By Joyce Alexander, RNP (Retired)
I recently bought a book, Violence Risk and Threat Assessment: A Practical Guide for Mental Health and Criminal Justice Professionals, by J. Reid Meloy, Ph.D. I actually bought it to give some “credence” to the statistics I put into my letter to the parole board protesting the release on parole of the Trojan Horse-Psychopath that attacked our family,
Of course this book is directed, as the title says, to professionals, and to assess risk of violence. But since we are dealing with psychopaths, it is, I think, a good idea for us to be able also to look at the assessment for possible violence in our own psychopaths when we thwart their desires, or kick them to the curb. We need to answer the questions, “Is my psychopath likely to respond with violence? If so, how?”
Most violent individuals are not violent all the time. In the introduction, the author illustrates that “just because an abnormality (in behavior) ”¦ only shows on occasion, does not mean it has gone away.” (My emphasis.)
A “false negative” is when you decide that your individual will not be violent, and you are wrong. You may pay for this decision with your life. A “false positive” is when you think your individual will be prone to violence, and they are not. Being prepared for violence, even if your individual psychopath does not turn out to be physically violent is, of course, the safest way to play it. If you are going to err, erring on the side of caution is the best course. False positives are less damaging to us than false negatives.
There are also different kinds of “violence.” Not all violence that does damage to us is physical. Psychopaths can become financially violent and deprive us of our income, our estate, and a hundred other violations that we can all imagine.
Contributors to violence
Dr. Meloy uses what he calls a bio-psycho-social model for Violence Risk Assessment to assess an individual’s risk for violence. This consists of the biological aspects, the psychological aspects and the social aspects of the individual in question.
The first, the psychological domain, contains such things as gender, age, past history of violence, frequency of violence, how recent have they been violent, and severity of past violence, paranoia, intelligence, anger, fear problems, and the frequency and intensity of them, as well as control of impulses. Of course, the psychopathy and other attachment problems will weigh in heavily on this.
The second, the social or environmental domain, looks at the family of origin violence, economic instability and poverty, WEAPONS HISTORY, weapon skill, interest and approach behavior, as well as alcohol and or psycho-stimulant use.
The third domain is the biological one. Is there a history of head trauma, or major mental disorder (like untreated bi-polar disorder).
Dr. Meloy also emphasizes that the MOST IMPORTANT factor in his judgment is the history of past violence. The best predictor of future violence is a history of past violence.
Questions to ask yourself in doing your own “risk assessment for violence” in your psychopath are: How “provoked” is your psychopath by losing you? Do they have the paranoid personality disorder, in which they feel “that everyone is out to get them,” with a long memory for imagined slights or wounds from those people “out to get them”? Are they chronically angry, fearful and jealous? Some forms of illegal drugs will also contribute to paranoia, and as the use of drugs and the interest and reliance on weapons goes up, so does the risk of violence. Dr. Maloy mentions the killing of Nichole Brown Simpson, where she was not only killed, but after death her body almost beheaded. He says that drugs, along with the rage, could have easily lowered the threshold for the abandonment rage which probably motivated the killer.
Fear and stalking
Dr. Meloy also goes into the lack of difference between biochemical reactions to both fear and anger. Both cause the same reaction within the body. How intense is the anger response in the person you are evaluating? How does the person handle anger?
Dr. Meloy differentiates between two different kinds of violence by illustrating his text with a story about a cat.
We have all seen a cat, cornered by a dog, with its hackles raised, its tail up, hissing and spitting. That cat is emotionally reacting in a violent way to the fear inside it that it is going to be attacked by the dog. (This is called “affective” or emotional violence in reaction to a perceived threat.) Once the perceived threat is gone, the cat will quickly return to a state of calm. The purpose of this kind of violence is “threat reduction.”
The second type of violence illustrated with another story of a cat is the predatory violence, which is planned and purposeful and goal directed.
The planned and purposeful (or predatory) violence has a minimal or absent autonomic arousal, (which is the hair standing on end, the hissing and spitting etc.). As you observe the cat in predatory violence—such as stalking a mouse or bird—the cat is calm, cool and collected. It is focused on a goal as it stalks the prey. It tries to keep its purpose (violence) hidden and it tries to keep the prey from realizing that it is prey.
The brain chemicals released in each of these states of violence are completely different. The emotionally generated fear induced violence is a defense mechanism. It can still be a threat to anyone who is the perceived enemy, but it quickly subsides once the threat is gone.
