Dark souls SS Products Category:  Self-Help Publisher: SS Products ISBN-10:  0956645807 Pages: 264 Copyright: 25/10/2010 ISBN-13: 9780956645807 Dark Souls is a deeply personal story written by a woman who had a relationship with a narcissistic Psychopath. She draws on her own experience and discusses Psychopathy and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. With an estimated 1-4 per cent of the population having this disorder we are likely to run into one every single day of our lives. Sarah Strudwick who was unfortunate enough to have a run in with a number of them during her lifetime decided to look at the spiritual damage these people do to their victims when the con them for financial, sexual or emotional gain. Dark Souls - Healing and recovering from Toxic Relationships, provides a valuable handbook for those who have been in relationship with them. However in view of the world that we live in its a very topical subject that will appeal to a wide audience. Dark Souls also provides a practical handbook for those who have been luckily enough not to have encountered these people but want to be able to spot them in the first place before they spot us. Dark Souls is a practical handbook on psychopathic personalities. It draws on the authors own personal experience and is interwoven with some stories about other psychopaths and victims It focusses on the spiritual and emotional damage these predators do to their victims. It provides the reader with a number of tools to spot manipulative, exploitative people including some of the tactics they use such as gaslighting and emotional blackmail. In the healing pages it looks at the own writers reasons why she believes these predators target certain types more easily such as codependents and empaths and more importantly looks at the often unconscious negative beliefs that the victims may hold about themselves such as low self esteem and how we can uncover them and enable us to move away from a relationship of inevitable harm.  It further goes on to explain how the author healed and moved on. Although thoroughly researched, Dark Souls is not just for victims it is also a book that will help anyone who wants to learn about psychopaths or narcissists and learn how to spot them before they spot us. Excerpt 4 _________ The Black Hole Where does one start to write a book about healing from having been in a relationship with a appeared to be Mr Nice and normal but underneath the mask lies a Dark Soul? I have thought long and hard through my healing journey, which involved much soul searching and many tears, and after much research I believe that there is a process you need to go through to really heal. It is a journey, for some taking longer than others. You cannot rush it and if you do not process everything including the reasons why you got into a the relationship in the first place you will be back to square one a few years along, entertaining yet another dysfunctional relationship. I believe the universe has a way of upping the volume until eventually you start listening. I’ve had a number of not-so-healthy relationships and, one by one, the universe upped the volume because I just wasn't listening. Eventually it made me hear the inner demons I hadn't been prepared to face and my wakeup call came in the guise of a relationship with the most charming man you could ever wish to meet. Underneath the “mask,” Oliver was an amplified clone of one of my closest family members. I ended up with a nothing but a conman and an undiagnosed narcissistic psychopaths. Many books talk about the emotional damage a psychopath does to their victims. Some victims are unfortunate enough to have physical damage. While physical abuse might be the most visible sign, other types of abuse, such as emotional abuse also leave deep, long lasting scars. But there is another aspect into which I will delve a bit more deeply. My view is that much is overlooked about the spiritual damage they do to your energy field and many books miss how you can actually heal from these people. The tears have now gone. During the healing process the bitter taste never quite leaves you and you are left with the feeling that can only be described as aftershock, with nothing quite adding up. You always remain hyper vigilant to some degree, and you are left to clean up what can only be described as a relationship that had no substance, because the person you were with never really existed. Some people find it difficult to move on through the grieving process because it's unlike a normal relationship. However you can heal and there is light at the end of the tunnel. I hope that this book will inspire those of you who have been wounded by these people to pick up the pieces and come out shining, perhaps better than the way you were before you met them. Although anyone is a target to a psychopathic personality, many of the victims who get preyed upon are highly sensitive, empathic and may also have come from previous relationships in childhood where they were abused. They may even on the surface appear to have removed the little “come and get me flag” that sits like a beacon on the top of their head. Psychopaths are extremely intuitive and can hone in on victims however successful and strong they appear on the outside, by looking for subtle clues even down to the way a target walks. I was watching a video on psychopaths and there were twenty women, one of whom had this unusual kind of walk: a bit “oopsy daisy” and carefree. I too walked like that. The interviewer asked the psychopath which target would he choose and he explained that he always chose the women with the funny walk. It turned out all those women had been sexually abused as a child. In a speed dating experiment they took 50 women and 50 men in a room and told them to mingle together. One man was an abuser and one woman was a previous abuse victim. It took 3 minutes for them to find each other and leave the room together. That's how fast they can spot you. So, yes, a psychopath will use anyone for their needs, but if you’re vulnerable, you are going to be spotted far more easily. It's because of this that your emotional warning radar needs to work better than theirs. This book is partly about my own journey, it is also about spotting these predators in their numerous guises. There are ways in which you can disconnect and heal from the psychopath/narcissist in your life. But the essence of this book is about examining the core values within us that lead these people to finding us in the first place and how to get your emotional radar working one hundred per cent so that it never happens to us again. There are many victim stories and, make no mistake, the victims are out there in their thousands, but the only way to come out of the devastation that Psychopaths bring into our lives is to come out victorious and strong. After all, it was that strength of character in you that attracted them to you in the first place. For the purposes of research, I have looked at the following types of personality: psychopaths, sociopaths, and those with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). I’ve done so because many of these predators appear to have both sociopathy/psychopathy and/or NPD. There are many kinds of predators, and throughout this book I just call them Dark Souls. Sociopaths appear to be the lesser version of the psychopath, but they, too, are predators despite