Among the more serious personality disturbances, there’s a disorder you hardly ever hear about. Even when it manifests itself, this disorder is often neither recognized for what it is nor properly diagnosed. But when someone has Paranoid Personality Disorder (PPD), believe me, you know it, whether or not you know the right label to apply to it or you fully understand its dynamics. You know always know something’s dreadfully wrong when somebody has PPD because of how unnerving it is to have any kinds of dealings with them. Just like when you encounter psychopathic personalities, you can sometimes feel the hair on the back of your neck stand on end when you deal with someone who has this disorder. That chilling feeling is your nature-given intuitive warning system telling you something is seriously wrong with the person you’re dealing with and something really bad could easily happen, especially if you should do or say anything that upsets them in some way. Given how serious this personality disorder is, you have to wonder why you don’t hear much more about it. And in the aftermath of the shootings at UC Santa Barbara, I thought it well worth visiting this subject, the reason for which will become clearer momentarily.
Like others, I was deeply moved by the tragic stabbing and shooting of several innocents by another social “misfit” with a vendetta of some type. But when I looked very closely at the all the known information about Elliot Roger – his lengthy history of treatment for psychological problems and his self-proclaimed hatred of the women who’d supposedly spurred his amorous advances – and the closer I looked and the more I reflected on rants and manifesto he posted on YouTube and other social media, the more it became apparent to me that attributing this wanton killer’s actions merely to him being a “high-functioning” autism spectrum child (i.e. having Asperger’s Disorder) or a serious “misogynist” (there appears little doubt misogyny was a big factor) misses the mark when it comes to understanding the depths of his pathology. And not having his pathology correctly pegged might also have significantly contributed to many not recognizing the full extent of his dangerousness.
Now, it would be irresponsible of me to confer a formal diagnosis in the absence of sufficient firsthand information and corroborative data. And it’s impossible to fairly judge all the possible missteps and misjudgments that might have contributed to the failure of the mental health system and law enforcement’s to prevent what might have been preventable. But there are aspects of this case that simply scream for some attention and scrutiny, so I feel obliged to share a few thoughts – in no small measure because it’s quite likely someone reading this article might have encountered a person with PPD, didn’t really know what to make of it at the time, and could have been much better served (or protected) if they had enough information.
I include PPD in my descriptions of the major personality disturbances in Character Disturbance (see pp. 127-128) but I now lament not going into greater depth. So for the benefit of the readers, here, in a nutshell, is what someone with Paranoid Personality Disorder looks like:
- Paranoid personalities exhibit a persistent, pervasive pattern of mistrust of the intentions and motivations of others.
- Paranoid personalities are highly sensitive to personal setbacks and perceived slights, rebuffs, and injuries by others.
- Paranoid personalities bear grudges and harbor resentments, often holding onto them with tenacity and using them to justify a hostile stance toward others.
- Paranoid personalities can misconstrue even the most neutral or benign events as evidence of conspiracies, ill-intentions, and justification to mistrust
- Paranoid personalities often have an unrealistic, exaggerated sense of self-importance, are self-absorbed and unduly self-concerned, and therefore cannot accept the blame for personal failures (i.e. have some malignant narcissism).
- Paranoid personalities are predisposed to aggress in the face of perceived threats to their worth or safety.
- The paranoid features of this personality type are not merely the result of a psychosis but rather are part and parcel of the person’s typical coping “style.”
Now here’s the real kicker about (and some would even argue the “core” of) the paranoid personality: Even though they’re usually not truly delusional, their beliefs border on the delusional. And under stress, folks with PPD can easily “decompensate” (i.e. deteriorate from their usual level of functioning) and become truly delusional (i.e. experience a psychotic break). Anyone who examines closely the character and content of the rants made by Mr. Rodger cannot help but see how delusional he was not only in his perceptions of others but also in his appraisal of himself. And that’s what made him so dangerous (People with PPD are not completely devoid of danger when they’re not in a decompensated, delusional state but are generally able to exercise better impulse control and practical judgment). And the fact that he was so dangerous and the way both our mental health system and our law enforcement system work left them unable to protect folks from him is a genuine disgrace.
Just how broken our mental health care systems and legal systems are when it comes to the severely disturbed is probably fodder for another series of articles. But hopefully today’s article will help make some sense of yet another senseless tragedy and provide some helpful and perhaps potentially life-saving information to those who know or have known someone with PPD.
I’ll be talking more about the Elliot Rodger case and PPD on this Sunday evening’s Character Matters program at 7 pm EDT. And I’ll be making some announcements about new foreign editions of In Sheep’s Clothing.
This describes someone in my family. How on earth do I deal with them ..?
I wish I knew. I am having a huge problem with one myself.
I’m dealing with a 35 yr old daughter who has held a grudge for 20 yrs and displays many BPD traits. I recently was hacked big time out of hostility and have had to cut all contact. It became a bit scary and very abusive on her part. Very sad, but you can’t force someone to seek help.
There is an extremely dangerous one in my home right now, and has been for about ten years, or so. He refuses to leave, threatens me, steals from me, lies, gaslights, etc. He is an African American monster, and hates women, has choked me nearly to death, speaks of murder, and killing, constantly. He is paranoid, schiz, bi- polar, etc. He is truly dangerous, and nobody will help me. The police are an inexperienced JOKE!
There is an extremely dangerous one in my home right now, and has been for about ten years, or so. He refuses to leave, threatens me, steals from me, lies, gaslights, etc. He is an African American monster, and hates women, has choked me nearly to death, speaks of murder, and killing, constantly. He is paranoid, schiz, bi- polar, etc. He is truly dangerous, and nobody will help me. The police are an inexperienced JOKE! He is a transient, and pays nothing. He cannot hold employment, and refuses benefits. I am a physically disabled homeowner. His family has been lying to me, and I learned he was dangerous since early childhood. May they rot in HELL, those so-called “Christians”. I do not deserve any of this because I am a good, Godfearing woman.
Truthseeker,
The person actions you describe are not bound to any certain race. We do not ascribe to any nationality being the culprits as the CD are in every race of people.
I empathize with your circumstances. Have you gone to the Women’s Resource Center for help? They have advocates there who have dealt with situations like what you describe. Yes, it is very difficult once one of these CD are living in your home to get rid of them. There are ways though.
It’s takes planning and asserting your rights in a legal venue. It can also be a very trying, dangerous feat to get free of a CD individual that is pathologically ill. My heart goes out to you.
I welcome you to keep posting and if in any way we can be of help to you please feel free to ask. If anything you can come here and vent. Whatever, you do though, do not engage with him or tell him of any resources you have found. I also would suggest keeping race out of the mix as the true problems is his sick, twisted thinking and abuse.
Take care and blessings
The reason I mentioned his race is in case of my “untimely demise due to unnatural causes” since he has already displayed homicidal tendencies, and mentioned a murder he committed before having met me, although he could have been lying about the self defense aspect, which is the reason it did not bother, nor concern me at the time. What if it was not self defense? What if the person was not a gang member? What if it was not several thugs, and he lied about the details? He is, after all, a pathological liar. He has gotten away with so much already, that I believe he would actually get away with killing me. He is very analytical, and intelligent as well, in some ways, although not well educated, except in history.
Truthseeker,
You are describing a predator. You are right to assume he may kill you especially if your gut is telling you this. Be ever so careful. I don;t know this man or all your circumstances to comment or guide you. There are ways to get away from him, it depends on how adamant you are in taking back your life. I can guarantee it won’t be without an enormous battle.
I have found an eviction attorney who sounds very good, and is highly recommended. However, I cannot afford him. He charges $350.00 An hour, and demands a $3,500.00 retainer. I need an emergency order, and restraining order, but the police in this city are so danged incompetent, and have an extremely bad reputation of NOT enforcing restraining orders, according to another local attorney. I believe it. This monster is too crazy for words.
The person you are describing sounds more like NPD or someone with psychopathic/sociopathic tendencies than PPD only. I do hope you are safe, as this was posted almost a year ago.
If only you didn’t reside in California where the “system” fails you and the state makes it next to impossible to buy a gun and defend your life..
your discription to this man is someone who’s mentally fucked up in the head and needs to get out that house you should take some mma lessons in case he ever try’s to hurt you again if the poilce is to lazy and won’t get there big fat ass’s out there to arrested him for assault then you need to call substance abuse hotline for help.
Just a suggestion because u are playing with fire (not making light of it with the word playing). I had to do this once..doesnt matter if u are renting or own follow the order of whichever. I moved out without him knowing..didnt take everything…then i got ahold of him and told him the house had been sold and we have to move. This was alot to do but the person who owned help me..he wrote up llegal papers eviction…type stuff..i hired someone to pack and move my stuff in storage..and it was several months before i could mive back in. I actually pretended i had married etc. By then he had someone else to abuse…nothing i could do there. I believe i would probly be dead…yes it was alot…but it worked for me. U just do what u got to do…
He preys on disabled/ chronically sick women who are low income. He knows they are quite helpless. I have MS, and am always exhausted, but the perp makes everything worse, in order to have total control over me. He says the only thing that will get him out of my home is if the police shoot him dead. Also, he becomes quite paranoid at times, imagines things, hears voices, and talks to himself. When he becomes paranoid, he becomes even more violent at times. He is quite sharp, and analytical. I do not believe I have long to live, as is, however it would not be smart of him to kill me, because that will make him homeless, even if the police do nothing to prosecute him. It seems like, in this city, anything goes.
Hello There! I am the same person who goes under “TruthSeeker”, and “TruthSeeker777”, but I am also devastated and traumatized, so I go under that as well. I am still alive, for now, and the narcissist knows he will be homeless if he kills me, and perhaps get locked up, but the police are so lazy, and corrupt, I doubt anything would be done about him, as they have not been any help to me, or the other victims I know about ( not victims of my monster) but victims of other monsters. There are so many of them. The Holy Bible says that in the last days there would be total lawlessness, and that is exactly what is happening now. It also says something about hearts running cold. All evil people are Demon possessed. It is of Satan, even if they claim to be Christians. Narcissists, and other sickos will claim anything they want. They are The Liars, and Receivers that the Holy Bible speaks of, besides Satan.
Truthseeker,
I have read your posts in the past. Could you tell me if you are in the US, since laws are differ throughout the world and yes, even state to state. I assume you have been educating yourself in the meantime.
Truth, Could you tell me what you would ultimately like to see happen, what do you want and what are you willing to do to get it.
I am just trying to find out where your at.
I truly feel for you,I have had to deal with a broken legal system with an issue concerning mental. It is sad & disgraceful their lack of knowledge is on dealing with someone with mental health problems. I wish you all the best & hope you find safe refuge
Sound like the same guy that tortured and attempted to kill me nearly a decade ago. Run like he’ll. I tried to myself but he caught me at the door when I was trying to get away. Kept my keys to my car on his beltloop and my cell phone in his pocket. I prey that you find away. There are shelters. Just go. Leave your things behind cuz they are not worth your life. Like when the house is on fire! Run and figure it out later. It can only get better not worse . my heart is lacking for you. I understand . I still have PTSD. And I am a changed woman who still is suffering years later. But I got out with my life. Barely. My face was smashed. Have dentures now because of him and I no longer had a cheek bone because he hit me so hard I was spitting my teeth out and was told I was going to be blind from a torn retina. Was actually seeing the inside of my head when ever something shinny caught my eyesight it would turn backwards so please I beg you to leave him before something worse happens. I wouldn’t wish anything I went through to happen to another. That fear doesn’t go away once you been through what I endured and i never even thought that could happen to me . I prey for you and your life
Sound like the same guy that tortured and attempted to kill me nearly a decade ago. Run like he’ll. I tried to myself but he caught me at the door when I was trying to get away. Kept my keys to my car on his beltloop and my cell phone in his pocket. I prey that you find away. There are shelters. Just go. Leave your things behind cuz they are not worth your life. Like when the house is on fire! Run and figure it out later. It can only get better not worse . my heart is lacking for you. I understand . I still have PTSD. And I am a changed woman who still is suffering years later. But I got out with my life. Barely. My face was smashed. Have dentures now because of him and I no longer had a cheek bone because he hit me so hard I was spitting my teeth out and was told I was going to be blind from a torn retina. Was actually seeing the inside of my head when ever something shinny caught my eyesight it would turn backwards so please I beg you to leave him before something worse happens. I wouldn’t wish anything I went through to happen to another. That fear doesn’t go away once you been through what I endured and i never even thought that could happen to me . I prey for you and your lifei heard he had preyed on a disabled woman after me and another. He was a black man . played guitar beautifully. Sang to Mervyn Gaye. That’s what lured me in. He got paranoid and even thought I was a person that was written from the Bible. My son was about 13 and his name comes from biblical names so this m.f. convinced himself that the scripture says my son must die and I will die too. It was truly terrifing barely got out with my life. He had butcher knifes to my throat and told me to redeem myself before God. I was going to die. I was pregnant and from the trauma miscarried. I didn’t even see it comming. I still have a hard time understanding why this happened to me. Now I am fearfully of the things people can do to me whenever I get a bad vibe off a person I go back to the former trauma that I suffered from and have panic attacks that last for 2 or 3 days and all of it happened like ten years ago. I hope you get out . hell I’m really worried for you lady. If I didn’t know better I would say this was the same man. I don’t know if it’s okay to give out names on here. If I knew where you were I would rescue you myself in fear he is kill someone eventually if he hasn’t already. There was another lady he nearly stabbed in the throat cutting and scarring her face after it happened to me. If you are scared that he may hurt you then call a taxi if you have to or call someone to help you get out as soon as he goes to sleep or leaves the house! Please! Trust your intuition!
He is not the same black predator. Also, this one becomes paranoid. He does NOT want others seeing, and discovering that he is a narcisstic psychopath. He puts on a false image of himself, and hides behind Christianity, and the Bible, but cannot live it for himself. He is total TRASH, and totally defective in his brain, and heart.
Iam so glad to be able to vent. My girl friend 7 months now is so sick..I met her fell in love with her moved her into my home, living with others on a 20 acrea lot in a fifth wheel.. NOt her or her family gave me a heads up on her mental health issue which has escalated into a severe problem… SHe was living in a home with others with same problems homeless ect…. SHe was receiving a shot in the but that assured her a save place to live until I asked her to move in. SHe tolded me the men that lived in this home where raping her.. I had no idea she was scitz, polar.. manic. bi etc. Since we have been together and never was told about her condition from the gate not even her huge family which I met at her fathers big birthday party… ALl of the relativies and well know Jazz artist very talented and so is Charisma… I was finally aware of something being totally wront after I moved her into my life.. We both fell in love,, Up to date, I have put her into riverside mental health, sanberdino mental health, St. Bernadines hospital had her amitted to the syic ward, after she was found out calling the fbi and police on her mother repeaditily from the hospital..Ive been arrested spent 5 days in Southwest detention center when she full fisted me across the face put my glasses into my forehead,, Of course when I called the police now this is when I was driving,, she was acting up and I mention if she did not calm down l,,, on our way to laundry, she full fisted me across the face… the police took up both in,,, horrible experience… the da never took the case. I had to call the police a couple weeks after being release from jail bailed her out the first time,, SHe had a violent episode at my work place striking me in the face in front of wittiness,, she has gotten more violent since that insodent…. SHe also destroyed property in my office in front of customers.. Horible day all most lost my job.. Anyways the DA took that cast I didn’t file chargers but the Da did. Awaiting her court date I bailed her out of that charge as well after when she called me from jail threating me on a jail phone ,, get me out of jail or else type of threat,, threating to have me killed,. Two days ago I thought to get her out of the house to go bowling kind of learty but whent anyways…. WE were in the establishment playing pool in the bar area when all of a sudden she lashed out at the female bartender and other paitrons…. SHe was out of control acusing these fine citizens of wanting to do harm to her family ,, father , etc…. I was in tears she promised to be normal… We were asked to leave from security I was hoping the police would of showd so to get into .. SHe attacked me on the way home in the car hitting me in the face numoreous times I feared for my life.. Made it home then the madness really started.. She continues to accuse me of screwing these woman wanting to conspire to kill her father etc…. Very scary…… what do I do I love her………………..care about her….
Run for your life dude!!! Forget about her, and get yourself some psychiatric help FAST. If you love her, or think you do, then you are sick too. You hate yourself sub- consciously to LOVE that extremely ill person. You will be MISERABLE for the REST of your SHORT life. Life is much too short to be with a MONSTER like her. She is Demon possessed!!! The transient MONSTER who has caused me so much harm, and suffering, is OUT of here, finally. My problems are far from over though. As soon as the bastard settles in with yet ANOTHER VICTIM, he will retaliate against me, and STEAL my cat, etc. I NEED to do something FAST. I NEED a good home for my fur baby, or must keep him locked in, and miserable. Poor soul. I am sick, and disabled. May be dying from pancreatic cancer. Afraid to get tumor diagnosed. I pray it is not cancer.
I believe that I have delt with a person like this in my life. I was recently called by a person who is related to them. After 10 years of no contact directly or indirectly with this person, she is still just as angry with me for things she ¨percieved¨ I did completely in her mind. She blames all of her problems on me (ok I was married to her for 5 years). I plan to continue to have no contact.
I do not want to get you paranoid, but as long as she knows where you live, she will be a problem, and perhaps, when you least expect it, unless you are an extremely intuitive person who gets bad feelings about things, like I do. The psycho who nearly killed me, knows where I live, because he lived with me, off, and on, for years, against my will. I told him to get out so many times, and even put it in writing. It made him very angry, and violent, to where I had to call the police. What a sick joke they are, and what a pathological liar he is. When he was not here, he was committing criminal acts elsewhere. I must ignore him the best I can, as he called me the other day. I had to hang up on him.
I think someone in my family may have this as well. She has been this way as far back as I can remember. She will flip out if you decide to be nice and grab the mail and bring it in the house. She came to a point that she excluded my brother from all family activities. She try’s to “help” everyone then turns around and screams at them for what she perceived in her mind to be true. If she is wrong and you know for a fact she is. She will disagree, because she “knows” its true. She screamed at me for not helping around the house as if I never do so. But honesty I do almost everydAy. If I don’t do much around the house in 2 days. She claims I do nothing to help out, yet I almost clean the entire house everyday, Pick up dog poop, run things to my grandparents house for her. Ect. Today she flipped out on me because I left a bowl in the sink when I went to work. Told me that if I’m doing nothing around here that I should move out.
I’m here like wtf just happened?
She has been worse now than she has every been. Keeps going in to episodes. I don’t know what I should do anymore. All my life I learned to just agree with her even if she is in fact wrong, and don’t even bother saying anything during an argument. If I defend myself, she gets worse. If I prove something to here she looks the other way like her way is best, or she know more.
Again It has been like this my whole life. My step-mom, just doesn’t quit. And know I have no clue what to do. My dad keeps telling me to not worry about it, but this has broken up my family a few times. Still my brother is excluded from all family activities and has ben for about 6 years now. He and my dad have not spoke to each other since.
Mr. B
It is your choice who you talk to, and what you tolerate.
Maybe you take a break away from environment. Think about everything, maybe talk to your brother if you trust him, and find out your boundaries especially what you will not accept anymore. Go back and enforce your boundaries. Enforce them even if all the hell break lose.
When all else fails, cut your loses and move out.
You may want to read some more blogs here. If you like, then you may want to get a copy of books too.
My son told me that people are being recorded and charged for everything they do..after 3 strikes you get put on a disposal list..after the disposal list you are still recorded..the people recording go over peoples footage..if they dont like their lifestyle or say their a waste of space the vote to murder..their best murdering is heartattacks..they explode the heart..anurisma are a big one..they put a lazer in the vein of a brain and explode it..im still investigating ways they murder..he said he was on the list for feburary 22 but someone erased his death..they put wire type things in the back of the brain to plug you in to someone else..when cut comatoast..the president of the united states has a disposal list..i was put on but my dad saw..
Yesterday’s science fiction/ mental illness, becomes today’s reality, and tomorrow’s nightmare. The Government has all kinds of technology that we know nothing about. People who tend to be psychic, or mentally ill, are often in tune with things that sound extremely crazy, and paranoid. That does not mean that these people are NOT crazy, and paranoid. Many of them are, and I have one of “THOSE” sitting next to me right now, pretending to be “normal”. He is now controlling the television again, because he is The Auditor/ Contoller of my sad, horrible life. He should have been killed in that hit and run, but no, he came back like the foul odor that he is. Hopefully, someone will mow him down like a weed. There are many other “crazies in this sorry city, besides the monster who harms me.
Devastated&Truamtized
There are ways out, perhaps not the easiest way but nonetheless there are ways to get out or him out. It all depends on you, your fortitude, your resistance, your belief in yourself and willingness to do that which is painful without normal fear and manipulation.
If you think this is what you want, let me know. There are many that will support you on this journey, only if you so choose…..
I am in California, and I want him permanently out of my home, and life. He is a transient, which is one of the reasons he refuses to leave. He has nowhere to go, and no income, other than from recycling( and stealing) from me. I found an eviction attorney in the city I live in, but he charges a lot, and I am very low income/ disabled. The other problem would be if the eviction is not IMMEDIATE, meaning EMERGENCY eviction, because he will harm me in the interim of being with me in my very small house. TruthSeeker.
Truth Seeker,
In most counties there is a Womans Resource Center, it may be called something else in your location. Many times they have a shelter to stay at if you are homeless. I would seek out their services, they have support groups, counselors and legal advocates. I would think they can help direct you to where you can obtain assistance.
This is happening to me now with my 35 year old son I doing all of what everyone says. He is harassing us and commandeering our home. We went to court and had him IEA- Ed and put in a hospital for two weeks. We could no zip and he came back angry. We have had the police here several times. No help.
Suzanne,
I am sorry to hear about your situation, however, it is not out of the oridinary these days. Stick steadfast to that which you gut tells you. Many times the only way an individual who has lost there way will ever wake up if ever is to experience the results of their abohrant behaviors.
I can tell you this, you will feel more pain than they will ever feel.
I encourage you to continue to read the blog and attain Dr. Simons books and read other material suggested on this blog. I also encourage you to keep posting as you will need encouragement and support in the days to come. Just know you are welcomed and we all appreciate your input as we learn from one another.
Take care and my prayers are with you.
I am a compassionate neurotic personality, but after being around several manipulative personalities in my life, I can see some of the paranoid traits in myself! Scary!
Actually paranoid or is it merely mistrust after meeting such folks?
good point J. How can someone come out of a situation with one of these deceptive covert manipulators and not question just about anyone they come across? Thanks for pointing out the distinction.
Let’s hope it is just mistrust. I too am so thankful for Dr. Simon’s books. I agree with other comments, before his books, I thought I could “love” manipulators into better behavior. I mentioned my 18 year old son now falling for one and getting him counseling. Is there any specific questions to ask the counselor to be sure they understand what he is dealing with? I am concerned he is going to go into the counselor and say he has no problem. He thinks he is dating a caring person. He can’t even remember all the lies and manipulation that led up to this! I was watching Lost the other day (my son is re-watching this show, which is interesting, because he is so lost right now) they made a comment that the manipulative character, Ben, will plant an idea in your head and you will think you came up with it. That is where my son is right now, he thinks these are his ideas and they completely oppose who he has always been. So, bottom line, I want to be sure the counselor will be able to help him find himself! Thanks for your input.
Vic, I would ask the counselor if he/ she is familiar with Dr. Simon’s work/ books and ask if they are familiar with the difference between neurotic/ personality disorders and character disturbances (intentional overt and covert manipulation). As Dr. Simon has said, we can all be manipulative to varying degrees but someone who is truly disordered is very aware of what they are doing, why they are doing it and have little to no concern about if or how it affects the other person.
You mentioned your son… I wanted to share my story. Several years ago my son, 23, with not much experience in serious relationships, met a woman, 32, who was previously married and divorced. After a month of dating she moved in to live with him. He was just out of college working on his Masters degree and living in my second house (my late husband’s art studio). I was dealing with my husband’s death and just finished chemo treatment for cancer. My son was dealing with his father’s death and my illness too. First we all liked my son’s new friend. She was charming, smart, good looking, caring. But then I started seeing red flags. She told him heartbreaking stories about all the awful people who hurt her in the past, including her mother, previous boyfriends and ex husband, and former friends. Seemed like the whole world mistreated her and it was always their fault. She was very secretive, always claimed that someone was stalking her online, stealing her “ideas”(she had an art blog). Then she gradually and skillfully separated my son from his guy friends and later from all his friends. He was just supposed to be at home with her all the time. He could not see his family (me and his sister) without her being present. If he did something she considered wrong, there were tears, complaints, silent treatment, etc. Then she started talking about marriage. My son was not yet even making a decent living because he was working on his degree. I was helping him financially. This woman’s income did not even allow her to live on her own. She lived with roommates before she moved in with my son. She kept asking him when he was going to marry her. If he tried to explain that he was not ready for that serious step, there were tantrums, tears, accusations, silent treatments. I saw him very rarely and he became distant He was seeing a therapist that helped him to deal with his anxiety. Once he called and asked me to go to a session together with him. We did. It was helpful for me, because I could express all my concerns. I think his therapist started helping him understand that he was dealing with manipulative, controlling and somewhat paranoid person. It was all in a package. My son started reading about it and educating himself. I asked my son and his girlfriend to move out of my house. Believe it or not, I was not allowed to come to my own house. Did I mentioned that I paid for all the utilities? They found an apartment and started to get ready to move. His girlfriend did not like that. There were scenes, tears again. One fine day my son called me and said that he broke up with her. I was proud of him and thankful. Our lives seemed to get back to normal. Then the lightning struck. She told my son that she was pregnant from him. Then she disappeared. Later we found out that she was living with another man and a child that she had in another state. And she is suing my son for child support. This is her ultimate victory! Now she can pull all the strings she wants! Scary, isn’t it?
Sure is…..yikes. Of course I think a paternity test is in order if it hasn’t been done already?
Horrible.
Marina, Funny, when I read Dr.Simon’s article, months ago, it brought to mind a friend I had many years ago. She was also an artist, quite paranoid. Blew through friends left right and center. My husband and I hung in there for her for years but eventually incurred her wrath, too. She always imagined the worst in people, a state of mind we are all prone to on ocassion, particularly if we are bring mistreated. But..she’d made an art of being a victim and it was difficult to deal with. Your poor son! Really difficult. Wonderful that you have each other at this time!
So glad he got out, I hope that kid isn’t his 🙁 if it is hes going to have to get all his ducks in a row very quickly and he will have to be two steps ahead of this woman, because she’ll manipulate every opportunity she gets. Hope he has learnt the red flags for next time (moving in that soon is a huge red flag!)
I was thinking the same thing Vic. Def scary!
Oh what a witty retort! I didn’t get it at first, but after a couple more reads it sank in. Brilliant.
My mother has this disorder. I began research into this disorder a long time ago and one day she said that she had been disagnosed with this during a stint in mental home, but now won’t confirm this. I’m fairly sure this is the disorder she has, along with a healthy dose of
narcissism. My story is complicated and we go through periods of me managing her and getting along to being extremely distant. It’s hard because now I’m pregnant I want her to know her grandchild but it has become apparent that it won’t be easy. I have been in therapy for years and I have picked up some of
these traits she has and have often felt powerless to stop them taking over. They come up in work and have come up in relationships I have had in the past. As soon as I sense someone is not being honest with me I can get very anxious and it’s like a switch goes off and I might get paranoid or sabotage things because I can’t bear the feeling it brings out. With work I often shut myself away if I suspect the boss isn’t honest or conflict arises or stress of a certain level. I have had many jobs fail because of me quoting or being fired. I’ve had to do short contracts purposely because I don’t seem to be able to handle jobs of a certain level for long anymore. It left me worrying if had a disorder or if I have just reacted and am displaying learnt behaviour. I know I have an anxiety issue, but for a time I was truly worried I was turning into my mother.
I can’t maintain long term relationship with her because I turn into the mature mother type and she tries to be a mother but isn’t capable. Its cruel but the way we relate needs to as friends otherwise we will have an argument event or I’ll end up feeling depressed.
I wish I had an answer for others but my experience is that if the ppd person is a parent it makes it quite impossible to relate. Unless you have an inter al frame of steal and can handle being the ‘parent’. I know my mum just wants me all to herself so I can prove I love her and I am on her side. But she tries to do this with abuse or emotional manipulation. I now have decided to cut her put my life. I’m too damaged to manage her like a carer. I need to recover myself.
That’s only natural in my opinion. Sometimes experiences and that environment can eventually turn up as symptoms of a disorder when there actually is no disorder. Just a natural expectation due to patterns
I’m afraid I have this disorder. I’m not sure though since some of the traits pointed out are a bit normal or so I think. Like “cannot accept the blame for personal failures”. I know a lot(if not all) of people that really can’t accept the blame. And I’m one of them. It’s hard to accept because of pride, I think.
As for, mistrust and thinking that there’s a conspiracy, I think that’s what’s weird about me. I try to convince myself that it’s just my imagination, that it’s baseless, but I can’t stop myself from feeling irritated by that. Those are just small things like when my sister ask me to babysit our niece because she needs to go somewhere, I’d be thinking that she’s really doing it on purpose. That she’s planning something so that I would stay in our (other) sister’s house so she could stay in our parents’ house(where I live right now). I enjoy babysitting my niece but I really get irritated when I think my sister is doing it to trick me or something like that. And well, it’s not the first time or case that this happened to me. So I was thinking I’m getting paranoid but thought that PPD is a bit extreme for my case. I really don’t know. I hope not though. I already have a lot of disorders, it’d be hard if I’d develop more.
That sounds like me exactly..
