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.
lovinglem, of course, ask away….
As for your daughter fearing her father. How old is she? Has he actually hurt her physically? or just emotionally?
I would explain to her that she has a RIGHT to her FEELINGS whatever they are in words that are appropriate to her age.
I would also get her some counseling. I would get counseling for myself as well to get some professional help in dealing with having to take your daughter to visit and interact with someone YOU know is dysfunctional (at best) or a psychopath (at worst)
At some age usually the courts do not make the kid go see a parent they do not want to….so you may just have to wait it out and do the best you can, but get some professional help if you can for both you and your daughter. You both deserve it and I bet you need it as well.
No, you are not crazy or stoopid….we have all been fooled, and that is the thing that made me feel better about myself is finding out I am NOT stupid or crazy to have been fooled. There are some SMART folks here at LF and they got fooled too. You are in good company. Hang in there (((hugs))) and God bless.
Ox Drover,
My daughter is 10. No he doesn’t harm her physically. He’s just very cold, callous, has a blatant disregard for her (and her siblings’) needs. He lies. He’s selfish. He demands that no one have or express any feelings, except him. He’s a bully; an emotional tyrant. She tells me that he doesn’t really love her, that he’s really a “bad man pretending to be a good man.” Things like that. I think she just sees right through him and it freaks her out.
Unfortunately where I live it’s almost unheard of that a court will allow a child to not visit their non-custodial parent until at least age 16 or older. Many lawyers and people who’ve walked this road have told me this. And no judge in this area is going to give a darn about her father being cold and callous, or a selfish liar.
I have a Christian Counselor and a Pastor for her to talk to, and that is helping a lot, but what she really wants is to not have to visit him, and no one can fix that for her.
I do validate her feelings, but I have to be careful what I say because he’s always accusing me of “tainting” them and planting thoughts in their head about him. Ironic, right? He’s the liar, the bully, the tyrant, but he accuses me of those things.
Oh, and I don’t remember if I mentioned this. He’s a licensed psychologist with a genius level IQ. He could con his way out of anything. This is one of the reasons why I fear him so intensely. He threatened throughout the marriage, (and he did indeed follow through) to use his position and status as a licensed psychologist to intimidate and control me, both throughout the so-called marriage, and during the court battle. He has the intelligence to outwit me (and the court) easily.
In the meantime it’s only been a month since I’ve been free from him and I’m just not doing well. Everyone seems to think I should be JUST FINE because IT’S OVER in their minds. But it’s not over. I’m living in the aftermath, and no one seems to understand that. I’m not sure what I need, but I need something to help me heal and move on. Do you have any suggestions?
Thank you for being so kind and for welcoming me here.
lovinglem,
I know you are asking OxD for suggestions and I am sure she’ll reply. Welcome to Lovefraud. I haven’t been posting very much this week and I am fairly new here. Sorry you have experienced the s/p’s wrath……….
I have a 13 year old who originally went through forced reunification at 10 years old with her bio dad. He was terrible to her and I had never said negative things about him nor did I allow anyone else to in her presence. He, of course, blamed her valid feelings on me. She really saw through him and became very distraught over the process and the system. She went from one of the happiest children you could know to self harming and suicidal when this all happened. She is now showing happiness again and moving on.
The right things I did was validate her feelings. I did this without giving my opinion but letting her know I understand. I also found a counselor who had extensive experience with children and adolescence who were traumatized. Luckily this woman was good. She actually facilitated something like a victim impact statement so my daughter was able to express herself assertively and tell him how she felt. Of course, he didn’t like this but she told him she was pubescent and speaking respectfully and she didn’t see a problem with her saying how she felt.
At 10 years old I also asked her to draw her feelings. I would ask her to draw a picture of herself (our family) or you or him as she wants it to be. Or how she thought it would be in my case. I then asked her to draw a picture of how she sees us now or how she really sees us (whatever words your child understands). Those pictures were heartbreaking as she drew a picture of her father with hair blowing in the wind and smiling shouting her name as her picture of what she wanted him look like or be verses how she actually sees him. When she drew that picture, she drew a big round ugly looking character in a huggie diaper and said something was coming out of his butt that nobody has identified yet???? lol. I believe the diaper was because he blubbered (fake tears and way over the top)like a baby in those meetings. So many details of those drawings can be analyzed. The unknown conent coming out his butt I believe is her lack of understanding why he is who he is or she sees that other people haven’t figured him out yet.
I promote that she has his good genes. I believe this is a relief to them so they don’t carry the weight of knowing he’s not normal so she can’t be either. When she asks me what good genes she got, I am stuck. I say a great immune system, good eyebrows, she’s cute. And I HATE this guy. I have never hated anyone like I hate him. I asked her if she wanted to keep a journal and she said no but when I asked if she’d like to have a journal on the computer, she said yes. We also had a ritual of flushing bad thoughts and hurt feelings or bad words down the toilet. Maybe your daughter could write a story or a song about you and/or him. These type of excercises help you know where her heads at and it helps them get it out.
