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.
Chic…..my face hurts…..I think iv’e cried myself out tonight…..
Thanks for being here……tomorrow IS another day!
I’ve got to go to bed…..
Nighty night~
and big XXOO’s to you baby!!!!
Dearest EB, Darlin, Id like to give you th biggest {{HUG!}}, make you a hot chocolate, and tuck you up in bed.!
Im so sorry that your Thanksgiving day went pear shaped!
I also think that maybe junior is missing you more than he lets on, and doesnt want to tell you he misses you.
He knows he dropped the ball re the pies,when youve both calmed down, maybe you can have a laugh about it all later!
Xmas and Thanksgiving are such emotionally loaded times,with evryone pretending were “Mr and Mrs Norman Rockwell,American as Apple pie. Its harder on single or divorced Moms{and Dads too, Im sure.}.Also, maybe Junior sees you flying around with snowblowers etc, and feels, “I should be doing all this for Mom”. he feels guilty, mad, confused,angry at spath dad, and hey, on top of all this he IS a teenager after all!
When the heat is off all of this,Id have real heart to heart with him find out whats bugging him. Im sure hes a good kid at heart. Massive {{HUGS!!}}, Mama gem.XXX
Hopeforjoy:
“He said he would be out in January. He has tried to stay for so long, begged and cried and bargained” – sweetheart, cut him loose – let him go – make him go. Please. Now.
This time of year is famous for not only the good and heart-warming family connections but also for the following:
a rise in domestic violence and other family crimes
a rise in alcohol and drug-fueled crimes
a rise in marital/relationship splits/fights/tension
a rise in suicidal and murderous behaviours.
Over the next two months, there are way too many buttons available for him to push that could wear you so down that by January you may not have the emotional or mental or physical strength required to stand your ground. Please do it NOW before he puts you where you can’t. x
EB: I do hope you are feeling a little better by now. xxx.
Gem and I just posted at the same time! I agree with what she says but also understand your fears of the old “gene” problem – I hold the same fears for my former step-son (who is now 16 and very troubled) and so does his bio mum. How old is your son?
Dear EB – first, I want to call a moratorium on people apologizing that they post; it’s a blog!
I am not on lf consistently, so I missed that you had kicked him out – that’s a huge step toward getting some peace in your life. I know you had some good times with jr this summer; i wish that could be your reality with him, but it seems it is not. you have to let him go, if he is toxic to you. the not right about him may just be having grown up with his father. nurture not nature. my mom doesn’t drink, but her dad did – and, I act like a kid of an alcoholic…I’ve learned from her, she both acts like an alcoholic and a kid of an alcoholic.
huge opportunity is in your hands now; to learn to say no to the behavior regardless of the agent. You can let him fail, you can endure the exposure and embarrassment. You have done a great deal of damage control with the spath – showed a sunny face until he landed so deep int he shit that others questioned HIM and not You. You have to let jr fail also, the playing field has changed – you don’t have the energy; and you are not the person you were before.
Call dibs on tg next year. YOU need the tradition.
EB…so sorry about your Thanksgiving. I think that I might have caught something important….something that sounds a lot like my ex spath hole.
“I had enough”..and I BOOTED HIM about 2 weeks ago.”
EB, he was PUNISHING you! He wanted to PUNISH you…he may have had the pie thing all planned out.
My ex spath hole is a middle aged ‘man’, and his Mommy still bails him out! No job, she buys him a car. No home, she lets him live with her. No job, no money, she pays for his cell phone, insurance, and for doing ‘jobs’ around the house. He stole from his brothers and trash-talked them and their kids, so they want nothing to do with him anymore. Mommy is the only one enabling him now, as far as I know. If she continues to enable, he can take his time and shop around for another patsy like me.
As one step said…”huge opportunity is in your hands now”. Take it, EB. You are such a nice person…let it be all about YOU from now on. Let him sink or swim.
(((HUGS))) Jazzy
EB,
Sweetie, your Thanksgiving has now passed and you can look at things in a new light. Is it you? Hell no!!!! You overcame so many challenges and made your kids the central theme in your life. Your love for them shines through on this blog so I imagine it’s ten times greater in your ‘real’ life.
Jr. has to make his own mistakes. It’s too early to know what path he will chose, you modeled a healthy, loving parent and he needs to decide what to do with that. Kids tend to blame their parents for the problems in their life but ask yourself, am I to blame? Obviously not. You are not to blame. Keep repeating this because 100% the truth. You raised Jr. in love. Keep up your boundaries, they are put there out of love and compassion.
