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2/16/2010

HEALTHY LOVE – WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THAT?

by Sandra L. Brown, M.A.

The last week or so we have been talking about the difference between attraction and love. Since Valentine’s Day was upon us, I thought it would be a great discussion about what happens in Pathological Love Relationships— that attraction is on over-drive while love (from a pathological) is lingo-bling.

But what about real love, healthy love? People write all the time and say ‘When are you going to write How to Spot a Healthy Partner because with as many bad relationships that I’ve been in, I can hardly tell the difference between what should be obviously toxic and what should be obviously healthy.’

The opposite of healthy love is what we often call ‘toxic’ love. Sometimes understanding what toxic ‘looks like’ helps us to see what real ‘love’ should look like too.

Here is a short list of the characteristics of Love vs. Toxic Love (compiled with the help of the work of Melody Beattie & Terence Gorski).

1. Love – Development of self first priority.  Toxic love – Obsession with relationship.

2. Love – Room to grow, expand; desire for other to grow. Toxic love – Security, comfort in sameness; intensity of need seen as proof of love (may really be fear, insecurity, loneliness).

3. Love – Separate interests; other friends; maintain other meaningful relationships.  Toxic love – Total involvement; limited social life; neglect old friends, interests.

4. Love – Encouragement of each other’s expanding; secure in own worth.  Toxic love – Preoccupation with other’s behavior; fear of other changing.

5. Love – Appropriate Trust (i.e. trusting partner to behave according to fundamental nature.) Toxic love – Jealousy; possessiveness; fear of competition; protects “supply.”

6. Love – Compromise, negotiation or taking turns at leading. Problem solving together.  Toxic love – Power plays for control; blaming; passive or aggressive manipulation.

7. Love – Embracing of each other’s individuality.  Toxic love – Trying to change other to own image.

8. Love – Relationship deals with all aspects of reality. Toxic love – Relationship is based on delusion and avoidance of the unpleasant.

9. Love – Self-care by both partners; emotional state not dependent on other’s mood.  Toxic love – Expectation that one partner will fix and rescue the other.

10. Love – Loving detachment (healthy concern about partner, while letting go.)  Toxic love – Fusion (being obsessed with each other’s problems and feelings).

11. Love – Sex is free choice growing out of caring & friendship.  Toxic love – Pressure around sex due to insecurity, fear & need for immediate gratification.

12. Love – Ability to enjoy being alone. Toxic love – Unable to endure separation; clinging.

13. Love – Cycle of comfort and contentment.  Toxic love – Cycle of pain and despair.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Love is not supposed to be painful. There is pain involved in any relationship but if it is painful most of the time then you are probably in a Pathological Love Relationship because the end result of these relationships is ‘Inevitable Harm.’  Let’s be clear that there is nothing wrong with wanting a relationship – it is natural and healthy. If we can start seeing relationships not as the goal but as opportunities for growth then we can start having more functional relationships. A relationship that ends is not a failure or a punishment – it is a lesson. And these lessons are mostly about pathology, its permanence, and the lives it affects without discrimination.

REAL LOVE NOT JUST REAL ATTRACTION

by Sandra L. Brown, M.A.

So many people confuse the feeling of ‘attraction’ with the emotion of love. For some who are in chronic dangerous and pathological relationships, it’s obvious that you have gotten these two elements ‘mixed up.’ Not being able to untangle these understandings can keep people on the same path of unsafe relationship selection because they keep choosing the same way and getting the same people!

Attraction is largely not only unconscious but also physical.  There is actually something called an ‘erotic imprint’ which is the unconscious part that guides our attraction. (I talked about this in the Dangerous Man book). Our erotic imprint is literally ‘imprinted’ in our psyches when we are young–at that age when you begin to notice and be attracted to the opposite sex. As I mentioned, this is largely an unconscious drive. For instance, I like stocky dark-haired men. When ever I see that type of image, I immediately find that man ‘attractive.’ I can ‘vary’ slightly on my attraction but I’m not going to find Brad Pitt attractive. I might forego the full ’stocky’ appearance but I’m not going to let go of some of the other traits that make men appealing to me. We like what we like. For instance, I am attracted to Johnny Depp or George Clooney. I don’t like any of the blondes or overly tall and lanky body types.

If you think back to what your ‘attraction’ basis is, you may find some patterns there as well. Attraction, however, can also be behavioral or based on emotional characteristics. For instance, some women are attracted to guys with a great sense of humor. The attraction is based on that characteristic. Other women may be attracted to athletic guys–not because of what sports do to their bodies, but because of the behavioral qualities of athletes.  Attraction can be subtle–like the unconscious erotic imprinting that makes us select men based on physical attributes OR attraction may lead us to choose relationships based on behaviors or emotional characteristics like displays of empathy, helpfulness or friendliness. (I discussed your own high traits of empathy, helpfulness and friendliness in Women Who Love Psychopaths.)

Although these traits might guide our relationships selection, this is not the foundation of love. It’s the foundation of selection.

Often, our relationship selection comes more from attraction than it does anything else. So knowing ‘who’ and ‘what types’ you are attracted to will help you understand your patterns of selection. Some people choose characteristics–helpfulness, humor, gentleness or another quality that they seem to be drawn to. Other people are more physical in their attraction and find the physicality of someone either a ‘go’ or a ‘no.’ Maybe you like blondes or blue eyes. This may also drive your pattern of selection.

Also in the area of attraction–sometimes it’s Traumatic Attraction that seems to drive our patterns of selection. People, who have been abused, especially as children, can have unusual and destructive patterns of selection. While this may seem the opposite of what you would expect, these patterns are largely driven by unresolved trauma. People who were raised in alcoholic, dysfunctional, or abusive homes are likely to repeat those exact patterns in their selection of a partner. They often select individuals who have similar ‘characteristics’ to the abusive/neglectful/addicted adult they grew up with or were exposed to. The characteristics could be physical (how they look) or behavioral (how they act) or emotional (how they abuse/neglect).  In any event, the unresolved abuse issues drive them to keep selecting abusers for relationships. Today, they are mystified as to why they keep picking abusive/neglectful/addicted people for relationship partners. That which remains unresolved, revolves–around and around thru our lives until it is resolved.

So, when you have no idea that attraction (good, bad, or dysfunctional) is guiding your selections, you just keep picking the same way and getting the same thing. But because the world keeps using the word ‘love’ you use it, too. And you label your attraction-based-choices (that are largely dysfunctional) as ‘love’ and then become confused about the nature of this thing called ‘love.’ Your attraction is NOT love. It is merely attraction. What DOES or DOES NOT happen IN the relationship may be more reflective of ‘love’ than anything else.

Remember the Bible verse, “Love is patient, love is kind, love does not seek it’s own…”? it helps to reflect how love is ‘other centered’ not in a codependent and frantic needy way but in a way that helps others be interdependent in relationships. Love is often attributed to positive ‘attributes’ such as:

Joy – love smiling

Peace – love resting

Patience – love waiting

Kindness – love showing itself sensitive to others’ feelings

Goodness – love making allowances

Faithfulness – love proving constant

Gentleness – love yielding

Self-control – love triumphing over selfish inclinations

–Source Unknown

(Now, think about if ANY of those traits described the Pathological Love Relationship? I didn’t think so….)

“As long as we believe that someone else has the power to make us happy then we are setting ourselves up to be victims” (From: Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls).

This Valentine’s Day be very clear with yourself about love and attraction. This is a time when you might be likely to want to recontact him. Let me remind you, NOTHING has changed. His pathology is still the same. And on February 15th you could hate yourself for recontacting him for one weak illusionary moment on Feb 14th–in which the world is focused on love but he is focused on manipulation, control or anything OTHER than love. If you open that door, then you will have weeks or months of trying to get him out and disconnect again.

Instead, plan ahead for your potential relapse by setting up an accountability partner AND something to do! Go to a movie with a friend; go out to dinner, so SOMETHING that takes responsibility and action for your own loneliness at this time of year. Whatever you do, don’t have a knee jerk reaction and contact him. One day on the calendar about love is just an ILLUSION!

LOVE! LOVE! LOVE! Will I Ever Find MINE?

by Sandra L. Brown, M.A.

February is Valentine’s Day month–a trigger month for many women who want to just ’slip back into the fantasy’ of everything we associate as a culture with Valentine’s Day.

It’s one of those trigger months like Thanksgiving and Christmas where women want to ‘look the other way’ in order to have a nice day or time with him. Just for 24 hours she wants to pretend he really isn’t pathological. She wants the chocolates, a dinner out, dancing, a little romance–and 24 hours of normalcy. But at midnight, the Cinderella dress turns back to what it was; the carriage that carried the handsome prince is now a pumpkin with field mice.

Pink and red hearts does not make his pathology ‘turn off’ for the convenience of a lover’s holiday.  Women get frustrated and want to know “Will I Ever Find MY Love? When Will It Be My Turn To Find Someone Worth Loving?”

I don’t know…can you:

~Stop focusing on him?

~Be willing to manage your intrusive thoughts of him?

~Redirect your obsessions from him to your own self care?

~Create a full life so you aren’t lonely?

~Build a foundation of support that doesn’t include ‘having to be’ in a relationship?

~ Learn to find fulfillment in activities that don’t only include intimate relationships?

~Treat your symptoms of anxiety, depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

~Heal your sexuality?

~Embrace spirituality?

~Learn to be attracted to guys who aren’t proverbial bad boys?

~Dig deeply to see what all your relationships have in common so you don’t repeat the pattern?

~Memorize what pathology is and stop looking for loop holes?

~Take a year or maybe even two years OFF from dating to nurture all those places in you that are wounded and broken?

~Will you take time to learn what your trait proclivities are (read Women Who Love Psychopaths) so you know how to safe guard yourself in the next relationship?

~Seriously UNDERSTAND how your traits and his traits are a magnet to each other?

~ Realize YOU ARE ENOUGH FOR YOU! If another relationship DOESN’T come along…you will survive. If you’re really determined, you’ll even THRIVE.

~ Get grounded–sink your feet into the earth of your soul and declare you’ll never be uprooted again…no matter what–you’re grounded in you and reality–not fantasy.

~Be willing to challenge old belief systems, old assumptions, old patterns, old preferences.

~ Most of all…can you LOVE yourself?

This month is Valentines Day…you’ve fallen in love with all sorts of things and people…you’ve fallen in love with illusions, with dreams, hopes, and pathology.

It’s time to fall in love with you! I know who you are…you know why? Because after all that research we know EXACTLY who you are–you deeply attach and love, you are loving to the 9th degree, loyal, trusting, sensitive, and very invested in relationship happiness. You’re a TERRIFFIC woman that any NORMAL man would be blessed to have.

No one is alone during the month of Love. We stand hand in hand, bridging the gap for each other–connected and bonded by a sorority of shared experiences, pain, and yet hope. If you need a hug for Valentines Day, there are plenty of cyber hugs floating thru here.

Learn to love you. Nothing happens and no one else does until you do. Give to the world that part of your self that is so rich and deep. There are lots of ways to be loved–be loved by giving back, by reaching others. Valentines Day is for lovers. Be the lover of your own soul. We celebrate that with you…

Pacing and Planning Your Own Recovery
Becoming Part of The Institute’s Path to Recovery

by Sandra L. Brown, M.A.

Since the beginning of the year, we have been focused on discussing your recovery in great detail. That is because the power of pathology saws people off at the knees. In order to heal, you have to have a plan for your own recovery.

We consider this so important that a portion of all of my counseling including phone, in person, or at the retreats is focused on how to pace and plan your own recovery.

Women fantasize that ’somehow’ getting over this pathological relationship will just ‘happen’ and don’t know they should be planning their recovery or even how to go about planning it.

In fact, most women have done -0- to pace, plan, or facilitate their own healing process. Those of you who have found the website are much further ahead than the woman who has not even begun reading about the topic of her relationships yet! So finding the information is a great first step. But, it’s only a first step and too many women stop there only to relapse and get into yet another pathological relationship.

Last year’s newsletters spent a lot of time examining the depth of damage done at the hands of your pathological. We have looked at PTSD, The Cracked Vessel, the need for Living the Gentle Life, about intrusive thoughts and obsessions, healing spiritually, healing sexually and about fantasy and hatred. We have spent almost 52 weeks looking very deeply at the issue of how this relationship has hurt you emotionally, physically/medically, spiritually, sexually and financially.

There will always be those women who will not do anything about their lives except continue to be a victim of it. How do I know this? I get the same emails from the same people week after week asking me the same ‘loophole-based’ questions about ‘do I think she should leave him because after all, he SAID he would change.’ Week after week the same people with the same questions who haven’t read the book, who have not spent time in the workbook, who haven’t listened to one mp3 or CD, who haven’t spent 1 hour in counseling….keep asking the same questions and getting the same results.

Any 12 Stepper knows that the only way they can stay away from something so life-gripping like drugs, alcohol, gambling or sex is with a concerted daily focused recovery on themselves and the behaviors, habits and beliefs that lead them to the life-damaging events that have altered them. Women who will recover from pathological relationships are those who take the same serious and focused approach to the life-gripping and life- damaging relationship that has altered her life.

40+ hours a week is spent at The Institute developing ways to strengthen YOUR recovery–after all, this isn’t about US! This is done by writing books, e-books, making mp3s and CDS and other products, giving workshops and conferences, training therapists so they can do phone counseling with you, opening a retreat center so you can get specific and unique treatment for your issues, and intense research so we understand WHAT you need to heal from this.

We hope that 2010 is the year you really knuckle-down and focus on your own recovery–taking the steps you need to take to heal from the life-damaging experience.

Why? First of all, we don’t want pathology to win by destroying the lives of strong and wonderful women. We exist to kick butt on this issue! Secondly, WE NEED YOU!

~ If you don’t teach the woman you sit next to, how will she learn to spot and avoid pathology?

~ If you don’t heal and recover, who will be a teacher to others?

~ Who will run support groups?

~ Who will give community lectures?

~ Who will operate an outreach?

It is not us! Our focus is to educate YOU. Your job is to reach others! 2010 can be the year that you heal and reach others. Let us help you reach your recovery goals, and then the world!

1/19/2010

Are You Really As Far Along As You Think You Are?

by Sandra L. Brown, M.A.

For the New Year, the month of January we have been discussing recovery and finding your path to emotional wellness from Pathological Love Relationships in 2010.

When women get mild relief from the unrelenting symptoms of the aftermath with a pathological, it can be palatable to them. The relief from intrusive thoughts, obsessions, PTSD, poor sleep, hyper-vigilance, or any other problematic symptom can feel ‘healing’ to them. But it doesn’t always mean they ARE healed.

Over and over again, I have learned how damaging, how unrelenting the aftermath is from pathological relationships.

For some women, it reaches all the way back to childhood with pathological parents. For others, however, it has been only in their intimate relationships during adulthood yet has left its distinguished mark.

Mild relief can often be mistaken for recovery. Recovery is a life long journey of self care. Recovery can begin at the moment you recognize the damage done to you by pathologicals but it doesn’t end with a counselor or a group. For many women, the symptoms have crept into their worldview, how they see others, their environment, and themselves.

Weekly, I learn again and again as I meet with women that the damage is widespread. This isn’t a quick fix or often even a quick treatment. While her mild relief of symptoms instills relief or hope, it isn’t the end of her recovery journey. It’s the beginning.

Like peeling an onion, each layer shows a level of damage that needs care. All the way down to the core are layers of unperceived and unrecognized aftermath symptoms. At the core are boundary issues–those necessary limits that show someone understands what’s hers, someone else’s, or God’s. From the center of boundaries are developed gates which serve as limits saying what one will tolerate and will not tolerate.

Boundaries are the bedrock of all recovery. Anything that is built will be built from the issue of healthy or unhealthy boundaries. Many women don’t realize that pathologicals target women with poor boundaries.

They test it out early in the relationship and when small violations are not managed, they proceed on with bigger violations. Every violation is a green light. Boundaries are the first step in recovery.

In other layers of the onion lays hyper-vigilance issues. High harm avoidance from PTSD weaves a level of distrust in new environments, people, and situations. It affects fear of the future and even fear of now.

Another layer of the onion is communication–the ability to listen in the midst of upset. Since pathologicals have skewed communication, this area is often seriously affected. Long term exposure to pathologicals produces the same type of skewed communication patterns and linguistics in women who have normalized abnormal behavior.

A layer of emotional regulation is most assuredly part of the aftermath–anxiety, depression, irritability, the overflow of pent up emotions and the inability to control the emotions.

Layer after layer are aftermath symptoms that must be peeled and treated in recovery. Everyone knows how many layers are in an onion. While it may be disconcerting to see all those layers, the layers are translucent and show the wounding on each level that recovery must touch.

Women who have begun recovery may be surprised at what feels like the un-ending layers of the onion and wonder when they will reach the core. A mild relief from anxiety or sleeplessness is welcomed but should not be viewed as more than it is. Reaching to the core is deep work and should be respected for the lengthy process it is likely to be. What other choice is there?

Whether you begin at the core with boundaries, or start at the outer edge with symptom management and work into the onion core, allow the process because there is not healing without it.

We must never underestimate the damage done by pathologicals at a deep emotional and even spiritual level.

Why a Focused Recovery is Necessary -
Beginning 2010 in a Completely Different Mindset

by Sandra L. Brown, M.A.

Last week I began the New Year by talking about the issue of healing, recovery,
and moving forward. In fact, all of January we are going to look at why starting 2010
‘differently’ can help you move forward in recovering from the aftermath of a pathological love relationship.

The past few years at The Institute has been a trememdous time of developement.
(Don’t mind me as I wander down memory lane of all that has happened this year at The Institute….)

A mere two years ago the newsletter started. We now have nearly 35,000 subscribers
each week. That created a snowball effect and the phone counseling and coaching
began. More e-books were written. Then the CDs, mp3s, DVDs, and tele-seminars were created.

Research commenced and the Women Who Love Psychopaths book was written. 2nd Edition is coming out soon. The retreat program started, we trained therapists and
coaches, and started the Inpatient Treatment Center. Sandra began to do more keynote speaking at other organizations conferences including law schools and victim organizations.

All this development because of realizing how uniquely damaged you became at the hands of a pathological. All this research because of realizing there was really something to ‘the temperament’ of women who end up in pathological relationships. All this phone counseling, therapist training and retreat/treatment center creation because so few people ‘get it’ about you, him, and the mind-blowing relationship dynamics. For the FIRST time there really is a concrete program designed about you and in some ways, by you, and definitely for you.

The one thing that does stand out in the research and what I have been eye-balling closely about healing and recovery is that this level of damage by him is profound. If there were lots of ‘hims’ then it’s even more profound. What this does to you over the long haul is take some strong, fabulous women out of the game of life by destroying you.

Untreated symptoms, get worse. Symptoms that get worse effect your life functioning and your children.

Worsened effects then contaminate your partner selection. And if you do get a healthy one,
you don’t like him or you’re too messed up from the pathological relationship to be in a healthy relationship so he leaves.

Untreated symptoms make intrusive thoughts worse so obsessions increase. Friends abandon you because they are tired of hearing about the obsessions so you isolate.

Isolation makes you at risk of recontacting him and recontacting him lowers your coping skills.

As your coping skills drop your bad habits increase (drinking, medication over use, eating, hibernating).

As your coping skills lower your fantasizing increases ‘Maybe he ISN’T pathological’ “Maybe he WILL stop cheating, etc.’ and your minimizing begins ‘At least he …..’

More contact with him increases your Post Traumatic Stress symptoms of flashbacks, fear of the future, unbridled worry, depression,and insomnia.

Is any of this sounding familiar? There is a typical decompensation pattern that most of the women go through. Recovery can stop that decompensation and begin rebuilding your life.

By December 31 of this year (2010) how many of you will be in the same situation, with the same man, having the same symptoms?

On the other hand, how many of you will be ‘pathology free?’ — symptoms reduced,
a new vigor for life, insight about how this happened and how to avoid it in the future?

How many of you will be less depressed and anxious, more active, lost weight, have more friends,
have a better job, have happier children, got more self esteem so a better job or gone back to school, and have potential to have a healthy relationship…?

I’m not a resolution type person so I don’t make them but I AM an advocate for complete life changes. Not tiny habits, big overhauls. Let’s face it, if you have dated a narcissist or a psychopath, you NEED a big life overhaul. Something malfunctioned in your life that created this
huge blind spot under which really sick people flew into your life, camped there, and overtly destroyed you. That’s not a little issue—take a look at the condition of your life and see if you think it was ‘little.’ Ask others if they think it was little.

2010 is going to be a great year here at The Institute–I can just feel it. We spent the last three years laying a solid ground work for super programming next year.

For the first time ever, everything is in place to heal for the women who have loved
pathologicals. I believe we have covered all the bases with phone support (coaching
and weekly support groups), in person counseling (retreats, 1:1s, and inpatient
treatment), portable products (ebooks, books, DVDs, CDS) and community outreach
through workshops in your area. We have removed the barriers to assistance by creating
our program in as many formats as possible. I recently found out that the Dangerous Man book
is now in almost every country of the world!

I hope in 2010 instead of being a mere name on our email list, you’ll be a very active part of The Institute beginning by working on your own healing. Then we hope you will run support groups in your community, give powerpoint presentations for other women in your area, or start an advocacy group. Instead of emailing me and telling me what ELSE I should be doing (I’m tired enough!), how about you step out and be the powerhouse in your own community?
How about you take it to the streets and pass it forward? How about you turn your life
around so you can be a role model to other women?