Ciesiel,
So now that you know, what do you plan to do about it? It takes courage to admit one has a problem. If in fact you take action to change and truly get help to correct your CD, faulty thinking it gives me hope for the people in my family. I can tell you if you don’t make the effort to confront and change you will only sink further into the mire.
I wish you the best and encourage you to reach out. If you should decide to have the courage to take the next step, I am sure others on this blog would be more than willing to point you in the right directions and lovingly prod you in the right direction.
Dr Simon, sometimes I feel like I’m saying ‘my psychopath is bigger than your psychopath’ on this blog, however I would like to tell you that I have had four children to two of these types of men, in the extreme character disturbance category. They both have features of other forms of character disturbance too, for example being able to pull on the fleece for a short time to manipulative me into the relationship in the first place. I would like to say from 26 years experience (that’s an understatement!) that every single word of what you say above I have observed to be true. The first has a very high IQ but extremely low EQ, he was a twin born with a calcified fetus that came out with the placenta. He absorbed the energy of his twin even before it had a chance to be born! He had a very difficult high forceps birth and sustained some damage to his temporal lobe apparently. He died at birth and was revived. His Mother had severe pre-eclampsia and diabetes of pregnancy and didn’t hold him for six weeks because she rejected him. His parents suspected he was deaf around the age of 2 because he made no attempts to communicate then discovered his hearing was fine. His family were very religious, Methodist and later born again Christians. He was a very ‘naughty’ boy and showed traits of the homicidal triad at a very young age. For example at four, he locked the baby sitter out of the house and with another child the same age inside with him, took his father’s rifle, found the ammunition and firing pin which were both hidden separately apart from each other and the rifle. He put the loaded gun together and walked around inside the house pointing the gun at the babysitter through the windows. He was severely bullied at school for almost all of his childhood. His parents paid for him and his two siblings (he was the middle child of three born close together) to have music lessons but he didn’t have the concentration span to do his drills, so he used to play his Dad’s vinyl records of classical music and teach himself the pieces by ear. He can play like a brilliant classical pianist. This ability was almost savant like. Really complex fast and difficult pieces like Rachmaninov’s Death March about the guy who wakes up locked inside a coffin. He probably spent most of his childhood learning pieces like this instead of socializing with children. His Dad would beat him with his belt, making him choose the belt first and bring it to him, then say as he was belting him…’God…(belt) doesn’t…(lash)…love (harder)…bad (whip)…boys…(another belt) His two siblings were much more normal, his brother a Doctor of Medicine who is (Ned Flanders) to a tee and his sister a specialist nurse. During his teens he became obsessed with knives, guns, crossbows, survivalism and hunting. His whole world was disorganised chaos but his weapons and survival gear was kept meticulously. He was diagnosed in his teens as anal retentive and had major constipation problems. I met him at Church youth group when he was 18 and I was 16. Obviously I knew none of this at the time and was too nuerotic to even notice. He was cruel to animals and would shoot , kill and skin them just for pleasure. He has never been able to hold a job down for more than a few months, even adult men can’t handle him and end up ostracizing and bullying him in the workplace. He used his high IQ in his twenties to become adept at imitating normal people and became a glib, superficial conman. He especially preyed upon Christians in the church. He decompensates as you describe, under significant stressors and becomes paranoid and obsessed with various conspiracy theories relating to the medical establishment, the illuminati and the coming of Christ. He has nervous tics in his hands and eyes and had epileptic fits from nine to fifteen years of age. I left him mainly because he was abusing our babies physically and emotionally. He subjected me to almost 20 years of evil, trauma, obsession with me and refusal to let go. I either had to kill him or deal with it. I had no choice but to manage him during those years as I knew that too much significant stress from me could be the thing that tipped him over the edge. I know this sounds wrong but honestly I just knew that my ‘love’ was the thing that gave him his last internal inhibitor to hang on to. His children were the ultimate manipulation tactic against me. He did so many horrific things to me and the children over the years. We are living proof that love conquers all and that the human spirit is a profound mystery that can survive the most terrible circumstances. Much to our relief, he dropped myself and our children like a hot potato once he found a replacement object, when our children were 18 and 16. He was the first. I ran away from him when our sons were 6 and 8 into the arms of an even more disturbed paranoid man which I will save for another day. Have I learned something from this?! Of course..I just want to say Dr Simon, that until I came across your work I thought these guys were just victims of bad childhoods that could be healed. I now know different and after reading your book and all the information on this site as well as the stories of other survivors I wish I had known all this sooner and maybe saved myself from the disorder I now have. Thankyou Dr Simon.
I forgot to add he is a pyromaniac too.
I left him when our kids were 0 and 2
Juliette, how in the world did you find out all of this about his background?
Puddle, I pieced it together from stories he told me and when I was on a mission to heal him alot of it came from his Mum and siblings too. His Mother was a midwife and his Father a grade school teacher. Nice Father figure to spend all day with someone else’s children?! Which brings me to one of my ideas. So much of what we hear of these types of guy’s childhood involves school bullying. Most people of our generation also grew up with institutionalized State sanctioned corporal punishment ie the strap, the cane. This was quite often done in the classroom in front of the child’s peers, I can remember this from my school days. Hurting children as punishment was phased out in the 80’s. Many of our teachers were emotionally cruel to children too, it was just normal. The accepted child discipline theories of the day were ‘behavioural modification’ ie reward the good and punish the bad. Then there was the accepted Christian Biblical dogma of ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’, which was used by alot of people who believed hurting children was good for them and hey who wants to disagree with God! During my school days bullying was rife and it was considered a worse thing to be a ‘dibber dobber’, so many bullied children just suffered in silence.
If you think about my ex-husbands story in the context that he grew up in Australia and not the US where the gun culture is so normal, he was indeed a rare entity. In Australia you can’t own a gun unless you have a letter from a rural person who owns land, that says you are allowed to shoot on their property. He acquired this from his many good Christian friends who allowed Churches to use their properties for Youth Camps. Hand guns are illegal unless you are a member of a pistol club, which very few are. In 1996 we banned all automatic weapons and the government bought them all back in an amnesty, in response to our very own first spree shooting. It is very interesting to compare the sheer fact that guns are so freely available in the US, with the ever increasing and tragic number of spree shootings we see there all too often. We still have a great deal of violence though but the seriously disturbed characters among us have less options available to them to inflict mass murder.
Mass murder does not require a gun though Juliette. There are plenty of options I’m afraid. Case in point, IEDs and bombs that just about any idiot can make. Crazy idiots!
So, the reason why I asked how you came to know these things about him is because they have a serious reputation for spinning a pity ploy to gain your trust, understanding, compassion, etc, etc, etc. From what you are saying it sounds like his stories have been validated by others and as long as THEY are telling the truth and as long as they have not been fed lies by him and bought them, the information could be legitimate.
Absolutely Puddle! I was always careful to corroborate anything he told me with his family. He is an expert liar.
Wow thats so much detail! Have you explored why you stayed with such a disturbed man for so long and had two children with him?
The thing that is sad to me and I can’t quite come to terms with is what a person with as horrific of a background as your ex-husband’s was, can do to fix something it? Especially when you look at the reality of certain things like financial means, finding a qualified therapist or treatment, the odds are not stacked in “recovery’s” favor.
I just watched another Investigation Discovery show last night, this one about William Bonin who was a serial killer of young teenage boys in California. Well, this life history was a horrific disaster! Just one horrific event after another, insult to injury, dropped ball after dropped ball and when you look at the whole picture, I honestly don’t think he could have turned out any other way. His entire childhood was absolutely full of abuse which must have tweaked his psyche beyond repair.
Yes Puddle, they are a mystery and school and society fails them at every turn too. I believe every seriously disturbed, danger to society person is like an Air Crash Disaster. Usually it’s not a single catastrophic event like a bomb, rather it is a series of mishaps and failures that aren’t picked up, cutbacks, improper training, the weather, a piece of sticky tape, bad maintenance etc, that all come together one day to create a catastrophic event.
Not to make light here but the “sticky tape” was a nice touch! But that’s what I’m saying too……it’s not JUST that they know better and do it anyhow. Something much deeper is awry. it is disturbing at the very very very least because i’m seeing signs of it in MANY people I encounter. I just ended a “”friendship”” with a woman i’ve known for over a year now. Something felt wrong almost from the get go but not wrong enough. We had fun together and, well, too long of a story but yeah, a whole other side has been discovered and I’m done. that is two in one month folks! they are dropping like flies!
Hi Juliette,
I wonder if you could clarify something here for me. Calcification of a fetus takes a very long time. If the twin was discharged along with your covert aggressive, at the time of his birth, I don’t think twin would have time to calcify. They are referred to as ‘stone babies’ and I thought they were extremely rare.
Also you have mentioned the most recent CD person as being the product of multi-generational brother sister incest. This form of incest carries with it the highest risk of genetic aberration, as sis and bro are more closely related than father- daughter. I am not clear as to whether this CD had major health issues.
Hope you don’t mind me seeking clarity. This is a bizarre story.
I don’t mind LisaO, :-), apparently the fetus is still in a jar in a teaching hospital in the city where we live. His Mother told me this when he was 20 and hadn’t told him yet! The fetus stopped growing at about 10-12 weeks she said. It wasn’t detected until the birth and came out perfectly formed for it’s gestational age but calcified. The other, was one of 7 children who were removed from their parents, (who had them all living in a VW homeless), for gross neglect. Him (5) and his twin sisters, 2 years younger were placed in the same foster home. You can imagine, that when he told me I reeled in shock. The first thing that came out of my mouth was how did he know that he was his father’s child. His words were, ‘I look like him’. He reunited with his siblings at the age of around 13. I have spoken to the older twin sister on the phone. She verified the second generation of interbreeding with me and also seemed to think that it hadn’t occurred with him. I’ve seen photo’s of the twin girls as adults and their downs children, but not met any of them. It sure is a bizarre story, it did occur to me at the time that he was paranoid, which is why I made attempts to verify it. He doesn’t appear to have any deformity about him, in fact he is actually quite handsome. The mind and brain, well that’s another story, which can either be attributed to organic brain disease or the horrific childhood he had, one of the worst I’ve ever heard of. He is 48 now and a severe but functioning alcoholic. I don’t see him living long the way he drinks. He works as a security guard and is still a very paranoid person that goes in and out of varying levels of functioning. My son seems to be really normal. To me even though he was born at term, he looks like the bridge of his nose is shallow, like premature babies do. My other children don’t have this. He is above average intelligence but so am I, his father I would say at a guess, is of average intelligence as far as cognition goes anyway. I anxiously anticipated his whole life, whether, when and how to tell him this. He knows now and the right moment came, a year ago, where I either had to lie or tell him the truth, when he asked about his father’s family tree for an assignment at school. It was hard to do but I’m glad it happened because he really did need to know.
Just to clarify something here, he has twin sisters born after him and a set of twins born before him, boy and girl.
I am just so confused by this story Juliette. I’m trying to follow along but it just doesn’t make sense in my mind! Sorry if I am missing some critical details or maybe something I missed?
Which bits Puddle?, I took him back/got sucked back in 10 times, that might help you to understand why despite running away from him we were still talking about family trees when our son was 8 months. I had to go to court and ask for the restraining orders to be taken off/put back on each time and look like an idiot. There were 7 children in his family. Of course all of this is IF he is to be believed, I have a hard time believing that anyone would make up the fact they were inbred as it carries so much shame. So apparently his Mother, lets give her a psuedomym for understanding’s sake, Lily. Lily was born from a brother and sister. She married her (normal) husband and had 7 children during that time. During this time Lily’s own brother, who had been molesting her during their childhood, continued an adult sexual relationship/rape, who knows? with her. They claim that 3 of Lily’s 7 children were to this brother and not her husband. My horrifying question that I will never know is, whether this brother of Lily’s was also born from a brother and sister (their parents)…My ex says that he thinks he was born to Lily’s husband, the apparent Father of the other four children, because he ‘looks like him’. How on earth they know this for sure, I can’t tell you. I don’t think any of them truly know who and what they are. My ex’s ‘Father’, Lily’s husband, was a gambling addict/alcoholic who came and went from what I gather, not paying the rent etc, they were all often homeless until the child protection authorities removed them all eventually. So my ex and the two twin girls went to one foster home and the other kids all went to other foster homes. Does that help? The bottom line for me is that someone very twisted, took my DNA without consent and I see it as genetic rape. There is no way I would have had a child to him if I knew this. Thank God my son is normal, so far anyway :-(… 🙂
Maybe this helps.. 7 children, claimed that 3 were born to her brother…
1. Girl
2. Twins – boy/girl
3. Boy
4. My ex boy
5. Twin girls – claimed to be Lily’s brother’s children. Both have a Downs child. One of these twin girls is of very low functioning IQ.
Juliette, The part about getting sucked back in 10 times I understand all too well I’m afraid 🙁
I think I’m starting to follow it better. This is a VERY confusing story and it’s hard for me to keep the details of it straight just by it’s self. it’s also hard to keep all the other peoples stories straight and then add in OTHER stories like Elliot Roger and…………well it isn’t pretty.! Thanks for the further explanation. Just to let you know……One of these monsters will say anything and I mean ANYthing to further the manipulation. I honestly don’t think they will stop at anything, believable or not, true or not, etc. over the top, outrageous…..they will stop at nothing if they think it will get them what they want. And, they have no shame so even if what they tell you seems so believable just because it would normally be something a lot of people would be hesitant to tell other people doesn’t mean it’s true. I’m not saying it’s not true for your spath, maybe it is, just based on what you have said about his behavior I wouldn’t believe anything he said without checking it out in a way that removes all doubt, ALL doubt! And, I wouldn’t necessarily believe anyone closely related or involved with him. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in some of these cases and often is still hanging on the branch!
Thanks for the further explanation Juliette!! I will try to digest it better!
Yeah, you are right, I know what you’re saying Puddle, it’s hard for me to believe all that really happened too and I sure wish it didn’t, whatever it really was..it was a nightmare for me, even harder to think that my whole reality since then has been a false impression gained, grieved, raged and survived, that when all is said and done, was just some psycho’s delusion and manipulation. His childhood stories are just unspeakably devastating, I’ve seen him vomit trying to describe them, which he only did when I pressed him a couple of times. He also vomited at the first psychologist he ever went to (in adulthood). Although he was a CA, he is also definitely a paranoid personality and some form of dissociation goes on with him under certain stresses which I’ve witnessed consistently over time. Personalities which have different values, speech, body language, expressions, ways of dressing etc that were consistently the same over years. He is a disorganized, true mental case not just a smooth manouvering CA and I’m very relieved that he lives far away now and our son is too old to abduct, like he did when he was 5. How sad it is, that we are left with a sceptically orientated mind towards the whole human race when we survive guys like these.
Juliette,
Most interesting about the calcified fetus. I imagine the professionals at the teaching hospital were saddened by the circumstances but pleased to have such an anomaly for their collection. Outside of ectopic pregnancies gone wrong, and fetuses that somehow migrate to the abdominal cavity and calcify over time, I’ve never heard of such a thing Have you seen the jar in which it is kept?
I just had this awful intuition that your mother-in-law might have been lying or manipulating you for some reason. Did she have a history of lying to you? If she made this up for dramatic impact…WOW. Seriously, that would make her a drama queen extraordinaire and a truly superb bullshitter. Talk about the mother-in-law from Hell. Like, “Throw Mama from the Train!!”
LisaO, lol..I haven’t seen it no, but I have read about it in obstetric books when I wanted to know more about it around that time. She did tell me the name of the hospital it was apparently preserved in. When I told my then husband about it, he was really emotionally affected by this knowledge and confronted her about it and they had quite an emotional showdown over it, which I was present for. She was also a midwife, so it is possible she made it up perhaps after obtaining this knowledge herself. Yes she was the Mother-in-law from hell! I can’t remember ever verifying it with his Dad, I should have done that come to think of it now. If I had a calcified twin in a jar somewhere, I would want to see it. My ex husband is too ‘self absorbed’ most likely, to be bothered. I will ask him about it, next time we have contact. You’ve got me thinking now!
The whole family are strange, emotionally blunt and still religious, to say the least. I’m not sure really of whether she had a history of lying to me, more so she lied by minimizing things, to make herself look better if anything. To excuse the terrible Mother she had been to her children. She has the early stages of Dementia now, so whatever is to be gleaned of her life won’t be coming from her again.
Hi LisaO, I just had a look on the net for calcified fetus, which in the 80’s we didn’t have the benefit of. It does sound strange that the fetus would come out with the placenta, which is what his Mother said had happened. A true calcified fetus does seem to go into the abdominal cavity from what I have just read, so perhaps it was just a deceased twin that stopped developing due to a placental or other malfunction. He is a Gemini too!
The saddest part is the mother saw something very wrong and tried to do something earlier.
Juliette, I know what you mean about the competition aspect in telling your story but it’s all good information for others so don’t worry about that. It’s important to put things in context so that others understand your experience,,,,,,,,that’s my opinion. Most of the time when I tell my story(s) I feel like I’m talking about someone else!! Dissociation??
Wow………see, your ex-husband’s background?? That makes me so sad for him. Please don’t take that wrong or in a way that invalidates you and the nightmare you have been through. Clearly there are many factors that steered your ex-husband down a terrible path. I do wonder HOW someone who gets off to such a horrific start in life can even begin to turn themselves around. Your x sounds like he is a danger to society! Just a jaw dropper of a story Juliette. Internet hugs to you and your kids.
Puddle and Tori, thankyou both so much. Puddle your are such a beautiful person. I see you like the lifeguard on a rescue boat throwing the ring to each new floating survivor who comes across this page. Bless you.
Juliette, Im just glad you have found a place where you can feel safe and get clarity and information. I have no clue how I would have made it through my experience without the validation I have found through sites like Dr. Simon’s and I want to help anyone I possibly can by sharing my experience and especially the part about there really is a light at the end of the tunnel. A year ago, I could only conceive of the light at the end of the tunnel being an on coming train and I am SO serious. I just couldn’t wrap my head around living without him or facing the truth about him. Stuck between a rock and a hard place. But today, I am SO close to being able to say that I’m over it. I’m not quite there, I know I could NEVER be talked back into it by him and i also know he would never even try. It still makes me sad to talk about, I still can’t completely wrap my head around it all but slowly but surely i am coming to a place to “I just don’t care anymore”. what he did to me is pathetic and anyone who does something that low to another person is pathetic. ANd then there are about another ten BIG reasons he is pathetic.
Anyhow, I’m happy to help in what ever way I can Juliette!
Juliette, what a story. I am amazed at how much strength you must have to endure what you’ve endured. I really am gob smacked. I really don’t know what to say. For you to have brought your children through this the way you have I say you’re an amazing lady. Big hugs to you and yours.
There is no excuse for killing, but my first thought was he was raised in a culture that amplified his worst traits – a culture that says you don’t have to build character or exercise delayed gratification.
And a culture that also says if you don’t have a good looking blond caucasian girlfriend you’re worse than nothing.
Why on earth would his parents provide him with a BMW when he did not complete a single course after enrolling for five terms at SBCC? Did he pay his own rent by working a part-time job? Doubtful.
Then I looked at the sorority picture of the ones he was obsessed with and thank goddess when I was in a sorority we did not have to pose naked (in two-piece bathing suits) and have the pledge class bikini photo published on the Internet.
Everything about this screams your inner world does not matter, everything is external and how it appears, and you do not get to have privacy to figure out who you are. You have to have instant results publishable on the Internet.
If you have the misfortune to be brought into the world by one or more Narcissistic parents, it would be great if we had more public figures such as the new Pope to talk about and value character building. And look at the aftermath – our culture still lacks the language to discuss what is wrong with this kid – he never developed skills, life skills.
Claire…don’t get me started! Some of the things you are saying I entirely agree with. Our so called advanced society is turning out disturbed characters like a pie factory. Add meat to pastry, press lid on and bake. Here they all come down the conveyor belt, faster than we can catch them. These guys are also proof that it’s not just low-socioeconomic deprivation that causes the worst type of character disturbances. On the surface everything looks ok. If you scratch it though, you’ll probably see a very dysfunctional developmental path, starting with one or both of the Parents. We also don’t teach empathy to the normal kids at school. We all remember the class reject or the victims of the worst type of bullying. We picked our sports teams at school in physed, by slowing choosing the best most popular kids one at a ttime, whittling away the choices until the last two socially undesirable kids were standing there alone hoping desperately that they wouldn’t be the last. Nowadays we have a nightmare, a developmental disaster. Add the sexualization of everything, including children to the mix of the information age and the public arena of social media and you have what we are seeing on a daily basis. Our society is sick and it’s turning out disturbed characters with exponential growth in this current generation. I absolutely love and entirely agree with the ideas of the Canadian Dr Gabor Mate. His presentations are on youtube I highly recommend him to eveyone I know. He says our kids, for the first time in history, spend all their time with other kids and not the extended family or clan, as well as the fact that our society creates stressed parents, who in turn create stressed children who spend all their time together with no guidance. Developmental Disaster.
Juliette, or anyone, have you read the book, “The Continuum Concept”? About primitive tribes and how they grow their children? REALLY interesting and a total (indirectly) slam on just about everything this modern society is about. I highly recommend it.
Puddle, no I haven’t but I will have a look and find it. It sounds really interesting. Thanks.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0201050714/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=47135377968&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16403191729197257895&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_9lky88jh2j_b
AND, you of all people should find it interesting, you little earth mamma you! 🙂
yeah…..reading some reviews and the book might not be “all that” but there were some very interesting things in it none the less…..just kind of food for thought?
Thanks Puddle for providing that link. I’m looking forward to reading it. I was influenced in my first pregnancy by the book Ina May Gaskin wrote..’Spiritual Midwifery’,long before someone coined the term attachment parenting. From there I just followed my instincts and followed much the same kind of Mothering that the ‘Continuum Concept’ reviews explain. In the Mother’s group I was part of, in the early days, some of us who had trusting friendships even breastfed each other’s babies. The midwives (who were all registered nurses) would often attend births and need to stay until whenever the end was whilst they were still nursing themselves. We were city women doing our best to give our children the kind of childhood they were born to have and need. Thanks again 🙂
Juliette……Very beautiful. I have the Spiritual Midwifery book because I was going to attend a friends birth but things in my life got chaotic and I wasn’t able to go. So very sad I missed that experience but she sailed through it like a champ (natural childbirth but at a hospital attended by a midwife).
Juliette….agree absolutely with your every word. As a parent to 4 children (and married to a grade A manipulative and narcissist) this is perhaps my greatest worry. So far, and to their credit, my kids seem to be turning out well……however I do work extremely hard to counter the relentless social messages being preached from the pulpit of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr……all of which are besotted only with the exterior, the facile, continually exerting pressure on them to look after number and to hell with everyone else. I am really concerned about the future adults we are turning out. You sum things up so well.
Danny, thankyou, I can really empathize with what you say. I have often said to friends of mine with younger children that I’m relieved that I barely scraped in and avoided having to deal with that whilst mine were young. My youngest born in 1996, is 18, who was born when my third child was six, so he has been influenced more than the others by the social media epidemic and I can see how differently his teens have been affected by it compared to his older siblings. He has recently deleted his Facebook profile, Yaye! and has formed a relationship with a great, intelligent girl from a modern middle eastern family, who has also done the same. I tried very hard too with him to counter the effects, as you describe by having conversations with him about the shallowness of the online world. He was really caught up for a while in defending people online who were being bullied by trolls, which on one level I was really proud of him for and another I just kept urging him to withdraw from it and focus on himself. Thankfully he has risen above it. I have an idea that alot of people disagree with but I will describe it for you. I believe we are our children’s first ever true friends. We are their leaders of course and we are their keepers too, who state the rules and enforce boudaries when they are violated. When they get to their teens and young adulthood we are the benchmark when it comes to being treated with dignity. respect and unconditional love. Appropriate to their age level of understanding and emotional maturity, it is ok to let them know our human weaknesses. It’s really important to admit our mistakes and make it ok for them to truly know us as people and not just role models. Very few of us are the excellent role models we all desire to be, we are just the best we can be. With the right measure this doesn’t cause our children to become narcissistic, it causes them to see us as people too, who make mistakes and want to learn from them. Isn’t this what a true friend really is. Someone who knows you inside out, loves you for all of your character strengths, abilities and weaknesses – everything you are and continues to love you all the same. Someone who can tell you what you really need to hear and are trying to avoid. Someone who can hear the hard truth from, because you know they absolutely love you and are on your team. This is what I want my children to see in me and I want them to know that this is how I love them. I am more than not perfect, I am even a bit disordered myself. So many parents believe if you do A B plus C,, D will happen. If you get the outer right then the inner will follow. I believe it is the other way around. My four kids all have issues arising from the life I exposed them to, but i worked hard to let them know that these were not the things that defined them. I had to try very hard as they grew up to find a balance between hanging in there with them motivated by genuine love and attachment and enabling them motivated by guilt and fear of loss of attachment. Easier said than done. They are now four of my greatest friends and I am proud to be the first true friend they will ever have.
I agree with alot, but not all of your response. Your comments about competition at school I disagree with. Life is a competition and removing competitive elements from school will do us a huge disservice as a society, if we don’t compete we don’t innovate. I do agree however that over worked absent parents are a huge problem and ironically is a result of ‘over’ competition (and change in the economy). Interesting..
Claire, I do agree very much with you that this boy grew up in a culture that values the superficial over good inner character. He was a classic example of an young man growing up in that culture on the fringes of it but no matter how hard he tried, never being able to experience it. However, hundreds and thousands of young men are experiencing the same thing every day, so this young man was something else too. I just finished reading Elliot’s life story and manifesto. Only about the last tenth is his manifesto, the rest is his life story related through his own perceptions and a growing narcissism that is growing more each year as he develops. He lied to his parents that he was still attending classes and his Mother was a huge enabler of him, I believe, contributing to his Narcissism all along. He does relate quite a bit of his story with some form of honesty, like describing his feelings of worthlessness and the times he was lying to others and why. He also explores the effect that retreating into video games had on him and other boys like him. I believe it did contribute in some way and his parents enabled him in this by providing the means to do it as he became more and more unmanageable for them as he grew older, they most likely enjoyed the false sense of peace his retreat into the online world gave them, especially his Mother. It took me one and a half days to read it and it was alot to take in. I’m left wondering what was his true motivation for writing it? I understand why the manifesto part at the end but I wonder why he wanted us all to know his life story of both happiness and pain. He knew full well he was going to die in the end. He admits this had to happen because he couldn’t bear the thought of jail. He had also been studying himself for a long time by reading psychology. What comes through for me is that he wanted his life to count for something, he acknowledges often how twisted he has become too. He wanted all of us to ask ourselves the very questions we are now. He knew his fantasies and delusions about getting rid of and torturing all women were unrealistic, he even says so towards the end but he wanted to jolt or scare the world into being motivated to change I believe. He uses the words ‘shake the foundations of the world’ or something very like that when describing what will happen after his plan. The media has also downplayed how much he hated men who loved and/or wanted women too. He wanted to kill lots of them too. His actual fantasy and plan was horrific, much worse than what actually happened on that tragic day. In the end it was his wounded narcissism I believe that convinced him he had to die and a deep depression and social anxiety that his narcissism prevented him from seeking genuine help for. He just felt the things most of us do to become happy, including a perceived sense of humility, seek help, earn a living, engage in therapy, live in socioeconomic circumstances below that of our parents and many others steps he could have taken to have a fulfilling life..he just felt they were all beneath him. In the end he restored his narcissistic pride by fashioning his delusions and manifesto. That’s my observations anyway. I’d be interested in hearing what anyone else thinks. By the way I love the new Pope too, I think he is a fantastic leader and I’m not even a Christian anymore. I really admire him, Bless his Soul.
You know, people don’t ASK to have a personality disorder! I think there is so much judgement (I’m guilty of this too) against these disordered people and in a way I find it sad and confusing. Something went drastically wrong in a child’s life and created serious damage and then maybe things continued to go wrong through adulthood and now they have X,Y, or Z disorder. Yes, part of what they do they may know is wrong by society standards but with so much damage behind them and with it being in place for such a long period of time, and maybe some of the damage they are completely unaware of……it seems like such a tall order to expect them to be able to turn that train wreck around! and the further down the economic ladder you go, the less options are available.
It’s just so sad. I think of this with my sociobro. He is 52 years old and almost every opportunity for him to have a real man/ father figure in his life was yet another missed opportunity. He has been a criminal since he was a child, a liar, a thief, and addict of various substances and he is a complete a**. it started with my parents being completely inept parents! He needed a father figure and our father was
ill-equipped ! Various male figures have come into his life, his assets are in a trust because he can’t take care of money, he has no driver’s license because it would only get him in trouble and honestly, I’m not sure if he will ever be allowed another drivers license. We do NOT get along what so ever, i don’t trust him as far as I could throw him and don’t believe ANYthing that comes out of his mouth but I feel sorry and sad for him because I KNOW, I was a living witness to his childhood and how completely wrong it went.
Puddle, that is indeed sad for you. I have often wondered why it is that this type of disturbance affects males more than females. We come from the same family of origin and the males tend to turn out anti-social and we women tend to become neurotics. Maybe the biological and cultural influences play a big part too. My brother turned out to be much like yours, he beats women too. I do feel sad for him too. Both his Mother and Father, then step-father completely failed him. I agree that the socio-economic resources availble to people have a profound effect on a person’s ability to identify, seek and participate in healing. It has always perplexed me that there are so many psychologists out there treating people who, in comparison, have such insignificant problems, when there are so many who cannot afford it who are the ones that really need their help. Society places so little value on these people and then pays a much greater social and financial cost later down the line in terms of welfare, crime, security, policing, incarceration as well as housing, educating, protecting and helping the victims of such disturbed characters. How do we find a voice to shout these things from the roof-tops?
very well said Juliette. Just to be clear though, my brother and I are not “”related”” because we are adopted.
