Predator Detection and the Devil of Plurality: Personality Disorders and the Nature of Good and Evil
The following article is written by Alex Z. Cameron, whom regular readers of Shrink4Men may recognize from his participation in the comments of past articles.
In his first piece, Alex connects the dots from his undiagnosed personality disordered parents to his attraction for toxic, abusive personality-disordered women and the impact relationships with personality-disordered individuals has had on his life to an examination of personality disorders and the concepts of order vs. disorder and good and evil.
My sincere thanks to Alex for allowing me to publish his work. – Dr. T
When I look back now after thirty years of wandering, distressed wondering, and decades of self-diagnosis, the answer only ever gets clearer. Of course the partners I ended up with had personality disorders or serious problems, because both my parents have personality disorders.
That revelation was less of the grand enlightenment that others seem to experience, and more of an increasing acuity to the eventual fact that nothing would help, and nothing will change.
I’d spent thirty years wondering what was wrong with me, when in fact, the heartbreak of relationship failure after relationship failure forced me to understand in detail what personality disorders are and how to spot them – in short, what was wrong with them, and what it did to me.
The sharper edge of the sword in my case was the horror when I realised both my mother and father had undiagnosed personality disorders (PDs), and the implications for my identity, emotional life, and future. Liberation comes at a price.
Learning to recognise the telltale signs of these stigmatised mental health issues, like Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and the recently-declassified Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), in my experience, is closer to an art than a science. Nobody teaches it in school, the behavioural symptoms are often cultural norms, and then of course, there is the incredible strength of denial.
Whether you believe their behaviour to be malicious, or just plain absurd, there is no doubting that forewarned is forearmed. I wasn’t. And you need emotional acumen to detect emotional predators, just like animals need it to escape from real ones in the wild.
Possibly the strangest phenomenon about abusive individuals from whatever cloth they are cut, is that they literally use the same words, phrases, and justifications, like they are reading from the same textbook. They don’t have any new ideas. It’s old news happening to new people.
The first thing to understand is that both parties (i.e., you, the “victim,” and the predator) are equally looking to play out a childhood role, or a partner in a twisted dance. They’re looking for you, and you’re looking for them.
Not consciously, but you’re looking for what feels like love – the example of “love” that was modelled for you when you were small. You may just be “wanting” to be abused and/or encouraging your own victimisation because it’s what you remember “love” feeling like.
I’ve always felt that the best way to understand personality-disordered people is as a sprawling mess of chaotic coping mechanisms that have turned malignantly pathological. The inert blandness of denial becomes a delusional prerequisite to gaslighting. Criticising others is only a step away from outright projection.
The other crucial principle to establish in your soul, heart, and mind is that almost all personality-disordered people look entirely normal to the outside world, as their illness is relational and only appears in private. They have spent a lifetime hiding their disability from the other human beings around them, disguising and camouflaging themselves so they fit in with their surroundings. The “self” they project to the outside world is absolutely false, but expertly acted to the untrained eye.
They rightly know that being exposed for what they are means almost certain rejection, humiliation, shame, stigma, and pariah status. They operate on the basis that ultimately, at some point, they will be rejected – somewhere deep in the silent abyss of their heart, they believe they can only get what they need by getting around the defences of others.
The ancient Greek mythology that gave us the illustration of Narcissus of Thespiae also helps us to answer the Piper’s dance invitation to self-destruction with the story of the Sirens; dangerous seductresses who lured mariners to ruin with their intoxicating music and voices. The Sirens’ call of personality-disordered, abusive, and toxic people everywhere, in every language, is the universal heartstring-puller of pity. Pity for themselves, pity for others, projected distress and pain of all the unfairness that ails and grieves them; their pathetic inability to behave like an adult, and their “victim” routine.
To put it bluntly, the toxic pheromone of disordered people, or how they attract you, is feeling sorry for them, as you would for any normal human being.
The attack posture of this kind of urban predator is the baited trap. They emit their loud Sirens’ call to attract their prey — who feel sorry for them — and then simply lure them in closer by an appearance of pathetic weakness. Once you’re within their jaws and feeling comfortable, the fangs inject into their prey so slowly it barely registers.
The classic combination of the “Damsel in Distress” and the old-fashioned “bait ‘n’ switch” is tried, tested, and field-proven.
The reason they are predators is not just because they’re “feeding;” it’s because they don’t care how their behaviour affects the other person. They hold them in contempt, because it’s the only way they can rationalise their own sick behaviour next to their Holy image of themselves inside.
As I know to my own cost, some personality-disordered people are so expert at camouflage that they successfully smother their victims with the stigma of dysfunction, whilst appearing as pillars of the local community. When you meet one, that still small voice inside, or the strange feeling you have that tells you something is wrong but you can’t put your finger on it, is your primeval animal instinct registering that you have detected a predator that is camouflaged.