their everyday persona. There are many sociopaths living in the community and not all of them are locked up in prisons for murder. Steve Becker, a well known writer who writes for a resource website on sociopaths, called Lovefraud.com wrote in an article entitled The Sociopath’s Imperturbability” “But the point is, he just doesn’t care. The sociopath just doesn’t take these laws and interpersonal boundaries seriously, because he doesn’t take you, or others, seriously.” So my wish is that what I write in this book is taken seriously enough for those people that have been affected by abusers that they may find some strength and courage in the reality that they can recover from these people. It’s not an easy journey, but you can make it as easy or as difficult as you want to. As a small note to my abuser, if by chance he may be reading this book, and who ultimately tried to destroy my life and my sanity: you did not break me, and I am back, fighting and strong, exactly as I was before you met me. It is my humour, my spirit, and my willpower that have kept me strong and helped me to come out of this, although the scars will remain forever. They can try and pinch your money and your possessions, but they cannot steal your soul and spirit. They will try their very best, especially if you are Empathic, but when you finally heal from them, you will come out shining. I have always been passionate about spiritual energy and the universe and, in my naivety, I wrongly assumed that everyone was good. Of course now I realise that is not true; it was just a fairy tale I wanted to believe in. I was trying to think of the perfect name for these people and I called up a friend of mine, Dr. Michael Millett. He uses hypnosis and EFT, and has a Masters Degree in Metaphysical Science (M. MSC) with the University of Metaphysics, Sedona, Arizona, USA. We were discussing the concept of how psychopathic people such as sociopaths and narcissists had the need to feed off their victims, a bit like energy vampires, and somehow got to talking about quantum singularities, known more commonly as black holes. No one really knows exactly what a black hole is, although it’s clear that a black hole sucks everything in; not even light can escape it, which is why it appears black and invisible. Scientists believe that a black hole occurs when a massive star, much larger than our sun, runs out of fuel. The remaining mass of the star collapses in on itself, causing an enormous vacuum that draws everything around it, including light, into itself. This is exactly how sociopaths appear to us. Their real personalities are invisible to everyone else around them and they spend their lives sucking people in drawing in the light and positive qualities of their victims’ personalities, money, or whatever they can get from them. Once you are in a relationship with them it’s extremely difficult to get out. Anything or anyone that is sucked in will be eventually depleted until there is nothing left. Once you have been sucked dry emotionally, spiritually, and financially, it’s almost impossible to leave, whilst they, on the other hand (especially if they are narcissistic), thrive on your light or energy. Perhaps they will be enjoying all the money they have sponged from you. Of course, the minute they have run out of supply, they will move on to the next victim because, like the black hole, they constantly need input to survive. I must point out, without prejudice, that I am not a psychologist. I have referenced and discussed sociopaths, psychopaths and narcissists throughout the book with the help of colleagues. Although to some degree, all the pathological personalities tend to have vast similarities among them, the little dissimilarities between them make them stand apart. Therefore, it is very important to go through the case history of an individual before labelling him or her as a sociopath, psychopath, or narcissist. My ex, Oliver, fits into several of these classifications, including the “black hole” category. I wondered if I should bestow Oliver with such a grand title as Black Hole, which, with so much power associated with it, would only inflate his galaxy-sized ego. A black hole conjures up the image of a bottomless void that relentlessly feeds on light. If you think about people and energy, although we all exchange energy amongst ourselves, both sociopaths and narcissists tend to be energy vampires, i.e. only consuming. In the case of a sociopath, I would describe them from an energy point of view, as consciously and intentionally stealing your energy for themselves, be it for fun or out of vindictiveness. The narcissists’ reality is so distorted and dark they may not even realise that they are doing anything wrong, and their inner darkness is temporarily made brighter by those people that feed their false egos. I pondered on the concept that actually there is some debate as to whether psychopaths have a soul at all. In the book, The Mask of Sanity, Hervey Cleckley speculates that what is really wrong with these people is that perhaps they lack a soul. Whereas Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig, author of Emptied Soul, implies that psychopaths are just lost souls. Eileen Rawson who works as a space clearer and healer suggested that these people have a “walk-in” soul that takes over their bodies. Sam Vaknin suggest in the forward that the narcissistic psychopath has no soul at all. As the debate goes on, I therefore decided to give Oliver and other predators a lesson title and nicknamed him a Dark Soul. I have also used the same term as a general label for predators and disordered personalities who abuse victims. Why? Because they are all very similar and it implies that they might have a soul but that it is a soul that is tainted and perhaps somewhat damaged and that a big chunk of it is missing.

Steve Becker, LCSW, CH.T Psychopathy Expert and LoveFraud.com columnist
"Dark Souls is a must-read if you've ever been involved with an exploitative personality, and a recommended read even if you haven't. It examines in great depth who these personalities are, what makes them tick, and why they are so dangerous. Most importantly, it addresses, very effectively, how to avoid these insidious individuals and, if this is too late, how to recover from them. A welcome, important addition to the literature on violating personalities."

Sam Vaknin Ph.D
"This book is a painstakingly well-researched tour of the netherlands of such "relationships" with narcissists and psychopaths: the ups and downs, the promise and inevitable disillusionment, the cruelty and mind games and the heartbreak that is the inescapable aftermath. The author's first-hand experience translates into helpful insight both passioned and, where appropriate, impassioned. It is a useful and liberating guide for the perplexed, the disoriented, the sufferer, and the victim. It should be read and studied by both them and mental health practitioners."

John B Nutting BA (Psych) Clinicial Counsellor
"Dark Souls" is, however, far more than the story of her experiences. It also provides powerful step-by-step guidelines for those who are ready to begin dealing with narcissists and particularly to those who want to escape from their clutches, or better still avoid getting caught in the first place. I can recommend it as essential reading and I will certainly be recommending it to my clients here in Australia."