Perhaps, in the aftermath of the terrible tragedy in Connecticut, people will finally start talking seriously about how to cope with the mentally disturbed. Liza Long, mother of 13-year-old boy who sometimes rages out of control, tells her story.
‘I am Adam Lanza’s mother’: A mom’s perspective on the mental illness conversation in America, on HuffingtonPost.com.
Dr. Liane Leedom recommended this story for Lovefraud readers.
I can so related to this woman’s pain, her fear.. I felt it myself when my son Patrick reached puberty and started raging out of control, he started going down hill with a tail wind, from being a productive student and a loving child to a psychopathic monster….and nothing helped, not therapy, not turning him in to the law….NOTHING helped.
Then he learned to manipulate me…and con me into thinking he had reformed…until that day the school cop came to my door and told me he had heard that Patrick had a gun at school….and then I found the gun, took it away and the real fight started….but because I loved him, he continued to manipulate me that he had reformed…even after 2 years in prison.
Now, he is in prison for murder…he turned 21 in prison for the murder of Jessica witt…a 17 year old girl who didn’t deserve to die because she did NOT COMPREHEND WHAT A PSYCHOPATH WAS….none of us knew what one was until we finally comprehended it, but Jessica didn’t get a chance to learn and recover…when he called her name and she turned to face him, she ad maybe a few seconds to comprehend she was going to die before the two bullets tore into her brain. Her parents spent the next two weeks trying to find her body.
Yea, I am EVERY mother who has an offspring like Patrick or Adam, who is a loaded gun, cocked for destruction of how many? 1? 2? thousands? The world?
Oxy…I thought of you and Patrick when I heard this woman talk, yesterday, on NPR. She was quite articulate and very thoughtful in her responses. She also never broached the subject of a personality disorder. He is under 18.
It amazes me that no one, not a single person, references personality disorders when talking about these violent events.
Even worse, it is as if the media and experts AVOID it…like it isn’t politically correct to talk about personality disorders. We can talk about autism, being schizophrenic, psychotic breaks. But to say someone is likely a sociopath, or malignant narcissist is like pulling a ‘chicken little’.
Because they were never diagnosed, we cannot talk about it.
The only place I have heard this language, when people speak about this kind of pre-planned violence, is from the nordic countries. There, they speak more openly about psychopaths. It seems to be more a part of their common language, more integrated into the cultural fabric of understanding violence.
Slim
Dear Slim, that’s the thing about the “politically correct” language here and not calling “a spade a spade” where personality disorders are concerned.
Diagnosing a personality disorder and writing it on a chart in a community mental health clinic is a “no, no” no matter what the evidence for such a diagnosis is. Believe me I worked in one and it was amazing how that diagnosis was shunned.
Many of the patients I worked with were BPD…and also they wanted drugs that they liked for anxiety….and they also self medicated with street drugs and Rx drugs they bought. It was very frustrating.
Then the truly mentally ill patients, many were homeless, those patients got short shift in the services they needed.
The DV cases and the many (mainly women) who went back to the abuser, dragging their kids along for the ride. Ii saw those women in the mental health clinic AND in the family medical practice as I did pro bono medical care for them and their kids if they did not have insurance and most did not.
In working in the inpatient facility I saw these dangerous kids and they made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I felt for the parents of these children…yet, it took me so long to DISCONNECT FROM PATRICK MYSELF even though I KNEW….emotionally it was so hard to “give up” and “let go” until the fateful day when he looked me in the eye (in a prison visiting room) with the CHARLIE MANSON STARE….and bragged about how bad his crime was.
Last time we protested his parole My attorney sent me a copy of the police report and it was the first time I read it, and it made my BLOOD RUN COLD. I sent a copy of that police report to Donna with my article requesting letters to the parole board and if someone can show SHOCK in an e mail, Donna’s response was SHOCK!!!! after reading it. I think it MIGHT have helped me in the beginning if I had read it, but it might not either, no way to tell, but I KNOW NOW, and it still makes my blood run cold.
What to do with kids like this? I don’t know. But pretending that they are just “upset” and that love and care is gonna save them is INSANITY.
OxD, ditto on the puberty, but I always knew that something was “different” about my eldest son. There was an absence of genuine affection (as with his bio-father), and “connection.” As he reached puberty, I was actually skeeved out by hugging my own son – if someone can explain that, I would REALLY appreciate it.
And, all of the love, care, understanding, and parental effort is NOT going to alter a disordered child from becoming a disordered adult. Sure, there are way to teach a disordered child to respond appropriately to certain social cues, but they never FEEL those responses as emotional connections.
I don’t know what to do with children like this, either, because I had one of my own and nobody – not Juvenile Court, counseling therapists, physicians, or clergy – heard the words that I was speaking about his behaviors. They only heard sounds coming out of the mouth of a tired, frustrated, and victimized woman.
Brightest blessings
EDIT ADD: and, there were many, many times when I fantasized about sending my own son off to foster care so that I would have one night’s relief from the anxiety and tension that this kid created. I was often fearful of falling asleep because I honestly believed that he meant to do murder. HOW does a parent explain THAT to agencies, Courts, friends, and family?