At that point, those reptilian instincts are signalling something doesn’t fit; it doesn’t work. Something’s strange, incoherent. There’s something strange about the person. But like any normal person would, you simply give them the benefit of the doubt. Your brain needs coherence. Small incongruencies are fixed by denial and rationalisation.
And that is where complications arise. You want, and desperately try, to treat a personality-disordered person like a normal, ordinary person. They don’t look howling-at-the-moon insane as their illness is socially transparent.
Most maintain the appearance that they have an enormous happiness for their life, are surrounded by close friends, and are busied by a huge array of interests, hobbies and ideas. The sad truth is that is only an appearance; an important social veneer.
They have friends, but none are actually close to any degree of significant intimacy. They talk about being interested in interests, but never have any substance for them. Their hobbies almost always exist solely to glorify them somehow, or offer social cover (e.g., church).
If you’re unlucky enough to be trapped in their proximity, it’s not long before you come face-to-face with the terrifying reality that they are inevitably totally convinced that, within specific boundary lines of demarcation, they are entitled to treat you as they see fit. For example, “It’s my house!” is abuser-speak justification that because they own the roof, they are entitled fairly to abuse you, or anyone else: children, animals or adults. Because they’re in a relationship with you, they’re especially entitled to irradiate you with their toxic emissions, because that’s your role. They’ll even abuse you for leaving.
Whether they are men or women, you begin to notice that most personality-disordered people exhibit a similar suite of behaviours that are subtle clues to the mess inside that they would sacrifice their own lives (or yours) to prevent anyone seeing. Healthy people avoid them unconsciously, and once you have spent a good length of time coping with their quasi-transparent insanity, they begin to stick out as if they had a large real estate sign above their head.
Yes, their illness is genetic/hereditary and runs in families, like physical illness. There’s a very good chance one of their parents also has/had a personality disorder.
A sense of frustrating childishness.
Dealing with personality-disordered people is confusing. Despite the fact you’re looking at an adult, you can’t help but feel that the way they think, talk, and act, is incredibly childish. Adults acting like children are all too common, but the difference is that even their behaviour reaches some kind of mature resolution. It goes away. The grown-up appears eventually. The only “maturity” a personality-disordered person emits is for public show, as you’ll find out in the next argument.
The distinguishing feature between child and adult is the ability to accept responsibility for oneself. An inability to accept responsibility for your own behaviour indicates a lack of maturity and/or dysfunction. In normal, healthy people it can be deferred temporarily. In disorder, it never appears and you will be waiting forever.
Pushy, pushy and more yet more pushiness.
Personality-disordered people are relentlessly pushy in every area of their lives and the lives of those around them. They push you away. They push their way into your life. They push to get what they want. Boundaries have no meaning to them other than being their victim’s selfish device to “hurt” them.
They operate on the basis that they will 100% be rejected at some point in the future, and so must find their way around their target’s defences, and control or contain anything they think, feel, believe or experience.
Natural drive respects boundaries; abuse doesn’t. Relationships have a natural “flow” about them, starting with a natural, healthy cautiousness – a luxury you are only afforded in a PD relationship if it’s providing additional social “camouflage.” Disordered peoples’ “relationships” are jerky, violent, pushy and chaotic combinations of demands, defences, and incoherence that are just below the threshold that triggers the “flight” response.
An endless influx needing immediate disarmament.
To a personality-disordered person, the world is a terrifying abyss of danger; threats around every corner, overwhelming feelings, the unpredictability of other people. Over a lifetime of never-ending “trauma” they’ve exhausted themselves trying to cope with, they all develop exactly the same system of defence: the desperate need to “disarm” anything that looks like it may induce bad, uncomfortable, or distressing feelings in them.
Their knee-jerk response is to devalue, demean, denigrate and/or just plain ignore the “thing” or “person.” The theory is sound. By devaluing the person, or what they think/say, they remove its “power” over them. Remove the value or meaning, and you disarm what it is. Discredit the source, and the threat loses all meaning.
Turning your escape into a prison.
Perhaps one of the most disturbing moments you will have in dealing with a personality-disordered person is their near-telepathic ability to sense the exact basis of your aversion to them. For example, if you consider them “toxic,” somehow you’ll soon find yourself being called “toxic” — by them.
And God forbid they discover any self-help books or personal development materials (e.g., websites), because it’s a 100% certainty they will be used against you. Your notes on boundaries will be transformed into you not respecting their boundaries, or your motivations for reading self-help material will be to “manipulate” them with “mind tricks.”
In disarming the “threat” of your means of escape, they create enough self-doubt through guilt to dig their fangs in deeper.
