By Ox Drover Since I have been in the medical profession for many years as a Registered Nurse Practitioner (now retired) I have been interested in the reactions our bodies and our minds have from stress. Stress is a contributing factor to poor health and decreased immune response. Increases in the frequency of infection for individuals with a high level of stressful events in their lives have been well researched by many researchers. It is also well proven that our thinking and ideal mental responses are also diminished by high levels of stress. Stress is not just the negative things that happen to us, but according to researchers Holmes and Rahe, stress is the result of “life events.” I …
When it comes to sociopaths, education is the key
Lovefraud spent the weekend at the Battered Mothers Custody Conference in Albany, New York. Quite frankly, it was depressing. This was a conference of worst-case scenarios. I spoke to a woman whose story sounded like the Clark Rockefeller case, only worse. Her ex-husband was an illegal alien from Germany. He was also a doctor who had a hard time getting licensed because of "missing documents," but eventually did get licensed. Once he got his American residency and license, he dumped the woman and got their 5-year-old daughter in an emergency custody hearing—the woman believes he paid off the judge. The woman knows her daughter is being sexually abused—she screams when anyone touches her. B …
“Emotional blindness” and the sociopath
Editor's note: The following article was submitted by the Lovefraud reader who comments as "Pearl." By Pearl Someone on this blog once mentioned a book by Alice Miller and Andrew Jenkins, and it caught my attention. So now I'm reading The Truth Will Set You Free—Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self. Even though I'm only about halfway through the book, I wanted to share parts of it because it is so important to what a lot of us are working on—forgiving ourselves and trying to understand why this (fraud) happened to us. I know this won't apply or appeal to everyone, but it might help some of you as it has me. Miller's ideas help me understand why I was sus …
Sociopath-proof in 2009
Editor's note: This is the first post by Lovefraud's newest blog author, Kathleen Hawk. She previously posted many thoughtful comments under the screen name "khatalyst." Last year, 2008, was a year in which we faced the cost of sociopathy in our economy. Huge financial firms were destroyed or deeply damaged by their own corporate cultures. Their employees were encouraged to pursue personal gain, without concern about the messes they left behind or the damage they did to other people's lives. The results are loss and suffering, even for people who had nothing to do with these companies. It sounds familiar, doesn't it? Sociopathy taken to a grand scale. But there are people and …
A sociopath will leave you out in the cold every time
The day after Christmas, I got a lesson in respecting the elements. It was about 35°F, not really that cold, but there was quite a wind chill. The kids and I went to the beach to run the dog on the sand at about 3:30 in the afternoon. We got back to the van at about 5 to discover that good old Mom had lost her keys. (Actually, a prior foster dog had chewed a hole in my jacket pocket and the keys fell out.) I ended up calling a taxi, but we waited in the elements for at least an hour total. We were all properly dressed with boots, hats, gloves and heavy jackets. In spite of being prepared, we were chilled to the bone when we finally got home. I said to my daughter, “I can see how easy it i …
A sociopath will leave you out in the cold every timeRead More