Lovefraud Blog

Emotional and psychological abusers: Coping with chaos and losing your balance

March 5, 2009 // by Donna Andersen// 300 Comments

By AlohaTraveler I work at a children's shelter. One day last summer, we were playing dodge ball with the children and it made me think about the Bad Man. When we play dodge ball, we divide the teams children against counselors. To play the game, we divide the basketball court in half with the mid line being the divide between territories and we use six balls. When the referee blows the whistle to start the game, balls begin flying in every direction, someone is “OUT!” and the heated arguments ensue (from the children of course, we adults keep our heads) about the rules and who threw what? Was their foot over the line? Was it before or after “TIME OUT” was called? Which player was “out” firs …

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After the sociopath: How do we heal? Part 5-Getting Angry

March 2, 2009 // by Kathleen Hawk// 1,437 Comments

Healing from an emotional trauma or extended traumatic experience is a like a long, intimate dance with reality. Or perhaps a three-act ballet. We are on the stage of our own minds, surrounded by the props of our lives, dancing to the music of our emotions. Our memories flash on the backdrop or float around like ribbons in the air. Down below the stage, in the orchestra pit, a chorus puts words to the feelings and gives us advice drawn from our parents' rules, our church's rules, all the rules from the movies and books and conversations that have ever colored our thinking. And our job is to dance our way through the acts. The first act is named “Magic Thinking.” We stumble onto the sta …

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Sociopaths and opiate addiction

February 28, 2009 // by Liane Leedom, M.D.// 63 Comments

Heroin and oxycontin belong to a class of drugs called opiates. Lovefraud recently received a letter from a reader that raised the issue of heroin addiction in sociopaths: For nearly two years after my relationship with him ended, I was on the web researching heroin addiction because I assumed this was where all of his abusive behavior came from, but I stumbled upon information on sociopaths, and realized that he fits every trait”¦I know substance abuse behavior can mimic sociopathic behavior, but it is clear that the man I was in a relationship with is a sociopath, and was able to use his addiction as an explanation and excuse to further manipulate the many people who offered help to him”¦ …

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The Borderland of Narcissism and Sociopathy

February 26, 2009 // by Steve Becker, LCSW// 226 Comments

In a prior post, I discussed some differences between the narcissist and sociopath, a focus I'd like to continue in this post. For convenience's sake, I'm going to use “he” and “him” throughout, although we can agree that “she” and “her” could easily be substituted. The narcissist, if I were to boil his style down to one sentence, is someone who demands that his sense of self (and self-importance) be propped-up on a continual basis. Without this support—in the form of validation, recognition, and experiences of idealization—the narcissist feels depleted, empty, depressed. The narcissist struggles to define himself independently and sustainedly as significant and worthwhile. The fragilit …

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Love, sex, your brain and sociopaths

February 23, 2009 // by Donna Andersen// 500 Comments

Ever since the beginning of recorded history, humans have been trying to understand and explain the mysteries of love and sex. Over the past few decades, scientists started using specialized equipment to measure physical arousal by attaching devices to private parts. More recently, they've been observing the most important romantic organ in the human body—the brain. Forbes wrote about the research of Andreas Bartels, Ph.D., at the Imperial College of London. Bartels used a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, which can capture images of brain activity, to pinpoint the areas of the brain that are activated by love. Bartles did a study of 17 people who were madly in l …

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RESOURCE PERSPECTIVES: Online predators aren’t who they say they are

February 20, 2009 // by Lovefraud Reader// 23 Comments

Editor's Note: Lovefraud's Resource Perspectives features articles written by members of Lovefraud's Professional Resources Guide. They Aren't Who They Say They Are By Skipp Porteous, Sherlock Investigations Skipp Porteus profile in the Lovefraud Professional Resources Guide People contact Sherlock Investigations every week that have been taken by someone they met online. To make matters worse, the perpetrators die off before the benefactors even realize that they've been had. We've all heard of the Nigerian scams. (It's amazing how many people still fall for them.) They contact you by email claiming to be the wife, husband, son, or daughter of someone who had control of a lot …

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A guidebook for recovering from the devastation of a sociopath

February 16, 2009 // by Donna Andersen

I clearly remember the shock of realizing that everything my ex-husband, James Montgomery, had ever told me was a lie. I remember the devastation of discovering the truth: His entire purpose in marrying me was to get a free place to live, take advantage of my good reputation and defraud me of my assets. All the promises, all the assurances, were literally sweet nothings. They sounded good, and meant absolutely nothing. I remember being paralyzed by my new truth. How could I possibly plan a recovery for my life, when every day I was falling apart? Worse, no one seemed to have an explanation for what happened, or advice on how to handle it. It's been 10 years since I left my ex-husband. …

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After the sociopath: How do we heal? Part 4-Bargaining

February 15, 2009 // by Kathleen Hawk// 239 Comments

If there is a single category of memories that still can make me squirm, it is the remembrance of what I did to make my sociopath love me. And what I did simply to keep him from hurting me. And what I did to try to understand the things I must have done wrong, because he didn't love me. And all the ways I pretzel-twisted my brain to excuse him for his lies, deception, disrespect and greed. The topic of this article is the next phase of healing from a sociopathic relationship: bargaining. We are in the process of healing from the moment we sustain any emotional trauma. Relationships with sociopaths typically involve many traumatic events, both large and small. Some of these events are the …

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Why I say “Bad Man”

February 15, 2009 // by Donna Andersen// 79 Comments

By AlohaTraveler It took me a long time to clearly define that what the Bad Man was doing to me was... bad. Plain and simple, it was bad for me. Never mind if he was working through pain, never mind if he had suffered many losses or had an unfortunate childhood. Never mind. He's a grown man. He was treating me in a way that I can only define as very bad for me no matter what his issues were. Really, it was unacceptable but at the time, I did not have clear boundaries as to what kind of treatment I would accept for myself before I would draw a line in the sand and say, “No more!” There were lots of excuses he made up and to be honest, there were lots of excuses I made up to try to exp …

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The “feel” of a sociopath

February 12, 2009 // by Steve Becker, LCSW// 319 Comments

I recently had clinical contact with a client who left me with the unusually strong, immediate impression of “schemer,” “slick,” “full of crap.” He was instantly, aggressively ingratiating—less, I felt, from insecurity, as from ulterior motives, as if he were angling, at the outset, for an edge. I had the uncomfortable feeling I get around intrusive salesmen who leave you feeling like an “object” from whom to extract a sale and commission. I should mention that he was glib. Glibness is a trait often associated with certain sociopaths. My client was so glib, as a matter of fact, that for the first time in a long while the word “glib” actually popped into my head. When I say “glib,” I d …

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Donna Andersen on Here’s the absolutely best way to protect yourself from sociopaths: “Truthmatters – excellent, excellent points. Even when we notice our instincts warning us, the sociopaths often try to convince us…”
truthmatters on Here’s the absolutely best way to protect yourself from sociopaths: “I would like to add a caution to all that ample disordered personalities know that your intuition will kick off…”
Donna Andersen on After the sociopath, proud of my healing: “Eleanor – Congratulations to you and all survivors. And thank you so much for your kind words. You, too, have…”
sept4 on Am I a sociopath magnet?: “Not me, I am one and done! My sociopath ex husband wrecked my life and I have never wanted to…”
sept4 on My psychopathic ex-husband is dead, and his pedophile brother is in prison: “Thank you Donna for sharing. My sociopath ex husband is a convicted criminal and continued his criminal activity after a…”