It hard to hear your pain because you have been such a huge pillar of strength.
My 23 year old daughter continues to do irresponsible things and I have learned to quite enabling her behavior. She has some fierce mood swings and I worry about bi-polar. she is lucky enough to have a narc dad and a narc/spath stepdad. Bonus for her. I loved and cared for her the best I could and still try to be a positive influence even with all my blasted problems. She makes her own choices, I am not responsible for them. You are not responsible for Jr’s choices either.
The fact that his dad is a spath really complicates things. Second guessing his motives and seeing similairities between his actions and good ole dad. He may grow out of his bad choices and take control of his life but you aren’t responsible for his bad choices in the meantime.
Today is a new day, put yesterday behind you and if Jr ever ‘forgets’ to make the pies, it’s not your fault. None of it is yours to own! Take care and many warm hugs!!!!
Dear EB,
Darling your day yesterday reminds me of my “End of year Holidays” last year and How I MELTED DOWN when son C lied to me after breaking his agreement to make good choices on his spending while he was living here (Paying rent and board but still living WELL for very little percentage of his paycheck!) So I told him he had to leave and he did—then LIED TO HIS FRIENDS and his boss that I had tossed him out on the street in the middle of the night (I had given him 30 days to leave) and left here (after spending a huge chunk on toys) owing me for a truck he had purchased—I told him to either pay me the FULL amount by Monday or return the truck until he had paid it off in FULL. He did pay it off (wasn’t a lot, a few hundred dollars)
Since then, the guy who he is renting a place to stay from went into foreclosure on his double wide mobile home (long story why) and somehow the two of them managed to get some sort of chity-arse “single wide trailer” put on the lot this guy uses though it belongs to his step mother (I can only imagine what it is like, I’ve seen the “trailers” this guy lived in before!!!)
I went into a complete melt down because son C lied to me—and it wasn’t over the ONE LIE, but the 100+ other lies he had told me before. C isn’t a psychopath, he is just someone who is dysfunctional and refuses to live his life in a way that I think makes “good sense” and “good choices”—he is DOOMING himself to a life of ABJECT POVERTY even though he works at a steady job, he “blows” his money on “toys” and computer games which seem to be the only thing in life he is really interested in. Sooner or later he will have some minor emergency that will render him unable to get to work–his car will crap out, or need major work and he won’t have a dime saved up to fix it or as a down payment on another. Something will happen so that he needs a place to stay and won’t have a deposit on any kind of place to live, much less the rent for first and last.
He already had major problems with his ankle from repeated strains on it, and the doctor says, wear a brace and use a cane…that’s great! He’s been wearing a brace for 20+ years, but it doesn’t help the pain, and surgery isn’t the answer–sorry. Even if surgery was the answer, how on earth would he manage with 8-12 weeks off work—in an economy where his work as a machinist is going to China and India anyway? Jobs are HARD to come by in his field, and in our area low paying anyway.
All of the problems he has are AVOIDABLE by THINKING AHEAD…by focusing on saving money rather than spending it on “boy toys”—he is living and his friends are living what we refer to here as “trailer trash.” Always broke, always in a financial tight…and as they age, it only gets worse as they are less and less age to come up with the resources to even maintain the necessities of life.
The only thing in his favor my son C has is that he isn’t a drinker or drugger. It breaks my heart to see him hang out with guys just like him that “feed” his decisions by making the same kind of decisions, and I feel certain that in the end my son will wind up with nothing to show for his life but some obsolete and broken computers and living in a cardboard box. It wasn’t necessary, and he had a CHOICE not to live that way. But he made HIS CHOICE. Sure, after the big blow up with his wife trying to kill him (Oh, boy did I try my best to have him get better acquainted with the cyber-chick before he married her and took on raising her “Devil child” teenaged daughter and her disabled AND disordered son—but no, he had to marry her “before mom broke them up”—and he had actually had a couple of nice GFs.
I too tried to “help” him….and over looked his disrespectful behavior toward me. BUT IT BROKE MY HEART, and when I finally DID set limits last year and ask him to leave….you remember I am sure my 60 day melt down! Holidays HUMBUG!!!!
WE WANT THE BEST FOR OUR KIDS EB! We want them to take advantage of the opportunities we make available for them. Like finish high school. JUNIOR made the choice not to finish, and my guess is (though you haven’t said) that he isn’t going to finish this year either. So now, he is without even a HS diploma in a bad situation for job hunters with COLLEGE DEGREES. I also imagine the guys he is living with are not exactly great role models either.
