Most of the time we spend with sociopaths is spent in confusion. They tell us that they love us, while they cheat on us and take our money. They tell us that everything will be wonderful while our lives are falling apart. They tell us they’re sorry and will never do it again, yet they do it again, and again, and again.
We ask ourselves—what in the world is going on here?
They explain it all away. The explanation seems to make sense. But something still isn’t right, and they still don’t stop the behavior that makes us believe we are losing our minds.
There must be a reason. We wonder if they’re depressed, or bipolar, or they have low self-esteem. We’ve been told that they were abused as children. They overindulge in alcohol or drugs, and we’re sure that if they can only overcome their addiction, they’ll change.
It never happens.
We can’t figure it out.
The words that fit the behavior
Then someone says, “It sounds like he (or she) is a sociopath.” Or maybe they even use the word “psychopath.”
Sociopath! They’re the guys on The Sopranos.
Psychopath! They’re all serial killers.
But something tells us to do more research, so we go online. We buy a book. And there they are, the people who are driving us insane, perfectly described in the symptoms of a sociopath.
At Lovefraud, we hear it all the time:
“He’s got every symptom on the list!” “The description fits her to a T!”
Finally, we have a name for that person’s problem. He or she is a sociopath. A psychopath. An antisocial.
Finally, it all makes sense. The lies, the emptiness, the remorselessness, the evil. There is a reason. It is not us. It is a personality disorder.
Naming the disorder makes all the difference. Finally, we begin to understand what we are dealing with. This allows us to begin recovery.
Learn about them in school
Why do we spend so much time in confusion? Because there is no education program about this personality disorder for the general public.
I remember a story from the tsunami that struck Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand on December 26, 2004. A vacationing family was on the beach there when the ocean suddenly receded. The little girl of the family had just finished studying tsunamis in school, and learned that the receding ocean meant that a wall of water would soon come crashing into the shore. She told her family, and they escaped to higher ground.
Sociopaths cause personal tsunamis for all of their victims. The sociopaths/ psychopaths/ antisocials of the world cause a huge percentage of all human pain, damage and devastation, yet most of the population does not know they exist. Why? Why don’t we learn about these predators in school? If we did, when we saw the symptoms, we could escape.
Arguing over terminology
Part of the problem with trying to educate people about these predators is that the mental health professionals do not agree on what to call it. First it was moral insanity. Then it was psychopath. Then it was sociopath. Then it was antisocial personality disorder.
The professionals can’t agree on how to define and diagnose the disorder, either. The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV), is supposed to be the bible for clinicians. I find its description of antisocial personality disorder to be vague and difficult to understand.
Dr. Robert Hare’s description of the symptoms of a psychopath—the term he uses—is easier to understand, and the test he developed has been consistently shown to be useful in predicting recidivism among criminals. But Hare’s criteria and evaluation are resisted by many psychiatrists. From what I’ve heard, the basis for much of the disagreement is political.
Mental health profession should come to agreement
I believe this lack of agreement is a travesty, and the professionals are actually contributing to the confusion in which the predators operate. In a way, that makes the mental health professionals complicit in the havoc wreaked by the sociopaths/ psychopaths/ antisocials—whatever we call them.
Lovefraud calls on the professional associations to solve this problem. The American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry—please, come to an agreement.
Make a decision. Define this disorder. Publicize the symptoms. Let the general public learn what to look out for.
It would help all of us keep the sociopaths/psychopaths/antisocials, the human tsunamis, from upending our lives.
Beverly: I’m reading One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish … Dr. Suess books again. Getting myself back to that beginning happy place I was when I was a child and everyone got along … before egos became a big deal in people’s lives … when we were innocent, loving, kind, eyes wide open as we learned and ran home to tell our parents/guardians all the new things we learned in school, loving to meet new friends and picking their brains to what they were all about, not judging, not being jealous, just having fun hanging out with everyone, learning from them as they learned from you, considering everyone was your best friend and everyone did have your best interest at heart ….SMILE, it’s contagious.