I am curious what you will think of the book. My counselor (the first one I had who I LOVED) recommended me to read it because of the stark contrast it points out, the serious issues that result in not bringing up children in a natural way.
I find it extremely irritating that Dr. Phil is such a goof! And don’t get me started on Oprah. two of the biggest voices in the country and they are seemingly afraid to call a spade a spade in an impactful way. I don’t watch either show but have see some episodes. Dr. Phil has kind of at least called some people out on the mat but there is something missing and it’s not a message that can be delivered with “it’s all about Dr. Phil”humor. But this is serious folks,,,,,,,,people loose their lives, finances, minds at the hands of one of these monsters.
Puddle I’m hearing you on Dr Phil, he has such a powerful voice and platform though. I think he has learned that people want to be entertained and he gives that spoonful of sugar with the medicine. I rarely watch the show, and when I do, I usually end up changing channels, because I find it either depressing or traumatizing. It’s strange how I don’t find using this blog as traumatizing as watching shows like Dr Phil, well not really if I think about it. Just writing that story above gave me major heart palpitations for hours afterwards and I had to ‘decompress’ for a while that night and didn’t sleep much. I get what you mean about Dr Phil being goofy though. There is just something a little too show-biz for me about his show these days. Yes, sadly Oprah went the same way! But I do greatly respect both of them for using their profile for something better than the plethora of mind-numbing rubbish on TV. I just don’t find them helpful myself.
I put both of them in the better than nothing department Juliette but I find them both very irritating.
Dr. Phil does indeed have a platform. And the fact that he is much more of a promoter than anything else is of some concern, but if the interview were structured correctly, it could help bring a much needed message, so I certainly don’t mind folks writing him or urging him to have me on. Oprah, who discovered and bankrolled him, was set to have me on just before she announced her first retirement and then booked only major Hollywood celebrities for her final year, so the executive producers might well be familiar with me and my work.
Dr. Simon, that is very unfortunate about the almost appearance on Oprah! I will jump on the write Dr. Phil wagon though and do my part to voice the need.
I have no regrets, Puddle. When you have big exposure, there tends to be a rush of interest followed by a dramatic drop off. As it is, I’ve enjoyed the most phenomenal word-of-mouth recommendations for all my work – including the blog, other writings, and of course, the books – which has been worth more than any high-profile exposure (although I’ve had my fair share of that, too). And it’s the consistent word-of-mouth that’s enabled one book over 17 years old to still enjoy bestseller status and two other books developing the same strength. I couldn’t be more pleased and grateful.
I understand where you are coming from Dr. Simon and my comment may have been born out of my own selfish desire to have the word spread, as thickly as possible! So, if you are happy, then I’m happy for you! 🙂
what evidence is there that it affects males more than females? I have certainly not encountered this…evidence please
Re: the paranoid personality disorder- Scary! So much speculation in the news about what could have been done to stop this Isla Vista tragedy. Perhaps we need a national sprinkling of PPD whisperers…people who are trained under professionals like Dr. Simon who can be called in when the huge red flags are there. Kind of like hostage negotiators but with a specific background/training/mission. Just think- if the parents of this disturbed man could have called in the PPD whisperer (instead of the cops, who appear to have been ill-prepped and inadequately trained), maybe this would have gone differently (Maybe). Then again, maybe not. He was hell bent on destruction.
Linda, that is an excellent idea! I think Dr Phil needs to shout that from the rooftops! In fact I wonder if Dr Simon’s work has come to Dr Phil’s attention? Wouldn’t that be great.. Dr Phil interviewing Dr Simon. With the collective grief and confusion in the US at the moment regarding these types of spree killings, I’m sure now would be a ripe time for Dr Simon’s message and insight to be brought to the attention of so many people. Dr Phil is on at midday every day here in Australia and I imagine in many, many other countries in the world. I think we should ask Dr Simon’s permission first though before we go writing to Dr Phil?
yes,,,,,he would be a great guest to have on Dr. Phil but perhaps Dr. Phil would feel threatened?
Thanks so much for pointing out that Roger’s problem wasn’t Asperger’s or Autism – and neither was Lanza’s. My brother is autistic, and though they are socially challenged, they are SO NOT violent. I don’t know who came up with those diagnoses, but it’s sad that they call themselves professionals, because both of them were CLASSIC cases of PPD.
I’m with you Dr. Simon….our mental health system is broke, broke, broke. I don’t know how many more of these tragedies it’s going to take.
Einstein, do you see the entitlement issue in this story? Like somehow he thought he was entitled to having girls fall all over him and because he was PLAYING the part he couldn’t get why they were not. Another thing……bought the kid a BMW, really? His parents were at the Cann Film Festival…… maybe I’m being judgmental about that but something just seems so askew in a connect the dots kind of way. Honestly I have not really followed this story at all so……..
Just want to weigh in about Lanza. I think a better diagnosis was probably violent paranoid schizophrenic. A young schizophrenic, before the full blown order developed could even more readily be misdiagnosed with autism.
I’m not familiar with “Lanza” LisaO, do you have a good link for that story?
Ah, Sandy Hook. Again, not familiar with the actual details but I was just looking at some pictures and something is looking VERY wrong with him. 🙁
Hi Puddle,
Just do a google news search for Adam Lanza’s father and schizophrenia. I think it was a Vanity Fair article where he claimed his son was obviously misdiagnosed from a young age. The tough part is at a young age mild autism and pre-psychotic schizophrenia look a lot the same. So it is difficult for the therapeutic community to deal with.
I hope this issue gets more attention, because so many of these kids and young adults who rampage are end up with a certain diagnosis; autism being the de rigeur default. The diagnoses should be more subject to revision and ‘at risk for violence’ protocols developed.
Great contribution, Lisa O! I’d like to add: It’s bad enough that some very different syndromes have similar outward manifestations at different stages and make correct diagnosis difficult. But that’s only part of the problem. Two other very important parts are: First, the behavior-bound diagnostic criteria we currently use by nature invites categorization without sufficient consideration of underlying pathology. Second, because there are all sorts of professionals out there using the official diagnostic manual, reading the descriptions, and conferring labels base on those descriptions, many of whom have absolutely no advanced training or hands-on experience in clinical settings or with clinical populations, it’s unfortunately true that the likelihood any one of these professionals will make the correct call the first time is extremely low. And even the most advanced practitioners often fail to complete the full multiaxial diagnostic scheme. There are lots of reasons for this, as well as reasons for assessment no longer involving the comprehensive testing and evaluation once commonplace, but the end result is that folks with psychiatric conditions are all too often misdiagnosed or inadequately diagnosed. I keep getting more convinced about the need to do a series on our broken system.
I’m currently about one fifth through reading Elliot’s ‘manifesto’ on scribd.com. I’m up to eleven years old. Its really a walk down memory lane of his childhood, with great insight into his feelings as each year passes by. Of course all this is related through his own perception. I must say his insight into the significant events so far is quite raw and much of it is an honest expose of what most children go through in their quest to fit in at school. Already I’m seeing the ingredients mounting up towards disaster. He is relating his early friendships with boys and girls, his parents divorce, his happy childhood memories and the growing awkwardness he feels as he is about to leave Elementary School. I think any of us who want to have an informed opinion and conversation about this disaster should read it, now that I’ve started. It’s very long. Has anybody else here read it yet?
Juliete, can you provide a link?
Dr. Simon, I think it’s a great idea to do a series on our broken mental health care system. Given personal experience, I believe there are too many ‘professionals’ in practice that make incorrect, or inadequate diagnoses. What’s more, psychologists in private practice have nearly carte blanche to “diagnose” anything they want, without oversight of a higher review board as far as I can tell. Potential patients should remember that licensed practitioners are susceptible to base emotions and are just as capable of abusing the power of their credentials as anyone, may possibly be disturbed characters themselves. I have paid too much money to one person who shouldn’t have been in practice–now has had credentials revoked–and one who turned on her patient mid-treatment when it became socially expedient to do so, for status reasons, despite clear evidence of a disturbed character harming the patient. Dr. Simon, your blog fills the void for support where “professionals” like these practice, leaving needy clients to fend for themselves.
It sure does P…and the void that is created by a lack of funding for disturbed characters and their victims. I knew a Federal Policeman in the nineties, he helped me through some of the toughest times with my second ex. We would have big long philosophical conversations all day whilst he was my bodyguard at family court. He used to say to me…’nobody cares, the government see’s you all as a self-cleaning oven, what you need to do is get out of the oven’. What he was saying was that on a macro economic level, the less people there are to fix the better. Better to let us all exterminate each other and slowly rot. They can study the statistics at best.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/225960813/Elliot-Rodger-Santa-Barbara-mass-shooting-suspect-My-Twisted-World-manifesto fascinating read Puddle I’m about half way through now. May the force be with you!
I just read the very first little bit of this Rodger story and right off the bat, if what he says is true, he was an unplanned child and she was on birth control to assure she did not get pregnant. I find that very significant IF it is true. No excuses just interesting.
OK, this story is LOADED with things that could have worked against this kid! Broken home, he is an unwanted pregnancy followed by a planned sister addition, the kid was drug all over the place right from the start…….an unwanted accessory to THEIR life. VERY well to do Hollywood parents…..privileged childhood, indulged….I’m not saying that this is an automatic reason for him to do what he did by ANY means but things are not looking good and I’m barely into this story!
Puddle, accessory is a great observation, it just keeps on stacking up, IF he is to be believed. I also wonder what significant things he intentionally left out too.
I am type casting here and I realize that but given the constant bizarre and twisted stories that come out of Hollywierd society………there is certainly a possibility that something actually very traumatic could have happened to him (thinking sexually) and even HE didn’t know. This was true for a friend of mine who had no recollection of childhood incest AT ALL until she was in her thirties.
I sent a message to Dr Phil with a link to this page. Here’s Hoping!
nice job Juliette! Take the bull by the horns! It can NOT hurt! Thanks for the link too.
As Puddle observed above, there is the very real potential for “Dr. Phil” to “feel threatened.” FWIW, I agree with Puddle’s observation and here’s why: “Dr. Phil” lost his license to practice years ago secondary to an inappropriate relationship with a patient. In order for him to regain his license he would be required to participate in what would be called “Professional Rehabilitation.” This would include reviewing and understanding Professional ETHICS, working under very direct supervision, how to appropriately HANDLE the Pro’s attraction to their patient (ex: Discussing HONESTLY with one’s colleagues the attraction, perhaps referring the patient to a colleague, etc.) “Dr. Phil” refused this opportunity and as a result is working under a Calif. License that allows him to “practice” on his “Reality Program” under a License that is “For Entertainment Purposes ONLY.” Think on that a bit, OK? What does that indicate about “Dr. Phil?” Do you think “Dr. Phil” would give Dr. Simon a space on HIS “Stage?” I sincerely doubt it.
Juliette, I don’t think this disorder effects more males than females at all. The manner in which it’s manifest is different and generally with females, more overtly subtle to the outside world but no less deadly to those around them.<Danny, I'm thinking of you with this statement: "Death" in the metaphorical sense secondary to your children's "mother" and your consistent efforts to ameliorate the results of growing up with what appears to be a CB "mother."
There is an inherent bias regarding criminal behavior (that is, those actually charged, convicted, sentenced) wherein women go to "Counseling/Probation" men go to Jail/Prison. In the US, we are far more likely to give females "Passes" than males. (There's lots of good, peer-reviewed research that consistently confirms this bias.) Mental Health Practitioners in general need to ACKNOWLEDGE their personal and professional limitations and start being more honest about and within themselves and their Profession. Not *everyone* is a potential "patient" whom the Mental Health system is capable of assisting. Over the years I've written numerous letters to Judges, Probation, Parole etc. indicating the numerous attempts made in good faith by various Practitioners to assist this particular individual-to NO avail. The Mental Health System is not in a position to impose significant consequences while concurrently protecting the community; however, the Criminal Justice System IS and indeed that is their mandate. I realize Mental Health intervention is often more cost-effective than incarceration. BUT, at what cost to the safety and well-being of the rest of the community? Do I want to be responsible for what this CD'd individual *may* do to their kids, families etc. given their hx. and my experience? (OHHELLNO!) Simply the reality they were legally prosecuted in itself (as much a testament to the vagaries of the Legal System, plea bargains etc.) does not speak to all the *other* havoc they have reaped and for which they have not been held accountable.
Many years ago I heard a Mental Health Professional speak the words of the unfortunate and yes, ugly reality the Mental Health Community is loathe to acknowledge: "There are the treatable and the UNTREATABLE." <There's some genuine honesty a la Dr. Simon.
(Do ya think "Dr. Phil" would really get behind this kind of honesty-and PRACTICE IT-other than to enhance his ratings 😉 )
Tundra Woman……………..well there is a little unknown tidbit of very interesting information. Do you have any references about this that you can share? If this is true, it indirectly confirms my take on “Dr.” P.!
Tundra
Woman…………..Very VERY well stated across the board!
Just found this and it sums up my feelings about “Dr.” P……………
DR Phil: The Jerry Springer of Psychology
I’m not clear about this…….
http://www.casewatch.org/board/psych/mcgraw.shtml
Puddle it looks like he hired a patient or newly ex-patient and that this was in breach of the Texas code of ethics for licenced practitioners. It also looks like Dr Phil complied with all of the conditions of the order, which include supervision and the full evaluation of his fitness to continue to practice? Which doesn’t fit with Tundra Woman’s allegations. Legal wording can be difficult to interpret but I’m also going on the red writing at the top, which is also hearsay!
Very confusing indeed. Most everything else I looked at ( sources subject to ??who knows if it’s accurate??) basically said the same thing Tundra Woman is saying.
Goodness, we just want to borrow his platform! lol Ok anyone for Plan B? 🙂
Right Juliette, Dear “Dr.” Phil, be a good time and take a day to yourself,,,,,we need your studio.
So, continuing to read the Rogers story, His writing is very odd and reminds me of Spathtard’s in a way. Very formal, flowery wording and detached…….interesting. I’m up to age 9…….
I pretty much can’t stomach reading anymore of Elliot Roger’s life story. I have no clue what the genetic component is in his situation but the nurture part sounds VERY off base. Raised by Nannys, moved here and there…….not good. No excuse or real explanation but it doesn’t sound good, like at all.
Seriously?? Take a 10 year old to “the salon” to get their hair bleached?? Or do we have to add the California Hollywierd factor into this equation?
Geez Tundra Woman, I didn’t know that!(about Dr Phil I mean), wow that’s going to take me a few moments to come to terms with! Ok, I’m at terms with it now, perhaps Dr Phil would think it was a good idea only if it was also in his own interests. Was this breach of professionalism before or after his career changing ‘life coaching’ with Oprah, I wonder? I do understand what you are saying about the disorder manifesting differently between the sexes. I have a book called ‘When She Was Bad’ which outlines how we see women as victims all to often and so do juries and the judicial system en-masse. Our conditioning causes us to refuse to accept that a women can be motivated by covert/offensive aggression and other character disturbance and even when we do find women acted badly, we still refuse to believe that it is caused by plain narcissism. When couples act in pairs or abuse children in their care the woman all too often is seen as a weak individual under the domination of a brutal male. She invariably gets a much lesser sentence than her male counterpart. Many character disturbed women play on these facts too. What I was specifically wondering is why, when we come from the same family of origin, do I seem to see time and time again, girls who develop proper and often too much empathy for others and boys who don’t? Even more specifically why are boys the ones who seem to do all the spree shootings? It is a really interesting point you make. I sense from your writing that you have/do worked in the cystem (that was not a spelling error) and experienced the pain. I have worked there too, particularly the child protection, family court, domestic violence and mental health systems. An unspeakable pain that brings me to tears and heart palpitations, if I think about it too long. An unspeakable rage when I contemplate the values that created the mess we are faced with…and we are the lucky ones! I mourn for the men, women and children at the hands of CD political leaders everywhere in the world.
Beautifully put Tundra Woman……and described so accurately. One of the biggest bugbears I have suffered is in my dealings with those people who ‘feel’ my wife is some poor misunderstood soul who basically needs a bit of loving, a few meals at a local restaurant (with me giving her my undivided attention), unlimited time away from the home whenever she chooses, hugs, hugs and more hugs and my continued reassurance that I care for no one in the world like I do for her – then maybe she wouldn’t get so ‘frustrated’ and ’emotional’ and ‘lash out’ against me. Now whilst there may be an element of truth (or should be true for life partners in a relationship) I highly suspect she would not be receiving the same or similar advice were I dishing out the kinds of emotional abuse she has inflicted on me for all these years. I really do feel these awful kinds of behaviours associated with CA’s and emotional abusers more generally are looked upon through completely different filters dependant on the gender of the one doing the perpetrating. Right now, my wife is going around to specific individuals (those who are basically more gullible) spinning the sob story that I am unwilling to reconciliate, whilst at the same time continuing with CA behaviour (looking through my mail, spreading rumours about members of my family, hiding my belongings, intentionally moving things that belong to me then denying all knowledge – when even our children have seen her move them).
Hi Danny,,,,,,May I ask you a straight question……..What DO you love about your wife?
Your question is not so much a tricky one to answer Puddle, as it is one that even now, after all the mistreatment, I still cannot allow myself to abandon the possibility that my wife may one day hit rock bottom, thus leading to a better day for us both. Maybe that is as a result of my upbringing – maybe I mislead myself. I know our children live in hope. They will rarely communicate with their mum (rarely answers direct etc), preferring to share their issues and challenges……and good times singularly with Dad. And yet, in answer to your question, my wife can be so passionate, so caring, so helpful, so tend, so kind. Suffice to say, the most uncomfortable bit is in wondering whether those attractive qualities were all merely a facade!?
Danny, thanks for your reply 🙂
I read this and get an instant lump in my throat because I can relate to what you wrote.
“Suffice to say, the most uncomfortable bit is in wondering whether those attractive qualities were all merely a facade!?”
I can’t tell you or anyone how excruciatingly painful it has been to admit to myself and face the realization that it was just that, a facade. I keep asking myself questions like…..
Was it always a facade?
Was it ever real?
If it was real at some point, when did it become a facade?
The questions are endless! And torturous, but sad to say, the writing was on the wall from the get go. I didn’t MAKE him into a Spathtard, he already WAS one before I ever laid eyes on him. I’ve talked to enough people at this point to know beyond a shadow of a doubt and if we were still together? he would berate ME for calling people who would tell me he’s a liar and a parasitic loser! But I still ask the questions!
Do you think she may have a problem that she needs help for? A mental condition of some sort that needs medicated? Of course I do not know her and therefore don’t know what you are up against Danny only that It just made me sad because maybe I envy your dedication to her and clearly there is still a part of me that is NOT over Spathtard. it’s just SO hard to let go of someone I valued in my life, for so many reasons, and at the same time realize that what I valued was an illusion that was never real even when I valued it and was woven together with manipulation and deceit.
Your analysis is pretty well spot on Puddle. The bizarre thing is she thinks (or rather she will give the impression she thinks) that I have given up on her….whereas all I have done is called a halt to the negative behaviours being inflicted upon me. She does not cope very well at all in no longer having the power she once had. For example, if she will attempt to belittle or mock or accuse or deride, I will exit the conversation. Actions that I would have once ignored are being more robustly challenged – I will tell her I know absolutely what she is doing or attempting to do. Unfortunately I am not expert enough to answer for sure whether or not there is a mental health issue taking place but I do think she needs to commit to therapy to break the cycle of negative speech and behaviours. The other issue is that I see a lot of her behaviours in her mother. Sadly, she is insistent that her reason for acting that way is because she has ‘depression’ but so far has managed to convince those closest allies only. So many others have openly, without prompting on the matter, told me they do not believe a word of her claimed illnesses (unsurprisingly, she will not let me visit the doctor with her). Hence why I say she will need to eventually hit rock bottom – chiefly because more and more people who were close to us both have reached the point whereby they are tired of her antics. It really is an ongoing mental battle, sapping all my mental energies.
My wife has PPD. I’ll tell you this. I don’t love anything about her in fact I spend 95% of the time hating her guts. There’s no way you can feel any different. She’s vicious, manipulative, controlling, hateful, accusational, incapable of love, incapable of empathy…. I could go on. Only because we have a 5 yo son am I still with her. My kindness has just about run out. I feel sorry for her and I known she cannot help it but I have grown to hate her stinking guts. There’s no other way you can feel. Like some professionals have said of PPD: it’s either divorce or prison. I guess I’m going for divorce. Nobody could understand this without living in it.
Hi Danny, people really do see men and women through differing filters, even when dishing out our empathy and compassion. I think we even see ourselves through the same filters at times. I imagine it is even more difficult for males being abused in this way, to make sense of the situation. I know a male who had a wife who abused him in much the same way you describe your wife has been to you. He was so loving and patient with her and it didn’t matter what he did, she would never change. He is a big burly bloke who is a tree lopper, she was a prison guard in a men’s prison. Get the picture. It was awful. When he finally decided to move on she punished him in every way she could, including using the children against him. Wavering between malevolent aggression and needy hysterics and emotional breakdown to get what she wanted, whatever that really was?! no one could quite tell from day to day, week to week. It was almost like dealing with a completely different person from time to time. Then there was the time of the month!! Look out eveyone! That’s when he usually came to visit me. We have been mates since our teens so I know he was normal before that. If you play the game with people like this, they just change the rules anyway. I think it’s the game they most want, not necessarily an outcome. The game is about making it all about them, at all times and needing someone else’s energy/depletion to fuel their own cycles. That’s why partners in this situation feel as if the life is sucked out of them. This can be what life is like with a Borderline Personality. I obviously don’t know the whole story but it does sound like that from some of the things you describe. Your wife sounds very disturbed as well as Borderline and I’m glad to hear that you have found the strength to remove yourself from the situation and I hope you continue to recover for you and your kids. Hugs to you.
This place has been a sanctuary!! Thanks Juliette – you’ve summed up very accurately (with the example of your friend) what it is like having to negotiate on even the most simplest of issues with a wife or female partner who is BPD. To those closest to me who I share my issues with, I have used exactly the same phraseology, in other words life becomes a “game”. The game is to have control in whatever way the individual wishes. The focus must be at all times on them, getting what they want, in the way they want it and at the times (usually permanently) they want it. The hostility is deliberate, the conflict is created, then they can claim to have been ‘wronged’ in order to exact total undivided servitude from others. To the outside world my wife can appear a wonderfully kindhearted individual – but behind closed doors she can be a monster. After only 5 minutes of discussing ANY subject with her, I’m mentally knackered!! I have lived this for many years – my conclusion is that it is not that men are not recognised as having to live with this relationship ‘problem’, the gross ignorance is in assuming that it can be resolved by the man simply showing more love towards his wife, or being more caring, or trying to reassure more, or giving more undivided attention. Hey presto…..problem solved! Though we all know it isn’t!!! Meanwhile…….the man is continually mentally and emotionally abused to within an inch of his life.
you know Juliette, what’s interesting is that when you describe HER behaviors,,,,,,,it sounds like someone who has been victimized by a CA!! I know that pretty much described me during the involvement with Spathtard!
Aha the light bulb moment! yes she does. Not to say that it is Danny that is her problem AT ALL. I think of it this way. I had a female friend with BPD in my late twenties. She was the first true BP I had actually met and befriended. I loved her dearly but boy she did my head in and totally drained me at times, using me as her therapist and comfort. I came to understand she just liked/needed the attention and had no other mechanisms to soothe herself as other people do. She had a terrible childhood, with quite traumatic sexual abuse and emotional neglect. It was easy to feel compassion for her when you heard her life story and I do believe she was telling the truth too. She had been in therapy her whole life since she disclosed the abuse as a child. She even did things or gave things to me, that would ‘obligate’ me towards her constant need to sit and talk and cry with me. I had to cut ties with her because I would usually end up counselling over coffee the endless line of men she would get involved with and destroy too! So I believe it is likely that she was the victim of a CA in her childhood and your observation is most likely spot on. People with true BPD are usually damaged in some way during childhood, they also have periods of intense depression too. Often people are diagnosed with a disorder and then tacked on to that label is ‘with Bordeline features”, its all a bit of a continuum/ spectrum I think. That doesn’t excuse the fact that they develop other traits of character disturbance or refuse to work on themselves or see the effects of their behaviour on those that love them. It’s all a choice.
Danny, when you said ‘within an inch of his life’ it reminded me of the moment when my old friend the tree lopper came over one night crying, I had never seen him do this. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back for him and for me too. The thing that made him see the light and leave. He had been working late for 2 few weeks as there was a storm in the city and trees down everywhere. He knocked on my door and fell in, in a mess. He had gone home that night, after mulching trees in the dark and rain, gone and bought takeaway dineer, as he had to do every single night of the year, tired, hungry and exhausted to find her crying. He started comforting her, asking what was wrong. She said ‘I didn’t know where you were, you weren’t answering your phone’, he said ‘I’m sorry, its okay darling I’m here now’. She said ‘I’m not crying because I thought you had had an accident, I’m crying because I thought you were dead and now I know you’re alive’. That’s being abused to within an inch of your life. I know what you mean.
In remembering back (the mind obviously becomes somewhat clearer in hindsight) something definitely wasn’t right. There were red flags that I wasn’t experienced enough to detect, which I put down to MrsDanny just being, well…..MrsDanny. I particularly remember her telling me about a big falling out between her and a friend that I wasn’t able to get a proper explanation for the reasons behind the dispute. Her explanation was very hazy…..deliberately avoiding being specific about what happened. Also, there was another particular major falling out between my wife and a neighbour…..which was definitely down to an oversight on my wife’s’ behalf. When things had died down, I tried to have a discussion about the misunderstanding……which attempts were unsuccessful. And don’t get me started on the many cutting comments that have been directed at me. Of course, we all have to question ourselves and others perceive the way we negotiate our way through lifes challenges and tribulations.
Juliette, I’m confused….your friend’s wife was crying because she found out her husband was a live? What is wrong with that? There are such things as tears of Joy. Maybe she was crying in realization of how devastated she would be if something HAD happened to him?
I read with interest the discussion on BPD. I guess I find it an area where there is much of blur especially when talking about disorder characters. Particularly when there is so much about this written and I do wonder if some who write about it actually should. I say this because so much of it is aimed at women (not that I want to make this a gender issue and obviously some men suffer it as well) but I see it at times as a way of discrediting women and another way of sowing doubt in someone who is suffering at the hands of an abusive character. How often do we hear “oh she’s unstable”, “she’s abusive too” and there maybe some truth to that statement as on this site we all know that we react in ways we wish we hadn’t at times in our situations. No one is perfect but it is whether you are doing it on purpose. Obviously someone who is manipulating you covertly is purposefully making you crazy and trying to keep you off balance.
For instance I know and deeply regret leaning on my daughter with my emotional issues when I had no right to do so. I can make excuses one being that I kept it secret from all my friends and family. I felt also that I was in a situation I could not control. I was at times an emotional mess. She has now put up her boundaries and I am proud of her for that. I know I crossed them and I now have to deal with the fallout of my actions. I’ve even been labelled directly and indirectly from my older children and even that first DV counsellor (or that’s how it felt when she said if we fix you all will be okay in your relationship) as BPD and as a result for some time believed it was me. Trying to debunk that is a hell of a task. As I know too that my older children really have no idea about the dynamics of an abusive relationship even if they have lived it along with me. There are things that take place that they are never aware of.
I was so confused about everything that I asked my psychologist straight out if there was a chance I suffered this disorder. Told her my reasons why and she told me that NO I didn’t. I can look back now and realise it was most likely PTSD that I was suffering…with nightmares (that he was ALWAYS in) and my reactions. I didn’t realise anything about PTSD then also have generalised anxiety anyway it all spills over. It still doesn’t excuse my behaviours but it does shed light on them.
I also believe there are many other disorders that can mirror some of those in BPD so again it really takes a professional to diagnose such a disorder. I think if you are a highly emotive person or very neurotic you are very easily labelled as either BPD or “high maintenance” (which I hate) or unstable. It really is not a fair assumption unless you have the full details of the person, their situation/relationship or their past. I’m not casting aspersions on anyone here etc but it’s a really grey area that can have many different aspects to it.
Tori, Very good points and something I just talked to my counselor about the other day. Her take on what you are saying is this…….Throw ANY assessment of the victim’s supposed diagnosis out the window if they are being manipulated and/ or abused covertly. Most likely the person assessing them does NOT and never will understand the entire picture.
And I agree,,,,,,,,BPD, from what I have heard, has become a catch all diagnosis and while it may be valid in some cases, men included, it is way over diagnosed and misdiagnosed. And because of the way these monstrous covert abusers work, it creates a dark hole that most therapists don’t see in the overall picture of their supposed BPD client. Most of what I’ve experienced is so complex and jumbled and vague and add…… descriptive word here…… that i simply can’t even come close to retelling it to someone who does not have the right background to really understand.
The counselor I’ve FINALLY come across really does understand.
She meant that before he came home, she was happy and thought that she was rid of him and that she was upset she was again, stuck with him for life. There was no misunderstanding on his part she made it very clear at the time. Whether or not she was telling the truth is another matter.
