preferred there are also many free and anonymous email account providers. I just don’t get it. Where’s the downside? I would help and have helped others in similar situations.
I wanted to comment on this post because it is very informative and enlightening.
In the past few years since my elderly (incestuous) father’s death from cancer, my family’s dysfunction is coming out of the closet. Dual trauma: my mother had abused me terribly physically, psychologically, emotionally, religiously, and every other way a mother can reject and abuse a child she did not want from infancy. She told me that she did not want to be pregnant at 15 years old and did not even like me, let alone love me for a long time, many years. I was 16 before she ever told me she loved me…but only after I broke the ice and said “I love you ” to her after witnessing my friends mom do that with her step-daughter.
Because of the relentless and profound childhood abuse from my immature teenage parents (my mother was 16 and my father was 17 when I was born, as stated on my birth certificate) I was forced upon my mother, who did not want a kid. She was forced to marry my dad.
Another huge piece to my puzzle was the long-term sexual abuse from my incestuous father…who was a cop, retired as one, never got caught (another story for another time). To hide his deeds, he encouraged my mother to bully me (of course, with my “flying monkey” siblings who were taught by my mom to hate on me)…and me alone. No matter her motive(s), she assassinated my character in early childhood, discrediting my reputation, or rather never allowing me to have a reputation except that which she gave me. She treated me like ‘The Boy that Cried Wolf’, ruining in advance my testimony should I ever decide in the future to disclose the incest from him or abuse from her. My dad hid successfully behind a domineering wife until his death at 70 years old. She created an environment for him to serially sexually abuse about a dozen (known) children in the family from 3 generations beginning with abusing all of his 5 younger siblings. (Yikes!!)
Being the eldest child of 4, I endured all (not an exaggeration) of the abuse in the family. My siblings were never punished or struck, claiming they had happy, healthy upbringing. I was the only one who claims it was not perfect. I have labored most of my life under the delusion that “something was ‘wrong’ with me”. I thought I was “crazy” and everyone wanted to be rid of me. I have been very sensitive.
Some of the abuse is being carried over into my adult life presently-ongoing, including but not limited to scapegoating, blacksheeping and ostricization, gaslighting and crazymaking, gossip and full-blown character assassination, namecalling and labeling (such as “hypochondriac”, “mythomaniac”, “liar”, “you’re just like Aunt ______”, and more.
I have been “made fun of” or mocked by my mother for feeling suicidal before. Like feeling low is akin to being “evil”. On the subject of suicide: when asked the question, “Have you ever been suicidal?” I want to laugh…because to “become suicidal”, there would be the notion that you had “fallen down” to that lowly place from once wanting to be alive and thrive. The reason I find it humorous is because it seems absurd to me personally to have ever “possessed” the will “to live”…ever. Since my very first memory is of being severely beaten about the face and head by my mother (she and my father were witnesses) when I was only 18 months old (babies CAN and DO have the ability to remember…especially if it’s life threatening or traumatic. As a child living in this environment, I always carried the idea that I was just a malignant “cancer” to the family and was ashamed of my very existence. Lots of shame, blame, guilt and zero self-esteem.
With recent therapy, I am learning how to develop a healthy “will to live” and take care of myself. People automatically think everyone is born with a “will to live”. Maybe so, but if is is assaulted early enough, that will to survive or “survival instinct”, being consistently threatened, can die before the person is old enough to know something changed or was lost. When babies and children are beaten or abused by their own mother (or father, or other caregiver), it seems that they are robbed of a vital piece of their life’s supportive “foundation” upon which all other development occurs. I am still trying to regain what was stolen from me so long ago. I am learning to not despise myself as a problem, nuisance or ‘mistake’. I have always loved the truth, despite being screamed at, beaten and threatened by my mother from an early age about “the truth”. I was labeled by my mother at my dad’s behest, to be considered and treated as a “liar/fabricator” (also known as a “mythomaniac”). Telling the TRUTH was always at issue for me. I see now after all these years that it was my insistence of telling my mother the truth about my father’s behind-the-scenes sexual antics that “caused me” to be scapegoated by my mother and all my siblings (remains that way to this day). I really was “singled out”. My siblings became “bullies” to me at my mother’s encouragement. “Family mobbing” is a better description that mere “bullying”.
As an adult now in my 50’s, I can now see it is better to be “guilty” of right and good, standing firm on truth and reality, than that of building a faulty world around deception and lies. Somehow through it all, I survived. All 7 of my kids survived…but there is residual damage in my adult kids that is just now coming to light that resulted (I believe) because of the damage to myself that I never understood from my own childhood physical and sexual abuse. I made mistakes because I didn’t know what was really happening in my mind. I began therapy recently to work through my past, my child-rearing mistakes, and where to go now that my family-of-origin has recently ostracized me (AGAIN!) since I wrote them a letter about the “truth” of the denial of our family’s dysfunction. All of my siblings ignored my letter completely, as if I don’t matter, never did, like I were invisible like a “ghost”. I still have hope they may see the truth about being a part of my mother’s “flying monkey” circus, of which she was the ringleader.
