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 description was since revised, but apparently there are professionals who are still dissatisfied.
If the professionals can’t agree, no wonder the rest of us are confused.
Two who resigend from DSM-5 explain why, on PyschologyToday.com.
one/joy —
oh, YES!!!!!!
Good words hens:’…living in the same cage’. Seems you are no longer on the ‘supply’ list. That’s down to you. Congratulations!
OMG 20 years, someone else is up this early!
i am back to kafka. but not because of the spath. my humour has gotten dark and morbid in the last 2 weeks, and i am quite fine with it. some of the folks around me are having a hard time with it – but that’s mostly because they are having a hard time with my diagnosis.
One of the things that ALWAYS makes me laugh – even last night a few times, is the Graham Norton Show. Irish comic with a BBC talk show. I don’t like talk shows in general, but I watch him on youtube and there are some shows i will watch again and again, because his guest combo/ his quickness always delights me. I couldn’t get to sleep last night, and I put on the latest episode and i went off to sleep because i feel comforted listening to him.
I was thinking about how i may never have kids in my life, if it turns out that my life will be short. And i think i made some peace with that last night. I do not want to carry regrets. I won’t even be a dancer ( lord knows I want it and have tried) but my body won’t let me. I may never get a chance to sing – although i have been trying for the last two years to get into a choir/ have enough money for a teacher ( I am very insecure about my voice). Well, yes….but i have had many many things and lived a pretty interesting and rich life, albeit full of pain. no one gets away without pain.
one/joy,
good morning! 🙂 I am up a bit earlier than usual for a Saturday, but generally I stick to my sleep schedule because sleep is so important to my health. People get angry with me for it because I’m a “party pooper” but I try to go to bed at 9:00 and get up between 5:00 and 5:30, 7 days a week.
I know that during times of stress or when health crises intrude, it can be hard to have good sleep. I hope you are able to get the sleep you need, to stay strong, get through your ordeal, and heal.
I have been insecure about my voice for years, and it kept me from singing solos (I would hide in a choir). But I did finally buy myself some good voice lessons and it helped tremendously. I hope you can do that, too. Or barter for some, if you don’t have the money to pay for lessons.
As for interesting and rich life, I remember distinctly the “dark night of the soul” time when I was contemplating divorcing the spath, standing in my (MY) garden and KNOWING that I was at a crossroads. I could choose to stay, keep my garden, keep the “lifestyle” with whatever price I had to pay…. or I could take a leap towards the unknown, probable financial struggle, give up my garden….. I remember this choice being presented as either the known path, or the more INTERESTING path.
I also remember my dad always saying to me “An Old Chinese Curse (sorry if this is politically incorrect but it is what my dad always said): May You Have An Interesting Life….”
And I thought about it, said goodbye to my garden, and chose the interesting path.
Looking back now, it has been about 14 years, I am certain I made the best decision for myself and the kids.
It’s painful, as you say.
I can see you are thinking about a lot of these types of things. I hope you can have clarity and peace and find the right people to surround yourself with, as you go through this period of morbid humor. You seem very centered and open to experience.
20 years – THANK YOU for ‘You seem very centered and open to experience.’ I am most of the time, some days – like yesterday, were dark days. So today I will keep your above line in mind. That’s THE way I want to go through this.
🙂
20years,
Thank you for speaking so freely and descriptively about your experiences. I totally get it. I can relate to just about each detail you explained.
I have survived trauma in my life and escape from my first love who was abusive and probably spath1. That I likened to losing a limb when I finally gave myself permission to try a life without him and give myself one year on my own for the sake of losing myself in the relationship and finding myself from about a one inch piece of me that was left that I hoped would grow in that year. I was so young and vulnerable when that all occurred, I had taken responsibility for his abuse of me as I did not have YET what you had which was knowledge of who and what you were BEFORE the creep crept in. In that year I grew and started a business and flew basically but broken hearted.
I had always been a high energy free spirit with a brain in my head that I didn’t call upon unless it was necessary. Does that make sense? On one hand that protected me but on another it left me scary vulnerable to spaths and mean people in general. I am sure it has to do with my upbringing and a coping technique.
I remember the 9-11 and I remember when they gave the definition of a terrorist and I too felt similar to what you mention above. “Now you know how I feel” is the very thought I had as they were describing my daughters father who spent her first years harrassing and stalking me in the name of “I want to see my daughter” in typical psycho form! He never even asked about her! Once she answered the phone and it was him, she handed me the phone and said “he says it’s my dad but I don’t believe him”. He didn’t care a bit about her and I hurt for her. I had a physical reaction to single motherhood, business, homeowner and stalker freak dealing with it on my own. I believed time would heal if I lived through it and I did. That was through probably 2003.
