By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired) What is the one characteristic that we must have, and must demand in those with whom we are associated? My thought is that it is reliability. Most virtues exist on a “sliding scale.” These vary from “all the way” excellence to total ineptitude. Most folks are some where in the middle and that is pretty acceptable. The one virtue, however, that is all or nothing is reliability. You are either reliable or you are not. It is sort of like dead or pregnant either you is or you ain't. There is no middle ground. If I employed someone, I would be willing to put up with just about any deficiencies, but not with unreliability. The unreliable person is bound to …
Schizophrenia and mass killing
Paul Steinberg, a psychiatrist in private practice, explains schizophrenia and how it may have caused Adam Lanza to open fire in the Newtown, Connecticut school. An interesting point in the article is his discussion of the Goldwater Rule, an ethical standard of the American Psychiatric Association that prohibits members from discussing people they haven't examined. Consequently, it prohibits the people who may understand what happened from explaining it. Our failed approach to schizophrenia, on NYTimes.com. Link supplied by a Lovefraud reader. …
Triggered
I used to wonder exactly what it was that people were talking about when they said that an event or comment triggered them. I had a text book understanding, of course, but could not think of an event that personally triggered me, bringing back overwhelming feelings stemming from past abuses. Recently, however, it happened and I experienced something I never had before. Honestly, I am surprised it took as long as it did. It was not a proud moment, as retrospectively, I can now think of about five different ways that I could have better handled the situation. At the same time, I wouldn't really have changed it because of what it taught me. My reaction was honest, showed me that my prio …
DSM-5 creates new categories of mental illness – and costs
Lovefraud has written about the American Psychiatric Association's new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) in relation to the new guidelines on personality disorders. (Read Disarray in the DSM-5.) But one psychiatrist says the manual will create even bigger problems. New psychiatry manual is a giant step in the wrong direction, on PressofAtlanticCity.com. …
DSM-5 creates new categories of mental illness – and costsRead More
Peace at Christmas
Another Christmas is here. Again. Already. Some galactic entity must have revved up the planetary clock, because Christmases seem to be coming faster and faster. Even though we didn't all evaporate on December 21, 2012 with the end of the Mayan calendar, we seem to be hurtling into the future at breakneck speed. I've been dealing with holiday stress, such as running late while making hors d'oeuvres for a family party, and trying to figure out what gifts to buy for my teenage nephews. But that's easy stress. I am no longer pining for someone to spend the holidays with—an emotional void that made me vulnerable to the sociopath. And I am no longer going to family parties and pretending t …
LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: Are cats sociopaths?
Editor's note: Lovefraud received the following from the Lovefraud reader who posts as NewLife43. I not only read Lovefraud to help me with the backlash from my 8-year relationship with my spath. I also read an interesting blog written by and for sociopaths, answering some of their questions, presenting criteria about what makes a sociopath what s/he is. It's very enlightening, particularly when I am sorely missing my ex-spath and need to remind myself why we are no longer together. Since it's on the Internet, the spaths are surprisingly honest. Sometimes, the posts can be very chilling, when they are honestly posting about the way they think, causing a shiver to run down my spine that I e …
Exercises for becoming detached from the sociopath
Before explaining the exercises in depth, let me explain what we have to get detachment from with the sociopath, in particular when s/he triggers “our inner victim.” We all have deeply ingrained reactions from childhood that are triggered in any committed intimate relationship. If you, for instance, had a good looking older sibling who did everything right and excelled in school, but you didn't, you might have an issue with not feeling “good enough” that gets triggered in your current relationship. It might come up in jealousy, or you may be waiting for your partner to wake up and realize he or she is with no prize and leave you. Perhaps you grew up in a home in which you were always correct …
The mind of the mass killer
Take someone who is mentally ill/unhinged, add rage, and paranoia, then weaponize this individual, and you've got a murderer/mass murderer on your hands. The “rage + paranoia” is a highly incendiary combination. In these mass murders it strikes me that "paranoia" is almost surely present and necessary—the murderous individual believes that it's “him against a world” that has "screwed him over," the world (and everyone in it) becoming a global, generalized “object” and "target" of his violent contempt and rage. His is a worldview in which he is the “outsider” and everyone else is "on the inside;” in his paranoia, immaturity and narcissism, he has divided the world into these rigid categori …
What was Adam Lanza’s motive?
By Mary Ann Glynn, LCSW If we have recovered enough from past mass killings and felt safe once more, here we are again. An even more heinous massacre, families and a community destroyed for years, even generations to come. Sweet innocent children shot down in a bloody horror, and the adults who tried to protect them. Families who may never recover fully from the devastation of trauma and loss. Generations in Newtown to come that will resonate with it. A community that will perhaps never experience the magic of Christmas again. The children left who now have gone from a safe secure existence to a reality in which terrifying things are not in a distant fairy tale, they are real in whose …
Mother of a mentally ill son describes what she faces every day
Perhaps, in the aftermath of the terrible tragedy in Connecticut, people will finally start talking seriously about how to cope with the mentally disturbed. Liza Long, mother of 13-year-old boy who sometimes rages out of control, tells her story. 'I am Adam Lanza's mother': A mom's perspective on the mental illness conversation in America, on HuffingtonPost.com. Dr. Liane Leedom recommended this story for Lovefraud readers. …
Mother of a mentally ill son describes what she faces every dayRead More