In my research, and per my own personal experience, I opine that sometimes severe abuse upon children stays hidden and does its insidious damage under the surface, not (usually) surfacing until much later in life..if ever. I wish the information in this post could be taught in schools. More people at younger ages could see it and avoid decades of painful and disastrous stumblings while they grope around trying to find the light and escape out that dark world of childhood abuse trauma … if they only knew. Knowledge is empowering.
Thank you for sharing your insight!
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Thank you for sharing this history.
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I lived this too my entire life with a mom and twin sister who smeared me relentlessly and violently dominating if I tried to talk about it And act so sweet around others. It is the most confusing way to live. What helped me was open dialogue family systems therapy reading and lots if conversations with therapist friends. Learning words for the behaviors from out of the fog .com and about anti social groups in the Lucifer effect and pia mellodys book the intimacy factor saved my life. I was able to conduct a dialogue with them and confront my mother with specific perceptions and thoughts and feelings about it. Psychopaths cannot be taught confrontation and levelling. Vernon Johnson’s book I’ll quit tomoro helped me understand that. My mother’s responsive were totally propaganda techniques and logical fallacies. I described with memes to them for a year her behavior from narcissistic games to games people play in transactional analysis, trying to get the family into addiction recovery and explaining how alanon helps dysfunctional families and what the core symptoms are. I didn’t accuse I just listed the pattern if abuse and also taught about what abuse is. To no avail. I was able to demonstrate definitely in writing what her games are and that she is a person ifnthe lie and i quoted m Scott peck from his book people of the lie. They caused my son parental alienation syndrome psychosis and I was finally able to make sense if all the baffling behavior all the years in front if him. They were alienating him and turned him into a flying monkey. I also for one reason was reading about cults a lot before I woke up I what this is. The techniques they used on my son were classic psychopath toxic cult leader techniques. I also read about exorcisms and deliverance and now I just pray a lot. These people cause psychotic disorders in families. The lies and distortions cause cognitive dissonance and double binds with the secret rules. My mother also is a Christian scientist. Religious about the no talk rule and no think and no feel. In recovery we do all three. She is an amazing liar and actress and so is my sister and the double standards are outrageous. I explained all of this for a year with the whole family in writing and to no avail. It is like a cult for sure and also I feel it is demonic. I could see how excited they were at times I was dominated as well as when they thought I might have committed suicide. The gaslighting is incredible. Memes helped me a lot. It is amazing to tell the truth and tell my story. I was very close to losing my mind. The ambient abuse and bullying and covert relational agression has been outrageous. I had no voice. I had no words fir these experiences. It really effects your self concept. I thank God for Christ which gave me a sense of identity back. Scriptures have been so helpful to me I as a way to make sense of the senseless. It is truly primitive scapegoating to the death and I am quite sure sadism. Psychological warfare. In families that talk about love all the time. Horror story. It’s amazing to hear other people describe the same. It was a hell of a time coming out if the fog and getting my confidence back. Many people do not make it.
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Thank you for the testament.
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Becca,
I know how hard it is to walk on egg shells around everyone, especially family and friends. If you can just keep your wits about you and learn to get fast on your feet and confront this ex of yours in front of others while he’s spreading his trash talk he’ll begin to back off. Or he’ll get even more secretive about his trash talk campaign against you.
If you can get even ONE thing in writing that he’s spread about you that is untrue, a face book post, an email, or one person to give a deposition or written signed notarized statement to an attorney on the trash he’s talking then do it and take him to court! Deformation of character in written form can and should be pursued in a court of law.
I personally have two 2 inch thick three ring notebooks full of such items a sibling has posted/sent. I have made copies of all and turned them over to my attorney and we are heading to court soon on this one particular issue. there are several more court issues also with this sibling of mine.
Becca, learn from this experience even though it’s a bad one, just learn something from it. What I’ve learned is this, the smeller be the feller. He who wags and points fingers at others has something to hide. The one who smells up the gathering with trash talk on others doesn’t want everyone to notice what they are doing or have been doing. When they are talking YOU be watching them. Eventually, you’ll see what he has to hide that he doesn’t want others to notice or find out about. Jealousy may be the cause but I suspect it’s something much more damning than simple jealousy.
Blacksheep
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There is nothing deceptive about nature. Nature is free from deception as well as from self-deception. The term “human nature” is an utter joke. Man does not evolve, he devolves. He chooses to refuse his own true reflection in the mirror. Psychopathy exists in nearly every human being, it is simply a matter of degree. Think about that next time you eat a hamburger. No, I am not a PETApath, I don’t advocate for animals while lying, stealing and killing behind the scenes. I mean what I say. Look in your mirrors. Yes, some people are much more evil than others. But you still have to clean your own houses too.
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