New research has found a specific change in brain chemistry due to trauma. An article on Medscape.com says:
“Lower serotonin 1B levels were also strongly associated with age at first trauma. The earlier the trauma exposure, the greater the brain alterations and the greater the severity of PTSD symptoms, and the greater the risk of developing comorbidities,” senior author Alexander Neumeister, MD, associate professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, told Medscape Medical News.
“These findings establish that trauma at a young age causes long-lasting neurobiological and psychological effects in survivors with PTSD. In other words, early-life trauma can interfere with normal brain development,” he said.
The article is somewhat technical, but lay readers like us can pretty much follow what is being discussed. To read the story, you need to register for Medscape.com, which is free.
Read Potential new drug target for PTSD on Medscape.com.
Link supplied by a Lovefraud reader.
Eddie Haskell? I will research that.
Eddie Haskell was the kid on “Leave it to Beaver” who was always brown nosing Mrs. Cleaver. He was Wally’s best friend and was always getting them into trouble while usually skating away scott free. If I remember correctly, his father was abusive to him.
Funny, but Leave it to Beaver is the last place you would think to look for a spath, yet there it is! LOL!
athena
beware. my spath SAID he just got caught up in paranoia about ‘protecting himself from me’ but in reality, his SO called paranoia was just him excusing his SOCIOPATHY b/c he learned people excuse going to far b/c of paranoia but they don’t excuse blantant abuse.
lesson learned: paranoia may destroy ya.
Did you guys stay with your spaths after you knew they were lying to you? Or did the lies become apparent later? What was your last straw? For me, when I caught him in his first blatant lie, that was it for me. I had feelings for a long time afterward, but I knew in my mind he was sick and I couldn’t talk to him anymore. As soon as I knew he was playing some sort of a game with me, I was done. I didn’t care what kind of illness would make a person play these games. I didn’t discover the magnitude of his lies till afterward.
Star,
the blatant lies just left me confused. They were about nothing. I confronted him and he raged at me for calling him a liar. I researched it but couldn’t make the connection between spaths and this very very nice man who just happened to lie a lot about irrelevant things. I wrote it off to his being insecure. I also noticed that he was always putting other people down and again, wrote it off as being insecure. It made me feel sorry for him.
Now looking back, I see that I was right, he is insecure. He’s a paranoid, insecure coward. That’s why he needs to control and dominate everyone. RED FLAG: Insecurity in a grown man.
It may make him seem pitiful but it’s a sign that he has huge issues. And will stop at nothing to assuage those feelings of insecurity. Just like Hitler.
Sky, you were so very young when you met him. I think that’s a double whammy. At 48, I had already lived many years of my life with (relative) normalcy before meeting the spath. So his bizarre behaviors stuck out like a sore thumb. This is also why, when I was a stripper at age 33-36, I was able to mentally protect myself from all the manipulative clients. I was old enough to have some sense of myself. I really felt for the young girls – 18 and 20 – who were in that line of work. Many got beat up and raped or at very least just developed a very bad opinion of all men. I already knew all men were not like that, and that I was dealing with the dregs of society. Your identity is not really formed yet at such a young age, though. That is what your 20’s are for. If your 20’s are spent with a spath, I can’t even imagine what that does to your brain. I think you are an incredibly wise and courageous person. I’m so glad you survived the incredible ordeal. I sometimes wish I could relate more, but I’m also glad that I can’t. I don’t know if I would have been strong enough to survive, remembering how lost I was when I was that young.
Quote SKY:
“Once you see that he is capable of evil and that he has no limits and no conscience, then you realize: OMG, he’s the devil. He’s not a prankster, he’s all that is evil.”
You know, last night I ran into a man I’ve known for several years at the auction. He is in his early 50s and a nice guy. He had married a woman I knew…a woman who’d been married to a man who was PURE EVIL…her first husband had killed and gotten away with it…he beat up the woman and tried to use their then 6 yr old child as an alibi for the murder he committed. He was tried, but the DA blew the case and he got off with only 1 yr pretrial in jail.
Anyway, the woman had I thought landed in “hog heaven” when she married the man I ran into last night. He was a good man, not the brightest bulb in the lamp, but a GOOD man and he took the daughter and raised her as his own, provided a nice home for the wife, and a “good life.” Happy ever after ending, right?