All of this begins when you start healing yourself…and moving forward.

The truth is, there is only us to educate others. You don’t see a multi-million dollar ad campaign with billboards on the highways that announce how to spot pathological relationships do you? That’s because it doesn’t exist. Sadly, no one has funded a national campaign to
warn and educate others. However, what exists is The Institute + You = Education For Others.
It’s you and me, babe!

As Gandhi said ‘Be the change you want to see in the world.’

Join us in 2010 for Healing Your Heart! We’re here.

1/5/2010

Finding Effective Help in 2010!

By now if you have been trying to heal from a pathological love relationship and can’t find effective and knowledgeable counseling you have probably figured out what we have…that the pathological love relationship is NOT widely understood.

Frustrated women hear unhelpful advice from family, friends and even therapists who label their attachment to pathological men as “codependent” or “mutually addictive” or merely “emotional abuse.” Women jump from counselor to counselor and from group counseling experience-to-group counseling experience looking for someone, ANYONE, who understands this intense attachment to a dangerous and pathological man.

She looks for some understanding at ‘what’ is wrong with him. Labeling him an ‘abuser’ doesn’t quite cover the extensive array of brilliant psychopathic tendencies he has. Why was SHE targeted by him? Why does she feel both intense attachment and loathing for him at the same time? Why do her symptoms more resemble ‘mind control’ than mere ‘abused woman syndrome?’ Why is the bonding with this man more intense and unshakeable than any other man? Is it abuse if he never physically harms you but has the mental infiltration of a CIA operative?

What we are finding out from our research about women who have been in pathological love relationships is that all the normal dynamics of regular relationships DON’T apply to these types. All the normal dynamics of addictive relationships, codependent relationships and dysfunctional relationships DON’T apply to these types either. No wonder women can’t find the help they need…it hasn’t been taught YET! Our research is pointing towards women who DON’T fit into the stereotypes of women we normally see in shelters, counseling centers and in other abuse situations. These are not women who have the kinds of histories we normally associate with abuse nor do they have the kinds of current lives that fit the demographics of most counseling programs and shelters. Their personality traits and behaviors fit no other ‘typologies.’ And their current symptoms don’t match the simply ‘dysfunctional’ love relationship.

Could it be that the dynamics in a pathological love relationships really ARE different than other types of relationships? Could this be why women in these types of relationships aren’t helped by the more prevalent types of intervention offered to other types of abusive relationships? Why does the Power & Control Wheel model seem ineffective with these types of women? Why are these women LESS likely to seek traditional counseling? And if they do, why are they less likely to be helped by it? Why are these women’s personality traits so vastly different then shelter women? Or abused women?

Too many women have been through the ringer of counselors-not-understanding-psychopathology/family-lumping-all-relationship-types-together/ friends-saying-’just-get-over-it’/ and counseling-programs-telling-she’s-just-codependent. Too many women have stopped seeking help because they are tired of too many people ‘not getting it.’  Psychology has to allow itself to grow beyond a one-size-fits-all approach when dealing with women emerging from pathological love relationships because all relationships are not created equal especially when one of them is pathological. Not understanding the effects of pathology on relationships, self concept, and recovery deters a woman’s ability to heal. Understanding the DIFFERENCES in these types of relationships is critical.

The Institute developed programs and materials exactly for this reason. We developed our telephone counseling program for women in immediate need of validation of their experiences, our retreat programs specifically geared to ‘Healing the Aftermath of the Pathological Love Relationship,’ our Therapist Affiliate Program training which provides other therapists nationwide the clinical training to help women heal from these types of relationships, our inpatient treatment center for those needing crisis help, and our 40+ products all developed to teach pathology to others.

Why? Why all the effort in treatment related issues? Because the absence of trained counselors is screamingly evident. Our mailing list writes us week after week asking “Can you recommend someone in Florida, Michigan, the United Kingdom, Canada, California, Oregon…? Why don’t other counselors understand this? Why can’t anyone explain to me what is going on! If one more counselor or family member suggests I am codependent or a relationship addict, I’m going to scream! Why is this so hard to understand?”

Much like the beginning phases of the addiction field, the pathological love relationship field is feeling the same ‘misunderstanding phase’ that other theories of counseling have gone through. When the field is new or the knowledge is groundbreaking, there is an overt lack of trained responders. Unfortunately, those that suffer the new phases are the victims/survivors that wish there were more trained service providers.

The Institute operates as a public psychopathy education project which means we try to train anyone and everyone in the issues of pathology–that includes the women in the relationships AND those who are likely to be emotional supports to women recovering from these relationships. Please bear with an entirely new emerging field of psychology that is trying to race to catch up to the knowledge of what is needed for this population of people. After all, until us no one had even bothered to STUDY the female partners of psychopaths and partners of other pathological types. No one created research projects to study the personality traits, histories and chronic vulnerabilities of women who have been in these relationships. So to that degree, we are virginal in our exploration of these issues.

As an Institute, we try to be immediately responsive to needs. In the last year we have exploded in growth in our outreach–our weekly newsletter continues to reach more and more people, our blogs we write for other websites such as Psychology Today and Times Up! helps us to reach an even larger audience with the educational value of our expertise, our list of books, CDs and DVDs that are in every country of the world, our expanded retreat format, private 1:1’s with Sandra, our telephone assessments and counseling which doubled in size this year, our weekly teleconferencing support groups, and our Therapist Training Program–all are born out of our desire to reach YOU! As needs are repeatedly identified by our mailing list, we try to quickly ascertain how to develop a program to meet the need. That’s because we recognize that the services available out there are slim. We provide what we can, knowing that we are a drop in the bucket to the need that exists. So unless we duplicate ourselves through products and services many women will go untreated.

I know for many women who are struggling to recover from the diabolical aftermath of a pathological relationship that it seems that too few services exist. Please remain hopeful that not only this Institute but other therapists and agencies hear your cry and are reaching out for training so they can help you. We too are always looking at how we can expand our scope and reach. If you have ideas about how we can help you further, please give us your thoughts.

In the meantime, if our brand new treatment program can be of help please use it.
Or if you are a therapist, please come to our trainings. If you are a survivor, we’d love for you to bring healing to you through our phone counseling, support groups or retreats.
The fact is, the more we learn the more we can teach but we can only do so much.
One agency like ours can’t heal the world. But we can teach what we know and heal those who come for it which is why we are always encouraging therapists to get trained. (Jan 29-31 in Clearwater, FL, Feb 5-7 in Jacksonville, FL!) Don’t lose heart that there are few services that understand your unique situation with a pathological. But remain hopeful that in a new field of psychology, we’re growing as fast as we can!

Watch with us vigilantly as we see a new field of psychology emerging! Please let 2010 be the year of healing for you. We’ve worked hard so that you have many of our resources that can help you move forward. Much healing to you in 2010!

12/29/2009

Circling the Promised Land

Reflections on the year lived…isn’t that what December 31st was all about before it was about party horns and too much champagne?

For me, sometimes it’s good and hearty reflections…satisfaction at goals reached and lives touched. Other times it’s sadness, frustration or confusion.

These past two years have been all of that for me…hearty and hell…so many of your lives touched and yet so many in my personal life gone–taken–dead. When you lose someone so close (my mother, my pet therapy dog, and Cody my foster son) it makes this life so much more real.

I don’t know if YOU see your life as real as I sometimes see it. Do you see what I see when I read your letters, hear your stories, and imagine your relationships and pain?

Many women want ‘The Promised Land.’ To them that could be healing or maybe that’s being with him…but so many are always looking for happiness and thinking ‘The Promised Land’ is just around the corner.

~ “The Promised Land always lies on the other side of the wilderness.” ~
(Havelock Ellis)

Oh…the wilderness…the path of pain–that road that requires that you leave him–that you face your own fear or loneliness. The street that makes you wonder if you’ll ever find another one to love, have sex again, or feel real joy in your heart with.

The wilderness that meanders thru all the places you have been this year…the valley of truth, the river of denial, the desert of lies…

Don’t spend time regretting whatever 2009 was for you—if you couldn’t leave him yet, if you picked yet another pathological, or if you’re still not over him yet. Regret is so wasteful of human energy.

A wise man said “Humans grow thru the metabolism of their own experience.” What you lived through was not wasted. It’s part of how you will grow and how 2010 will be a healthier and healing year for you.

Women ask me all the time, “What can I do to help other women in the area of pathological love relationships?” Your own self growth and healing is the greatest service you can give the world and other women. What you invest in yourself is never wasted or lost. God is the God of Economy–He recycles everything–even your pain. Your pain heals the next woman.

I believe that which is why we created the Coaching program so you can recycle your own pain and help the next woman.
(Our last and final coaching training is Jan 26-31 in Clearwater, FL. )

Many therapists are also survivors too and have made entire practices into outreaches from their own pain. They stopped circling ‘The Promised Land’ and moved through it to a place of helping other heal. (Our Therapist Training is Jan 29-31 in Clearwater, FL).

To stop the circling of the promised land and to help you actually get there is why we developed our retreats and phone coaching–so that your pain recycled becomes hope to the next woman. Nothing is lost. Pain that is not actualized–that isn’t converted into wisdom is just pain. It was useless suffering that did not manifest itself into something larger than itself.

In 2010, I believe many of you will stop circling ‘The Promised Land’ and will come out of the wilderness you’ve been in. And when you do…we’re right here celebrating with you–your rite of passage into a new life. May 2010 be the healing year you have been waiting for. Let us know how we can help you begin that!

“I believe that what it is I have been called to do will make itself known when I have made myself ready.” (J. Phillips)

12/22/2009

Joy vs. Happiness

You were out looking for a little happiness when you stumbled upon Dr. Jekyll as he was appearing wonderful and considerate. Strangely, before you knew it, evil Mr. Hyde was instead dismantling anything that resembled happiness and leaving in its wake, destruction and despair.

Despair is a long way from the happiness you were initially seeking. How did you get from mere happiness-seeking to a totally despairing life? How can you embrace the happiness that you set out to find?

It might not even be happiness that you were initially seeking. You might have been looking for someone much more internal, spiritual and existential.  But you tell me…

Happiness is external. It’s based on situations, events, people, places, things, and thoughts. Happiness is connected to your hope for a relationship or your hope for a future with someone.. Happiness is linked to that ’some day when I meet the right guy’ or ‘when he starts changing and acting right’ or ‘when he goes to counseling.’

Happiness is future oriented and it puts all its eggs in someone else’s basket. It is dependent on outside situations, people, or events to align with your expectations so that the end result is your happiness. These expectations can be seen especially during the holidays when whether or not you have a ‘merry Christmas’ or a ‘happy holiday’ depends on whether or not he is with you, shows up, isn’t drunk, or a list of other behaviors you expect for a ‘happy holiday’ experience. Unfortunately, pathology rarely obliges in that way. So when the relationship falls thru, he isn’t wonderful at Christmas, you kick him out, he cheats again, he runs off with your money, or he was a con artist…then your holidays were not ‘happy’ and your happiness was crushed.

Unhappiness is the result. It’s a typical and inevitable result in pathological love relationships. There are no happy endings to pathological relationships. After Christmas and New Years, he will still be pathological and you will still have the same problems you had in November. You notice that The Institute has not written a book called ‘How to Have a Happy Relationship with a Pathological.’

Chronic unhappiness leads to despair and depression. Remember the emotional roller coaster you rode with him? You were happy when he was good, and miserable when he was bad? You were hypnotically lulled into happy-land when you were with him and in intrusive thought-hell when you weren’t? Your happiness was hitched to his rear end. When he was around (and behaving) you were happy. When he wasn’t, your happiness followed his rear end right out the door and you were obsessing, wondering, and pacing.

Happiness is what you feel when he says the ‘right romantic’ stuff, buys you a ring or moves in.. But happiness is not joy because joy is not external, can’t be bought and is not conditional on someone else’s behavior. Joy is not contingent on anything in order to exist. You don’t have to have ‘him’ for the holidays to have joy. Likewise, you don’t have to get revenge, snoop out his short comings, tell the new girlfriend the truth or anything else in order to have joy. You can lose in court with him, already have lost your life savings to him, watch him out with a new woman, or live out of the back of your car and still have joy.

You’re probably thinking, ’sure you can have joy in those circumstances if you are Mother Teresa!’ Joy is almost a mystery, isn’t it? It’s a spiritual quality that is internal.. My mother had a lot of joy and I learned from watching her joy. Her dangerous man ran off with her life savings forcing her to work well past retirement. She lived in a one room beach shack and drove a motorcycle. For cheap entertainment, she walked the beach and painted. She drank cheap grocery store wine that came in a box, bought her clothes from thrift shops, and made beach totes from crocheting plastic grocery bags together. She recycled long before it was hip to do it. But what she recycled most and best was pain….into joy.

Instead of looking externally for yet another relationship to remove the sting of the last one, or the boredom she might feel at being alone…she cultivated internal and deep abiding joy. It was both an enigma and a privilege to watch this magnificent life emerge from the ashes of great betrayal.

I use her a lot as an example of someone who went ahead and got a great life and turned this rotten deal into an exquisite piece of art called her life. Anyone who spoke of my mother spoke MOST of her radiant joy. She had the ‘IT’ factor long before it was even called ‘IT.’ Women flocked to her to ask ‘How did you do it? How did you shed the despair and bitterness of what he did and grow into this? THIS bright shining joyful person? What is your secret?’

Somewhere along that rocky path of broken relationships with pathological men, she learned that happiness is fleeting if it’s tied to a man’s shirt tails. She watched too many of the shirt tails walk out the door with her happiness tied to his butt. In order to find the peacefulness that resides inside, she had to learn what was happiness and what was joy.

The transitory things of life are happiness-based. She had a big house and lost a big house when she divorced my father. She had a big career and lost a big career when she got too old according to our culture to have the kind of job she had. She had diamonds and lost diamonds.

So she entered into voluntary simplicity where the fire of purging away ’stuff’ left a clearer picture and path to the internal life. When stuff, people, and the problems they bring fall away, there is stillness. Only in that stillness can we ever find the joy that resides inside of us, dependent on nothing external in order to exist. During this holiday season, this is a great concept to contemplate.

Her joy came from deeply held spiritual beliefs but it also came from a place even beyond that. Joy comes when you make peace with who you are, where you are, why you are, and you are not with.. When you need nothing more than your truth and the love of a good God to bring peace, then you have settled into the abiding joy that is not rocked by relationships. It’s not rocked by anything.

It wasn’t rocked as she lay dying two years ago in the most peaceful arms of grace–a blissful state of quiet surrender and anticipation. Those who were witness to her death still tell me that her death brought new understanding to them about the issue of real joy. Joy in all things….death of a dream, death of relationship, death of a body. Joy from within, stripped down, naked and beautiful.

Untie your happiness from the ends of his shirt tales…

Merry Christmas and Peace to You in This Season of Peaceful Opportunities!
12/15/2009

About Face: Changing the Direction From Which You Seek Happiness

This time of year has it’s own ‘internal reflecting’ which guides us to dig in, evaluate and give thanks.  We ponder ideas, gather insights that might have eluded us during the busyness of the past 11 months, and slow down to look inward and receive the Light we may not receive at other times during the year. I hope this week’s newsletter is a little piece of Light that you are open to receive.

Last Christmas, I got a book written by one of my favorite spiritual writers–Thomas Keating. It’s called ‘The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation.’ Profoundly, he reminds us that we spend much of our lives looking for happiness through avenues that can never produce it. Our misery is produced by looking for love in all the wrong places, as the song goes. Nothing can be truer when it comes to pathology. Pathology is wired to produce misery, not happiness. Everyone has the same response to pathology: they are harmed, miserable, and eventually try to flee. It’s a true indicator of seeking happiness from a source unable to deliver it.

Your idea of happiness was probably initially developed around the relationship or the fantasy that was painted for you about him, the relationship, or your future.  Instead of understanding that happiness had been sought from someone (whom by the nature of their disorder could never deliver happiness) you were held captive in the compulsion of repeating the same scenario with him and still trying to find happiness in the very person who is hard-wired to NOT produce happiness!

Not all of this seeking happiness in the wrong place is the result of his pathology. Some of it is the result of our own unknowing about where happiness is found. It is not found in someone else. Instead, it is found inside of ourselves rooted in our own spirituality through God. It isn’t about them. It’s about us.

Keating says, “What we experience is our desperate search for happiness where it cannot possibly be found. The key to our happiness is not lost outside somewhere in the grass–it is not lost outside of ourselves. It was lost inside ourselves when we began looking for it in someone else. We need to look for it where it can actually BE found.

The chief characteristic of the human condition is that everyone is looking for this key and nobody knows where to find it. The human condition is thus poignant in the extreme. If you want help as you look for the key in the wrong place, you can get plenty of help because everybody is looking for it in the wrong place too! They are looking for it where there is more pleasure, security, power, and acceptance by others. We have a sense of solidarity in the search yet without any possibility of finding what we are looking for.

The religions of the world have discovered the insight that (non-pathological) human beings are designed for unlimited happiness, the enjoyment of truth, and love without end. This spiritual hunger is part of our nature as beings with a spiritual dimension. Here we are, with an unbounded desire for happiness and not the slightest idea of where to look for it.

While we may certainly recognize that looking for happiness in alcohol or drugs is looking in the wrong place, do we recognize that looking for happiness even in relationships can be the wrong place? Certainly looking for love in pathology would never produce the key you were seeking because it cannot be found where you were seeking it. But sometimes people even look for happiness in what appears to be the RIGHT places–marriage, children, higher education, careers, service to others only again to find that they are still seeking happiness from the wrong direction.

In religious language the word ‘repent’ means to ‘turn away from.’ And I like that concept even from a psychological growth stand point–that as you find your own path of recovery from the aftermath of the pathological love relationship, your recovery calls you to ‘turn away from’ the very thing that has produced so much pain for you–the relationship, the choices, the person. In essence, in order for you to find happiness in yourself, God, and in your own (and often single) life, you must ‘change the direction from which you are seeking happiness.’

This is especially true in this season in which everything in you wants to ‘turn back’ to him, to the routine, the perceived comfort–just to get through the tough times of the holidays. Changing the direction from which you seek happiness is embracing the truth that happiness cannot be found in pathology. God did not create you for pathology. He created you for Himself–for peace, love, and joy. It’s not there and will never be there, even if it IS the holidays.

Over the years I have become pretty good at picking up on those who will ‘get it’ and move on and never repeat the pathological love relationship dynamic again and those who WILL, unfortunately, not change directions from which they are seeking happiness. They might change the FACE from whom they seek happiness, but they are still facing the same direction seeking it. The Institute has been involved in helping hundreds and hundreds of people ‘change the direction from which they are seeking happiness’ and how to find recovery, healing, growth, and better choices in themselves. To that end, we are always consciously trying to expand the way we meet the needs of our growing population of wounded readers and bring a wider comprehensive approach to your own health, well being, and healing from the aftermath of pathological love relationships. We hope that we have touched your recovery in a positive way in 2009. We hope that we have helped you ‘change direction’ on your path. If we haven’t, we’re still here and 2010 is a great year for you to recover in!

As we wind down the holidays, the new year always births in me a new hope. Although there is much turmoil in the world right now, be reminded again, that we can always change the direction from which we have been seeking happiness and focus on a brighter future for ourselves and with ourselves. We look forward to being a bright part of your future in 2010. Thank you for entrusting your care and recovery to us this past year. We do not take that privilege lightly.

12/8/2009

The holidays are stressful under the best of situations. Add to it a dangerous and pathological relationships and you can have a prescription for **guaranteed** unhappiness.

The pathological relationship never lies dormant during the holidays. It’s an opportunity to re-contact you–of course “just to wish you a Merry Christmas.” If you haven’t already, do read The Institute’s materials regarding our ‘Starve the Vampire’ teaching on no contact! He has a million hooks he will use to get you back in…here’s one!

Christmas!

A text message of Happy Holidays is not good cheer. It’s a hook.  A Christmas Card is not a mass card to everyone–it is a targeted approach for you. A gift left on your door step isn’t a thoughtful gift–it’s a manipulation because being the good mannered girl you are, you’ll call and thank him and then he’ll have you on the phone…and it all goes downhill from there.

Then there’s the mistletoe, and the date for New Years Eve, and the gift he left for your child or your parents…The holidays are one BIG OP-POR-TU-NITY for Mr. Opportunistic.

The No Contact rule still applies and he’ll be testing your boundaries to see if it applies during the holidays. If it DOESNT apply and you responded to him or sent him a text/card/call, you have just taught him where your loop hole is. You also said something very LOUD to him. You just screamed in his ear ” I’m Lonely! Come snuggle with me.” And you know what he’s thinking, “You don’t have to ask TWICE!”

Ladies, Christmas is ONE day of the year that is laced with a lot of triggering memories. Maybe from childhood where you believe “miracles happen on Christmas” or “everyone should be together then” or the sights, smells, and memories of past Christmases with him are rehashing in your mind. Don’t stay stuck in that ‘air brushed Christmas memory’–how about you pull out your memory list from the other 363 days of the year and how he behaved then? Not one night with the twinkle of Christmas tree lights and a ribbon on a gift. That doesn’t make a pathological man stable!