Perpetual misery that only a toxic waste dump could transmit.
Fundamentally, despite all their pretentions and protestations to the contrary, personality-disordered people are incredibly negative and depressive people who drain the life from you when you try to relate to them normally. They live in a state of continual fear of the world that’s entrenched and pathological. The “happiness” they project to the world is merely “contentment” of not being in pain.
The simple fact is they are profoundly unhappy and character-weak people who are endlessly distressed. But perhaps the most telling sign of their inner darkness is their absolute contempt for others, and the viciousness in how they talk about the feelings, thoughts, or cares or those they supposedly care about. When they’re pressured, their true nature appears, so clear particularly in their tone of their voice – a nasty defensive arrogance, devaluing and deriding anything that might require something of them with utter contempt in order to disarm it.
Spoken or unspoken, it’s your fault.
Listen to any unrepentant criminal who’s been convicted by a jury, and you have absolutely no doubt whatsoever when they complain their victim was to blame, that they are wrong, but also delusional. The trouble is personality-disordered people are mostly undiagnosed.
Any ordinary person who is blamed for a wrong naturally becomes reflective and introspective in order to healthily examine their possible guilt. Like the burglar who blames his victim for being “stupid enough not to close the curtains,” all abusers preach the philosophy that others somehow “caused” them to abuse, and that they are the real victims – often pre-emptively before you make a claim.
What separates personality-disordered people from the healthy norm is their terrifying lack of awareness – or willful blindness – of how their behaviour affects others. They are so completely unable to see their own behaviour because they are childishly enthralled in themselves.
Terrorised by criticism or accountability.
One of the most effective tests you can conduct if you need a degree of “proof” as to whether someone suffers with a personality disorder is to deliberately use criticism in a group dynamic. A disordered person cannot cope with even the slightest criticism without exploding into a hysterical routine, be it internally (e.g., red cheeks, silence, holding down panic and anger), or physically (e.g., raised voice, backing away) and reacting very badly indeed. Most normal healthy people, whilst disliking criticism, are able to “adsorb” it, whereas a personality-disordered person will act in panic to desperately “keep it away.”
On the other hand, they also suffer enormous provocation when they are in proximity of others being praised. Narcissists are particularly vulnerable to spurting a tidal wave of devaluation of the person who has stolen “their” attention. The quieter it is, the more advanced and adapted they have become at blending in with their surroundings, and hiding their dysfunction. Anger is something often expressed in a socially “acceptable” way, or passively.
An unfulfilled universal need for coherence.
Lastly, it is useful to admit to yourself that, on whatever level, we all have an emotional and spiritual need for coherence. We need order; be it routine, structured learning, or beliefs that are consistent with who we are. We need it in others. Words, feelings and behaviour that are incoherent cause an ordinary person confusion in the least, but typically, considerable distress.
Personality-disordered people are, as the name suggests, fundamentally disordered. They have little or no integrity. Their beliefs, logic, and cognitive processes make little or no sense. Arguing with them leaves a normal person entirely frustrated and confused.
Their arguments are disordered, their logic is illogical, and the easily-rationalised adult life in front of you is completely irrational. Yet they look adult, socially respectable, claim to be responsible, and refuse to admit their difficulties or make any effort to get any better. Stubborn, outrageous hypocrisy is the norm. Double-standards are their principles.
You slowly come to accept that you are only frustrating yourself by expecting and assuming a personality-disordered person to react and/or engage as an ordinary, healthy person would. An argument, debate, or healthy confrontation always, always, always becomes a meltdown, or game played to “get the upper hand.”
Their inner world and private life never reflects, or aligns with integrity with, their public persona. Who they are outside to others at arm’s length is entirely different to who they are behind closed doors to those they are supposed to love and care about. There is no integrity or coherence. Empathy, introspection, and compassion are the reserve of healthy normal people, whereas to the personality-disordered, they are important theatrical gestures.
Being fundamentally disordered means you can’t recognise your own disorder, or even order itself. To do so would trigger pain. And that, to the personality-disordered person, comprises their only philosophy in life: To avoid pain at all costs. The obnoxious, toxic, and vile behaviours you experience are their attempts to avoid pain using defence mechanisms that have become pathological responses.
The basis of all morality is that all life has value. If we accept that there is good, we accept there is also evil.
To distinguish between them, we understand there needs to be “moral law.” Natural law says that our choices have consequences; moral law says there is right/wrong and good/evil. Our world is built on order, whether it be the laws of nature, or moral law. That order reflects that, because we have intrinsic value, by extension, who we are is sacred. Our heart, mind, soul, being, property and relationships are all sacred. No-one has the right to violate them, and we have no right to violate those of others.
