A free eBook – 4X4 for Nons
|
An article from ABC News about Casey Anthony’s pathological lying and the disorder from which it may arise. Before I supply the text here, I want to discuss this quote:
Two of the potential issues Anthony could suffer from are border personality disorder and psychopathology, the experts said. The main thing these issues have in common is a total lack of empathy, according to LeslieBeth Wish, a psychologist and licensed social worker in Sarasota, Fla.
“They can turn a person into a non-person,” Wish said. “Borderline personalities have more emotional regulation problem and often use lying to get away from something and not ever feeling like they’re responsible.”
Those two potential issues were the ones that I identified and opined on the other day. The second paragraph above is why I believe that Casey Anthony probably doesn’t have BPD. The reasons for the lies are not impulsive and reactive, as they seem to be most often in BPD. People with BPD are much more likely to “bullshit” (as a term of art not vulgarity) than to actually lie with proactive intent. They can make up some elaborate stories about themselves, typically to make their world a safer and more livable place when others think better of them. Still, most often BPD lies are to get through a painful moment. Very often as the lies collapse, they will admit everything and ask forgiveness. Casey did NOT do this. She maintained her lies even after the police were aware they were lies. In fact, she started lying to her parents LONG BEFORE Caylee went missing. She lied (by omission) about her pregnancy. She lied about having a job at Universal Studios BEFORE the cops got involved.
As for psychopathy…. I presented the guidelines of Hare’s PCL-R on the other page. Let’s look at them again and see which of these seem to match Casey Anthony, based on what we know from the press:
PCL-R items
The following findings are for research purposes only, and are not used in clinical diagnosis. These items cover the affective, interpersonal, and behavioral features. Each item is rated on a score from zero to two. The sum total determines the extent of a person’s psychopathy.
Factor 1
Aggressive narcissism – Hard to say for Casey Anthony. We don’t really know enough. We do know that, when in jail, she got angry about what this situation was doing to HER!
Glibness/superficial charm – Yes.
Grandiose sense of self-worth – Again hard to say. This is one factor that really separates BPD from the narcissism spectrum. People with BPD have a lot of shame and generally hate themselves.
Pathological lying – YES, YES, YES.
Cunning/manipulative – I’d have to say yes.
Lack of remorse or guilt – Again, I think we need to say yes here.
Emotionally shallow – Hard to say.
Callous/lack of empathy – Could be. Hard to say.
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions – Yes. It’s never her fault.
Factor 2
Socially deviant lifestyle – Party girl. One night stands.
Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom – Probably, but who knows.
Parasitic lifestyle – Yes. She was living off her parents and then off friends while pretending to have a job. Actually, it is interesting to note that she was telling her mother she had a job long before Caylee disappeared.
Poor behavioral control – Probably. Again, one night stands.
Promiscuous sexual behavior – Yes.
Lack of realistic, long-term goals – Yes.
Impulsiveness – Yes.
Irresponsibility – Yes.
Juvenile delinquency – well, some form of delinquency. She stole checks from her friend and passed them.
Early behavioral problems – unknown.
Revocation of conditional release – we’ll see.
Traits not correlated with either factor
Many short-term marital relationships – no, but many short-term boyfriends
Criminal versatility – it depends. She stole and possibly caused the death of her daughter. They couldn’t prove it in court to the satisfaction of the jury, but we may never know.
Ok, onto the article:
‘Dr. Judy’ Doubts Casey Anthony’s Penchant for Lying Can Be Cured
By CHRISTINA NG
July 19, 2011
Casey Anthony’s lawyers have said that Anthony has suffered “trauma” and will need counseling now that she is a free woman, but experts aren’t sure Anthony can be helped.
“It would be exceptionally difficult for anybody to treat her. There is no magic pill that’s a truth serum for a person who’s a pathological liar,” said Dr. Judy Kuriansky a psychologist from Columbia University, but better known from her radio show as Dr. Judy.
Kuriansky believes that Anthony likely feels that she has been rewarded for her lying with her acquittal and release from jail.