With predatory violence, the predator is goal directed to do violence to the prey. They may plot and plan and take quite some time to stalk and corner the prey. The predator may strike without warning. Unlike emotionally (fear) induced violence, predatory violence is not time limited and the stalking may go on for days, weeks, months or years.
Knowing which type of violence your psychopathic adversary is involved with at any given moment can help you assess what your course of action should be. If the Psychopath is showing the “cornered cat” response, for example for being confronted in a lie, your best response is to just “back off” and let them calm down when the perceived threat is removed. If the psychopath is stalking you; emotionally, financially, or physically, they will not be so obvious to spot as the enraged cat. Once you have determined that the person you are dealing with is a psychopath, or likely one, you must assume that the person will engage in predatory violence on some level. The fact that this stalking and predatory violence may be very subtle does not make it any less dangerous.
In the short term, cornering one in a threatening manner (confrontation of any kind) can produce an emotionally violent response or even physical attack, but in the long term, the predatory violence can do more damage to us, body and soul. We need, I think, to assess the state our psychopath is operating in, and learn when to back off with confrontations, and when to prepare ourselves for “out of the blue” attacks when they are in a predatory state.
muldoon: You really need to read Tolle’s book “A New Earth” … you are in desperate need of a breather here. It can be overwhelming to learn all of this at one time. You want to learn … but your mind is still in the shock phase that anyone on this planet can be like our EXs … it’s just too much.
You can log onto Oprah.com … go into her spiritual healing site … on there you will find Tolle’s 10 classes for the 10 chapters of his book … detailing each chapter. Oprah is keeping his videos on line for FREE because she realizes how much spiritual healing is needed in our world today.
Expect to keep falling asleep while you try to read through Tolle’s book. It’s just too much information to absorb at one time … so you read a few pages, fall asleep … read a few more pages, fall asleep. It will take you over a week to get through the book … but it is worth it.
Peace. Keep the book with you … and pick it up again in a few months and read it again. The more you grow … the more info jumps out of the pages at you. Put the book down … then pick it up again and read it all over again … the more you read it … the more you will see in the pages.
Good luck.
cheers wini will give it a go.
Muldoon: It’s a good “pat on the back” book for us to read. Has nothing to do with our EXs … just our spiritual growth.
Enjoy the book. I suggest listening to Tolle’s tapes on Oprah site too. His voice is so soothing.
James,
“I often wondered how many other members experienced a kind of “sleep deprivation” themselves?”
Most if not all, I imagine.
Personally, I find that anxiety and lack of sleep make me stupid. I become so absent minded that I cannot get the my work done. I pick up something in one room that needs to be put in another, then end up wandering out of the room I was working in to the second room and getting totally off track with other activities. I reverse letters in words. I use Ps in place of Bs, 5s in place of Ss, and even reverse syllables in words and/or confuse homophones. (“worse than usual”-not “just like always”) I forget people’s names. I stammer and trip over words. I lose my way on familiar streets…etc. All of this makes me feel very ashamed, and stresses me out worse, which makes me act even dumber. If there’s an S, P or N around, they’ll rub my nose in it all ’til I become suicidal.
In short, I have to take care of myself in order to be “fit for duty”. My family and friends count on me to be at my best. So even if I am reluctant to rest and take care of myself for my own sake, I force myself to do it for theirs.
From what I’m hearing and seeing, there are several people here who have this same syndrome to one degree or another. All I can prescribe for you is rest, recreation and a bit of self-care. You really do deserve . If you can’t believe that, then simply remember that you need it in order to take care of others.
PS-
Somewhere on this site I read a post yesterday that got me to thinking.
The poster commented that their ex S/P had boasted to them that he had stressed out his new target so badly that the gal was extremely muddled in her thinking and behavior.
It that case, the S/P knew full well that his behavior was wrecking his target’s ability to think straight from moment to moment. I’m not suggesting it’s always deliberate, or even that it often is. I’m just saying that occasionally an N/P/S does set out to un-nerve us. Even if it’s not deliberate, it is often the result of their “crazy making”. We have to resist with every tool at our command.
Do what you have to do to get a good night’s rest.
Dear Muldoon, Elizabeth, Wini et al,
Deliberate Sleep deprivation has been used by armies for centuries as a torture and to “unhinge” captives.
I too have suffered “insanity” from severe sleep deprivation at several different times, and yes, I was “insane” as a result of the mixture of sleep deprivation and stress!
Yes, it does effect your ability to think, your emotions, and your physical health as well.