Nah, not quite. The woman started cheating, she was bored I think, no drama…then when the man tried to control the daughter who was doing drugs and working at age 18 as a STRIPPER, the dtr accused him of molesting her, so he’s off to jail….the wife opens 32 credit cards in his name (or some variation there of) runs up horrible debts, etc.—you get the picture—finally the daughter recants and he gets out of jail to face having to buy back half interest in the house he’d owned for 10 years before he married the woman, pay her support, give her all kinds of his stuff and pay off half the 32 credit card bills.
I’d heard all about this situation from another mutual friend, and was more than a bit broken hearted that the woman I had thought had gotten her life back on track and married a good man had indeed turned out to be a lying, cheating, psychopath herself. The daughter following closely in her footsteps, the “nice guy” husband left broken hearted in the dust.
He also told me that he thinks she had been mixing sleeping pills in his drinks and he thinks she was trying to kill him. His son had found him unconscious from one mixed drink. Yet the man is broken hearted that the daughter he loved would do to him what she has done, that the wife he idolized and loved would betray him and leave him broke and broken.
One of the take home lessons for me is that just because someone has been a VICTIM of a psychopath, the way this woman was a beaten up victim of her X husband, doesn’t mean she isn’t ALSO a psychopath herself. I have no doubt the murderer she was married to that was the father of her daughter is a card-carrying psychopath, and I saw the grapefruit sized lumps he left on her body and limbs, but I am just as convinced that she is just as much a manipulative psychopath for what she did to her next husband. I think possibly “motivated” (as if a psychopathic person needs a “motive.”) by boredom and lack of impulse control.
In addition to having empathy for this man, I also feel “betrayed” by this woman—because I THOUGHT SO MUCH BETTER OF HER THAN WHAT SHE ACTUALLY IS. My judgment was off as well, she had me fooled too.
Not every person who breaks their marriage vows is a psychopath, but you can almost bet your bottom dollar that if a person is a psychopath they WILL violate those marriage vows. So if you see someone who is breaking their marriage vows, a person who is lying or doing anything DISHONEST, or immoral or twisted, WATCH OUT FOR THAT PERSON…don’t trust them….and if they shaft you in the back, do NOT give them another chance because you “feel sorry for them” or You feel guilty because you can’t save them from themselves.
Maybe I’m just a cynical old woman, but I’m getting to the point that if someone is a drama-queen, or a drama-king (as the case may be) I don’t need them in my inner circle of TRUST.
I’m not “blaming the victim” here, but I am saying that it is not uncommon for two psychopaths to hook up and the “loser” in the fight presents themselves as an “innocent victim” as my “friend” did….sure, she had lost the fight with her husband and came out bruised and bleeding, but she then went on to prove that she was just as much a psychopath as her first husband. She is now living with a guy who cheated on his first wife with what was his second, and my “friend” had started a relationship with him while he was married to this second wife…but you know, I don’t think their relationship is gonna last really long or well…they are both cheats, liars and high in psychopathic traits. But I bet their relationship will be “interesting” and “exciting” and “not boring” but thanks, I’ll take A PEACEFUL AND”BORING” LIFE over all that “excitement.”
Oxy, did you say you wrote a book? If you didn’t you should. You’ve had more sociopaths pass through your life than anyone would even want to think about.
Oxy
While my husband is the covert spath, his brother is full out open aggressive nobody crosses him self absorbed woman hating ass. And he married a woman who SEEMED to be terrific. She’d left her abusive boyfriend whom she had two children, worked hard, was apparently a great mom, swimming lessons, piano lessons, and the boys had polite social manners. Yes she was his employee and yes she and he cheated on his THEN trusting girlfriend but I thought Hey, not the best way to go but she was not a long term girlfriend. And he’s such an ass. So if NEW wife could tame the beast and he was smart enough to want a socially developed woman. Besides, this was BEFORE I knew the full story of my husband so I also believed maybe his brother had something soft inside him. And b/c the parents were so awful, I thought his aggression might be just an act.