Her crazy psycho biohazard got himself incarcerated in 2007 (YIPPEE) and wrote me a letter in 2009 saying he’d been praying for 680 days and God does nothing in half measures and we would be together wholly and completely. WTF??? NO! So 4 mos. later I wrote back after years of no contact saying “you have done nothing to add to dd life except drama, trauma and upset. Just leave us alone”. OH CRAP!!! I will regret responding to that letter forever. Within a short period of time he filed for all rights from his prison cell. I was served by a detective at my door. 3 to 5 motions per week for 4 months which I had to respond to and he had nothing else to do!! Off my life went straight into a ditch of hell while I ran around, became a prisoner of the family court, attempted to protect my daughter, was stunned by the abuse of the legal system. I ate my words above as this was the ultimate drama, trauma and upset. In this guys LIFE he couldn’t get me to be somewhere weekly at his request/demand. This abuser came out of prison in hog heaven! I was being sold as HIM in court and my daughter freaked as I had never told her her father was criminal. She only knew criminals to be bad and she was hurt angry and scared.
I became afraid to drive on the freeways here as I literally would see myself falling in a swan dive off the overpasses!!
I also couldn’t be around happy or normal people. I felt everyone could see in my face something terrible was happening and they didn’t understand. That’s the isolation part of the abuse.
When I gave birth to dd, I experienced 9 deaths starting with my 38 year old secretary having a sudden brain aneurism and ending on my daughters 2nd b-day with my final grandparent dying. Due to all of the stress and stalking I didn’t really mourn them all and I knew it. On 9-11 I mourned all of their deaths at once. It was very strange but it happened is all I can say.
The family court abuse was almost like my last core belief was shattered. All good things left my life, my laughter, music, pictures, exercise, my career, food, loving mother, all of it. I am told how to deal with all this by those who have no clue. I have been called names, treated like a person I have never been, told I just had to throw in the towel and looked at with disdain that I have Idone THIS to my life and lost a business nobody acted like was real in the first place. The demand for a plan from the people who should know I had no control of my life drove me CRAZY. It’s been awful. I have tried to explain, defend, show, read, educate what is happening to those I thought would care but nobody really does as it is NOT their problem. I watched my daughter who helped to keep me going in the direction I no longer knew if was best or what. I researched and learned and became a voice for others while getting my own story out there and it worked in a way as I didn’t have the money to fight this like I wanted to and I wasn’t going to borrow it except from a bank. I lost $250,000 in assets during this time from the economy and the court case. I couldn’t borrow money from the bank as all assets were gone!! So I became the squeaky wheel.
I am seeing light though. I am hearing music and almost there. I see my daughter double take when I smile or half laugh. My face doesn’t know a smile. I am sure if I went to a comedy club and laughed for a time that the muscles in my face would hurt similarly to those muscles you exercise for the very first time in a long time. This is unbelievable. Cappuccinoqueen had the very worst outcome from this system but we all have had the slow grueling abuse from the system.
These stories just can’t come in a brief as there is so much to them.
I am grateful for your help as you are helping me, validating me and letting me know with there is life after this horror. ….. I am grateful for your story.
20years,
I went all the way to the House of Representatives to be a voice of the public and protective parents. What I witnessed was unbelievable corruption. I continued to keep a toe in the waters of that part of the system and just saw more and more disgusting special interests getting what they wanted that was in NO childs best interest! They falsified statistics just like Annie was talking about. I knew I was shocking them because I came out of nowhere and had a story that was so horrific and wrong it caught attention. So, they scrambled to shut me up and I couldn’t believe it!! I thought I must be missing something. I was. It was how the money worked and to what extent these nuts have been given POWER over the unfortunate souls who get stuck there. I hope I live to see the day where this is exposed but it’s so huge that Sandusky looks like a drive by compared to the vastness of this.
The understanding of what’s going on is a curse. I want to scrub my brain off.
Eralyn,
I’m afraid I do know what you are talking about, and you can’t un-know something once you know it. I have spent most of my life in DC. Most people have no idea. A few people live their lives pretty oblivious until one day they think it is “time” to pay whatever very high up (House of Representatives for example) agency/official/representative a visit, and then are shocked out of their minds. Most of those people still go away oblivious and rationalize it away…. a few others have their eyes slammed into the open position and it is horrifying when that happens, especially after years of believing in something. And THEN what do you do? Hmmmm.
(hahaha but even though I grew up here and worked here, my spath husband STILL took me by surprise and I still took a long time to catch onto spathness in one’s PERSONAL life!!!)