Those are just some suggestions that have worked for us. I wouldn’t have shared them had I not seen a great improvement……. Good luck and keep posting!
Thank you Eralyn! I will try some of your suggestions. It’s so comforting to find a place where I am understood, and where people understand what my children are enduring. I like the idea of the victim impact statement, but if she called it that in front of him he’d flip out. What did your dd call it? Was it something she memorized and repeated in certain situations? Or was it something she wrote and gave to her father. My dd is afraid to tell him her true feelings, and I don’t blame her. According to him all feelings (except his own) and all expressions of feeling (except his own) are “inappropriate.” I’ve been really floundering to find ways to teach her how to communicate with him. I couldn’t communicate with him because no matter what you say, or how you say it, he perceives it as a personal attack and he counter attacks, or he diagnoses and labels you, or he bullies and intimidates you to shut up. Can you give me some ideas of what you taught your daughter to say to her father.
This is one of the things I need help with most and NO ONE in my personal life understands. I need help teaching my children how to cope with him.
lovinglem, I am sorry for what you are going through with your 10yo daughter. I see from your earlier posts that you have 3 children. May I ask if all three of them visit their dad together during the scheduled visitation, if so is this/could it be protective of your daughter?
I have three children. All of them at various times have refused to see their dad or go on their scheduled visitation. At first when this happened, it was my son (the oldest) at age 13. He would lock himself in his room and cry — genuine, sobbing crying, while his dad was waiting downstairs, yelling at me to get him, I would go upstairs, unlock the door, and beg/plead with my son to go. I regret to this day that I “forced” my son to go and did not validate his feelings better.
Then, when a similar thing happened with one of my (twin) daughters at age 13, it was precipitated by a crisis: she cut herself and told me she was frightened of her dad. I immediately took her to a psychiatrist (emergency appointment) and the psychiatrist told me that it would be in my daughter’s best interest to not make her go on her visitation that weekend (she was shaking, in shock, etc.). I later found out that (can you believe this?) it was my ex-spath husband’s new spathwife who planted the idea in my daughter’s head that she “could cut herself if she is stressed or bothered.” (!!!!!!! OMG !!!!!!!)
Anyway, I’m going to let you know that it is NEVER easy, especially never easy to resist all of the pressure that is up against you to send your kids on that visitation, or choose to send them but “validate their feelings” instead. My daughter is now 16, and it has been 3 years since she has “visited” her father. She is no longer “scared” of him but she was so scared of him for 2 years that she would hide whenever he came by the house to get the other two kids.
At this point, her twin sister is now refusing to see her dad. Their brother is away at college.
I have played mostly a waiting game. I got CPS called on me by people who didn’t understand the situation, and it played right into my ex-spath-husband’s hands. But my kids are still with me (thank God!), and they are safe.
Their dad still “stalks” them and yes, that is what it is. I think most people outside Lovefraud who don’t get this stuff would say, “oh, poor dad he just misses his kids! That mom must be doing parental alienation!” etc. But he is a sociopathic, PD stalker, and gives them the creeps.
(my daughter, thank goodness, only cut herself ONCE, at the suggestion of her evil spath-stepmother. What a world…)
I don’t know if I’m making any point at all, but it is: this is NOT easy for any of us, particularly those of us raising kids (co-parenting, hahahahahaha) with spaths. Do what you have to do to protect and help your kids process all of it, in age appropriate ways. This will change over the years and with different crises you may find yourself in. Keep your eye on the prize, DO NOT GIVE UP EVER, and seek support here and in other places, where you have people who get it.
I do not trust the courts. I do not trust mental health professionals. I absolutely loathe CPS due to my experience and betrayal by the system. I am just doing my best to give my kids as normal and peaceful and loving a life as possible. I have enemies and I try to just stay off their radar (spath/spathwife).
Hug your kids, love your kids, protect your kids. God help us all.
lovinglem, I just saw your last post.
Time to learn gray rock and teach it to your kids.
Do NOT share your true feelings with any spath.
It will get you nowhere GOOD.
You can put on your own mask of pleasantness, but it is a mask. It is bland, boring, vaguely pleasant, never excited, always just a hint of being ever so slightly not very smart…. maybe a little relaxed and sleepy, but mostly neutral.
Do not share ANY emotions — not happy, not sad, not angry, not scared.
Hide them.
This is very hard. But it really helps. They want you to express emotions so they can hurt you some more. They like you to be frustrated and driven crazy. This is what this spath thing is. It really SUCKS.
20years,
I was stunned when you said the spaths new wife advised your child to cut herself!! WTF???!!!
You give very good advice to lovinglem. I completely understand your lack of trust with all systems. We have been through so much in the system and like OxD said, it can always be worse but it blows my mind.
Yeah, Eralyn, I know. It is one of those things that is so hard to get your mind around.
Thankfully, my daughters are twins, and also there is their brother, so when I hear about something outrageous like this, there is usually an audience. The first thing I do is try to verify separately (discreetly) with each kid.