Get out of the fantasy. Christmas has a way of hypnotizing women into the fantasy of his positive behavior and his lack of pathology. Nothing changed because we hit Christmas season. It’s just a BIGGER opportunity for him to hook you. If you’re still with the pathological person, they can be very sabotaging at this time of year wanting to strip every little piece of joy you could get from the season away. They get drunk, pick fights, say mean things to your family, yell at the kids, and don’t participate. Don’t react. Have a great Christmas while he wallows around in that puddle of pathology.

You know one of the things we found out in our research? You ladies tested unbelievably high in ’sentimentality’. What are the holidays all about? SENTIMENT! If your sentiment is on caffeine, what do you think it will do? Be restrained or have a knee jerk reaction because all that sentiment is coursing through your veins?

One slip up now could cost you a year of trying to get rid of him again. Call a support person and tell them you VOW to them not to have contact this season. Then make plans to fill up your time so it’s not even a possibility.

I have ‘lectured’ our readers about loneliness because this 4-inch stack of research sitting on my desk that you ladies filled out, tells me that you lapse and lapse and lapse again when you feel lonely. Holidays induce loneliness. Plan ahead and safeguard. “I was lonely” is not an excuse for starting something that will once again destroy your life!”

Instead, do something wonderful with your kids. Get outside, take a walk, go to a movie with friends, do some scrapbooking, get some of our books to read, go to a nursing home and visit someone! Sit in a chapel alone and count blessings, walk your dog more, go to the gym! Do anything except have a knee jerk reaction to your excessive sentimentality gene!!

Dangerous Liaisons: How To NOT Go Back/Hook Up During The Holidays

Here’s a secret: “Even if you go back, you’re still alone. You’ve been alone the entire time because by nature of their disorder, they can’t be there for you. So you’re alone–now, in the holidays, or with them. With them, you have more drama, damage and danger. Your choice….”

People relapse and go back into relationships more from Thanksgiving through Valentines Day than any other time of the year. Why? So many great holidays to fake it in! Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, V-Day….then PHOOEY! You’re out. Why not be out now and stay out and save face. You’re not fooling anyone…not yourself, them, or your family and friends.

Holidays are extremely stressful times. It’s a time when it is more likely

• For domestic violence to occur
• For dysfunctional families to be even MORE dysfunctional
• People drink more
• People binge eat because of the stress
• Some feel pressured to ‘be in a relationship’ during the holidays and accept dates or stay with dangerous persons to ‘just get through the holidays’
• To overspend
• To not get enough rest
• It’s an idealistic time when people have more depression and anxiety than any other time of the year. Depression creeps in, anxiety increases, to cope they eat/drink/spend/date in ways they normally would not.

People put extraordinary pressure on themselves thinking their lives ’should be’ the picture postcards and old movies we watch this time of year. You can’t make a ‘picture postcard memory with a psychopath or a narcissist!’ Here’s a mantra to say out loud for yourself “I’m pretending that staying/going back with a psychopath/narcissist will make my holidays better.”  Pretty ridiculous thought, isn’t it? Something happens when you say the REAL thing out loud. It takes all the romanticization and fantasy out of the thought and smacks a little reality in your face.

“I want to be with a psychopath/narcissist for the holiday.”  Say that three times to yourself out loud….

NO!! That’s not what you want. That’s what you GOT. You want to be with a nice man/woman/person for the holidays. As you VERY well know, they’re not it.

“I want to share my special holidays with my special psychopath.”  ???  Nope. That’s not it either. But that’s what’s  going to happen unless you buck up and start telling yourself the truth. It’s OK to be by yourself for the holidays. It sure beats pathology as a gift.

Here’s a real gift for you–some tips!

TIPS FOR A HAPPIER/HEALTHIER HOLIDAY

• Stop idealizing–you are who you are, it is what it is. If your family isn’t perfect, they certainly WON’T be during the season. In fact, everyone acts WORSE during the holidays. It is the peak of dysfunction. Accept yourself and others for who they are.
• Don’t feel pressured to eat more/spend more/drink more than you want to. Remind yourself you have choices and that the word ‘No’ is a complete sentence.
• Take quiet time during the season or you’ll get run over by the sheer speed of the holidays. Pencil it in like you would any other appointment. Buy your own present now–some bubble bath and spend quality time with some bubbles by yourself. Light a candle, find 5 things to be grateful for. Repeat often.
• Take same-sex friends to parties and don’t feel OBLIGATED to go with someone you don’t want to go with. People end up in the worse binds of going to parties with others and get stuck in relationships they don’t want to be in because of it. Find a few other friends who are willing to be ‘party partners’ during the holidays.
• Give to others in need. The best way to get out of your own problems is to give to others whose problems exceed yours. Give to a charity, feed the homeless, buy toys for kids.
• Find time for spiritual reflection. It’s the only way to really feel the season and reconnect. Go to a service, pray, meditate, reflect.
• Pick ONE growth oriented issue you’d like to focus on for 2009 and begin cultivating it in your mind–look for resources you can use to kick start your own growth on January 1.
• Plant joy–in your self, in your life and in others.

I am so passionate about this subject and concerned for your wellbeing this holiday that I have made an mp3 message for you. To listen to my 15 min broadcast about protecting yourself this holiday season from relapse and hook-ups, click here:
http://www.howtospotadangerousman.com/Audio/Christmas2009Message.mp3

Professionals in the Helping Industries & Their Personal Pathological Relationships

Are you a doctor, nurse, therapist, social worker,female clergy, medical personnel, paramedic, teacher, psychiatrist, Certified Nursing Assistant, day care worker, guidance counselor, speech therapist, missionary, physical therapist, psychology grad student, art therapist, writer, artist, musician, work in parole or probation, or work with at-risk kids? Welcome aboard to the group of people MOST LIKELY to end up in a relationship with a pathological narcissist, sociopath or psychopath. Can your career be a risk factor for finding/staying with a narcissist or psychopath? Unfortunately, YES!

Look at that list again…all the ‘hearts of gold’ kind of people–the salt of the earth women–the ‘Mother Teresas’ of the world–AT RISK for attracting and staying with dangerous, dark, and pathological men. Seems unfair doesn’t it? Normally, narcissists and psychopaths don’t migrate to their own kind and in the rare occasions when they do, you end up with a sensationalized case of a new Bonnie & Clyde. Yet in most cases, they migrate to you!

During a recent media interview I said, “I think understanding this represents one of the largest breakthroughs in our understanding of dangerous intimate relationship dynamics. For so long we understood him but we didn’t really understand her. She was wrongly labeled codependent but codependency treatment didn’t help her. She was wrongly labeled a relationship or even sex addict and addiction treatment didn’t help her. She was wrongly labeled as mutually pathological and yet she was never diagnosed with her own personality disorder. Nothing fit and nothing explained her until we found the missing key…her ‘off-the-richtor-scale traits’ that put it all in perspective. Once we can understand her, we can help her.

What we do understand is that by the nature of your own tender and helpful personality traits you migrated to a career in which you could use your abundant traits of empathy, helpfulness, compassion, resourcefulness, cooperation, and tolerance. Where best do these great humanitarian traits get used? In helping professions like social work, ministry, nursing, other medical professions, psychology, teaching, child workers…all people with big hearts trying to give out of their own abundance of empathy and helpfulness. By virtue that you even ENDED up in one of these professions means you are probably more at-risk for these types of relationships than others. In almost ALL circumstances, the women from these relationships are either IN these types of professions or are trying to get in to them (they are in school or trying to move out of their job into a more giving field like these fields).

Many of the women who are in these types of professions ended up with the narcissist or psychopath during the course of their actual jobs. Nurses hooked up with patients, doctors married someone they met in the field, psychologists dated mentally ill men, missionaries dated someone from one of the street missions, prison workers hooked up with inmates, psych nurses dated psych patients. Every once in a while we got stories from very left-brained women like CPA’s but even then, she’s not usually a typical left-brainer. She’s still got a lot of the abundant humanitarian traits or she hates what she’s doing for a job and wants to leave and go into a care giving field.

This has HUGE implications for intervention…don’t you think? If by nature we know that women with SKY HIGH temperament traits of too much empathy, too much tolerance, too much cooperation end up in jobs in which empathy/tolerance/cooperation is the #1 skill, then we also know THESE are the women most likely to go on to empathize, tolerate and cooperate with severe pathology. Knowing that women in these professions are more likely to have the high risk personality traits means education can begin within these professions. Women need to know that sometimes even their career selection is indicative of what their relationship selection might be as well. I doubt any colleges are going to put in their Academic Handbooks  “**Caution, This Profession May Be Hazardous to Your Relationship Health” !! Yet, it’s the beginning of how to think about ‘WHO’ needs this education BEFORE they end up in pathological love relationships.

Once we know ‘who’ this is, the next question is how best to reach these identified groups of women. Who BEST to reach out to their own field than the nurses, teachers, therapists, social workers, etc. who ARE the women who have been touched by these destructive relationships? Why? In the research, almost all the women indicated career and financial harm by the pathological. NO ONE gets out unscathed!

This is a career risk for women. Many women are demoted or lose their jobs because of their inability to concentrate or he sabotages her work situation. Others have lost their entire life savings putting them in financial ruin. Some have lost their licenses–an incredible amount of college work down the tubes. Doctors that are so fraught with PTSD have stepped down to nursing. Attorneys have stepped down to paralegals. Teachers down to teaching assistants. Professors work in book stores. This is why teaching YOUR industry about what these men can do to their productivity, their futures, and their careers is important.

My hope is that someone from every field we have identified as a potential source will become an educational voice in their industry. Are you an Alumni from somewhere? There’s your market…educate your own. Protect YOUR FIELD by peer education–by writing or speaking about these issues because you are NOT the only one in your field that this has happened to OR will happen to. Your field is an identified ‘at risk field’ that needs what you know!

Fantasy And Its’ Effect On Your Reality

Women who are in relationships with pathologicals test very high in the trait of ‘fantasy.’ Fantasy is not just merely wishful thinking. Fantasy has other components in it that effects your here and now life.

Fantasy is often associated with the future and in some ways the past. Here’s how… women often stay in
pathological relationships because they feel panic or fear of abandonment when she or the pathological tries to end the relationship. She ends up re-contacting or allowing re-contact because of these feelings of fear/panic/abandonment.

Abandonment is an early childhood feeling. As adults we are not technically capable of being abandoned (unless you are for instance medically dependent.) The reason we aren’t capable of being abandoned as adults is that as mentally healthy adults, we really can’t be abandoned in the childhood sense. That feeling is an early childhood feeling usually associated with a time of adult or parental abandonment. It is an age-regression feeling–something that pulls you back to your childhood or a very young emotional state.

The feeling of ‘ending’ a male relationship often subconsciously sets off childhood feelings of abandonment. These are past associations and it taps into fantasy that it is happening all over again when it really isn’t. The previous male in your life who did abandon you as a child (for instance) is not the same thing as a pathological leaving your adult life.

But inside, internally, the child feeling is so strong that it feels like a ‘hole in the soul.’ The fantasy of THIS being the same as THAT takes hold and your panic makes you go back or allow him back in.

Fantasy is also future oriented. Fairy tales are fantasy and are based on “Once upon a time….and happily ever after” which is all the good stuff that ‘might’ happen in the future. Women stay in relationships with pathologicals based on a lot of ‘fantasy future betting’ — that is:

• he might stop acting pathological
• he might marry me
• he might stop cheating
• he might tell the truth

Fantasy betting is a lot like gambling…betting on a future that is not likely to happen with a pathological.

Why? Because pathology is the inability to change and sustain change, grow in any meaningful way, and the inability to for him to see how his behavior negatively effects others.

But women also stay in pathological relationships based on ‘projected fantasies’ that is, she fantasizes he will be happy with the NEXT woman and she will get all his good traits and none of his bad. This too is fantasy….that his pathology somehow will not effect HER the way it effects you. (You can’t turn pathology on and off like a light switch!)

Here’s some info: Pathology Effects EVERYONE the SAME!! (Unless she’s pathological as well–then who cares if he goes on to have a relationship worthy of a Jerry Springer Show?).

• Women fantasize that this ‘abandonment’ feeling will effect her the way the childhood abandonment did. (And it will not–just as an FYI for you).
• Women fantasize that he will be different with them. If he is truly pathological he is hard-wired. This IS his DNA.
• Women fantasize that he will be happy in the future and she is missing out on something. If he is truly pathological, his patterns don’t change.

Fantasy is not the here and now. It’s not being present in the real life that is happening around you in this moment. It’s ‘out there somewhere’ kind of thinking. Come back to what’s real right now. List the 5 most real points about him right here:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Now stand back, step out of the childhood feelings, and look at the list with adult eyes. You can’t be abandoned as an adult because where ever you go, there you are and you are all you need as an adult. You don’t have dependency needs as an adult like you did as a child. To be abandoned is to be dependent on the one who is abandoning. Adults are not dependent.

Your real life is going on right NOW while you are in your head about his drama and the pathological intrigue. You are MISSING your real life that is happening right now! Drama, obsession and intrusive thoughts are usually about fantasy–the past or the future. It sure isn’t about this present moment and what’s happening right now. Such as, you might be ignoring:

• your own health
• your own self-care and happiness
• maybe that of your children and friends

…because of how much time you spend in fantasy. Fantasy is telling you ‘just a little longer and he’ll get it and then I’ll have the life I really want.’

Your life is right now–not back there and not up there in the future.

10-02-09

Deciding to Not Stay Where You Are At

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month (To us, this includes Pathological Love Relationship Awareness)

‘The First Step Towards Getting Somewhere is to DECIDE That You Are Not Going To Stay Where You Are’
(Anny Jacoby)

I just loved when I read this quote…it reminds me of what we have been talking about now for months—since I began the Living the Gentle Life series which has been about the recovery from PTSD and Pathological Love Relationships.

I get emails that say “I can’t leave because ________.” There are lots of reasons that people (men and women) feel trapped in pathological love relationships–finances, children, health, lack of job/education, religious beliefs, family attitude, fear of harm, and their own damage from PTSD. But the first step towards any kind of internal shift where something else might be a possibility is beginning with knowing you are not going to stay where you are.

The external reasons of ‘why’ you are still there are just that…external. The paradigm shift starts with the internal, the decision you make that you are not going to stay where you are: emotionally, physically, financially, spiritually, or sexually. What happens outside of us in recovery first starts with the shift internally before it is ever manifested in our lives. We won’t follow a path that isn’t developed internally first. We’ll end up only seeing the road blocks of the external which doesn’t help us.

Over the 20 years of working in pathology and victimology I have heard every kind of story about these relationships: from the most deviant kind of mind control to attempted murder, to actual murder. Financial hostage taking, rape, assaults, stalked, women put into comas, people alienated from their children, people medically harmed, reputations and careers ruined, people locked in their homes or psyches for decades. I’ve heard all of it. The emails
start with “But, I can’t and then (the reason).” But yet, they have read our magazine, are on our newsletter, or are emailing us so obviously something inside is shifting–somewhere they are deciding they are not going to stay where they are—even mentally they are moving and changing. Their ‘Yes, but’ might be a reason to them but I see beyond it. I think they are already deciding to eventually not be where they are.

Yes, there are safety and housing barriers–he won’t leave. But every community has DV services or DV housing most likely exists even a town away.

Yes, there are emotional barriers–you have PTSD. But every community has DV counseling services that are free, churches have support groups, community mental health counseling for you or your children is free or very low cost.

Yes, there are starting over barriers—when you leave with only what’s in your suitcase. But DV services and other non-profits offer furniture, clothing and house hold items to those starting over.

Yes, there are legal barriers–you don’t have an attorney. Self help, women’s organizations, non-profits, DV agencies have information on Legal Aid and OTHER types of pro-bono services if you don’t qualify for Legal Aid.

Yes, there are other case-specific barriers–there are so many issues to manage at once. But women’s org, DV agencies and other non-profits have case workers assigned to you so you don’t have to do it all yourself.

You only have to first decide “That you are not going to stay where you are at.” That’s the first step of the rest of your life. That doesn’t mean you leave tomorrow–that means you shift internally–that you open the emotional door of possibility that you will not always be where you are today.

The Institute is not a crisis program so we can’t help you ‘leave’ per se. You need to call agenices where you are at because it’s unethical for Cyber-Programs to be involved in that level of care when we cannot be face-to-face. However, there are lots of things we can do to help prepare you to make that move OR after you have left and are ready to heal.

October is DV Awareness Month and I stop to give tribute and memory to those patients of mine who have died because they believed they couldn’t do anything about their situation or they under-estimated his pathology (or her pathology). In honor of all those who have been harmed, alive or not, we remember you this month and send ‘possibility’ to you that your life can and will be different. I don’t say that flippantly–I too have experienced a lot of pain when I see patients further harmed so I say it from my own experience.

The Institute has helped thousands of people make that paradym shift internally so they could evidently make it externally. We hope you’ll be next. Instead of sending us an email that says ‘why’ your external reason is for not being able to leave right now, use that energy instead to open yourself to the possibility of what it would be like to leave, begin again, feel something, grow, get your life back, love again. Take a journal and write about that possibility. Use your energy not to talk about the staying, but the growing. We believe you will get there!

Why a Focused Recovery is Necessary

The last few weeks we have been talking again about the issue of healing, recovery, and Living the Gentle Life when you are trying to recover from PTSD and a Pathological Love Relationship. In fact, everything The Institute does is focused on your recovery! Our books, other products, magazine, retreats, services, counseling, and treatment programs–all have one thing in mind and common–YOUR recovery.

This has been a tremendous two years of development. (Don’t mind me as I wander down memory lane of all that has happened over the years at The Institute….) Two years ago the newsletter started, we began the retreat program, the Intensive 1:1s in NC, and the training of therapists. Last year, we began the training of coaches, added telephone coaching/counseling, expanded our line of retreat offerings, added more coaches, wrote Women Who Love Psychopaths, began The Institute’s online magazine, and started writing for Psychology Today. This year, we have added online teleconferencing support groups, phone assessments so you know what you need to be working on, and an inpatient treatment program for those needing intensive therapy for PTSD and other acute stress disorders.

All this development because we realized how uniquely damaged you became at the hands of a pathological male. All this research because we realized that there was probably really something to ‘the traits’ of women who end up in relationships like this. All this phone counseling, therapist training and retreat/treatment center creation because so few people ‘get it’ about you, him, and the mind-blowing relationship dynamics. An inpatient treatment program because other therapists and treatment doesn’t understand the effects of him on you. For the FIRST time there really is a concrete program designed about you and in some ways, by you, and definitely for you. The one thing that does stand out in the research is that this level of damage by him is profound. If there were lots of ‘hims’ then it’s even more profound.

I wish women understood recovery is mandatory–not optional. If you want a life or to get your old life back–you MUST recover. Why? Untreated symptoms get worse. Symptoms that get worse affect your life functioning and your children. Worsened effects then contaminate your partner selection. And if you do get a healthy one, you don’t like him or you’re too dysfunctional to be in a healthy relationship so he leaves. Untreated symptoms make intrusive thoughts worse so obsessions increase. Friends abandon you because they are tired of hearing about the obsessions so you isolate. Isolation makes you at risk of recontacting him and recontacting him lowers your coping skills. As your coping skills drop, your bad habits increase (drinking, medication over use, eating, hibernating). As your coping skills lower, your fantasizing increases. “Maybe he ISN’T pathological,” “Maybe he WILL stop cheating, etc.” and your minimizing begins. “At least he …..” More contact with him increases your Post Traumatic Stress symptoms of flashbacks, fear of the future, unbridled worry, depression, and insomnia.

Is any of this sounding familiar? By December 31 of 2009 how many of you will be in the same situation, with the same man, the same symptoms, the same miserable existence? On the other hand, how many of you will be ‘pathological free?’ — symptoms reduced, a new vigor for life, insight about how this happened and how to avoid it in the future, how many of you will be less depressed and anxious, more active, lost weight, have more friends, have a better job, have happier children, got more self esteem so a better job or gone back to school, and have potential to have a healthy relationship…?

How will that happen if you don’t take a step towards your own recovery? The Institute has developed an extensive and highly effective recovery products and programs for those who are serious about their recovery. We understand the unique challenges your face and have developed many of our programs and products with that in mind.

For instance, we recognize women are financially devastated by psychopaths. Our e-books and books are very inexpensive that provide an economical approach to recovery–packed full of pathology information. Some of our products are as inexpensive as $7.95.

Women are seriously damaged but don’t have the cash or extensive amount of time to invest in outpatient recovery that could months to get through. Use your insurance benefits by coming to our inpatient treatment program and gain the most intensive of therapy in the shortest amount of time. (Another no/low cost alternative: Contact your local DV program or community mental health program for free support and services.)

Women can’t afford to leave their area for inpatient treatment and need to be at home and at work. We are a low cost alternative to outpatient therapists charging 60% less than therapists for our phone coaching/counseling. (No/low cost alternative: Or check in with your own community mental health center which works on a sliding scale fee and DV shelters do counseling for free.)

Women need to stay at home and have a low cost alternative to connecting with other survivors of the same issues while getting support and counseling at the same time. Our tele-conferencing support groups are $20 for 1.5-2.0 hours of counseling. (No/low cost alternative: Use women’s chat forums for support.)

Women want to get away and heal at reasonable rates. Our retreats (when they run in early spring) cost approximately $22 an hour for therapy–where can you get inexpensive uniquely focused treatment for that?

** COMING SOON: Women want a quick break + treatment + the ability to bill it to their insurance. Our solution = Intensive Outpatient Programs (winter location is in FL, summer location is in NC)–often billable to your insurance. Come to our locations and get 3 months worth of treatment in 1 week! While you’re there, enjoy the beach or the mountains!

