Christina Herrströms blog

Now my book The Destroyer has been out for three and a half months. It did not disappear, poff, as if it had never existed, as with most books. That was my fear. In that case, all had laborious work – in addition to the years of destruction – been in vain. The purpose of the book was to reach others with the story, because what happened is part of the human experience. But we do not know much about the kind of human evil that the story represents, despite the fact that it goes on and on over and over again, hela tiden. The explanation is simple; victims – like myself – become so devastated from within that they cannot even explain to themselves how it happened.

A thousand voices have heard from me. In fact, more. I've read everything, listened to everything. It is upsetting and turbulent in many ways. I have experienced a lot of grief. We all cry in the moments we recognize ourselves, feel that someone is grasping, really into the marrow takes.

But it is actually also exhausting to get as many loving words as I have received in the wake of the book – from my readers. It's exhausting because I understand in their words how bad I've been. And it is turbulent to receive the wishes of strangers for prosperity, so tenderly and anxiously conveyed. They reach me straight into the heart. Many times tears have flowed down my cheeks as I read. Tack.

Think about what we humans are worth to each other. Compassion. Who under it can do!

I have in addition to that I have been enriched with so much compassion and affection, got to take part in a very large number of stories about other people's experiences. Tänk, if all around you knew how strong you have been. If they understood that you are heroines and heroes who stubbornly continue to live and find light and power and joy, though someone has hurt you so much, insidiously and purposefully broke some of the most important pillars of human existence, in the self which is a part of everything. Anyone who has contacted me with experiences of psychopathic abuse, wish we talked openly about this. It's good that it's starting to happen now. No one thinks that you will experience it yourself. Only those who have a little more knowledge suspect that it is actually possible that I too, who is on solid ground and knows who I am, bit by bit without me initially understanding what is happening, can be entangled and lose all the important things in my life. If we talk openly about it, there are more equipped, and may not try to be strong and cope with it on their own – som jag – while becoming increasingly exhausted and seduced. Many who have heard from me have been through much worse things than I have, too often, very often it is about a woman / man that you have been in love with, älskat. That was not the case for me – if it had been, I would not have had the strength to write the book.

The letters and comments continue to drip in with undiminished force. Maybe half of them are from people with experience of psychopathic violence but the rest are readers without experience. I must say that I am really glad that they also hear from me. It can not help that I am extremely happy and feel proud – som författare – that they describe that they have not been able to stop reading! They have read well into the wee hours, even though they had only intended to read one chapter, but another chapter will be another and soon it will be morning. They have told me that they forgot to eat, barely had time to go and pee, that their relatives have wondered what is going on because they absolutely do not want to be disturbed – just read or listen further! A woman discovered that she was standing in the shower with her headphones on – she was so inside the book that she forgot to take them off and when she discovered it she still could not stop listening but risked them!

It was very difficult to figure out what form I would tell it all in. I could have done it more analytically and alternated the past with the present to ensure that everyone understands that I have understood more than it seems! But I did not want to do that. It had become boring and I had not been able to convey the fear you feel when you are exposed and how life and the world shrink. This horrific creeping anxiety, and growing uncertainty about everything, not least one's own logic and perception. It is important to understand how the degradation process is experienced, how disoriented one becomes, how difficult it is to think clearly, and stick to it. Not least if you are also afraid in the vicinity of the natural person. When you have not experienced anything like this, and fortunately most of us have not been, it seems so strange that you do not just go your own way, not just roaring! It was terribly difficult to describe it all and I have not really succeeded in describing how all these healthy boundaries and reactions are blurred.. I understand that I should have put more pressure on the fact that I was never allowed to sleep. Not a single night did I sleep a whole night from the time he moved ( tillfälligt ) in. And apparently it is very common, a well-proven method of pushing a person into something they had never accepted under normal circumstances. I chose to write it all chronologically, as it unfolded and make me as ignorant as you are when you have no idea you are a tool in someone else's boundless completely ruthless plane. The reader already knows the title and can simply witness how the victim falls into trap after trap. Now I'm happy, Yes it's me, that I have managed to describe it so that you have been drawn into it and started biting your nails. All this material, everything I knew and everything I had to choose from and opt out or include…. it was like an insurmountable mountain and it made me so frustrated because I knew I had to write the book – but how? Ja, I get really happy when I hear that readers have been engrossed in this tongue, thick book. It was certainly part of the devilish challenge and almost every day I wondered why all the way to hell I tormented myself with this but then I reminded myself that the material is quite unique – and that it was probably a meaning that he would happen to me! I did not just stop him, his deeds can benefit others in book form. Mwuahahaa!

Now I even hear that you read it twice! And many have told me that they wish all young people read it, as part of the information tax that one should receive along the way, about all the dimensions of human life. I wish so too, because the more you bring with you, the easier you can navigate and not least also help others if you are more familiar with the phenomenon.