It’s easy to write-off the sins of personality-disordered people on the basis of involuntary mental illness (i.e., excusing it as not deliberate), but our conscience is what helps us navigate the choices we face every day (i.e., ethics). It’s not reasonable to suggest that someone is “good” despite all evidence to the contrary.
Moreover, it’s ridiculous to believe that someone’s soul is separately ordered “good” when the rest of them is disordered – one is connected to the other. It’s easy to wrap up therapy in the clinical blanket of objective reasoning about “character” and “dysfunction.”
The painful and inescapable truth that becomes harder and harder to run from is that there is something morally evil in personality disorder, not just social dysfunction (evil itself is defined as a violation of the natural, sacred order or a moral code). The behaviour is just outright wrong, as in right/wrong.
Narcissism, scripture tells us, was the first original sin – the root that begat all the others. A politician’s private infidelity easily becomes fraud in taxpayer accounts because the root is dishonesty; integrity means that which happens in the private dark is the same that happens in public view.
The foundation of our recovery from the damage caused by personality-disordered people needs to be firmly anchored in moral and natural law, before we even begin to deal with the therapeutic platitudes. We must live according to conscience, with character.
As comforting as it is to re-railroad ourselves with the list of sins and betrayals committed against us, we have to begin by understanding there is a law higher than ourselves that has been violated. Life is about “we,” not just “me” – it is our collective experience.
Disorder favours fog. Those who demand blind obedience are usually planning to abuse it, and the perfect world for a personality-disordered person to cloak their behaviour is one where everything is relative; one where boundaries are flexible, and a permissive system where good, evil and moral law do not exist. A world where they can do whatever they want because everything is permitted, and higher law is superseded by concern for the self, or even just plain survival.
However, there are absolutes, and disordered “philosophy” is invariably incoherent. Truth is simple.
A lifetime of dealing with personality-disordered people teaches you to not only recognise an absence of conscience and morality, but also the critical weakness of dictators, despots, tyrants, criminals, abusers and fanatics everywhere from the beginning of time immemorial: A complete inability to tolerate plurality and the idea that we accept more than one idea. The concept that we accept there is more than one point of view.
But the most telling trait of a personality disorder? The fact that they could read this whole article –or a whole library, in fact, and not begin to suspect for a second, let alone recognise, that it could be about them.
Much gratitude to Alex for sharing such a thought provoking work. – Dr T
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105 Responses to “Predator Detection and the Devil of Plurality: Personality Disorders and the Nature of Good and Evil”
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What a terrific, thoughtful, comprehensive piece. You don’t develop this level of insight without, on the one hand, experiencing these kinds of predators first-hand over a lifetime, and on the other, having a first class mind.
Bravo.
JP
That means a lot coming from a site veteran and legend-in-the-making JP, thank you! If only it was the mind that was the problem needing re-programming, rather than the heart.
First let me say thank you to everyone for their really encouraging and thoughtful comments! And a huge thanks to the indefatigable Dr T (one of my favourite writers, as it happens) for being kind enough to publish it. Without S4M, i would still be down the rabbit hole from the “relationship” (kidnapping, really) that led me to the site two years ago.
I wrote the piece on the hoof last night over about two hours, so wasn’t entirely convinced with the first draft. It’s incredibly rewarding to be able to contribute, and if it helps even one person, i’ll be grateful for a long time to come!
Not sure what took my thinking round to the philosophical edge but i’ve always felt that there is a distinct relationship between personality disorders and morality. I’ve found it hard to know where the line between mental illness and personal choice is: When does disorder become the abdication of morality? It’s impossible to escape the fact that disordered behaviour almost certainly means a disordered (or non-existent) moral framework in someone.
Philosophically speaking, we always need an “ontic referent” (i.e. a point of reference) for anything that exists. If we know what we are doing is wrong, it’s because we have that point of reference (i.e. an example or code) to use in comparison.
I’m going to try and respond to each of the comments individually as we go along rather than here. Already thinking of a possible sequel around the idea of the virtue of being a “problem” to disordered people, rather than feeling guilty for it. That or the intrinsic nature of evil.
“The first thing to understand is that both parties (i.e., you, the “victim,” and the predator) are equally looking to play out a childhood role, or a partner in a twisted dance. They’re looking for you, and you’re looking for them.