2009 has been a great year here at The Institute. We have opened many opportunities for healing in many different ways offering every possible form of recovery–self help materials through books, DVDs, e-products and CDs. Telephone coaching, counseling, and support groups. Retreats, soon Intensive Outpatient Programs in FL and NC, and our newest inpatient treatment center. For the first time ever, everything is in place to heal for the women who have loved pathologicals. We hope you will see the need and ease of adding something, anything, to your own recovery. Recovery comes to those who work it! Let us know how we can help match you with recovery basics and the best possible fit for your situation. Much healing to you!

Healing Sexually

Over the past couple of months I have been talking about healing from pathological relationships and what is involved. It requires that you face the damage that has been done and recognize any stress disorders or PTSD that you might have now from the relationship. Then it requires that you change your life in order to heal–change your environment physically and learn how to develop a life style that helps you heal emotionally, psychologically, spiritually and sexually.  Today, I am going to talk about the sexual effects of pathological and dangerous relationships.

The last few weeks I have talked about the spiritual effects of a pathological relationship. Ironically, the sexual effects are also often spiritual effects. That’s because a lot of the spiritual effects have to do with attaching and bonding on many levels–including spiritually.  In a spiritual sense, we have been designed to bond during sexual experiences. Especially women.  (WARNING–THIS IS GONNA GET GRAPHIC!!)….recent hormonal and sexual studies have indicated that orgasms achieved during sex, release the same brain chemicals that are released during BONDING with your baby! This phenomenal aspect gives great insight into WHY it’s so hard to leave a relationship even if it IS dangerous and pathological.

Many of the pathological man types are hyper-sexual–so there is ALOT of sex. A lot of sex = a lot of opportunities for sexual bonding through orgasm/hormone stimulation.  Women are by nature, NOT abandoners. Those they ‘attach’ to or ‘bond’ to–they stay with.  So the more bonded you feel to him, the less likely you are to leave.  The more sexually attached (when often feels like spiritually attached) you are, the more confusing it is to detach.

Additionally, many pathologicals who are hyper-sexual bring to the relationship a lot of deviancy. For the first time in you life, you may have been exposed to sexual behaviors or aspects that you have never experienced. Since pathologicals are great at manipulation, guilt, and rewarding your loyalty, you may have been coerced into sexual behaviors that violated your own morality or normal sexual boundaries. Perhaps pornography, sexual acts you were uncomfortable with, group sexual experiences, relationship rape, or other sexual violations. Additionally, most pathologicals in their hyper-sexuality are NOT monogamous so maybe you have acquired an STD from him.

These deep soul wounds harm more than just your emotions–it harms you spiritually and infiltrates your sexual identity. Women often feel so ‘perverted’ in what they have experienced they feel like they have to stay with him because no ‘normal’ or ‘healthy’ man would want her after what she has ‘done’ in the sexual relationship with him.  In some relationships, true sexual addiction may have occurred. You may feel like you are addicted to him, the sex with him, or sex with anyone.  What you have experienced IS sexual abuse within the relationship. However, pathologicals have the wonderful way of making you feel like a willing participant or that it’s YOUR deviancy he is responding to sexually. Remember–they twist and pervert every aspect of truth.

The sexual side effects of the relationship can contribute to your overall stress disorder or PTSD. It is an aspect that should be treated in order to re-claim your sexual identity. Untreated, your skewed sexual identity can cause you to continue to sexually act out; continue to cooperate in his sexual deviancy; use drugs/alcohol to numb out your painful feelings; cause increased PTSD/anxiety/depression symptoms or leave you despondent to stay in pathological relationships out of a sense of feeling ‘dirty’ or ‘unworthy’ of healthier relationships.  It can also impact your spirituality–driving you away from the solace and help you find in your own connection to God.

From this standpoint, the ONLY way to live a gentle life is to heal your sexual side and to see the damage done to sexuality as part of the overall picture of the after-effects of a dangerous and pathological relationship.  Please talk to your counselor about the sexual effects of your relationship.

Because of this overwhelming need, The Institute is opening its own Women’s Pathological Love Relationship & PTSD Recovery Hospital Program in Clearwater, Florida. (Most insurances accepted.)  This is the first and only program of its kind in the U.S.!

If you are in need of * Pathological Love Relationship Education * Healing the Aftermath Symptoms of Intrusive Thoughts, Obsessional Thinking, Flashbacks, Anxiety, Depression * Learning to Manage PTSD–The Institute’s Inpatient Hospital Program is just the place to get your life back!

If you would like to be assessed for our inpatient program (normally ranges from 5-12 days–depending on your insurance), contact us at saferelationships@yahoo.com.  We’ll be happy to help you find out if treatment is right for you.

Healing Your Own World View

“Be gentle with yourself. The rest of your life deserves it.” (Sandra L. Brown, MA)

Over the past month or more I have been talking about healing from a dangerous and/or pathological relationship. The chronic stress disorder and often Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that occurs from the damage done in the relationship requires a serious change in lifestyle in order to heal.

We have been talking about those changes–what needs to change physically, emotionally, and spiritually. In the last segment, we discussed the negative ‘world view’ effects resulting from pathological exposure. The negative world view impacts how you now see your post-pathological relationship world. This includes how you NOW see yourself, others, the world, your future, and God. (You can read past issues about this subject on our blog–the link is listed below).

One of the seriously ‘under treated’ effects of pathological relationship exposure is the healing of the personal world view (you can listen to the audio segment I created about this topic on the magazine under CDs/Audios. The untreated aspects ‘mimic’ PTSD symptoms with increases in depression, anxiety, fear, isolation, dread of the future and other similarly related PTSD side-effects. Healing your world view is critical to a healthy future.

Another often ‘untreated’ effect of pathological relationship exposure is the ‘unconscious adopting of the pathological’s world view.’ Not only was your world view altered from the damage done to you IN the relationship, but your world view was also altered from the damage done to you THRU the pathological. One of the unrelenting side effects is the ‘learned experience’ of seeing the world through ‘his’ eyes.

One of the things that makes pathologicals, pathological is the effect of their pathology on how they see themselves in relation to the world and others. Pathologicals are noted for their over/under sense of themselves, over/under opinion of others, and their unusual view of what the world ’should’ do for them.

While you may not have adopted these exact views like the pathological, chances are that your views have been tainted with the pathological’s viewpoint. This can include normalizing abnormal behaviors or dissociating pieces of reality AWAY from yourself. Normalizing can make womanizing, over/under employment, drug dealing, alcohol/drug abuse, domestic violence, lying, cheating, stealing, or other overtly wrong behavior ‘marginal’ when you have taken on his view of life and right/wrong. Pathologicals don’t operate by the rules. They create them for their unique situations and break them for fun.

When your grip on societal boundaries begins to slip, you have been affected by his view of the world. When his behaviors become ‘just a little different’ than other people’s or ‘all people are like this’ — your world view has been infiltrated. When you begin to think of other people like he does, or define others by his warped definitions, when you believe his ‘take’ on things or tell yourself only partials truths so you don’t have to really see his ‘real’ self–your world view has been penetrated. When you become numb and lethargic to the things he has done, your world view has been violated.

This is just one more aspect of your wounded world view that needs healing if you are going to recover. A wounded world view does not allow for living the gentle life. And the gentle life is probably not even possible until the way you see yourself, others, and the world becomes ‘gentle.’

Pathologicals are harsh. They leave people feelings irritated, rubbed raw, and chapped. Your interior does not feel ‘gentle’ –it feels the opposite of it. Pathologicals are notoriously ‘negative’ so you may have found your mood, thinking, and reactions to have taken on his negativity. It’s hard to heal when everything looks like he told you it looked–bad (and it’s all your fault!) It’s hard to live the gentle life for yourself when your emotions are anything BUT gentle.
This is the point about the necessity of healing the world view–it’s a critical part of your recovery. Because having been warped by a pathological, ‘HOW you see determines WHAT you see.’

Living the Gentle Life – Part 5

Soul Tearing—The Spiritual & World View Effects

The last few weeks I have been talking about the necessity of living a gentle life if you are recovering from a dangerous and/or pathological relationship. The damage it does to a person is profound and many are often diagnosed with a chronic stress disorder OR Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) because of it. These disorders respond best to a ‘gentle life’ that allows the body, mind, and spirit to rest from the overload of adrenaline and stress it has experienced in the dangerous relationship.  (Read our previous newsletters about this topic listed on the magazine)

I have talked about physically how to ‘adjust’ your environment if you have a stress disorder and we also talked about the emotional effects—anxiety, depression, and other after-effects associated with PTSD.  Today, we are going to talk about the spiritual effects.

Dangerous and pathological relationships violate at a deep soul level. That’s because it touches on the core building blocks of our concepts about relationships–Trust, Love, and Hope. Deception is evil and sick and when you realize ‘who/what’ you have been with, there is a violation that cuts to the deepest part of a person: their spirit.

Often these kinds of pathological relationships have already ‘played into’ your soul connection…leading you down the path of believing that your ‘connection’ was spiritual in nature. There were probably lots of promises of the ‘life together’ and all the ‘reasons God brought you two together.’ In the end, they were lies but before you knew they were lies, they were HOPES.

~ “Hope is the thing with wings, that perches in the soul.” ~ (Emily Dickinson)

So many pathological relationships have “an intense attachment” that feels like ‘connection’ or ’soul mate status’ when in reality it is just the intense game of the ‘pathological’ sucking you in and hoping you will confuse intensity with something healthy.

But Hope, Love, and Trust are all core spiritual values and when you have invested those core values and beliefs in someone and then the heinous deception is revealed that the ‘goal’ of the relationship was to manipulate you all along, something ‘rips’ inside of you. This ’soul tearing’ brings a spiritual skepticism, a distrust that permeates everything you EVER believed…sometimes even about God.
It’s a disastrous wound to your ‘world view’ and how you see yourself, others, God, and the world at large.

These mortal wounds to your world view can last a long time because, in effect, they are the ways you have come to ‘believe’ about yourself (I can’t trust my intuition), others (everyone is evil), the world (it’s a sick place) and God (He didn’t protect me). This profound shift in your world view can increase the symptoms of PTSD–depression, anxiety, alienation, loneliness, isolation, and a fear or dread of the future.

So often the spiritual effects of the pathological relationship are overlooked both by the victim and by the therapist. This ‘world view’ earthquake has shaken the foundation of your belief system. Without repair to the foundation from which you build your self concept, healing is limited to only symptom management. Spiritual healing of your world view is paramount to your overall recovery.

I have created a 15 minute audio (mp3) “Spiritual Effects’ that goes into more detail about healing your world view and the spiritual effects of dangerous relationships. I think the audio will greatly help your understanding of WHY this part of yourself MUST be healed as well and how the unhealed aspects can impact depression, anxiety, reaching out to others, and your future relationships. You can pick it up on the magazine under Shopping/CDs, Audios.

Also, if you are in counseling, please allow your counselor to listen to the mp3 too. This will help them address these issues with you in counseling. This is an area so often ‘under treated’ by other counselors. I teach on this aspect a lot at professional conferences and therapists are eager to understand this aspect of spiritual side effects and its impact on chronic stress disorders.

Because of this overwhelming need, The Institute is opening its own Women’s Pathological Love Relationship & PTSD Recovery Hospital Program at Windmoor Treatment Center in Clearwater, Florida. (Most insurance accepted.)  This is the first and only program of its kind in the U.S.!

If you are in need of * Pathological Love Relationship Education * Healing the Aftermath Symptoms of Intrusive Thoughts, Obsessional Thinking, Flashbacks, Anxiety, Depression * Learning to Manage PTSD– The Institute’s Inpatient Hospital Program is just the place to get your life back!

If you would like to be assessed for our inpatient program (normally ranges from 5-12 days–depending on your insurance), contact us at saferelationships@yahoo.com.  We’ll be happy to help you find out if treatment is right for you.

Living the Gentle Life – Part 4

‘Ah….just get a life!’

People ever tell you that? Sometimes from the chronic stress and upheaval the pathological relationship causes, people can get very one-dimensional and hyper-focused on him/the relationship/or the problems. They stop doing the kinds of things in their life that could help them be LESS obsessed, depressed, or anxious. That’s because women really tend to ‘lose themselves’ in the pathological relationship. It’s a testimony to the strength of pathology.

The crazier it gets, the more they feel like they need to ‘try to understand it’ or ‘try to make him understand what he’s doing’ or ‘do something that will help the relationship feel less pathological.’ This idea can be a 24/7 thing…it can take up your whole life trying to balance the relationship, which, as you have figured out, is un-balanceable.

Getting lost in a very dark tunnel can draw people away from the actions, behaviors, thoughts, people, and resources that previously allowed them to live a happier and more balanced life. The dangerous and pathological relationship is ALL consuming and soon any level of your own self care is abandoned for the insane focus on how to fix him/the relationship.

It isn’t long before others around you notice the myopic/single focused person you have become that can’t think about or talk about anything except the dangerous relationship. This myopic view of your relationship has now blacked out any other part of your life…people are bailing out of your life, emotional resources are dwindling, your life has become the size and shape of him.

Women in the most dire of all situations (especially in domestic violence for instance) are those who have lost physical and emotional resources and can find no way to get out. The less support a woman feels from others the more likely she is to stay because it takes SUPPORT to get out/to break up/or to not go back. So, by the act of myopia, her life and resources just dwindle away.

One day someone says to her ‘man, you need to get a life bigger than THIS!’ and something really hits her about that statement. Like coming out of a big deep freeze…the light bulb goes on—she notices her lack of life and says “What happened to me? Where is my LIFE?????”

The last few weeks in the newsletter I have been talking about ‘Living the Gentle Life’–especially if you are someone who has lived in a pathological relationship or has a chronic stress disorder or PTSD from the relationship.

A gentle life is a FULL life–one that includes the finds of things that nurture you, that bring peace to you, are simultaneously IN and PART of our lives.

The gentle life is healing because to feel JOY is to send the right kinds of brain chemistry to your brain that fights depression and anxiety and gives the sensation of ‘well-being.’ We need to be Joy Hunters!

Women go back (or pick poorly again) because they fail to build a life for themselves. They know how to ‘invest, invest, invest’ in him and THEIR relationship with him but have NO idea how to ‘invest’ and build their own life WITHOUT HIM like the one listed above. Women who have out side healthy lives ARE the women most likely to get out and stay out.

Loneliness is one of the KEY risk factors in why women go back. There are so many ways to get your needs met for friendship, fun, support, beauty, or whatever you love in life. Building a ‘life’ is the best prevention for relapse a woman can do.

But sadly, many will NOT do it. After 20 years, I can pretty much pick out who will and won’t invest in themselves and build a life. Those that don’t are in the same boat 10 years down the road…either with this pathological person or another one just like him. Those that do build a life are less likely to feel pressured to date or get so lonely they pick up the phone and call him.

The Gentle Life isn’t even possible unless you have a life that is ready for transformation. Living with a pathological man or picking another one is about as OPPOSITE of a gentle life as there is. Will you be one that rebuilds a fabulous life? Or be stuck in your dependency on dangerous and pathological relationships?

So many women say “But I don’t know where to start in the rebuilding…my life has been like this SO long I don’t know where to begin.” This is such an important issue so to solidify this discussion, I have created a companion mp3 called “Stop Focusing on Him: Get a Great Life.” We ran it recently, but I’m gonna put the link in again because it’s such a great reminder!

Because of this overwhelming need, The Institute is opening its own Women’s Pathological Love Relationship & PTSD Recovery Hospital Program at Windmoor Treatment Center in Clearwater, Florida. (Most insurance accepted.) This is the first and only treatment program of its kind in the U.S.!

If you are in need of * Pathological Love Relationship Education * Healing the Aftermath Symptoms of Intrusive Thoughts, Obsessional Thinking, Flashbacks, Anxiety, Depression * Learning to Manage PTSD– The Institute’s Inpatient Hospital Program is just the place to get your life back! (Opening the week of August 18, 2009).

If you would like to be assessed for our inpatient program (normally ranges from 5-12 days–depending on your insurance), contact us at saferelationships@yahoo.com.  We’ll be happy to help you find out if treatment is right for you.

Living The Gentle Life—Part 3

The Emotional Effects

In the previous newsletter I have been talking about recovering from a pathological love relationship. The toll it takes on people often leaves them with chronic stress symptoms and for extremely bad relationships, often Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)–a diagnosable anxiety disorder. The long term stress from the pathological love relationship (with narcissists, abusive partners, socio/psychopaths) effect people emotionally, physically, sexually and spiritually.

I have been talking about what the body ‘does’ when it is under chronic stress and the results of this unrelenting stress. (The previous newsletters about this are on the magazine under Sandra’s Current Article) The last newsletter discussed how to deal with the physical ramifications of stress and I even created a unique relaxation audio for people with chronic stress or PTSD (which is available on the magazine under Shopping/CDs,Audios). I also talked about changing your physical environment to embrace the needs of a stress disorder.

Today, we are going to discuss the emotional effects and how to create the Gentle Life for your emotional needs as well.

PTSD is as an emotional disorder that falls in the category of an anxiety disorder therefore, someone with chronic stress of any kind needs to learn the types of techniques that help reduce emotional anxiety. The problem is, by the time people ‘ask for help’ with chronic stress or PTSD, they have often lived with it for a long time and the symptoms are now extreme.

The emotional effects of untreated PTSD can include tension, panic attacks, depression, anxiety, sleep disturbances, intrusive thoughts, nightmares, flash backs or hyper-startle reflex. All of these are distressing and over time a combination of these symptoms are normal to have all at the same time.

The relaxation technique is a way of managing the physical symptoms of PTSD. Relaxation techniques are not ‘optional’ in the recovery of chronic stress/PTSD. That’s because these techniques have a dual purpose. These same relaxation techniques also help manage the emotional symptoms as well as the physical. Learning correct breathing to ward off anxiety and panic attacks can be done thru the relaxation techniques.

Likewise, these same techniques can help with sleep disruptions, and tension. Chronic stress and PTSD are disorders that should be treated by a professional therapist. Especially with PTSD, the symptoms tend to increase over time if not treated. People make the mistake of waiting until it is totally unbearable and then it takes time to back down the symptoms. People are often ‘hopeful’ it will just go away when the pathological relationship has ended or contact is ended. These aren’t the worst relationships in the world for nothing! They are labeled that because they produce horrible side effects!

Unfortunately, PTSD is a chronic disorder which means you are likely to have symptoms off and on for years, maybe a lifetime. This is all the more reason to learn how to manage the symptoms when you may need to. Intrusive thoughts are one of the most complained about symptoms.

This is when unwanted thoughts of the pathological person/relationship keep popping in your head. No matter how many times you try to ‘not’ think about it, it keeps coming back. The problem with the imagery in your mind is that each time it pops in there it has the ability to trigger you. Your body responses to that trigger with adrenaline which just starts your whole stress cycle over again. So managing the intrusive thoughts and flashbacks is imperative to emotionally regulating yourself and living the gentle life

Living the gentle life means removing yourself from personalities that are similar to the pathological relationship. We often tend to migrate BACK to the same kinds of people and relationships we just left. These kinds of abusive people can cause an emotional avalanche. It is important that you understand the kinds of traits in people you should avoid if you have PTSD or stress. This could be people who remind you of the pathological person, loud or aggressive people, people who violate your boundaries or bother you in other ways. Stress and PTSD do mandate that you develop self protective skills such as boundaries—learning to say no or leave environments that increase your symptoms. Learn to migrate instead to people who are serene or leave you feeling relaxed and happy.

Creating your gentle physical environment will also help you emotionally. An environment that is soothing, calm, quiet, soft, and comfortable has the best chance of allowing an over-stimulated body to relax. Changing your physical environment for your emotional benefits and adding the relaxation technique can greatly impact the amount of emotional symptoms you experience. Learning ‘emotional regulation skills’ for stress/PTSD is a must.

Because of this overwhelming need, The Institute is opening its own Women’s Pathological Love Relationship & PTSD Recovery Hospital Program at Windmoor Treatment Center in Clearwater, Florida. (Most insurance accepted.) If you are in need of * Pathological Love Relationship Education * Healing the Aftermath Symptoms of Intrusive Thoughts, Obsessional Thinking, Flashbacks, Anxiety, Depression * Learning to Manage PTSD–The Institute’s Inpatient Hospital Program is just the place to get your life back! (Opening August 2009). If you would like to be assessed for our inpatient program (normally ranges from 5-12 days–depending on your insurance), contact us at saferelationships@yahoo.com. We’ll be happy to help you find out if treatment is right for you.

The Physical Effects

In the previous newsletter I had begun talking about the normal after-math of pathological love relationships—Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. (Previous newsletter is on the magazine under Sandra’s Current Articles.)

PTSD is an anxiety disorder that is often re-activated by daily ‘triggers.’ These can include people, places, things, or sensory feelings that reconnect you with the trauma of the relationship. In the last newsletter I talked about the gentle life and how an over-taxed and anxious body/mind needs a soothing life. I cannot stress this enough that people MUST remember that their PTSD symptoms CAN BE re-activated if you aren’t taking care of yourself and living a gentle life.

What IS a gentle life? A gentle life is a life lived remembering the sensitivities of your PTSD. It isn’t ignored, or wished away–it is considered and compensated for. Since PTSD affects one physically, emotionally, sexually, and spiritually–all of those elements need to be considered in a gentle life. Just as if you had diabetes you would consider what you eat or what medication you need to take, so is it with PTSD.

