One Day at a Time

If I can make it through this night,

perhaps the dawn will bring insight.

If I can make it just one more day,

maybe everything will be okay.

If I can make it another week,

perhaps I will find what i still seek.

If I can make it through this year,

perhaps I will grow beyond this fear.

If I can make it another decade,

maybe this pain will finally fade.

If I can just make it and live this life,

there's a war that I must fight.

It's the battles we fight every day

that pave a life along the way.

Cults and Character Assassination

Destiny Denied ©Lindsay Archer 2007 Cults employ many of the same tactics used by typical emotionally abusive personalities but on a wider level. Their sphere of control is more reaching and they don't want to stop at dominating one person. They want a group to feed their egos, and many start out of the personality disorders of the one in charge. Wikipedia states that Cults are groups that often exploit members psychologically and/or financially, typically by making members comply with leadership's demands through certain types of psychological manipulation, popularly called mind control, and through the inculcation of deep-seated anxious dependency on the group and its leaders. "A cult is a group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea or thing and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control (e.g. isolation from former friends and family, debilitation, use of special methods to heighten suggestibility and subservience, powerful group pressures, information management, suspension of individuality or critical judgement, promotion of total dependency on the group and fear of [consequences of] leaving it, etc) designed to advance the goals of the group's leaders to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community." In their book Theory of Religion', Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge propose that the formation of cults can be explained through a combination of four models: • the psychopathological model - the cult founder suffers from psychological problems; they develop the cult in order to resolve these problems for themselves, as a form of self-therapy • the entrepreneurial model - the cult founder acts like an entrepreneur, trying to develop a religion which they think will be most attractive to potential recruits, often based on their experiences from previous cults or other religious groups they have belonged to • the social model - the cult is formed through a social implosion, in which cult members dramatically reduce the intensity of their emotional bonds with non-cult members, and dramatically increase the intensity of those bonds with fellow cult members - this emotionally intense situation naturally encourages the formation of a shared belief system and rituals • the normal revelations model - the cult is formed when the founder chooses to interpret ordinary natural phenomena as supernatural, such as by ascribing his or her own creativity in inventing the cult to that of the deity. According to the very informative site How Cults Work... Cult leadership is feared. To disagree with leadership is the same as disagreeing with God. The cult leaders will claim to have direct authority from God to control almost all aspects of your life. If the cult is not a religious group then questioning the leaders or program will still be seen as a sign of rebellion and stupidity. Guilt, Character Assassination and Breaking Sessions. Guilt will be used to control you. Maybe the reason you're not making money is because you're not "with the programme". Maybe the reason you're not able to convert new recruits is because "your heart is prideful and full of sin". It could never be that the programme isn't working, or those new recruits have valid reasons for not joining. It's always your fault, you are always wrong, and so you must try harder! You will also be made to feel very guilty for disobeying any of the cult's written or unwritten rules. Character Assassination is used to help create the guilt in you. Character Assassination is a type of false reasoning used by people and groups who have no real arguments. The technical name for Character Assassination is "The Ad hominem Fallacy". This is how it works. Imagine if you will a conversation between two men, Ford and Arthur… "One plus one equals three", says Ford. "No I don't think so. You see when I have one thing, and I have another thing, then I have two things not three", replies Arthur. "I see your point, but what you must realize is that one plus one when calculated in relation to this complex number domain, which I just invented, and then squared by the sum of the ninth tangent in the sequence of the Fibonacci series results in three!", stated Ford triumphantly. Ok, Ford is wrong, but that is not the point. The point is that Ford tried to answer Arthur's reasoning with more reasoning of his own. This is the healthy way people and groups debate subjects. Now lets see what would have happened if Ford had used Character Assassination… "Arthur I have been a mathematician longer than you. How dare you disagree with me! You are obviously a very smug and prideful person. I think you are disagreeing with me because you are jealous of me, and to be honest with you Arthur your rebellion has really hurt me and a lot of other people too", stated Ford his face intimidatingly close to Arthur's. You see Ford didn't answer Arthur's argument, instead he attacked his character. If you are not aware of how Character Assassination works then it is a powerful way to exert control over you.

A Personal Crusade

If I am attached to another person because I cannot stand on my own two feet, he or she may be a life saver, but the relationship is not one of love. - Erich Fromm

Because of my own personal experiences, I feel drawn to reach out to others and help them come to a better understanding of some delicate issues.

As many others, I was raised with the concept that it's not abuse unless it leaves a mark. Without bruises or gaping wounds to present, it is often hard to uncover the more subversive yet often more lasting wounds of emotional abuse that do not heal as easily with time as the wounds of physical abuse.

The problem with emotional abuse is that it is slow and creeping, and it is often the precursor to physical abuse. It leaves the victim damaged or even destroyed on the inside while the outside may be virtually untouched. Although the person may still be able to function physically, the damaging effects are seen in their personal and professional relationships, mental and emotional health, and their general success and effectiveness throughout their lifetime. Often the psychological effects of the emotional abuse that accompany physical abuse provide the more lasting damage.

Emotional abuse is not an occasional spat or outburst, it IS an ongoing and habitual PATTERN. All of us are guilty of losing tempers and saying things that we don't mean, but emotional abuse is a continual progressive pattern with the conscious or subconscious intent to tear down the other person, or to build the abuser up by pushing the other down. It carries a general disrespect or devaluation of the person being abused. Emotional abusers aren't always parents or lovers. They can be coworkers, bosses, friends, siblings, extended family, or just about anyone who has developed these damaging techniques to accomplish their own means.

My hope is to bring public awareness to this constant pestilence in our society. My purpose is to help people understand that they do not have to be miserable and to learn how they are hurting themselves and often those around them.

If we can eliminate emotional abuse, then physical abuse will follow, along with many other negative social problems in the world today. If we want to change the world, we have to start from within our own hearts.

Positive healthy relationships with those around us are possible and worth working for, but sometimes you have to learn what the negative traits are that need to be avoided before that can happen.

• Do you feel that you can't discuss with them what is bothering you? 
• Do they frequently criticize you, humiliate you, or undermine your self-esteem? 
• Do they ridicule you for expressing yourself? 
• Do they isolate you from friends, family or groups? 
• Do they always put their needs before yours? 
• Do they limit your access to work, money or material resources? 
• Have you ever felt obligated to have sex, just to avoid an argument about it? 
• Do you understand their feelings, but do they rarely attempt to understand yours? 
• Do they dismiss your difficulties, issues, or complaints as unimportant or an overreaction? 
• Do they not listen to you? 
• Do they not allow you to have your own thoughts and opinions? 
• Do they ignore logic and prefer histrionics in order to remain the centre of attention? 
• Do they attempt to destroy any outside support by belittling that support in an effort to retain exclusive control over your emotions? 
• Do they perceive themselves as a martyr or victim who expects preferential treatment? 
• Do they project their feelings, short comings, or misbehavior onto you? 
• Do they not take responsibility for hurting others by blame shifting, minimizing, or denying it all together? When held accountable, instead of acknowledging and validating your feelings, do they instead emote, blame you for initiating it, or attack your character/feelings ("The Ad hominem Fallacy") as opposed to addressing the actual issue. 
• Do you find yourself apologizing frequently but rarely if ever hear an apology from them? 
• Do they concentrate more on placing blame than fixing the problem? 
• Do you sometimes feel trapped in the relationship, and fear what will happen if you attempt to leave? If you have left, have they stalked, character assassinated/black balled, or tried to ruin you in some way when they could not woo you back? 
• Are you afraid of your partner? 

Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide

I like Saffron as much as the next person,
but she fits a psychopath.

Pinnochio was given a cricket as a conscience to become a real human boy, and is a good example of what becomes without a conscience.  Sociopaths and Psychopaths are marked by a lack of empathy for others or conscience for their own misdeeds.  These people can lie without compunction because they have no guilt associated with the process.  

"Interpersonally, psychopaths are manipulative, grandiose, egocentric, deceitful, and forceful.  Affectively, they are shallow and non-empathetic; they do not experience empathy, guilt, or remorse.  Behaviorally, they are impulsive, irresponsible, and sensation seeking."

Ironically, without a conscience, psychopaths, sociopaths, and other similarly characterized disorders are not hindered by the normal social worries that accompany social interactions.

This lack of concern comes across as confidence and can make them appear very charismatic.  They often become popular in social circles.  This lack of reaction to lying and manipulating others makes them incredibly persuasive, and more believable than someone less confident telling the truth.

Psychopaths

These days, psychopathy is defined in psychiatry as a personality disorder characterized by lack of empathy or conscience, poor impulse control and manipulative behaviors. Though in widespread use as a psychiatric term, psychopathy has no true equivalent in either DSM-IV-TR's, where it is most strongly correlated with antisocial personality disorder and the ICD-10 dissocial disorder. It is hoped that the projected DSM V will begin to address this anomaly.

Psychopathy is a three-faceted (in the current most accepted analyses) personality disorder involving interpersonal, affective, and behavioral dimensions:

Interpersonally, psychopaths are manipulative, grandiose, egocentric, deceitful, and forceful.

Affectively, they are shallow and non-empathetic; they do not experience empathy, guilt, or remorse.

Behaviorally, they are impulsive, irresponsible, and sensation seeking.

According to Wikipedia ...

Psychopathy (/saɪˈkɒpəθi/[1][2] from the Ancient Greek ψυχή "psyche", -soul, mind and πάθος, "pathos" -suffering, disease, condition[3][4]) is a personality disorder characterized by a pervasive pattern of disregard for the rights of others and the rules of society. Psychopaths have a lack of empathy and remorse, and have very shallow emotions. They are generally regarded as callous, selfish, dishonest, arrogant, aggressive, impulsive, irresponsible, and hedonistic. Despite this, psychopaths are often superficially charming with an intelligence higher than the average individual.

According to some, there is little evidence of a cure or effective treatment for psychopathy; no medications can instill empathy, and psychopaths who undergo traditional talk therapy might become more adept at manipulating others and more likely to commit crime.[8] Others suggest that psychopaths may benefit as much as others from therapy. According to Hare, psychopathy stems from as yet unconfirmed genetic neurological predispositions and as yet unconfirmed social factors in upbringing.[9] A review published in 2008 indicated multiple causes, and variation in causes between individuals.

Shallowness of emotions

Psychopaths do not feel emotions as deeply as an average person. Although they are not totally unemotional, their emotions are so shallow that some clinicians describe them as "proto-emotions: primitive responses to immediate needs."[68] They live in present to the extreme, and their feelings are immediate, immature and unsophisticated. They are incapable of enduring, real love, and cannot form caring, lasting intimate bonds with others. They feel no fear, and thus take reckless risks and commit crimes with little heed to the consequences. They feel no shame or anguish, thus reprimands and punishments have no effect on their behavior. Their behavior is driven by shallower impulses, such as sexual arousal, frustration, boredom, greed, and irritability.[69]

Psychopaths are fearless. When exposed to grave danger, they do not experience the normal range of physical and emotional reactions that a normal person would, such as trembling, involuntary urination, or a pounding heart.[70] They never panic. They frequently engage in criminal acts because they're not afraid of getting caught. They frequently take foolish risks because they are not afraid of getting hurt. This is not to say they are oblivious to the potential consequences of their actions. Rather, the thought of pain and punishment does not provoke an emotional reaction in them and thus has a weak restraining effect.[71] Their lack of fear also contributes to their often extraordinary talent for lying: people believe the psychopath because he is so unflappable in the face of scrutiny.

Prison does not make any deep impression on the psychopath and thus does little to discourage future criminality (there are anecdotes of psychopaths reacting nonchalantly to being sentenced to life in prison.[72]). Public exposure as a crook does not leave them feeling devastated or ashamed. In short, no sort of setback can break their morale or alter their character.

Because their own emotional life is so shallow, psychopaths often have difficulty predicting the emotional reactions of others and are often clumsy with emotional language. Sometimes, they may fail to appreciate the emotional meaning of certain words and use them in odd or inappropriate fashion. For instance, one person thought to be a psychopath regularly beat his wife, eventually battering her to death. He was afterwards quoted as saying: "I loved her so deeply. I miss her so much. What happened was a tragedy. I lost my best lover and my best friend. [...] Why doesn't anybody understand what I've been going through?"[73] One might expect that a man who genuinely loved his wife would not have battered her to death and would feel terrible anguish if he did. This might suggest that his description of his own emotions was inaccurate or deceptive. Psychopaths can be very skilled at figuring out and manipulating people's emotions, but only so long as they can read their reactions for cues. Hare cites the example of a psychopath who once described dispassionately his murders to an interviewer. Eventually, the interviewer could no longer maintain her poker face and expressed her disgust. The psychopath immediately shifted gears and feigned remorse and horror. Because of his sparse emotional life, he did not realize that his description should horrify his listener. It took the interviewer's loss of composure to make him realize this.[74]

Sweeping generalizations about emotions in psychopathy are contradicted by complexity and individual differences found in research. Lack of fear and anxiety has been the most consistent claim, but while studies show some reduced responsiveness in specific contexts, for example to forewarned aversive stimuli or film imagery, most studies do not report significant differences in resting physiological activity or in reactions such as the startle response. It is also possible that some emotions are suppressed so as not to show weakness or vulnerability. Anger, sadness or happiness may be present though denied, concealed or linked to motivational states of impulsivity or antisocial behaviors. Guilt, shame and interpersonal affection are complex states that relate to socialization and morals as well as particular emotional experiences.[75]

Lying and manipulation

Psychopaths can be pathological liars. Their relationships with other people are practically defined by manipulation and exploitation. The psychopath sees no reason why he should be honest or caring towards other people. They typically become very good at lying, sometimes fooling experienced interrogators. Because they are incapable of shame or fear, their body language and tone of voice never display the typical signs that often betray liars. They are completely unafraid of being caught in a lie. When they are confronted, they will, without pause, simply rework their story to fit the facts and appear consistent. This utterly confident presentation is what often sways people's doubts. Another reason they are great manipulators is because they practice harder. They are aggressive and domineering, often relishing the game of control for its own sake if not the rewards they can finagle. They have fewer social inhibitions, and are usually more confident. They are not afraid of causing offense, being rejected, or being put down. When these things do happen, they tend to dismiss them and are not discouraged from trying again.