Not consciously, but you’re looking for what feels like love”
– i’m starting to get annoyed by therapists who try to ask me to look at what drew me into a relationship with my abusive wife. umm, here’s what drew me into that relationship: she was good to me before we got married. ’nuff said. but if we need more here goes…
what was i looking for: someone who was good to me
did i see some red flags: yes, a few, but i believed that my wife would transcend her past, that she wanted to, and prior to marriage, in her treatment of me, she showed me that she had.
just because my spouse was putting forth her best self and somehow slipped into an abusive and sick role after marriage also does not mean that it was not love prior to marriage. after marriage, it does not make sense to call it love, i understand that.
however, what i was seeking was pure. what i was experiencing was good. and that is what “drew me” into my relationship with a woman who wound up being abusive.
so stop it, ick yuck no. i did not “attract” an abusive spouse. i did not want an abusive spouse. i ENDURED one for a long time because i believe in marriage, in ethics, in family, in dedication — and because i thought my wife could recover the way she treated me prior to marriage. i did not endure the abuse because i liked or wanted it.
…that’s my first comment on this article as i read, and though i am taking a “critical” stance — the article looks very good and very informative — so please do not mistake my providing some counter-thought with ingratitude.
“The other crucial principle to establish in your soul, heart, and mind is that almost all personality-disordered people look entirely normal to the outside world, as their illness is relational and only appears in private. They have spent a lifetime hiding their disability from the other human beings around them, disguising and camouflaging themselves so they fit in with their surroundings. The “self” they project to the outside world is absolutely false, but expertly acted to the untrained eye.”
THANK YOU
“The distinguishing feature between child and adult is the ability to accept responsibility for oneself.”
eh — my 5 year old is pretty good at accepting responsibility for himself. much much much more emotionally mature than mom.
“The painful and inescapable truth that becomes harder and harder to run from is that there is something morally evil in personality disorder”
– i think there’s great progress there. it’s something we can take to court with us. recognizing evil is something we can disclose in court. it won’t be hard. it’s damaging to children. this behavior: really really really bad for our kids. bad for any kids. science will verify. the kids will verify. social services will concur. and it’s based in fact.
Alex, thanks for an informative and very comprehensive article. I’ll concur with anon.father, though… not everyone “attracts” abusive partners. This does seem to be a foregone conclusion in some circles, particularly on sites that cater to abused women, where every other phrase seems to be “co-dependency” and/or “poor boundaries.”
Judging by my own experience and that of many others that I’ve read here over the last few months, I would venture to say that many disordered women actively seek out intelligent, hard-working men with healthy childhoods and family backgrounds. Such men (a) have a lot that can be “mined” (e.g. money, status, a nice suburban life etc.) and (b) it’s almost certain that such men won’t abuse their partners.
“Healthy people avoid them unconsciously, and once you have spent a good length of time coping with their quasi-transparent insanity, they begin to stick out as if they had a large real estate sign above their head.” – Healthy people can just as easily get duped (at least in the early stages) by the disordereds; as you wrote, they have spent their entire lifetimes camouflaging themselves. But when the disordered behaviour begins, the real trick is to immediately recognize it as such and not justify it away or “give her another chance” (as I and many others did). If the behaviour springs from an obvious lack of empathy, conscience or morals, feelings of entitlement, etc. – yes, that’s as big as a real estate sign, so get the hell out of there!
Perhaps the best red flags are those “WTF moments” as discussed in one of Dr.T’s recent radio shows. If I ever find myself asking “how could she possibly…” I won’t even bother finishing the sentence in my mind!
Alex,
Good article.
One question.
You write:
”Criticising others is only a step away from outright projection.”
I agree.
But could you have written this article without using the words ‘they’ ‘them’ ‘their’ ‘those kind of people’ ‘PD people’ or simular terms?
I believe this article would become MUCH better, or better said ‘would become even more valuable’, if you just rewrote it in a ‘part 2′ just using the words ‘i’ ‘me’ ‘mine’ etc. instead – while touching every topic which you covered here now, again…but from that different angle this time.
Just my curiousity and 2 cents. Thanks for sharing your view on this. That takes a lot of courage which I respect a great deal; don’t get me wrong, I don’t disagree, but perhaps would like to trigger a broader, more complete view.
I think that’s a great point, and thank you! I have heard that said from time to time that i can’t speak quite impersonally. I don’t like grouping, labelling, or stereotyping at all, which i concede the article was doing. In fact, it was about collective observation so a tacit detachment on my part. I think you may have called me on something important there.
Exquisite, AZC!! Well written, using common language, and descriptive visual. This is one I’m going to save.
Glad to see JP back – you two (or more!!) could collaborate on a book / movie.
Thank you! I’m a screenwriter so movies are definitely my thing. Planning a move to LA within 18 months or so, so maybe i’ll get to meet some of you in person over a beer?
Hi AZ
You stated what it really is and that is evil. People don’t get that. I was stalked and harassed by a female psychotherapist (LCSW) for almost 3 years after I fled. She lied to me at the beginning of therapy so I stayed. If she didn’t lie, the severe stress I was under wouldn’t have brought out an illness I have that has left me disabled. My life was forever damaged on some level because of her lie. If I would have gotten competent help, my problem would have been resolved in short order.