Interestingly, although PTSD has its description listed in the psychiatric manuals, PTSD has some very real physical effects as well. In fact, they have even discussed listing it in physician’s manuals as well because the untreated on-going effects of acute stress are well known in the medical community. Since PTSD has both components of emotional and physical symptoms, someone recovering from PTSD must take those aspects into account.

Physically, PTSD is often a chronic condition by the time you take yourself for emotional help. That means you have been living with it for a while and it has been wreaking havoc on your physical body during that time. Unbridled anxiety/stress/fear pumps enormous amounts of adrenaline and cortisol into your body. This over stimulates your body and mind and causes insomnia, paranoia, hyperactivity, a racing mind/intrusive thoughts and the inability to ‘let down’ and ‘rest.’

A body that has been living on adrenaline needs the adrenal glands to ‘chill!’ People often complain of chronic insomnia which also leads to depression. Depression can lead to lethargy, over eating, weight gain and hopelessness. It is possible to have both anxiety and depression occurring at the same time. Un-managed stress, anxiety, and adrenaline can lead to longer term medical problems often associated with stress–lower GI problems, migraines, teeth grinding, aggravated periods, chest pain, panic attacks, chronic fatigue and most auto-immune disorders like fibromyalgia, lupus, chronic fatigue, arthritis, and MS.

So, CLEARLY PTSD is something that SHOULD be treated. Physically that means to go to someone who can diagnose you–a therapist or psychiatrist. In the early parts of treatment, it is normal to take anti-anxiety medication, anti-depressants or sleep aides in order to rectify your depleted brain chemistry and to allow the adrenal glands to
‘rest’ and stop pumping out the adrenaline. Your doctor is in the best position to tell you what will help you relieve your physical symptoms.

Additionally, you need to help your body and brain produce the ‘good stuff’ in your brain chemistry which means exercising, eating well, and learning relaxation techniques. Too much adrenaline has been pumping through your body with no way to get utilized. Excessive adrenaline makes your feel jumpy and restless. Exercise (even moderate walking) helps to produce endorphins in your brain that produce those feelings of ‘well-being’ and helps to burn off the adrenaline and any extra weight you might have gathered.

Although during depression you often don’t FEEL like exercising, you will always feel bad if you don’t get your body moving. Stress is even stored at the cellular level of our bodies. You must, must, must get moving in order to feel better.

Eating well means not trying to medicate your depression and low energy with carbs. When you are depressed your body craves carbs as a source of quick energy but the spikes in blood sugar add to the sense of mood highs and lows. You’ve already had enough ‘junk’ in the relationship–think of it as nurturing to give your body good food to replace all the ‘junk’ that it has been through. You can greatly help mood swings by eating well.

Dealing with the negative habits you have picked up as a ‘coping mechanism’ is also necessary. Lots of people with PTSD try to medicate their anxiety and depression. This could be through smoking, relationship hopping, sex, eating/binging/purging, drugs (legal and illegal) and the increased use of alcohol. In fact, one of the devastating side effects of PTSD is how many alcoholics it produces. Anything you are prone to right now tends to increase when you have PTSD because you begin to do that habit more and more to manage your PTSD symptoms. Finding positive coping skills instead of negative habits is a great step in your recovery.

Physical recovery also means paying attention to not reactivating your symptoms. Your physical environment in which you live, play and work must be conducive to low stimulation. That means low lights, low noise, and low aggravation. Sometimes that means making big changes in how your house is run so that it is not loud, noisy and over active. Sometimes that means making big changes in the PEOPLE you hang out with — getting rid of the loud, noisy, over active, aggressive and pathological. And sometimes it means making big changes in a job where the environment does nothing but trigger you.

Lastly, learning relaxation techniques is not ‘optional’ for people with PTSD. PTSD is a chronic state of hyper-vigilance, agitation, and restlessness. Your body has been over-ridden with adrenaline for a long time and has ‘forgotten’ how to find it’s equilibrium in relaxation. It must be retaught. Re-teaching means doing it daily. Taking 5 – 10 minutes a day to use relaxation breathing and allowing your mind to unwind and giving positive messages to your body to relax will help your tap into this natural relaxation even during times you are not actively trying to relax. The more you use the technique, the quicker your body can relax–even at work or when you are doing something else because it has ‘remembered’ how to.

There are lots of tapes, CDs or videos you can buy on relaxation that walk you thru how to do it (we also have one created for PTSD on the magazine under Shopping/CDs, Audios.

Or take Yoga where they teach you these deep breathing techniques that help correct the ’shallow/panting’ breathing that is associated with PTSD and anxiety. This type of breathing can actually trigger panic attacks. Learning to breathe well again is a metaphor for ‘exhaling’ all the junk you’ve been thru and releasing it. If you don’t have a relaxation tape, you are welcome to get our mp3 audio on relaxation techniques on our website. Most importantly is to just become acutely aware that PTSD is physical (and often medical) as it is emotional.

Because of this overwhelming need, The Institute is opening its own Women’s Pathological Love Relationship & PTSD Recovery Hospital Program at Windmoor Treatment Center in Clearwater, Florida. (Most insurance accepted.) This is the first and only program of its kind in the U.S.

If you are in need of * Pathological Love Relationship Education * Healing the Aftermath Symptoms of Intrusive Thoughts, Obsessional Thinking, Flashbacks, Anxiety, Depression * Learning to Manage PTSD–The Institute’s Inpatient Hospital Program is just the place to get your life back! (Opening August 2009). If you would like to be assessed for our inpatient program (normally ranges from 5-12 days–depending on your insurance), contact us at saferelationships@yahoo.com. We’ll be happy to help you find out if treatment is right for you.

Living the Gentle Life Part 1

“Be gentle with yourself. The rest of your life deserves it.” (Sandra L. Brown, MA)

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a trauma-related anxiety disorder. PTSD is often seen as an aftermath symptom of Pathological Love Relationships. Exposure to other people’s pathology can and often does, give other people stress disorders, including PTSD. Our systems are simply not wired for long term exposure to someone else’s abnormal psychology. Often the result is a series of aftermath symptoms that include PTSD which is described as ‘a normal reaction to an abnormal life event.’ Being with a narcissist, socio or psychopath is definitely an ‘abnormal life event.’

PTSD’s profound and long term effects create what I refer to as a ‘cracked vessel.’ The fragmentation caused by the trauma creates a crack in the emotional defense system of the person. While treatment can ‘glue the crack back together’ and the vessel can once again function as a vessel, if pressure is applied to the crack, the vase will split apart again. This means, that the crack is a stress fracture in the vessel—it’s the part of the vessel that is damaged and weakened in that area.

There are numerous types of therapies that can help PTSD. If you have it, or someone you care about has it, you/they should seek treatment because it does not go away by itself and many people don’t realize that if left untreated, it can worsen. People often have missed the opportunity of treating PTSD when it was still relatively ‘treatable’ and responsive to therapy. The sooner PTSD is treated, the better the outcome. But any treatment can still help PTSD.

However, what is often not recognized is the ‘continual’ life that must be lived when living with the after effects of PTSD. Because the cracked vessel can re-crack again, a gentle and balanced life will relieve a lot of the PTSD symptoms that can linger. I have often seen people who have put a lot of effort into their recovery NOT put a lot of effort into the quality of a gentle life following treatment. This is a mistake because going back into a busy and crazy life can re-fragment the PTSD. As much as people want to ‘get back out there’ and think they can return to the life they use to live, often that’s not true. ‘Wanting’ to be able to live or do what you did before does not mean that you will be able to.

Consequently, many people’s anxiety symptoms returned. Much like a 12 Step program, ‘one day at a time’ is necessary and understanding your proclivity for re-activated PTSD must stay foremost in your mind.

Living the gentle life means reducing your exposure to triggers that can re-activate your PTSD. Only you know what these are…if you don’t know, then that’s the first order of therapy–to find your triggers. You can’t avoid (or even treat) what you don’t know exists.

Triggers are exposure to emotional, physical, sexual, visual, auditory, or kinesthetic reminders that set off anxiety symptoms. This could be people, places, objects, sounds, tastes, or smells that reconnect you to your trauma. Once you are reconnected to your trauma, your physical body reacts by pumping out the adrenaline and you become hyper-aroused known as hyper vigilant. This increases paranoia, insomnia, startle reflex and lots of other over-stimulated and anxiety oriented behaviors.

Other triggers that are not trauma-specific but you should be on the alert for are violent movies, TV, or music, high noise levels, life style/jobs/people who are too fast-paced, ‘busy’ environments, risky or scary jobs, bosses or co-workers who have personality disorders and are abrasive, or any other situation that kick-starts your anxiety.
Women are often surprised that other people’s pathology now sets them off. Once they have been exposed to pathology and gotten PTSD from this exposure, other pathology can trigger PTSD symptoms. Living ‘pathology free’ is nearly mandatory–to the degree that you can ‘un-expose’ yourself to other known pathologies.

The opposite of chronic exposure to craziness and pathology would be the gentle life. Think ‘Zen Retreat Center’ — a subdued environment where your senses can rest…where a body that has been too pumped up with adrenaline can let down…a mind that races can relax, the video flash-backs can go on pause, fast-paced chest panting can turn
into long/slow/deep diaphragmatic breathing, where darting eyes can close, where soft scents soothe, and gentle music lulls, where high heels come off and flip flops go on…where long quiet walks give way to tension release…where quieting of the mind chases off the demons of hyperactive thinking….where when you whisper you can hear yourself.

Only, this isn’t a retreat center for once a year…this is your life where your recovery and your need for all things-gentle, are center in your life. It doesn’t mean you need to quit your job or move to a mountain, but it does mean that you attend to your over-stimulated physical body. Those things in your life you can control such as the tranquility of your own environment need to be. Lifestyle adjustments ARE required for those who want to avoid reactivated anxiety. This includes psychological/emotional, physical, sexual, and spiritual self care techniques.

The one thing you can count on about PTSD is when you AREN’T taking care of your self your body will SCREAM IT! Your life can not be the crazy-filled life you may watch others live. Your need for exercise, quiet, healthy food, spirituality, tension release, and joy are as necessary as oxygen for someone with PTSD. Walking the gentle path is your best guard against more anxiety and your best advocate for peace.

Because of this overwhelming need, The Institute is opening its own Women’s Pathological Love Relationship & PTSD Recovery Hospital Program at Windmoor Treatment Center in Clearwater, Florida. (Most insurance accepted.) This is the country’s first and only program of its kind!

If you are in need of * Pathological Love Relationship Education * Healing the Aftermath Symptoms of Intrusive Thoughts, Obsessional Thinking, Flashbacks, Anxiety, Depression * Learning to Manage PTSD–The Institute’s Inpatient Hospital Program is just the place to get your life back! (Opening August 2009). If you would like to be assessed for our inpatient program (normally ranges from 5-12 days–depending on your insurance), contact us at saferelationships@yahoo.com. We’ll be happy to help you find out if treatment is right for you.

In a session someone says “I really miss what we had. I could get over this if it hadn’t been the most wonderful relationship of my life. I just feel like something has been cut out of me–like I’m missing a big part of myself now.”

Pathology is marked by the issue of illusion. It’s why our logo is a mask because it best represents
the mirage of normalcy that pathologicals can often project…at least for a while. Cleckley, one of the writers about pathology from the 1940’s called it ‘The Mask of Sanity’ which gives all the surface signals of deep connection, the most fun ever, someone really into you—while behind the curtain, you are being used as a distraction, a pay check, grotesquely as a ‘vaginal doormat’ or some other form of ‘feeding’ of the pathological pyrannia. What you are experiencing you are internally labeling as ‘normal’ or ‘wonderful’ or ‘love’ and yet it really isn’t any of those things–it’s just a label of experience you have tagged him with. If someone else was watching your relationship as a movie and had watched the other scenes in which the pathological is exposed for what he is, your scene would be tagged and labeled by the watcher very differently because their experience would be different and they would see all those behaviors and words of his that you experienced in a different context and see them as manipulation. Your labeling of your experience isn’t always accurate. As I often say “Your thinking is what got you into this pathological relationship. Don’t always believe what you think.”

Being invested in being correct is part of the human condition and actually part of the way our brains work. The more important the question “Does he love me? Is this THE one?” — the greater the pleasure will seem from labeling the experience as positive. The more positive the relationship, the more invested you will be to label the experiences and his behavior as positive and to get the reward of your label “him, marriage, the relationship.” Of course none of this is problematic except if you have misread the illusion, believed the mask, and have labeled an experience with a narcissist, anti-social, or socio/psychpath as ‘positive.’

The illusion is that he was normal, he was in love with you, he was what he said he was, and he did what he said he did. In pathology, that’s never the case. Their attachments are surface (which isn’t love), they are mentally disordered (which is not normal), they never present themselves as ‘disordered, sexually promiscious, and incapable of love (so he wasn’t what he said he was) and they harbor hidden lives filled with other sex partners, hook ups, criminality, or illegal/moral behavior (so they don’t disclose what he’s really up to). What you had (that you can’t possibly miss) is a pathological relationship. What you miss, is the ability to wrap yourself up like a blanket in the illusion–to go back to the time before you knew this was all illusion.

Women often say they have the feeling that something is cut out of them–that they are missing a part of themselves. This sensation is similar to what is called phantom limb pain that is a medical mystery of sorts. When a person has an arm that is accidentally amputated, the portion of the brain that use to receive sensory messages about the existing arm goes through a series of changes that causes it to mis-read the brain message and creates the ‘ghostly’ illusion that the arm is still there and in pain. Even though the patient can see that the arm is gone and what they are experiencing is an illusion, they can’t stop the distressing phantom limb sensations of wanting to believe the arm is still there, the arm is in pain, the arm is anything but gone. The amputee must learn to cope differently by beginning with relabeling the experience they are having which is the presense of the arm is a perceptual illusion.

So it is with those leaving the illusional pathological love relationship. The emotional pain experienced is based on the illusion the pathological presented, a perceptual illusion that was mis-labeled, experienced as positive and invested in so keeping that positive illusion is important to her. Learning to adjust the cognitive dissonance (the ping ponging between he was good/he was bad, the relationship was good/the relationship was bad) is the challenge in overcoming the ghostly emotional baggage of phantom relationship pain.

For more information on this, we have added a book to the magazine site under Resources/ExpertsBooks/General which is called ‘On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You Are Wrong.’ The book is about “Despite how certainty feels, it is neither a conscious choice nor even a thought process. Certainty and similar states of “knowing what we know” are sensations that feel like thoughts, but arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that function independently of reason.” By Robert Burton, neurologist and neuro-scientist.

Life, Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness

Happy 4th of July! With all that flag waving and potato salad, I couldn’t help but think about ‘Independence Day’ — the day that women cut the cords of dependency and exit dangerous and pathological relationships.

Over the years I have talked about ‘Living the Gentle Life’ when you are recovering from a pathological relationship and and why that’s important for recovering from dangerous attachments to dangerous relationships. ‘The Gentle Life’ is a path choice after the too-much-drama of pathologicals.

Independence Day begins ‘The Gentle Life for a lot of women. It’s the day that you ‘come to’ and say:

• How did I get here?
• Is this REALLY my life?
• Where did the real me go?
• Look how much this has cost me to be with him
• Look what it’s done to my friends/family/children
• You know what? I’m not CRAZY!
• I don’t believe his lies any more
• I’m sick of feeling this way
• I am tired of hearing about how everything is my fault
• I am sickened by my own staying

Independence Day is the day you pick up ‘How to Spot a Dangerous Man,’ ‘Women Who Love Psychopaths’ or any other insight-oriented material that makes you snap out of the trance you have been in within the relationship. It’s the day you read a book, listen to an audio, call a counselor, or pack your bags. It’s the day you pray ‘God help me get out,’ change the locks on your door, or leave his bags at the curb. It’s the day you book a retreat, go back to church/temple, confess your pathological sick relationship to others.

Independence Day symbolizes freedom…not only in this country but in ourselves.

• The freedom to heal.
• The freedom to choose differently.
• The freedom to gain insight from someone other than a pathological individual we have been involved with.
• The freedom to end what is unhealthy.

Life, Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness is Living The Gentle Life–aspects of a healthy life that
can’t occur within pathological and dangerous relationships. There is no life in that! It has all been sucked out of you by the pathological personality that is needy, defiant, deviant, or insatiable. There is no Liberty–he runs the show, your thoughts, your needs, your dreams. There is no Pursuit of Happiness–only his. All pathologicals have an agenda that include their own perverted entitlement. Your happiness is only an accident if it happens while he is pursuing his own.

People fight to keep us free. Shouldn’t you fight to keep yourself free? Independence isn’t the opposite of dependency. It’s the absence of self negation where you respect your own uniqueness, self, and life path and that you live first for these values. Independence isn’t selfishness. It isn’t some prescription for aloneness. It’s the foundation of boundaries, self care, emotional and relational health. Independence allows and builds inter-dependence–the structure that allows us to mutually care for one another without pathological suffocation. Independence is most assuredly, Living The Gentle Life.

To celebrate your new life and the 4th of July , I am giving you a free mp3 download this week called Creating Independence. Let me know how you like it!

Talent -VS- Personality Disorders

The world has been rocked by the death of Michael Jackson who is likely to be remembered equally for not only his talent/creativity, his bizarre behavior, appearance, and practices and the abuse allegations he has gone thru more than once. It seems at ‘odds’ that someone so talented could also be fairly disordered.

Michael appears to meet the critieria for Schizotypal Personality Disorder. There has been many other articles written about Michael’s possible link to Schizotypal Personality Disorder (just google).
This disorder is:

• acute discomort with, and reduced capacity for close relationships
• Odd beliefs or magical thinking that influences behavior and is inconsistent with cultural norms
• Unusual perceptual experiences
• Odd thinking and speech
• Suspiciousness or paranoid ideas
• Inappropriate or constricted emotions
• Behavior or appearance that is odd, eccentric, or peculiar
• Lack of close friends or confidants other than first degree relatives
• Excessive social anxiety that does not diminish with familiarity and tends to be associated with paranoid fears rather than negative judgments about self.

Through the years we have watched a mega-talent and child prodigy slowly turn into a reclusive and eccentric man-boy. Exemplifying the oddities of schizotypals, he has continued to alter his appearance past the point of ‘normal’ appearing cosmetic surgery–often implying that the weirder it gets, the better. He used other behaviors as ways of accentuating his ‘eccentricity’ and uniqueness–often seen wearing a germ mask (long before the flu fears), claimed that Bubbles his chimpanzee was his closest companion (not humans), created his property into Neverland, storybook based on the Peter Pan story of ‘never wanting to grow up’ and remained highly reclusive from that point on–drawing mostly children to Neverland. The stories about sleeping in the ‘anti-aging chamber’
along with his growing oddity of appearance, dress, and behavior, sadly attracted the title ‘Wacko Jacko.’

His two sexual child abuse cases, while dismissed, did expose some of his bizarre thinking, stating “It’s the most loving thing to share your bed with a child.” The inability to see the inappropriateness of some of his comments especially while under investigation established much of his thinking as ‘disordered’ and out of touch with reality and what is ‘normal’ in other people’s eyes.

While bizarre children’s names are not out of the norm with celebrities and many every day people name their children after themselves or a family name, his reflected a glaring narcissism. First child was Prince Michael I, second child Paris Michael (a girl), third child Prince Michael II.

The last child produced more examples of his bizarre behavior by him dangling the infant over a hotel balcony. Today, the child is referred to as ‘Blanket.’ While celebrities all try to shield their children from the negative effects of the media and possible kidnapping, Michael’s was the most extreme–given his schizotypal approach to life. His children, when they were rarely seen in public, had elaborate masks or towels hanging from their heads. While other huge celebrities face the same threats (John Lennon, McCartney, Elvis, JF Kennedy)– none responded by dressing their children bizarrely in masks or towels and prohibiting any known information about them.

Michael stands as probably THE most talented person to date changing the racial divide in music, changing MTV, and pressing excellence in music far beyond what anyone had done to that point. But talent does not mean that it is not co-mingled and intertwined around rather severe disorder. We see that over and over again in pathology–that people’s pathology is often dismissed when it is compared to their achievements. Various forms of pathology SEEKS careers in which they receive a lot of status, attention, money, or exposure. Many forms of pathology are laced with excitement seeking, risk taking, and high achieving traits that will ‘help’ pathology over the bar and up the career ladder. We shouldn’t be looking for pathology working at the grocery store or the car wash. While there are blue collar pathologicals, many (and those most undetected) are successful–even mega-successfully. Certain disorders migrate to certain fields such as medicine, the legal field, criminal justice, law enforcement, banking, psychology/theology, and even the entertainment field. While it is tempting to take our eyes off of ‘who’ they are underneath the talent, it is just as important for us to remember that talent and disorder aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s as if the Creator gives greatly on one side, and takes greatly from the other side–there are talented excesses and devastating deficits. Michael’s talent exemplifies what it means to be a prodigy. His personal life and deteriorating behavioral life also shines a light on how pathology is not a respecter or persons–any talented person can be harboring the life-altering effects of pathology.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw him moon walk and the goose bumps I had when he sang Thriller. Yet I’ll also never forget the first time I saw his face being so altered from surgery and thinking this was the revelation of a bigger problem or the mortification I felt when he was fighting sexual abuse allegations. In either extreme, we will all remember something “BIGGER” than life about Michael. Much healing to those who loved him–which were many.