Although psychopaths are mentally very different from normal people, through their skill at deception they often succeed in convincing others that they are normal, caring, and law-abiding. A psychopath will readily lie about his past to cover up past errors and exaggerate his skills and virtues, all to create the impression that he is in fact the most wonderful kind of person imaginable. Although the psychopath possesses shallow emotions, he will often claim to possess the normal range of human emotions. They tend to make good first impressions and can appear quite likable. There is thus no easy way to detect psychopaths.

Psychopaths are not perfect liars. The speech of psychopaths is often riddled with wild inconsistencies and contradictions. While this is often due to their usually improvisational method and poor emotional understanding, there is also a cognitive deficit at play. Robert Hare argues that psychopaths have difficulty integrating the components of their thought processes and thus fail to notice the absurdities in their speech. They simply toss ideas at their listener without putting much thought into coherence. Cleckley called this phenomenon "semantic aphasia".[76] For instance, one psychopath told Hare: "I had to steal sometimes to get out of town, yeah, but I'm not a fucking criminal."[77] Another psychopath was once asked if she ever committed a violent crime, and responded: "No, but once I had to kill someone."

Impulsivity, irresponsibility, low tolerance for boredom

Psychopaths can be impulsive and have little self-control. They often act on their immediate desires with little planning or thought for the consequences. Their crimes tend to be spur-of-the-moment affairs. Psychopaths do not think hard about the future and they change their plans frequently. They often abandon relationships and quit jobs on a whim. Their lifestyles often reveal a pattern of bouncing from one job to another, one city to another, and in and out of prison.

Psychopaths care nothing for rules and obligations. At work, they regularly shirk duties and break promises, leading to erratic performance records. They spend their money recklessly and often have terrible credit histories. They neglect their children.

Psychopaths have an excessive need for stimulation. They will often abuse drugs or perform reckless acts, including criminal ones, simply for the thrill. At work, they regularly neglect tasks that they find boring.

Parasitic lifestyle

Due to their frequent lack of qualifications, concern only for their own welfare, irresponsibility, and disinterest in boring work, it is unlikely that psychopaths will be productive family members or workers. They tend to live parasitically, draining resources but contributing little.[79] They have no qualms about draining the money of friends and family to satisfy their desires or bail them out of trouble. Some psychopaths specifically adopt a lifestyle of seducing men or women in order to obtain money and sex from them for as long as they can.

Lack of remorse

Psychopaths show a profound inability to feel remorse. Whatever the crime, whoever the victim, a psychopath simply does not accept responsibility for the consequences of his actions. They know the difference between right and wrong but do not care. In some cases, psychopaths are completely forthright about their attitude: they acknowledge the pain they cause but are not sorry. In other cases they may rationalize what happened, perhaps by minimizing the seriousness of the incident, or blaming the victim in some way. They may deny any harm was done.

Though psychopaths do not feel remorse, they may feign contrition in order to elicit leniency and forgiveness.

Grandiosity

Psychopaths see themselves as superior beings, with an exaggerated sense of entitlement. They often appear arrogant, opinionated, domineering, and cocky. They believe they are more talented than anyone else and that they can become anything they want to be. They see themselves as smarter than everyone else and have little regard for the opinions of others. It is not uncommon for psychopaths who have defrauded people to describe them as weak, inferior beings who deserved to be taken advantage of.[80] They resent authority and being in a position of inferiority.[81] With their exaggerated sense of entitlement, psychopaths often expect large rewards for mediocre efforts.[82] They will apply for important jobs despite lacking qualifications, demand authority and privileges above their rank, and show no gratitude for favors granted them. They are shameless and relentless self-promoters, exaggerating or fabricating their talents and dismissing their failings. In this respect, they resemble narcissists, and indeed the two disorders are sometimes hard to distinguish.

Most psychopaths tend to be underachievers due to their lack of interest in education and lack of self-discipline. However, they are unashamed and dismissive of the legal, financial, career, or personal problems in their lives. They blame everyone and everything but themselves for their failures - bad luck, an unfair system, unsupportive colleagues, etc. - or they might dismiss their old projects as wastes of time that they were right to abandon. They may even portray their bad qualities as virtues: many psychopaths brag about their criminal versatility, the number of crimes they got away with, and their talent for deception.

Unrealistic long-term goals

Closely related to the psychopath's grandiosity is his lack of realistic planning. They often have grandiose, self-centered goals, and they believe that they can become anything they want to be. However, they often fail to appreciate the talent, dedication, and effort it would take to achieve such goals. Since they are focused on the present, they have no capability to self-sacrifice to achieve their goals, give up quickly and easily, lack patience and instead focus on instant gratification.[77]

High recidivism

It is impossible to correct a psychopath's behavior through punishment. Psychopaths reoffend at a much higher rate than non-psychopathic offenders, especially when it comes to violent crime. As much as 80% of psychopathic inmates will be convicted of something within five years of their release, compared to less than half of other inmates.[83][84] Psychopaths frequently violate parole conditions, winding up back in jail soon after release.

There is currently no reliable means by which to reform a psychopath. In the past, special therapies for psychopathic inmates were designed to teach them sensitivity, but these backfired and instead made them even more likely to reoffend.[85] It is believed that the programs instead made them more adept manipulators and thus opened up more opportunities for them to exploit people.

Juvenile delinquency

Background checks on psychopaths typically reveal that their antisocial behavior began in childhood. Researchers noticed common misbehaviors including:

• frequent unauthorized absences from school and home
• defiance of parents, teachers, and rules
• petty theft from other children and parents
• non-responsiveness to reprimands and punishment
• animal abuse
• early promiscuity
• vandalism and arson
• persistent bullying and fighting

What has struck researchers is that many psychopaths come from apparently stable backgrounds. Popular wisdom holds that antisocial tendencies are the result of abusive and neglectful parenting, yet some psychopaths had caring parents who did their best to socialize their child properly.[86]

"There are some individuals who come from fantastic home backgrounds—dedicated parents, all the advantages in the world—and yet they grew up to become psychopathic violent monsters later in life, and you ask the question: 'how the heck did they get there?'"—Adrian Raine

Robert Hare argues that parents cannot be held to fault for their offspring becoming psychopaths, for no amount of good parenting can fix the basic condition, which has genetic causes.[87] Though upbringing cannot cure psychopathy, it can alter its expression. Hare found that psychopaths from unstable families were more likely to be violent.