I left when I figured out that lie, and when I figured out she was a Psychopath. Here is some of what she said. Note that she didn’t even think it is wrong or “feel” any adverse reaction when she said it. I have seen people butter toast with more emotion.
Her example to her group therapy about what an unconditional ethic was that if one of her sons got hurt in a desert she would pick up a rock and smash him over the head to kill him. Nobody made anything out of it because they were so enraptured with her. That really got me. I still get the chills and prickly feeling writing this 30 years later. It was obvious to me that she didn’t know right from wrong and that it is a myth that psychopaths always do which is even scarier. I could see how shallow her attachment to her son was, and the level of gruesome pain she could inflict on him. A minor head injury produces a lot of blood. Can you imagine the pain he would be in by having a rock smashing his head? I believe that the bloody gore would be fuel for her Histrionic PD. She would garner attention by saying that all his blood was on “her”. Her wanting to kill him was about ending her distress because she can’t tolerate distress because of her BPD. It wasn’t about ending his suffering. Her grandiosity in believing that she is above the law and that she can medically assess damage without any Medical Education and act on it was horrifying to me. She considered her crime euthanasia. She literally lives in a reverse universe a lot of the time.
Another time, she was put on an anti psychotic to prevent her from killing her
married lover because he cheated on her. She wanted to smash into his car every time she got behind him. This happened while she was a therapist and her Psychiatrist never pulled her out of the game, and he had the authority to do so. While she was being treated on a antipsychotic by him to control her, she prompted a rescue by making a pseudo suicide threat in a somewhat seductive way to try and have her Psychiatrist have a romantic relationship with her. He was married, and she didn’t care about that or saw that a married man had just hurt her. No moral guiding her bottomless pit of needs. She used to tell her clients that she wanted to F—him. How warped is she. Not to mention very unprofessional because of severe boundary problems.
In her therapy with one of her many therapists she said that she took one pillow and pretended choking her father to death and then took another one and pretended bringing him back to life to love. This time she acted on a homicidal impulse. As if splitting him would magically make him the way she wanted him to be through use of fantasy.
I reported her to the State, and I was told or asked the following by 2 of the Supervisors there. She must have had some smarts and did she ever “really” kill someone? She has Schizotypal PD and DID, and she is psychotic at times. Nothing was done and she is still practicing. I even paid money to see her Psychiatrist, and I told him about her. Guess what he said? Don’t think about it!
I had serious grounds to sue her civilly. Unfortunately, by the time I found a lawyer who even bothers suing LCSW’s, the statute of limitations was over to do so. Evil is going on, and I know it. People are being harmed and have been harmed by her in some way because she was handed a license to meddle in people’s minds and play with their feelings, emotions and lives.
People really have to be careful with the therapist they chose. There is a whole lot of delusion out that is delivered in packages of junk or pseudoscience too. I can’t tell you how many crazy Psychiatrists, Psychologists and Social Workers I have come to read about, know or hear about. The Cluster B’s are drawn like magnets to this field because of the power they can and do wield over others.
“The Cluster B’s are drawn like magnets to this field because of the power they can and do wield over others.” – I have to also wonder if they are fascinated by the diseases and disorders, but as long as they are on the authoritative side of the couch, they can pinpoint what is wrong with everyone else while being able to ignore it happening in themselves. As if being let behind the curtain means that they couldn’t possible be the one in front if it.
I don’t believe that most of them have a lot of insight into their psychopathology or any most of the time. Others want to figure themselves out or get their needs met by their clients or patients. I have always noted that power over their clients and them believing they were right was present in some way because of their denial level or stupidity. All narcs are stupid in some way because of their grandiose belief about themselves.Plus, all Cluster B traits or relationships contain elements of exploitation and misuse of power somewhere and somehow.
I am separated from my PD, it will be 2years in 2 days time!…Yesterday my daughter 7yo walked up to me and said: “Dad you know I really love ALL of my family because they’re so kind and nice, You, Mommy, older sister, etc…but even before she could mentioned MOMMY, I was already Freezing. But as always I just smiled and agreed with her…I wondered for how long will I have to swallow such BS just “for the sake of my kids”.
Great article btw, even though I was still expecting to hear the link between PD’s victims and their parents.
I can say this after having had a Cluster B Father. My Mother pointed out his crap and was very clear about it. That IS NOT Parental Alienation. It is defending your child and explaining the parents problems to the kids. That is how we knew that it was his problem and not ours. Other times she didn’t get our fears that were very real. That didn’t serve us well.
