How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists

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BOOK REVIEW: Trading Places, a true story of overcoming abuse

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People who have not been entangled in abusive relationships often ask, “Why doesn't she just leave?” By reading Trading Places, by Natalie Hutchison and Mary Turner Thomson, you begin to understand. Natalie Hutchison was reproached as a child, ignored by her first husband, then physically abused by her second husband. Finally, she decided enough was enough. Natalie escaped the abuse, went back to work, started a business, and in 2006 won the Barclays Bank Trading Places award, given to individuals who overcome tremendous personal adversity to turn their lives around. Natalie had health problems as an adolescent, and she tells how her parents reacted to her medical issues.You see the see …

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Mandatory sociopathy/psychopathy education for judges and DAs

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I am late getting my blog done this week partly because I have been helping a crime victim get justice. I hope at some point to be able to share the entire story with you but for today I want to share part of it and not yet name the offender. The offender is in prison for kidnapping and physically assaulting (torturing) a child. The victim's mother provided me an official copy of the sentencing transcript where the defendant plead guilty to those crimes. He was sentenced to 3-12 years in prison. It is unclear to all of us exactly how it is determined if the defendant serves 3 years or 12 years or something in between. The sentence of 3-12 years was handed down after the defendant and his …

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The Narcissiopath

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What do you call someone you've been describing alternately as a narcissist and sociopath? Someone for whom neither diagnosis alone quite suffices as a complete description of the individual, but rather in whom both disorders seem as if wrapped up in one menacing individual? Pardoning my grandiosity for daring to expand the already crowded psychiatric nomeclature, I propose to call these hybrid personalities“narcissiopaths.” While I don't expect the DSM folks to take me very seriously (or anyone else for that matter), I'm thinking (unfacetiously) that there's a case to be made here. The narcissiopath, as I envision him (using “him” for convenience's sake) will meet many of the essenti …

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Outrageous: Judge gives ex-Senator Vincent J. Fumo light sentence

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Vincent J. Fumo, a former Pennsylvania senator found guilty by a jury of all 137 counts against him, could have been sentenced to 21 to 27 years. Yesterday, the federal judge in the case, Ronald L. Buckwalter, gave him four years and seven months. Fumo defrauded the Pennsylvania State Senate of more than $1 million. He defrauded the charity he founded, Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods, of more than $1 million. He defrauded the Independent Seaport Museum of more than $100,000. He used Senate employees to clean his house and manage home improvements in his 33-room mansion. Then, when the authorities started sniffing around, he obstructed justice by destroying records and e-mail. I …

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When the pain caused by a sociopath doesn’t stop

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Almost three years ago, Lovefraud published the story of a man from the UK whom I called Tom. Tom's wife left him for another man, took their children, had him arrested on false charges nine times and wiped him out financially. Here is the original story: UK man says sociopath stole his life Now, three years later, Tom still hasn't seen his children. His ex-wife and her new husband, who also sounds like a sociopath, have removed the children from the UK. They live in France, at a small town near the Swiss border. “My heart bleeds every minute for the loss,” he writes. “It is a living bereavement and a nightmare from which I may never awake.” I asked Tom if he was taking care of himself. H …

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Spotting the Covert Psychopath “In the Wild”

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By Ox Drover Something occurred recently that set my mind to thinking. My best friend who lives another state came to visit me for a couple of weeks. This friend has known me about 30 years, so has known both of my biological sons, including the psychopathic one, since they were kids. She has “been there” for me through all the trauma, the disappointments and the pain. She was there for me when my husband died in the aircraft crash and my adopted son was burned. She was there for me and for my oldest son when his wife tried to kill him. So she has seen many of the psychopaths I have dealt with “up close and personal” and she has seen the toxic enabling my mother has done and is doing with …

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Don’t blame victims, but do hold them accountable

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This week events in my life have and people I encountered got me thinking about the blaming of victims. Coincidentally, I discovered this quote from Attorney Wendy Murphy. She wrote this in a comment answering others who commented on her blog: It doesn't matter if Sandra Boss was a 'gold-digger' anymore than it matters that the mother of Michael Jackson's latest victim 'consented' to her child being allowed to sleep at Jackson's home. It's equally wrong to rape a child - even if the victim makes it easier on the criminal to commit the crime because she's ill, or dumb, or uneducated, etc. There's no such thing as a criminal being 'partly guilty'. There's only guilty - or not guilty. …

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BOOK REVIEW: The Betrayal Bond (redux)

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In a post written more than two years ago, Dr. Liane Leedom recommended The Betrayal Bond—Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships to Lovefraud readers. In fact, quite a few of you have been discussing the book in your comments. I finally finished the book, and I strongly agree: The Betrayal Bond, by Patrick J. Carnes, Ph.D., is must reading for anyone who is having difficulty leaving, or recovering from, a relationship with a sociopath. A betrayal bond, Dr. Carnes explains, is a highly addictive attachment to people who have hurt you. He lists 14 signs that a betrayal bond may be present in your life. Some of them are issues that I've frequently seen expressed on Lovefraud: When e …

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After the sociopath: How do we heal? Part 13 – Happy Emotional Independence Day

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Happy Independence Day weekend. It is a lucky coincidence that this is our topic, because emotional freedom is truly about personal revolution. It is an end to collaboration with and submission to abuse. It is an end to the emotional slavery of feeling responsible for other people's feelings and other things that are beyond our control. Emotional freedom is something that might be difficult to imagine when we are in the first stages of healing — especially if it's the first time we've ever processed an abuse-related trauma all the way through to the end. At least once, we need to go through all the stages to take a good look at patterns of denial or bargaining that made us vulnerable to a …

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Enabling a sociopath is unpatriotic

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Sociopaths/psychopaths commit a disproportionate amount of both violent and non-violent crime in all Western countries. Today is July 4th or American Independence Day, so I am going to take this opportunity to ask that friends and family members of sociopaths stop enabling them. According to Webster's Online Dictionary the word enable means: 1 a: to provide with the means or opportunity b: to make possible, practical, or easy c: to cause to operate In her book A Dance With the Devil, (which I highly recommend) Barbara Bentley gives many poignant examples of enabling as she describes how her psychopathic husband accomplished his antisocial goals. The most shocking of many examples is …

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