// by Donna Andersen// 6 Comments
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
// by Donna Andersen// 95 Comments
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 …
// by Lovefraud Reader// 102 Comments
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 …
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 …
// by Steve Becker, LCSW// 40 Comments
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 …
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 …
// by Donna Andersen// 69 Comments
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
// by Donna Andersen// 291 Comments
I recently heard from yet another Lovefraud reader who realizes that she's been in a relationship with a sociopath. She's in the phase of trying to wrap her brain around about what these people are, and sent me the following email: What happens to these people? These sociopaths? How do they end up in life? Do they just go from victim to victim? Have any of them ever realized the affliction of which they suffer? Do they ever realize they are not capable of love? If they are not capable of love, they will never be happy, right? So...you could present “Red Flags of Love Fraud” to a sociopath and they would not see themselves in it, correct? Do they ever see the error of their ways? The …
// by Liane Leedom, M.D.// 54 Comments
President Bush designated the 1990s as the Decade of the Brain: "to enhance public awareness of the benefits to be derived from brain research" through "appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities." Thirteen years after the decade of the brain, the public is now aware that brain function is impaired in mental illness (including psychopathy) and addiction. Research has uncovered the brain regions involved in mental illnesses (including psychopathy) and addiction and the mechanism of action of many helpful medications. [youtube_sc url=http://youtu.be/zqqsxoFsFtw] Now this may still be difficult for some people to comprehend but, I say categorically that, "a 20 year old male who …
Connecticut shooting: It is time for “people control”Read More
// by Linda Hartoonian Almas// 15 Comments
While preparing for the holiday season, my children and I like to play Christmas movies as we add our decorative touches throughout the house. This year, I caught a portion of the television movie Snow as we worked. Although I was not paying close attention, the premise is that Santa goes to California to rescue one of his reindeer that somehow ends up in a local zoo. This particular reindeer, Buddy, was not expected to ever be able to fly. Of course, as the movie's climax began, I stopped arranging the garland and candles on the fireplace and sat to watch. Naturally, I hoped that Buddy the reindeer would triumph. As Christmas movies go, he learned to fly just in time to escape the "b …