It is very important to point out the Cluster B’s problems so that the child doesn’t form unhealthy relationships and develops healthy boundaries and self esteem. It has to be respected if the child chooses not to love their parent,loves them only for some things or only a little. The best gift anybody can give a child with a Cluster B parent is the permission to say I don’t love them and not feel guilty or pressured because of social more or religious beliefs. That is adding on another dimension of abuse to the child and yet again gives and excuses the Cluster B’s behavior and gives them another chance to get undeserved loved. Healthy and mature love has limits, doesn’t tolerate abuse, believes that it isn’t a cure all and isn’t coerced or manipulated .
Thanks for the advice B!
I have always struggled as to whether I should hide my ex-wife’s true personality from my son or expose it to him in all it’s depravity. Since she now only has supervised access, my son only sees the public persona that she portrays, which is fine with me since her true dark side is much uglier and scary. But I fear that when he grows older he will wonder why mom & dad are not together when both parents seem so “nice”. I guess I will cross that bridge when I come to it but it is always in the back of my mind that he will resent me for doing what is best for both of us.
Hi Funk Monk:
I don’t know your son’s age, but you want to do it age appropriately as he asks. You have to shelter him in an age appropriate way and tell him the truth at the same time. If you don’t think he is ready for some questions answered, then you tell him that you will talk to him about it at a later time and why you think so. This way you are teaching him his age limitations and respecting his need at the same time.
I am in total agreement with you that it is okay for him to only see her good side now. Boy am I glad to hear that she has to have supervised visits.
There’s plenty of time and room for another article!
I spent over 10 years married to a man with a personality disorder. He was only happy when I was downtrodden. Our moods never matched. In private he was bitter and twisted. He tried to drive friends away from me, but it was only the friends he had “tried it on with” who rejected his advances that he then tried to drive away just in case they told me what he had done and I believed them. He had affairs and then blamed them on me. When I found out about the first one, I was very angry and he then spoke to me in a very calm and calculated voice to calm down because I was acting like a “crazy person”. He then acted as though he was sorry but I have since come to the conclusion that he was only sorry that he got caught. I had planned to get out when I found out I was pregnant with our second child. When she was still a baby, I went to see an attorney and started divorce proceedings. My ex claimed that I was suffering from post natal depression and didn’t know what I was doing. He then put it down to, “after she had the baby, she went crazy.”. He has since blamed my daughter for how I reacted, somehow my daughter is at fault for his behaviour. He is in a profession that helps people. He’s a nurse. People think he is a wonderful caring person when he is not. He does this for the attention he receives from it. In private he is a volatile unpredictable person. His gaslighting of situations was very apparant. He would be completely aggitated about something that was going on and when asked what the problem was, he would turn to me and say, “calm down, that’s all I need is you starting up.” Ummmm he was the one that was blowing a fuse and I was the one that was calm but I still copped it. If I thought living with him was horrible enough with the constant lectures and him continually “teaching me a lesson” (which meant setting up a situation of his own making, watching me slip up and then him saying see, ‘I did that to teach you a lesson’). The aftermath of finally leaving him has been far worse than I could have imagined. It took ages to get divorced because he wouldn’t settle the property and in Arkansas when there isn’t a property settlement, there is no child support. I was left with no money even though I was working full time. Child care took that majority of my money and we had none for food etc… I finally had to go to social services and try to get some help. This was then held against me. “See she can’t take care of the children properly”. He broke into my house, looked through my rubbish bins trying to find something to hold over me. He took photos of things he has staged and said that my house was a tip and that I was an unfit mother and the list goes on. I finally got permission to move away to live with my parents on the West Coast and because he had someone else who had his attention, I was granted permission by the court to leave (this took giving him the house, the cars and just about everything but the debt, a price I was willing to pay to get away.). I spent a good amount of time working and paying off all the debt I was left with, trying to recover my self respect. During this time I became close to a friend who lived in England and we started seeing each other. A while later I petitioned the court to move again, so I could remarry and relocate to England. He put up very little opposition to this and I was granted permission. Things were strained because of his constant need to change things and make statements and then retract them. I had comfort in the fact that I had a concrete court order and when he would start his games I just referred to the court order of which he would state was just a “guideline” and not set in stone. Unfortunately, in 2004 I filed for back child support because his guideline theory of a court order regarding child support meant that he was behind by a few thousand dollars and I needed to recover it for the children’s sake. I was hit with a counter suit for custody. His counter suit changed 3 times before he finally got the children in his possession for a visit and after they returned home, I was hit with a custody suit because the children were being “abused”. Truth be told, the children were very young and scared and told me that it was their father that was doing the abuse and that he told them to tell a counselor that it was us in trade for toys etc… After spending $40,000 and multiple counseling sessions with both children here in the UK, we won the suit in America but what’s happened since has been even more of a nightmare. In 2005 every time the phone rang the children would say “if it’s dad I don’t want to speak to him”. The phone terrified them. He told them that he would be very angry at them if they told what had happened of which they did and then every time the phone rang they would run scared. I finally cut off all communication with their dad. He has been to court multiple times without my knowledge and managed to get a custody order in his favour because he told the court that I was on the run in Europe with the children. Our pictures have been put on the missing children sites etc… He has put an alert on my children’s passports which have expired, just in case I try to get them renewed. I am now prevented from going back to America to see family and friends because of all the things he has done in my absence. Nacissistic personality, Sociopathice personality? Whatever it is, it is a very lethal personality disorder and has cost me. I wish I had known the warning signs earlier and I could have avoided so much heartache.