NOPE. It was real. And SHE revealed her true self. Her sons were given martial arts which they used to bully others. SHE taught her boys that if people were “disrespectful”, i.e. not subservient to their superior, then they were to discipline them (beat them up using their martial arts skills.) She did the same to me, since I did not do what she ordered me to do, she beat me, and nearly killed me, only a truck driver arriving by accident saved me from what was planned. (more to that incident but am not repeating myself this time.) The one thing she did do, she knew her husband (my BIL) was a cheater and she sticks like glue to him. He goes NOWHERE without her, not even to round up the cows. ANd last I knew, he LIKED it that way, that she was so compliant to his whim, working like a free field hand while he sat back and gave the orders. As long as they stay in that equilibrium, great. But problem is, stuff happens. Sons, like young bulls, test the old man. And as mean as my husband’s brother is, I don’t think he can manage the three of them against him…
I learned that when someone says they are an a*, BELIEVE THEM.
Somebody mentioned a week ago how they were torn over a friend being involved who for us makes our red lightbulbs blink.
The best friend I’ve had for 20 years is ‘in love’ for the first time in her life (and she’s 38) with a guy, while my best friend is the OW. I know this since August and I met him twice. Right from the start I didn’t like him. He talks grandioze, thinks himself the smartest businessman and inventor (he did partly the same studies I had done, but switched to industrial engineer). Apparently he has several businesses, some of them registered in Wallon (just a post box) to pay less taxes. Within the first ten minutes he tried to diss me for being a teacher, a social democrat who has a union card. He shared feelings of disdain for idealists, including fellow industrial designers like myself who wish to design products that make society a better world. And even when he praised my friend, he was actually praising himself. He’s gradioze talker who’s full of himself and shows disdain for idealists. Red flag n1.
The story as my friend told me is that his gf was the love of his life and divorced her husband for him. Shortly after that he met my friend and claims to be totally in love with her, but claims to feel guilty to dump the gf after she divorced her husband to be with him. So, according to my friend he’s lying to the gf, but not to her. I put a big question mark behind the latter. Bot me and my gay best friend have pointed out to her that he’s not an honest man, when she claims he’s being honest, just by the fact that he’s lying for several months now to his gf. It’s an argument she cannot discount. The whole story is full of red flags for me.
My friend also yesterday confessed that she’s been so afraid that he might choose the gf over her and lose him that she did not dare to take a stand. She has confessed feelings similar to being addicted to him. I’ve told her how oxytocine can create an addiction to a person, and relayed my inability to break myself with the spath until he pulled his mask off. She admitted that, like me, she has stopped the relation, but couldn’t bare without him for 24 hours and took him back in of her own accord. So, red flag n3 for me.
From the first meeting with him and overhearing their conversation I learned that they went to the horse races and a reception with his friends, including his gf, and how they noted (including the gf) how long he talked with her. He expressed hints of glee and excitement over it. Huge flag n4.
My friend has been near a nervous breakdown at work (she’s a general manager) after she could function less and less, has been extremely emotional and feeling unstable. She lost a tremendous amount of weight (BMI was at 18 at some point). She’s now being coached, luckily for her. When I asked her whether the relationship may be part of the cause of that, she admitted this to be the case. The guy makes her insecure about her position in his life, making her emotionally unstable, which would imo naturally reflect in her job as well.
I told her that it’s her decision and that I understand why she feels she has to make a go for it with the guy (just from her emotional perspective), but I’ve also pointed out the red flags imo. Eventually last night she asked me what the traits of a spath are, so I gave her a list of them, but telling her that it was highly unlikely to detect the lack of empathy and shallow emotions at the start… but that words and actions conflicting each other consistently are a sign of it. She believes of course that he loves her by the 100 km drives he does to see her, texting and calling her insistently when she didn’t answer him or picked up the phone when she had her breakdown, the care he shows her when they’re together. And I soberly said, and yet he has not told his gf, is still with her, and has not chosen you.
Anyway, I hope I’m doing the right thing by her: I remind her of the inconsistencies, but also expressedly told her it’s her life experience to decide what to do with it, that I hope what she believes is true, yet am a sceptic.
Neither my gay friend or I believe this will ever turn into a succesfull romance story.