Psycho-Free Zone

Blatant Disregard For Personal Boundaries In a previous post, I talked about giving some insight into what it was like living with my narcissistic mother-in-law during the time my husband and I had to do so out of necessity. The following is an example taken from one of my personal journal entries from about five years ago. We had been there for several months, so we were noticing patterns in her cycle of abuse, and we were constantly on edge. This happened on a day when my husband (then-fiance), Tim, was working and I was off. I was in our room, sitting cross-legged on the bed with my laptop. I'm an extremely introverted person; my personal space is important to me, and since the in-laws were also at home, I kept the door to my room closed. They (my NMIL and her flying monkey) were in a bedroom adjacent to mine where they had their computer set up. I knew they were both in there, because I could hear both of their voices, and I heard Maude lower hers in a conspiratorial tone. Sho

Sabotage Anyone who's come out of a long-term toxic relationship knows that a manipulative, vindictive narcissistic ex can all but ruin your life. They'll at least do their best to try. My husband's abuser managed to sabotage his career, basically setting him back to square one. She did this even though taking away his means to support himself also meant taking away his means to pay child support to her. An emotionally healthy woman with a handful of kids will look for a job to help support herself and her children. An unbalanced wreck in the same situation will spend all of her time plotting and scheming until she succeeds in cutting off the only source of income she does have. To me, this is one of the most baffling aspects of psychopaths and the personality disordered . When they perceive that someone has wronged them, they will go out of their way to harm that person, even when it is inevitable that they themselves will be negatively affected by the outcome. I truly bel

Disordered and Deceitful Psychopaths There is no cure for psychopathy/sociopathy/cluster B personality disorders. There is no way to teach a psychopath to have compassion and empathy. Worse, being a sociopath isn't even a crime, in and of itself. There are plenty of personality disordered, high conflict people running around loose in our culture, and they destroy people's lives. Not all of them kill, not all of them are physically abusive, and not all of them commit such blatant crimes that they wind up in prison, but they all use and abuse others for their own personal gain. Given that knowledge, is there any way we could co-exist with psychopaths peacefully? Could they be integrated into society in such a way that they could only be helpful? Here are a few ideas for how to neutralize them, in order to protect the innocent.  Option 1 - Banishment Exile psychopaths. Give them their own remote territory to reside on, but make sure they have no way to leave this pla

A Book Worth Reading I am currently reading Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life by Susan Forward, PhD . Most of her information and advice is spot on. However, I disagree with her on a couple of issues. Before I get into those, I should probably fill you in on why I'm reading this book about toxic parents.   This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I may receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for your support in this way. As I stated in my Introduction post, I lived with a sociopath for a number of years, and my husband was ensnared by one for over a decade. If you're reading this, I assume you've had your own major encounter with a psychopath, or perhaps you have a loved one who has. And if that's the case, you may already have learned that the reason some of us get involved with sociopaths is because we're trying to resolve childhood issues. We had high conflict, soci

  Sex Trafficking I was reading an article about sex trafficking (I removed the old, broken link but was unable to find the original article again), and I couldn't help noticing how the abusers got into the victim's head in Brianna's story. Psychopaths, sociopaths, predators, whatever you want to call them, they all follow basic patterns for victimizing others. It starts by asking seemingly innocuous, friendly questions. What they are really doing is gleaning personal information from you with the intent of using it against you later. In Brianna's case, the predator used personal knowledge of her likes and dislikes so that he could cast a younger predator in the role of her Prince Charming. The one portraying her "dream guy", then made her feel special and forged a superficial bond with her, thus making it easier to manipulate her into doing what he wanted. Predators Know How To Get Into Your Head It's important to notice these patterns, because anyone is

Some people should not be allowed to reproduce. A New Jersey mother of a five-year-old  faces child endangerment charges for allegedly exposing her daughter to the UV rays from a tanning bed. If you haven't seen this yet, you can read about it here . No way to tell for sure if this mommy is personality disordered or a sociopath, but body dysmorphic disorder is probably a safe bet. At any rate, she's not exactly what you'd refer to as mentally stable . When I read about this, it reminded me of an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia . The gang finds a baby in a dumpster, and Dee and Mac try to exploit him for money. They take the baby boy to a tanning salon to get a base tan, so that he can become an actor/model. It's hard to explain out of context, but you can watch the tanning salon clip here . A tanning salon is no place for children, and it's baffling that an attendant had no problem letting Patricia Krentcil take her little girl into the room with he