Tori and Puddle, very well said. I know I have definitely become the way you both describe yourselves previously with partners, with this one I am separating from as we speak. It does throw your identity, ability to make decisions, your usual coping style and all sorts of things into chaos. It makes you needy, tearful, guilty for being needy and tearful and even mad at yourself. I’ve had urges to punch myself in the head this year, which I didn’t act on, because I was tempted to get sucked back in, when my intuition/higher self was saying, NO NO NO, you know the truth, you know what you have to d, you know what will happen if you believe him, look at yourself!… I just re read Dr Simon’s description of people with BPD again, (by typing it into the search box, its at the end of the article that comes up) with a view to looking at the differences in behaviour of someone with BPD and someone disintegrating at the hands of a CA. It seems that a person with BP will have developed this style over their lifetime. I know how normal and sane I was before I met Bambam. I had done so much work on myself to get to that point, I was stable, single for 12 years and liked it. I was actually starting to make serious inroads to achieving some lifelong dreams as well. Out of the blue he came into my life when I wasn’t even looking for it, then, like you too Puddle, I wasn’t even attracted to him at first. He worked on me. Here I am 5 years later, a shell of a person compared to then and displalying features of all sorts of mental illness labels, that’s because I Have.. become mentally unwell during the course of this relationship!. His life has gone ahead in leaps and bounds since then and I have deteriorated badly. I also have physical signs of living in flight or fight for 5 years, like heart palpitations that won’t stop night and day, this tells me that it’s not a mental disorder and that removing myself from this situation HAS to happen. I’m hearing what you both say on the gender issue, I wonder what a male with BPD looks like. Maybe someone prone to outbursts of aggression and violence and substance abuse, or more physical self harm? It can’t just be a label applied to females, very good point and questions you both raise.
And then what about a BPD diagnosis in a person who has been abused and manipulated off and on there whole life? who has never had a steady ground to stand on?
“It seems that a person with BP will have developed this style over their lifetime.”
Juliette, for me, you sum it up for me with your words “…..It seems that a person with BP will have developed this style over their lifetime……”. This seems to be fit quite accurately with my situation (as I say, hindsight is a wonderful thing – the flags were definitely there). My wife has always been a difficult one to have whatever the relationships dealings with, indeed I once remember (after a particularly trying incident) her sister making reference to difficulties in previous years BUT I was having none of it. I loved her and wanted to care for her and wanted to be that person who could provide the stabilising environment that she needed. Over the years, there have been so many incidents, missed engagements (in which I have been blamed for us not attending in peace), missed engagements in which either of us have chosen to not attend due to the conflict, my wife going missing, etc, etc. I thought she was just a precocious individual with a bit of a temper. But the biggest lesson I have learned more recently is that it has always been there. Yes it has. This is a negotiation and resolution style that she has developed over many years……and I didn’t see or maybe even ignored the red lights.
Danny, excuse me if this is a repeat question! Has your wife been in therapy? Does she show ANY remorse or desire to make improvements in herself? Does she ever acknowledge wrong doing or hurtful behavior?
Puddle, a person who has been abused and manipulated repeatedly over a long period would perhaps more accurately be described as experiencing complex trauma and ptsd. Maybe the two do look alike sometimes. I have definitely experienced this, however I’m not particularly a demonstrative type of person, so I tended to internalize my anger and because I have gained tools in therapy, I tend to try to just ‘notice’ my feelings and not act them out. Which led me to become homicidal towards my abuser in the end, so that wasn’t too healthy either! But still, I asked for help when it mattered at the risk I would lose control and be locked up! Thankfully the right kind of help was there at the time. A person with a different temperament or other issues related to anger might look different again, outwardly. I think your comment raises a very important point. That victims/survivors often look to the wrong people for help and get assessed according to the DSM behavioural guidelines which just don’t fit the realm of human individuals and the mystery of personality and character and how this relates to people’s outward behaviour. The DSM also doesn’t take into account much, what is REALLY going on inside the minds of people with psychopathology or whether the people trying to assess these things even have the skills necessary to build rapport and find these things out. Elliot Rodger is a classic example. He had been planning and building the drive to do what he did for years but no one knew! Then he wavered on that position for quite a long time. They were all too worried about him committing suicide. Which is bizarre when you think that right when his parents were apparently the most worried about him, they sent him to live alone for the first time in his life in a place where he knew no one with very little support. Like being thrown overboard and told to swim for his life. It was their final act of self serving, neglect.
@Puddle. I’m not exactly sure about the level of therapy tbh. This is part of the problem. She is manipulating the situation in such a way that she is telling me and other family members that she is having some sort of psychiatric treatment (including medication) but will not define exactly what it is. Also, she will not allow anyone to accompany her to the doctors. And yet on the other hand will claim that she is better….and had to do it all alone because no one was bothered about her. It is a totally confused and contradictory message. It is as though she will reject all attempts by me and her children of help so as to then subsequently accuse us all of not caring about her. She wants us to fail. She wants us to be guilty. She enjoys telling others that we are not interested. Like she enjoys creating the conflict situation to fuel the animosity. Almost as though she enjoys being unwell and has no intention of getting better because it would take the focus away from her totally.
She will rarely show remorse for her actions and will never apologise. She will simply carry on as though nothing has happened, or when challenged will excuse her actions (“do you know why I did it?” or “you wound me up”) until it happens the next time.
Juliette, Thanks for those points. Ans yes, Elliot Roger, IF what he is saying is true, is an example of many things gone wrong and why it’s so important to really really make your children your number one priority in life and not just an accessory to YOUR life. Great post.
Danny………………….uhgh……yikes. I does sound like quite a mess. I’m not even sure what to say. I just don’t understand how someone(she) can have someone in their life who is so concerned and dedicated(you) and not do everything in their power to get that train back on the tracks, for you and the kids.
Btw, for anyone reading my more recent musings I’d just like to make clear that I am not elevating my [male] issue as being any better or worse than what other victims of emotional abuse are currently suffering. My main point was raise questions over the way perpetrators and victims are treated by virtue of their gender. That is all 🙂
Danny, I’d like to say that we know that, well I do and I imagine others do too. I still acknowledge that I believe it IS often, not always, harder for men in your situation to deal with because of biases inherent from their own and society’s general conditioning. I am also guilty of referring to CD people as ‘guys’, ‘these guys’ and I notice that you don’t take exception to it, probably because you are used to it. So I have recently, since reading yours and Tundra Woman’s posts, been trying to use the word people instead of guys when I generalize because I want to acknowledge all the men and their children out there who are living with disturbed women.
Not surprised if this is true about doctor phil. Personally, I think that Dr Simon should go other routes for exposure. I wanted to comment on your statements about the bias for men and women in regards to prison. I am keenly interested in this as I am interested in mens issues. I find it very frustrating that society does not hold women accountable to crimes in the same way as men. We should not be treating adult women who commit crimes such as sleeping with a minor, as ‘damaged’ and men as ‘dangerous’. Men and women are both dangerous and damaged.
It might be a good idea if DHS, researchers and other psych professionals monitored this site to gauge how predominant this problem is progressing, not just specifically a “personal psychology” concern, but also a social problem with regards to societally induced stresses.
Sophia, that would be wonderful wouldn’t it. There are gems to be found all over this site, for the Department of Human Circuses and their policy makers, researchers looking for the Holy Grail and professionals who are still trying to treat people based on the currently accepted modalities that so called abusive personality and all of it’s subtypes has at its root inferiority and defense mechanisms.
I have extensive experience dealing with these and other relative types, and I can tell you that there usually co-morbidity traits that vary in intensity and subtypes. Some are more narcissistic based and others are more violence based (including violent tendencies, also to varying degrees.
Assessing the subtype’s potential behavior can be both an easy task (when the behavior is overt), but also an extremely difficult task when dealing with more latent dangerous types who wouldn’t hesitate to kill. And then there are those whom are legally and politically connected who are able to easily circumvent the system. I have dealt extensively with the latter type.
The problem that you have with the latter type is being able to analyze these individuals without intervention, and usually this ends up.more as a political/legal consequence as a result of the protections (e.g.Individuals who hold great power over policies, or those with whom they are connected or associated.)
I have extensive experience dealing with these and other relative types, and I can tell you that there usually co-morbidity traits that vary in intensity and subtypes. Some are more narcissistic based and others are more violence based (including violent tendencies, also to varying degrees.
Great site, but please also consider this:
Assessing the subtype’s potential behavior can be both an easy task (when the behavior is overt), but also an extremely difficult task when dealing with more latent dangerous types who wouldn’t hesitate to kill. And then there are those whom are legally and politically connected who are able to easily circumvent the system. I have dealt extensively with the latter type.
The problem that you have with the latter type is being able to analyze these individuals without intervention, and usually this ends up.more as a political/legal consequence as a result of the protections (e.g.Individuals who hold great power over policies, or those with whom they are connected or associated.)
Thanks for the contribution here, Sophia, and for making these points so articulately.
Very well said Sophia and such good points to know. I have a friend who’s son was ambushed while trying to help another friend who was being tormented by some punks. Someone stepped out of the shadows and bashed him in the head with a steel pipe. It split his head open and they actually had to remove pieces of his skull from his brain. Needless to say, he has problems for life from this but is doing remarkably well. My point being, his attacker’s father was well connected politically in the city this happened in and as far as I know from last reports, nothing was ever done to the punk that attacked him. Just an example of what Sophia is saying.
Unrelated to this very article per se, but nonetheless absolutely important, here is Dr Simon’s latest article for all to absorb:
http://counsellingresource.com/features/2014/06/02/covert-self-monitoring-and-reinforcement/
Thankyou for that J, I did read it and it actually helped me as I’ve been thinking too much lately and doubting myself.
J thank you for the link to this article. It makes absolute sense, though reading it now that I am free and reading it when I was in the situation is two different things. Now I read that and think Yes!! And when in charge of your own life you find you do become more self reliant and positive about what you’re doing.
As soon as I started reading this article I started the self check that I am prone to do.
I have so often had to check my paranoia meter since leaving the ex. I remind myself that I only feel this way in situations that he is involved or touches. I also remind myself that while I may have been wrong (paranoid) on occasion most of the time my intuition was accurate.
Knowing someone wants to harm you can sure make you feel paranoid.
E, there is a difference between justified fear and paranoia but I know what you mean, you are not alone. In the article that J has posted a link to above, Dr Simon explains the healthy aspect of what he calls covert self monitoring. It helped me feel less ‘paranoid’ when I read it, realizing that in order to change our ingrained habits of relating we need this kind of self monitoring. It is good that you remind yourself that your intuition is reliable. I need to remind myself of that more often. I think it (the article) applies just as much to those who have too much conscience as it does to those that don’t have enough. I experience a great deal of hyper-vigilance too, which is what has remained. It’s really normal after being chewed up by a manipulator.
I have always questioned and doubted myself Juliette. One bizarre “”benefit” of this whole mess is that I have been shocked to find so much validation and confirmation that my self doubts are mostly unfounded!
it doesn’t help AT ALL that these creeps discount everything you observe and will never admit to any wrong doing. It can definitely twist your perceptions and undermine your ability to trust your observations.
Totally! and being hyper-vigilant for the 12 years I spent single didn’t stop me from being manipulated for the last 5 with this covert I am currently extricating myself from, thanks to finding this place and Dr Simon’s gem, of manipulation being an offensive tactic. What a revelation..You know how when you hear the truth sometimes, it just resonates in your intuition and you just know that what you are hearing is right?..The Truth. Such a simple idea really which turns the whole power game on it’s head, amazing that no one ever saw it before.
Juliette, I feel SO bad for those that have gone before us in the day that information like this was literally no where to be found. Horrible and you can easily imagine the outcomes.
That’s so true Puddle, it’s like you have to keep sifting from a distance to see what’s really going on to find the nuggets of truth. When you think on all the ways they minimize or as you say won’t admit their wrong doings it can really do your head in. It takes a lot of help with someone who is knowledgeable about these “Creeps” personalities. I was so stressed last week with haunted thoughts and had to clear them with a counsellor, that made a huge difference like a load was taken off my shoulders. Finally have had some days without that creep on my mind. Progress YES!! As I found that my concerns were justified, just talking these doubts and thoughts out loud the jigsaw started to come together.
Hi Tori! 🙂
“That’s so true Puddle, it’s like you have to keep sifting from a distance to see what’s really going on to find the nuggets of truth. When you think on all the ways they minimize or as you say won’t admit their wrong doings it can really do your head in.”
AND one of their “tactics” is to take posession of you, your life and your time. He was with me almost all the time. if he wasn’t at work or having dinner at mommys or doing something for her, he was glued to me. He “required” more together time than any man I’d ever encountered! Why?? They want to occupy the territory! They don’t want you to figure it out and the more time you have to yourself and not under their influence, the more time and ability you have to do that. I LOVED being with him when I was with him but certainly didn’t need to be with him as much as I was. I have no problem what so ever being by myself…….NONE! I actually NEED a lot of quiet time to myself to process and untangle things. When I’m “forced” to be around other people for too long it SO works against me. Like when I go visit my parents (just my Dad now) I stay there and after a short period of time it starts to catch up with me. OVERLOAD!
Dr. Simon, so a covert aggressive of whatever degree can also have something like an actual personality disorder like PPD? Where does one stop and the other one begin??
Puddle, I do think Elliot’s ‘book’ is worth persevering with as he gets to his teens he starts writing about certain beliefs he has in relation to men, women and himself. If he is to be believed of course. I think his step-mother had a big influence too as time goes by. She had a golden opportunity to give him so much but she chose her own selfish needs at every turn. I believe she was the significant fork in the road after him losing so many nanny attachment figures and being tossed around to suit his parents schedules that made him start to hate women. Hollyweird influenced all of them. He continues to ask the question, all through these years, why do girls always go for obnoxious, brutish guys that treat them badly and ignore the nice ones? He starts to use the language of a narcissist early on like magnificent, opulence, supreme, superior, luxury and we can see how these things come together towards the end. He planned to kill his step mother on the Day of Retribution and her young son, his little step brother, one of the few people he liked. I think he had great difficult being of mixed ethnicity too. Maybe the hair bleaching had something to do with that and his Mother enabled him because either consciously or subconsciously she agreed with that. There are some facts that speak for themselves such as the failures of various help and types of therapy his parents found for him, much too late in my opinion and it’s an important document for people who work in the various fields that tried to help Elliot, to read. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if he did manage to get a girlfriend at some stage of his adolescent life. He most surely would have traumatized her in some way with obsession, possessiveness and paranoia that other males were looking at and desiring her. Most likely she wouldn’t have measured up to his unrealistic fantasies of what the relationship would be and his attachment and other psychological problems would have surfaced in the environment of his attempts to attach. She probably would have run a mile and maybe become the focus of his hatred herself. Much like many of us have experienced.
Juliette, I agree with all of your post and yes, the writing was basically on the wall, spelling out what would have happened if he had a girlfriend.
I find it very sad when men put such emphasis on height and mis label it’s importance. I had a male friend who was short, maybe 5’5″, who was convinced he would never find a mate/ girlfriend because he was short and women don’t go for short men. He is ignoring the fact that his mother AND FATHER are short and they have been married for ??? years, had three children together and are a pretty wonderful couple!
The fact that he grew up amongst movie and Hollyweird people did nothing but create and confirm Elliot’s misguided beliefs. They simply were not accurate beliefs! AND even in movies there are plenty of examples where the bronzed and beautiful guy isn’t the one who gets the girl. Plenty of examples in real life and in the movies.
That kid was drug around from day one (if his accounts are accurate), even before the step mom came o the scene. He was indulged in superficial ways that have nothing to do with why a woman/ girl falls for a boy/ man, short or tall, average or stunningly gorgeous, when it’s actually a healthy attraction and union.
It’s just sad that his perceptions were SO off base and that so many people died because of that. He clearly thought he could and should have anything he wanted and when mother and father couldn’t make that happen with females,,,,,,,we see the result. He should have asked mother to buy him prostitutes.
Something happened with this young mans upbringing (if what he writes is true). A ball was dropped, rather bounced around the court, opportunitieS missed and windows for a better outcome slammed shut.
Horrible horrible. I am going to make myself complete the reading of his story because I’m only to age 9 or so. It was making me angry to read it, angry and sad.
I just wanted to shake him as I read it and say NO!! you are missing the point kid! This is NOT why girls are not falling for you! It’s because you have turned your back on yourself and what is real about the real you! At a younger age he sounded like he had the potential to be a pretty neat individual! So So sad………..
I don’t know about the step mom thing……….from what I have read, it sounds like she was trying to impose some limits while the mother was overindulging him…..what a mess!
Puddle, I think she most likely put in some kind of effort to look after Elliot. She was a woman who was yet to become a Mother, trying her best to care for the children of her new partner. It’s probably fairer to say that the three parenting styles of the parents were wildly incongruent and Elliot did not adapt to this well. It’s easy for us to point the finger at her because she was there. I feel that step parents have a crucial role to play in children’s psychosexual development. Kids of divorced parents have this huge new developmental task to negotiate on top of all the usual ones and in Fruedian terms their Oedipal crisises multiply and complicate. The step mother needs to become another solid attachment figure and advocate for the child, I believe, otherwise the male child must compete with the stepmother in order to identify with the father. Of course the father has to ‘support’ his new partner and ‘choose’ to side with her in his own best interests. This leaves the child in a terrible conflict. I grew up with an evil step mother and without being corny it was a bit of a cinderella situation. It gave me terrible conflicts and damaged me. I have lots of Step-Mother Stuff. Hence the reason for overly, holding step parents accountable! It’s really the blindness of all the parent figures that creates this problem and unless it is a ‘conscious uncoupling’ and team effort the child’s psychosexual development suffers. Like maybe they become neurotics who attach to CD men, maybe they become CD men who hate and mistrust women…….etc.
I hear you about the stepmother’s roll and i’m sorry you were raised and hurt by yours, it all makes me just sit and shake my head. being a stepmother is really a horrible situation. You are between a rock and a hard spot. This is NOT your kid, the kid knows that and now you are face to face with a child who’s not yours and have to try your best to deal with the mess someone else started. (Please don’t think I’m saying you were or are a mess…….very general terms here). In this case part of the problem is a father who is not really around much and maybe not at all, or very little, even when he is there. Everyone seems to think that the mother is the most important “issue” when something goes wrong with a male. That there had to have been some huge glaring problem with the mother/ son relationship for a man to treat women with such disrespect, abuse, etc. Thats what I always thought until i read Lundy Bancroft’s book, Why Does He Do That. He talked about how important the FATHERS roll is both in shaping a male child’s attitude towards women and in separating the male child from the developmental early narcissistic bond with the mother. Well, if he is absent or disengaged or fill in the blank, this separation doesn’t happen properly or at all.
In the case of Spathtard, I believe his father hated and disrespected women and raised his son to do the same. But if Spathtard is telling the truth about ANYthing, his father was also extremely critical and emotionally abusive towards his little failed protege. (How do you like these family dynamics? His father was the only male child and had eight sisters!) SO……..the father hates women, is abusive towards his son who is indulged and coddled my his mother who also fails to “protect” him from his abusive father. What’s a baby spathtard to do? He NEEDS a mother figure who he also resents to take all of his unresolved issues out on. And along comes Puddle who is dripping in care taking traits but doesn’t want to be a mother, wants a man not a weenling…….
especially hard in this situation as a stepmother!! On over indulged, tantrum throwing, entitled, little high maintenance developmental nightmare?? I think i’d be like, check please, bye now!
No offence taken whatsover, your sense of humour is great Puddle. When I read Spathtard I always read it phonetically as spat-t-tard. You know every survivor of abusers I’ve met does that..give their ex a name that depersonalises them. I think it is a way that we separate the guy we loved from the guy that hurt us and it is a sure sign that they have let go of and accepted something. Your post made me think of the chicken and the egg question…How come no one ever asks where the rooster fits in to the equation?! Absent and damaged Fathers are a huge part of the problems in our world. Whether it was from war, industrialization, divorce, materialism, workaholism, addiction, disengagement, macho-ism or just plain domestic terrorism such as we have survived, there are too many children raised with this ever present absence. I think this is especially damaging to boys, not to say that girls don’t suffer because of it too.
What about fathers resenting their unwanted children? That’s another problem, resentment poisoning any bond between father and child.
J, that’s a hard one..it happens to Mothers too. Not sure if you have ever had kids but something either kicks in or it doesn’t when your child is born. So when this urge to merge with the newborn doesn’t kick in for Fathers, yes it is a very big problem for the child and the Father. The relationship at best becomes one of duty. Are we referring to Elliot’s father too, I imagine so. The other thing that happens to Fathers is that they get divorced and because they don’t share the same narcissistic bond that the Mother does (in an ideal world), not being able to have the daily influence causes them to feel really powerless and I’ve witnessed this alot in friends that have separated. I’m generalizing here too, because I have also known many Fathers who have gone through divorce who are very,very attached to their kids and put their relationship as the number one priority for however long it takes. This usually comes at a great cost to the man’s career and future ability to secure a suitable new mate. So back to resentment..There can be many reasons why this resentment happens, I agree. Then there is the resentment that happens to men when their partner takes up with a new man..Painful for them. I’m sure there are oceans of men out there, hanging in with poisoned marriage relationships that they resent, because they don’t want to abandon their ‘unwanted’ children too. My Father was a classic example of this. He drowned his sorrows with workaholism and whiskey. Yes it is a form of poison to the soul of both themselves and their children. My personal opinion is that whatever we do and don’t do in our children’s childhood comes back to haunt us when they are older anyway. Many parents of both sexes fail to recognize this whilst their kids are young. I happen to have the benefit of being raised with warring divorced parents and a toxic step mothers, so I was highly motivated to not let this happen to my own children. Somewhere along the way I did it for myself too, because otherwise you pay for it for decades with developmentally delayed or otherwise screwed up kids. Do you think it is better to abandon the child altogether or hang in with the poison? I wonder about that myself sometimes and I don’t have a strong opinion either way. It’s a hard one.
Power doesn’t corrupt by itself, but can resentment corrode character? I can imagine resentment eroding faith as well as joy in life.
Oh Juliette!! YOUR humor is great…..LOVE the rooster comment! So clever!! It really is up to the father to make a man out of a boy,,,,,,at least to set the stage for that transition to develop! The list of ways that can go wrong are endless.
A long while back I went from saying “my Spath” or “my whatever” when referring to that pos. I think it was a healthy transition to start viewing him as just a Spathtard, not my Spathtard…….actually he’s mommy’s spathtard.
How can I still cry over this??? I just did today at my appointment with my psychiatrist! How can that feeling of ??????? still make me feel sad? I asked my shrink this today, asked him how I could still feel what I feel. He said you loved him Puddle, you bonded with him and he lied to you, deceived you and betrayed the feelings you had for him…….of course you feel sadness about that. He created a false hope for love in you and you surrendered to that promise. (I’m paraphrasing) Of course that made me cry even more!
Oh boy Juliette, add to your comment and observations about bonding or the lack there of………add this:
A father’s jealousy and possible resentment of the narcissistic developmental stage between the child and mother where he is on the outside and doesn’t get all the attention he used to.
Or, all the dynamics, usually unacknowledged, in adoptions. I wish I could remember the name of a book I read about this……but there are all kinds of issues including the mother’s unresolved disappointments about not being able to have her own child. I wonder how many times my mother secretly thought to her self……..”If this was my own child……”.
Why would someone prescribe Xanax for someone like Elliot Rodger?! Xanx..from the Wikipedia
Paradoxical Reactions;
Although unusual, the following paradoxical reactions have been shown to occur:
Aggression[47]
Rage, hostility[36]
Twitches and tremor[48]
Mania, agitation, hyperactivity and restlessness[49[50][51]
Contraindications
Benzodiazepines require special precaution if used in children and in alcohol- or drug-dependent individuals. Particular care should be taken in pregnant or elderly patients, patients with substance abuse history, particularly alcohol dependence and patients with comorbid psychiatric disorders.[31] Use of alprazolam should be avoided or carefully monitored in………. chronic psychosis, hypersensitivity or allergy to alprazolam or other drugs in the benzodiazepine class, borderline personality disorder (may induce suicidality and dyscontrol).[23][32][33][34
Episodic dyscontrol syndrome (EDS, or sometimes just dyscontrol), is a pattern of abnormal, episodic, and frequently violent and uncontrollable social behavior[1]
Juliette, Im up to age 12 now and all I do is ask why? I personally would not buy my 12 year old kid a cell phone let alone a BMW!! This story is insane. He found the tents at camp too drab and asked to be moved to a cabin? Not on my watch! I swear…….Hollywierd is a different planet.
Yep…the way he was farmed out to summer camps I find reprehensible, when he just wanted to hang out with the few friends he did manage to make. Then later made to spend the ever changing shared care arrangements at his Father’s home, even when his Father was away and was forced to be there with his Step Mother is outrageous considering how old he was. He was still having and calling them, ‘playdates’ well into his teens. Teens don’t have ‘playdates’! It’s possible that he had some kind of pervasive developmental disorder maybe. Definitely not Autism. The parents have a great deal to answer for, apparently they started seeking help for him at 9. They just kept palming him off onto each other and ‘throwing money at it hoping it would all go away’. I’d be interested in knowing Dr Simon’s opinion on the fact that so, so many of these kids who do spree killings are on either Xanax, Prozac, Ritalin or Zoloft. He had been on it for 6 months and his parents are now saying that they believe that Xanax was the cause of his isolation and anxiety! They apparently haven’t been able to read his writing yet, it’s too traumatic for them at this stage, fair enough though, I predict that when they do they will discredit alot of what he has written to save face. I bet my bottom dollar on it. Disturbed, medicated children is a whole new area of character disturbance that has yet to be properly documented, defined and researched. People are turning out disturbed children, then medicating them to try to control the behaviour instead of accessing therapy and doing the hard work of looking at and changing the environment that created the disturbance in their kids. It’s just easier to chemically restrain them with dangerous drugs for which there are no long term scientific longitudinal studies to say that this is a safe and good thing to do. In fact the evidence is mounting that it’s disastrous. When this thread is finished I am going to focus on something really positive that fills me with hope. It is just a sad, sad thing and has made me feel angry at times too. It’s like watching anti-animal cruelty ads on TV, almost impossible to do but necessary.
so, he is 16 now and being fed a steady diet of video games and players. It really doesn’t take a lot of effort here to connect the dots IF what he is saying is true. Train wreck of an upbringing and an ultra sensitive kid. Again, no excuses for what he did but this is something I wonder about and ask about all the time! At what point does someone really become responsible for themselves and the “choices” they make when their inner reality has become so twisted by either nurture or nature? the outcome of this story could have gone a countless number of ways and none of them would have been good. It’s like asking someone to run a marathon on two broken legs. Somehow he is just supposed to pull himself up by the bootstraps he doesn’t have? Your an adult now kid, only not really, so despite everything that has gone so tragically wrong at someone else’s hand, step up! It doesn’t matter if you have the necessary tools or brain wiring, just do it. I personally don’t see that happening in THIS case. This is a tragic story. Even if only a fraction of what he is saying is true and it’s “well written” enough for me to have a hard time believing it’s not, there are so many tragic childhood stories that we know are true that end up badly to varying degrees. He put quite a bit of effort into making sure it was all there to be seen in the end.
The stuff he whines about isn’t even the stuff I see that is tragically off base in his upbringing. The fact that he does whine and is over indulged for whining instead of being guided into facing some of the cold hard facts of life that everyone has to face IS certainly a problem.
It just keeps on rolling along like that, until someone has the great idea to send Elliot to live in Santa Barbara, all because he idolized a teen movie about the Frat life there when he was younger. I agree with all you say. ‘The stuff he whines about isn’t even the stuff I see that is tragically off base’ – that’s the very thing that I thought. The stuff Elliot does complain about is largely, evidence of his escalating narcissism, so I tend to believe that too. At what point is someone responsible for their own choices?, is a very good question, maybe it depends on how well they have negotiated life’s developmental tasks and who is really the judge of that? The legal definition of ‘responsible’ only really excuses those who have genuine psychosis. We have children’s courts, so society (with more compassion than it does for adults), holds children responsible for their actions, not the parents. I’m sure Dr Simon has already asked himself these questions, I have no idea really. As our collective consciousness is evolving these are probably some of the most poignant questions of our sick, sad medicated times. I’m about 3/4 of the way through Character Disturbance and was really moved by Dr Simon’s ‘Ten Commandments’ for the development of good character. Yet again something so simple really, but never before quite put together in the way that he has. (Unless you want to absorb and memorize the entire Bible!) The other thing I really like about the book is that it gives respect and credence to every type of faith there is, including Science. There is no belief in a higher power evident in society anymore, Science is the religion of the masses if anything and it keeps on changing as we discover more and more. So really were all just observing and experimenting on ourselves to some degree, worshiping our ‘knowledge’ until someone can ‘prove’ that there is really a higher power and restore everyone’s ‘faith’ in it.
Juliette, You really summed up SO much in your post here. Standing ovation! And I especially liked what you said about science! I always roll my eyes when I here “scientifically proven” because it really should end with “for now and with the knowledge and methods that are available at this time”! You know……the fine print?
sorry, I kind of ran the cell phone and the BMW into one package……..I realize they didn’t buy him a BMW at 12.
I think they probably substituted the cell phone for actually being present.
Juliette, good point! Prescribed medications and their affects on people and children especially! AND the fact that that a regular MD, as in family doctor, can prescribe them?? How much sense does that make? I can’t even cut someone’s hair without a license but these MD’s who are not mental health practitioners can and do hand out an RX for mental health meds. I had a GP put me on……..oh! Paxil once and the dosage was way too high. I looked like a friggin crack head or speed freak! Someone I knew was a psychologist and referred me to an associate of his who was a psychiatrist. He was so adamant about how much he disagreed with GPs being able to give out antidepressants like candy.