A number of decades ago, there was no talk of such things as sexual abuse, våldtäkt, pedophilia. The more you know about it, the better equipped you are and the less the victims are disgraced due to the lack of knowledge of the common man, the better the victims can heal and recapture their lives.

I have seen in the letters I have received that many, both women and men, are so deeply wounded by what has happened to them that decades later they are still suffering from nightmares, of panic disorder, of fear, of feelings of inferiority, of self-loathing, for fear of proximity, of suicidal thoughts, of depression, of apathy, of insulation and more. Usual, starka, honest people who have believed in another human being, wanted the other well, and only practiced what made it possible for humanity to evolve at all: empathy, love, benevolence, trust, endurance, the ability to put oneself last to temporarily carry / help / heal another human being.

While the perpetrators swing on and find new victims and for the most part there is not even anything to prosecute them for.

I'm lucky because I can feel happy about what I've done. Pride. And deep satisfaction that so many others have been able to reflect in the story, and that I have spread some understanding, which benefits everyone ( except the perpetrators) Thank you all who communicate with me. And thank you for the loving thoughts I have received. It really touches me deeply and makes my step easy.

Hello friends,

I have had to breathe a little. But soon more will come!

I'm confused, gripped and dull and grateful and humble and strengthened and refreshed and …. recovered… of all the wonderful emails I have received and comments on the blog.

Strong people out there, strong who have managed through similar and worse things. It is clear that this needs to be discussed. There are many victims of people with psychopathic traits, they are sacrificed time and time again. Sometimes I have regretted writing The Destroyer, men nej, it was good. It was good that I wrote it, it does benefit.

Both for others and for me.

It's good to understand that I'm strong too. Rent egocentriskt. Men det är bra. Tack, thank you all.

Hey all,

now I hope that for the last time I will write some kind of defense for my book The Destroyer. Of course, if it had been FICTION, I would not have said a word about my thoughts on criticism and reviews, precisely because one cannot dictate how others should perceive one's work. Through all the years of professional writing, I have read many reviews and know that the reader interprets based on his own experience and his world of thought, and that some are perceived, otherwise not and that it is in any case a subjective interpretation of text or drama and if there is nothing to say, som författare. But when it comes to The Destroyer, it's not fiction, it's about some traumatic years of my life and therefore i feel that i have to point out some factual errors in reviews, especially since there were annoyed question marks in the critics' reading as to why I did not do this or that. Continue reading →

A giant entertainment industry counts it! An entire film world, an inexhaustible world of TV series counts it, a fat amount of writers count the violence against women in gold.

I wrote in my previous blog, due to Kajsa Ekis Ekman's article about Fjärilsvägen and the Destroyer, that violence against women does not count, just as she describes so clearly with the help of the critics' texts about these two titles.

correction!

At the same time written, produced and ”consumed” huge amounts of detailed depictions of violence against women. This brings in improbable income. Writers who get rich with this are proud of their fortunes, and film companies, streaming services and television rub their stomachs contentedly over how depictions of violence against women generate profits.

What if the industry that produces violence against women without end as entertainment could spare a few percent to the victims of the violence? Som good will? Maybe some writer who sits and ice cream with his millions could donate 4 % to women whose lives have been ruined, who were forced to change their place of residence, forced to go underground, have physical or and mental but for life?

Another thing I've been thinking about, which is directly connected to this with ” violence against women” – is that it seems that people in general do not understand that the women who are exposed to violence are any women. It is not a special variety. It is not written in their birth certificate that they are particularly suitable to act as victims of violence. Before they have been part of it, they have been part of the large group that has not been part of it.

It sometimes seems like a surprise to people. Now I start from myself , but I have seen really astonished faces when I pass by, as a matter of course has mentioned that I had never been in the vicinity of violence before the Destroyer through his child and my empathy entered my world.

”Va, Oh really?”some hiccup with big eyes. In this way, the unreflected assumption emerges that a person who has been the victim of a violent act, in this case a psychopathic person specializing in psychological violence, must have been predestined for it, perhaps in principle brought with it abuse from the beginning, with breast milk. That you have probably lived your life in an obvious perception that you belong to the group of people who meet the anti-violence quanta and do not have a lifelong experience of the opposite. You kind of stutter; ”You mean, that throughout your life you have an experience like mine – alltså, to go safe and secure in respectful relationships, you mean you have not already carried on a wounded integrity that the bandit has just loosened up a bit? VA? Do you mean that you were like ME before you met him?? Is it true? Did you not belong to a particular group as well??”

Back to maintenance violence.

If you look back at the cultural offerings in the history of mankind, you can be sure that it has never before been as normalized as now: the violence, gross violence, sexual violence, psychological violence and physical violence against women. At the same time as the women pass revue as victims are ”kvinnorna” not persons in these descriptions. They are deprived of their humanity from the beginning. There is nothing that makes us recognize them as if they could be one of us, one of mine, one of those I love or myself. They are always just victims. This discussion is old. I remember it from when I was a teenager in the middle 70- talet.