Current medical practice forbids diagnosing children as psychopaths.[86] Nonetheless, Robert Hare has developed checklists that can identify psychopathic tendencies in juveniles. The Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV) is used for clinical research,[89] while the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD) is used to identify problem children for therapeutic intervention.[90]

Moral judgment

Psychopaths have been considered notoriously amoral – an absence of, indifference towards, or disregard for moral beliefs. There is little firm data on patterns of moral judgment, however. Studies of developmental level (sophistication) of moral reasoning found all possible results – lower, higher or the same as non-psychopaths. Studies that compared judgments of personal moral transgressions versus judgments of breaking conventional rules or laws, found that psychopaths rated them as equally severe, whereas non-psychopaths rated the rule-breaking as less severe. A study comparing judgments of whether personal or impersonal harms would be endorsed in order to achieve the rationally maximum (utilitarian) amount of welfare, found no significant differences between psychopaths and non-psychopaths. However, a further study using the same tests found that psychopaths (prisoners scoring high on the psychopathy checklist) were more likely to endorse impersonal harms or rule violations than non-psychopaths. Psychopaths who scored low in anxiety were also more willing to endorse personal harms on average.[91]

Perceptual/emotional recognition deficits

Facial affect recognition

In a 2002 study, David Kosson and Yana Suchy, et al.[Who] asked psychopathic inmates to name the emotion expressed on each of 30 faces. Compared to the control group, psychopaths had a significantly lower rate of accuracy in recognizing disgusted facial affect but a higher rate of accuracy in recognizing anger. Additionally, when "conditions designed to minimize the involvement of right-hemispheric mechanisms" (i.e., sadness) were used, psychopaths had more difficulty accurately identifying emotions. This study did not replicate Blair's et al. (1997) findings that psychopaths are specifically less sensitive to nonverbal cues of fear or distress.[92]

One study indicated that in children antisocial behaviour is associated with perceiving hostility from others, while callous-unemotional traits appear related to not recognising fear in others. Those showing the latter trait tended to pay less attention to the eye region of faces. Although deficits in these areas have been linked to the amygdala in patients with brain damage, a recent meta-analysis suggested the deficits are not always found in adult psychopathy and tend to show more on tasks requiring verbal processing (e.g. a verbal response to a questioner) at the same time as visual processing.[93][94]

Vocal affect recognition

In a 2002 experiment, Blair, Mitchell, et al. used the Vocal Affect Recognition Test to measure psychopaths' recognition of the emotional intonation given to connotative neutral words. Psychopaths tended to make more recognition errors than controls with a particularly high rate of error for sad and fearful vocal affect.[95]

PCL-R items

There are 20 items in the PCL-R, conventionally divided into two factors. Each factor is sometimes further subdivided in two - interpersonal vs affect items for Factor 1, and lifestyle vs antisocial behavior items for Factor 2. Two items, 'Promiscuous sexual behavior' and 'Many short-term marital relationships', have sometimes been left out in such divisions (Hare, 2003):

Interpersonal-Affect items	Antisocial items
Glibness/superficial charm Grandiose sense of self-worth Pathological lying Cunning/manipulative Lack of remorse or guilt Emotionally shallow Callous/lack of empathy Failure to accept responsibility for own actions	Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom Parasitic lifestyle Poor behavioral control Promiscuous sexual behavior Lack of realistic, long-term goals Impulsiveness Irresponsibility Juvenile delinquency Early behavioral problems Revocation of conditional release Many short-term marital relationships Criminal versatility.

Cleckley checklist

In his book Mask of Sanity, Hervey M. Cleckley described 16 'common qualities' that he thought were characteristic of the individuals he termed psychopaths:[154] Cleckley checklist formed the basis for Hare's more current PCL-R checklist (see above).

1. Superficial charm and good "intelligence"
2. Absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking
3. Absence of "nervousness" or psychoneurotic manifestations
4. Unreliability
5. Untruthfulness and insincerity
6. Lack of remorse and shame
7. Inadequately motivated antisocial behavior
8. Poor judgment and failure to learn by experience
9. Pathologic egocentricity and incapacity for love
10. General poverty in major affective reactions
11. Specific loss of insight
12. Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations
13. Fantastic and uninviting behavior with drink and sometimes without
14. Suicide threats rarely carried out
15. Sex life impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated
16. Failure to follow any life plan.

Psychopathy vs. sociopathy

Hare writes that the difference between sociopathy and psychopathy may "reflect the user's views on the origins and determinates of the disorder." The term sociopathy may be preferred by sociologists that see the causes as due to social factors. The term psychopathy may be preferred by psychologists who see the causes as due to a combination of psychological, genetic, and environmental factors.[161]

David T. Lykken proposes psychopathy and sociopathy as two distinct kinds of antisocial personality disorder. He believes psychopaths are born with temperamental differences such as impulsivity, cortical underarousal, and fearlessness that lead them to risk-seeking behavior and an inability to internalize social norms. On the other hand, he claims sociopaths have relatively normal temperaments; their personality disorder being more an effect of negative sociological factors like parental neglect, delinquent peers, poverty, and extremely low or extremely high intelligence. Both personality disorders are the result of an interaction between genetic predispositions and environmental factors, but psychopathy leans towards the hereditary whereas sociopathy tends towards the environmental.

Co-occurrence

Psychopaths may have various other mental conditions. It is difficult to consider psychopathy 'comorbid' with clinical diagnoses when it is not itself a clinical diagnosis, unless considered to mean antisocial personality disorder. The constellation of traits in psychopathy assessments overlaps considerably with ASPD criteria and also with Histrionic personality disorder and Narcissistic personality disorder criteria.

Psychopathy is associated with substance use disorders. This appears to be linked more closely to anti-social/criminal lifestyle, as measured by Factor 2 of the PCL-R, than the interpersonal-emotional traits assessed by Factor I of the PCL-R.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is known to be highly comorbid with conduct disorder, and may also co-occur with psychopathic tendencies. This may be explained in part by deficits in executive function.

Anxiety disorders often co-occur with antisocial personality disorder, and contrary to assumptions psychopathy can sometimes be marked by anxiety; however, this appears to be due to the antisocial aspect (factor 2 of the PCL), and anxiety may be inversely associated with the interpersonal-emotional traits (Factor I of the PCL-R). Depression appears to be inversely associated with psychopathy. There is little evidence for a link between psychopathy and schizophrenia.

It has been suggested that psychopathy may be comorbid with several other diagnoses than these, but limited work on comorbidity has been carried out. This may be partly due to difficulties in using inpatient groups from certain institutions to assess comorbidity, owing to the likelihood of some bias in sample selection.

Comorbidity may be more reflective of poor discriminant validity of categories in the DSM-IV than reflective of actually separate conditions.

Antisocial personality disorder (APD or ASPD), or dissocial personality disorder, is a psychiatric diagnosis that interprets antisocial and impulsive behaviors as symptoms of a personality disorder. Psychiatry defines only pathological antisocial behavior; it does not address potential benefits of positive antisocial behavior or define the meaning of 'social' in contrast to 'antisocial'.

Professional psychiatry generally compares APD to sociopathic disorders and psychopathic disorders (not to be confused with psychosis). Approximately 3% of men and 1% of women are thought to have some form of antisocial personality disorder according to DSM-IV. Formal psychiatric definitions make a distinction between APD and social anxiety disorder.

Although criminal activity is not a necessary requirement for the diagnosis, these individuals often encounter legal difficulties due to their disregard for societal standards and the rights of others. Therefore, many of these individuals can be found in prisons. However, it should be noted that criminal activity does not automatically warrant a diagnosis of APD, nor does a diagnosis of APD imply that a person is a criminal. It is hypothesized that many high achievers exhibit APD characteristics. This, however, brings much criticism upon the diagnostic criteria specified for those exhibiting APD and the PCL-R. Both of these tests depend upon the person in question being a criminal or having participated in criminal activities.

Research has shown that individuals with APD are indifferent to the possibility of physical pain or many punishments, and show no indications that they experience fear when so threatened; this may explain their apparent disregard for the consequences of their actions, and their lack of empathy to the suffering of others.