Last Week Was ‘Will It Ever End?’ This Week is “Why Won’t It Ever End?’

We began talking about the ongoing battles with pathologicals-whether it is a break up, move out, divorce, property settlement, mediation, child custody, or the ever-revolving door of litiginious events with law enforcement or the legal system. By nature of the pathology, they are MORE likely to allege falsified abuse, stalk the other parent, sue, to continue to sue, to not settle, to refuse mediation services, to go to court over things like “his shoes are dirty therefore this is parental neglect,” to reject every child evaluator, reject every child therapist, reject every child pediatrician, reject every child’s school choice. They gaslight situations suggesting things have happened that didn’t, nor can they be proved they did or did not happen. (Classic gaslighting is associated with NPDs, ASPDs, socio/psychopaths). They are MORE likely to need court monitored visits after exchange antics which now require ‘a babysitter’ for their behavior and yet reject every monitor chosen, every center selected, or will find centers that are the farthest away in the most dangerous areas to ask the other parent to bring the child to. They also do not follow through on child support payments, other medical needs the children may have, does not pay their share of attorney and court fees. They use up enormous legal resources which has given them their own title within the legal system known as ‘High Conflict Person’ which eventually becomes a ‘High Conflict Case’ for you and for them. A ‘typical’ legal scenario (provided by Bill Eddy www.billeddy.com) is:

A Petition is filed, then there are countless emergency court hearings, restraining orders, restricted visitation, and/or residence exclusion, many filing for temporary hearings on custody, visitation, child support, and spousal support. Then there is the unending filing for many declarations for hearing, getting an evaluator appointed, preparing documentation for evaluators/court (often done multiple times), serving numerous subpoenas, taking lists and lists of depositions, going through the demand for documentations, attending multiple temporary hearings. Now they have received the trial only to have delays that can go on for years, disputes over evaluators reports and other unending other objections. Then begins the continuous disputes over trial court orders, motions for reconsideration, etc. Sprinkled through out are the constant allegations to child services of abuse and neglect, the rallying of others to support the allegations, and the utter exhaustion of the child services departments with the constant threats of suing them, etc. Once/if after all these enormous amount of time, money, energy is and the divorce is granted, then there is the ongoing post divorce hearings with the constant modification requests, custody battles, alleging new relationships which are bad for the children, failed relationships wit others bringing in new conflicts, drama and trauma.

It’s easy to see that this kind of behavior is what is shutting down our court systems and why it’s hard to get simple things done. 90% of the problems are being produced by a small % of the people who have the largest % of mental health and pathology disorders. In fact, it is cases like THESE that indicate to professionals working on these cases that there is in fact, pathology present. They have already been named ‘High Conflict Persons’ to help identify the partner who is likely to keep producing litigious insanity. It has taken a while for all the professional systems involved in cases like these to come to understand what behavior like this IS attached to: chronic and unrelenting pathology. For many years euphemisms have been used for these people “difficult cases” “pain in the butt cases” “problematic” instead of understanding these ARE the behaviors associated with pathological conditions.

Pathology is simply being what it is—in the relationship, in the parenting, in the courts. It holds its’ mask in place for a while but then it always slips where other professionals are able to identify the behaviors and recognize the pathology. This is the unification of how Public Pathology Awareness is beginning to allow systems involved with pathologicals to more easily identify them by their universal and consistent behaviors, in and out of court.

The Institute’s goal is to bring training about these consistent and universal behaviors to therapists, coaches, the legal system, child evaluators, monitors, child therapists, Minor’s Counsel, and social service workers. ‘Why’ high conflict persons act this way has everything to do with the disorder itself. When we understand pathology and it’s neuro-implications as well, we can not only know what behaviors go with which disorders but why. We can learn to predict the kinds of known behaviors and antics that go with pathological disorders– in child rearing, in court proceedings, and in relationship endings. The imperative impulsivity, loophole lying, gaming gaslighting, reliable revenge, the prevalent projecting, and legendary legal litany of cases. Normal people don’t do this in court, in relationship, in life. It is the glaring opposites that almost always give us the best indicator that what is happening is not what other people do, behave, or believe. So, ours shouldn’t be to ask ‘why’ pathologicals do this. It’s to say ‘why not?’ after all, that’s how they are wired.

Lots of clients lately want to know ‘when will this ever end?’ — ‘this’ being the aggravation from a pathological.

• Constantly harassing you
• Stalking
• Stirring the pot
• Making up allegations against you
• Not paying what they are suppose to
• Going back to court for the 1,000th time
• Turning others against you
• Turning you in to Social Services for child abuse
• Lying to the judge
• Paying others off to lie for him in court
• Gas lighting you or others
• Making others dread him, you, or your situation

The truth is, this IS what pathology does. If court evaluators, child monitors, judges, attorneys, batterer intervention counselors, anger management therapists—those working in the field knew that this IS what pathology does, it would heighten everyone’s awareness about pathology. Instead, euphemisms are used for this kind of behavior–

• Drama cases
• Trauma cases
• Dead beat dads
• High conflict divorces
• Jerks
• Snakes in Suits
• Con artists
• Custody Battles
• No resolution cases

Behavior related to making allegations, lying in court, hiring others to lie, hiring others to stalk you, spy on you, put spy ware in your house/car/computer, harass social services/child services workers, eat up enormous amount of court hours–are all behaviors ASSOCIATED with pathology—not drama, not trauma, not dead beats, not conflict, not jerks, not snakes and not cons—but Cluster B personality disorders such as Borderline, Narcissistic, Anti-Social and the other Low/No Conscienced disorders such as Socio/Psychopaths.

Our office has been flooded with calls lately about ‘how to’ survive until ‘this all stops.’ Women aren’t finding help with ‘how to’ survive, ‘how to’ appropriately communicate with him to have the least ‘aftermath,’ what to do when he alleges things to child services, judges, and courts, how to document well for court now and in the future, what dissuades them, how to angle the situation so he exposes his true self/disorder/motives, how to take care of yourself until some of this slows down, stops, or a miracle occurs.

Pathology is exhausting. This isn’t something ‘unique’ to your case. It’s standard in cases with pathologicals. You didn’t cause it, it’s the disorder just being what it is. But maybe some of the things you are doing aren’t in the best interest of your case, simply because using what ‘works’ with normal people, NEVER works in pathology. I think it’s time we do something to help the women out there get a grip on some of the problems inherent in pathological break ups, legal situations, and child custody.

Determination in the Life of a Survivor

I’ve seen the look many times–hundreds of times over the past 20 years working with (mostly) women who are surviving a pathological love relationship. There ‘is’ a look. Initially, it’s a timid look—before she grasps that she really CAN survive and thrive. Then the look begins to change, morph into real belief and real power.

Ironically, I saw the look this past week in an unlikely but stunning face. I saw her gentle-ness—as did the pathological who is in your life. Your ’super’ traits of empathy, tolerance, caring and compassion are what make you the wonderful girl you are. It has also been target traits for pathologicals. You can see the gentle-ness even in the face.

Then I saw her powerlessness.

The look like you don’t know if you will ever get out, ever survive, ever find your power back again. It feels as if you are being held there against your will–when you remember once that you were so different–so self assured, confident, and capable.

And many people have seen the face of unbelievable stress and worry—when you no longer trust your own judgment, ping pong back and forth between loving and loathing him. When you can’t concentrate, focus, sleep, or even want to get up each day.

But the greatest thing about doing this work is when women really ‘get it’ about pathology–when they understand that what’s wrong with him has nothing to do with her, what she did or didn’t do–when she gets that ‘wild eyed look’ that says her reality has shifted–she realizes that what has happened to her is simply she’s been knee deep in pathology and she is powerful enough to walk away.

I love that part–the paradim shift when women turn the corner in understanding and her whole future opens up like a flower blooming.

Over the years I have watched hundreds of women storm off into their future having recaptured their lives, their dignity, their ability to function well, their self belief. It’s a beautiful and strong presence when you get to witness that.

(Link for Powerful Look)

Why all the horse photos? This is Rachel Alexandra–I love her expressive face. She is a reminder to me of all of the women I have worked with. She is the first filly in 85 years to win the Preakness. It awed me to see her many faces of gentile-ness, powerlessness, worriedness, thriver-hood and powerfulness. It reminded me that even though so much is often against you in your race to recovery from pathology, that you too, like Rachel Alexandra, can defy the odds even when they have been stacked that way for 85 years! There really is something to be said for the power of belief, destiny and desire. I believe in you!

05-13-09

Today marks my fairly ‘official’ date (at least in my mind) in which I was thrusted into the field of pathology–totally without consent, without warning and without return to the normal life I knew before May 13, 1983. 26 years ago my father bled out in a grungy gutter in Cincinnati after a psychopath plunged a knife into his aorta outside of his jazz club. I was initiated into a victim-hood that would turn my life and career in a direction I hadn’t much interest in on May 12, 1983.

Much like pathology in anyone else’s life, you don’t get to pick how it plays out. The best you can do is learn how to ride the rollercoaster that goes along with the serious group of disorders in pathology.  And so I did.

26 years later I still feel like I am just skimming the surface of what can and should be done in education, awareness, survivor services, and advocacy. Thousands of pages later of writings (books, newsletters, websites, workbooks, e-books, quizzes), hours and hours of lectures ad nauseum, over a thousand hours in broadcasts (radio and TV), stacks of cds and dvds created—and still we are in the infancy of a new understanding about pathology–the virtual edge of just starting what one day will be a momentum marker that shows ‘when’ the world turned a corner in a better and very public understanding of pathology.

We’re not there yet, but the day IS coming. Every new blog that goes up, every newsletter, every website, every talk, every social networking post, every private moment of your knowledge shared with another victim, every coaching session, every class taught, every therapy hour, every group gathering, every prayer muttered, every radio show aired, every celebrity living it and bringing notice, every TV show about it, every newspaper or women’s magazine article taunting it, —is another message to another ear that has heard the message.
You learned it because someone cared enough to make sure you learned it.

Every May 13 for the past 25 years I have halted my life to remember that life altering second when my life went from normal everyday life -to-a homicide survivor. When my reality was ripped through by pathology–a disorder so conscience-less that altering history is just another day in their lives. While my pathology story includes a brutal ending, yours no less includes something similar–all the things lost in the moment of deep betrayal–the kind of betrayal that only pathology can bring.

(If I don’t brighten this article up, I’ll get complaints about ‘too much reality’ or ‘too much negativity’) So, I will say this–while none of us ‘choose’ to become survivors at the hands of very disordered pathologicals, what we ‘do’ with what we were dealt is up to us. Every so often I like to send a message to you that encourages you to ‘pass it forward.’ Whatever you have learned from the magazine, the newsletters, or the books is probably more than the woman who is sitting next to you knows. You don’t need to wait til you ‘understand it more, take a class, get a degree, read one more of our books, take the coaching training.) That doesn’t help the woman you sit next to at work. The knowledge in your head is life saving to her. Next year ‘when you get better trained’ isn’t the year to share what you know. Today is!

If we want to move from living on the virtual edge of changing pathology education in the world, we have to open our mouths and tell what we know. Every pathological out there hopes you DON’T do this–they hope you keep what you know to yourself. So many women with so many tears had said “If I had only known….I would have left earlier, I wouldn’t have left my children with him, I wouldn’t have _______.”

Every May 13 is a time I renew my commitment to what changed me. Every May 13 I bother people with my message and prod them and push them to make victim’s rights and survivor education important in the world. If I don’t, the image of my dad laying in that gutter haunts me. His death should never have been for nothing–and as long as people have been helped, it hasn’t. Frankie Brown has touched so many lives with his death through the message of psychopathy. You’re one of them! Help me celebrate my father’s death anniversary in a way that brings meaning and hope to many. Tomorrow, share what you know with just ONE person–someone that you have felt in your gut needs to know about the permanence and the pain of pathological relationships. Then email me and say ‘I passed it forward’ so I can count up how many people celebrated Frankie! If this email offended you, I’m sorry. Pathology offended my entire life.

Thank you for growing in the knowledge of pathology so you are prepared for the day when you can give someone the life changing information that you’ve come to know!

05-05-09

This week during our coaching training, an astute student asked ‘How many people does pathology negatively affect?’ We did a little math….There are 304 million persons in the U.S. 1 in 25 people will have the disorders associated with ‘no conscience’ which include anti-social personality disorder, sociopath, and psychopath. 304 million divided by 25 is 12.16 million have no conscience. Each anti social/psychopath will have approximately 5 partners who will be exposed to their pathology = 60.8 million people!

(This does not include the children negatively affected and since psychopaths are hypersexual they tend to have lots of children so we could certainly tack on about half that number for children based on 2.5 children per psychopath. And sadly, this does not include all the other forms of pathology related to Cluster B personality disorders that also negatively impact others such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder. Current stats says that narcissism affects approximately 1% of the population and BPD at 2%. However, 60% of people who have 1 personality disorder have more than one personality disorder so it’s likely that NPDs also have BPD or some ASPD and ASPDs have NPD and so on. So those numbers represent an overlap. (This is starting to challenge my math skills here…) But if we begin even with just the statistics on 1 in 25 have no conscience and multiply that out to figure out how many wounded people are out there—it’s a huge issue. )

The Institute’s friend, Howard, who was trained in psychiatry said “I consider this to be the country’s number one public health issue.” And with good reason—60 million people negatively impacted by someone else’s extreme pathology. There is the emotional impact–the aftermath symtoms that leave 50% of the people with PTSD. That’s about equal with the % of war vets who come home with PTSD from Iraq and other wars.

This emotional aftermath (with or without PTSD) causes treatable mental health symptoms like cognitive dissonance, intrusive thoughts, sleep disruptions, increase use of alcohol, concentration problems, flashbacks, and paranoia.

The emotional aftermath affects the work environment causing almost 50% of the persons negatively affected to have to cut back from full time to part time, be demoted taking lesser money, or go on short term disability for aftermath symptoms causing MILLIONS of dollars in lost wages. Doctors move to ‘impaired practictioner status, attorneys step down to paralegals, social workers because mental health techs instead, others default to paid time off, using their vacation time, or go on disability and begin using state services such as food stamps and subsidized housing.

The aftermath also affects children who are then put into counseling, needs school-based services because of acting-out and behavioral problems, are distracted, suffer with declining grades, some will go on to have their own genetic transmission of their parent’s personality disorder and others will be pseudo-affected—acting like the pathological but without the transmission but still requiring a lot of therapy to overcome their patterns. This doesn’t include the abject neglect that kids go through when being ‘watched’ by the pathological–often malnourished, not on a schedule, not put to bed on time, exposed to high risk behavior (porn, drugs, lots of sexual partners, violence, other criminal types) and the child has a lot to over come. Since many of the personality disorders are parasitic by nature, they are also dead beats by nature not paying child support (even if they can afford to) causing another lag on the government services while children need medicaid and other benefits.

Many of the personality disrdered types are also affected in moral reasoning and the levels of responsibility they take for their behavior. This includes not paying off debt which becomes written off as bankruptcies or the other partner assumes the debt placing them in financial chaos for 10 years or more while they dig out and live below their normal standard of living. Millions of dollars every year are written off and absorbed by financial institutions and credit card companies because of pathologicals causing an even bigger financial drain on our over-taxed economic system. These types also feel ‘entitled’ to have all the things they want so are likely to have bought luxury toys they can’t afford–more than 1 house, huge houses, expensive cars, vacations, boats, etc. and walk away from the financial responsibility.

It is estimated that over 60% of pathologicals have addictions including drugs, alcohol, gambling, and porn–all causing millions of dollars in not only money spent on that, but money then not spent on their children, alimony, and their bills ending them up in mostly state-funded rehab programs causing yet another lag on the system.

Pathologicals are also highly litiginous and don’t follow court orders resulting in years spent in frivilous court activity putting a lag on the court systems either by using up court time, not following court order resulting in more court appearances, and using state appointment court resources, clogging up the court system. It also causes the partner high amounts of legal bills in fighting narcisstic-based law suits to simply spout their opinon in court or to exert power over the partner.

A moderate percent of pathologicals will be criminal using court resources, state appointment legal services, jail, prison, probation and parole services.

(Are you furious yet?)

This cluster of pathologicals with impaired moral reasoning, high impulsivity and hyper sexuality are those most likely to practice high risk sexual behaviors and thus have resulting STDs that they willingly share with others causing public health concerns.

This high impulsivity and low responsibility results in DUIs, speeding tickets, and jacked up insurance rates.

When we wonder if pathology and the lack of a national public awareness campaign is ‘really’ an issue we should consider that ‘AT LEAST’ 60 million people are being affected by someone else’s pathology —and pathology is increasing as more women have children with them and as more children are being raised by them, thus influenced by them.

If we have some lingering benefactors out there that would like to help a national campaign in this country, we’d love to hear from you. Meanwhile, for those therapists and existing coaches who are looking for a steady ‘niche’ of clients in a field that is growing….pathology can be your path! Trust me, there are PLENTY of clients!

Genetic and Neuro-Physiological Basis For Hyper-Empathy

I heard a universal go out around the world when women read the title to this article. Don’t you feel better knowing there really is some science to the whole issue of too-darn-much-empathy? When we began writing about ‘women who love psychopaths, anti socials, sociopaths and narcissists’ we already ‘assumed’ that maybe you did have too much empathy (as well as other elevated temperament traits). We just didn’t know how much or why.

When we began the actual testing for the research on the book ‘Women Who Love Psychopaths’ we learned just ‘how much’ empathy you had. Do I need to tell you? WAY TOO MUCH! But by now you have probably already suspected that your super high empathy is what got you in trouble in this pathological relationships (and maybe others as well). But did you know there is hard science behind what we suspected (and you too) about what is going on in your relationships with your super-trait of high empathy? It really IS all in your head (and your genes).

In fact, these genes influence the production of various brain chemicals which can influence just ‘how much’ empathy you have. These brain chemicals include those that influence orgasm and it’s effect on how bonded you feel while also influencing some aspects of mental health (no, no! That’s NOT a good mix!). Other brain chemicals influence how much innate and learned fear you have. However, females don’t seem to assess threats well and in females, these chemicals increase her social interactions at the same time she is not assessing fear and threats well (This is not a good thing!!). One of the final chemicals effects delaying reflexes (like getting out of the relationship) and impacts short and long term memory (remember when I talked about how you store good and bad memory–here’s the culprit!).

And since it is genetic, these kinds of genes can run in entire families that produce ‘gullible’ and ‘trusting’ individuals who seem to just keep getting hurt.

Of course, the reverse is also true. Genes can influence the absence of various brain chemicals which influence ‘how little’ empathy a person has. We already know in great detail how this affects those with personality disorders. Personality disordered people (especially Cluster B disorders) struggle with not enough (or not any!) empathy.

Over the past few months, the magazine has been writing about various aspects of personality disorders and the brain. This has included the issue of brain imaging and what we are finding out about how the brain structure and also how it’s chemicals can affect personality, empathy, and consequently behavior and the behavior in relationships. As advances are made in the field of neuro-biology we are learning more and more what The Institute has always believed, which is there is a lot of biology behind the issues of personality development and the lack of personality development such as personality disorders. Genetics and neuro-biology is proving that the behavior associated with narcissism, borderline, anti-social personality disorders and psychopathy has as much to do with brain wiring and brain chemistry as it does with behavioral intent.

The Institute has long said to the survivors that personality disorders are not merely willful behavior but brain deficits that control how much empathy, compassion, conscience, guilt, insight and change a person is capable of. Autism and personality disorders share a common thread as ‘empathy spectrum disorders’ now being studied extensively within the field of Neuro-science. But in some opposite ways, so the women also share a common thread of an empathy disorder—Hyper-Empathy which we are coming to understand has just as much to do with innate temperament (you come into the world wired with the personality you have), genetic predispositions to high or low empathy, and brain chemistry configurations that contribute to high/low empathy as it does with the old assumptions that the women with high empathy were merely ‘door mats.’

Neuro-science with all it’s rocking information has the dynamic power to blow us all out of the murky waters of assuming that our behavior is merely a reflection of our will. As Neuro-science graces our minds with new understanding of how our brains work, it brings with it incredible freedom to understand our own traits and the pathological traits of others.

For a mind blowing book on the genetic and neuro biology of not only personality disorders, but ‘evil’ as well, read Barbara Oakley’s book ‘Evil Genes’. You’ll find a whole new approach to understanding the biology of the pathological!

External Locus of Belief:

Is it True, is it REALLY True?

In psychology, we refer to the belief about where control over events in our lives resides as internal and external locus of control. This means we see our behaviors either generated by personal efforts or by destiny. We believe that we make things happen or we believe others do it for us whether we like it or not.

But also related to to internal and external locus of control is it’s effect on impulse motivation. This means that a person who has internal locus of control can self regulate their impulses and desires themselves. They find their motivation for behavior, choices, and reactions inside of themselves by themselves. (By the way, pathologicals normally have poor internal locus of control except for brief periods of time when they are conning someone).

Other people who have external locus of control (like the pathologicals) are not self regulated in their behavior, choices,
and reactions inside of themselves. Instead, they look outside themselves for motivation and consequently since they don’t regulate themselves well, outside themselves for limits on their behaviors. People with poor internal locus of control often need the external world to regulate themselves for them—unfortunately this is often the legal system, jail, or some kind of negative consequence.