Because we have learned, fed by this violence from childhood, that the women who are sacrificed are not like ourselves ( not drawn as characters, individuals, people with their own world, in its own drive, enclosed in their own strong movement of friends, familj, interests, love, work) it is perhaps not so strange that one transfers the notion to the victim of reality for violence, and gets confused when it turns out that yes… they are like us, the victims of reality are just like us.

The disappointing thing is that the industry – it is more an industry than an expression of the inner body of man in artistic expression – has not changed since 70- talet. It has passed generation after generation of filmmakers, författare, producers and all have lacked the ability to develop. No one with power has worked to change perspectives. Violence against women certainly counts, and the amounts are gigantic.

There's something extremely perverse about that.

Tack.

Finally someone who addresses what my book is about. What made his looting possible. And what was the reason I thought the book was important to write – for others, för alla. This is what violence looks like. This is how a strong can, healthy, independent, happy man is broken down.

I've been horrified all along – actually shocked by – that not a single critic who has written about my book The Destroyer has mentioned the violence he subjected me to, the violence – psychological and physical – which enabled him to also ruin me and almost make me homeless.

It has been dizzying, in a negative way, to notice that people who are believed to be intellectuals, which has a place to express itself in the media, who will read books in a professional way – tror man – falls back into the simplified, aggravated old narrative where the blame always lies with the victim / woman. I've seen it now, in review after review year 2020 in Sweden and wondered where the person was actually mentally while they were reading 587 the pages. Probably in another story. The old and life-threatening conservative story about how things like these go and in that story the violence is certainly there, but does not count as important – and is somehow, implied the victim (the woman's) own fault. I have read that I am ”grounded”. That I am ”idiot”, to ”how can an adult be deceived like that”. That I have ”betrayed everyone by letting me fool”.

As I have written before; these reviews are counterproductive except that they are unintelligent and naive. If someone was about to take the step from hell staged by a person in their vicinity who is practicing mentally – and often also physically – violence , strengthened by the interviews with me which have evidently strengthened some, so you can expect them to back into the dark after reading how my book was received in Sweden's most influential newspapers because that's where the world shouts” SHAME ! Idiot! He was a clown! How to be fooled by a clown! Shame on you!”

It's bigger than my own resentment over this and shock over how to read it. Much much bigger. For these conclusions ( called reviews) if the book manifests to a large extent the silent power of violence, most often violence against women, in society, in time, for the future, from the present back. They are clear concrete expressions of how violence against women does NOT count.

This is what makes Kajsa Ekis Ekman's text in Aftonbladet important far beyond the titles Fjärilsvägen and Ödeläggaren. And it's very, very creepy. Take a look at SVT play and the documentary series ” Violent love” so you get a glimpse of how dangerous this denial and conservative attitude is.

I have thought quite a lot about how I would have written the book so that it became clearer that I was exposed to psychological violence – and physical violence, and a methodically insidious and at times quite sadistic breakdown of my brain, my movement room, my self and that it was the whole condition for him to ruin me and I now have to live below the subsistence minimum for the rest of my life. I thought I had described it, sometimes quite detailed, through the 587 the pages. I should have bothered that he did not let me sleep a whole night, starting as soon as he entered my home? I should have taught the reader how devastating it is for a human being not to have the opportunity to rest? Not everyone knows that they use the method of not letting people sleep properly to take power over them? I have thought afterwards, when I read these upset texts about how stupid I was – that how much do they mean to endure? Not even the fact that the man in question after the personal investigation in connection with the trial was ”very dangerous to other people” has bitten the critics; nä, the woman in question was stupid who let herself ” luras”!

For most people, having a needy person goes a long way, exposed, weeping, appealing stranger at home who is then also there in your office when you hope to be left alone in order to end up in imbalance. A couple of days is enough and if the night's sleep is disturbed several times during the time, you are quite tender. That you then lose a loved one to death in the middle of it all, may not help either? And then we have not even touched on the more insidious psychological violence that soon intensified – and not at all the physical. Nor the complicated psychological game in which everything took place with responsibility for a vulnerable child and so on. I have really wondered how much Jonas Thente in DN and Clara Block in Svd think that you should be able to cope in your daily life because I was such a ” idiot” som ” went on” och ” lurades” by ”pajasen” och ” betrayal” both my close ones and everyone who admired me as a writer! Hallå!

Som sagt, the violence is neglected. Varför? If you overlook it? Or do you consider man ( I in this case ) earn it? Do you understand that you take a stand by not mentioning the violence in a word? Probably not, it seems completely unreflective. I have been surprised that the critics' reading of my book has been so blinded by unsorted emotions, upset slightly accusatory formulations about how stupid I was. After the description of degradation and violence I offer, it's a bit like a slap in the face. Where is the sharp thought, analyzes? I'm surprised, but I have overlooked it, as one must as an artist, and I have chosen not to keep silent about the destruction. But I have thought that if I were a psychopath I would eagerly seek out these people because they would definitely never understand what happened when I caught them.