I wish I could put my arms around you and hug you and let you cry it out, or that I could do something to make you feel better about it….but the only thing I can do, EB is to tell you that I understand your pain, your frustration and your loss of your hopes and dreams that Jr. will fix himself.
It isn’t just the PIES, it is that you lost your expectations, your dream that he might be seeing the light. Those DREAMS are precious to us. We WANT Them BADLY!! We grieve when they evaporate in the sad light of reality! We’ve held on to them since the day we realized we were pregnant with the child we loved so much our heart was directly attached to them.
Junior (like my son C) may not be a psychopath, but he isn’t without dysfunctions, isn’t without poor choices. He may or may not learn from the consequences of those poor choices, but the only thing that you and I, that WE can do, is to stop having those hopes and dreams for them, and accept them as they are.
I don’t hate C, but I am not there for him any more. When he gets into a financial tight and needs help (or wants to borrow my tools) there’s not any help available, BECAUSE HE HAS NOT DONE THE BEST HE COULD TO HELP HIMSELF. I am no longer the “bail out” queen, running to his aid. He is ON his OWN now.
I didn’t invite him for TG dinner, and I am sure unless one of his better friends invited him he didn’t have one. Oh, well. I won’t send him a card for his birthday, or invite him for Christmas dinner either! He recently send me an e-mail copy of his MRI on his ankle and asked me to “translate it into english” for him, and I did so, and I keep him advised on the parole hearing with his brother. But that is the only time I contact him even by e mail and it has been nearly a year since I have seen him, and only probably 8 or 10 e mails about “business” (or his medical information) but no other communication about how we are “doing” or wondering about how “he” is doing. He has sent me some information (like the repossession of his buddy’s double wide) but I didn’t even comment on it…I just stuck to the BUSINESS of the parole hearing. I did translate his MRI into English and told him what I thought the doctor would tell him about his ankle (and it turned out to be right on) and he sent me back information saying I had been right—but I just replied. “Sorry to hear that.” nothing more.
I have come to accept, though I am saddened, that my “predictions” of what his life will be like are pretty likely to occur. I really don’t need a crystal ball to predict what road he is headed down. It isn’t one I would have chosen for him, but at least he is not robbing liquor stores, and he isn’t raping little children, or blowing the brains out of his Girl friends. So, could be worse. There are levels of dysfunction. He has his, I have mine. You have yours. We are though, at least trying to keep our lives between the ditches, and I know it hurts to see someone you do love weaving from ditch to ditch, and wondering when they will hit a tree…but we can’t stop it, any more than we could with the psychopaths. ((((EB))))) and much love and prayers from your friend, Oxy
EB,
Sounds like a tough day.
Couple of thoughts…
Boys of Few Words, Dr. Adam Cox
Boys are different.
There is always more to the story.
And there are always a couple of sides.
Children learn what they have lived. And you and yours have been through hell.
Maybe there is a chance to do some real work and a need.
I feel your distress.
I wish there were easy answers.
Advice may pour down from the stadium full, but only the matador faces the bull….
EB,
I’m sorry you had such a trying day. You were in the “washing machine”. I’m at a loss for words to comfort you, but your love for your children and family does shine through. I hope you are having a much better day today.
Hugzzz,
soimnotthecrazee1!
EB,
My son seemed lazy and disobedient. He had bursts of extraordinary anger and prolonged periods of non performance…
Then we found out he had extraordinary sleep apnea.
Sometimes it is what it looks like and sometimes its not.
He’s going to be a late bloomer because he kind of lost years. And a lot of the years when his father and I were still together traumatized him. It was worse when I sent him to dad for a year .
Sometimes they tell us things by actions that we can’t understand clearly right away. So, I’d ask the questions about why and how it all added up. And I’d pursue homework.
There are people who know more than we do. And their insights are often, I have found invaluable.
Is there a physical problem that may be existant but many years overlooked? Are there issues that can be overcome?
My experience was that the hard core advice I was given was wrong and eventually both my child and I were validated. But it was a long road. And WE had some really TOUGH times.
I have stories that sound like yours. I have spent those bitter nights and pained days.
The road is long. The road is rocky. And there are so many possible outcomes.
Wishing for you that there is a good one for you and this boy.
Know we are all here for YOU. And there are resources here. Dr. Leedom, Steve Beck- and there are many, many more.
Sometimes things are what we think on first pass and sometimes they are not.
Sometimes we are persuaded by the experiences of others to overlook details in our own that differentiate them.
There is no single or simple answer.
I just know from my own, that there was a time when I was very,very wrong to believe what I thought I understood about my child and that it has taken a lot of work to bring things back toward where they should have been.