Video: What does Psychopath mean? Antisocial Personality Disorder.

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
A lot of people are coming on with Conduct Disorder (pre antisocial personality disorder diagnoses) and even Antisocial Personality Disorder and a lot of people don't understand it. Me too. So I you tubed a person I sometimes listen to to learn about disorders which interest me. Do I think she is right? I don't think ANY clinician is always right. And the DSM is flawed. But I'm going to share this, for better or for worse, because this is such a serious diagnosis and, if somebody we love truly has it, we do have to watch our backs. However, like all diagnoses, I believe it may be misdiagnosed at times.

What does Psychopath mean? Antisocial Personality Disorder - Mental Health Help with Kati Morton
 

newstart

Well-Known Member
I have seen this good video before. I have studied psychopathy deeply because my daughter turns into one while manic. My daughter has many labels from ADHD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), ODD, bipolar, borderline etc. In reality if you are dealing with a person that is deep down creepy, that makes the hair on the back on your neck stand up, where you feel like you are in the presence of the devil, chances are pretty good that you are dealing with a real psychopath no matter what label they have been given. One way to tell if a person is a psychopath is that they always leave a trail of destruction. Years ago when I was a single girl I went to a club with my girlfriends, while there a very good looking man started talking with me, I thought he was not only good looking but charming. When I went to the bathroom, I had several women follow me in there to tell me that this guy is horrible and that I have been warned. Several of the other men in the club pulled me aside and told me that this man is horrible and I really need to stay away from him. People came up to the other women I was with and told my friends that this man is the worst of the worst and to warn me to completely stay clear of him. It was as if everyone in the club had my back. Every once in a while someone will tell me to stay away from someone, they are bad news. I like to give a person the benefit of the doubt because I know sometimes two good people just don't get along because of their chemistry but when people came out of the wood work to try and protect me, I listened.
 

Loosey

New Member
She described my son to a T. He is a compulsive liar. So much so that I have stopped believing him at all. He can con anyone that doesn't know him. He just turned 18 and has not graduated from school yet. medications help with anger issues and ADHD but not with his life skills. We have no idea where he will go or what he will do but I am at the point I just don't care as long as he just goes. Am I a bad parent, maybe, but I am tired of his BS and others looking at us as if we haven't tried everything. I love my son and dislike him at the same time. Sorry I just needed a place to rant.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
You're not a bad parent. But you have to be careful You have no choice. Antisocial behavior can clean out your entire bank account set your house on fire(but to make it look like they didn't do it)and they can be the sweetest when they are setting us up. They can kill at the far end because they have no empathy although they learn to fake it. Ted Bundy (an extreme) worked at a crisis center and sat next to the detective who ended up writing his book "This Stranger Beside Me" by Ann Rule ( the one who sat next to him at the crisis center.) They know better than to terrorize all the time or they would get no access to finances, homes and people they want to harm. They are great manipulators and potentially very dangerous. Never let him know if he is in your will....some of the worst ones and we never know for sure how bad they can be kill us for the inheritance. Think Menendez brothers. Yes, also extreme but their parents didn't know either.

Even with somebody very beloved,we cant help this. Right now it isn't treatable and I have heard that most don't want to change. You need to protect yourself from any child who is this way as they can and may hurt you or do so to their siblings.Heart killing I am sure. But we have had parents on here who had enntrusted adult kids to "help" with money and lost everything. Some have tried to kill their loving mother. Or father. Most people can not kill or even attempt it.

As you heard it isn't your fault they are like this. Please take care of yourself. You can't have a relationship with anyone who could harm you.it isn't true love. Its manipulation and for their gain only. medications can sometimes help symptoms bit not give anyone a conscience.

I am sorry for the pain this must cause. Nobody wants to know their own child would harm them or other family. Thats so wrong. Protect yourself. Guard your heart too. They know how to twist it. If you feel the child can truly harm you, or if the child already tried, meet them only on public places and never be alone with them. The car with a dangerous person is not safe or your home. Keep your monetary affairs from them. Protect your pets....antisocoals.can pretend to love pets then kill them and you won't think it was them.