Puddle, if you read the Mims Annual where the scientific data is printed for these drugs, they usually begin with ‘the exact mechanism of action for ‘xxxx’ is unknown but thought to be ‘yyy’. Then you look at the data for interactions, side effects and reactions on the rats, rabbits, monkeys and other poor creatures that were given doses of it until they reached a fatal overdose. Then you look at the data for what happened to the internal organs of the same mammals in the longer term NOT! (5years!)trials to see what the liver and kidney’s tolerance before developing cancer is. No-one would ever take any drug if they read the Mims Annual. Then almost every section for the drug says ‘further data is required to ascertain ‘zzzz’. This is where the GP’s and other doctors come in! The drug companies send their pushers to them or invite them to events and get them to sign up for long term data collection arrangements for whatever the latest wonder drug is. This is especially prevalent in psychiatry, which seems to change its’ wonder drug every five years when the human trials are complete. The latest wonder drug is Clozapine, it seems to have lasted past the magical 5 year point, (more than likely because the one waiting in line behind it started to kill everything!) but it does horrendous things to people, some of them to the immune system and irreversible in susceptible individuals. Where is all the data on the widespread medication of children I wonder? I’m glad you have found a psychiatrist that you like, the good ones are few and far between.
Yeah, he’s ok but………..I don’t know what we are doing exactly….LOL
funny how everyone can tell that I loved Spathtard except Spathtard. He used to say, “I know you think you love me but I don’t think you do, not really”. Why’s that Spathtard? Could it be because I have no clue who you really are? Like if i knew you really didn’t give a shoot if this worked out or not and basically you were just milking my feelings for all it’s worth and waiting for the big discard, you think I wouldn’t still love you?? Like if I knew who you REALLY were?
Of course any time he wasn’t saying this, he was saying how wonderful my love felt. I love you Spathtard,,,,,,,,I know you do and it feels wonderful. I love you SO much Puddle.
Loser
Sorry……anyhow, what you are saying is just absurd Juliette, and frightening. Very interesting information.
Please don’t apologize Puddle, that’s exactly why they say that because they know we don’t really know them and they think that by making us feel deficient in our quality and quantity of lovingness that this tactic keeps us in a condition of confusion as to who is creating the gap we feel between our intuition and reality. The operative word was “I know you think you love…ME..; who is ‘me’, which one of ‘me’, ‘is it me, myself or I you love…. bwaahahahhahaha!”
Personally, I just don’t think psychiatrists have anything useful to offer society anymore except evaluations on whether people should be detained in jails or institutions for the protection of the community, even then I think that psychologists would do a much better job. Dr Simon’s work needs to be instituted in the university degrees of psychology students. Period.
Juliette! This is so on target and SO well summed up! Amazing! You should be a carpenter! because you keep hitting the proverbial nail on the head and ………..just amazing! Thank you!
“that’s exactly why they say that because they know we don’t really know them and they think that by making us feel deficient in our quality and quantity of lovingness that this tactic keeps us in a condition of confusion as to who is creating the gap we feel between our intuition and reality.”
Puddle, in reference to one of your earlier statements about going through this and living in an age where we didn’t have this knowledge accessible to us. Wow, I can’t imagine how terrible that would have been. Thank God for the internet to connect us all in our recovery.
I don’t know J. If a parent is a narcissist they can come to resent the child if the child isn’t a little ‘mini-me’, this could have applied to Elliot’s relationship with his Father. Do you mean erode the child’s or the parent’s character? When you say Faith, do you mean in a higher power or in oneself? I can see how resentment takes the joy out of life but some joy had to be missing for resentment to root hold in the first place, I think.
“I don’t know J. If a parent is a narcissist they can come to resent the child if the child isn’t a little ‘mini-me’, this could have applied to Elliot’s relationship with his Father. ”
It sure did with my mother!
Mine too Puddle, she is now a Master Porcelain Doll maker, one of the best in the world. Each doll represents hundreds and some thousands of hours work, hours she didn’t spend with her real children and grandchildren. She now has all her little mini-me’s behind glass with their trophies, where they ‘belong’ for her and her admirers to gaze at and admire her handiwork.
woah…..how symbolic!! Amazing! Perfect little reflections of her perfect fantasy children. how horrible really….and creepy??? dolls freak me out!
I think I was a perplexing mystery to my mother…..so different than she was, and that vexed her greatly! Man…..she was determined!
Yeah it’s very symbolic. She was so obsessed with making dolls that she reached the pinnacle of the “Millie” which is the international, single award given out each year to the world’s best porcelain dollmaker. Once you have achieved the Millie, you can’t enter competitions anymore. So now she is the Judge of the show. I totally respect if you don’t want to elaborate, I’m curious to know what you mean by ‘determined’ 🙂
oh,,,,,sorry….she was determined to break me and mold me into her image of how I should be,,,,,,you know, the way I would reflect best on her? I have always loved nature and the outdoors and life in the rural country,,,,,, she absolutely refused to believe that about me!! I remember her saying one time, “I don’t know why you live all the way out there! You’ve always been a city girl.” It was such a eye opener. I see myself looking at her in confusion and amazement like, WHAT??????? where did you ever come up with THAT one Mom??!!
Maybe the operative word was ‘girl’…
If a father resented the mere existence of a child that signified an unwanted obligation, that’s what I meant.
Could resentment like that erode a good man into less good?
if he allowed it to through his own selfishness.
Yes!
J, I think he is just a human man, neither good or bad. Like those with CD he must face what society expects of him and his responsibility to finish what he started. I think it could only erode him if he resisted the obligation. For a Father to resent a child’s existence and for him to feel the child an unwanted obligation, he has to be lacking in some other way in order not to feel proper attachment and protectiveness towards that child. I can understand how a guy would feel resentful towards the child’s Mother as an unwanted tie and obligation for life. Mothers get this too. I call it ‘Time to put the saddle on’ some Mother’s just don’t like the saddle and were never ready for it but it’s not impossible to submit to. It’s the refusal to submit that erodes a person’s character, not the resentment. That’s how I see it. What do you think?
I think you amaze me Juliette. I just can’t get over how you put things into such a concise wording and hit the target!
But yeah, I agreed.
Thankyou Puddle, for such a nice compliment, I’m pretty sure some people think I waffle alot too! lol. Interesting sidenote though…. I barely spoke at all until I was eight-ish, only when absolutely necessary, as I had a really bad stutter until then. I wonder if that’s why I still think in symbols more than others. Maybe I stayed in that part of development longer than usual?
I just don’t know Juliette but I’m still digesting your story of origin. In some cases, who could blame someone for wanting to stay in a phase of (under)development? If it’s not safe to come out, it’s not safe to come out! Im here to say….I don’t know how some people make it through. I have not been “wowed” by what I have seen for therapeutic help and again, is someone’s start in life has tweeked their very foundation emotionally…..what do they do?
I don’t think that a man who was of good character at his core would resent his child’s existence to begin with J.
Let’s say a woman has tricked a man to impregnate her, tricking a man to be a father. I could imagine huge resentment over that.
Could it be that such scenario such has a man emotionally distance from a child?
J, that’s why I said something either kicks in or it doesn’t when you have a child. Holding your newborn baby for the first time, regardless of whether you planned it or not is a moment of epiphany, arrival, wonder, intense emotions…the list goes on. I has to be experienced to be fully understood. So I believe that the emotional distance a man may feel in that situation is still something not quite natural within him. The resentment he may feel for having his seed stolen is more appropriately justifiable towards the thief that stole it. Imagine this…the baby is born with a malformation or is intellectually disabled, a chromosonal abnormality etc, what do both parents do with their loss in this situation. They get with reality and accept the saddle. It is no different for the man who has lost his independence without consent. Nature throws all sorts of things at parents and they rise to the challenge.
tricked or not tricked,,,,,,this is a child of YOURS that YOU created from YOUR seed. As Juliette said, A person with good character is able to override their own wants and desires in favor of the welfare of the child. Resenting the mother is one thing but the man with good character stands by the child. I’ve personally seen it happen and the tragic out come was that the woman used the children to manipulate the Hell out of him and then poisoned them against him.
And, it would be better, if at all possible to just be out of the child’s life than to be there and resent the child for the mother’s manipulation. I’m not sure what the scenario is exactly that you are describing J. Sorry if I’m unclear about it.
Did the man feel guilty when he resented the child J?
That was a hypothetical question.
Also, if a mother used a child to manipulate a father, what hell would that be, indeed.
Yes I understand that, I was trying not to write one of my huge long excerpts. I’m thinking that someone who lacked empathy wouldn’t feel guilty in this situation and that someone who just felt really hard done by and was tempted to direct this feeling towards the child, might still feel bad about it and still resentful all the same. If he was just a fairly normal guy who had been harmed like this, he would most likely feel guilty for feeling it. Can I tell you a horrible story from my own life and how this affected me?
J, I’d like to tell you that when circumstances force parents to survive a powerless situation, such as the one you describe or for example living with the reality that you have had children to a psychopath, you HAVE to emotionally distance yourself from the child, otherwise you get mental illness or homicidal fixation. Without going into the horror story, my second ex talked me into having a baby, promising that he would have a vasectomy afterwards which he did. I already had three chidren and looked forward to the time in my life when I could get up each day and do whatever I wanted, since I had been rearing children since I was 17. We had been together for a year. I felt like I didn’t want to wait another five, to start back at zero, since my youngest was already 5. He promised he would help me alot so that I could go to university, like I should have at 17. I thought what better thing can you do for your soulmate than bear him a love child? So I got pregnant straight away. Within months of me getting pregnant he became psychotic, not on drugs either. He decompensated because he has a severe personality disorder, which shocked the life out of me. Where did that come from, I sure didn’t see it in him before that. Bla bla bla it was a NIGHTMARE, so many horror stories. Women’s refuges, Police, Restraining Orders, Breaches of restraining orders, homicidal mania, threats to kill us all, stalking, Family Court, terror, terror and more terror. Now to my point. When my beautiful, intelligent very advanced son was 8 months old I was trying to fill in the Family Tree at the front of his baby book and I asked him for the details of his grandparents. He became very upset crying and having a panic attack and couldn’t breath, so I gently coaxed it out of him. He (the father my PPD ex) informed me that his own Mother was born from a brother and sister and that she had three of her children to her own brother and that two of those children were twin girls, born two years after him!! Generational incest in a family. His twin sisters both have babies with downs syndrome. WTF!!! He raped my DNA, J. I confirmed this about their Mother, with his sisters who lived in another state. I have never resented my son, not even once. I feared for him for years that he would have some deficit or develop problems, he didn’t. One time at the height of all that drama I summarized above, when he was about 2, he was riding his little push bike in front of me down the pathway toward the road, I was so exhausted and at the limit of what a person can physically and traumatically endure in life that I looked at him and thought, if he (the toddler), died I would be rid of this nightmare of a man that I know is never going to go awasy, from my life. My parental instinct kicked in immmediately and I ran to the bike to catch up. That’s what nature placed in parents. Love.
Juliette, what activates in a woman for the child she gives birth to is a different thing than for a man. That’s just me thinking out loud. For a mother, there is so much more there to build that bond with a child. I’m certainly not saying that there isn’t a bond between the father and child, or should be, but I think it’s based on something different. I think it’s more of a choice, it comes more from protection? So much chemistry happens between a mother and baby,,,,,,,they are united in a way that the father just never will be and that all encompassing focus the mother has on her newborn when she holds it, feeds it, gazes into it’s eyes for hours on end, day after day…..that can’t be replicated in a father/ child relationship.
I’m so relieved that your son turned out the way he did, for both of you. What a mess of a story Juliette………it just gets worse and worse. Someone has been looking over you there is no doubt about that. {{{{HUGS to you}}}}
Puddle, I kinda think that too, that men have a ‘less’ of or a ‘different’ a bond but I’m sure there are lots of men out there these days, who will wholeheartedly disagree with that. Or is it that for so long we have allowed ourselves to think that and industrialization and the nuclear family has just made it that way? Someone or something was indeed watching over us, not to mention every day I put one foot on the carpet, then the other, stood up and did what it took. When the decisive moment came for me to step over to the dark side myself and kill him, one night crying in bed all alone, I chose to step into the light then made a commitment to that pathway. It did get worse for a long time, then slowly but surely better and better. I still don’t have a fantastic relationship with the higher power who I questioned heavily after that experience, its getting better though as I see the light at the end of the tunnel and I learn to forgive myself. You would think that after all that I would have learned about people of the lie wouldn’t you. Nope, not enough apparently! How on earth did I not see Bambam coming. He’s nowhere near as bad as the other two and we don’t have children together, thank goodness. He’s a much more skilled covert though and has destroyed me in a place that the other two didn’t get to do. Like you had done to you and LisaO, he used the old wounds as part of his arsenal of manipulation and activated the fragmentation of my personality into these ‘cage fights’ I first talked about. I have read so many books, articles and texts on psycopaths and sociopaths,their victims, psychology, psychiatry, you name it but it wasn’t until I found this site, that I finally had they key and simple, clear thinking to see it coming and identify it when it is happening in real time. I KNOW that this isn’t a false belief I’m clinging to or just a theory. It has turned my insight into Bambam on it’s head already in just a few weeks. Like a veil has been lifted. Dr Simon takes the Nobel Prize for ‘carpentry’ as you put it, he has cracked the holy grail in my opinion. All I did was google, ‘how to leave a toxic relationship’, thankyou Google and Dr Simon. Thanks for your hugs too.
it has to be a different kind of bond, father vs mother, because it just has to be! LOL! But in and ideal world they are both just as important a bond and roll. In this day and age, i just don’t see it going right, the odds are stacked against it. Multi generational dysfunction begets more dysfunction. I’m not saying there isn’t hope though. It sounds like your children have a chance at something better Juliette, a chance to stop the cycle thanks to your hard work, love and dedication among a host of other important qualities. They are so fortunate!
lol, you are probably right Puddle, symbiosis makes it easier for the Mother. That’s what it’s all about in the grand scheme of things, breaking those cycles. Today is my Grandaughter’s 2nd birthday and we are all going to her house for the party. My 3rd child is almost 25, he became an electrician and is engaged to a wonderful young woman from a loving stable family, they are paying their own home off and are just the best parents. They have just had another daughter too who is 1 months old. When I look at these two beautiful little girls, who have a little bit of me inside, I cry tears of joy. Not only that but I have a chance to influence their characters for life. My other children are all doing great too. When I look at all of them now, especially my Grandaughters I have this feeling of triumph over evil. I did it, I broke the cycles and I won the battle against the darkness that tried to claim my soul.
Puddle, have you ever looked at Erikson’s stages and tasks of development?
Maybe but not formally Juliette. Maybe just in comments I’ve read. I’m almost remembering where I saw them……… The narcissistic stage really sticks in my head because I was applying it to Spathtard and his mommy. I’m sure I failed to attain mastery over some of mine,,,,,no doubt. How could I have? So, along comes Spathtard and holds me and holds me and holds me……..I know for a fact that he hooked me at a very very young and damaged place like that…….very primal. And, you can imaging the pain when he ripped the hook, line and sinker out from all the way down in that place?? That’s the part he will NEVER EVER understand……how horrifically painful and primal this has been and i’m glad he can’t understand it because I’m sure it would make him that much happier.
They go like this…
The Stage Age Developmental Task Resolution/Failure
Hope 0-2 Trust V Mistrust
Will 2-4 Autonomy V Shame
Purpose 4-5 Initiative V Guilt
Competence 5-12 Industry V Inferiority
Fidelity 13-19 Identity V Role Confusion
Love 20-39 Intimacy V Isolation
Care 39-64 Generativity V Stagnation
Some theorist say that there is a middle age one there too which equates to Ego Integrity V Despair..the middle age crisis. I forget what that stages name is.
So at each stage we have a task to integrate, which if we don’t, we drag the baggage into the next stage unresolved and end up paying a heavy price for excess baggage! It’s easy to see that the first one is all important. Disruption of the bonding and narcissistic stage – forming beliefs about the self and others which then colours all the other stages with mistrust and attachment difficulties. I think as neurotics we play this out in our adult drive to attach too and so do all the Spathtards out there.
not sure I followed your last sentence Juliette.
Sorry Puddle, I should have been more specific, not that I’m putting us in the same basket as them, I mean they are playing out their unresolved conflicts/delayed development, like being or refusing to move past the stage they are stuck/comfortable in.
well, I’m sure I missed 1+2……now what do I do?
Hi Puddle, I keep logging on and off as Bambam has been upping the ante, as they do when you start getting empowered and I’m not feeling really safe at the moment when he is alert and awake. I can only tell you what I’m doing and maybe you can relate. I haven’t successfully resolved just about all of them. Well up to 45 yo anyway. What resilient beings we are though! I’ve finally got myself to a point in life, where I can afford to do long term therapy. My youngest has recently left home and the other kids are all independent and going well. I think it’s the only way to begin to glue the mirror back together. To form a theraputic relationship that goes back to Hope-Trust and onwards from there. For me I have found a nurturing female clinical psych, who has such a caring Motherly quality to her personality and I have decided to make this the priority in my life after my survival needs. My Mother tried to abort me twice, once at 8 weeks, then again at 10 weeks by drinking a full bottle of gin and getting into a red hot bath while my Father helped her not to drown. This was the old wives tale way back in the day to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy. I hung on though. Things went downhill from there. I’ve done a few good bouts of therapy in my life in DV situations and when I was experiencing kill or be killed but I’ve never worked on the core issues for all sorts of reasons. After what I have experienced in my adult life I feel that a female is the best therapist for me. I was never really Mothered much at all as I was brought up by my Father. I asked you the questions about Erikson as I wondered if you had ever looked at your own early life stage in that way given that you were adopted and some of the other things you have shared about your story. I’m feeling pretty raw right now after a heavy manipulation assault by Bambam all day by txt and then the evening… before he started snoring. One day really soon I will come on her and say..’I did it..I’m free!
oops, That was meant to say come on here!
Puddle, that’s a very good analogy and it made me shudder. I don’t like fishing for that very reason. My second CD ex, who was also PPD, did that to me and then our child and my own 3 kids whom has opened their little hearts to him after suffering at the hands of the CD who prays with an e. Please tell me if I’m triggering you, I’m trying to be as obtuse as possible in order not to. He pillaged me from the hair follicles right down the level of my DNA. I don’t know if they truly understand, I don’t really care anymore. Time has gone by and I see him now 17 years later in a miserable existence of his own making. I see myself as wounded, battle weary but full of hope. Hope is a great place to begin.
I’ve got brain delay tonight. I meant who had opened their little hearts to him.
Bambam is an excellent fisherman. He knows how to think like a fish, what, when and how they eat, which and how many hooks to use. Where they like to hide when the seas are stormy. This is one of the best times to catch fish from the shore actually, during a storm. How to catch a big fish with a light line and how to land one that’s fighting. He knows the value of patience in fishing too. He’s a sea predator. I had a lightbulb moment one day sitting on the rocks with him, watching him wear out this big fish he had hooked, that was too heavy for the line he had on his reel. So that the line didn’t snap against the fish’s strenuous efforts not to be dragged to shore, he would reel it, then let the line go again, over and over till the fish was exhausted and had no energy left to backpedal. I realized that’s exactly what he had done to me for the last five years. The positive side of that story is that we were the ones that got away.
EXactly Juliette,,,,they love to figure out and catch and play fish……the think with their….um, well you know…and with their reptilian primitive BamBamBrains and that is exactly where they hook us,,,,,in our primal need zones. And somehow these throwbacks find themselves superior and entitled? Maybe in Mommy’s nest they are all powerful but I have never known a “””grown man”””(SO using that term loosely!) before who’s life was more of a train wreck than Spathtards. So in order for him to “win” he has to cheat, lie and deceive? And when all else fails, move back to Mommy’s basement?? Falls far short of superior in my book. What a pathetic joke is more like it. Chronologically this is an adult we are talking about! Elliot Rodger was technically an adult but barely and emotionally he was a toddler. He was only 22 when it all caught up with him and he went over the cliff with all of his past issues dragging behind, fully intact. Not very much time for him to turn that mess of a childhood around, if it ever could be turned around. Spathtard has had over twice the amount of time to swallow the bitter pill that he’s really NOT “all that” and really doesn’t deserve to be treated like “his highness”. he couldn’t walk around the block without tripping on it……..if you know what I mean.
Yeah Puddle I do know what you mean. Mommy’s basement is really symbolic too. I see him in there like returning to the womb fed by whatever cord links him to upstairs and the can he is sucking in his hand. They’re either hooked into ours or retreat to the safety of hers. Bambam has an extremely intrusive Mother who wouldn’t let him cut the cord even if he tried. She swings between constant criticism and enabling and smothering, he swings between infantile narcissism and toddler type attempts to be a big boy and ‘do it on his own’. So he swings between infancy and rebellion. His Father is hostile and critical towards him and resents his wife being ‘close’ to any member of the family, even their grandchildren. The entitlement they carry through to adulthood has to have something to do with all that. When Mommy is so hooked in to their identity, they learn how easy she is to manipulate and how easy it is to get away with deceiving Daddy because Mommy’s guilt helps him keep the secrets that may have prompted Daddy’s hostility or disapproval. Add to that that Bambam’s Daddy is so nasty, self centred and hostile, that for their own emotional wellbeing, the whole family has learned to walk on eggshells around him and hence he is a mushroom kept in the dark for eveyone’s comfort level. (He only has one sister, nine years younger). It’s the excuse they all use for their endless enabling behaviours. None of this is an excuse for not having a good hard look at themselves and doing something about it! They hate any type of hard work, mental, physical or emotional because they have never experienced fully how it feels to be rewarded for hard work, everything they get, including their inheritance when Mommy dies, is something they are entitled too. ‘We need Mommy, she’s our ticket to a retirement free of the anxiety of homelessness and poverty.’ I think Elliot had this going on too. Bambam stands to inherit millions and he’s not going to let go of that cord, EVER. It absolutely dumbfounds him that it means nothing to me compared to a lifetime of living like an empty shell. Some sociopaths end up murdering their parents because they get sick of waiting. Bambam and his sister both do it in passive aggressive ways, by neglecting them, it’s fascinating.
interesting and potentially significant dynamics Juliette…… i took note of the huge age difference between BamBam and his younger sister. That had to have been a fatal (fetal!) narcissistic blow when she came along, potentially anyhow. More like probably given the sad state of affairs in BamBam’s family dynamics anyhow. So, at 9 yrs old the king is deposed from his solitary reign and twisted bond with mommy? See?? He probably never had the healthy narcissistic separation from her thanks to Daddy being a wastoid of a father figure, lived for nine years as an only child which usually comes with issues of it’s own, then gets dropped like a hot rock down the priority list because there is now a new baby in the castle…….and it’s a girl?? Who is in charge here???? This is unacceptable!!
The magic 8Ball says……”Outcome looks bad”!
For anyone interested, if you sign up with audible.com you get one free credit for an audio book that you can listen to on any device or computer with headphones. This is how I managed to listen incognito, to ‘In Sheep’s Clothing’ without having to answer to the Wolf who is currently trying very hard to manipulate me and find Grandma, whilst I empower myself.
Recently watched a video recounting a very interesting Internet horror story named The Machine by username nihilistic novelist. It would be so much easier, if we could straight-up see the evil in people as described in that story.
Of course, the problem is how many would have ego strong enough for such.
J, I have to be honest and please correct me if I’m wrong, I say this with all due respect, I sometimes feel you may be manipulative yourself and perhaps searching for answers?
Alright, my answer to your question isn’t as simple as I’d like it to be. I answer, but I also answer your question with questions of my own. There are many points here in different paragraphs, to make understanding this post easier.
It seems you are talking generally here. I answer accordingly.
I admit some of my posts have been written on the spur of a moment.
I simply express my thoughts here, because I’m interested in discussion and no one here is obligated to agree with me.
Also, everyone here understands disturbed characters better from having more experience with them than I have(I’ve met two persons, who were all about avoiding and resisting responsibility and acting as they please when they can get away with it). There’s no intention to sound knowledgeable on my part. There’s just interest to contribute when I have a thought, want to present it and see what others would think of it, whether it would advance discussion to somewhere new.
I’m not trying to invent a new theory here. I don’t have enough experience or necessary credentials. Because the knowledge about disturbed characters has obviously been proved many, many times, no harm should come out of presenting some other viewpoints, whether they hold water or not. I’ve criticized Patricia Evans here, but also commented on some of her ideas that make sense. I’ve talked about Robert Moore and his thoughts on evil and spiritual grandiosity, which are from neo-Jungian school of thought. The knowledge here obviously works best for folks, who need help after encountering unscrupulous folks. I’ve been thinking more along the lines of general human psychology. What understandings could help us get better(even got curious about spirit complexes, autonomous complexes from the collective unconscious, as opposed to soul-complexes, autonomous complexes from personal unconscious as Carl Jung details in his essay Psychological Foundation of Belief in Spirits)? I very well may be thinking too much of some things. Because folks here seem to have no problem getting back to problems that need addressing, what harm is it to think of things that mightcomplicate our life from within? I’m not trying to deal with every single thing that could possibly come anyone’s way. I’m simply curious whether these would encourage discussions.
If I got into a similar situation as anyone has described here, I probably wouldn’t intellectualize it. I’d prefer to get away and stay well.
I see no problem in slipping this small story here. How different would our lives be, if we actually could see the evil in people? Another wondering here.
Also, what exactly do you mean with “manipulative – and perhaps searching for answers”? Do you mean that I’m trying to formulate some own system of ideas here and get validation for them? Compelled by inner hollowness to trick some validation for myself? Someone covertly preaching another belief system altogether? A covert aggressor or a serial bully(or other kind of significantly manipulative personality), who tries to muddle facts with lies, half-truths and distortions that sound plausible enough? A petty, disgruntled sulker, who wants to see if someone could swallow pieces of his negative worldview? Someone, who belittles the importance of character? Deluded about how important my words are? Aiming to feel important by doing nothing else than typing? Wanting to flaunt self-importance? Someone near the middle of the spectrum, but just on the neurotic side, (perhaps a spiritual seeker of sorts?) trying to bend facts to fit some vague, big idea that could explain everything everywhere? Someone near the middle of the spectrum, but on the character-disordered side, not necessarily someone, who would kill, injure, rape, stalk, harass, bully, tyrannize or terrorize others or even emotionally abuse anyone or actively take advantage of others, but actively or passively attempts to justify passive-aggressive resistance of taking obligation for anything? What do you mean?
J, thankyou for writing that reply. I meant no malice when I asked you that question and even if you had replied simply with the word yes or no, it would not have caused me to feel that you didn’t belong here or that I have/will dismiss anything you have to contribute on this forum. Elaborating on what motivates you to contribute here as you have above, has helped me understand what you are saying in many of your posts and when I said thankyou I really meant it. If it were possible and you were in front of me, I would give you a hug. Providing your body language was telling me you were open to the suggestion. The thing about written communication, for me anyway, is that without adjectives or expletives, the emotional tone of our words is sometimes lost and a large part of what we are trying to convey is not coming through. I, like many people who use this forum am a survivor of relationships with disturbed characters. This has left me with a mistrust of both myself and others, in a general sense. In order to deal with this knowledge about myself, I have come to depend on honest, respectful, kind and direct communication, (such as asking you that question above) and look for the same in return, which I thank you again for giving me. Sometimes when I was reading your questions and comments, my perception (which is often wrong) was that you were more interested in your own and other people’s thoughts and less about their feelings. That is ok too! I also wondered before my question above that maybe you were someone knowledgeable who was studying us! Perhaps someone writing a PhD on some area of human relations. I enjoy reading your posts especially when you give freely of your knowledge/questions, I am a thinker too, my fascination with human beings and what drives them, goes way beyond my experiences with disturbed characters. I meant none of those things that you describe as questions. I just had a perception that you have a different reason for taking part in these discussions, than a survivor has and your answer has clarified that for me, in a way that gives me a better understanding of where you are coming from. It is a risk for women like me and many others here to disclose our deepest pain, a risk we need to take in order to heal. We become confused and mistrusting of our own judgement when a partner penetrates us in the way disturbed characters do, then leaves a bunch of pain behind in the void. We need to ‘intellectualize’ it before we can process it. Unless you have someone to reflect that onto you are left having conversations with yourself, which rarely give the same kind of insight one gets from a conversation with someone who understands. Ordinarily, the word love and trauma don’t go together. War and Trauma, accidents and trauma, natural disaster and trauma etc these things go together. When love and trauma go together the carer/victim/lover is left in a double bind. To have that part of the ego/animus/psyche/id all the parts that psychologists have given labels to, whatever they may be, are affected. We walk around knowing we are forever changed and left to pick up the pieces on our own, we attempt to find love again knowing we are scarred, burnt, wounded and therefore more vulnerable to the next time our ‘judgement fails’, we don’t want this to happen again, so we know that the only person who can save ourselves from that, is ourselves. Our happiness and sometimes, very existence depends on gaining this knowledge and insight. This is why we come on here with Dr Simon and each other. We are safe. No one can see our scars unless we let them. No one can see our wounded/ugliness or our beauty. They only see what we let them. Being on here is a way that we ‘get away and get well’. It is also a way of climbing a psychological rope that someone has thrown deep down into the hole we find ourselves in. Dr Simon has thrown us a rope. I see him and all these other strong people on here standing up on the surface calling to me ‘come on up, grab hold and climb, you can do it’. Notice no one is pulling me up saying ‘hold on to the rope, we’re going to rescue you’. I believe that you have as much right to contribute here in the way that you do as anyone else does, I needed to understand more of what motivates you in order to respond to your questions in a way that I felt safe to do and your detailed response has given me a better understanding of where you are coming from that I didn’t garner from reading some of your other posts. I take full responsibility for my own mistrust of others motives and I thank you for taking the time and giving me the respect of allowing me the opportunity to clarify this. I hope you are also feeling the respect and gratitude I am sending to you in giving you the same. 🙂
Juliette, My two cents here is that it’s not your question to J, but the way it was asked. It made me bristle. It sounded accusatory. So, that is how it sounded to me.
