How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists

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Our Family Wizard can help you co-parent with a sociopath

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SPONSORED CONTENT The most heartbreaking dramas that sociopaths create are those that involve children. Many sociopathic parents stand up in court proclaiming that they “only want what is best for the children.” They're lying. What they really want is to use the children as clubs to beat their ex-partners into submission. There is no such thing as a simple phone call to find out what little Johnny needs to bring to soccer practice. Every phone call or e-mail is an opportunity for the sociopath to manipulate, denigrate and infuriate the ex, through lies, innuendo and misinformation. For the parent trying to protect the children, it's exhausting. A few months ago, Lovefraud published a …

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Why we fall for the con

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All of us who have been conned by sociopaths ask ourselves, why did I fall for it? How could I have been so stupid to trust him (or her)? Well, it turns out that there's a chemical reason—oxytocin. According to an article on Psychologytoday.com: Social interactions engage a powerful brain circuit that releases the neurochemical oxytocin when we are trusted and induces a desire to reciprocate the trust we have been shown—even with strangers. Read How to run a con, on Psychologytoday.com. Link submitted by a Lovefraud reader. …

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Could the Chelsea King murder have been prevented?

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Last week, the body of Chelsea King, a 17-year-old high school student from Poway, California, near San Diego, was discovered in a shallow grave. She went for a run in a park on February 25, 2010, and never returned. John Albert Gardner III, of nearby Lake Elsinore, was charged with her murder and rape, or attempted rape. Gardner was a convicted sex offender. In May 2000, he pleaded guilty to molesting a 13-year-old girl. In that case, he was a month shy of his 21st birthday. The victim knew Gardner—they had been neighbors. She and a friend were waiting for a school bus when Gardner drove up and offered them a ride. He then lured the victim to his mother's townhouse to watch a m …

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RESOURCE PERSPECTIVES: Taking the sociopath to the mat

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Editor's Note: Resource Perspectives features articles written by members of Lovefraud's Professional Resources Guide. Questions to ask yourself when you want to go after a sociopath By Fred Dunsing, Attorney at Law Fred Dunsing profile in the Lovefraud Professional Resources Guide I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist or a counselor. I'm a lawyer. Therefore, I'm wholly unqualified to write about sociopaths and the specifics of their mental health disorder. I do, however, understand the definition of sociopath and generally understand what constitutes sociopathic behavior. I have seen many of these individuals during my years in practice as a family law attorney, and I can …

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The sociopath’s pseudo insightfulness and sensitivity

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Sociopaths who posture as insightful and self-aware are some of the most dangerous predators around. When I use the terms pseudo insightful and pseudo sensitive, I'm referring to the sociopath's manipulative efforts to seem some combination of vulnerable, self-aware, sensitive and compassionate. For some sociopaths this deception is conscious, while for others it is so seamlessly woven into their modus operandi as to feel (for them), at least in the moment, almost authentic. Even the normal individual, low in sociopathic traits, may struggle to distinguish his deception from authenticity when finding himself “performing” in a mode in which he feels masterfully confident and com …

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Last chance to fill out the sociopath survey

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If you haven't yet completed the Lovefraud survey about your experience with a sociopath, do it now. The survey will close the evening of Wednesday, March 3, 2010. Lovefraud will submit the results to the American Psychiatric Association. The association is preparing the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5), which mental health professionals use to diagnose mental conditions. It includes a new definition of sociopaths/psychopaths. Our survey asks you to rate how well the definition matches what you experienced in your involvement with a disordered person. We are seeking input from both men and women. Hundreds of Lovefraud readers have …

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Staggering statistics about domestic violence

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Reading the newspaper on Saturday, two terrible articles jumped off the page. A New Jersey man accused of abandoning his infant daughter at a gas station in Delaware has been charged with killing the toddler's mother, whose burning body was found in an upstate New York park. Read more. A man apparently infatuated with a special-education teacher shot and killed her as she walked into her elementary school Friday, shortly before students began arriving. Read more. These were stories of domestic violence with the worst possible endings. Dr. Liane Leedom has written previously on Lovefraud that, “studies of male perpetrators of domestic violence reveal that 50% are sociopaths and a …

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Practice makes perfect

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By Ox Drover I remember when I first learned to ride a bicycle. Most of us remember the day we first took off the training wheels, because generally, we fell down a few times before we got it right and were pretty safe from falling. It took practice. I can't remember many days before I was about twelve that I didn't have at least one band-aid on at least one knee. Even with the continual road rash I usually had on my knees and elbows, it never even occurred to me to not keep on practicing or to give up on learning to ride the “big kid's bike.” The past couple of months have been rather stressful for me with some deadlines I was facing, some big decisions I had to make, and the usual anx …

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ASK DR. LEEDOM: What is dissociation?

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A reader asked the following question this week: Recently, I've started doing more research into sociopaths and have run into a condition with which I'm unfamiliar: dissociation. Do you know if sociopaths/psychopaths have been considered to have this disorder, or if it is part of what makes them who they are? The term dissociation has two distinct meanings in psychology. These two uses of the same word do not necessarily reflect a similar process operating in each. The first kind of dissociation is a response to stress, and peritraumatic dissociation (dissociation during a traumatic event) appears to be a risk factor for stress-related illness. Symptoms of this kind of dissociation …

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How Sociopaths Think

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When reflecting on the sociopath's style, I often find myself thinking metaphorically. For instance, in an early LoveFraud article (Sociopaths' Cat and Mouse Game) I explored the mind of the sociopath via the metaphor of the cat toying with the mouse. In this article, I probe a different metaphor: the small child abusing the captured insect. But a caveat's in order: Just as I wasn't impugning cats as literally sociopathic in my earlier piece, I'm not suggesting here that all children, including bug torturers, are developing sociopaths (anymore than in my last LoveFraud article I was suggesting that all practical jokers are sociopaths). On the other hand, I am suggesting that there ar …

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