Central to understanding psychopaths is that they do not appear to experience true human emotions, or at least, they do not appear to experience a full range of human emotions. This can explain the lack of empathy for the suffering of others, since they cannot experience emotion associated with either empathy or suffering. Risk-seeking behavior and substance abuse may be attempts to escape feeling empty or emotionally void. The rage exhibited by psychopaths and the anxiety associated with certain types of ASPD may represent the limit of emotion experienced, or there may be physiological responses without analogy to emotion experienced by others.

Emotions which the true psychopath exhibits are the fruits of watching and mimicking other people's emotions. This is to mask their sociopathic tendencies from others.

One approach to explaining APD behaviors is put forth by sociobiology, a science that attempts to understand and explain a wide variety of human behavior based on evolutionary biology. One route to doing so is by exploring evolutionarily stable strategies; that is, strategies that being successful will tend to be passed on to the next generation, thus becoming more common in the gene pool. For example, in one well-known 1995 paper by Linda Mealey, chronic antisocial/criminal behavior is explained as a combination of two such strategies.

According to the older theory of Freudian psychoanalysis, a sociopath has a strong id and ego that overpowers the superego. The theory proposes that internalized morals of our unconscious mind are restricted from surfacing to the ego and consciousness.

Personality Disorder Categories

In my research, I discovered this reference for Personality Disorder Categories.  It paints a broad stroke of disorders falling into 3 categories: Paranoid, Dramatic, and Anxious.  Unfortunately I do not recall the source, but have found the information very valuable.

Personality Disorder Categories

Paranoid Personality Disorders: Paranoid, Schizoid, and Schizotypal

Paranoid Personality Disorder - individual generally tends to interpret the actions of others as threatening.

Schizoid Personality Disorder - individual generally detached from social relationships, and shows a narrow range of emotional expression in various social settings.

Schizotypal Personality Disorder - individual is uncomfortable in close relationships, has thought or perceptual distortions, and peculiarities of behavior.

Dramatic Personality Disorders: Antisocial, Borderline, Histrionic, and Narcissistic

Individuals with these disorders have intense, unstable emotions, distorted self-perception, and/or behavioral impulsiveness.

Antisocial Personality Disorder - individual shows a pervasive disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others.

Borderline Personality Disorder - individual shows a generalized pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image, and observable emotions, and significant impulsiveness.

Histrionic Personality Disorder - individual often displays excessive emotionality and attention seeking in various contexts. They tend to overreact to other people, and are often perceived as shallow and self-centered.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder - individual has a grandiose view of themselves, a need for admiration, and a lack of empathy that begins by early adulthood and is present in various situations. These individuals are very demanding in their relationships.

Anxious Personality Disorders: Avoidant, Dependent, Obsessive-Compulsive

Individuals with these disorders often appear anxious or fearful.

Avoidant Personality Disorder - individual is socially inhibited, feels inadequate, and is oversensitive to criticism

Dependent Personality Disorder - individual shows an extreme need to be taken care of that leads to fears of separation, and passive and clinging behavior.

Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder - individual is preoccupied with orderliness, perfectionism, and control at the expense of flexibility, openness, and efficiency.

Co-Habits: Co-Narcissism and Codependence

In the last post the topic was on pride and narcissism.  Often attracted to the narcissist is the codependent, but there is also a form of internalized narcissism called co-narcissism or a covert narcissist.

The codependent was first defined when dealing with addiction.  Often the addict, usually alcoholic was in the company of a codependent who enabled them.  Codependency is a form of a twisted Golden Rule. They do unto others and expect to have that done to them.  They ignore the thinking of how the other person wishes to be treated, and instead project onto them their own wishes and the way they wish to be treated.  In this way a codependent thinks they not only know best, but are bound to alienate those around them due to their rigid lack of abstract thought.

Co-Narcissism

A co-dependent who emotionally depends exclusively on classic narcissists is sometimes referred to as a covert narcissist (Elan Golomb and Alexander Lowen) or co-narcissist (Alan Rappoport) or inverted narcissist (Sam Vaknin).

Defenses such as narcissism are developed to compensate for the intolerable and gradual realisation that adults are merely human: capricious, unfair, unpredictable, non-dependable. Defenses provide both satisfaction and a sense of security.

The child's feelings towards its parents are reactions to their responses (affirmation, buffering, modulation or disapproval, punishment, even abuse). Their responses help maintain the child's self-structures. Without the appropriate responses, grandiosity, for instance, cannot be transformed into adult ambitions and ideals.

Children entertain notions of greatness (primitive or naïve grandiosity) mingled with magical thinking, feelings of omnipotence and omniscience and a belief in their immunity to the consequences of their actions. These elements and the child's feelings regarding its parents (which are also painted by it with a brush of omnipotence and grandiosity) — coalesce and form these constructs.

Early childhood abuse and traumas trigger coping strategies and defense mechanisms, including narcissism. One of the coping strategies is to withdraw inwards, to seek gratification from a secure, reliable and permanently-available source: from one's self. The child, fearful of further rejection and abuse, refrains from further interaction and resorts to grandiose fantasies of being loved and self-sufficient. Repeated hurt may lead to the development of a narcissistic personality.

Codependence can also be a set of maladaptive, compulsive behaviors learned by family members in order to survive in a family which is experiencing great emotional pain and stress caused, for example, by a family member's alcoholism or other addiction, sexual or other abuse within the family, a family members' chronic illness, or forces external to the family, such as poverty.

As adults, codependent people have a greater tendency to get involved in relationships with people who are perhaps unreliable, emotionally unavailable, or needy. The codependent person tries to provide and control everything within the relationship without addressing their own needs or desires, they set themselves up for continued unfulfillment.

Symptoms of codependence are: controlling behavior, distrust, perfectionism, avoidance of feelings, intimacy problems, caretaking behavior, hypervigilance or physical illness related to stress. Codependence is often accompanied by depression, as the codependent person succumbs to feelings of extreme frustration or sadness over his or her inability to make changes in the other person's (or persons') life.

Pride and the Narcissist

Supposedly pride is at the root of all sin, or at least the worst of the 7 deadly sins.  This can be applied to emotional abuse as well.  According to Wikipedia: 

Violent criminals often describe themselves as superior to others - as special, elite persons who deserve preferential treatment. Many murders and assaults are committed in response to blows to self-esteem such as insults and humiliation. (To be sure, some perpetrators live in settings where insults threaten more than their opinions of themselves. Esteem and respect are linked to status in the social hierarchy, and to put someone down can have tangible and even life-threatening consequences.)

The same conclusion has emerged from studies of other categories of violent people. Street-gang members have been reported to hold favourable opinions of themselves and to turn violent when these estimations are shaken. Playground bullies regard themselves as superior to other children; low self-esteem is found among the victims of bullies, but not among bullies themselves. Violent groups generally have overt belief systems that emphasise their superiority over others.

Also it can be seen in psychological experiments such as the Milgram Experiment.  In an effort to uncover how such horrors as the holocaust could happen.  After the participants of the experiment were convinced that they had hurt the test subject/actor, they often viewed the subject as less attractive, intelligent, or in other words less valuable than before the experiment.  Although the actual experiment was on obedience, it gave a glimpse into the Just World Phenomenon that basically says that "bad things only happen to bad people"and often leads to Victim Blame.  All of these basically go to show that a sense of superiority can lead to the dehumanization of an individual.  At that point the abuser feels justified in the devaluation of that individual and soothes their conscience.