P.S. All Suess’ books are a marvel. The man was a genius, not only for child psychology but adult psychology as well.
Peace.
Henry, dear
I was and am in a superb state of mind. Change is good, and I lived right next to the woman at my past residence, who I thought was my friend, but she stabbed me in the back. She betrayed my trust and genuine concern for her by being heartless and self-centered. I wanted to be as far away from her as I could get. After her malicious behavior I continued to maintain my dignity and self-control in speaking with her, but I kept the conversation short, succinct and mostly in mono-syllables; yes & no. She doesn’t deserve a good, loving friend like me so I have washed my hands of her.
And I understand your justified fury at your x loser and your mother, but in time you will be calm at heart. Like my x woman friend, I don’t wish her harm or bad things to happen to her, but I most assuredly DO NOT want her in my life. At all. I have become indifferent to her, which may seem harsh but it’s my self-preservation kickin in. I won’t tolerate any cruelty, abuse of any kind ever again. I made a solemn oath to myself a while back to go completely to the NO CONTACT zone as soon as I witness abuse perpetrated to me and to others. Our lives are too precious to waste trying to rehabilitate, influence, affirm those who are unchangeable.
You will forgive for yourself, Henry, as Oxy says…”take the bitterness from your heart so it doesn’t eat YOU alive” (paraphrased)
It will come, lov, just be patient with yourself and truly allow the Lord to give you strength, guidance, and a sense of peace during and after your breakup with the loser and the tragic realization of your mother. You are cared for by so many. **HUG**
Aloha,
I know exactly the reasons for my LoveFraud addiction:
1) You are all intelligent, loving, compassionate people and I gravitate to those of a kindred spirit.
2) I feel it necessary, as a showing of my respect to read and respond to the experiences I read on here. I wish to offer comfort and support however I am capable. If I was in your physical presence I would listen intently, with love in my heart and then give you all a super big hug!
3)The articles that the LF mistresses post are beyond priceless in my continuing search for answers to questions I didn’t even know I had. I wish to be well informed by educated, highly intelligent, compassionate women and men who have themselves suffered tramatic experiences with psychos. I don’t derive pleasure from reading the heartbreaking histories, but I can empathize with their pain as I’ve been there, done that too many times myself.
4) I blog here because I LIKE, and CARE for you all. I’m an extremely loyal and consistent friend, ready and willing to defend my beloved buddies from any intentional and unintentional callous behavior, actions from nasty, sick people. I consider it my duty to protect those I care for or even strangers who stand face to face with a predator. I’m no badass kung-fu fighter gal, but I will use whatever is necessary, whatever self defense skills I have attained to do what I must to preserve that which is good, harmless and innocent. As you do every day in your career as a loving, care giver to young girls.
Dear Beverly,
Your blog on forgiveness is the PERFECT explination of my thoughts, much better than I could have phrased it in 10,000 words! Thank you so much!
Dear Jane;
Your explination to Aloha and us all about why you are “addicted” to Love Fraud is also perfect, and described exactly what I feel to perfection, again better than I could have phrased it in 10,000 words! Thank you so much.
Being here makes me THINK about my feelings, and my thoughts, even my angers. I was divorced in 1980, that is nearly 30 years ago, it seems like yesterday in some ways. And I can’t “forget” what my P-X-FIL did to me, but I no longer feel bitterness toward him, and like Joseph after he got out of prison in Egypt, I have forgiven him, and if he is still alive I still don’t want him in my life, and I do see that what happened was in many ways a benefit to me and to my sons. I also realize that he was an evil man. Coming out of that divorce with NOTHING except my kids, a cat, and an old truck, and a dog made me push myself to the limits of my being and become something I wasn’t up until then…a truly strong woman. It also made me realize that we cannot depend on another, any other, to be our rock, we have to be our own rock. We can share happiness with someone but they can’t give it to us. We have to find it for ourselves. Material possessions don’t give us security because they can VANISH in the twinkling of an eye. Look at the survivors of 1,000 things like Katrina or the people in the Twin Towers.