We lived for three years with a foster/adoted child. He was only 11-13 but he killed two dogs by strangulation (we thought it must have been a stranger because he cried the loudest and was loving to them in front of us ) and he molested our two littles. They were too afraid to tell us as he promised to burn our house down and kill us all if they did. He said he is the Devil. They believed him, even though we didn't go to church to expose them to a Devil. They we're 5 and 3. He was escorted out. We never saw him again. We had a choice to make. For us it was a no brainier.

So say kids can't be antisocial. Don't care what is in the DSM. Psychiatry is inexact. No proof just theory. His behavior mimicked adult antisocial. His official diagnosis was Severe Reactive Attachment Disorder. The symptoms are that of an adult psychopath. This kid was on his way to really bad stuff.

Most of all take good care of yourself.
 
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newstart

Well-Known Member
She described my son to a T. He is a compulsive liar. So much so that I have stopped believing him at all. He can con anyone that doesn't know him. He just turned 18 and has not graduated from school yet. medications help with anger issues and ADHD but not with his life skills. We have no idea where he will go or what he will do but I am at the point I just don't care as long as he just goes. Am I a bad parent, maybe, but I am tired of his BS and others looking at us as if we haven't tried everything. I love my son and dislike him at the same time. Sorry I just needed a place to rant.
Welcome Loosey, I am so sorry you have this gigantic burden. It is ok to not like anyone you choose. I love my daughter deeply, I do not like how she acts or the things she does. It is just overwhelming pain when it is your own child. Cutting emotional ties are the best thing you can do for your own sanity. I am working on doing just that, for me it is hard but it has to be done.
I feel your pain and hear you. You are not alone in this battle, all of us here are fighting the demons in our children. Some with good outcomes.
 

RN0441

100% better than I was but not at 100% yet
A lot of people are coming on with Conduct Disorder (pre antisocial personality disorder diagnoses) and even Antisocial Personality Disorder and a lot of people don't understand it. Me too. So I you tubed a person I sometimes listen to to learn about disorders which interest me. Do I think she is right? I don't think ANY clinician is always right. And the DSM is flawed. But I'm going to share this, for better or for worse, because this is such a serious diagnosis and, if somebody we love truly has it, we do have to watch our backs. However, like all diagnoses, I believe it may be misdiagnosed at times.

What does Psychopath mean? Antisocial Personality Disorder - Mental Health Help with Kati Morton

I really like her! I think that most addicts have Conduct Disorder diagnosis at some time or another.
 

sail24

New Member
A lot of people are coming on with Conduct Disorder (pre antisocial personality disorder diagnoses) and even Antisocial Personality Disorder and a lot of people don't understand it. Me too. So I you tubed a person I sometimes listen to to learn about disorders which interest me. Do I think she is right? I don't think ANY clinician is always right. And the DSM is flawed. But I'm going to share this, for better or for worse, because this is such a serious diagnosis and, if somebody we love truly has it, we do have to watch our backs. However, like all diagnoses, I believe it may be misdiagnosed at times.

What does Psychopath mean? Antisocial Personality Disorder - Mental Health Help with Kati Morton
Thank you for introducing me to this online therapist. She reminds me a lot of our family therapist. Super smart, witty and concise. I’m going to be listening to more of her videos that’s for sure.
 

sail24

New Member
She described my son to a T. He is a compulsive liar. So much so that I have stopped believing him at all. He can con anyone that doesn't know him. He just turned 18 and has not graduated from school yet. medications help with anger issues and ADHD but not with his life skills. We have no idea where he will go or what he will do but I am at the point I just don't care as long as he just goes. Am I a bad parent, maybe, but I am tired of his BS and others looking at us as if we haven't tried everything. I love my son and dislike him at the same time. Sorry I just needed a place to rant.
I hear you. These kids suck us dry. There comes a point when you have to give yourself permission to have a healthy, happy life. The sad reality is, your son isn’t going to be a part of it. That sweet little boy you loved is gone. So hard to say, so hard to hear but it’s true. Mine is almost 16. He’s been a challenge from the day he was born. He was adopted at birth and on the way to the hospital to meet him for the first time, a car driving in the wrong direction came headfirst at us. Thankfully we swerved and avoided a horrific outcome. We look back on that day as some higher power telling us to turn back, don’t go to the hospital.

I’m grateful to have found this safe place. This isn’t a story I can share with other parents that have only typical kids and expect any understanding.