“Why would she want to go to therapy when she basically got what she wanted? There’s no motivation for her to seek help,” Kuriansky said. “If she had been sent to jail, maybe she would want to see somebody because her style didn’t work, but it did.”
Anthony, 25, is in hiding after being released from a Florida jail following her acquittal on murder charges for the death of her 2-year-old daughter Caylee. She has received death threats and as she left jail protesters changed “Caylee, Caylee.”
Casey Anthony Therapy Will Be ‘Challenge’
Anthony’s criminal lawyer Jose Baez has said, “It is my hope that Casey Anthony can receive the counselling and treatment she needs to move forward with the rest of her life.”
Her civil attorney Charles Greene was quoted as saying Anthony was “emotionally unstable” following the trauma of her daughter’s death and the grueling trial.
Psychologists interviewed by ABCNews.com agree that the desire to change is the key to successful treatment for pathological liars, which some believe Anthony may be.
While acquitted of murder, she was convicted on four counts of lying to police. One of her lies was that Caylee was kidnapped by a fictional nanny named Zanny. Zanny was one of a dozen bogus characters that Casey had created. She also lied about working at Universal Studios.
None of the psychologists who spoke with ABCNews.com have treated Casey Anthony, but spoke from observations and personal experience.
Two of the potential issues Anthony could suffer from are border personality disorder and psychopathology, the experts said. The main thing these issues have in common is a total lack of empathy, according to LeslieBeth Wish, a psychologist and licensed social worker in Sarasota, Fla.
“They can turn a person into a non-person,” Wish said. “Borderline personalities have more emotional regulation problem and often use lying to get away from something and not ever feeling like they’re responsible.”
Continue reading ABC News Experts talk about Casey Anthony’s potential disorder →
 Casey Anthony BPD or Psychopath or What? A few days ago I got an email from a member of the ATSTP list asking me what I thought about the possibility of Casey Anthony, who is currently on trial for the murder of her 2 year old daughter (Caylee Anthony), having Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). In 2008, I was following the case with interest. I have followed it a bit during the trial. I am not a doctor or a mental health professional, yet I have met a LOT of people with BPD (both men and women) and members of their families. I’ve looked at Casey Anthony’s behavior and compared it with the behavior of people that I know with BPD. I pretty much come to the conclusion that Casey Anthony doesn’t have borderline personality disorder. It seems to be more likely that she’s a psychopath. It seems that some criminal profilers agree…
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/36551199/ns/today-today_people/t/do-letters-show-casey-anthony-psychopath/
Pat Brown, a criminal profiler, told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira that in her opinion, Anthony is a psychopath who is trying to get potential jurors to feel sorry for her. The letters are the way she does it, Brown said.
“This will prove she’s a new woman. After all, she’s found God,” Brown said, adding that juries will frequently sympathize with a woman who claims she was abused and mistreated but now has found the light.
“A lot of time women go to court, juries start feeling sorry for them,” Brown said. “It’s manipulation.”
Brown called the letters “a wonderful window into how a psychopath thinks.”
Here is some information about psychopathy:
In his 1941 book, Mask of Sanity, Hervey M. Cleckley introduced 16 behavioral characteristics of a psychopath:
- Superficial charm and good “intelligence”
- Absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking
- Absence of nervousness or psychoneurotic manifestations
- Unreliability
- Untruthfulness and insincerity
- Lack of remorse and shame
- Inadequately motivated antisocial behavior
- Poor judgment and failure to learn by experience
- Pathologic egocentricity and incapacity for love
- General poverty in major affective reactions
- Specific loss of insight
- Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations
- Fantastic and uninviting behavior with drink and sometimes without
- Suicide threats rarely carried out
- Sex life impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated
- Failure to follow any life plan.