The most predominant example of this leading to an abusive personality is through Narcissism.  Beverly Engel describes the Narcissist in her book "The Emotionally Abused Woman" as follows.

The Narcissist

Narcissism is characterized by a grandiose sense of self-importance, recurrent fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love; a craving for constant attention and admiration; and feelings of rage, humiliation or haughty indifference when criticized or defeated. In addition, narcissists have at least two of the following characteristics: a sense of entitlement (that is, they view themselves as desirable, talented, and special and thus entitled special recognition and unconditional acceptance); exploitive (the tendency to take advantage of others and to disregard their rights); oscillation between extreme over-idealization and devaluation of others; and lack of empathy (meaning not just an inability to recognize how others feel but often also the inability to recognize that others have feelings at all).

Even though narcissists are often arrogant and vain and seem to feel superior to others, they in fact have very low self-esteem. They find it hard to accept constructive feedback of any kind or to go beyond superficial relationships.

More information on Narcissism as follows from Wikipedia and Bruce Gregory Ph. D

Narcissism
The narcissist prefers fantasy to reality, grandiose self-conception to realistic appraisal. The child, fearful of further rejection and abuse, refrains from further interaction and resorts to grandiose fantasies of being loved and self-sufficient.

Narcissistic personality disorder itself is defined by the DSM as being characterized by an all-pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), the need for excessive admiration or adulation, and a distinct lack of empathy, all present in a variety of possible contexts.

The Narcissist fails to regard other people, situations, or entities (political parties, countries, races, his workplace) as a compound of good and bad elements. He either idealizes his object, or devalues it. Things are seen in black and white; the object is either all good or all bad. The bad attributes are always projected, displaced, or otherwise externalized. The good ones are internalized in order to support the inflated (grandiose) self-concepts of the narcissist and his grandiose fantasies, as well as to avoid the pain of deflation and disillusionment.

Primary Narcissism, in psychology is a defense mechanism, common in the formative years (6 months to 6 years old). It is intended to shield the infant and toddler from the inevitable hurt and fears involved in the individuation-separation phase of personal development.

Secondary or pathological narcissism is a pattern of thinking and behaving in adolescence and adulthood, which involves infatuation and obsession with one's self to the exclusion of others. It manifests in the chronic pursuit of personal gratification and attention (narcissistic supply), in social dominance and personal ambition, bragging, insensitivity to others, lack of empathy and/or excessive dependence on others to meet his/her responsibilities in daily living and thinking. Pathological narcissism is at the core of the narcissistic personality disorder.

Research shows that most narcissists are born into dysfunctional families. Such families are characterized by massive denials, both internal ("you do not have a real problem, you are only pretending") and external ("you must never tell the secrets of the family to anyone"). Abuse in all forms is not uncommon in such families. These families may encourage excellence, but only as means to a narcissistic end. The parents are usually themselves needy, emotionally immature, and narcissistic and thus unable to recognize or respect the child's emerging boundaries and emotional needs. This often leads to defective or partial socialisation and to problems with sexual identity.

SKILLS FOR DEALING WITH NARCISSISM - Bruce Gregory, Ph.D.

The narcissist doesn't want you to be in control of your feelings or emotions. He wants control of them, to put you off guard, feeling chaos, despair and need. We end up angry, depressed and sometimes suicidal.

Often when leaving the company of a narcissist one feels very tired and worn out. You feel as if you have been holding a castle gate alone against the onslaught of hordes that want pillage and destroy, and in essence that is a good analogy. 

Fight or Flight

Your body is in the fight or flight mode and you feel the physicality of your stress. Cortisol and adrenaline, the stress hormones, are flowing through your body causing your heart to race and your breathing to become shallow. (Deep breathing really does help switch from the panic mode to a calmer mode, done deeply enough which means your belly expands as a baby's does when breathing, then completely emptying the lungs switches you over to the calming side of your nervous system, away from the fight or flight.

Most people feel victimized by narcissistic forces and narcissists. This is because they have felt consistently oppressed, suppressed, or frustrated by narcissistic forces This becomes problematic in terms of achieving sustainability. When one is in a "victim state," one sees the oppressor as the enemy, as the one with the power, and as a result, the victim is easily manipulated into frustration and anger. The narcissist will utilize this dynamic to incite people into emotional states which can be exploited into distractions from the core issues.

Skills for dealing with attempts to intimidate can be divided into two areas, intrapersonal and interpersonal. Intrapersonally, it is essential not to react. This means that reactions of fear, impatience, or anger are not practical. In their place should be patience and curiosity. On an interpersonal level, responses and questions like, "that's interesting; could you explain that?; or, "I am not clear about that; would you please clarify (or elaborate)?; or, "it seems like there is a contradiction in your logic." All of these can generate positive results in terms of reducing the control of the narcissistic forces. This is done through the non-reaction, which communicates,"you are not so powerful that you can manipulate me, or us, and distract us from the issue. It is also done through the questions which communicate, "I/we are not afraid of you; we are not leaving the space/situation to your control alone; we will challenge you if necessary; you cannot win through intimidation or disinformation."

Excellent individual emotional boundaries are so critical for dealing with narcissism. These emotional boundaries prevent the force of the narcissism emotions from throwing an individual off balance. The emotional boundaries are also helpful in not taking the narcissism's actions or positions personally.

The narcissist, consumed and driven by the grandiosity, feels responsible for everything; therefore, all failures, frustrations, and disappointments are its fault, and are directed personally at it. In interacting with narcissism, one does not want to fall into the narcissist's world and take what is going on personally. Narcissism's actions are indiscriminate. They are directed toward any object, person or group that threatens its control, domination, and grandiosity. An excellent emotional boundary system does not allow the force of another person's emotions to penetrate one's own personal space.

Sharing "Red Flags" by Meredith Gold

RED FLAGS

How to Recognize the warning signs of an Abusive Partner

This article was found in "Self Defense for Women" Magazine August 2002 written by Meredith Gold