It is an interesting dimension in that Fjärilsvägen is still written by a man. It would be easy to think that since a man writes about the mental and physical violence against a woman, perhaps he would be interested in it in a different way, one might even admit it? Nej, not even with a man as a messenger, do you give violence any significance in the course of events, although it is absolutely crucial. The event and the outcome of the course of events are explained in a completely different way. Kajsa Ekis Ekman describes it clearly and distinctly in her article.

I have wondered if the violence would have been noted by the critics if it was a man who was exposed to it instead of a woman. Had one written about the event in the same diminishing tone then? Jag tror inte det.

I think the woman's refined and insidious psychic terror against the man had been appalled. They had even noticed the detail that she was constantly disturbing his sleep every night and they had understood what it meant for the poor man. I think one might have almost understood how mental violence makes physical violence possible. It had probably been written about how the physically weaker woman in passing pushed her fingers into the man's mouth and tricked his throat. With horror it had been realized that psychological violence against an entire man had wiped him out so much that he would not have protested, but just suppressed it, and tried to handle the situation as constructively as possible. The moments of abuse described in the book had become ingrained in critics. The violence would have simply appeared in its entirety if it had been carried out by a woman against a man. ( and this very violence is also going on out in the silence, notice well!)

Thanks Kajsa Ekis Ekman. The article highlights something incredible, extremely serious. Something very dangerous. Something that goes on and on and on. The acceptance of violence against women.

people wonder. Nej. It's a far too active feeling. I've never hated the destroyer. Maybe some brief moment when I have remembered one of all the hundreds of times when he looked at me with tears in his eyes and asked for my support, in his struggle for his child – now that I've done. How he used both me, my compassion, and his child who was his tool.

Men nej, I do not go around hating. It has never bothered me. It feels strange. The man is a psychopath. Psychopaths have an injury. It is innate. They understand the world in a different way than the rest of us. He has, of course, made his conscious choices, all the time to break me down and bind me to him, use my empathy and my sense of responsibility, but based on their damaged conditions. Nä, I do not feel hatred. It would have been hard. Hatred consumes oneself and leads nowhere.

However, I think a lot about it all. Right now there is a certain kneading because so many people contact me, with similar experiences. Of course, it is not the case that everyone has lost their opportunities for a decent life financially, but for many, this spinoff has come in handy, but everyone talks about and recognizes the degradation. They have also been strong, självständiga, thinking people who never thought they could come across something like this.

What has followed in the footsteps of the book are many different conversations. It is the best. People who have had bad experiences in the same way have started talking, with his friends, their close. The important thing is that it is now easier to talk about it, open, that people stop feeling ashamed because they have been extremely manipulated by another with an insidious and heartless agenda, that they have methodically become mentally worn out ( as a common thread through the stories of many goes insomnia! That seems to be the first step; ensure that the victim is never allowed to recover, do not get a full night of undisturbed sleep at any time) and that as a result it has lost its power over itself – på olika sätt. That people tell their loved ones; it's a big step! And that perhaps in general one begins to understand that these crimes are so much more brutal and terrible than ” sun and spring” – the epithet with attached performance suggests. I'm so grateful I was never in love with this person because in that case he would have ruined too much. And so it is for most people; very many victims of psychopaths have been entangled in duality and love. I can not imagine the horror and vulnerability of it. What is called ” sun and spring.”

Men sedan, when the conversations about the abuse itself and the consequences for an individual and that person's close, has started to ebb out – which are so important! – makes other calls. The existential, the moral issues. And the search for reflections, after perspective and after inspiration for the wounded soul begins. And if the conversation then exists – you can share it and if you share it, so much more happens than if you also carry the healing alone. Man, as a victim, can then see new doors open, to new paths, which even though so much is important in oneself and one's existence is destroyed in a way one cannot even put into words – yet new forms emerge in the interior, where small rippling streams – with sun in! – can poke forward. Our understanding of life is deepened. Our understanding of who we are as human beings in relation to others, something that is constantly changing. But through this road that is so difficult you see, if you look back, that you have made certain decisions that are often in the sign of love and for that you can feel pride. Despite all the hardships, despite the confusion, have you stuck to the idea that things should be good, that one can take responsibility for it, that one is even willing to use one's last forces to take responsibility for carrying everything to the end; where everything will be fine. Admittedly, one has been seduced and psychologically exposed, but one has held one's banner high and been faithful to one's own ideals and ideas about human goodness. This is exactly what the psychopath has often used, but nonetheless: one was not spineless, they went through the blizzard and did not give up.

