How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists

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RESOURCE PERSPECTIVES: How sociopaths mess with your head

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Editor's note: Resource Perspectives features articles written by members of Lovefraud's Professional Resources Guide. Sarah Strudwick, based in the UK, is author of Dark Souls—Healing and recovering from toxic relationships. She has also created a wonderful animation that describes the antics of a sociopath, called Exposing the Mask of Insanity. View the animation here. Getting your head out of the washing machine By Sarah Strudwick Sarah Strudwick profile in the Lovefraud Professional Resources Guide I often receive emails from people asking me to talk about different subjects. One recent subject was the mind-bogglingly creative ways in which a sociopath will literally mess w …

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Researchers minimize the psychopathy problem

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Here's the headline for the cover story in the September/October issue of Scientific American Mind magazine: Inside the mind of a psychopath Neuroscientists are discovering that some of the most cold-blooded killers aren't bad. They suffer from a brain abnormality that sets them adrift in an emotionless world. The authors of the article are Kent A. Kiehl and Joshua W. Buckholtz. Dr. Kiehl is the researcher who examines the brains of psychopaths in prison using fMRI technology. Lovefraud wrote about him before in Psychopaths, crime and choice. This latest article, Inside the mind of a psychopath, is an excellent overview of the personality disorder. It summarizes the characteristics …

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Sociopaths explain their own words

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Perhaps the hardest thing for those of us targeted by sociopaths to grasp is the extent of their inhumanity. Sociopaths have no empathy. They do not feel connections to other human beings. We are mere pawns in their games. They view the world as predators and prey—they are the predators, everyone else is prey. We ask, “How can this be?” We object, “He said he loved me!” (“She said she loved me!”) We argue, “I said I was leaving and he cried! He begged me to stay! He said he couldn't live without me!” (The female sociopath did too.) Well, let's take a look at what their words really mean. A Lovefraud reader visited Sociopathworld.com. “They had a discussion going on things they …

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“Love Fraud” book earns 5 stars in first independent review

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In the book publishing business, reviews by respected sources are critical. As soon as we had printed copies of Love Fraud — How marriage to a sociopath fulfilled my spiritual plan, we sent it to about a dozen reviewers like Publisher's Weekly, the New York Times Book Review and the Library Journal. The first review is in, from the Midwest Book Review. Founded in 1976, the Midwest Book Review publishes monthly book publications specifically for community and academic librarians, booksellers, and the general reading public. Of the 169 books reviewed in the Small Press Bookwatch for November, 2010, Love Fraud is one of two books listed as a “Reviewer's Choice.” Here's what they wrote …

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Traveling the distance

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By Ox Drover I got to thinking the other day about how our strength and ability to carry an emotional load of “stress” is sort of like a long-distance walk or ride or race. People who travel in various long distance endurance races, or just for their own purposes, have to limit the amount of weight that they carry. Some people who do long distances on foot even cut the handle off their toothbrushes to reduce the load they have to carry by even a fraction of an ounce. If I had to carry a five pound sack of flour to our local post office, which is about three miles away from my farm, up and down several steep hills, I could do it without a great deal of time involved, but would probably l …

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Don’t call it a diet–call it a lifestyle change

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By Ox Drover I slipped into an unhealthy lifestyle after my husband died six years ago. Slowly I let things deteriorate until I had gained a significant amount of weight, about 10 pounds a year. I started to feel bad and wasn't really sure just why, but in the back of my mind I knew I had ignored the “red flags” of that needle on my scale creeping up. I had been in “denial” with, “Oh, it's just a couple of pounds.” Many times I have realized that my life has been “out of whack” just a little bit at a time, that I have been doing unhealthy things that didn't immediately impact my life dramatically, but just a “little bit at a time.” Like a bucket filling up one drop at a time, eventually …

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When Bad People Do Good Things

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Even bad people can sometimes behave well. That seems a strange twist on the idea of “good people behaving badly.” But it's true. Even the skeeviest personality isn't usually spending all day long exploiting everyone who enters his path. Now this doesn't mitigate his skeeviness one wit. But it's also true that sociopaths aren't always exploiting and mistreating others, all day long. They will be taking some time off, in different contexts, from their more unseemly behaviors. And so sometimes, sociopaths can be nice, even very nice; sometimes they may extend themselves to others. Now we can question what motivates them when they are behaving well; probably, very often, their prosocial be …

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LETTER TO LOVEFRAUD: I fear for my granddaughter’s life

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Editor's note: Lovefraud received the following e-mail from a reader whom we'll call “Veronica.” She fears for her granddaughter's life, and it appears that she has reason to. I'm desperate and very afraid. I hope you can help and help quickly. My daughter was married to a man, who by all accounts, appeared to be the most wonderful guy in the world. It wasn't until after she left him that she finally confided in me as to the truth of their relationship and I was horrified. I know he is definitely a sociopath. For 5 years he made her life a living hell. The only reason she stayed with him she said was because it was the only way to protect her daughter. She left him over a year ago, a …

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No shame: Disgraced sociopathic governor repackages himself

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There's a little TV in the corner of my kitchen, and in the morning, as I make breakfast, I usually have it tuned to CNN. Today I was shocked to see Jim McGreevey, former governor of New Jersey, talking about his new involvement, an organization called “Faith in America.” You remember Jimbo.  He was the governor who, after someone threatened to expose his alleged affair with a male staffer, decided to spill the beans himself. On August 12, 2004, with his traumatized wife at his side, McGreevey announced to the world, “I am a gay American.” I don't believe it. McGreevey isn't gay—he's a sociopath. Many sociopaths, if not most of them, are neither gay nor straight—they're sexual opport …

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Sociopaths and My Life as a World Ambassador: ‘My Mother, Myself’

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By The Front Porch Talker My father was a sociopath. He was many other things too. To my mother—and the world—he was an alcoholic and a sex addict. In those days, back in the sixties and seventies, they didn't use the word, "sociopath." Things were more black-and-white: either you were a psychopath, like, say, Richard Speck, the man who killed those nurses back in the day; or, you were an average American. To the world, my father was an average American who, by all appearances, was normal. Well, except for the booze and sex”¦ My mother, on the other hand, while also an alcoholic, just viewed herself as a bundle-of-nerves. And, a victim of my father who, as I found out forty years later, …

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