Continue reading Casey Anthony: Borderline Personality Disorder, a Psychopath or What? →
 When I saw the backward-carved “B” in Ashley Todd’s face last week, I couldn’t help but think about Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). And one Mental Health professional actually came out and said that Ms. Todd did, in fact, exhibit traits of the disorder. Personally, I have to disagree with the experts that have “diagnosed” her with BPD. While self-injury is a hallmark of BPD, the motivation behind self-injury in BPD is usually NOT to get attention. Clearly, Ms. Todd, who was the “victim” of an attack by a black man in Pennsylvania (which later she admitted was a hoax), carved the “B” in her own cheek and she must have known that this action and the made-up story about the attack would garner a lot of attention. Yet, what I have seen in most cases of BPD-related self-injury is that the motivation is typically pain-relief and not attention-getting. The mere act of self-injury is a shameful one, and, in BPD, which already fuels shameful feelings, the self-injurer usually hides the act from others, doing it in private and on places that are not detectable by others. That’s because the self-injury functions to stop private emotional pain. Cutting oneself on the face (especially a letter on the face) would seem to me to indicate a different disorder. While it is possible that Ms. Todd does have BPD, I personally think it is unlikely.
 I get so sick of the “support community” for Non-BP’s on the Internet. The terms that invent and proliferate – it’s enough to drive someone crazy. Misinformation, misinformation, misinformation. I understand that Nons are upset, angry and confused about BPD. Heck, I was upset, angry and confused too – about three years ago. I think it’s best to learn as much as you can about the disorder and to practice skills to make things easier, both for the BP and the Non-BP.
Today, I’d like to take on the idea of “hoovering.” A full definition of hoovering can be found here (BTW, that is a lousy website for BPD information IMO). You can read the definition and forget it. Hoovering doesn’t exist. As a Non, you might feel that it exists, but in reality it doesn’t exist. I know I’m bound to get angry emails or comments from angry Nons that are convinced that they have been hoovered. “It happened just last night!” I thought I had been hoovered, way back on November 2, 2005. Here’s the text of a message I posted on WTO about my wife’s “hoovering”:
FROM ANOTHER LIST MEMBER: [I have never written before because I was too ashamed to admit that I had allowed myself and my children to fall into such a bizarre and screwed up situation, nor am I sure that anyone would believe what we have actually lived through.]
MY RESPONSE:
Yes, no joke. Really none.
I have felt this way for YEARS. I have refused to open up to anyone. I was embarrassed and sick about the behaviors. It wasn’t until last month at this time – when my wife exhibited “cutting” behavior – that I realized that she’d finally gone and done something I didn’t have an inkling about why. I always understood the depression (it’s in my family in spades) – I always understood the rage (well, sort of, Nons are angry too) – But I never felt the compulsion to cut myself.
That = research. Research = finding out about the real story behind BPD. That = finding WTO. This forum is just about the only thing that keeps me sane. Knowing that I’m not alone, that’s priceless.
You are not alone. Embarrassed, sure. Hiding the secret, yes.
My wife is currently (well, if she wasn’t passed out from taking too many sleep pills) in a BP moment – she just hoovered in the most primal way – trying to push my buttons, but me not allowing them to be pushed. That = rage on her part (and I have said she isn’t a rager – she only rages when I don’t comply). Now I’m 3 rooms away (we have a fairly large house) and I can hear her snoring away as I write this. Point is – embarrassed or not – the nons all feel your pain.
God, I knew nothing about BPD back then. I was so ignorant. I actually said that finding WTO was “finding the real story behind BPD.” Stupid me. I’ve learned so much more about BPD since then and realized that WTO was poisonous toward maintaining a relationship with a BP. I just felt so validated there, because I found other people that had experienced some of the same things I felt I had experienced. I had an explanation and some (virtual) shoulders to cry on. Unfortunately, that is all they do there – bitch about there (usually) “BPxh” (who most likely doesn’t have BPD and is just an a-hole) and cry on each other shoulders. I suppose there’s room in the (virtual) world for that. Must be, considering they have 4000+ members.
Ok, back to hoovering. Why do I say it doesn’t exist? I say it doesn’t exist because a person with BPD has dysregulated emotions. When they feel kind, happy, desperate, anxious, sad, angry, etc. they actually FEEL that way. The feeling is overpowering. It is not a “designed” situation. It is not manipulation – which is exactly what hoovering implies. A person with BPD is too “in the moment” of their dysregulated emotions to plan ahead of time when to hoover. Granted, this action may be born out of a fear of abandonment. However, the feeling is real and not prearranged.