Because I survived that first big trauma in my life (my divorce) starting out with nothing, and depending on no one except myself, I gained strength. I think that strength and that self sufficiency helped me survive all of this latest fiasco.
The more we exercise our strengths, the stronger we become. Just as a weight lifter becomes stronger when they work out and weaker when they don’t. As we think, experience and grow, we too become stronger and better people. Never perfect, of course, but better each day. If we just sit on the couch and feel sorry for ourselves rather than trying to fiind meaning from all this crap and pain, we don’t grow like we would if we “worked out”—
During the time I have been here at LF I know I have grown, but I have also seen others grow, then reach out a hand to the next person who comes here in such horrible pain, and then in turn seen that next generation grow and reach out a hand in love to others. How could anyone not get “addicted” to seeing such growth, such resolution of pain, spreading like a wave made by a small pebble cast into a lake, reaching ever outward.
Those small waves of kindness will reach out through the years to others, even to other generations. Look at Bird, how she was in such pain and distress when she came here, and now only three months later, she has her Baby Bird and is getting on with her healing, becoming and being the kind of mother that will teach a new generation to LOVE, even though that child was sired by the P, that chld will have ever opportunity in the world to grow into a loving and wonderful, caring individual because of what LoveFraud readers reached out to that mother in her pain and distress. Her healing is started and I am sure will go on with her the rest of her life, giving her strength and in turn her strength to others. What could be more wonderful? I can’t think of anything.
Oxy,
EXACTLY!! That was beautiful, especially the last 2 paragraphs. Your post above was another sparkling example, proof of why I love being a member of the LoveFraud fellowship.
Personality Disordered Individuals are serious business to me and I most definitely do not minimize or discount any horrifying account delivered by a sweet, undeserving victim either in cyberspace or out there in the world. They absolutely most emphatically deserve to be heard and offered as much comfort and support as they need to recover.
I totally agree with your statement that..”the more we exercise our strengths, the stronger we become” I believe that having to struggle with whatever obstacles, life altering situations that arise in our lives, that through the suffering caused we will eventually become exceptional, wiser, considerably more mature adults. We will then be able to share ourselves in a much better capacity. That we each have so much to offer to those who are receptive, and willing to share their own wonderful qualities, gifts, admirable character traits so we ALL can grow mentally and spiritually.
To me that’s what life’s all about. The meaning to good living and a good, bountiful life isn’t some esoteric, farfetched, intangible idea. It’s really not very complicated at all, even though each of us is a multifaceted, unique person with our own personal journeys to seek and fulfill. And I’m sooo diggin the journey, aren’t you?….haha.
I have a friend that her motto is “don’t sweat the small stuff, and remember it’s all small stuff” I’m not sure where my son C heard that, from me or her, but since he has moved out of state after the divorce, he has taken that as his “motto” and things that in the past might have sent him through the roof now just roll off his back like water off a duck’s back.
Keeping things in mind as “relative” problems helps us to realize that things that would irritate us or upset us, in the big scheme of the world are trivial. I don’t mean this to rivualize anyone’s pain because I know when you are in DEEP pain, anything becomes a horrorible thing. But once you have the deepest of the pain under control, if you have your feet back under you, you can look at things more logicaly.
Okay, you had a flat tire on the way to workk and soiled your best blouse and you were due to give a big presentation that day. It’s NOT the end of the world, you didn’t die in a car wreck, your house didn’t burn, but even if your house did burn, the firemen got your cat out and your kids were at school.
Sure those things are irritating or even painful, but as long as we have our lives it’s all “small stuff.” I think that is one of the things the P-experience does is to make our lives so internally painful that EVERYTHING becomes overpowering. Even the everyday stuff.
The Ps are like kryptonite to Superman, they make us WEAK where we can’t handle even the simplest of tasks without feeling like we are hauling the world on our shoulders.
Once we get away from the Psychopaths, our strength returns and our power returns and we are able to cope with anything that hits us, and relatively it is “small stuff” compared with dealing with a psychopath.
