How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists

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LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: Before marriage, do your homework

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Editor's note: The following article was received by the Lovefraud reader who posts as "Adelade." It's been over a year since I discovered that the man that I married had been living a double-life before we ever even met. My vulnerabilities were the beacon that he gravitated towards: exiting an abusive marriage, loving to my children, spiritually "grounded," artistic and creative, and all of these attributes and vulnerabilities in addition to a "socially connected" family with a colorful history were exploitable and desirable. I believed his words and assertions because I wanted to. I "needed" to feel validated and valued because I couldn't provide this to myself, on my own. I've …

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I Don’t Want to Live That Life

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By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired) Recently I found a book in a “junk book store” that caught my eye. Its title was I Don't Want to Live This Life, and it was written by Deborah Spungen. The book is about her family trying to raise a “difficult child,” her first daughter, Nancy. Nancy was murdered by her boyfriend, a “rock star” named Sid Vicious, in the 1970s. Nancy's birth was problematic with the cord around her neck, and a rare blood disorder caused her to need a total blood exchange transfusion immediately after birth. From the day that she was brought home from the hospital, she screamed and fought her caregivers. By the time she was 14 she was out of control. By the time she was 1 …

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The sociopath’s “loyalty” deficiency

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(This article is copyrighted (c) 2012 by Steve Becker, LCSW.  The use of male gender pronouns is strictly for convenience's sake and not to suggest that females aren't capable of the behaviors and attitudes discussed.)  “Loyalty” and “the sociopath” are incompatible terms. We've discussed many traits of the exploitive personality, but let's not minimize a very vital one: deficient loyalty. Clearly,  deficient loyalty is a sociopathic characteristic. A deficiency of loyalty can be disguised very well by clever, self-serving rationalizations. But you will not find the case of a true sociopath about whom you will ever be able to say: he (or she) was really, through and through, truly loyal. L …

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Just a dream: the subconscious doesn’t forget

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One night last week, I awoke from a very real dream.  It was not horrible or frightening.  In fact, it was quite ordinary.  It was a very accurate depiction of the everyday exchanges that commonly occurred in what was once my life.  As dreams go, things were slightly out of place and somewhat strange, but I understood. In the dream, it was a crisp October evening.  I was dressed in jeans and a sweater.  He was dressed in navy blue dress pants and a white shirt.  The accoutrements were missing from the shirt, as they often were in reality.  Why we were together, as he came from work, I have no idea. I was younger in the dream, the age I was the day we met, but he was his current age.  We …

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Disarray in the DSM-5

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The American Psychiatric Association is in the process of updating its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the DSM-5. This is the "bible" used by psychiatrists and other mental health professionals to diagnosis psychiatric conditions, including antisocial personality disorder. Two members of the committee working on personality disorders have resigned, stating that the proposal displays a "stunning disregard for evidence." Dr. Liane Leedom and I had issues with how the first draft described antisocial personality disorder, which was why we conducted a Lovefraud survey back in 2010. Based on the survey results, we submitted Lovefraud's  comment about sociopaths for the DSM-5. The d …

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Society Blames the Victim Instead of the Psychopath – I’m Sick of It!

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I am not sure why I am still shocked when people choose to blame the psychopath's victim.  I have heard that this is normal from others who have suffered from an encounter with psychopath, but I still get a bit shocked each time it happens to me.  From friends, to family, to the courts, to complete strangers — people seem to want to find something wrong with me to somehow better explain to themselves how I ended up being fooled by my psychopath ex.  It has been happening so long that sometimes I find myself wondering there is something wrong with me that made me ignore the red flags and believe the completely fantastic story he was telling me. The Judgements: This week alone, I have exp …

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The overdiagnosis of sociopaths

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(The following article is copyrighted © 2012 by Steve Becker, LCSW. My use of male gender pronouns is strictly for convenience's sake and not to suggest that females aren't capable of the attitudes and behaviors discussed.) Let's be honest. The term “sociopath” has become so commonplace, a very good thing (reflecting the increasingly spacious public awareness of exploiters), that it sometimes seems that pretty much every jerk we confront we're tempted to call a “sociopath.” Now, there's way more “upside” to this than “downside.” And I'd say this applies to terms like “abusive” as well. And thank goodness the concept of “abuse” is now much more widely understood—it's wider public reach, al …

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Taking the first step towards healing the trauma

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The young woman buried her head into my shoulder and sobbed, right in the middle of the exhibit hall. Last weekend, my husband, Terry Kelly, and I attended a conference for the Association for the Promotion of Campus Activities. We're reaching out to colleges, hoping to bring Love Fraud and How to Avoid It to students. It's such an important message, as the reaction of the young lady proved. At the age of 23, she had already suffered greatly because of a sociopath. She met the guy when she was 17, and later they lived together. The young lady had an opportunity to work at a well-paying job—earning $60,000 a year—except that the guy didn't want her to work. He didn't want her to be in …

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People with bad behavior in the news

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By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired) I recently read this article in the New York Times about Lance Armstrong. Armstrong is a world famous cyclist and well known “do-gooder” with his “Live Strong” website, which purports to tell others how to “Live Well and Live Strong.” Armstrong is a survivor of cancer. Testicular cancer is a “young man's” disease and one that I sought to teach my college-aged patients about when I worked as a director of student health. I also have a close friend who is now a middle-aged man who is also a survivor of testicular cancer. It is a horrible disease. Details of doping scheme paint Armstrong as leader It has been rumored for years that Armstrong was “doping …

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Sociopathic tendencies or full-blown sociopath?

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(The article below is copyrighted © 2012 by Steve Becker, LCSW. My use of male gender pronouns is for convenience's sake and not meant to imply that females aren't capable of exhibiting the attitudes and behaviors discussed.) What does it mean to say that someone has sociopathic tendencies, versus full-blown sociopathy, and does the difference even matter? The simple answer is that someone with sociopathic tendencies will exhibit sociopathic behaviors and attitudes sometimes, while elsewhere he may seem to possess (and, in fact, may possess) a somewhat genuine (if limited and unreliable) capacity and desire to respect others. In contrast, the full-blown sociopath's respect for others, …

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