But today, I am talking about internal and external locus of belief systems. Where is your belief system (especially about the pathological) located? Inside you or externally in others? Do you come to understand, see, and accept his pathology within yourself? Do you read materials, go to counseling and then come to believe and hold that belief in you that he is pathological, can’t change, and destructive to your own future? Are you able to pull up inside of yourself the facts of his dangerous or misleading behavior in your relationship? Are you able to point to the ways in which he has been destructive to others? Are you able to latch on to his diagnosis and use it as a life raft for yourself to drift away from him?

OR, are your beliefs externally hinged? “If you say so Sandy–if you say he’s pathological, then I guess he is.” “If he scored high on the P-scan (developed by Dr. Robert Hare) then I suppose that is correct….” Statements like these are related to people who have external locus of belief. They don’t really believe it themselves, they are hinging their belief system to someone else’s belief systems–usually mine or another expert in pathology. Somewhere along the line they haven’t really ‘come to believe’ that the pathology is his. It’s still some distant reality ‘labeled’ by a therapist but she doesn’t own it inside herself. This makes accepting it, reallllyyyyyy accepting it, hard for her because she then needs to be reminded every 30 seconds that he is in fact, permanently pathological. Once she is out of ear range of a therapist or some other external validating system (books, dvds, cds, etc.) will she still accept his pathology?

‘Coming to believe’ pathology is a hard thing. It’s a shock to learn that someone you thought was the most wonderful person in the world is secretly very, very (did I say very?) sick. NOT only do you have to believe that the person is very, very (did I say very?) sick, but that sickness has no cure. Not only are they sick and have no cure, but staying around them is detrimental to your own (and your children’s) mental health. Not only that they are sick, have no cure, staying around them is detrimental to your own mental health but they have all the capacities of breaking both your knee caps–either financially or even physically given no conscience. This is a big wad to swallow all at once with no chaser of hope.

Most people need a time of ‘coming to believe’ — it’s like building faith in anything else–we study and come to believe. Pathology is the same way–you need some education, some time to digest this big wad of bad news, and some time to work a plan of ‘accepting the things I cannot change.’ Almost everyone who faces the fact of pathology in someone else has this same ‘coming to terms’ process. We expect it.

But, there is also the problem of when you don’t ever come to truly accept it and then hinge your belief system about his pathology on some external person, organization, or book. The Institute can not be your belief system (He’s pathological because Sandy says so). If after a few months, that belief system doesn’t become internal for you (I know this to be self evident, that he is pathological and for all of these reasons….) then you’re in trouble of relapse.

Just like in external locus of control explained above, external locus of belief stands in the same jeopardy–that someone else can’t be responsible for what you do with what you know (or what you don’t come to accept). That your pathology destiny is not in The Institute’s hands–it’s in yours. That whether you ignore the info and go back is entirely up to you—not a support group, not a book, not a program or a retreat–just your destiny in your hands.

If your locus of belief is still external and it doesn’t shift and become internal–just know this is a risk factor for you. Holding the belief system steady is the challenge of overcoming cognitive dissonance. When it doesn’t get over come eventually, either you learn to do what the 12 Steppers call ‘Fake It Til You Make It’ (do it til you believe it) or face the rising statistics that you’re likely to believe the internal chatter and make a Bee line back.

Just Because You Believe It, DOESN’T Make It True

I am reminded frequently that this statement is so true when it comes to denial in pathological love relationships. There’s something about a narcissist and psychopath that can make you forget all about their pathology and return to your previous ‘fog’ of beliefs.  F.O.G.–Fear, Obligation and Guilt.

Entrenched in the partner is the dire desire to have a normal partner. Couple that with the NPD (Narcissitic Personality Disorder) and PP’s (Psychopath’s) ability to convince you of their, at least, fleeting normalacy and you have a woman who has dug her finger nails into the nano-second of his normal behavior and she’s not gonna let it go! Otherwise highly educated, bright, and successful women can be reduced to blank-stared-hypnotised-believers when it comes to believing he is normal, can be normal, or that it’s her that is really the messed up one.

Many therapists miss this process in working with the partners–they feel they have made substaintial headway in helping her (or him) understand the nature of the unchangeable-ness of the disorder and then what appears to be out of nowhere, she’s blank-staring and hypnotised yet again.

The only thing that has changed is her belief system. Obviously an NPD and/or PP is not capable of true sustainable change. He didn’t change. But her desire to believe his normalacy and to deny his pathology is the only thing that has changed.  It’s not so much a ‘change’ per se, as it is a return to straddling the fence about the belief system.

Most partners live a life of cognitive dissonance–this conflict between ‘He’s good/He’s bad’ that is so distracting they never resolve the internal conflict of whether he is MORE good than bad, or MORE bad than good. They live in a fog of circulating remembrances that support both view points–remembering the good, but still feeling the bad. This circulating remembrance keep them straddling the fence with the inability to resolve a consistent belief system about him.

This inability to hold a consistent belief system is what causes cognitive dissonance, it’s also what increases it and causes intrusive thoughts (join us this week for a tele-seminar on How to Manage Dissonance and Intrusive Thoughts). Dissonance is caused by thought inconsistency which leads eventually to her behavioral inconsistency–she breaks up and makes up constantly.  Thought and behavioral inconsistency increase Dissonance which increases Intrusive Thoughts. No wonder she can’t get symptom relief!

Her desire to ‘believe it’ doesn’t make it true. It doesn’t make him normal. It doesn’t cure his NPD or Psychopathy. It only keeps her stuck straddling a belief system that has caused her emotional paralysis.  In a crude way of understanding this–the only thing that happens when you’re straddling a fence is you get a fence post up your butt! Try moving when your paralyzed by a fence post!

Just because you believe it, doesn’t mean he’s ok, he’s going to stop doing the thing he said he’d stop, that counseling is going to work, that there never was anything wrong with him, that it’s probably you….or any of  the other items you tell youself in order to stay in a relationship of pathological disaster.

Even Benjamin Franklin said “We hold these truths to be self evident…”  For us in the field of psychopathology, these self evident truths are that pathology is permanent whether you believe it or not.

All Memory is Not Created Equal–Positive Memory Seepage

We already know that intrusive thought is associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as well as other emotional trauma disorders. However, many of the survivors say what is most painful is not necessarily the intrusive thoughts of the bad stuff or even the violence. It’s the intrusive thoughts of all the good times that are really hard to deal with.

Intrusive thoughts are not just bad thoughts or flashbacks. They can be intrusive from positive memories as well. Positive memories are embued with deep emotional and psychological ‘meaning.’ The meaning of the relationship, various happy moments, the deep feeling of attachments, the fantastic sex–can all be power packed into positive memories. Positive memories are also embedded with all the sights, sounds, smells, sensations, feelings, the associated meaning of the events, and the remembrances of a happier time. The positive memories can also be tied up with a ribbon of fantasy and romantisized feelings.  That’s a lot of power packed into a few positive memories that has the TNT emotional factor to blow your ’stay-away-from-him’ resolve, sky high.

All memories are not stored the same. I’ve talked about this before….positive memory is stored differently in the brain and is more easily accessible than some bad memories.  Many traumatic memories are stored in another part of the brain that make them harder to access. Sometimes the more traumatic they are, the harder it is to remember.

Unfortunately, what you might want to remember most is the bad part of the relationships so it motivates you to stay away from it. But instead, it’s murky and not always fresh in your mind about ‘why’ you should be avoiding the pathological relationship. But what IS easy to remember is all the positive memory. In fact, what has become obtrusive and intrusive, is postive memory seepage–where all the good times and the associated ’senses’ (taste, touch, smell,etc.) are flooding your mind. You easily remember the good times and easily forget the bad times–all based on how and where these types of memories are stored in the brain.  You NEED the bad memories but you REMEMBER the good ones—constantly.

In addition, that which is held internally is amplified. Almost like putting it under a magnifying glass–the feelings, memories, taste/touch/smell, are all BIGGER and STRONGER when the memory simply rolls around in your head. It’s a lot like a pin ball machine–memories pinging and ponging off of internal elements. The more it pings and pongs, the stronger the memory moves around the mind.

Memories kept in the mind also take on ’sur-real like qualities’ — certain parts are like a movie–fantasy based, romanticized.  The positive memories are dipped in crystalized sugar and become tantilizing treats instead of dreaded dead beats! While engaged in this positive memory seepage–it doesn’t feel like you are indulging your self in toxic memories—it feels like you are trying to ‘process’ the relationship–why did we do this, did he say that, why was it like that then but it’s like this now….  It feels like what you are trying to do is sort out the relationship. But all the sorting of this dirty laundry still leaves the same amount of piles of clothes in your head. You’re just moving the same shirt from pile to pile–but it’s all the same dirty laundry. Nothing is getting cleaned up.

Positive memory seepage as intrusive thought is a big contributor to the cognitive dissonance women feel in the aftermath of these relationships. Cognitive Dissonance (or C.D. as we refer to it as) is the difficulty of trying to hold two opposing thoughts or beliefs at the same time. That’s usually “he’s good” AND “he’s bad” = “How can he be good AND bad?”  Just trying to resolve that one thought can leave women’s minds tangled up for years.

C.D. can single handedly take women down—it can cause her to be unable to concentrate, work, sleep, eat, or function. It’s like the little image of the devil sitting on one of your shoulders and the angel sitting on your other shoulder and they are both whispering in your ear. That’s exactly like C.D.—trying to decide which thing you are going to believe….that he’s bad for you, or that he’s good for you.

Positive memory seepage produces intrusive thoughts. Intrusive thoughts, especially about positive memories, produces cognitive dissonance. These emotional processes feed each other like a blood-enduced shark fest. It’s one of the single reasons women don’t disengage from the relationship, heal, or return to a higher level of functioning. Now that we’ve identified ‘what’ is really at the heart of the aftermath of symptoms—we know that treating CD is really the most important recovery factor in pathological love relationships. It’s why we have developed various tools to manage it (Maintaining Mindfulness in the Midst of Obsession E-book and 2 CDs).

Is Batterer Intervention Programs Killing Women?

Our Batterer Intervention Programs might not be providing the hope women want. Our court systems are not psychologists so consequently are under-educated in the issue of pathology. Most judges have very little knowledge about the permanence of pathology, the effects of pathological parenting on children, which batterer has a personality disorder, which one doesn’t, and why that even matters. Without this knowledge, they continue to court-order batterers to intervention without even knowing which ones can change from the treatment and which ones will never change, and can’t.

This under-education matters so much that it’s killing women. The Central Three Tenets of Pathology — the inability to grow to any emotional or spiritual depth, the inability to sustain positive change, and the inability to develop insight about how one’s behavior negatively effects others is hugely relevant when it comes to batterers and personality disorders.

But judges aren’t the only ones under-educated in pathology. The attorneys who are suggesting Batterer
Intervention are likely to not understand pathology and the lack of many batterers ability to sustain positive change OR develop insight about their behavior.  Child evalutors are likely to not understand why sending a batterer to treatment has no guarantee that he won’t batter again in front of a child, or to a child,
if he has one of the Cluster B personality disorders.

And sadly, Batterer Intervention Programs are just as likely to be conned in their groups by narcissists,
ASPDs, socios/psychopaths as are the judges, child evaluators, mediators, and attorneys.  In fact, most
Batterer Intervention Specialists are not pathologists at all. Many are Marriage & Family Therapists (which isn’t a bad thing, of course) or Mental Health Counselors but have little specialty training in
personality disorders and psychopathy. Since they are not specialists in the field, they are less likely to flag the batterer as having one of these disorders. Most therapists feel they would be ‘able to spot’ a personality disordered person even though many of them can’t tell you the full spectrum of symptoms associated with personality disorders. One of the least taught aspects of psychology in graduate school is personality disorders and psychopathy.

Since Cluster B Personality Disorders and psychopathy are the ones MOST likely to stalk, disregard
restraining orders, abduct children during custody battles, and violently assault–the therapists who run
the groups and have a ‘duty to report’ to victims if they are at-risk of harm by their patient,
yet don’t even know they have those most likely to harm the victim in their group.

Equally as disturbing is that psychological testing of batterers as a pre-requisite to entering Batterer Intervention is not required and hardly ever done. That means batterers who have personality disorders are being court-ordered and accepted by the agency (or individual therapist provider) into their programs WITHOUT KNOWING what, if any, diagnosis they have.  Wouldn’t an agency WANT TO KNOW if someone has Anti Social Personality Disorder? Or is a Psychopath? Wouldn’t they want to know if they were admitting someone into a program that couldn’t be helped BY the program but would only learn how to be a ‘better covert batterer’ to the courts–slinging recovery jargon at the judge to prove they were treated? Even Dr. Robert Hare, the leading researcher and specialists in Psychopathy advises psychopaths NOT be put into group–any group because of this. And yet, day in and day out, Batterer Intervention Groups have NO idea whether or not they are admitting Cluster B’s and psychopaths to their groups to become better jargoned batterers.

The irony is that the same therapist in their out patient practice with a non-battering client, would have to give a diagnosis for a client in order for them to be in therapy and bill their insurance. Yet, in an area of lethal behavior like domestic violence (especially with the personality disordered), the same therapist does not have to diagnosis the batterer and (in some programs) are able to bill the State for the batterers treatment NOT knowing what the diagnosis of the batterer is. In the cases in which the batterer privately pays for the Batterer Intervention, they are able to receive up to 52 weeks of treatment and never be ‘diagnosed.’ Yet, again–if a non-batterer went to a weekly treatment program for group therapy for an entire year, they would certainly have to be diagnosed. Is this CRAZY or what?

So, how does this effect the woman? The un-diagnosed personality-disordered batterer has just been put through up to an entire year’s worth of weekly treatment that is not likely to do anything given that pathology is based on the inability to sustain positive change and the inability to have insight about how his negative behavior has effected others. Since Batterer Intervention is largely about (a) recognizing how his battering/negative behavior has hurt others and (b) changing and sustaining different behaviors—his theraputic outcomes are going to be nearly zip.

But he has ‘learned’ some things–how to discuss the power and control wheel taught in class, how to verbalize unequal power in the relationship—how to use buzz words like ‘abuse’ ‘dominance’ and ‘control.’ And better yet, he brings home his either paper or verbal ‘Certificate of Completion’ to the woman who has barred her door to him until ‘he got help.’  He got plenty of it–according to him–a whole years worth and a paper or verbal certificate to hang on his proverbial wall. And she assumes that if he was court-ordered, certainly he was going to a program that COULD help him, and did help him.

Women are killed every day in this country by batterers who have completed intervention, who are un-diagnosed raging narcissists, anti-socials, and socio/psychopaths–who were graduated from programs who didn’t bother to find out ‘who’ was in their class. The buck is passed from the attorney who doesn’t know personality disorders and suggests batterer intervention, to the judge who doesn’t know personality disorders and court orders a program, to the child evalutor who doesn’t know personality disorders and allows continued vistis with the child, to the Batterer Intervention Group that accepts, without testing, batterers into their program, and lastly the biggest buck passed is to the woman who is hurt or killed by the ‘graduate’ of Batterer Intervention.

Batterers represent an unusally high percentage of the personality disordered, which shouldn’t be a surprise. The personality disorderd (especially Cluster B) have an unusually high percentage of lethality, recidicism in battering behavior, and treatment resistance. And yet, we have an irresponsible system
of not testing batterers prior to admission into a program that will some day label them ‘graduates.’

Our positive psychology oriented world that believes everyone can change or grow wants to know ‘Then
what are we suppose to do with them?’ There is a reason Dr. Hare says not to put psychopaths in group. It’s so they don’t learn how to con others with their newly learned lingo and to protect the public from false presentations of ‘cure.’ We need a category, even within Batterer Intervention, of ‘non-admissable’–someone who is rejected from treatment to protect the public from the false presentation of ‘cure’ –to protect her from the illusion of graduation from a theory he’ll never incorporate, understand, or conform to.

The under-education of attorney, judges, child evaluators and therapists about personality pathology has to be addressed so that those who are being killed by our court-ordered batterer intervention programs are
given the truth–NOT ADMITTED TO BATTERER INTERVENTION.

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03-03-09

Mutual Pathology: Gasoline & Fire

Pathology is a mental health issue not a gender issue. Women have just as much pathology (in some areas of personality disorders) as men due in other areas of personality disorders. Some of the 10 personality disorders are seen more in men while some of the other disorders are seen more in women.

As you have heard me say over the years, pathology is pathology–meaning that each personality disorder has it’s own problems and challenges in relationships but pretty much holds to the Central Three that I talk about related to pathology:

1. The inability to grow to any true emotional or spiritual depth.
2. The inability to sustain positive change.
3. The inability to have insight about how one’s behavior negatively effects others.

Given those 3 aspects of personality disorders, we can easily see how the 10 different types of personality
disorders can be linked together by these three ‘inablities.’

While men may be more bent towards Anti-Social Personality Disorder or psychopathy, women may be bent more to Histrionic, Dependent or Borderline Personality Disorders. And when you have a personality disordered man + a personality disordered woman = Jerry Springer Dynamics!

There is no guarantee that there is only one pathological in the relationship. Women have just as much mental illness, addictions, and personality disorders as men. And it’s quite common for personality disordered people to hook up. When this happens you have two people who can’t grow to any true emotional or spiritual depth. You have two people who can’t sustain positive change. And you have two people who don’t have insight about how their behavior effects others.  The relationships are dramatic fire-beds of emotionality, addiction, and violence.

Women’s pathology is just as damaging to others as men’s pathology is to women. Women’s pathology may ‘present’ a little differently than men’s overt aggression related to their pathology but it is not any less
problematic. Women’s pathology can sometimes (and I use the word sometimes lightly!) be more subtle when it is masked behind emotional dependency, sexual addiction, sexual manipulation, financial dependency or high emotionality. Those types of symptoms can be associated with more than just a personality disorder. But women’s pathology is just as damaging to a partner, a boss, their family and friends, and God forbid, the effects of their pathology on their children.

While women are more likely to be diagnosed as Borderline, Borderlines are often misdiagnosed and under-
diagnosed psychopaths and anti-socials. There seems to be some what of a gender-bias when it comes to
diagnosising women with psychopathy. Unless they have participated in a Bonnie & Clyde episode or made
the Americas Most Wanted TV program, they are likely to be down graded in their pathology. Dramatic, highly emotional or self injuring women may be down graded to Histrionic, Narcissistic or Borderline.  Those with a little more flare for hiding their real lives may warrant the same diagnosis as male psychopaths but are able to hide it better or have less violence associated with their behavior. But not all female psychopaths are NOT violent. Many are horribly violent–to their children and their partners yet always present themselves as a victim. These are the women most likely to press un-warranted domestic violence assaults, cry rape that didn’t happen, and abandon their children. The point is, any gender can have personality disorders and each personality disorder may, or may not, present slightly different in the other gender.

Beyond mutal pathology, a woman’s own mental health can influence the dynamics within a relationship. A
woman who has unmedicated bi-polar disorder who is in a relationship with a borderline male can have
unusually dramatic relationship dynamics. Her mood fluctuations and his can ignite a feeding frenzy of
boiling anger in both of them which is likely to lead to violence. Both partners having a substance abuse
or alcohol problem can certainly negatively fuel the dynamics.

And let’s not over look the ‘pathologi-lizing’ that women often get from being raised in a home with a pathological parent. She brings to the relationship the pathological-like behaviors that are learned within pathological families. I have seen that in sessions with women (and hear it a lot in the emails I receive) where the pathological effects of her previous childhood, adult life or relationships is negatively effecting her world view, current functioning level and even ‘entitlement’ attitudes she brings to the table. Couple any of these mental health situations with her along with HIS pathology and you have some of the most volatile and difficult relationships and break ups in history.

There have been many times in working with women that I recognize he is not the only problem in the scenario. Not all women in pathological relationships are mentally ill. However, not all women in pathological relationships are NOT mentally ill. And some of her own mental illness can be the gasoline on the fire of the pathological love relationship which fan the flames of dangerousness for her. Red flags for me that there is possible mental health issues with her include entitlement, chronic victim mentality, unregulated mood issues that are not amenable to treatment/medication, chronic returning to the pathological relationship/replacing relationships with more pathological relationships, history of unsuccessful counseling/treatment, and doesn’t take responsibility for her own behavior/choices.

Those represent only a few of possible many different types of symptoms that there may be mental health issues in her as well. Clearly, pathology is not gender specific and pathology and other mental health issues in both parties can accelerate the dangerousness and problems seen in pathological love relationships.

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02-15-09

HEALTHY LOVE–WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THAT?
The last week or so we have been talking about the difference between attraction and love. Since Valentines Day was upon us, I thought it would be a great discussion about what happens in Pathological Love Relationships— that attraction is on over-drive while love (from a pathological) is lingo-bling.

But what about real love, healthy love? People write all the time and say ‘When are you going to write How to Spot a Healthy Partner because with as many bad relationships that I’ve been in, I can hardly tell the difference between what should be obviously toxic and what should be obviously healthy.’

The opposite of healthy love is what we often call ‘toxic’ love. Sometimes understanding what toxic ‘looks like’ helps us to see what real ‘love’ should look like too.

Here is a short list of the characteristics of Love vs. Toxic Love (compiled with the help of the work of Melody Beattie & Terence Gorski.)

1. Love – Development of self first priority.  Toxic love – Obsession with relationship.

2. Love – Room to grow, expand; desire for other to grow. Toxic love – Security, comfort in sameness; intensity of need seen as proof of love (may really be fear, insecurity, loneliness)

3. Love – Separate interests; other friends; maintain other meaningful relationships.  Toxic love – Total involvement; limited social life; neglect old friends, interests.