J comes across as a very curious person and is coming from a different place in his comments and questions than a victim……I pick up on what sounds like a very intellectual interest in the subject matter. I myself, as a victim, have an intellectual interest as well but maybe a different motivation than someone who finds the subject fascinating. Anyone could be anyone on any web site like this one and could say anything they want so asking such a direct question is in a way pointless. That is a weak point and a “risk” you take participating on web sites like this…..you just don’t know who anyone is really so it’s kind of a roll of the dice. I have paid my dues in the past and had a couple of not so good experiences, but I’ve also had some good ones and received needed information, support and validation.
Also, this web site is monitored by Dr. Simon and J has been posting here for quite a while. I keep that in mind with anyone posting here, if someone was a concern, i’m pretty sure it would be addressed on an administrative level.
Again, this is just my objective take on the above exchange and maybe none of my business?
Thankyou Puddle, I sooo didn’t want it to come across that way. I should have chosen some more words, with more care. Thanks for your input on this, if it made you bristle then I feel that I should have been more sensitive to how it sounded typed, without the benefit of reading someone’s body language and emotional tone. Of course it’s your business, we’re on an open forum, monitored by Dr Simon, where everyone’s input it invited. I deliberately choose not to focus on the fact that people could be imposters on here. I try to take each person at face value and figure I will cross that bridge, if and when I come to it, which is why I asked J the question and asked him to please, correct me if wrong and tried to convey my respect to him too. Directness usually works for me – honesty conveyed with humility. I think I need to pay attention to emotional tone though on here. Thanks again.
Your approach is not too dissimilar to my own style Juliette. I have read with interest the exchange. Sometimes, if we do not ask the question we will never know. I value the contribution of everyone on this website.
You know what Juliette??? Last night I thought about my comment about your question to J and I thought of at least one other way YOUR question could have been intended. These types of things are very confusing for me and make me back down and “shut up” even in an actual face discussion. And in an argument? I get completely befuddled and will just give up from confusion, second guessing myself, etc… Something comes across as a problem to me, but I’m not sure if it is, I ask the other person, they say it isn’t the way I took it,,,,,,on and on and ON! Add to that a Spathtard who IS manipulating and denying their true meanings and intentions? I feel the energy drain from my body just typing that!
AND……..I certainly tend to type plenty of things without REALLY stoping to consider how they might be taken by someone who is not in my head! Add the emotional weight of a lot of the issues being discussed on a forum like this and the fact that most of the people on a forum like this are in various stages of recovery from a Spath??? Woha!
With Spathtard, I would ask him a question in as gentle of a way as I could but probably not as clearly as I could because I was trying to be gentle. Why? Because I had been lambasted in the past for being direct! I now see that he was training me not to confront him directly! Easy to see why they call this process “a mind f”.
I became a mere shadow of the person I was when I met him and I’m sure he enjoyed watching that happen at his hand.
Puddle, so true for me too. I am a mere shadow of the person I was 5 years ago. All this confusion about my reality, because I have been lied to and manipulated and treated as an object, has left me lacking confidence and trust in my own judgement. I’m trying to practice self monitoring to change my ways of relating to everyone. Trying to be less neurotic, less involved in taking responsibility for the feelings of others before they even have them and I still get the fear just above my navel each time I do it. I’m counting on the fact that if I just keep doing it, that it will eventually overwrite the old programs that have been running my life. This site is like a self help group you can join at any time without even taking your slippers off! I’m so grateful for finding it.
Having written some of my posts on the spur of a moment, some of them, containing links to other sites, have been put to await moderation. I hope that says something.
It’s also true that you can’t automatically know what people are like. I’d still think a predator or a covert aggressor could easily get all needed material from natural naivety of people. I’m also refering here to the thought experiment: what if we could see the evil in people?
Hi J, I’m sorry for being so blunt with my original question. I should have been more careful to convey warmth and openness when I asked it, which is what I was feeling. What you are saying about moderation, would suggest to me that Dr Simon keeps that moderation in lines with his purpose in providing these forums so that people with interesting side lines don’t take the focus away from what he wishes to bring to the world (and needs to be!). I’m sure most of us are in agreement with you that a CA could get material from the natural naivety of people but a CA who studied psychology and delved into specific anecdotal stories from victims such as on this site could really use those weapons more effectively against both victims and those who assess them forensically. I’m really reluctant to expose myself to horror images and nihilistic thinking, so I’m glad that you summarized it as a ‘thought experiment’, ‘what if we could see the evil in people?’..Hmmm.. good food for thought I’m going to give it some time to run around in my head and give you my thoughts after that. What if we actually already can and it’s our culture that hasn’t reminded us how to anymore?
J, I’ve been thinking about your question in a generalizing kind of way. Assuming there is such a thing as evil (which I do believe there is personally though it still remains a mystery to me) and we agree on the definition is the first thing. My definition of evil may be different from yours, I see evil as something within a person or a force within that intentionally causes harm or suffering and takes pleasure or power from the infliction of that desire onto an innocent/unsuspecting other. It’s appetite is for destruction. I also define evil as someone possessing those attributes that is also capable of deception ie bad, pretending to be good in order to deceive the naive/innocent.
If we had the ability to see the evil ones amongst us at first glance, we would be faced with a very real dillema. We would either have to flee or fight their aggression, maybe we would band together alot more than we do for the common cause of eliminating them altogether. A long time ago I posed a similar metaphorical question to myself and others. (I am not a practicing Christian and I view the Bible more as a study of philosiphy and values)…”If you found yourself in Satan’s company and you for a moment had the chance to kill him and eliminate evil from the world, would you?” I was thinking at the time that without the ‘devil’ cast his shadow between us and the light, how would we know we had chosen to be good. I was also thinking that, the qualities inherent in the archetype of Satan are qualities that we as human’s possess and must do battle with, within ourselves and perhaps if we didn’t have Satan to blame, we might have to look within ourselves for the answers more often. Or perhaps would some other power hungry person step up to take his place. The questions your question poses are endless. I’d be interested to hear what you think? Also I read one of your earlier posts on Berkowitz and the weapons ideas. I looked them up on the Wiki. Very interesting studies I have never heard of before as well as the fact that they were done in the sixties! I’m really into the theory and research being done one mirror neurons. My interest in this comes from the fact that I believe that playing violent video games is a primer for violence. It can’t possibly be any other way in my opinion. Did you know that the Military had alot to do with the development of the game Halo?
Hypothetically, yes, I would kill all evil in one strike if I had a chance. We would have it so much easier. Sure, we may not know if what we were doing was good, but then again, we wouldn’t be bothered by the whole thing. Then we could theorize if that would hurt our spiritual quests and so on.
I’ve mentioned spiritual grandiosity and that’s what we all naturally have. Refering to Moore’s thoughts here, this grandiosity can be handled in so many wrong ways and that’s why we have addictions, mental illness, self-desctructive behaviors and other-destructive things like fundamentalism, tribalism and cruelty.
Basically there’s just so much naturally in humans that can easily go wrong and that’s disturbing as all get-out.
J, it really IS disturbing……when you think about HOW many things can go wrong and look at the society as a whole, well…..it’s a mess! I myself struggle against many scars and their resulting impact on my character. oddly, the times that I do screw up are just mostly because I can’t keep up with my brain. I say things I wish I wouldn’t have mostly……And get VERY hyper focused in the moment where I loose track of the “big picture” but it’s never my intention to hurt anyone. I see women who have been through a similar thing that I have strike back at the person who victimized them. I can understand why they do it but I have chosen to take the higher road and let the loser punish himself in his cesspool of a life. sadly, I think he LOVES it there.
Hi J, as far as posts with links, I think I asked Dr. Simon this in the past and he told me that if a post has more then one link in it, it will be subject to moderation.
All someone who is looking for information on how to manipulate others has to do is read articles, comments, etc.. They don’t even NEED to participate in and of the discussions, right?
What if we could see the evil in other people? I’m not sure I’m understanding your Question J. Could you add a little to it?
That’s a good point Puddle as long as it is not the people on here they are trying to toy with. Someone sadistic could throw a cat amongst the pigeons if they were clever and covert enough and cause traumatized people to be triggered/suffer unnecessarily, all the while covertly smiling behind the computer screen. Especially if they had some knowledge of developmental psychology. (I don’t believe J has done that at all btw). I have even though how brave Dr Simon is, in tackling this problem so openly. He is in effect taking on not only the people who need retraining and personal growth, he is taking to task, the most dangerous and malevolent characters in society. He is standing before these characters using his real name and photograph and taking a stand for the sake of their victims and society in general. That takes courage and I imagine he has great faith in God in order to be able to do this.
I don’t know if any one of you’s gonna read this, but still….
Can’t say much about spirituality myself(but direct someone to a few sites I’ve read if asked). I think the main point here is this:
A core message needs to be simple and clear if it’s to stand amongst complex details and realities of life.
So…. There are different core messages/metaphors. Dr Simon himself mentions how there are various metaphors for reality. Dr Simon’s mentioned Gavin de Becker many times, for example. De Becker has his own core message in trusting your intuition. That’s a theme in Dr Simon’s work, too. If I haven’t quite misunderstood, Dr Simon’s core message is: Without virtuous character small- and large-scale problems compound each other.
So we are well to digest different core messages. That would make sense for me after my years-long journey of life changes and some of those life changes had something to do with spotting when I was being manipulated in any subtle way and some with seeing how I’d been in error seeing life.
it takes a LOT of courage and as i’ve said many times, what a wonderful example he sets for many survivors of what real character looks like in a man. To me, it’s that quiet, calm, settled feeling in my gut in regards to my impression of Dr. Simon that i need to have with ANYone of significance in my life. I never had that with Spathtard…..NEVER! But I’ve had it with so few people in my life that it didn’t really stand out as the red flag it could of. It will from now on I hope, I hope, I hope! There is much more to it than this though in the hands of a true manipulator. There is a window they can seek attack through during the grace period of getting to know someone. This is why it’s SO important to really know the signs and the tactics they use. Once the chemical bonding happens, you can be in big trouble.
I am just remembering another encounter and seeing it through a whole new lens!!!!!! Serious lightbulb moment folks! I’ll try to write about it soon! WOW!
Thank you for writing this article. I am interested to learn more about PPD. It sounds similar to Borderline Personality Disorder. Is it possible for these two Personality Disorders to co-occur? Or, can one of these disorders present as a sub-type of the other?
Because of the nature of how we classify illnesses, it’s indeed possible for an individual to qualify for both diagnoses. However, many, including myself, see the “borderline” issue as not so much a distinctive illness but rather a pattern that results from weak or underdeveloped personality organization and solidification (You can learn more about this in my books, especially Character Disturbance, and a few articles on this site and the http://www.counsellingresource.com site). So, it’s quite possible for a person who’s got a very underdeveloped, unstable sense of self, to have among their more dominant personality traits the lack of empathy and conscience common to psychopathy. This conceptualization also explains why not all persons qualifying for the “borderline” diagnosis are alike in their symptom presentations. A lot depends upon what traits dominate their weakly organized, unstable personalities.
This is going to be a bit scattered. I would like to ask about how doctors, employers, and court system deals with these characteristics and at what costs? There are people who switch from therapist to the next because they don’t like what they hear. I have observed some who publically attack doctors’ and lawyers’ credentials without any documentation/proof. I have to believe that there is a point where one has to say “screw this!”. Of course I am not condoning malpractice or abuse of any type. Being a victim is not justification for attacking others publically. When does a person draw the line on abusive clients? Personally, it’s frustrating and extremely frightening having to interact with someone who will go to extent of threats, falsifying documents, and slander when their claims, real or imagined are questioned in any way. The damage control after unfortunate encounters with someone like this is mind numbing. What options does a professional (or anyone for that matter) have when someone who makes charges that are false.
Self awareness takes work, time and owning up to the damage inflicted on yourself and others. There comes a point when you say to yourself, “is it possible that regardless of what I have endured, that I might be the asshole?”. Your outlook on life has a lot to do with your happiness. Whenever I feel that things are bad, I have to remind myself that there is ALWAYS someone who has it worse off.
Auntiesocial, from my experience it is virtually impossible to hold a doctor accountable for their actions even when they did terrible things. There comments below the article on this site about ‘getting the right kind of help’, is full of horror stories of clients suffering at the hands of professionals who didn’t take action. The burden of proof in on the ‘victim’ anyway. The professional is innocent until proven guilty. I have no experience or ability to comment on professional conduct and legal issues in relation to that, I hope Dr Simon can give you some of his experience with this. There must be ways that professionals who work with disturbed characters protect themselves from the very thing that you are describing, otherwise no one would do it. I imagine Dr Simon has some great strategies.
This is a really complicated issue, but it’s important so it’s worthy of an article in the future. Please remind me! I have some experience doing peer review. And I can say with reasonable certainty that some disciplines are worse than others when it comes to this issue. And unfortunately, the higher the level of training and expertise, the more adept a professional can be at “CYA.” The problem gets even more complicated because a lot of professionals are rightfully (though not always fully consciously) afraid of severely disturbed characters and dare not be honest and genuine because of the potential reprisal cost.
After reading some of the discussions here I wouldn’t blame anyone for worrying about reprisal. Although the articles are very helpful but as someone who has observed both ends of situations, it is really difficult to discuss. I keep seeing the same replies repeated in every topic. I’m guilty of stewing on things, but it will eat you up. I am a woman and I have encountered both genders of manipulators and abusers. I have to tell you, females are far more brutal, bitter, verbose for much longer periods of time. I had a co-worker whose wife went so far as sitting on his chest and pounding his face with the car keys trying to provoke him. He had their newborn in his arms.
There are lots of discussions about gender bias in character disturbances on this site, in particular Tundra Woman, Danny and Puddle have contributed some good discussion on the subject. I wonder Auntiesocial which side of the ‘couch’ you are on atm, I’m not sure from your post as it is a bit vague. If you haven’t been in a relationship, a sexual pair bond with a manipulator and abuser and you have encountered them all the same….do you still feel qualified to comment on what the experience is like. I just get the feeling reading your post that you think there was far too much females, repeating themselves about abusive manipulators and letting it eat us up. I’m happy to tell you why you are wrong in assuming that, if you care to enquire. Perhaps you have been chewed up by a psychopath in your personal life, I can’t tell by your post, what I can tell though is that you are having difficulty understanding the issue yourself and having difficulty empathizing with others who have been hurt and traumatized by disturbed characters. I am one myself and I find this site a sanctuary I can come to at a very difficult time in my life. I don’t like being told by a stranger who has gleaned this site and made some assumptions without reading Dr Simon’s books, that I’m letting my experiences eat me up. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. I was the one eaten up and spat out, I’m actually here putting myself back together. With all due respect and dignity to you. 🙂
So sorry to hear about your male co worker who was assaulted with keys whilst he held a newborn too. I imagine he was glad he was a male and that he had the power to overcome someone physically weaker than himself when he stood up and protected himself. I remember being assaulted whilst I had a newborn baby on my shoulder, then another time when I had a 9 week old, then there was the time I was threatened with being kicked all over the paddock when I was 7 months pregnant, then there was the time I walked into my empty house and fount some kind of hunting knife had been slashed diagonally across my bed, cutting every layer of the bedding down to the mattress..feathers all over my room in the pitch dark, then there was the time where I sat all day and meticulously hand sewed all the bedding back together…the quilt cover, the channels in the feather quilt, the sheets, the mattress protector…it took me all day….because I couldn’t afford to buy a new one..then I slept in it for a year. Partners did these things to me, they were bigger than me and when they sat on my chest I had no hope of getting up, partners who I thought would love and protect me for ever they hurt me and did it on purpose…including keeping me too poor to do anything about it. Please don’t tell me I let things eat me up. I am one of the strongest, most resilient, intelligent, caring people I have ever met and if I need to discuss my life with someone who understands and educate myself on how not to do it again..get sucked in by a manipulator, this is where you will find me.
Before I went through this nightmare I would have told me to suck it up and get over it, put on your big girl panties and cowgirl UP! I’ve had MANY people tell me that over the last year and a half only in a different way, different words. I understand why because like I just said, I would have had the same attitude BEFORE I had experienced this. There is NO WAY someone who has not been through this can possible understand what people who are going through it experience. Just for starters, how many people come out of a normal relationship, bad or good, with PTSD? Not diagnosed by one off the wall quack doctor but by two psychiatrists and a couple psychologists.
AND, believe it or not AuntieSocial, someone who has been worked over by a COVERT abusive manipulator would almost prefer to have been treated in a “far more brutal, bitter, verbose” kind of way because at least it would be out in the open and visible . It is also known that many victims have reacted to their abuse in ways they will have to deal with later, either legally or in their own conscience while the abusive person who provoked their reactions walks away scott free and often times with a lot of support from the people around them because they have falsely painted a picture of their victim as an unstable wacko or………..fill in the blank.
I sugest to you AuntiSocial, and anyone else who will read the book, The Other Side Of Charm: Your Memoir. I will warn you though, it’s a very hard read and VERY triggering. I had to skip some of the parts about animals and I’m glad I was warned ahead. I believe the worst parts of that are on pg. 106&107.
As Juliette said, I’m not really sure what you are meaning in your post(s). I’m not sure I’m following you.
I love you Puddle :-))
Puddle, I AM a warm fuzzy person and I like being that way, with chocolate sprinkles on the top sometimes if I so desire. How good is that after what I’ve been through?! Pretty amazing I rekon! I am so grateful for the fact you have been gracious enough to repeat your story for my benefit, and Tori’s, and Angela’s, and Lisa’s, Vicki’s and a multitude of other women who have come across this lifeboat/site, whose names I am not up to typing out here and now. Your patient, persistent, intelligent, cogent posts have helped save my sanity and I’m sure I won’t be the last. I’m not going to grace the above post with any more replies and I trust that you are strong in your knowing too :-))
Juliette 🙂 Thank you for your sweet and kind thoughts and words. This is a frustrating thing,,,,,,it all is. I can remember being in this CBT therapists office and trying to explain some things and her cutting me off in mid sentence to tell me that it was inappropriate to bring something up on Christmas Eve. (asking Spathtardx if he thought of me as just a buddy and not romantically after being repeatedly let down by him romantically in spite of my efforts to “ask for what you want” which is what I had been told to do by ANOTHER councilor). She cut me off in mid sentence again when I tried to explain to her that this was a long standing issue, etc, etc, and told me that I needed to focus on me and not him. I was like but but but……… Shutdown. This was very early on in the split and I was going down hill fast. I have no idea how I made it through that stage, how I managed to climb out of that dark hole. I feel like crying just typing that.
There is all this discussion about what will keep a person safe from a psychopath, did you participate in your exploitation, where your boundaries faulty, on and on and on and on………and I have come to the “conclusion” that experiential knowledge is the only way someone can prevent a true predator from harming them. Not intellectual knowledge, not JUST reading and learning about these asshats but unfortunately,,,,,,,going through it yourself. There are SO many components to it, before, during and after….so many subtle nuances, tells, red flags,,,,,,,and it would seem, at least for me that the only way to fully grasp and understand THEM and what happened to YOU is in retrospect with the painful “benefit” of having survived the experience and THEN gained the intellectual and educational knowledge. You can’t tell someone how to ride a bike. You could study about it until you are blue in the face and think you understand it perfectly but when you actually get ON the bike you will more than likely find out that there is a whole other layer of learning to ride a bike other than reading about bike riding.
It’s just another cold hard truth to the subject at hand which apparently involves one reality slap in the face after another. I hate it….I absolutely HATE it and emotionally I recoil from it on a daily basis because it hurts my soul to realize that there are people in this world who can be cruel to other people intentionally and for no other reason than their own amusement or to settle a score for some insignificant perceived sight that may not even be true of accurate. The whole thing is traumatic to me.
I talked to my counselor this morning and she said they will target someone who they see as better than them just to take them down so that they can say……..see! Your not all that! LOOK at you!
Wow, what a ramble……..
{{{HUGS JULIETTE}}}
Just to say Juliette, I am grateful for your story and everyone else’s as well. They are all So different but also, I find myself nodding my head in recognition with my mouth open is amazement at the similarities. It breaks my heart to know what we have been through as a collective “we” and I wish more than anything it had dent happened to any of us.
Saddest of all is that I miss the man I thought he was. He WAS my sweetheart in spite of the problems we had and that is the most confusing and painful thing for me now. I guess that is what that article is speaking to…..how difficult it is to rewrite the history of your past, no mater what the deceit was. All this time later I can still sit here and shake my head in a bewildered disbelief. I know in my heart he didn’t have a clue what I felt for him really, he couldn’t possibly know.
J, did you check out the book: The Other Side of Charm by H. G. Beverley?
I don’t think I told anybody what they should think or feel. So, I shouldn’t comment because I’m new/stranger here? It’s not for you to question the severity of my situation. I may not post ‘loudly’ and I don’t think it is necessary to rehash the details over and over. Necessary at first but less and less after many years. I’m sure Dr. Simon can comment more on the benefits of therapy to work things out. I guess you could say all over the couch. I was attacked, fought him off with a camera and took pictures of him/auto and that led to stalking 4 yrs. YWCA has was a lifesaver dealing with trauma. Few years back in combat with manipulator who snapped when I stood my ground. No, I am not qualified to give advice but to comment yes. I am here to learn more on dealing with coworkers, landlords, and getting dragged through court system for asinine reasons. I apologize if I don’t seem empathetic or don’t hi5/kudos. Big warm fuzzies to all. I know, I know…just walk away. And I’m guessing my first lesson thus far is just not engage. Have a good one everyone!
I rest my case.
Hi all, I wanted to comment earlier on this thread but a few distractions and my internet was out of action. I must admit AuntieSocial that I have found myself thinking that I have to let this all go at times, that I can’t let this man eat up anymore of my life than he already has and I certainly don’t want it ever to define who I am. I don’t see myself as a victim, I see myself as a survivor and I am still surviving one little step at a time. That’s the way I see all here on this site. The issue with being involved intimately with these disturbed people is that no one comes out of it without some issues, or changes to their own selves in some way. Triggers are everywhere, they can be something simple you least expect, just going to the supermarket and buying something for dinner has set me off. There I was a crying mess at the checkout trying to get myself back together, thinking how stupid am I. Thankfully now I can do grocery shopping without a teary episode at the checkout. (I will say the ladies on the cash registers are some of the kindest people). 🙂 Anyway, it’s not a matter of just getting over it and oh I’ve heard that from well meaning friends and family and some not so well meaning. It’s not that simple especially if you’re only really beginning to realise the depth of the situation as you emerge from it.
Discussing it in whatever form whether here, with a counsellor helps get you through it and I say that’s good therapy. Personally reading others stories, Puddle, Juliette and others has helped immensely. Though people are different, their situations maybe also different and their tormentors may come in different guises or genders the fundamental patterns of disturbed behaviours are similar as are the reactions to the abuse. I have thought time and time again that I was finally over it and I wasn’t, I know I’ve said that before but it is so frustrating for anyone in this situation. I’m sure if there was a quick fix and cure we’d all be lining up and paying whatever the price just to have our old selves back before the trauma.
There is a great sense of relief in knowing that others have experienced the same feelings, responses and being able to say Yes…I recognise this or that… It will go around in circles, others will comment and they will want to share their stories and so others will be there to listen and help when they can. It’s a community and it’s through being a community and sharing our thoughts, feelings etc that we can help make a change in our ways of dealing with these dangerous individuals and maybe the community at large.
Puddle, I thank you too. So many times your story seems like it could have been a scene out of my life. Your last comment here again is the way I feel. I was in love with the kind, charming man I met and would see in the good times in between. I lived in hope he would change and not be the violent dangerous man he was but he was as someone called another of these types recently A False Pretender…nothing was truthful and for me too it is the hardest part to live with and I guess it is for many other survivors. And we are survivors, so many are not and it’s sites like these with the great informative articles and the shared stories that may just help someone in a potentially dangerous position to make a positive step. So I say keep going strong and keep sharing. Hugs to you all 🙂
Hi Tori :)…..((((HUGS)))) to you. I don’t know about you but i am STILL realizing things (truths) way over a year after the break up and everything I realize has to be chewed up and digested and inevitably gives my MASSIVE heartburn. How long has it been for you now? Since you have been No Contact?
Hi Puddle, not quite seven months. To tell you the truth I really am only now realising the real truth to my relationship. I’ve had so much to deal with resulting from the split and just reestablishing my life elsewhere. Sometimes I can’t believe that I’ve done it.
I was in love with him for so long and so steeped in denial or whatever you want to call it…false hope maybe I don’t know. Or maybe you cover it up so often you believe your own lies. You know years ago before I met him I watched that movie Nil by Mouth and remember I couldn’t believe the denial the family was living in about the abuse. I couldn’t believe that someone couldn’t see what was right in front of them but now I do as I did. I would never have believed that I would allow myself to remain in such a situation. It’s only now that I am waking up to the full nightmare of what I was living and what my family lived that it is starting to fully hit me.
You know sometimes I think I hate him but if I am honest I haven’t really got to that stage and don’t know if I ever will. It’s difficult to process all the manipulations etc… Even though I knew things were off…I knew I was living in fear but even that wasn’t enough to break the hope. It had to be my life being put on the line literally for me to wake up. And still I had hope. It’s crazy when I think about it. Of course this time I spoke about it and that set the ball in motion for me getting free of him. At least not living with him, psychologically and emotionally still not there yet. Each day it gets a little easier and lots of counselling. It’s just not easy is it. Time is all you have to heal all the wounds but it won’t ever go away. Now I just look to my future and my sons future and what we are going to do on our own. We’re starting to find our equilibrium and just live each day until hopefully one day he won’t matter at all.
Tori, I’m hearing a lot of self judgement and I think you are forgetting that you were manipulated!! Being in denial is totally different than being under the influence of a manipulator. They DO control your mind and screw up your perceptions. Did you watch the gorilla video? You are not crazy and the way you experienced the whole situation is not crazy…..it’s a byproduct of being with a covertly manipulative Psychopath. In a sense YOU were hijacked.
Hang in there, you are not through this until you feel some real anger and that will come when you are safe enough and far away enough to realize the ins and outs of the truth
🙁 It is no fun I can assure you of that. It’s horrible on a multitude of levels.
Hi, Tori, I am 24 yrs post my first psychopath ex, 20 from leaving him. I’m 20 years post my second the PPD 18 from leaving him. I didn’t get any counseling ever about the first, I just got on with things and dealt with everything he did after that, which lasted until recent years. Then had some therapy around the time of leaving No 2. Just enough therapy to stop the homicidal urges but not enough.
My point is, I didn’t do enough. I didn’t continue in therapy when I should have because I didn’t prioritize it financially, I just had too many children. I stayed single for 12 years after leaving no 2 and I knew I had issues but my ptsd didn’t become a physical injury to my nervous system, that has it’s own life, until half way into this relationship with Bambam. Which was 13 years after I left my ex no 2).
I was somewhat traumatized in those 20 odd years, but I now have a spontaneous smash up derby going on in my brain, memory and stress adaptation system in my body. It’s not nice. It’s a mild disability. (That may be a statement of denial or positive thinking because there are times when I could describe it as severe but I just refuse to go down to this and become a non functioning member of society).
Most of the trauma science and current best practice theories about trauma and development of ptsd say that early intervention is best. They say that people who experience prolonged trauma have the worst prognosis, statistically, that is. If there is one thing an old veteran like me could say to anyone just leaving trauma prolonged trauma within an intimate relationship, it is that keep doing therapy for as long as possible, even if it is once a month, for years. Then again when you start to form a new relationship, years later. That’s when you really discover the damage, when you try to attach again. I’m not just saying that from my own experience, I’ve been a member on a ptsd website and I keep reading that from lots of survivors. It can be 12 or more years later, just like me.
Some women can just leave their abusers and get on with things eventually. It’s a lot easier to go no contact when you haven’t had children to your abuser. The road often travelled is that of a lifetime of maintaining our children’s relationship with our abuser. I wrote it that way on purpose. I could have said their relationship with their other parent, which is true but for us, it is a terrible double bind that has far reaching consequences emotionally, physically and mentally.
The Abuser doesn’t change into a different, reformed person when we escape. In fact, they usually get worse at least for a while. The best we can hope for is to be discarded….I envy women who get or got discarded. If only that had happened to me….Does anyone hear how ridiculously sad and outrageous that statement really is??? That’s the reality because the battle with an angry, abusing, manipulative narcissist going through a wounded pride and deep attachment/loss of object crisis is way worse.
There is no time to fully recover, there is an urgency to learn all we can in the game of manipulation, have boundaries, change the behaviour, not engage in the game, try to feel safe, take all the responsibility like a general/negotiator in a battle for your sanity and your child’s wellbeing in the future. To people who say we should get on with it, move on, stop ruminating or what ever, in that vein……”Get on with it”, yeah right…. get real, open your eyes, grow an empathetic connection in your brain beyond the superiority complex of victim blaming. Geez that was a ramble.
(((Warm Fuzzy Hugs))) all Round, hi fives, with a chocolate, sparkling, glitter sprinkle on the top, :-))
You are a nut Juliette! A good nut though! 🙂 Glitter Sprinkles! DO they even make those?
I can not even begin to imagine how hard it must be to have children with one of these “men”. I think about it though…..what Spathtard’s previous wife/ mother victims went through….OMG! I wish so badly to be a fly on the wall of those situations just to be even MORE grateful to not have had the same curse. I’m so sorry for those of you who do….what a double edged sword…..children that you love but the curse of having to deal with their fathers.
Spathtard’s first/ second wife “dumped” two kids on him according to Spathtard but what really happened is she went over the edge and did crack up which forced him into the father roll which he milks to the n’th degree. Plays the loving father/ poor me card just like he plays the devoted, care giver card with his mother who he is TOTALLY sponging off of. Disgusting.