I recently sat down with all of my paperwork I’ve accumulated over the past 13 years to prove to myself that I’ve done so much to help my son. I made a timeline of every medical doctor, therapist, specialist, test, school and every teacher and administrator that has worked with us. I needed the visual to prove it. When I finished, I cried and cried because I realized that no matter what we did, the outcome was conduct disorder.
 

Baggy Bags

Active Member
Thank you for sharing this video.

The more I learn, the more I see it in my son.

I still hope to be proven wrong, but I am scared.

Reading other stories, like SOT's, I'm just grateful we don't have other children to worry about.
But I am worried for my own safety.

It's so hard because if it's pre-antisocial personality disorder, there's not a lot we can do except waste our money trying to find out if it's something else.

He's been almost violent with me twice yesterday and today. My mom had to physically put herself between us to prevent him from putting his hands on me.
I know that there's not much more advice that anyone can give me, after the responses I got on my thread.
Just sharing this so that anyone else in the same situation can consider this possibility and identify if they might be in danger and find alternative living situation.
 

New Leaf

Well-Known Member
He's been almost violent with me twice yesterday and today. My mom had to physically put herself between us to prevent him from putting his hands on me.
I am so sorry BB. I saw an interesting video on FB this morning, a psychiatrist talking about his 9 year old godson who had suddenly changed from a sweet boy, to suicidal and violent. He did a brain scan and they found a cyst on the temporal lobe.
He recommends brain scans for people that have sudden changes like your son.
Not trying to give false hope, just wondering if your son has had a scan?
Leafy
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
I worked in prisons many years. There many psychologists diagnosed ASPD almost automatically by virtue of the fact that they got to prison, right?

People get to prison for many reasons, societal, cultural, race, poverty, political, and personal: brain injury, developmental disorders, immaturity, impulse control, drugs, greed, hubris, stupidity, character, psychosis, mood disorders, etc.

Nobody denies these people exist, psychopaths. But, I always believed it was dangerous and plain wrong to give a diagnosis just because somebody arrived in a place. I can make a wrong turn and enter a pasture and it does not make me a cow.

The same is so for our kids. We come to fear they are irrevocably damaged because of how they treat and respond to us and others, perhaps, which can be stereotypically cruel, violent, angry, manupulative, intractable and inflexible and seemingly without conscience, remorse or regret. I was there too.

They have arrived in the cow pasture, and therefore are cows, aka psychopathy or ASPD.

When we begin to respond to and treat them like cows what happens is this: communication breaks down even more. We become rigid, stereotypical, defended, angry. We enter the cow pasture with them. Everybody is mooing.

We are parents. Do we want to be cows?
 
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BusynMember

Well-Known Member
It is far harder with littles. Then in my opinion the littles must come first.

A diagnoses is always a crapshoot. To me it doesn't matter what it is called. Or why. If a person is capable of trying to seriously and insideously kill another, rob you of all you have, hurt you in anger, abuse children, kill animals etc. they are currently unsafe living in a family and probably being out in society. Even if they have a secondary disorder too, we all deserve to be safe. Whether it is jail, residential living or group homes, unsafe people need alternative living until/unless they become safe.

The child we had was a child but more dangerous than most grown men. He met all the criteria for ASPD. Only his age changed the diagnosis. The deeds he did were still as dangerous as if he were 25. We really didn't care what they called his behavior...he continued to act up even in residential and if we had not asked CPS to take him, he liked to play with fire and often told the littles he would burn down the house with us in it if they told on him....he may have done it. I know a once foster mom whose eight year old foster son DID burn their house down and they lived in a motel until it could be rebuilt. He also had threatened to burn down the house but nobody took it seriously because of his age.

Bottom line. Take care of yourself around dangerous people. Love yourself enough to do that.
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
The issue of danger and keeping self and others safe is different than diagnosing. There are dozens of diagnoses, each vastly different, that have as defining features implicitly or explicitly, the potential for violence and harm. Danger is not specific to this diagnosis.

My only point is this: By keeping open to the possibility of any number of influences on behavior and attitude we are more apt to stay open and flexible in terms of remedy and relationship.
 
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BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Copa, I could not agree more. And, like you I am cynical of diagnoses. We need to remember each person is an individual. And, yes, the danger is a separate issue from a diagnoses
 
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