Abuse in a relationship can take many forms. In general, physical battery is what most people would consider abuse. The damage is often visible and the scars are a tangible reminder of what many women have lived through, but psychological and emotional abuse have remained more vague. Historically, there has been confusion about whether controlling, threatening or demeaning a woman daily should even be considered "real" abuse. For too many women throughout the ages, that treatment was simply their lot in life. Thankfully, times are changing and many women are ready to reclaim their lives. So the question is: If your partner is not physically beating you, where is the dividing line between what is acceptable and what is abuse? The answer is surprisingly simple for some of us and as daunting as climbing Mt. Everest for others, because the line is where you draw it. Each of us has to decide what we deserve, what we are willing to endure and when we've had enough. But how does the abuse even start? How can a seemingly wonderful relationship deteriorate into an abusive nightmare? Is it possible that there were warning signs that the victim failed to see? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. In virtually all cases, when a survivor reflects on her situation, she recognizes that there were definite red flags warning that she was in danger. Of course, abusers don't advertise the terrible treatment that awaits the unfortunate women who get involved with them. The beginning is usually pretty dreamy with everyone on their best behavior, but people tend to show their true colors fairly soon. It's important that we pay attention to what is really happening in our relationship rather than focus on what we want to happen. If something feels wrong, it probably is wrong. We need to trust our instincts, which we have for a reason. Every person's story has its own twists and turns but, by and large, most abusers share at least a few of these traits: They were raised in a physically violent or verbally abusive household. They may have a history of alcohol and/or drug abuse. They often suffer from low self-esteem and lack of personal power. They have a short fuse and overreact to small problems and frustrations. They often use intimidation, force and violence to resolve issues in their lives. And abuser's partner will probably not become aware of these traits until she has spent some time with him, but once the "honeymoon" phase is over and he gets comfortable and bold, she will see with whom she is really dealing. No relationship is perfect and sometimes people get angry and lash out or misdirect their frustration at their partner. It does not always indicate dangerously abusive behavior. Chances are, we have all been in situations where we pushed each other's buttons, resulting in raised voices, inappropriate anger and finger-pointing from both sides. Even though these situations are painful and unpleasant, it's important to recognize the difference between the occasional misunderstanding and habitual mental or physical abuse to prevent mistaking one for the other. However, if anything you've read in this article sounds like something you have experienced in your relationship, it is crucial that you get help. If you have ever experienced physical violence while with him, then you must leave. Abuse does not go away and it does not get better. It only gets worse. The way to prevent or stop it is by removing yourself from the relationship. There are crisis centers and support groups in virtually every state. If you need help, just look in your local phone book or get your computer and type "DOMESTIC ABUSE" + (Your state name) into any search engine. If you are ready, there is help out there. It is up to each of us to change our lives. The first step is the most important, and often the most difficult. Meredith Gold teaches adrenal-stress-based self-defense in Los Angeles. She is the director of female instructor training for Rocky Mountain Combat Applications Training. To contact her, send email to mere97@earthlink.net There are probably as many variations as there are abusers, but the following behaviors are some classic warning signs of an abusive personality. Control He wants you to spend all of your free time with him. He dictates what clothing you should or shouldn't wear. He criticizes your choices and decisions. He decides who you can socialize with and insists you check in with him regularly. He tells you that no one loves you as much as he does and you are nothing without him. He isolates you from friends and family. He gains control of your finances. He limitis time you spend outside the relationship. He insists you do not wear clothing or make-up that will attract attention. He becomes angry if you have contact with anyone he perceives to be a threat - especially other men. He discourages or forbids you from spending time with friends and family members for fear they might encourage you to leave the relationship. He creates drama to garner sympathy and make himself look like the victim. Unpredictability He is kind and loving one day (or moment) and then moody, frightening or violent the next. He constantly changes the rules so you are always wrong. Hurtful behavior is followed by flowers, apologies, and promises that he never keeps. His mixed messages keep you confused and questioning your own judgement. Verbal Destructiveness He wipes out your self-esteem by saying you're stupid, fat, lazy, ugly, etc. - both privately and publicly. He yells and admonishes you as though you were a child. He dismisses your opinion, saying you don't know what you are talking about. He tells you that no one else will ever love you or want you the way he does. He says he is sorry for scaring or hurting you, but blames your behavior for making him go crazy. He threatens to commit suicide if you leave him. Inappropriate Physicality He uses invasive, threatening body language to frighten and intimidate you. He pushes, grabs or shakes you. He punches, slaps, or kicks you. He forces unwanted sexual interaction Are You... afraid to speak up or contradict your partner? being publicly humiliated by your partner? second-guessing your own decisions because of your partner's negative feedback? keeping secrets because it's easier than making your partner angry? being physically threatened by your partner? the victim of even one incident of physical harm by your partner? making excuses for your partner's erratic or violent behavior? telling yourself he "really didn't mean it" or "this is the last time he will hurt/humiliate me?" feeling that somehow the situation is your fault and things will get better if you change your behavior? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you are experiencing some form of abuse and should seek the help of a qualified professional. - M.G.

Healthy vs Non-Healthy Relationships

QUALITIES OF A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP

Non-Threatening Behavior Talking and acting so that your partner feels safe and comfortable doing and saying things. Respect Listening to your partner non-judgementally. Being emotionally affirming and understanding. Valuing opinions. Trust and Support Supporting your partner's goals in life. Respecting your partner's right to his or her own feelings, friends, activities, and opinions. Honesty and Accountability Acceptinig responsibility for self. Acknowledging past use of violence and/or emotionally abusive behavior, changing behavior. Acknowledging infedelity, changing the behavior. Admitting being wrong when it is appropriate. Communicating openly and truthfully, acknowledging past abuse, seeking help for abusive relationship patterns. Responsible Parenting Sharing parental responsibilities. Being a positive, non-violent role model for children. Shared Responsibility Mutually agreeing on a fair distribution of work. Making family decisions together. QUALITIES OF A NON-HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP Using Intimidation Making your partner afraid by using looks, actions, gestures. Smashing or destroying things. Destroying or confiscating your partner's property. Abusing pets as a display of power and control. Silent or overt raging. Displaying weapons or threatening their use. Making physical threats. Using Emotional Abuse Putting your partner down. Making your partner feel bad about himself or herself. Calling your partner names. Playing mind games. Interrogating your partner. Harassing or intimidating your partner. "Checking up on" your partner's activities or whereabouts. Humiliating your partner, whether through direct attacks or "jokes". Making your partner feel guilty. Shaming your partner. Using Isolation Controlling what your partner does, who he or she sees and talks to, what he or she reads, where he or she goes. Limiting your partner's outside involvement. Demanding your partner remain home when you are not with them. Cutting your partner off from prior friends, activities, and social interaction. Using jealousy to justify your actions (Jealousy is the primary symptom of abusive relationships; it is also the core component of Love Addiction.) Minimizing, Denying and Blame Shifting Making light of the abuse and not taking your partner's concerns about it seriously. Saying the abuse did not happen, or wasn't that bad. Shifting responsibility for your abusive behavior to your partner, (i.e. I did it because you _____) Using Children Making your partner feel guilty about the children. Using the children to relay messages. Using visitation to harass your partner. Threatening to take the children away. Using Male Privilege Treating your partner like a servant. Making all the big decisions. Acting like the "master of the castle". Being the one to define men's and women's or relationship's roles. Using Economic Abuse Preventing your partner from getting or keeping a job. Making your partner ask for money. Giving your partner an allowance. Taking your partner's money. Not letting your partner know about or have access to family income.

Information is Power

The first step to fighting any enemy, is to understand how they work, and to recognize them so you do not get caught unawares. Sometimes that enemy is yourself. Sometimes that enemy is someone you love dearly. Regardless they become an enemy because you are in a struggle with them. Emotional abuse and destructive habits hurt the abuser and those they chose to lash out against in their own pain. But any psychologist well tell you, there is only one person, you can change, and that's yourself. Ultimately it is up to the person with the bad behaviors to CHOOSE to improve, to not give into the impulses that are ruining their lives and those around them. And the best way to combat any enemy is through knowledge.