I have taken ambien and for some people it does help, at least initially. It does have some side effects that can be dangerous though. It can cause amnesia, and in overdose, is very very dangerous. Also, if you are in a situation where you might NEED to wake up easily you might not be able to. (like if your house was on fire!)
The question of need for sleep has to be balanced with other things as well during the crisis part of the situation. Relaxation and meditation can partly substitute for lack of sleep, but they don’t do anyting for the NEED for Rapid Eye Movement sleep (in which you dream.) If you are deprived or REM sleep, you will try to “make up for ” this when you DO get to sleep and will dream excessively and sometimes nightmares in response for this lack. A feeling of “safety” is necessary for sleep as well. Plus, you must “turn off” your thinking about the chaos.
Our internal dialog (0ur thoughts) continue uninterupted unless we focus them on something, as our dialog can’t be thinking about two things at the same time. One way to do this is as you are lying there trying to go to sleep, a techniuqe I have used successfully is to count from one to four.
As you breathe in “say” one, as you breathe out say “and” and as you breathe in again say “Two” and out, “and” and then go to four and start over again. This will direct your internal dialog to the boring numbers and keep you from thinking about (talking to yourself) what is going on in your life and help you get to sleep. It takes a bit of practice, but this does direct your thoughts away from the crisis and pain.
Melatonin, which is a natural hormone, bought over the counter, also has been found by many to be beneficial. This is the hormone our bodies make in response to darkness which readies our body for sleep.
Avoid caffine after noon, and if you eat a high carbohydrate snack before you want to go to bed, the carbohydrate load also makes you sleepy. Try to regulate your times of sleep.
If you must take a nap, it is more beneficial to take one in the morning than in the afternoon. A “sleep cycle” is about an hour and a half, which allows you to go through all the “stages” of sleep, so time a nap to get at least a full hour and a half at once if you can at all to get the most benefit from the nap.
Older people don’t sleep as deeply as younger ones, and don’t need (apparently) as much sleep as younger people. They wake up more times, don’t sleep as deeply, etc. and this is normal for the “elderly.” I find this to be true as I have aged as well.
Eating well, drinking enough liquids, avoiding an overload of caffine (from coffee, tea, and sodas etc) and just ordinary REST, are all especially important to us at this time of crisis, and many times this is neglected completely. OUr immune systems depend on sleep, rest and nutrition, so we must do our best to balance these in order to keep from getting physically sick as well, which of course will add more stress to an already stressed system.
I recommend that ALL unnecessary-to-life tasks be postponed. Let the housework go except for ESSENTIALS. Do only what is required to keep you alive; eat, sleep, rest, take care of legal details, etc. The things that CAN wait should wait.
Get physical contact with another human being—HUGS ARE ESSENTIAL. Hug your child, your friends, your dog even.
Pamper yourself, you deserve it. Long bubble baths, a good book. Anything that will make you feel good.
Exercise is essential during crisis. It will “burn off” the stress hormones and decrease your anxiety.
Take care of YOU!!!
Ox-D: Great advice. What if you’re dealing with all that stress, and homelessness, too?
Dear Rune,
HOpefully, you (or whomever you are referring to) are not living in a cardboard box on the street, as that would make it very difficult to accomplish and add additional stress to the horrible mix. I know that happens though, or a shelter which is only a step or two above the cardboard box and is a very short temporary shelter available in most places.
Many people have to work at a job that requires concentration, have severe financial problems, etc. I know these suggestions are more easily accomplished if you are in a home of some kind than they would be if you were homeless, but you DO THE BEST YOU CAN. The relaxation therapy technique can be done as you lie in your cardboard box trying to sleep and that may be the only one you can do. The main point though, is that sometimes we use our VERY FINITE energy to focus on things that can be “let go” for long periods of time. The floor does NOT have to be swept daily, or the dishes done every night, or the cob webs knocked out of the corners. There are non essential things that can be “let go” that use our energy. The energy we have should be conserved for the ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY things, and we should be as good to ourselves as we can be.
I ended up with multiple serious infections (which were life threatening in intensity) due to my immune system being almost totally screwed from the continual and high stress levels I had maintained starting several months before my husband was killed and that went on for years afterwards, winding up with the threats on my life.
Our stress levels remaining high for weeks, months, years, is very detrimental to our physical and mental health. ANYthing you can do to decrease the stress–either physical or mental is important in maintaining the BEST (under the circumstances) health that you can, given the resources you have.