Time and time again along my path to doom, laid out through the darkness by the perpetrator, I realized that I was faced with moral choices. I felt that my never-before-questioned complacency was challenged. The idea of ​​my humanism. Of course, it was foolish of me to hold on to my own morals when I was dealing with a completely unscrupulous person in the absence of all morals., but it was something he successfully hid. In my eyes, he was desperate, extradited, desperate, father who alone fought to save his son from a destructive upbringing. He played this skilfully until a special point when he instead became more threatening, but then it was too late. Through all the decisive decisions I was followed by his acute despair and the boy's big eyes and through these decisive months went my perception of morality. I had promised to help the poor man and his children and who would I be if I let them down? I doubted him at the same time as I trusted him completely, but it gave me no room for movement. Now I will not present myself as more noble than I was – in parallel with the provocative morality there was fear, confusion and exhaustion. Some horror. But after all, it was just emotions and emotions can not control! When I tried to figure out what to do when he confronted me with his desperate hopes ( claim ) to borrow more money to build their lives with the child, and I hired my reason my reason told me that I must follow my morals. Do not get caught up in emotions like anxiety, confusion and fear. They could not be grounded in reality, they were just expressions of my own troubled interior. My superego told me that I must follow my morals and not cowardly back and forth, when I had promised to help. It's almost laughable!

Above all, it is laughable that I met this man in the church where he was so well rooted in his activities for many years without me being the slightest church or believer. Still, I followed, so to speak, the message of loving my neighbor as myself. And just this with this intruder! Ja, until the point when he had snared and worked me so much that there was only the devastation left, to then get quiet on me and move on. (Say what you want, but it is a good framework for moral reflection, I had never been able to come up with such a good drama myself. Above all, it is a mammoth beginning at the altar, the first meeting between us. )

But based on all the stories I have now received from other people who have been through similar devastation, this is also it – with their own dignity, the inner rising, morals – a common thread. These are people whose values ​​are strong. People who are persistent in their belief in these values. People who reflect on humanity, and our responsibility to each other. People who do not just look after themselves and people who have a perception that they have mental, soulful and loving margins. People who can temporarily put themselves in the second place to give to the needy ( Psychopaths are very often in need) power and space, people who are willing to assist and support. In other words, people with a healthy ability to connect and trust others, with a constructive attitude to problems and shortcomings and a strong belief in the possibilities of others, then gifted with perseverance.

Det är – also according to what I have read and been told by psychiatrists and psychologists – often such people who fall victim to psychopaths. People who are the way you wish everyone were. Driven by love, of kindness, of loyalty and openness. It can be good to know if you consider yourself a good and strong person – something that most of us think we are!

Personally, I thought that those who were so heavenly strange that they encountered such things radiated a desire for submission, smelled blood. Or that they were generally lost, rootless, clear of the wind, in desperate longing for belonging, even if it was fake and raw and cruel. Or that they were stupid in the head. Though I did not think much about it, more than I sometimes said ” but my God!” when reading any notice about someone who ” lurats” of millions. ”Back” is a tricky word in the context. It is not usually said that you have been tricked into being physically abused, but when it comes to mental abuse, there is a great deal of ignorance..

Given some of the reactions I have received after the book, I am not alone in the notion that there must be something directly wrong with the person who becomes ” lurad”. There is more than one who has said” But you??? You are neither stupid nor ugly???”

None of the above had made the abuses less brutal, but it is also an interesting thing to consider. Apparently, underförstått, it would be more okay if some – dumb, sargade, fula – exposed.

As usual, I slip into various discussions in my blog, and can not keep me academic to the subject.

Hur som helst, that the CONVERSATIONS have begun is … fantastic because it is a first step both for those who need to be healed and for those around them, and for everyone else who thinks they are safe. And that the conversations then deepen and at the same time branch out as if completely new trees are emerging in what has been fog and deadly silence, är … a clear and absolutely wonderfully gripping sign of the inherent power of man. But it does not happen in solitude. The conversation, the meetings, man against man, and basically the love between people is required. Människor, who carried the shock and wounds double-folded in silence, stretches and suddenly moves forward with eager steps, inspired by the mysterious and marvelous in that … so to speak receive life as it has become. But with the abolition of silence, of what is sometimes called carelessness ” shame” begins the movement away from the catatonic, terrible conditions in the pitchless darkness a psychopath leaves behind, an awful darkness that only continues to obliterate the one already sacrificed.

The language, thought…. that's what makes the difference. But you have to dare to use it with each other. Away with the silence.

Is good. It is good that we have respect for each other's integrity. But it is difficult to know where the line goes; how far can one go in asking questions about another person's life. I think especially of if you fear that something is not really good in the other person's life.

This is a difficult balancing act. It is difficult because you are afraid of losing the other person's trust, in case you question too much. Or to simply hurt the other. To maybe even get rid of the relationship if you ask something too uncomfortable.

And how far are we ourselves prepared to let someone else show their concern and care for us, and endure uncomfortable questions? We probably do not perceive them as care, but get provoked, closes us, waves away and does everything to avoid the subject that can create a bad mood, maybe a knot on the thread. Although the other only acted out of consideration, oro, love.