That’s a hell of a comment! As controversial as it might seem, you could argue that all of them are tyrants in waiting, with the ultimate objective being pointless abuse with absolutely no end – for the feelgood power trip, the warm security of not being challenged, and the stability of their own self.
I have just read the article, Wow!!!! for the first time iv’e been like WTF, im living with a mother in-law who is like this and my partner and her family.
My family couldn’t believe that such a person who goes to church could do those things, i even had turmoil of my brother defending her because they couldn’t believe that it could be so bad.
My mother in law is a divorcee as my parents both are, but i should have been alerted to the so called woe is me story line of her broken relationship with her ex husband and how it destroyed her and her family.
As i mentioned i come from a parents who were divorced, i noted in my head that my mother does the same thing, when we were kids, nothing special right?.
The difference was that i grew up with my father for 7 years and with my mother for 7 also, when i told her that her attitude changed, especially when i didnt agree to her philosophy’s.
She started asking me “why did i move to stay with my father” i answered her, thought nothing of it, she asked me “why i forgave my father for hurting my mother”, i responded because im a christian, i have to forgive him, otherwise it would destroy me, and i cant take on my mothers burdens, as she did the right course of action by seeking a divorce.
I could tell this didn’t sit well with her, i could see her pondering this with trying to understand in some way if i my answer was rehearsed or just clever, or whatever.
It came to a head when my daughter was born, and some complications arose where… the nurses suspected that the baby had the umbilical cord around the neck and had to do a Cesarean, to deliver the baby. My partner was in and out of consciousness and me and her were left to comfort her.
Once the midwife had stabalised her, and left me and her in the room, my mother in law changed.
She started to say wild things, like my father was an aldulter…im going to end up being like her former husband. Im not gonna be a good father for my child, im selfish so on and so forth.
When my partner would be awake she would pretend to be nice to me, but ignore me, once she would be back to sleep the abuse would continue.
I had to deal with this for 20 hours, i felt drained! angry at the timing to have such a conversation and real bewilderment at the evil that was coming from her mouth, this from a christian woman. she even had me bade her former husband away from seeing his duaghter while she was in labour because she couldn’t stand to see him! when it wasn’t about her in the first place!
Needless to say i kept this secret from my partner for over 2 years, even though she often wondered why me and her mum didnt get along.
We did talk about the issue, but not in private, even though i asked for her to allow me to speak without other family members present, but she insisted they stay as whatever i had to say should be heard by everyone! so as to protect her perceived innocence from my impending attack.
My mother and father cant believe how she is, even though they spent 2 years trying to convince me that its me, its not her.
People like this are out there, and they will do anything to not be exposed. And do everything to mess you about and make your life hell if you see through them.
the saga will always continue, stay safe and stay diligent.
I have to tell you that being a Christian is so immensely difficult when it comes to personality disorders. The most challenging idea for me was trying to understand that Christ’s sacrifice took their sin. Try thinking that one through when you get a few minutes, as it’ll spin you right out!
Wow – outstanding article by AZ. He really hit the bullseye. Perhaps a few things off – e.g., our proclivity towards these PD people may not be childhood-based but some other reason, or just plain naivete, low self esteem. Regardless, his description of the PD/Narcissist/Predator is dead accurate. Jesus, I wish I could have/should have known all about this when I was younger. Would have saved me volumes of pain & suffering. This article has comforted me though, knowing that I wasn’t the problem; despite my many defects & ‘normal’ problems, my occassional selfishness, I know I am not like these PD people & have to keep training myself, honing my instincts, to avoid these PD people in the future. Many thanks AZ its been very helpful. Thanks to Dr. Tara too she’s great.
Thanks so much. “I wish I could have/should have known all about this when I was younger.” That’s exactly what i felt as i wrote this article. It often seems like an endless battle. It’s interesting what Viktor Frankl observed in the concentration camps: those who found meaning in their suffering somehow managed to survive it. I think you have to come to a decision in your own life as to what it means. If you’d known, would it be better or worse? Surely the deciding factor is what you did once you knew – you got bitter, or you turned it into a motivating force that helped you help others.