Truthy,
When I worked inpatient juvenile, I saw some of these kids and I worked with them and pretended that I thought they would get better, but I knew that was a snow balls chance in hell and so did every other staff member including the doctors. But it was P:C to say we thought we were “helping” them “learn impulse control” and so on, but you could see the duping delight in the faces of these kids as they talked about building bombs and blowing up their schools or their parents, or the treats they made to burn down the family home while their parents slept.
We “treated” them until they got old enough for Juvy then they went on to big boy’s prisons, or drug rehabs, or the streets….there was not a lot of success with these kids. Not all psychopaths, some truly mentally ill, early bi polar, but even some of those I think were “hatching” psychopathy as well, and ADHD to the max…
Sure, we have to TRY to treat these kids…we have to study them and FIND a way (if there is a way) to treat these kids before they are set in concrete and fix the problem if it can be fixed. We’ve made great strides in bi-polar and other problems that without them also having other problems at the same time can be fixed and the people can live productive and good lives. Unfortunately too many times bi-polar AND psychopathy AND ADHD are all found in the SAME individual.
very eloquently put, all of you.
Oxy, I’m struck by your remark that your job was to “treat” hopeless cases that all of the staff INCLUDING THE DIRECTOR knew were hopeless, but you were held back by PC from speaking the truth. is that what you were saying? Is that still the case today?
Did the parents know the truth, and were being invalidated by ya’ll at the inpatient juvenile place?
(I mean that kindly)
Truthspeak, oh, you are playing my song about a mother who wants genuine help in raising a difficult kid, then is blamed for the bad behavior or dismissed as being tired, frustrated, victimized. No help there.
I remember one time going to an “education fair” with all kinds of booths of agencies and people offering services, and I went up to the one having to do with mental health, and I saw that they offered services (education and awareness and referrals, mostly) for parents and siblings of mentally ill (mostly depression and anxiety, maybe bipolar) children, but no services or acknowledgement of a mentally ill (or personality-disordered) PARENT, with a normal parent trying to co-parent, you know, support for the parent and support for the child in trying to cope, deal with, interact with, ANYTHING. Nothing. I said, “you know, this is really needed….” and she looked at me blankly. Then she said, “I am not aware of anyone out there offering any such services….” this was 3 years ago.
Slimone and Oxy, there is just dead SILENCE on the matter of what personality disorders ARE. That people like this exist. It is so much easier to think that the parents didn’t do their job (well, OK, but if so — WHAT THEN??? Hello?????). Or that the poor kid is just misunderstood. Abused. needs TLC and then everything will be OK.
It is so hard for a parent to come to terms with this in their own child. At which point do you throw in the towel and say, “I’m done. I’ve done everything I can. I give up.” This is ingrained in us as parents, mothers, to never give up on our children.
And what do we do with a parent has such a difficult child that the parent is begging for help, from anyone, anywhere, and there is no help.
And still we do not acknowledge this problem, this reality.
It is just easier to go on pretending that evil does not exist. I mean, it seems easier. But not if you are on the receiving end of it.
Because then, no one will believe you, except another person who has been on the receiving end of it.
Evil doesn’t come riding into town with horns, a tail and a pitchfork.
But I didn’t see this either, for a good 48 years or so of my life. Now that my eyes are opened, it is frustrating to be around so many of my friends and family who don’t or can’t see what I couldn’t or wouldn’t see for so much of my life.
Now they think I’m a nutjob or that I’ve been traumatized but will get over it and go back to believing that all people have good intentions but some people just don’t know how to show it, or that they have been misunderstood.
(I do agree that psychopaths have been misunderstood, LOL!)
Sigh.
20 years, thhe “professional rules” say that a kid cannot be diagnosed as an Anti Social Personality disorder (and many professionals say this is NOT the same thing as a psychopath) in fact, many professionals don’t actually believe in “psychopathy.”
Professionals “have to beleive” it seems that ALL people can be helped, must be treated as if they can be helped, and pretend that they are helping these people…yet, I submit that these same PC-speaking professionals KNOW IN THEIR HEARTS that these people are NOT “helpable.”
Schools and other “helping” institutions have this PC mind set that if they just have therapy and love and understanding that they will develop a conscience and that is is all ENVIRONMENTAL not genetic. Yet, it is proven over and over that the MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE PROBLEM IS GENETIC and environment as LITTLE TO DO WITH IT. In the identical twins, raised apart study, 80+% of identical twiins raised in different environments still became psychopaths….and I would bet the other 20% were high in P traits.
Studies with ALL adopted kids, many or most of which come from “poor quality DNA” or they wouldn’t have been put up for adoption in the first place…show that a high percentage of these children become problematic….DNA showing up even in a good environment.
Dr. Leedom’s book, “Just like his father” shows this. And I understand her own grave concern that her son, the son of her psychopathic ex husband, should have the BEST environment she can possibly give him and maybe he will NOT exhibit his father’s DNA and grow up to be a psychopath. She has worked very hard to instill a conscience and empathy into her son, but until the hormones kick in at puberty and she sees that he still exhibits this empathy and conscience, she won’t know for sure what she is dealing with. I can only imagine the anxiety she has for her son.
