How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists

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What we should do when sociopaths experience no consequences

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Lovefraud recently received the following email from a reader who posts as "Salvation2012." Thank you for helping me decide when I needed to cut my losses during my divorce. I did cut my "losses," yet the total I received tallied up to a number similar, just not in all cash. Because I settled in his eyes, he told everyone I was just proving how I was the guilty one and didn't want to risk being exposed. To the end he will deny permanently injuring me and bleeding me of money, and cheating on me (which I only later found out about the extent). My recent concern is watching him seemingly have no consequences. I'm not a vengeful person, so this is a distressing area for me, but I just …

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LETTER TO LOVEFRAUD: I have no further use to him and I am being disposed of

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Editor's note: The following letter was written by a woman who posts as "Sam." And to answer her question at the end, it sounds like she's been involved with a series of sociopaths. It all started for me around 11 years ago when I first met what I thought was "the love of my life" and the only man I would ever consider settling down with—up until only months ago. I was only a young 16-year-old girl and he was 21 when we first started seeing each other. I had a rather unstable childhood where I witnessed domestic violence from a very young age, and I left home before my 15th birthday. I did not have the best parental guidance. After leaving home I was living from house to house. I had n …

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Oxytocin, trust and why we fall for psychopaths

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  Invariably, once we realize we've been conned by a psychopath, this person has lied to us from the very beginning, and we fell for all of it, we ask why? Why did we believe? Why did we trust? The short answer is that we did what we, as social animals, are biologically designed to do. Human beings have evolved over millennia to live in community, and trust is the glue that holds us together. I just finished reading The Moral Molecule the source of love and prosperity, by Paul J. Zak. Zak spent 10 years researching a brain chemical called oxytocin and its role in human behavior. He says oxytocin inspires trust; trust is connected to morality; and morality is connected to the …

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CDC says 1 in 5 U.S. kids have a mental health disorder

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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) releases a report stating that about 20 percent of children between the ages of 3 and 17 are living with mental health disorders. CDC finds mental health woes in one in five U.S. kids, on CBSNews.com. Mental health surveillance among children United States, 2005 - 2011, on CDC.gov.   …

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NIMH v DSM-5: Mental health professionals continue to disagree

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The bigwigs of mental health research have slammed the bigwigs of psychiatry, which will probably mean more confusion for the rest of us. In 10 days, on May 27, 2013, the American Psychiatric Association's new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental  Disorders 5th Edition, or DSM-5, will be published. This is the massive reference book that psychiatrists and therapists use in order to diagnose mental illness. But a few weeks ago, the head of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which is the world's largest funding agency for research into mental health, trashed the DSM-5. More precisely, Thomas R. Insel, M.D., director of NIMH, said the government agency would no longer fund …

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“White hats, black hats,” and the dissenting opinion

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Many of us here have had experiences in court where we were less than satisfied with the outcomes.  I feel mainly fortunate in that respect.  For the most part, those I dealt with understood enough about personality disorders to act accordingly. However, in one case I am familiar with, that clarity was somewhat lacking.  In the end, things worked out fine because the judge followed the laws of the land explicitly.  Nonetheless, it is worth mentioning because, in my opinion, his attitude and belief system could have been of serious concern had different issues (in the same court) been at stake.  As long as there are those who believe as he does, and he is not unique in this way, justice may no …

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LETTER TO LOVEFRAUD: Signs of poor character

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Editor's note: The following letter was written by a Lovefraud reader whom we'll call "Gwendolyn." I was married to a sociopath and addict for four years. He did the love bombing thing with me and pushed for moving in and marriage very early, within the first few months. I was afraid of the consequences of refusing him, so I foolishly went along and moved into his house then married him. I only lived with him for two and a half years. It was a twisted game of lies, addiction and emotional abuse. It was a long and damaging period of time. At first it was intoxicating. He said we were destined for each other, that I was "the one," and that he couldn't stand to be apart from me so I needed me …

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Confessions of a Sociopath – a book I don’t want to buy or read

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Today a new book went on sale called, Confessions of a Sociopath: A life spent hiding in plain sight. The author is a woman writing under the pseudonym of M.E. Thomas. Although she doesn't want people to know her real name gee, I wonder why? Thomas claims that she is a successful lawyer and a Mormon Sunday school teacher. Oh, and she enjoys ruining people's lives. Thomas runs a website written by sociopaths, for sociopaths. I don't want to mention the name of it, because I don't want to give it any publicity. (If you really want to know, send me an email.) On this website, people who say they are sociopaths swap stories about how they get over on the rest of us stupid sheep who are burdened …

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To escape domestic violence, American mother sought asylum in the Netherlands

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An extraordinary documentary by Garland Waller, called No Way Out But One, told the story of Holly Collins, an American woman who fled the United States due to domestic violence and sought asylum in the Netherlands. The video above is a shortened version  13 minutes. The full film was screened at the Battered Mothers Custody Conference which took place last weekend in Washington, D.C. Holly and her two oldest children were beaten by Collins' ex-husband. A court in Minnesota acknowledged that they were abused. But the judge said that Holly Collins was crazy because of the abuse and the children were safer with their father. Holly was granted only supervised visitation. The children were afr …

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Heartbreak and heroism in dealing with child abuse

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Damon Moelter made the above video back in 2010, when he was 13. Last Friday, at age 16, Damon stood at the lectern and stated that he escaped abuse not because he was protected by the family court system, nor because he beat the system. He escaped because he found a way around it. How? Two weeks ago, Damon got married. Once he was married, he was emancipated, and his father could no longer demand custody. As I listened to this young man speak at the Battered Mothers Custody Conference, which took place last Friday and Saturday at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., I was on the verge of tears as were the 100 or so women (and a few men) in the audience. …

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