The responsibility goes in two directions. How far one is prepared to endure the possible questions and care of others – and how far we dare to go in knocking on someone else's privacy shield because we worry.

Above all, it is difficult to know where the line of someone's integrity lies, when it comes to even adult children. All parents are afraid that their children will turn their backs. Then maybe you choose to instead try to think away what you are worried about, signs you think you see, fears that the child himself may not yet have perceived, but as one might assume will come true, when everything may have gone get far. Even though one's parental responsibility never ends. But especially when it comes to adult children, is the easiest to think ”But he / she is an adult. I have no right to have opinions.”

I understand that it must be a little hell with people who have to get involved in everything and have opinions about everything. You have the right to live your life in your own way! But still, I wish people got involved a little more in each other's lives. Behind ”integrity” any amount of devilry can spread. And then you stand there ; ”I felt it in me!” och ” Actually, I saw it, but I was not sure, I did not want to hurt him / her , I was afraid he / she would turn my back on me and never want to see me again, so therefore I never said anything…” It is so common that we react that way! At the same time, something may still be gnawing at us, the idea that we should still try to address what we are worried about, or think we see.

It's so hard to know. But I still wish everyone, every, took courage and talked to the person we think might be hurting, or as we fear will go bad soon, in a relationship, due to a decision, at a workplace, whatever it is…. We should not be so afraid of being rejected.

You can always say ” I may be wrong, but I'm afraid this and that is happening to you and you do not have to defend yourself or explain anything to me, but I want you to know that I am here and will be here and you should not be afraid to turn to me if that day comes…”

It is better than being silent and pretending that you have perceived something wrong or that you are probably worrying unnecessarily or simply settling down to have ”respect for the integrity of the other”. They get order, stated on a single occasion, can make such a big difference – perhaps crucial – for the other person.

It does not have to be about such serious and brutal things as psychopaths, eller domestic violence, alcoholism or the like, it can be a prestigious assignment, about keeping working to death , about prioritizing errors, or about taking too much responsibility.

It is after all with the conversation that we move on. And get things in place, or get things rolling, or realize – in consultation with someone else – something we have not really had time to see. The conversations must also contain what feels uncomfortable and challenging.

Sometimes I think we shun the discomfort too much. Everything should just be nice and smooth all the time. And some have stopped talking to each other at all – about the most important things. They write ” jag älskar dig!” on Facebook or text each other when they have come into conflict and do not talk face to face, which makes one so much more vulnerable… and human and true.

We need to nurture conversations with each other. So that there is margin to say… of, I'm wondering if this is really good with your relationship…. or whatever it may be about. Following each other is not following each other's beautiful images on social media. Following each other is something much closer, braver and more sensitive. And it provides all the power a human being needs.

Hello friends,

I have received so many reactions to the book The Destroyer and to interviews and they are there 99 percent positive, if it is now positive that the subject of the book exists at all. It seems to do so to a great extent.

I can now state that the book has helped save people, I know that after correspondence with unknown people – and that was what I wished the writing of hell could lead to. Mission completed.

What strikes me, surprises me and irritates me is that both in some reviews and in some presentations it is said that I have felt ashamed. This careless statement applies to everyone – alla – who are exposed in destructive contexts, at least if the contexts are private. ( People are de facto also exposed by psychopathic people in professional contexts, but this seems to have been forgotten.)

It is always said and written, sweeping and obvious, that the victim, due to shame and guilt, lingers in his personal hell. In fact, I never understood it, not even before I saw this. How can the victim be considered to be in debt? Where does the debt consist? Debt???

And why is it taken for granted that those who are exposed are assumed to feel ashamed? Why? It is completely incomprehensible! Why is this repeated as an amen in the church – completely unreflected – of people who in other ways seem to be intelligent, even intellectuals? ( intellectual means that one ”has the ability and interest in thinking and analysis, often particularly philosophical and humanistic thinking” according to NE;s dictionary, thus a creative thinking )

The one who makes mistakes is the one who should feel ashamed. This has probably been learned since childhood? But is it in this context implied that the one who is exposed by others is the one who makes the mistake? This would mean that the child who disturbs the whole class and pinches little Elsa who is forced to sit next to him in order to have a calming effect should not stand in the corner of shame, but little Elsa will do it?

It is not shame and it is not guilt that keeps people in abusive situations where they lose themselves. It is not shame and guilt that prevent them from signaling strongly enough for others to react. It is not shame that makes them silent. It's despair. Fear. Horror. Phase. Fear. Responsibility for others you want to protect. Responsibility for children who may be in the relationship. It's exhaustion. This is because you no longer trust your perception, their ability to think in several stages. It's because of a threat, a diffuse, terrible threat always guards one, and if you make a mistake – and what is wrong is decided by the perpetrator – it is enforced. It is because you have a NOW that must be solved continuously. A NOW that you have to manage to get to the next NOW. It is because one lives in a state of uninterrupted latent panic.