Yea, the journey is getting better and better! Few pot holes still, but much smoother going! (((hugs))))
OxDrover: I don’t think it’s the pain as much as the shock. Your body and mind go into shock … it’s just so out there. It’s about basic decency. Everyone learned the basics in their churches as a kid “do unto others as you want done unto you”. Basic 101 stuff. Then when something so blatant and vile hits you square in the face, especially, when you don’t expect it and then for it to be so extreme … well, here we are. And the rest is history.
Peace everyone. Will get there. WE have directives from the only one that we need those directives from. We just have to fast pace ourselves.
P.S. It really looks like we were chosen!
OK. Now I’m going to say something that is going to blow your mind. Ready? When we love. Anyone. Whoever that other should be. We are loving God. God is in every one.
Peace.
Dear OxyD, ‘Dont sweat the small stuff’ is the title of a book. I am pleased you found that precis on firgiveness useful, forgiveness needs thinking about in depth to get the right perspective, this truly aids us to forgiving ourselves and others. I will try to precis the other articles, the next one on anger.
Dear Beverly,
The thinking about forgiveness was a biggie for me, because of my mother using “forgiveness” (her meaning was “pretend it didn’t happen and restore trust”) to beat me over the head with my entire life, mostly about Uncle Monster, her brother.
Her version had never “felt right” even when I was “blackmailed” into keeping my mouth shut in order to have “peace in the family”—peace at ANY price, and paid for by ME, not the one who was causing the uproar.
Even though mom’s version of “forgiveness” didn’t instinctivly ring true, I did pretty much buy into it and just decide I wasn’t able to do it, therefore I must be doomed to hell by this Angry God who sat up there keeping a check list, sort of like a reverse Santa Claus, just waiting for us to fail.
If nothing else good came out of the P-experiences I have had learning that forgiveness does NOT equal restoring TRUST has made my life a totally different thing. I no longer feel like a failure as God’s child, I no longer fear this ANGRY god my mother tries to placate, but have a new and different walk with a LOVING HEAVENLY FATHER. I no longer have to go through my mother to communicate with him, or to hear His Words. I can read them for myself.
Just that ONE change has made my path to healing even POSSIBLE.
Of course the other side of her “definition” was that somehow I had not shown “sufficent” remorse for any of my own failings, and therefore she didn’t have to forgive me, but could recall every “bad thing” I had done since the age of 10.
What is so amazing to me is that I had instinctively felt that her “definitions” and even her “practice” where forgiveness and trust and repentence were concerned was 180 degrees off, yet, I never rose up against it in any meaningful way until this latest episode of the P-experience.
It really is I think that I was “trained” in childhood, just like I trained oxen when they were calves, that I was “god” and that they could never rebel. Cattle aren’t actually dumb at all, but quite smart, but once trained, or once having learned a thing, they will not ever rebel. They will never question. I was almost in the same mindset as the oxen, I never REALLY questioned my mother’s precepts, just did my best to obey, failed at that, and then felt worthless and guilty because I couldn’t succeed at making sense of her point of view, yet accepting it as “gospel.”
But also, like the oxen, if they ever do find out that you are not as strong as they are, or that you fear them, they cannot ever be subservient again, they will always rebel once they have successfully done it.
Having strength and power is not enough, it is having a KNOWLEDGE of that strength and power that is necessary in order to USE that power. If I were to choose to abuse a pair of oxen they HAVE the power to stop me, BUT they are totally UNAWARE of having that power so they would lie down and take whatever beating I would give them without much resistence, except possibly trying to run away. They would be confused because they didn’t know what brought on this terrible beating, but they would submit.
When we are abused, especially from the age of a child, we accept, like the oxen do, even the things that don’t make sense to us. We don’t realize we have power to resist, or that we can overcome our abusers, or that we SHOULD NOT submit.
I had forgotten that “don’t sweat the small stuff” line was from a book, but now that you mention it I recall the name of the book. It was if I am right one of the books in the 70s or early 80s?