My son Patrick until puberty seemed the IDEAL CHILD. Popular with other kids and with his teachers, a highly intelligent child, in all the gifted and talented classes at school. HAD IT MADE to any college he wanted by age 13, then WHAMO! Changed into a monster OVER NIGHT IT SEEMED. As soon as the hormones of puberty hit the DNA became dominant and his need for CONTROL came out in spades. He became OPPOSITIONALLY DEFINANT and INTERMITTENTLY EXPLOSIVE, both “disorders” that are now highly indicative of later psychopathy. Yet no therapist explained to me how to fix this but only blamed me because he came from a “broken home” and his mentally ill daddy deserted him, poor baby. I should have been a better more loving mother. Then my own egg donor stepped in to RESCUE him from me and he went to live with her….of course his criminal behavior continued while under her “loving care” until the cops were about to arrest him then he wanted to come home to live with me and his brother and my then husband.
And of course the behavior continued until he eventually was arrested (I turned him in to the police) and things went down hill from there All the therapy he got—2 years after my divorce with a great therapist…and a year after we moved to florida, none of it helped, arrests didn’t scare him, prison didn’t scare him, rules and parole didn’t change his behavior.
I’m just fortunate I didn’t end up like Adam Lanza’s mother dead in my bed with a bullet in my hhead and if my son ever gets out, there WILL BE A “shoot out at the OK corral” that is why I am asking people to write letters to the parole board
Oxy, I know. I know.
And it really sucks.
Because such a disservice is done to the person they refuse to diagnose (no “treatment” program can address the cause or condition if they pretend it is something else).
And such a disservice to the family members who are then blamed and left to cope alone with the messed up family member. With no support or understanding, only blame.
In the case of a child, no you are not allowed to ‘abandon” your child. But you are given no real help either. and maybe false hope.
I understand about not wanting write off children who are still malleable.
They are our children! How do we come to an understanding that we gave birth to a monster? How do we mark that turning point — where we give up all hope? How do we come to terms with that knowledge? How do we convince others? How do we come to a place where we no longer blame ourselves, even if most everyone else does?
But I wish we had something real to offer these children and their families.
20 years you said:
They are our children! How do we come to an understanding that we gave birth to a monster? How do we mark that turning point where we give up all hope? How do we come to terms with that knowledge? How do we convince others? How do we come to a place where we no longer blame ourselves, even if most everyone else does?
I totally agree, there are so many QUESTIONS and NO ANSWERS.
Even after my son went to prison for a violent home invasion robbery I didn’t give up hope.
Even after he lied about wanting to come home and go to college, I didn’t give up hope.
Even after he murdered Jessica Witt, I didn’t give up hope entirely. 15 years later I still clung to that malignant hope and actually worked toward his first parole hearing.
A month after his first parole hearing said he couldn’t come back to the board for another 4 years, I SAW the monster for what he really was in a prison visit. It was like a bucket of cold water in my face, it took my breath away but at the same time it WOKE ME UP to just what I was dealing with, his face had the same RAGE FILLED look that my sperm donor had on the night he beat and raped me. It wasn’t about sex, it was about control and humiliation and subjugation. I realized that Patrick was a clone of my P sperm donor and he was EVIL.
Looking back I can’t understand myself why I held on to that MALIGNANT HOPE that he would change. Why time after time I made myself believe his lies when he would do it again and I would believe again.
That is why I guess that two years ago just before Christmas my son C LIED TO ME…about something totally insignificant, and I threw him out of my life for that LIE. I can no longer tolerate LIES in people who are close to me. I WILL not tolerate lies. I’m done with liars no matter what the DNA relationship is or how long we’ve been friends…DONE.
Oxy,
Your comment:
Unfortunately too many times bi-polar AND psychopathy AND ADHD are all found in the SAME individual.
I always thought my ex spath was selfish, very very selfish. Then I thought He was mean spirited, in fact a bully. Then I thought outright abusive. First counselor told me, “He will never change.” I was so mad he talked about my husband that way I never went back. Second counselor said, “He needs to feel a lot of control for your relationship to workThird counselor said, “He sounds like a dry alcoholic” (He wasn’t drinking heavily at that time – it was up and down, this was a little more down). Fourth counselor said he needs to reach out more. Big whoop! Fifth counselor I went to I begged him please diagnosis this so we can treat and get past this. He said “he is a narcissist and you are the co-dependent. ”
But in between and out of all of this I would wonder if he was depressed, insecure, jealous, very unspiritual, bi-polar, aspberger’s , then a nurse friend of mine said, Whoa, He has a personality disorder. I do know he is a huge LIAR!!!
I think these freaks have many things going on.
I also found a website he had bookmarked on the computer after I kicked him out. It was on ADHD. I also found books he had intended to get at the library on alcoholism. So he clearly knew there was something wrong with himself.
I had finally had enough. I didn’t care what it was/or is.
Now instead of diagnosing him I focus on me.
Who am I, was I to tolerate all this?
Yes, I know kind, a giver, way too tolerant. All of those conditions that the monster looks for.
Never again.