It’s well known and well proven that high stress levels increase both illness and accidents, and impede logical thinking. At the very time we need ALL of our resources, the stress (fear, grief, and all other emotions coupled with it) deprives us of our resources of mind and body.
I am still making a great effort to not stress myself out so that my reserves of energy can naturally rebuild. I am thinking more clearly now, so that helps too (though I do have some short term memory problems still) If there is something “nonessential” that I just don’t want to do, I don’t do it, AND I don’t beat myself up because it isn’t done. (doesn’t do any good to not do something non essential if you beat yourself up and stress yourself because you didn’t want to do it. LOL)
Just a change in the way I look at priorities has made a big change in how I feel about things so that additional, unnecessary stress is not added to my “plate.”
About three years is necessary to overcome the effects of a “big bad stress” attack (or a series of continual smaller ones) and during that three years I know that I need to keep CHANGES of all kinds at a minimum. Changes (even good ones) add “stress” to your life, so the research tells me that even a good stress like my son C moving home will “stress” me. Even though I am VERY happy he is here, I can see some changes in my level of toleration for various things, and am trying to keep myself aware of this so that I can take action to decrease other stresses to compensate.
I noticed the noise level in my house had risen, and I am sensitive to noise, it irritates me more than “normal” and has since my husband’s death. I have difficulty “tuning it out” that I didn’t have before. There are more other people here lately than is usual too, and frankly they had more or less over stayed their welcome (they were friends of my son’s) so last night we had a talk about this and the problem is solved (apparently they had also overstayed his welcome as well LOL) so we will cut down their visits and the length of their visits. Easy solution to that one. Look at things in your life that are making you feel stressed—find out what they are, then work on eliminating that stress. I have about two more years to go on living a LOW STRESS life (as much as I can make it that way) before the total effects of stress should be fairly well over with. I can already see that my “reserves” of strength and sanity, are increasing, and that I am able to handle “set backs” in a much better, quicker, and less intense way than when I was really stressed out and anxious.
I talked to my psychiatrist about it yesterday, about how quiet I was keeping my enviornment, how I was pulling inward, working on myself, etc. and seeking serenity and peace, focusing on my healing, and my relationships with those that are closest to me, and she validated that I was “on the right track” that I was “tired” from the stress of the past nearly five years now and needed a “rest”—-from stressful things. Learning to set boundaries for myself and others has helped tremendously, because setting them was very stressful at first, but now that I have a bit of practice, it isn’t as stressful at all, and the NET result is less stress.
I don’t know if any of this long diatribe makes any sense to anyone but me, but that’s the “plan” I am working on, to keep stress low. To use my resources well for my own benefit and not worry about things I can’t control.
Just to let you know …still alive and kicking…quiet day again…not a word..but this time I wont imagine its ll over like last time.
Ox Drover,
“and during that three years I know that I need to keep CHANGES of all kinds at a minimum. Changes (even good ones) add “stress” to your life,”
“how quiet I was keeping my environment, how I was pulling inward, working on myself, etc. and seeking serenity and peace, focusing on my healing, and my relationships with those that are closest to me, ”
These are tactics I use too.
I am insanely busy taking care of my family and homeschooling my children. Given how much is going on, I refuse to let anyone or anything rock the boat unnecessarily. The prime hours for home schooling are Mon-Fri 8-11 AM and 12-1 PM. No one messes with that time. I have an elderly relative who sometimes schedules her doctors visits during those hours. When she does, I politely tell her I won’t drive her unless she reschedules.
I take new relationships very cautiously. I used to reach out to anyone and everyone right away, not I take new relationships very, very, slowly. I don’t book as many social engagements either. If there are two social engagements only an hour or so apart, I politely excuse myself from one of them. I used to give people rides to wherever I was going, every time. Now I take off once in a while with an empty car, and I’m learning not to feel guilty about that.
My husband takes a firm hand with discipline matters, and gives me time away when I need it. This afternoon my 12 YO kicked her brother in the head, and he bit her on the big toe (don’t ask), while we were driving in traffic. I dropped them off at home and went out for a recreational shopping trip to the local thrift store – ALONE! At supper this evening my husband warned them that he would handcuff them together for 24 hours if they quarreled again. I don’t imagine social services would understand a punishment of that sort, but I heartily approve. Besides, their eyes got pretty wide. Dad’s a retired Marine Officer with a gift for thinking out of the box to solve discipline problems. THEY think he’d do it, and that’s all that matters.
No matter how busy things get, there are ways to leverage a sense of order and calm for ourselves.