Well, then you might ask me: What does this person (with BPD) actually believe about me? Are they telling the truth when they rage at me and tell me they hate me? Are they telling the truth when they “hoover” me into sex (or something else)? My answer: they are telling the truth in both situations. The truth is what they feel at any given time. It is not about you. It is about their feelings and their inability to self-soothe. I have an acronym for this in my book: IAAHF (It’s all about his/her feelings). Once you understand that, you are moving a long way toward the path of healing.
 When Hope is Not EnoughGet the Non-BPD book that is designed for staying and working on the relationship
Tools and the Borderline
I found this post to the thread “Author of Eggshells Workbook is a Moron” from a cached copy of the “Crazy Talk” web forum.
Unfortunately, the Crazy Talk board has moved to a new server and the old threads were not carried over. I guess Google will maintain it in their cache for a while. The thread itself is a quite interesting version of several borderlines’ views on the SWOE workbook. Here is a particularly insightful post responding to the idea that borderlines are “manipulative”:
I don’t think that, in most cases anyway, that the “manipulative” BPD behavior is deliberately so, despite appearances – thus it cannot be truly manipulative, by definition. These behaviors DO have a function and an objective, as do all behaviors (including brushing one’s teeth), but we do not describe ALL non-disordered people’s attempts to find or maintain love or get attention or avoid pain manipulation – only when it truly is just that.
I think a new word is called for.
More accurately, the behaviors in question are more like “tools”. Lacking a circular saw, I may try a hatchet to cut my board so I can cover my window and keep out the chill. It is not as effective, and is potentially damaging and will make a pretty ratty and half-assed covering, but it is the only tool I have to do what I need to do.
Granted, those with BPD/PD loved ones need to find ways to protect themselves, but applying such language ideas as “manipulation” does not give the “other” proper tools, either.
The overall effect is two people standing around with hatchets trying to make a straight cut down the length of an oak plank. Ain’t gonna work.
Many people when they find out about BPD, read “Stop Walking on Eggshells”. Just about everyone in the “non” community has read it. I read it AND read the workbook. At the time I thought, “Yes! Someone who understands!” I thought, “Finally, a method for dealing with my wife’s crazy behaviors.”
Well, folks, I was wrong. This book is about nons and ways for the nons to handle the BP’s behavior. Unfortunately, for the BPs, it does nothing to help them heal. In fact, the idea of setting limits and boundaries for BPs only serves to pissd them off more. Let me tell you why:
BPD is a disorder in which the sufferer feels emotions more strongly that a normal person.
When they are in the throes of a deep feeling, they cannot think logically. The limit that you set merely acts as a judgement of their behavior and boundary to be stepped over. They need to feel that they are OK. They live in a state of shame. If you tell them, through boundaries, that they are not OK, the message merely serves to fuel the deeply-felt emotion of shame. The behavior will get worse and you will get even angrier. This cycle of shame-anger between you and the BP serves to make you feel even more like leaving, like they can’t be “cured” and distances you from them even more. That is the real BP “dance” or “merry-go-round”.
When talking recently to the BP in my life, she had been reading a post on the Internet about “boundaries” and “limits” when dealing with borderlines. The post said this man’s ex-wife was a borderline – a nigtmare and a total abuser of him and the relationship. So, he left her. I wonder how that made her feel? Shamed further, perhaps?
I’m not saying that everyone should stay with their BP partner. What I am saying is: if you decide to stay, you should help that person heal, rather than set limits, sign contracts, be angry, etc.
Remember, borderlines suffer a lot of internal pain. All day, everyday. And they will do anything to stop the pain, including cutting, starving, raging, spending and attempting suicide.
Buy the book that can make your relationship last and grow:
When Hope is Not EnoughGet the Non-BPD book that is designed for staying and working on the relationship
|
Loading ...