Anyhow Juliette, it’s all relative……I know you think you envy the discarded and I can understand why, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t all a bed of roses either. I know you know that though.
{{Sprinkle Hugs}} to you!
Yes, they do exist, I saw them in the supermatket, there’s Rainbow ones shaped as stars too! lol
I’ve been on a train of thought for about a week about the similarities and difference between combat ptsd and relational abuse ptsd.
What I’ve been focusing on is the question of how people adapt, attach, defend and survive these situations.
Isolation (defending yourself alone in the home with an attachment figure).
With Organized Support, facing a common enemy with an offensive tactic to survive (advancing on the enemy as a team, with back up a ground regiment and airsupport/escape options)
I would love to hear anyone else’s ideas on this question. I feel that the attachment of an intimate relationship characterized by abuse, is different to the attachment that soldier’s have to each other’s welfare but also….. Similar to the attachment that the Victim Parent has to the children.
One is a war in the home, where the victim must sleep with the threat and in cases with children…be fighting for both their own and the safety of defenceless dependents to whom the victim is strongly attached to. The other is outside of the family fighting alongside the team knowing that loved ones are safe at home in their beds. I do realize that there are soldiers in the world who do fight knowing their loved ones are not safe in their beds and I imagine their level of trauma is even greater.
Both groups seems to suffer genuine and often debilitating ptsd because it is prolonged. The problem with surviving relationship abuse is that in order to meet one of our most basic needs in the future, we have to return to the warzone alone again with an unknown enemy. It’s a violation that takes place in the place you are meant to be safe, the part of your brain that clocked off the job, stopped being on watch and just decided to sit back and enjoy the stars, because it felt safe.
I think too Puddle, that quite possibly being entirely alone in a relationship with one, without children to protect, could be even more of a threat and smash up derby to the mind. Having children is like having a firecracker lighted under you in terms of doing something about it and the urgency of removing them from the toxic environment. All the time is spent alone with each other and there are lots of other implications of that all bad for the victim. So, yeah I think I understand that but I’ve never truly been there.
Juliette, regarding the war analogy,,,,,,one aspect you didn’t mention is the abuser/ savior/ rescuer dynamic that was a HUGE part of my situation. He not only facilitated the mental and emotional abuse but comforted me with his hug bombing and companionship. It was all intertwined in some crazy modern dance routine that I can’t even explain. I love you puddle, why else would I be here all the time abusing your soul and ignoring your needs…….I can’t live without you would you hurry up and have had enough so I can get rid of you and get back to my life, I’ve told you how much I want to be done with the way I’ve been living! Oh now, don’t cry…..come here….put your head on my shoulder……I just want to hold you….
It’s like having to be nice to the POW guards who are beating you because they are also the ones who will be bringing you your dinner.
Yeah Puddle, that’s a further aspect for sure. Describes very well what I’m currently trying to end. It’s kind of what I’m trying to describe in sleeping with the enemy too. They’re occupying a sacred space and leaving pain there in their wake.
Yeah, I’m a walnut pieces now, since I cracked…nothing like a bit of passive aggression covered with a blanket of glitter sparkles for a laugh. 🙂
Juliette very good advice 🙂 My GP today suggested just that after she read my psychologists report. I do see a counsellor but she still thinks it would do me good to see a psychologist as well. I feel good that I can get through days and keep making steps forward getting things back together but yeah…those other days when it hits…it does hit hard.
Puddle I have had a couple of people say the same thing about self judgement. I didn’t quite realise it either?? I think it’s just the ripple effects through my life and each one I have to deal with, even my part in it by not trusting my gut before it all went too far, though a great deal was manipulation and fear. I haven’t heard from him in over a week now…so that’s good and bad. As it is an indication of other abusive tactics in settling things. The fact that now he seems to have totally discarded his son is hard to take only from the point of view of what it does to my son. I can’t imagine how difficult that is for a kid though again he has been insidiously manipulated too. That does make me angry but then at the same time the less he has to do with his father I think the better for him in the long run.
Interesting that you bring up the differences and possibly similarities between PTSD in soldiers and those coming out of an abusive intimate relationship Juliette as it was something I was thinking about. My son and I have been watching a war miniseries where they interviewed the old soldiers involved. It was heartbreaking to see these old men so emotional and still after all these years traumatised. I suppose the symptoms of PTSD are very much the same just that different situations have caused the disorder. And also the triggers would be very different though I really don’t know.I have heard other sites refer to PTSD in abusive situations referred to as Complex PTSD. I just can’t remember now how it may differ.
Tori, I have heard comparisons between the soldiers PTSD and a psychopathic abusive relationship and it is very similar just in this one way for example…….Take Vietnam for instance or Iraq….a LOT of people who fought in those wars did so because they thought (were told, aka lied to) that they were just causes. So off they go to fight the good fight for what they believe to be a good cause, loose their mates, loose their limbs, etc etc etc,,,,,only to come home and be scapegoated (by war protesters during Vietnam) and or, find out that the justification for all they did and lost personally was BS. It sure sounds familiar.
Just today I was going through accumulated papers and piles of stuff that I haven’t been able to keep up with or sort out since this whole thing happened. I came across a huge pile of information I had printed off the internet……..one relationship source/ article after another from my search to try to heal and fix the issues between us. Now I see what an waste it was….how I was no more than spinning my wheels like a little hamster in a wheel….and all for that POS’s amusement. It just made me sick to see all of this which represented only a fraction of the effort I put into the relationshi*. I read articles, books, on and on and on…….do you think for a second I wold have if done any of that if he would have been honest and said, Puddle, I’m a jerk, I’ve been playing you, and I’m more interested in drinking and my own twisted life than I am in you by a mile? I know I wouldn’t have and I know I would never EVER want to be with someone who didn’t want to be with me. it’s just such a waste….sickening.
Dr Simon,
What about the manipulator who intentionally CREATES paranoia and suspicion in his/her target, by telling the significant other,
“Of course s/he is attractive, but I’m not interested in her/him”, but the next thing you know they are going out to “a four hour ‘business dinner’ together, that didn’t mean anything.”
(Just wait 3 mos to find out their REAL intention!)
Incidentally, his firefighter colleague slaughtered his girlfriend and was convicted of murder; the ex-wife threatened to expose a porno ring at one of the unit stations … It’s scary when people in power like THAT have EVERYONE fooled, except those closest to them who REALLY KNOW what they are capable of!!!
Dr. Simon,
Thank you for this article. I grew up with a sister with PPD and malignant narcissism. She was 13 years older than me and terrorized me when I was a child, and when she returned home to live with my parents as an adult. I was so worried she’d harm my parents and was relieved when they finally retired and put 1000 miles between her and them. I’m just beginning to accept and realize the damage she did to me when I was growing up, and continues to do to me as an adult. I recently cut all contact with her because I am afraid of her hostility, threats and manipulative behavior. It’s been very helpful to read articles like this to understand more about her disorder as I work with a therapist to come to terms with the lasting damage.
Surely everyone else has noticed that this guys style is not particularly academic. His desire to speculate about issues in the news doesn’t strike me as scientific. His qualification and base in Texas is less than reassuring, as it is not exactly the natural heartland of Enlightened thought.
In fact it looks to me like he’s got this horribly backward. I’m only a little old mental health social worker but….
I think this “academic” is a man who has Narcissistic personality disorder and every smart individual who has overcome narcissistic abuse and knows how to resist it and can see through him has to be diagnosed with a new disorder in order to maintain his view of the world.
That is why posts have said “I’m a survivor of abuse, and I sound a bit like this”.
This man may be a perverse Narcissistic abuser wearing doctors clothing.
Paranoid personalities exhibit a persistent, pervasive pattern of mistrust of the intentions and motivations of others.
Paranoid personalities are highly sensitive to personal setbacks and perceived slights, rebuffs, and injuries by others.
Paranoid personalities bear grudges and harbor resentments, often holding onto them with tenacity and using them to justify a hostile stance toward others.
Paranoid personalities can misconstrue even the most neutral or benign events as evidence of conspiracies, ill-intentions, and justification to mistrust
Paranoid personalities often have an unrealistic, exaggerated sense of self-importance, are self-absorbed and unduly self-concerned, and therefore cannot accept the blame for personal failures (i.e. have some malignant narcissism).
Paranoid personalities are predisposed to aggress in the face of perceived threats to their worth or safety.
The paranoid features of this personality type are not merely the result of a psychosis but rather are part and parcel of the person’s typical coping “style.”
In summary; Paranoid personalities have a preoccupation with this mad idea that there might be this thing called emotional abuse?
This disorder looks like, “No-longer-a-victim-but-still-very-angry-with-narcissists-in-general” disorder.
Which will be included in the next DSM manual along with medications, and will duly be ignored by European practitioners or anyone else in their right mind.
Hello Joe, When you say this man, who are you referring too? I don’t think there is any proven academic in dealing with the CD that has proved effective and many times when one goes outside of or thinks outside of the proverbial box an answer may be found that proves to be the answer. There are CD’s that are so outside of the norm, the CD has been researched and it seems to me no one has found an answer or agrees upon a proven method. Can you expand on why our society is so full of these disordered individuals and what or how would you approach this problem? One thing that disturbs me is basically we can all be diagnostically pigeon holed with a label.
I hope you expand on your post and hopefully, shed some intuitive light on your experience, I resect your opinion to disagree as much as I hope you will respect mine. Blessings
There is an unfortunate common confusion between paranoia and mistrust.
Paranoid personality style has far more certainty and self-confidence about it. On the other hand, mistrust is understandable repercussion of trauma from abuse and an abused person may not trust themselves for a long time.
Why is his, Dr Simon’s, “qualification and base in Texas – less than reassuring”? It would also be interesting to read more about what you find to be “exactly the natural heartland of Enlightened thought” and why.
Folks, here is another point of view. This person, “Joe” has attacked Dr Simon. He is using “leveling” — trying to discredit his credentials. He uses an ad hominem of sorts, claiming he is really a covert paranoid narcissist. He also “demeans” by suggesting Dr Simon is not in his right mind, or that anyone in his right mind would ignore h
j, I am curious, as to what credentials/experience you hold in opining your medical advice/statements? Blessings
…ignore his work. And yet, instead of confronting him, you both respond to lend credence to his “point of view.” Huh?
—
No wonder we end up suffering at their hands if we can’t stand up for one another.
BTOV,
This can be its own discussion. Don’t folks here in general talk about things Dr Simon has mentioned?
I’m not sure where you’ve gotten the impression that I’d be trying to flash my own sense of expertise. Excess reasoning?
Please respond to me in the comments of the latest article. I have laid off some things I talked about before and I understand that all would stay to bother you for one reason or another.
There’s an issue with Joe Mason here and now another rose.
As for the Joe Mason -matter, I contacted Dr Simon about it before I commented along with BTOV.
Btov,
I haven’t gotten the impression that J is pretending to be an expert or an authority. Unless the question you asked about his credentials is purely rhetorical, further explanation is required. I have not been following this blog regularly enough to understand attitudes that have been formed about this or that poster. Please bring some clarity to this issue for his sake, as well as other posters who may otherwise benefit from his input, if your impressions of his input about CD’s are biased by other factors?
I meant nothing other than to ask a simple question. These are merely simple questions, just questions, they cam be answered, or declined. Why is it turned into defensiveness?
I have no formed impressions or opinions on this, just questions. How can a question be taken out of context to mean anything other than the question asked. Mountains out of molehills. If we don’t ask a question how do we get an answer? Blessings to all
We are colleagues, here, BTOV. Nobody is the expert (save for the obvious person) and all can weigh in.
—
J, I hope you don’t take the bait. 🙂
Vera, I only asked a question, I don’t know what others backgrounds are unless I ask. Why, the defensiveness about a simple question. I do know for a fact many in the medical field and ones I personally know follow and do comment. Whatever, “bait” means I don’t understand. Maybe this all should be addressed in the CBT tread. Blessings
I recommend letting it go.
BTOV,
I wasn’t sure what the question was about, so I asked you to clarify. No defensiveness intended. 😀
Then again, misunderstandings do happen.
Thanks for defending me, LisaO and Vera. I do feel, though, that you girls are a bit too forceful in this.
I dno’t happen to have credentials, BTOV. I don’t even know if I’d get ones about psychology.
What makes you think that we were “too forceful”?
—
I confess I feel uncomfortable being called a girl. Would you be so kind and stick with “women”? Thanks, and good luck with the jousting. 🙂
Okay, sorry.
BTOV matter-of-factly explained what she really was getting at. The suggestion to address it in the CBT -thread seems reasonable, too. Unless I’ve missed something?
THanks for encouragement, by the way. 😀
Trying to be a white knight on a white horse feels like trying too hard for me, anyways. I’ve heard way too much about so-called white knights. Who knows, some of them might be predators and scavengers masquerading.
No doubt there are many masquerades, even here occasionally. But in any case, I tend to err on the side of mutual support in this forum. I will remember that you may want a more hands-off approach.
—
As for BTOV, what I was reacting to was her insistence that people were being defensive, and asking repeatedly for what you at first were not inclined to disclose, and had every right not to disclose. And likely the language she used kinda pushed a button of mine… I would hate if people here somehow divided into “experts” with more clout and those without. I am a big believer in the AA ethic of “no experts” and equality for support groups.
—
Thanks to you too! Sorry I missed the dustup you referred to in a response to Marianne… 🙂
Okay, that’s more understandable, Vera. Needn’t be a hands-off approach, really.
The dust-up?
Vera, we actually handled that thing.
Anyway, Vera, thanks for explaining. While some aspects of what BTOV says make sense, she also seems to be on the bait.
Shame on you, BTOV. Shame on you.
Sir, my wife was diagnosed with either PPD or Paranoid Schizophrenia. She had a stay in the local mental facility after suffering a psychotic breakdown believing famous/rich people were after her. That ended and she hasn’t had another one even after the medications were removed. The psychiatrist said PPD is she didn’t break down again right away upon removal of medication. She is the most selfish, angry, hateful, mean, and unforgiving person I’ve ever known. Unfortunately I have a 5 y.o. son with her. I’ll be filing for a legal separation this week as she refuses to go to counseling and I cannot cope with her angry outburst over the slightest slight, or even if I return from work looking tired. I must protect my son and myself. If I cannot function normally due to her condition then I cannot protect him, and therefore I am removing both of us from the situation. In my sate I cannot divorce her. She can divorce me. My attorney assures me that I will get full custody. My intent is not to deprive her of her son, but to protect him from any more mental and verbal abuse. She does this to everyone close to her including my mother and father, and her own mother. She has no friends. They always mysteriously disappeared. The best recommendation I can give someone who is married to a PPD partner is to give up and get out before they destroy you as well. They will try to make you angry as possible. My understanding is there are two outcomes: the spouse dealing with the PPD person will divorce them or end up in prison. I choose the former. I hate that it’s turned out this way, but that’s how life is sometimes. She also seems to have extreme narcissistic tendencies as well as compulsive habits like compulsive shopping. She lacks for nothing, and that included love, although I have no feelings left for her now. Mental disorder or not, nobody can, nor should they, continue to try and live with such a person who refuses to help themselves. I cannot help anyone who refuses to help themselves. Perhaps me and my son can move on, and I can get him the counseling he’ll need. I won’t deprive her of him, but I will ask for supervised visitation. She is foreign and really, she’d be better to return to her home country where her family is. Perhaps they can help her more than I can. Our laws in America are such that you cannot get anyone help. They have to be willing to go. It’s a miracle she voluntarily went to the E.R. for evaluation. But she looked really strange; she had a wild-eyed look and more fear and panic than I’ve ever seen when she had her psychotic episode and was hospitalized. No amount of reassurance helped that there was nobody trying to get her and that it was a figment of her imagination. My advice to anyone dealing with a spouse like this is just cut your loses and get out. Perhaps they will eventually seek help, but my understanding is that these folks practically never seek help. It’s not themselves, but everyone else that’s the problem in their minds. Sad.
Joe, I really feel for your situation. I know someone that is just like you described. I don’t know if you follow Dr.’s blog or not. I don’t think the in-patient would hold up in a court. The courts if you pursued divorce would appoint someone to evaluate both of you. Your wife may seem like she has schizophrenia, but the symptom’s of a raging frenzy and psychotic break of not getting her way may be evaluated differently. After an evaluation by others you may find the results are she knows exactly what she is doing. Narcissists are known to have delusions of grandeur, ie.. rich and famous. I hope you let us know what happens. My prayers to you and blessings.
This completely describes my mother-in-law. She broke into our house last year because she felt entitled to use our electricity because hers was shut off since she didn’t pay her bill. She didn’t admit to it but she had asked earlier that day if she could come over and we mistakenly told her we wouldn’t be home. She also has not had a job in the last 20 years and has just expected her husband to deal with everything even when he was out of work due to an injury. When my husband was teenager she would demand money from him, search his room for money when he wasn’t home and charge him gas money to drive him to school. If he didn’t give it to her, she would go to his job and make a scene to get him fired until he gave her the money. We have no idea how to manage this situation. We are currently in a weird limbo where we don’t really speak to her at all except on holidays. For a long time she kept asking him to hang out but he kept saying he was busy. How do you deal with someone like that? He wants to cut her out of his life completely but is afraid to do so because he’s worried about the repercussions that may come from her.
Where do we go for help? I was raised by a manipulative mother and a father who goes along in order to stay out of the heat. Where do I begin? I’ve been married for 15 years and when she calls our home phone and my husband answers, she just asks for me. She feels entitled to our resources, and expects us to pay rent on a 4 bedroom home for 3 adults saying she can’t live in a condo or townhouse because my father doesn’t remember to lock the doors leaving them vulnerable to break ins. She won’t come over to our house when invited. Yet when we were in Europe with my husband’s family, she invited extended family over to my house for a swim and bbq. She wants to be invited or tag along with us everywhere even though she won’t interact with anyone when she comes to our home. She says we make her feel unwelcomed and uncomfortable. Yet, when we’ve asked her repeatedly to come over and have dinners with us so she can spend time with us, she’s too busy with this and that or has a headache. She wants us to treat her exactly like how she perceives we treat my mother in law who lives 3000 miles away, who will bake and cook and clean because she feels we are overwhelmed at work and she knows I’m not a great cook, who gets up early to walk and goes to bed only after kissing us good nite. My mother won’t even say goodbye and just hangs up when she calls for something. On occasion, I’ve caught her admitting that she manupulates me, delaying me with long conversations when i visit to bother my husband, hiding from me how much resources she has in order to get us to continue to help her. The final drop in the bucket was that she wouldn’t let us thanks our niece whom she has guardianship with us to Hawaii if we don’t take her along. Even though my youngest sisters family had just treated her and my father and 2nd sister there in November and the niece could go because of school. The reason – wait for it: she doesn’t trust us. Did I mention that we are two upstanding healthcare professionals who helped raise the niece, supported the entire family, put themselves and their siblings through school, got married, bought houses, businesses and are sought after for personal and professional advice by other family, friends and colleagues. And lastly, I am at odds with her cause I have been brainwashed and are a puppet of my husband. This is why our niece is angry at her when she spends weekends with the grandparents. Please people, can you please tell me who’s manipulating me? The mother or the husband?
Sorry for the errors due to auto correct: niece could “not” go on the November trip because of school and so we wanted to take her with us to Hawaii on our anniversary trip over the summer.
Hi Gwen,
Throughout your posts you were complaining about your mother. At no point you gave a single example on how you were brainwashed and became puppet of your husband. You even praised your mother in law. Where is the doubt that there is at least one manipulator in your life, and that person is your mother. Your husband could be manipulator, but nothing in your post indicate it.
In case you want to be sure, then watch people’s action, things they do. Not what they say, or claim to think. It is too easy to say anything, but when it comes to action, a manipulator will simply do selfish things, a good person will behave in responsible manner.
C – your MIL and my mother are toxic people. Your husband has to deal with her. Best you stay away from that whole thing. No matter what my husband does or does not do, it’s always his doing.
I think I might have married one of these…
She badgered me into having 10 kids before I realzed what was happening …
Now she screams at me to fimd the money to finance all of them.
Marriage collapsed. Haven’t had ave relations with her for 2 years, but she wouldn’t mind doing it to have another baby (or two).
Last year she tried to rape me.
Throughout the AM411 Affiliate Advertising Directory
( ) are hyperlinks to probably the mowt worthwhile high payout
2-tier affilate applications we’ve got discovered oon the Web.
Yes! Finally someone writes about spirit hunter pirater.
This is my mother. The older I get, the less I can tolerate her behaviors. If she wasn’t my mother, I would never speak to her again. She has lost her relationships with all her children, and can’t understand why, even though we tell her, but it isn’t her fault.
I would assume that this “dissertation” is about a disorder that is conscribed and classified in the DSM manual (version unspecified). One day in the future, maybe in our lifetimes – maybe not, researchers are going to be able to break down some of these arbitrary nomenclatures that psychiatry and psychology have conceived to delineate disease and disorder states. I don’t know what you call yourself, but you talk like a so-called FBI profiler or a “forensic” psychologist. The psychologists and psychiatrist who wish to prefix their professional credentials with “forensic” need to cease this nonsense and call themselves criminologists and leave medical credentials to medical doctors.
Quite frankly, you have no idea what is going on inside of the human brain that would permit you to make such hardfast distinctions between psychosis and other disorders of consciousness and what you call “personality disorder”. Our submission to the orthodoxies of criminology and the DSM manual in concert with our pitchfork mentality against the insanity defense in this society has forensic psychology engaging in this foolery in service of our insatiable and primitive need to prosecute and punish. We fear the slippery slope that may lead us to see what we truly are as human beings…because it may curtail our instincts toward prosecution, conviction, and punishment. Science of the brain is going to force us headlong down that slippery slope whether we like it or not – one of these days in the future.
JS,
I believe we will go down that slippery slope and very soon. Pray tell, what are we truly as human beings, what do you see?
I was married 7 years then divorced from the woman of my life. We stayed together now for 3 more years and she takes all blame out on me for everything that goes wrong. Has acused my family of witchcraft on her, believe that people live on her property, that I pull her hair out at night to make her ugly, that these people are connected to me and I let them ride our horses, I give them keys to the house. She has even went to the point of saying that my 71 year old mother has a sexual desire to be with me. She has acused me of having children by other women on the property and goes to the point of telling me names and descriptions of the women. She said that they are dealing drugs on the property and has went to the point of making reports to the law that they have put drugs up in the horses from their bottoms to transport across her property. She dosent trust me at all. If I try to talk to her about help she says I am sick. She acussed me of looking at other people in the house while talking to her and no one else is there. It has destroyed our marriage and I am still holding on. I pray and ask for a miracle from the Lord. I love her with all my heart. It started when her brother died. Then it worsened when her grandaddy died. Not her mother passed in January and she has really got to the point that she won’t even speak for a week or longer to me now. We spent one weekend together in the last month. Was OK the first night. Then she slowly got to the point I couldn’t even touch her by Sunday night. How can I do anything to help her. I truely love her with all my heart. I would give my life for her. I feel I already have.
It’s easy to confuse “paranoid personality disorder” with other disorders in which paranoia is a primary feature (e.g., Schizophrenia – Paranoid type, Paranoid Disorder, Paranoia associated with a psychotic level of mood disturbance or a mood disturbance with psychotic features, etc.). All you describe here sounds nothing like what I’ve written about in this article but rather more like a mental illness that requires expert assessment and intervention. The good news is that with the right treatment you could have the love of your life back. Do the best you can as tactfully as you can to secure the treatment.
Robert,
Just a suggestion, Do you or your wife have a family doctor. If so perhaps, you can go to your family doctor and explain what is going on. Then under whatever pretext your doctor can do a mini mental exam. Also, talk with your local police and the next time she displays, or makes these bizarre accusations call the police and make a report. You can in fact write out the report as to what was said. DO NOT expect the police to make a thorough report you need to do it. Perhaps, a pattern will present itself that will be helpful for the well-being of all involved before something tragic happens.
If she ever threatens violence against you or anyone else or herself you need to report that to the authorities. You describe a very dangerous and very serious situation with your wife. I believe in most states they can do a 72 hour hold and require her to submit then to an examination by a psychiatrist including MMPI written tests and others. In essence you are in fear for your life, the safety of others and her.
It takes unselfish love to take action to get them help, rather then thinking you may lose them. In reality with her like this you already have lost her. In many cases there is help and medications they can prescribe. It will take enormous courage and love to do this. If you take no action she will only become worse and you could forfeit your life or that of an innocent person. Can you live with that? You didn’t say how old she was either.
I know of someone that has some of the symptoms you are describing and hope you will post further.
God bless you and your wife and I hope you can find help.
Robert,
I am glad you decided to post again. I could tell you about my story but that would take away from what is going on with you.
You say you have not see her in a week and she does not answer, could you tell me where she is? Are you separated?
What you are describing is very unsettling, I hope you stay here for awhile there are some well versed people who have dealt with CD individuals. From what you describe though, she sounds like she has other mental health issues.
Perhaps, the more you tell us the better handle we can help you get on this. The suggestion of speaking with the people at NAMI is a good start. I have dealt with many people with mental health issues including the ones Dr. Simon deals with and writes about. Individuals can have a mixture of both.
I can’t tell you how much I feel your pain, I still love my X, it was one of the most difficult things I did in my life. That is all I can say for now, I hope though we can help you. Doing nothing or ignoring her will not make it better.
Blessings Robert
Dr. Simon,
I hope you will write about the issues above in length in future Topics.
Thank you
Robert
States have different laws regarding involuntary admission to hospitals. In my state the criteria is linflicting harm on herself or others. This can include fear of eating, approaching people with paranoid thought where they might fear for their life and strike out at her, deteriorating mental physical condition and others. If she is acting out and you call the police they can be helpful in transportation to the hospital. Then there is that criteria again to keep her there.
My son has mental illness and I have been through this process.
What helped me through is an organization called NAMI. National association mental illness. My county has a wonderful group Its support and education. It saved me when I was crashing going through similar to what you describe.
Please keep in touch. We care
Robert
I am fortunate to live in a town that has a special trained police division to assist with cases of domestic relations and mental illness. You can find out who in your community is trained and specifically ask for them if you do need to contact police.
Robert,
This is the link for NAMI, National Alliance for Mental Illness.
https://www.nami.org/
She is 49 and I am 46. We dated 3 years before marriage. She had never been married and I had once. We have no children. Decided on this before marriage. After 3 years dating she told me that either we marry or go our separate ways. I told her to set the date. She really showed me a life I had never dreamed of. Until her brother passed. Then it all started downhill. Her brother was down syndrome and her mother had been treated for cancer. She had her hands full. Her farther walked out on them in her early age. Her grandaddy was her farther figure. She took his last name at 18. She has told me she has healing powers. When I touch her at times which is most now, she states I am taking energy from her. I explained I don’t understand but she insists that I am lying. She is taking some kind of classes on healing. She uses a drum at night and beats it around the house and blesses the house. She burns sage and different herbs to void off evil. At times she won’t let me in the house saying I will bring something in. Never know what to say to her or what might set her off. Been over a week now since I seen her. She doesn’t answer. She really believes I am hurting her.
I have a sister who has definitely got BPD or some kind of personality disorder. She doesn’t like me at all and hates to see me do well.
She also is paranoid I am trying to steal her “man” even though they’re not even an item officially. She is jealous of my appearance and constantly put me down when I dress up nice. I have relatives who have told me that she talks about me behind my back and calls me names. She has deep resentment again me. It’s pure POISONOUS and it makes me feel awful about myself. She has made me feel bad about myself since we were young kids. I’m not trying to blame all my problems on here, but a good chunk of my issues can be down to her.
Hi Rachel,
I am sorry to hear about your situation with your sister, I have one like this also.
I found the best thing if they are unwilling to get help is to stay away from them. It may be a good idea if you could meet with a therapist who can help you resolve the negative feelings you are having about yourself.
Work to find the real you, don’t let others define you. From what you have written it is not a healthy relationship and seems harmful to your wellbeing. As I suggested, a good therapist will validate your experiences and help you to move on in your life to a more stable ground.
I wish you the best and if you feel like posting for more input there are many others on this site that are more then willing to help you understand the dynamics of what is going on with your sister.
Take very good care and feel free to continue your conversation.
Hi dr. Simmon
I recently met a man and I’m a little worried about his thoughts and behaviors. He seems paranoid in the fact that he has his phone in someone else’s name not one piece of mail comes to his house it goes to a p.o.box. all of the curtains and his house are always shut and a very dark color so no one can see inside his home. He does all of this because he thinks that the government and police AR trying to keep track of his life and he says nobody has that right. And he has a very deep stare in his eyes. His reasoning for the government trying to tap in on everything in his life he says hit him when he was 15 and his father had been drinking and shared some things about the US military because his father served the country. Do you have any intake on his thoughts and behaviors?? Thank you in advance I just want to know if I should be worried because the couple times that we have hung out I just have a Eerie feeling and I never have with a person before in my life
HI Kristy,
I know you didn’t ask me, but, if I was you, I would trust my feelings, and my observations of this man’s behaviours, and stay far away. The behaviours you describe, imo, are not healthy behaviours.
When one person’s world view is so different from another person’s, it can create a relationship of conflict, fear, bullying, coercion, and manipulation. Unless you are a mental health professional, best to stay away from this fellow. He probably needs help, but leave it to the professionals.