When people ” outside ” of course claiming that it is shame and guilt that keeps the vulnerable in their vulnerability, it is actually like giving them an ear file. It's like saying ”Back! Into you cave again, out here in the light we shout shame and guilt, shame and guilt to you!”

Nobody in hell that things like this are about, would even have time to feel ashamed. ( if it were the case that the feeling was reasonable ) It's so far away that it's almost like flirting and if you can think of flirting you are not so deep in the shit.

Skamidén is a remnant of some kind of handicapping masculine dogma about the relationship and status between people. He who is not impregnable and unwavering must blame himself and be ashamed. For the norm, the only one that works, is that never, not a moment fall – at least not so that anyone notices it. The scam is used as a means of power. And behind ”the shame” abuse and human abuse can continue, for the victim is not only chained by his perpetrator but also by the baldness of society ”shame! debt!”

Language is important. The words shape our thoughts – and vice versa, words preserve ideas and ideas, phrases block healthy movements. Phrases like ”it is the shame and guilt that kept her going” clogs the airways. I want intelligent people to think this through, before they automatically repeat this old oppressive lock ”truth”.

Many victims also use the word ” shame ” when they explain what they have felt, or feel. They can say that they feel ashamed of their own, those who belong to their world, those they love and long for. But when I ask if it's really true, everyone answers no, that's not true – it is the despair they feel. Desperate fear that those they love will not love them anymore, do not receive them, do not support them, because they have come across a man who has entangled them, förlett dem, disassembled them, perhaps crushed them. Men ”shame”- the concept is the description that is closest at hand, naturligtvis, because that's it all ” outside” claims – with the greatest obviousness! That is what we have learned.

I remember when I came to the chief doctor at the psychiatric clinic after we had reported and I slowly began to grasp piece by piece what happened to me and tried to get the pieces together. I was in shock and sat crouched on the chair and he sat opposite and said a lot of wise things like I was in good company, there are so many who are exposed to psychological violence, of all varieties, seduced, cheated and devastated and he said I have to remember that most people are GOOD. But he also said something that I remember that I did not recognize at all. Han sa ” I understand that you are faced with great shame.” I remember looking at him and trying to find the feeling in me, but could not. So I thought maybe this is what I feel, the confusion and fear, is a shame? Although I define shame as the feeling you get when you do something that you know is wrong, or obscene, or that one could do better. I could not recognize this dramatic ” shame”, but maybe I was ashamed to feel ashamed and tried to deny it? Men nej! It was despair! Abyss despair!

I get really tired when I read that with shame, in connection with my book. Some people who have written about the book completely sonic apply it to me and claim that I – just jag – have felt it in the situation I was in. I think anyone who is in a similar situation now, who begin to feel the courage to stand up, to sound the alarm, to go – who recognizes herself in my book or the interviews and understands that she / he is not alone, that this is something that is going on all the time, that the perpetrators act in much the same way and the victims react in much the same way and that the only solution is to escape – that you back off when you get the words SHAME and GUILT in your eyes when you read about the book. It becomes counterproductive. Little pity.

Nej, I did not feel ashamed, and I was not going to let myself be carried into such an idea as others put on me. I was going to explore the idea in my little way and did not hesitate to answer unknown people on the train or in other contexts who asked conversations where I was going, or lived, or did. I said as it was, instead of slipping under a tarp and cuddling in shame, to see how the strangers reacted. Would they treat me with contempt, with looks and comments to remind me of my shame? Nej. No one did. And nine out of ten said they knew of similar fates in their vicinity, or maybe even had experience themselves.

No one who is exposed should feel a moment's shame for having ended up in a situation where they have methodically been deprived of the opportunity to have control over their existence.

I know I felt ashamed at first. That was a lot, very early and it was quite fleeting. I was ashamed of myself, I face me, because I realized I could not handle the man. And I thought I should know. I would have had to go outside then to ask for help. I did not, because I thought I would be strong and fix it on my own. Där, in the purple beginning, I felt ashamed of myself.

But not only. At the same time, I felt a great, trembling and anxious responsibility for the man's paternity, his children he fought for – for their vulnerable situation. That's how it is. When you can still save yourself and really have enough clarity and power to do so, even good pages have already been put to use. It is always the good sides of people that are abused by this type of perpetrator. But there is a time when one should have done differently – if you had known who you were dealing with. You do not know that.

But if you have read The Destroyer, you may at least bring a little more material into life, which might help a little. But SHAME should only be felt by the perpetrator. Unfortunately, they do not, it is included in the personality type. If the shame must land somewhere, it can land in those who may have seen signals and not acted, but rushed in behind the idea of ” INTEGRITY” instead. Perpetrators have many weapons. One is ”offrets skam” and another is ” integrity”.