4. Love – Encouragement of each other’s expanding; secure in own worth.  Toxic love – Preoccupation with other’s behavior; fear of other changing.

5. Love – Appropriate Trust (i.e. trusting partner to behave according to fundamental nature.) Toxic love – Jealousy; possessiveness; fear of competition; protects “supply.”

6. Love – Compromise, negotiation or taking turns at leading. Problem solving together.  Toxic love – Power plays for control; blaming; passive or aggressive manipulation.

7. Love – Embracing of each other’s individuality.  Toxic love – Trying to change other to own image.

8. Love – Relationship deals with all aspects of reality. Toxic love – Relationship is based on delusion and avoidance of the unpleasant.

9. Love – Self-care by both partners; emotional state not dependent on other’s mood.  Toxic love – Expectation that one partner will fix and rescue the other.

10. Love – Loving detachment (healthy concern about partner, while letting go.)  Toxic love – Fusion (being obsessed with each other’s problems and feelings.)

11. Love – Sex is free choice growing out of caring & friendship.  Toxic love – Pressure around sex due to insecurity, fear & need for immediate gratification.

12. Love – Ability to enjoy being alone. Toxic love – Unable to endure separation; clinging.

13. Love – Cycle of comfort and contentment.  Toxic love – Cycle of pain and despair.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Love is not supposed to be painful. There is pain involved in any relationship but if it is painful most of the time then you are probably in a Pathological Love Relationship because the end result of these relationships is ‘Inevitable Harm.’  Let’s be clear that there is nothing wrong with wanting a relationship – it is natural and healthy. If we can start seeing relationships not as the goal but as opportunities for growth then we can start having more functional relationships. A relationship that ends is not a failure or a punishment – it is a lesson. And these lessons are mostly about pathology, it’s permanence, and the lives it effects without discrimination.

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02-08-09

VALENTINE’S DAY

“REAL LOVE NOT JUST REAL ATTRACTION’

So many people confuse the feeling of ‘attraction’ with the emotion of love. For some who are in
chronic dangeorus and pathological relationships, it’s obvious that you have gotten these two elements ‘mixed up.’ Not being able to untangle these understandings can keep people on the same path of unsafe
relationship selection because they keep chosing the same way and getting the same people!

Attraction is largely not only unconscious but also physical.  There is actually something called an ‘erotic imprint’ which is the unconscious part that guides our attraction. (I talked about this in the Dangerous Man book).  Our erotic imprint is literally ‘imprinted’ in our psyches when we are young–at that age when you begin to notice and be attracted to the opposite sex. As I mentioned, this is largely an unconscious drive. For instance, I like stocky dair haired men. When ever I see that type of image, I immediately
find that man ‘attractive.’ I can ‘vary’ slightly on my attraction but I’m not gonna find Brad
Pitt attractive. I might forego the full ’stocky’ appearance but I’m not gonna let go of some of the
other traits that make men appealing to me. We like what we like. For instance, I am attracted to
Johnny Depp or George Clooney. I don’t like any of the blondes or overly tall and lanky body types.

If you think back to what your ‘attraction’ basis is, you may find some patterns there as well.
Attraction, however, can also be behavioral or based on emotional characterists. For instance,
some women are attracted to guys with a great sense of humor. The attraction is based on that
characteristic. Other women may be attracted to athletic guys–not because of what sports does
to their bodies, but because of the behavioral qualities of athletes.  Attraction can be subtle–like
the unconscious erotic imprinting that makes us select men based on physical attributes OR
attraction may lead us to choose relationships based on behaviors or emotional characteristics like
displays of empathy, helpfulness or friendliness. (I discussed your own high traits of empathy,
helpfulness and friendliness in Women Who Love Psychopaths.)

Although these traits might guide our relationships selection, this is not the foundation of love. It’s the
foundation of selection.

Often, our relationship selection comes more from attraction than it does anything else. So knowing ‘who’ and ‘what types’ you are attracted to will help you understand your patterns of selection. Some people choose characteristics–helpfulness, humor, gentleness or another quality that they seem to be drawn to. Other people are more physical in their attraction and find the physicality of someone either a ‘go’ or a ‘no.’ Maybe you like blondes or blue eyes. This may also drive your pattern of selection.

Also in the area of attraction–sometimes it’s Traumatic Attraction that seems to drive our patterns of selection. People who have been abused, especially as children, can have unusual and destructive patterns of selection. While this may seem the opposite of what you would expect, these patterns are largely driven by unresolved trauma. People who were raised in alcoholic, dysfunctional, or abusive homes are likely to repeat those exact patterns in their selection of a partner. They often select individuals who have similar ‘characteristics’ to the abusive/neglectful/addicted adult they grew up with or were exposed to. The characteristics could be physical (how they look) or behavioral (how they act) or emotional (how they abuse/neglect).  In any event, the unresolved abuse issues drives them to keep selecting abusers for relationships. Today, they are mystified as to why they keep picking abusive/neglectful/addicted people for relationship partners. That which remains unresolved, revolves–around and around thru our lives until it is resolved.

So, when you have no idea that attraction (good, bad, or dysfunctional) is guiding your selections, you just keep picking the same way and getting the same thing. But because the world keeps using the word ‘love’ you use it too. And you label your attraction-based-choices (that are largely dysfunctional) as ‘love’ and then become confused about the nature of this thing called ‘love.’ Your attraction is NOT love. It is merely attraction. What DOES or DOES NOT happen IN the relationship may be more reflective of ‘love’ than anything else.

Remember the Bible verse, “Love is patient, love is kind, love does not seek it’s own…”? it helps to reflect how love is ‘other centered’ not in a codependent and frantic needy way but in a way that helps others be
interdependent in relationships. Love is often attributed to positive ‘attributes’ such as:

Joy – love smiling
Peace – love resting
Patience – love waiting
Kindness – love showing itself sensitive to others’ feelings
Goodness – love making allowances
Faithfulness – love proving constant
Gentleness – love yielding
Self-control – love triumphing over selfish inclinations
–Source Unknown

(Now, think about if ANY of those traits described the Pathological Love Relationship? I didn’t think so….)

“As long as we believe that someone else has the power to make us happy then we are setting ourselves up to be victims“  From: Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

This Valentine’s Day be very clear with yourself about love and attraction. This is a time when you might be likely to want to recontact him. Let me remind you, NOTHING has changed. His pathology is still the same. And on February 15th you could be hating yourself for recontacting him for one weak illusioned moment on Feb 14th–in which the world is focused on love but he is focused on manipulation, control or anything OTHER than love. If you open that door, then you will have weeks or months of trying to get him out and disconnect again.

Instead, plan ahead for your potential relapse by setting up an accountability partner AND something to do!
Go to a movie with a friend, go out to dinner, so SOMETHING that takes responsibility and action for your
own loneliness at this time of year. Whatever you do, don’t have a knee jerk reaction and contact him. One
day on the calendar about love is just an ILLUSION!
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Trait Examination OR Character Assassination?

01-29-09

Part of the problem we face in trying to get to the nitty-gritty of pathological love relationships is that
‘how we do it’ or ‘what we call it’ is judged so severely that it impairs sharing the valuable outcomes that are learned.

There are groups of professionals, women’s orgs, and service agencies that tip toe around what we ‘call’ patterns of selection in relationships. There are unspoken rules and heavily weighted opinions about ‘what’ we can discuss and ‘how’ we discuss the outcomes.

What am I talking about? Since the 1970’s and the women’s movement, discussing the specifics about womens choices in relationships, patterns of selection, personality traits, mental health, sexual addiction/deviancy has been largely discouraged and ‘semanti-sized’ as ‘labeling the victim’ or ‘victim blaming.’ It has put the victim off limits for any in depth understanding other than a victimology theory that was developed in the 1970’s.

It is hard to get around the billboard image of ‘victim’ to talk about any kind of relationship dynamics or other psychological aspects (including biology or temperament engrained traits) that is happening in the pathological love relationship. We may study him but we already have a ‘theory’ for her which is not to be disturbed.

Compare this to any other field of mental health and it’s absurd that we would say ‘We already understand depression, no more theories, no more studying! Don’t call it depression or you are blaming the patient for their own depression.’

To study her is to blame her. To measure her traits to see if there are vulnerabilities or pattern typing is to suggest she is flawed.

• The victim assuredly has been through trauma.
• Studying the victim in no way says they have not been through trauma.
• The victim is not to blame for what happened to them.
• Studying the victim in no way says they are responsible for what happened to them.
• The victim did not ‘choose’ the victimization, but in relational dysfunction, she did pick the victimizer.

Could we learn something about that?

How will Cancer be won or a cure for AIDS be found if we don’t study the problem from all angles? If we conclude that studying the victim blames them, then we have cut off one entire segment of research that can help us in prevention, intervention and treatment–whether it’s a medical disorder or a pathological relationship.

Studying victimology, including aspects of the victim, is not victim character assassination. It might be trait examination or pattern of selection analysis. It might be a lot of things that have nothing to do with blame and shame and everything to do with understanding or creating new paradigms in which to see these relationships. It might piggyback off of theories developed in the 1970’s…surely we have learned SOMETHING new about relationship dynamics, pathology in relationships, personality disorders as intimate partners, violence and addiction and their part in these relationships…surely we can UPDATE a theory without our own assassination or that of the victim?

In some ways, I envy the Scientific and Research communities that look at the data and pass all the darn political correctness and emotional politics of ‘labeling’ it something that certain groups find offensive. They test and crunch numbers and put it in a journal without all the rig-a-ma-roy. But in our case, where we are a notch below the researchers, what we study, how we describe what we found, is subject to so much scrutiny that many clinicians and writers hesitate to publish what they found.

So it has been with many of the things that The Institute has studied, found, reported, and written. In many organizations the first book ‘How to Spot a Dangerous Man’ was rejected for looking at family role modeling, patterns of selection, and other aspects that women themselves said contributed to their pathological relationship. (On the other hand, it has been hailed by many domestic violence agencies and used widely in shelters, treatment centers and womens prisons.)

We stepped it up a huge notch in the ‘Women Who Love Psychopaths’ in which we used testing instruments to test women’s traits to see if there were temerament patterns in women who ended up in the most dangerous and disordered of relationships. This caught huge attention from some groups as the ground-breaking trait identification that it was and yet still; the victim groups saw it as labeling. How can we help women if we don’t understand their own biology?

Ironically, what we found was significant–super-traits so perfectly and symmetrically seen in 80 cases. Did we hurt a victim by studying that? Or have we helped now thousands of women who have read the books, been counseled by our trained therapists, come to our treatment programs? How would we have gotten here today without daring to look deeper…to even risk looking at her! Not to blame her, but to understand her.

Some of the biggest break throughs that have been happening are in understanding the biology of our own brains and the consequences of our biology on our behavior, choices, and futures. We know that MRI’s are being done on psychopath’s brains–revealing areas of brains that work differently. Some day, I think that may cross over and other personality disorders and chronic mental illnesses will be MRI’d as well so we understand how those disorder effect biology and brain function.

But what about victims?

• If we put the word ‘damaged’ away and instead looked at how ‘different’ brain regions in victims function, over function, under function, are influenced by stress, PTSD, adrenaline, cortisol, and early childhood abuse–could we come to understand how their brain might function in their patterns of selection in dangerous relationships?
• Could we come to understand that even temperament traits might give proclivity to how the brain ‘chooses’ or how the brain categorizes (or ignores) red flags, danger, or is highly
  reactive to traumatized attraction?
• Could we understand brains that have higher tolerance levels because of certain brain areas that operate differently than other people?
• Could we understand traumatic memory storage and why good memories of him (even as awful as he might be)  are so much stronger than the abuse memories?
• If we know what part of the brain distorts memory storage, can we work with that?
• Could we come to understand trait temperaments as risk factors or certain brain functions as possible victim vulnerabilities?
• Then would we know who is at risk?
• Would we understand better, how to TREAT the victim in counseling?
• How to develop prevention and intervention?
• Or how intensity of attachment could be either a temperament trait or a brain function instead of merely ‘victim labeling.’

I am not only interested in the psycho-biology of the victim but how the psycho-biology affects patterns of selection and reactions in the most pathological of relationships. When we start really dealing with an open dialogue about these survivors, looking past ridiculous theories that asking questions is victim blaming, then maybe we can really offer some new theories into victimology that by passes band aid approaches to complex psycho-bio-social understandings. This is what The Institute intends to do. To that end, this month’s expert is Dr. Kent Kiehl from The Mind Research Lab who is trying to answer some of the tough questions about mental illness and the brain as biology. This is such an extraordinarly important issue that we have focused much of our additional writing on it this month. This month we offer both the audio version of the interview Harrison Koehli and I did with Dr. Kiehl and also an article I wrote about this issue. Under Research is a great in depth article and interview with Dr. Kiehl by the New Yorker. And check out the expert section to read more about what we all want to know–how biology effects personality disorders, pathology, and psychopathy.

by Sandra L. Brown, M.A.

A brand new year, a brand new look, a brand new magazine launch, a brand new start, and could be, a brand new you! The miracle of life is the ability to begin again. To start over, to look ahead, to sweep the slate clean, to turn the corner, to hope and plan again, to strengthen, to birth a new beginning for oneself.

I am not one for resolutions, instead I just allow the blossom of hope to fully bloom in me during each new year. I can’t help but be hopeful and future-oriented as a virginal calendar slate bears itself for a new imprinting of my life upon it. And yours too. As 2008 gets peeled off as a page in the journal of my life, I look ahead with promise. The promise of growth and hope–for The Institute, for you, for me.

I am so excited for what lies ahead in the horizon of The Institute. The coming together of some great minds, great motivations, and great people wanting to reach others with the training of pathology which gives the future a glowing hope. The magazine, this issue and launch, is the first step towards many of us coming together for the greater good of public pathology and psychopathy education. Education that is not only information and facts but life transformations—the kind of education that brings healing to the soul. Not only coaching and counseling but transformations of the spirit as well. Not only training of others but the cultivation of each persons talents that forms a cultural foundation of help and hope.

The goal of public pathology education for the SAFETY of all is a lofty goal that could not ever be reached by one person, one website, one researcher, one book writer, one program, or one voice. But together, each person teaching someone else, is the new hope for our generation that others will learn about pathology before they are victims.

Because we so passionately believe that it takes everyone teaching others about pathology BEFORE someone is victimized, we have extended ourselves astronomically (at least it feels like that!) to provide every kind of educational service in every kind of avenue we can think of so there are no more excuses for a lack of education in the public today.

This comprehensive planning of not only this magazine but ‘how’ we reach people includes every kind of medium we could develop: print books, e-books, CDs, DVDs, phone coaching/counseling, 1:1s, tele-conferencing support groups, on-line workshops, on-line therapist training, retreats, 28 day intensives, community workshops, legal information,

parenting information, survivors tips and recovery, expert insights, the latest research, …and the list goes on.

If there is NOT information in your life or your community it isn’t because of US, it’s because people are not grabbing hold of what has been created for them to take out into the world.

We hope that you will give yourself some time to snuggle up with a cup of tea and spend time in the magazine. It is broad and deep and resourceful. It is not the quick read that the newsletter use to be so cruise around it the way you would your favorite part of the library.

But most of all, in time, I hope it brings hope not only to your personal situation but to you

as a HEALED VOICE reaching out to others. If that doesn’t happen, and you are merely a wounded victim on a website, we have failed to bring enough healing to you to recreate ourselves in you with the hope and healing that must happen in the world to prevent others from falling prey to pathologicals. Our goal is not to create a magazine (I have PLENTY to do other than merely write a magazine!). It is to create change in the world through you.

Our site is not to be entertainment, but the training and educating of all that each one teaches one. When your healing has created a vision that can help others, we have been successful. Our goal is public education through each person–and it all begins with you.

Whether you need personal help right now through coaching, counseling, groups, or personal relational education in your home or community, it is available. If you need community support through our online groups, online workshops or in-person retreats so that you can meet others who are going through the same thing, it is available. If you need legal information and ideas, legal reports for court, or help with the devastation done to your children through this relationship, it is available. If you want to know as much as you can about the disorders related to pathology and psychopathy, it is available. If you want to learn to see pathology alive and functioning in the world around you—in business, in politics, in others–it is available. If you want to read books by other experts in the field of pathology, it’s available. If you want tips on recovery and relatable information to a survivor’s journey–it’s available. If you want to be trained to reach out to others or as therapists to become certified and receive referrals–it’s available. If you would like to participate in some of the latest research projects related to pathology–it’s available.

Creating a community of change through education about pathology is the mission of not only this magazine but of my professional life. I hope it becomes yours. I hope that what as been created by many people through this enormous effort benefits you, so that it will benefit others through you.

This year, 2009, can be a landmark year for all of us as we heal, grow, and reach the public with new knowledge and hope about relational harm and pathology. Thank you for being on the path with us in 2009 and for supporting our efforts with your encouragement, but mostly, with your own personal healing and recovery.

We welcome your encouraging thoughts about how the magazine has developed thus far. You can write us at saferelationships (at) yahoo (dot) com.

Looking forward to a year of growth with you,

Sandra L. Brown, M.A.

CEO, The Institute

(All articles are copyrighted and cannot be reproduced, however feel free to put a link to this page.)

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Sandra L. Brown, M.A. is the CEO of The Institute for Relational Harm Reduction. She is a psychotherapist and author of six print books, key note speaker, and radio/tv personality. She is the previous director of a large pathology-based mental health program and has worked in inpatient and outpatient settings, as well as in the development of treatment programming.

Living the Gentle Life Part 5

Soul Tearing—The Spiritual & World View Effects 

The last few weeks I have been talking about the necessity of living a gentle life if you are recovering from a dangerous and/or pathological relationship. The damage it does to a person is profound and many are often diagnosed with a chronic stress disorder OR Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) because of it. These disorders respond best to a 'gentle life' that allows the body, mind, and spirit to rest from the overload of adrenaline and stress it has experienced in the dangerous relationship.  (Read our previous newsletters about this topic listed on the magazine) 

I have talked about physically how to 'adjust' your environment if you have a stress disorder and we also talked about the emotional effects---anxiety, depression, and other after-effects associated with PTSD.  Today, we are going to talk about the spiritual effects.

Dangerous and pathological relationships violate at a deep soul level. That's because it touches on the core building blocks of our concepts about relationships--Trust, Love, and Hope. Deception is evil and sick and when you realize 'who/what' you have been with, there is a violation that cuts to the deepest part of a person: their spirit.

Often these kinds of pathological relationships have already 'played into' your soul connection...leading you down the path of believing that your 'connection' was spiritual in nature. There were probably lots of promises of the 'life together' and all the 'reasons God brought you two together.' In the end, they were lies but before you knew they were lies, they were HOPES.

~ "Hope is the thing with wings, that perches in the soul." ~ (Emily Dickinson)

So many pathological relationships have "an intense attachment" that feels like 'connection' or 'soul mate status' when in reality it is just the intense game of the 'pathological' sucking you in and hoping you will confuse intensity with something healthy. 

But Hope, Love, and Trust are all core spiritual values and when you have invested those core values and beliefs in someone and then the heinous deception is revealed that the 'goal' of the relationship was to manipulate you all along, something 'rips' inside of you. This 'soul tearing' brings a spiritual skepticism, a distrust that permeates everything you EVER believed...sometimes even about God.
It's a disastrous wound to your 'world view' and how you see yourself, others, God, and the world at large.

These mortal wounds to your world view can last a long time because, in effect, they are the ways you have come to 'believe' about yourself (I can't trust my intuition), others (everyone is evil), the world (it's a sick place) and God (He didn't protect me). This profound shift in your world view can increase the symptoms of PTSD--depression, anxiety, alienation, loneliness, isolation, and a fear or dread of the future. 

So often the spiritual effects of the pathological relationship are overlooked both by the victim and by the therapist. This 'world view' earthquake has shaken the foundation of your belief system. Without repair to the foundation from which you build your self concept, healing is limited to only symptom management. Spiritual healing of your world view is paramount to your overall recovery. 

I have created a 15 minute audio (mp3) "Spiritual Effects' that goes into more detail about healing your world view and the spiritual effects of dangerous relationships. I think the audio will greatly help your understanding of WHY this part of yourself MUST be healed as well and how the unhealed aspects can impact depression, anxiety, reaching out to others, and your future relationships. You can pick it up on the magazine under Shopping/CDs, Audios. 

Also, if you are in counseling, please allow your counselor to listen to the mp3 too. This will help them address these issues with you in counseling. This is an area so often 'under treated' by other counselors. I teach on this aspect a lot at professional conferences and therapists are eager to understand this aspect of spiritual side effects and its impact on chronic stress disorders.  

Because of this overwhelming need, The Institute is opening its own Women's Pathological Love Relationship & PTSD Recovery Hospital Program at Windmoor Treatment Center in Clearwater, Florida. (Most insurance accepted.)  This is the first and only program of its kind in the U.S.! 

If you are in need of * Pathological Love Relationship Education * Healing the Aftermath Symptoms of Intrusive Thoughts, Obsessional Thinking, Flashbacks, Anxiety, Depression * Learning to Manage PTSD-- The Institute's Inpatient Hospital Program is just the place to get your life back! 

If you would like to be assessed for our inpatient program (normally ranges from 5-12 days--depending on your insurance), contact us at saferelationships@yahoo.com.  We'll be happy to help you find out if treatment is right for you.