I am just a big picklehead. Please visit my crowdfunding page and support my endeavour to deal medically with my Paranoid Personality Disorder. Thanks so much.
https://www.youcaring.com/psychiatricmedicalexpenses
I suspect my landlord/neighbour has PPD. I suffer from anxiety and her behavior is making me extremely anxious. Moving is difficult a lot of which relates to her violating my lease and doubling my rent as I was moving in. She inherited this property and likely hers too. I think she misled me about her profession because I can’t see her being able to function in the professional environment she says she’s in. I work in a very similar environment and she’d be considered a walking talking liability issue and HR nightmare. I am middle aged and have rented my entire life and never had to deal with so many baseless accusations, violations of my privacy and paranoid contact at all hours like texting me at 2:50a.m. because she saw my house lights were on, multiple calls and text at 6:45am because she freaked out when the oil truck showed up, said she thought it was a fire truck and I’d “done something stupid” and was burning her house down. She’s had a contract with this oil company for a decade. She’s shown up with no notice at 7:45am when I had no makeup on going through an acne break out accusing me of being on crack. I have a friend who visits for a few hours about 3 times a month. We don’t drink, do drugs and he doesn’t even smoke. He’s gone before midnight and she accused me of moving him in and demanded to know if he’s doing laundry here. She’s accused me of stealing $20 from here. I have to go through regular security checks as part of my job and have no criminal record. I’m not going to risk my career to steal $20 from her. Omg AS I AM TYPING THIS she just texted me wanting to know if her sister was around my house I’m sure for some paranoid reason. She obsessed over previous tenant who I’m sure is glad to be rid of her and moved an hour away, texting me at work wanting know if he’s been here because she said someone saw him drive down the street (doubtful). Ok she let no response to the text go less than a minute amd called. She wants to make sure her sister who lives close by isn’t peeping in my windows be cause she’s nosey informing me that’s not her sisters job but her job. So yes…I’m going to say the genetic link is on display here. She acts like she’s so nice, just doing her job as a landlord to justify all of this. I’ve been in contact with the previous tenants to the last one because she told me she got along with them so well. After 3 years of her the wife feels like she has PTSD. All the same stuff. Very similar patterned accusations right down to falsely accusing them of stealing $20 too. I have to address this because I have to put some boundaries in. I’m an anxious mess scared of how she is going to react. I can take her to the Tenancy Board for all this but she seems so sick and ignorant. I have moments when I feel very sorry for and just want us to get along but everytime my phone rings or I get a text, I feel my anxiety rising because it might be her.
Is there any way you can break the lease? I think you’d win your case in court because irbid obvious she had mental health issues and that display will surface. She is harassing you. She is making you I’ll. she seems to be obsessed with you. She’s probably watching and spying on you. I think it would be worth the work of moving the heck out of there I’m so sorry you have to seal with this nonsense.
I live across the street from a PPD. We sort of got along and he even helped me with some yard projects as his expertise was concrete work (he’s not mostly retired). And I brushed off his rants that all the other neighbors were “cops” and watching him including little old ladies in their upper 80’s. But now I’m on his list. I once took him to the local metal health clinic to get his meds. After telling me what he took, we looked them up, and sure enough some have side effects of paranoia. He threatened me recently with a “bunch to the stomach”. It’s now getting a bit scary and I wonder if he’ll drop into full delusional, cause he’s really close now. I don’t know what I can do, other than lock my doors at night. You’re right our system is broke and we only have to wait till he does someone harm till something is done. Very sad.
I have a 25 yr old stepson that displays at least 5 of the characteristics of someone with PPD. He calls and text his mother and grandmother multiple times daily for the simplest of advice. He has no friends. Works nights, plays games during the day, seldom if ever getting out into the world. A month ago he threatened to bury me if I hurt his mother after I invited him to visit my house to see his mom and sister. His mom is not concerned about the threat and says he would never act on it. I however err on the side of caution. He is not welcome at my house, I do wonder if he perceives me as a threat to his and his mothers relationship that it could escalate his threat into action. Please advise.
Bruce Andrews,
Any time anybody makes a death threat the police should be notified.
Oh, one more thing, Bruce. Mothers are often the last people to be aware and/or acknowledge the severity of threat their children might pose to others. Too many mothers are like way too many dog owners who insist their dog wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Bruce
What should cause alarm to family members often doesn’t because they’ve seen the behaviors so often. But they should cause alarm, because there are points when the sick person actually does act out. Abnormal becomes the norm in dysfunctional families. Believe me, I know. I lived in one.
I am scare, I just got married a year ago and the one I thought I knew have changed completely. I can see almost all of the symptoms you have described on him. Now he has become verbally abusive. He is seeing a psychologist but I do not believe he is telling him the truth. He is very manipulative, intelligent and controlling. My got instinct tell me to get out of the relationship but I feel sorry for him because I can see how lonely he is. Can this condition be treated at least to the point where he can at least have a somewhat normal life? when I meet him he was so charming and was good at no showing his true self, it was until we got married that he change completely.
Angelina,
He is manipulative by his choice. His condition cannot be treated by anyone, except himself. Only he can improve himself. But, this doesn’t happen just because well wishers wish so. For him, such goodwill of others is just their weakness that he can exploit.
I think you should simply set your boundaries and hold fast to them. For starting, do not take any verbal abuse… walk out if he doesn’t stop. You don’t want to spend rest of your long life in an abusive relationship that will only deteriorate unless you take care of yourself.
Angelina, AndyD,
AndyD is giving you sound advice. You don’t one day an old woman, looking back at your life and wishing you could do it all over. There are many on this site who stayed to long and would love to be in your shoes.
Keeping posting if you like to ask questions. Also, I would encourage you to read the archives of this blog and to obtain a copy of Dr. Simons book in Sheep’s Clothing. This book really opened my eyes.
Angelina,
I am glad you decided to post again and let us know what is going on with you. AndyD always gives solid concise advise. I am glad to hear you decided to leave. I understand the anxiety you are feeling, it will take time, be patient and kind to yourself.
I would also suggest you read all the topics in Dr. Simons 10 Commandments of Character. We can’t change the CD like AndyD stated but we can change ourselves:-) When we utilize these commandments of character we will grow stronger in those areas we are weak in and use truth to combat dealing with the CD.
I would encourage you to keep posting on the blog as you will receive support and encouragement as you proceed further in your divorce. You will be amazed what the CD will pull during these proceedings. Having a resource such as this blog to vent and receive support will help you to persevere. Just know, you are not alone.
Hugs and welcome…
Andy D. I left in January and filed for divorce. I moved back to my house and I can not say is easy. Some days are easy and some other ones very hard. The other day I was at the store and something reminding me of him and I end up having an anxiety attack. I know it was the best decision because he will never change or admit he is wrong. Also, meltdowns were escalating and I got afraid he will do something to hurt me.
Angelina Davin,
You are having anxiety attacks, and fear physical harm.
My advise will be to trust your gut feeling, and avoid rationalizing such episodes. Avoid meeting him. Avoid provoking him. Let things cool down. Let him have some small wins, so that his ego doesn’t hurt further, but don’t concede yourself to him and maintain distance. Go silent on social media, become boring. Change city if you can.
You wrote that earlier your gut instinct told you to get out of the relationship but you felt sorry for him because you saw how lonely he was. Trust your gut feeling this time.
You also wrote earlier that he is intelligent. So, he probably won’t do stupid things in emotions. Just bide your time, and let him move on. Pray that he finds a charming manipulative woman for himself.
May I suggest you to read Gift of Fear by Gevin de Becker. It is nice easy to read book.
This literally describes my mother. She is paranoid in the extreme, hyper sensitive to any kind of perceived criticism or censure, and will frequently interpret innocuous remarks as a personal attack or her favourite- evidence you are ‘not listening’ to her or ‘cannot be reasoned with’. That’s a new one- saying we are the unreasonable ones, when she is the one ranting and raving.
The most extreme episodes have involved her raging about people not ‘protecting’ her from perceived threats or slights when they were not even physically present. At these times you cannot reason with her at all. You can point out over and over again that the other person could not do anything because they were not there and did not see what happened and she will just shout something like, ‘That’s not the point, they should have defended me anyway!’.
Literally, you can perform any kind of everyday action, like eating dinner, and she will pick on you for something, or start making totally absurd and unfounded accusations.
When you point out she does exactly the same thing, even if she did it only minutes before, she will explode, say that you are ‘protecting’ the other person or ‘ganging up’ on her.
Or at other times she will blame somebody for something, but if you dare to point out that it was in fact her idea in the first place, or that the person who went ‘wrong’ was simply following her suggestions or instructions, she will again explode.
At the moment she has gone off in a huff, because she was having a go at dad for putting some grape juice in his wine to make it sweeter. She started calling him a ‘sugar addict’, and because I dared to point out the she does the same thing, that in fact she talked about having done it a short time before, she went crazy. She claims I ‘always side with’ Dad against her, that ‘she can’t say anything right’. These type of arguments happen virtually every day over something or another.
There are, on occasion, also paranoid delusions. She likes to be in charge, and tell people what time they can get up or (my dad works night shifts) what time he can come down. There have been times when he has come down literally one or two minutes early, and she will swear blind that he is actually half an hour early, even if you point it out on the clock.
Or when a person has spent 30 minutes doing something, and she will swear that they actually spent two hours. I have literally known her to bully and cajole the other person until they cave in and accept her exaggerations or false version of reality.
Her behaviour is toxic, and I am afraid that its already destroying family relationships. She literally goes around thinking people have got in in for her all the time and we’re often walking on eggshells or waiting for her to simmer down from the latest episode. Either that or having blazing rows on a regular basis.
Its emotionally exhausting, and its just like we’re living with a mentally unstable despotic tyrant. She also displays certain symptoms of being a control freak, and regularly tries to micro-manage or control what family members do or even wear or eat, or is just nagging all the time.
Oh sorry, as an addendum. The other thing with my other is she is very good at self-projecting her own behavior onto others. She has called me and other family members, and other people outside the family ‘control freak’ or ‘narcissist’ on more than one occasion. She has even accused others of being paranoid, as I recall.
I once called her out on it, because she was calling someone as ‘narcissist’ with no idea when she clearly had no idea what the word actually meant. She just tried to say ‘its a person who bullies someone’, and I showed her the actual definition to demonstrate how she was wrong.
Domina,
My goodness. May I ask, who all lives with your mother? Is she making your father ill? Seems she’s ruining his life with her toxic presence.
There really is no sense in arguing with her, pointing out anything, trying to reason with her to any degree, she’s proven time and time again she just won’t have it.
Personally, I would avoid her as much as possible. I’d take your dad on outings, invite him to the house or wherever to spend some quality time with him.
It’s difficult to pinpoint whether someone is truly “mentally ill” or character disturbed. Many illness can be helped with medications but then there are those that can’t be (such as my X husband – character disordered, malignant narc).
All I know that can be done is no contact with her, or as little as possible. With age some people worsen, as did my X. Your mother may be worsening as well. They can become unbearable, as it sounds like your mother has.
I bet you feel ill yourself by the time you leave her presence.
I experienced/witnessed this behavior with my late mother who had Alzheimer’s/Dementia, please do not discount other disorders. Not everything is narcissistic behavior and should not be a go to diagnosis.
My mother had a baseline done and went downhill fast. She would argue black was white and I often doubted my own reality because she was so adamant about particular events. My mother’s reality and mine were two different worlds and when I sought a support group I was taught a new way to talk to her.
Since Domina Anglicus did not give a time frame as to when this started it’s hard to determine whether this is onset or has been a behavioral problem her entire life.
Anonymous
Very good points. My sister experienced this with her then father-in-law. He became very mean and deteriorated quickly. I assumed this wasn’t the case with Domina’s mother, assuming she’d had proper medical attention. I should know this – never to make assumptions, one of the Four Agreements.
My sister has become very over barring. None of us know what to do anymore. She is just getting worse in a very short amount of time. She’s like a ticking time bomb. She seriously believes people are following her. Every person or vehicle she sees is following her. She has gotten to the point of recording strangers that are near her asking them why they are following her, calling the police several times telling them people are following her, changing her vehicle so that it looks differently so they may not recognize her vehicle and even shooting her gun off in the air telling them to leave her alone. She says she’s so tired of this! She’s going to shoot them. Now she’s to the point as of last night saying she’s going to shoot her self to end this so that she can have peace. If you try to help her or say anything that is not to her liking she flips out on you. My father is old and he’s having a hard time with this as she lives with him. I have 4 young children and can’t have that around them. We have no other family. She’s 34 years old what can we do!
Priscilla,
It sounds like your sister is in urgent need to medication, at least for a short while.
Priscilla,
I have attached a link to NAMI The National Alliance for Mental Illness. When a person is threatening to hurt themself or someone else they need to be evaluated, perhaps you can call their family doctor, law enforcement and also the organization I am leaving a link for.
https://www.nami.org/FAQ/NAMI-on-Campus-FAQ/What-are-NAMI-State-Organizations-and-NAMI-Affilia
My boyfriend showed symptoms of paranoia four months into the relationship, but by the one-year mark it consumed him. He had a lot of paranoia related to former employers, coworkers, friends and family when I met him. However, when it turned on me it was so devastating and trumatic. I have known people with a mild degree of paranoia, but have no idea how dark someone can go when they’re in the full throws of paranoid personality disorder. I watched him descend into psychotic break 18 months into the relationship and I had to have him removed by the police. At the time, I believe the police would take him to a psychiatric facility for an evaluation. However, they indicated that unless he was trying to kill himself, or had plans to eminently kill someone else, that they could not force him into psychiatric care. It began with simple accusations of lying to him about where I was going . Then it evolved into his beleif that I was running a swinger group, not only with my neighborhood, but the entire community that we lived in. His dark rants got worse and more frequent, but I thought that I would be able to figure out a way to encourage him to get help and reclaim his life. I did get him into one therapy appointment but he later decided that she was wrong and he never went back. We’ve been apart for five months, with intermittent phone calls and a few luncheons and he gets worse every month. I am still in shock that someone can go from being rational to irrational with the smallest minutia of information. For example, a neighbor had offered some petunias to me to plant in my yard, and my boyfriend said the word “petunias” was a code word for sex. Therefore, he interpreted the mundane text as being an invitation for sex. I’m so lost without him and dont ever see him getting his life backin track. I don’t know how to cope with the loss of a man that loves me, but I can’t be with because his mental illness prevents him from being a functional person. I wouldn’t wish my experience on anyone. I also have difficulty explaining it to people that have never dealt with paranoia.
Here are some of the other things that he accuse me of:
That all of the phone numbers in my cell phone were secretly rerouted to other people to hide their identities
That I had burner phones and had hired a computer expert to hide any evidence of my swing group activities or infidelities
That my ankle tattoo, plants in my yard, home decor, and the color of my clothing were all proof that I was the swinger
That I was secretly posting pornographic videos in swinger websites and porn websites. He would actually screenshot images that he would send to me that were clearly not me, but there was no convincing him otherwise
That certain numbers, times, dates were all secret codes that swingers used
That my hair salon was actually a front for an illegal sex shop
That any household furniture or home goods that I sold on Facebook Marketplace were written in a secret code for other swingers
That my illegal swinger activity would culminate in him being arrested by the FBI
By the end of the relationship, he would go through the garbage and the liquor cabinet every day to find evidence that I had been throwing swinger parties. It seemed like he had a slow dissent into madness, but it may have been that he was withholding his suspicions and when they finally started to surface, the floodgates opened .
I had written the Dr. Phil show to see if I could get him free help that would include a neurological evaluation as well as a thorough psychiatric screening and they agreed to have us on the show. My boyfriend did not consent to going on the show, even though I told him it would be his chance to expose my alleged illegal activities on national television.
He has moved in with his parents and I believe that they do not know what to do with him. He’s 36 years old and can’t hold a good job, and keeps his friends at arms length. It is the saddest outcome for him because without this dicorder, he would have had an amazing life.
Hi there I have a friend that I believe has ppd she never tells me when she is coming to visit because she thinks there are people following her everywhere she goes stealing from her and poisoning her food and drinks and that she has to replace everything she buys constantly so she showed up on my doorstep without telling me she was coming and apparently she hasn’t payed her car payment in 2 months so it got repossessed and she believes the people following her are just playing games and that her car has been taken several times and that I was involved but that I am playing games and wont tell her what happened the other times and that I am lying to her and the police are lying about it being repossessed and they are fake police and everyone is laughing at her trying to ruin her life every day I have to hear about this and every time she buys something she swears she has bought it several times before and that me or my husband are stealing her things or that we are taking it back to the store to sell again for money and when I tell her I’m not lying and that it’s never happened before she just keeps bringing up that im lying and she gets very angry and always threatens getting a gun and killing everyone around her and killing herself and I have a little 16 month old and am very worried living with her now and not sure how long the situation is going to be like this or how long it will be before she snaps from getting so angry thinking I am lying and I concerned and scared I told her none of this has happened before and that she needs to go to the doctor but she doesn’t trust anyone she thinks the jobs she filled out for are fake and want to steal her identity she thinks people are always recording her and drugging her and such I have no idea what to do and its only been 2 weeks
Ashe
Steps need to be taken to have her either voluntarily or involuntarily put in a medical facility so she can be treated.
To be involuntarily committed to a facility she needs to be a danger to herself or others, which the threats of killing should be sufficient.
Some police departments have specially trained personnel to deal with mentally ill persons, so If you do end up contacting the police you will need to ask about this.
This is the problem. People post very serious things, and even tell others about it, including so-called “Law Enforcement”, and NOBODY DOES anything about it, and numerous victims turn up DEAD, while police, and media play stupid. This is an anything goes society, and NOBODY gives a damn about anything, which is the reason websites like this one should probably NOT exist. I mean, what is the point? ALL I hear on the news is homicides, and numerous other atrocities, but proper action is never taken. Rarely are dangerous criminals caught, and when they are, they get a slap on the hand, encouraging them to keep on killing. Nothing makes any sense.
Take a breath and punctuate!
I have been diagnosed with this, does that make me extremely dangerous ?
I don’t think in and of itself it is dangerous at all
Narcisstic psychopaths, and sociopaths are extremely DANGEROUS because they fly into violent rage, and are without conscience. Anything goes with these people, and I knew of one who killed several people, and got away with it, probably due to the fact that he was an older perp.
My bf and I have been together for over a year and have always lived together. First at my house then at his. At first I saw no signs of this problem and I slowly saw it getting worse everyday. Now he has caused us to lose our place to live and almost caused me to lose my job but thankfully my boss is understanding. His family has never tried to get him help and now no One in his family will even talk to him. He cantkeep employment because he says if I’m not with him I’m cheating (sometimes when I am WITH him he says I am cheating also). I care about him and sometimes he cries and beggs me to leave him cause he says he will never stop. It kills me to watch this. I wish I could just save him myself. I want to be the one that helps him when no one else cared enough to do so. It will take 2 weeks to get an apt with doctor and I don’t want to send him to a 4 day to month long treatment alone. It would be devastating for him. Right now I stay with my grandparents and he has nowhere is live and just walks around and falls asleep where he can. He has made it to where my family won’t talk to him or let him come around and his friends could only take so much until they had to get out. How do i find a place for him to live? Ive exhausted all my rescorces and im out of options. What can i do? Where can i go for help? It’s been miserably hot out and I never know when he will next sleep or shower and if he will have something to eat or drink. I am the only one who cares please help.
homeless shelters, the local county social services might have a list of resources available to him. maybe he might want to do an inpatient stay at the local hospital as that might fast track him into getting some services and some supports and that’ll at least ensure an immediate doctor’s appointment happens. from what I read, though, inpatient stays usually leave the suicidal even worse.
his thoughts of you cheating seems to be quite the controlling abuser man mentality. it’s done to dominate and isolate you. the jealousy, the false accusations of you cheating. it’s a time waste and a way to put you constantly on the defense.
I think I saw it on dr phil one day where a man was so controlling and so convinced his wife would cheat on him, he actually kept her from showering, sniffed her panties on the regular after she’d been away at work, and didn’t allow her to have more gas in the tank than the little bit needed to get to her job and back.
any man who is constantly focused on the woman’s supposed cheating is bad news. it’s an abuser move. he knows you are not cheating. the ‘jealousy’ and cheating fears are usually feigned so the abuser guy can isolate and control the woman that much more. it’s how he keeps his woman constantly focused on him, and makes her constantly fearful of interacting with others for fear of new jealousy rages, new outbursts, new accusations of cheating.
what about church outreaches? or Salvation Army meals? or whatever the social services and active outreach charities are in your area.
you sound young. take care of yourself first. you need to keep your life going as much as possible. you’re living with grandparents. your job and your stability should be your focus. unless he is acutely psychotic, or decompensated to a severe degree, I don’t see why he wouldn’t want to reach out. if he is truly paranoid, and not just a jealous/controlling abuser, then that changes things and I can see why he wouldn’t want to go places or access services.
maybe shop for a tent or some gear so he isn’t sleeping on a park bench, totally in the open, totally vulnerable. he can apply for food stamps and then be able to purchase jugs of drinking water and food so he doesn’t starve or dehydrate to death. going to the local library will get him into some air conditioning. he can do a sink-shower in the library bathroom, too.
My ex-husband could be the next Ted Kaczynski, and he cannot be stopped. My “unprofessional” diagnosis is that he has PDD, and he IS THE DANGEROUS KIND. The emotional toll is too hard to even relive, so I wont even go there.
He is a genius. He has 2 bachelor degrees in engineering, and every position has ended due to his inability to conform to social norms, and work with others. He is far superior in his mind to their inferior standards. Whenever he would be fired, of course he would litigate, assuring the company would give him a reference or whatever else he demanded such as insurance, etc.
In 2009, just after the birth of our daughter, a paranoid idealization of his finally escalated to the point of danger, when he finally pulled a gun on our neighbor that he had hidden in his fanny pack to do yard work with our 2 yr old son.
The courts offered him a plea, but he was NOT WRONG and was going to fight this to the end. Of course he was found guilty, and his 2 year sentence was turned into over 4 years because of behavior patterns during his incarceration. They were able to separate his 2 chargers to be served one after the other. After not being able to work with attorneys, he basically trained himself. He is capable of writing a 50 page brief!
After he was put into prison, I was an emotional mess. During the initial few months, we obviously were going to lose our home, so I began packing to move closer to my family. He was always VERY SECRETIVE, so I had no idea some of the things I would find. The first thing I found was a box with live grenades, in an area that I would bring my baby down to the basement to play on a swing, next I found a really old folder from when he was MUCH YOUNGER containing pages of delusional paranoid ramblings, and finally I found a red binder that had documentation on how to make HUMAN GENOCIDE and BOMB MAKING LITERATURE.
Fast forward to the summer of 2015, he was finally released from prison. He was on parole for a short time, and even on a tether went to a gun shop. His excuse was that he was looking for Amsoil. Why do you need gun oil, if you aren’t supposed to have a gun? This was not taken seriously. His interactions forceful, and demanding, seeing our son Logan as more of an extension of himself rather than an individual. His behaviors with the kids were devastating! He told our son, who was still young at the time that they should buy a gun and shoot me. This finally got CPS involved, and got him removed, but it has NOT STOPPED HIM! A psych evaluation was done, and it said that he is not safe to be around the kids! The doctor has since passed away and given him the fuel to continue his fight. He will see different therapists, tell them the things that he wants them to know, and then drag them to court without knowing anything that has happened, and due to HIPPA there is really nothing that I can do. If I were to divulge the information, that would then increase his fight further that I have now poisoned his therapist.
He continues to drag me to court, over a hundred times. This is his mission in life now. I have thousands of dollars in lawyer bills because I wouldn’t dare try to fight him myself. He sends in multiple briefs a week, and will not work or admit he is working. The court has finally said that he is abusing the system and has imputed income on him. My husband and I are grateful that they are finally holding him accountable, however it is very clear that when pushed, he can become dangerous!
I have made the conscious choice to move on and give my children the best life possible, and keep them safe at all cost. There is not a dollar amount out there that would willingly make me subject my kids to this man again. It may be my end one day, but my children are worth it.
Whew! I feel for you. I’m glad you have a new partner who can help you so you are not alone in it all.
I don’t know what else to say. Just wanted you to know you were heard.
Thank you. Truly, its been a long road.
Amy,
If you are not using an alias at the top of the page on the right hand side is a button to Contact Dr. Simon. Explain the circumstances and Dr. will make sure your real name is removed.
Just my thoughts on this as I have dealt with some nightmarish circumstances and would make hard copies of all record and deliver them to the FBI and the CIA including copies to your Senator. When you go to court produce the documents to the courts and I sure would get an Injunction against him to see the children. I hate to say this but the courts are afraid of him too.
The irony of all this is is in the future if the X should got through with what you think may happen they can hold you accountable for having withheld information that could have stopped this man. Sad but true. All I can say is is I know. Be on guard and be vigilant in protecting your family.
One thing I have found is many of these types fear ones that hold them accountable and do not show fear. These people feed off of fear, however, there may come a time their sick mind go over the edge and their goal is to take as many as possible with them.
Dear one, I hope you can get as far from him as possible and know you are welcomed to post anytime on this blog and receive support. Just post under a pseudonym for your personal safety and that of your family.
God Bless you and may God give you courage and His angels guard you.
I wonder if BTOV isn’t on to something when she says the courts are afraid of him, too. Perhaps not afraid, but rather unwilling to do difficult work and actually oppose an abuser. They seem abundantly ready and willing to ally with abusers. It’s easy money and they risk nothing as most abused women cannot afford to do anything about anything.
I saw this thing on a wifebeater dad who ended up losing custody of his kids, as he was eventually found by the judge to be an abuser — and one who shouldn’t have custody of his children — and the dad still had current custody and so after the court hearing he went and murdered the children and suicided. The mom fought him in this custody battle and finally had the court listening but the judge let the abuser dad have his kids over the weekend, or that night at least, and they were dead within hours of the court hearing.
Glad you still have your kids. The murderer guy would threaten doctors for medicating his son. CPS was afraid of him so despite CPS becoming involved, the abuser’s aggression paid off and the harassment and intimidation worked to make CPS go away and step out of the picture. And those kids were murdered. And now the mom must live her life without her kids, as he killed them.
The fact he went to prison for something makes your case easier, I’d imagine, which is likely how/why you have full custody. But the danger is real as for murder-suicide, ‘grand finale’, scorched earth type exits. Especially if they feel they have nothing left to lose. You’ve moved on and your kids are with you, he’s been to prison, court isn’t going his way…
But Almighty God reigns supreme and He is in control. I hope you are a Christian and can take great comfort in your faith.
Thank you, I appreciate your comment. I sent a request immediately to have my name removed, I was unaware when I signed up that it would use it!
In regards to having hard copies, etc. You are absolutely correct. I made a call to the police when the grenades were found, and they took possession of them, and when the binder with bomb making literature/genocide was found, that too was also turned over to the police while he was in prison. It was transferred from the state police to the FBI. I filed for a freedom of information act on anything that had to do with him, and I have the report showing that it was sent. I followed up with a call assuring that the information was looked into, and that if anything suspicious were to ever happen, those files would be investigated. So, to the best of my knowledge, his name is flagged. Will that help? Anyone guess is as good as mine I would say.
When he was let out of prison, all of these things were brought to light, but still…..you are correct, it has been extremely hard to make any progress in the court system. The latest installment in the ongoing legal battle, he had a therapist come in and said that after 4 visits he has an adjustment disorder, and that she would recommend he see the kids. (win for him), however, when I asked the court about talking to the kids therapist, he immediately tried to disqualify the judge for the ??? 15th time??
For now, I am grateful and thankful that I have a wonderful husband, and that my own sanity has been restored. I have to believe in the power of prayer, because I don’t know how else I’ve made it this far.
This year, I decided to take one more step in regaining my self identity and went back finish my college degree, in psychology!
Of course the counselors and therapists and ‘specialists’ support his desire to see the kids! Of course! Doesn’t surprise me one bit. Same with any GALs. Were there GALs involved? Same with court-appointed evaluation ‘professions’ — the ones who bill a minimum of $2,000 or $3,000 right off the bat, just to produce some biased, worthless ‘report’ for the court to then have its ‘evidence’ to rule on that side’s favor (the attorneys, GALs, psychologists, etc. it’s all a racket, they work as a team to railroad the powerless party, which is almost always the abused wife and the powerless kids).
So glad you were able to go back to college and get your degree. Bet they didn’t cover CDs in depth in your college education. So many psychologists have such little experience dealing with psychopaths, etc. and yet they are displaying the Dunning-K. effect and presuming competence. They get snowed by the CD and end up allying with evil.
Because grenades, handguns, talk of shooting the mother, those are run of the mill kinds of things and produce wholesome, well-rounded children (sarcasm).
Glad you got out with your brain intact, Amy. Glad you are able to function. Fight until the death. Women aren’t encouraged to do so, but no dad or a stepdad is better than an abuser dad and the man is going to fight to the death, so why shouldn’t the woman do the same. All encouragement to you, Amy.
As for the LORD, it’s amazing what He does for us. I’m very bad off, but I take comfort in knowing that God cannot lie and there is the verse where it says, ‘God can work all things for the good of those who love Him’ so I rest in that. When considering one’s eternal home, this life’s horrors and suffering pales in comparison. God will take care of the wicked. Eventually. And they won’t plague us in heaven.
Amy,
Prayer is what kept my sanity too. I suggest you contact Homeland Security too. Each agency works separate of each other. Give HS a copy of those documents. I would also ask the courts to order him psychologically evaluated by a forensic psychiatrist separate from his chosen doc to do a MMPI on him. I know they don’t use this test any more but it will be a form of it where he can’t weasel by manipulating a hand picked psychologist.
With the documentation you have you can make the case he is a ticking time bomb and you refuse to be a party to not making the authorities aware of his behavior.
Like I said the court authorities may be afraid that he may go off and kill one of them. There are judges who have been retaliated against and killed by crazy people.
That is such a sad story, I believe I know exactly the one you are speaking. And it isn’t a far reach from my own. I am a Christian, and I don’t think I would have been restored to my present situation had I not trusted in God.