I swear, I didn’t used to do this. I didn’t realize how evil my ex-husband and particularly his wife were. So I followed trustingly the therapists’ advice not to ever pump my children for information… well I changed that view. I just listen very carefully to what my kids say, try not to comment much on it, “um hmmm” most of the time, but if there is a matter of CONCERN, then YES, I will investigate.
Even though I’ve had some run-ins and have some battle scars, those occurred mostly after my kids hit puberty. You see, in our case, until then they were pretty obedient kids and didn’t see their dad for the guy he was (I shielded them, I mean COLLUDED, though I thought it was in their best interest). But around the time our son turned 13, spath remarried. All of a sudden he wouldn’t talk to ME anymore, ONLY to the kids.
And he alienated them, without me there as a buffer. And blamed me for it.
But back to what I wanted to point out. I was the target for years, so long as the kids brought him supply for being cute and obedient and he could wear the mask of “good dad.” His wife did change the dynamics, and she would leave things lying around open for the kids to see, such as her diary (I know they shouldn’t have looked but it was left out — I told them don’t do that again!) so I know that she wrote in there “I can’t stand these kids and can’t wait for them to move out of here!” and “I am so glad that my plan is working and I was able to marry a wealthy man!”
The kids started being HER target from day 1, and their dad did not help the situation. There was a lot of behind the scenes manipulation that I ignored/didn’t see/denied for the first few years. it was the cutting incident that finally woke me up and made me see spathwife clearly.
I have to say, from a certain vantage point, all of this “targeting” just seems so stupid and childish!!!! And I wish they would just stop!!!! Ugh. I’m sick of it. I am not a drama-seeker by nature. This has been the weirdest chapter of my life (the past 20-ish years). Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
Hang in there, lovinglem.
lovinglem,
The description of your spath is much like ours with their feelings being the only valid feelings and all the rest are someones fault but never theirs! Must be nice living life blameless, shameless and never feeling guilt for their behaviors or anything. Then I think about the good feelings they will never feel and I stop thinking that way. 🙂
The woman who facilitated what I call “the victim impact statement” was a supervisor of visits or what they call therapeutic interventionist. I really had no idea what was happening. I know the woman had extensive experience with traumatized teens and kids. I also knew she was a mother of a daughter older than mine. Those things made me relax a bit and just do what I had to do. She knew all I cared about was the damage being done to my daughter. I could see she got it although she believed fully both parents should be in a childs life, she would also call a duck a duck and say if she felt a parent wasn’t acting in the childs best interest. My daughter was very afraid of her dad. She did not trust him and he said horrible things to her. They worked together on her feelings in one on one meetings with the woman and it was supposed to be about 3 of those before they brought him in. It ended up being 3 months as the child didn’t want anything to do with him. I saw a paper dd filled out in the office and it was an inpatient form for boundary setting. They went through likes and dislikes and when dd got mouthy or aggressive she would ask her to rephrase or direct her into saying the same thing in a more assertive way. What eventually happened was they had a few couple hour supervised meetings at a public place that was fun for kids and dd never left the womans side. It was during these supervised visits that dd had the opportunity to get it all out. She was actually just communicating her feelings and asking him to validate how she felt. Of course he didn’t. He blamed me or her and even my parents. One of her boundaries was he was to never talk about her mom. The woman respected her boundaries and would keep the father in line. The previous person who was supposed to do this actually joined the father in bashing me and anyone the child loved. It was sick. The father wasn’t used to the person in this position not being his minion. He finally lost it and stormed out of the visit. From what I could tell the woman saw it coming. She kept me out of the conversations and even yet, she made me invisible in the process. I was never in his sight and he wasn’t allowed to bad mouth me and this was too much for him along with the child being validated by the professional. She gave dd a voice. She was the key and I felt like I was playing russian roullette choosing her. I really don’t think she was on my side or his but definitely on the childs. This is why I believe she used the time to let her get out what she needed to say to him. I am the one who calls it a victim impact statement as that is what it equated to me.
If I were in your shoes, I would probably start looking for someone in your area, preferably a woman, with a background of childhood trauma. If you can find out if she has her own children that helps too.
My daughter was very innocent at age 10 and that’s when this started for us and this process was heartbreaking to her. The ideas I gave above are the ones I did at home that helped. I think if you implemented some of those your dd would be getting out some of her feelings. The professional is who made biohazard HEAR her even though he never validated her. Be careful not to break her trust by telling him what she shares with you even if you think you should. Ask yourself what it will solve first.
Just like it helps you to hear we understand on the board and we “get it”, it helps them too when they just know you get it.
Eralyn, I’m so grateful to you that you described in such detail the process of the forced reunification. I think that she (and you) are so tremendously lucky that you found a neutral facilitator for that who focused on the child’s best interest.
We had a negative experience, attempting that, and because it was negative (the woman was unskilled at dealing with people like the spath — she couldn’t handle him and was continually thrown for a loop and ended up blaming me and our daughter and siding with the dad/spathwife)…. it ended up doing us further harm, on top of the harm we had already suffered.
Does your daughter now have improved or any contact with her dad? What is the relationship like now?
I am glad to hear your experience was different from mine, and to see how it can go, when it goes as it is supposed to.