I encourage you to learn this information and learn to recognize the behaviors in others and yourself. Many people do not see them as wrong or bad (unless it is physical), but the negative impact on those around them, reveals the destructiveness of their behavior. Sometimes these learned behaviors are just what the person grew up with and therefore recognizes as "normal", but after a lifetime of broken hearts and damaged relationships it becomes obvious that what they are doing is not working. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Once the cycle proves to be futile, one must choose to break it, to reach for new healthier habits, which takes a heavy dose of humility and honesty with ones' self. The good thing about learned behaviors is that they can be unlearned - if the person chooses to work hard to change. Only that person can change themselves.

If you are in the company of an emotional abuser, you must accept that you can not change them, but you can change your response to them. You can establish boundaries and choose where to invest your energy. At times they are like drowning people who are reaching and grasping for anything. Their behaviors are not out of malice, but desperation for anything to cling onto; however, if you are not careful, they can pull you down with them.

Remember that we are talking about behaviors. This is not a character judgement on the person who has these behaviors. A good person can make bad choices. You have to accept the destructive quality of these behaviors regardless of the intent of the one performing them. Behaviors can be learned and unlearned, but as long as the negative ones continue to work for someone (get them what they want i.e. control, a feeling of security, a feeling of superiority, etc.), there is no reason for them to change. The best thing that you can do in the face of these abusive techniques is to stand by your boundaries (say NO and do not sacrifice for them), clearly state your limits, establish expectations, establish boundaries, and do not tolerate the violation of them. This is not being mean. Letting people run over you is not being nice. It does them no good, and you neither. It only sends them a signal of acceptance and permission which in the end enables the bad behavior. Then you will both be caught in a downward spiral that will suck down both of you.

Many emotional abusers have no idea what they are doing is wrong. If told what they are doing is wrong or abusive, they will often become offended, because it seems perfectly acceptable or justified to them. They may be acting out what they experienced in their own home. They may be acting on their own feelings of insecurity or emotional immaturity (a major cause of abusive behavior). In extreme cases they may actually have no sense of guilt ... and any expression of contrition is more about being caught and avoiding being held responsible. With these individuals (psychopaths/sociopaths) the feelings, boundaries, and rights of others in no way check their behavior, due to a prevailing lack of empathy.

Everyone gets their buttons pushed, and occasionally says things that they don't mean. People get in shouting matches when stress has pushed them to their limits. This is normal. Emotional abuse is NOT, it is a constant state.
It may not be intended to destroy those around them, but it is intended to control them. It systematically wears away at the victim's self-confidence, sense of self-worth, trust in perceptions, and self-concept like a form of brainwashing. It achieves this through verbal abuse and constant criticism or more subtle tactics such as intimidation, manipulation, and refusal to ever be pleased. Sometimes it is used as a form of "guidance" or "teaching". Abusers can be Lovers, Bosses, Coworkers, Parents, Siblings, and Friends! Whatever relationship you are engaged in with an abuser, it will be a source of stress for you.

When I say "these behaviors" there is a list of techniques that most abusers use. Rarely do they know that this is what they are doing, but most abusers and abusive personalities employ the same methods to get their desired results. Here is a list of the most common forms of emotional abuse.

Domination 
Someone employing domination techniques must have it their way, must be in control or on top, always right, must be alpha or in charge, and in general they must WIN!

Verbal Assaults 
Someone employing verbal assaults uses words like ammunition berating, belittling, criticizing, name calling, screaming, threatening, blaming, abusive sarcasm, humiliation, tearing you down, and tell you that everything is your fault and never theirs.

Abusive Expectations 
Someone using Abusive Expectations sets the bar so high that no one can reach it.  This allows them to continually look down upon the one who can not possibly reach this unattainable goal, and limits your ability to spend time or energy except in service to them.  This can be seen in unreasonable demands, insistance that you put aside your needs for theirs, need for undivided attention, sexually demanding, nothing is ever enough, never pleased, never satisfied, you can always do better even when you can't, they make you feel that there is always something more you could have done, constant criticism for not fulfilling their needs or making you feel that you are not doing it as well as they would have done.

Emotional Blackmail 
Emotional Blackmail is the conscious or unconscious coersion into doing what the abuser wants by playing on someone's fear, guilt, religion, or compassion.  You are made to feel guilty for thinking of your own needs. They exploit your sympathy or use "secrets" to keep you quiet.  If they don't get what they want, they threaten to leave, or they distance themselves until you give into their demands.  Employers may threaten to fire you if you don't do what they say.  In general they use fear tactics to control you.  This makes them your own emotional terrorist that will do something horrible if you don't do exactly as they say.

Unpredictable Responses 

These responses are often unwarranted or without any foreseeable source.  It includes drastic mood swings and sudden emotional outbursts for no apparent / logical reason.  Also someone like this may give inconsistent responses.  Their reactions will make you constantly on edge and afraid how they might respond to the smallest thing.  It makes someone feel as if they are walking on eggshells in their presence since one never knows what will set them off.  Another indicator is that the abuser changes personalities when drunk.

Constant Criticism 

This emotional abuser is unrelentingly critical, always finds fault, and never pleased.

Character Assassination 

Character Assassination is just that.  This abuser attempts destroy your public image and turn people against you.  They constantly blow your mistakes out of proportion, gossiping about your past failures or mistakes.  Often they will concoct lies about you to turn away public approval or destroy the victim's support group.  These are the people who will harm you and then justify it to others, convincing them that you deserve bad treatment.  In public they will humiliate, criticize, or makes fun of you in front of others.  If there is something of which you are proud or successful, they will discount your achievements and minimize any complaint you may have, laughing it off.   This person will relentlessly try to ruin your personal or professional reputation.  In this way they can still exercise control over you if you decided to leave their abuse.  While still in their circle influence, they will do this to ensure no one will support you leaving.

Gaslighting 

The term Gaslighting came from the plot of an old black and white movie where they would turn down the lights and then when the person perceived it, make them think it was all in their head.  Someone using gaslighting techniques makes the victim doubt their perceptions, memory, and sanity through the denial of certain events.  They attempt to rewrite history and insist on their version of reality.  An example might be by saying that something was said and that you both know was said but in reality it wasn't. Also a gaslighter may insinuate that you are exaggerating or lying to gain control or to avoid responsibility for their actions.

Constant Chaos 

Identifying this can be seen through the continuous cycles of drama.  If things get too quiet, they will stir things up through continuous upheavals and discord.  This persons starts arguments and conflicts over minutia.  These people are addicted to drama, crisis-oriented, disruptive and negative.  Often they even present themselves as the victim, so as to gain influence.

Sexual Harassment 

These are specifically unwelcomed sexual advances and unwelcomed physical or verbal conduct of a sexual nature.  These abusers may say things like "if you love me, you will"  or  "your lips say no, but your body says yes".

If you have been in a relationship that fits any one of these bad behaviors, then you have probably experienced the pain of caring for someone and watching them destroy themselves and others. These are very common things in our society, unfortunately.

If the knowledge of these things becomes known, it is easier to combat within ourselves and within our relationships. Perhaps you have been in an unhappy relationship, and did not know why because there was no term for what was wrong. They probably asked what they did wrong, and you may not have had a solid answer, but with the right information, we can all work within ourselves to have healthy relationships. By doing so, we can lift each other up instead of tearing each other down. This information is to help transform your mind, to teach you how to think and perceive behaviors. One must understand the problem in order to find a solution.

Much of the information I have gathered here comes from "The Emotionally Abused Woman" by Beverly Engel.