After my book The Destroyer came out, I have received large amounts of emails and thoughts and stories from others. It is very instructive and the subject; to be exposed to a person with psychopathic traits, or in short; en ”psykopat”, seems inexhaustible. It has something eternally fascinating about it, the phenomenon of people who in every way seem to be like the rest of us – but which hides so much more, who is constantly playing with everyone and in a way that we can neither predict nor imagine – before we have decided. And most of the time we do not have the result until we are spit on the other side. If we do not have special knowledge.

But what we all, which has been exposed, have been told when we have finally managed to free ourselves from the confusing disoriented hell we have lived in – where we have tried to find order and logic and honor, such as we recognize from other relationships, which has to do with ordinary basic agreements between people, but which cannot be found in a situation with a psychopath – is that we have been naive. So naive, snorts some smugly – certainly not all! absolutely not – they themselves would never be! They could never end up in a situation with a psychopath who entangles one. Nej, they are not so reckless and blue-eyed! It's just naive, reckless and blue-eyed people who can fall victim and do not belong to themselves.

I probably thought so too and all the others who have been / are exposed. We probably thought each of us could recognize the sinister intentions of a fellow human being, we all thought we could handle a person who might at least sometimes seem to have a hidden agenda, we all thought we could take responsibility for ourselves in a situation with anyone – except perhaps one who indulges in us physically. I will not list all the situations, which could be thoughtful, where we have all thought we understand that we have control but where we have been unable to have it.

En sak vet jag – and all those who have been exposed to a psychopath – it is naive to think that you are safe. It is blue-eyed to think that you yourself could not end up in and get entangled in and maybe even be destroyed by such a person. ( Destruction can happen in many ways, it's not always about money, but it is the transfer of money through deception that is prosecuted. ) This is not a subjective conclusion. In psychiatry, it is well known that anyone can fall victim. It's like being unlucky enough to be hit. It is not a certain kind of people who get hit. If you explain why someone ends up in a car accident, you will discover that it is a long line of small ones, small decisions that have gotten in the way. No one blames the person hit for it. But really, it's the same as having the bad luck to get in the way of a person with psychopathic traits.

It is naive to think that you would not make the very decisions that make you snag a psychopath, for precisely the decisive decisions are the result of a lengthy preparation in which thousands of small, seemingly innocent decisions have been made, such decisions that are constantly made in interaction with others and that never lead to any disaster, but which one nevertheless takes uninterruptedly. When people confidently claim that they ” never would” do this or that, so they seem to believe that the decisive actions, where the psychopath puts his claws in one, is free-floating, detached from an already built history. My very own psychopath was aware of how he worked. First, build trust. Touch the human heart. It could take a long time. He was prepared for that. Long time. It required his patience and his sensitivity. Which road was most passable? Once a trust has been built, you can strike.

In my case, I was reluctant and averse and tried to get him out of my life for six months. But in the meantime, he held on, and showed, among other things, what a bravely fighting and loving father he was. Then he won my trust. So he managed to touch my heart. The foundation was thus laid. It took patience. Time. Waiting. Strategies.

If you understand that, that the decisive decisions ( to get together, to have children, to hire someone, to become a good friend, to let someone into their private sphere, to tell a trust, to promise to help etcetera) always preceded by a carefully constructed story, one may not so assertively assert ”it could never happen to me!” And what we forget when we say so, is that we all can, all of a sudden get out of balance and thus become more receptive to a person of this kind.

So unfortunately, it is naive to think that you are safe. And the one who thinks she / he goes safe is de facto a very promising – and also enticing – byte.

The program Body and Soul in Swedish Radio P 1 always brings up interesting topics. Today it was about psychopathic traits, manipulation and gaslighting and more. Important things to have some knowledge about when walking through life.

I was one of the guests due to the book The Destroyer, where I try to describe how an extremely manipulative person- med psykopatiska drag – enters my life and destroys it. Something that happens over and over again. To varying degrees and in different contexts, not least in working life. For the most part, one associates with love relationships and when it happens in such fragile relationships, it must be infinitely difficult to get out of it.. For me, it was not about love, which I think was my salvation in many ways.

A conversation is held about the phenomenon – and also about the fact that many men live in destructive relationships with women – something that needs to be lifted because there the silence is even greater and the men who ask for help are sometimes not even believed. How much loneliness does not have to be?

Ulrika Hjalmarson Neideman is the host, and the researcher in psychiatry, Associate Professor Karolina Sörman and psychologist Anna Bennich and I try to talk about this complex and elusive subject that you can probably never exhaust.

Here is the link to the program:

https://Swedens radio.se/embed/episode/1569490

The next program will be about hypnosis. I'll listen to that, because among the things that the destroyer left behind, I found that he had taken a course in hypnosis that promised the course participant greater power over his fellow human beings to be able to seize what they wanted; pengar, sex, fame etcetera… It will be exciting to listen to!

https://sverigesradio.se/embed/episode/1569490