I find it hard to do when order of things change. An example of this is I help out on a horse ranch. When it was time to bring in the horses, the other worker started sending them to the barn in a different order than I was use to. I know the horses and where they go in the barn, but when they came at different order, I couldn’t put them in right stalls. Then they all started fighting so other worker had to come and help.

I have trouble that increases in communication when stress is increased in small amount; this is both speech and writing. This also increases headaches all the time. My history is head injury, had skull fracture from left parietal to right occipital and in coma for many days. This was over 30 years ago, but because of more head injuries including a beating this year. I now have trouble with much more and stress is a big enemy now.

I even have a friend I email many times; I use to work with her about 5 years ago. Both of us Nurses, she still works, I cannot anymore. Anyhow she made a comment to me in her email and asked why sometimes my writing is grammatically clear and other times it is not. Is same with speech I know it comes out wrong but it is hard to make it right.

This is how stress affects me now, I have no other explanation.

I appreciate this clarification.
My first visit to this website, I think, was in June 07. I needed to research the behaviors I was seeing in my husband, mainly, and also my own reactions.
After having read through the Loser articles and posts, as well as the various pieces on Personality Disorders, it became ultra clear just what has been happening in my home.

Because I was just newly aprised of his infidelity(ies), I was a mess-myself and needed quite a bit of time to sort through all of the information.

Beside this, I remembered his own psych eval administered in 01, when we were having our son’s ADHD isolated.
(He aked for an eval because he thought he had some developmental disorder or ADHD too)
Somewhere in my house there was his Psych report which I needed to find. My thought was that maybe I could see from his eval just what he is dealing with, and maybe I could make a more informed decision as to how to respond best.

Oh well. In July last year I did manage to find that report while he was out of town. Yes, I was able to learn enough from that report to help me respond appropriately to him and make a sound decision.
In the course of the next few months, he did finally attend two counseling sessions with me, although our relationship is changed forever.

He did freely admit to the counselor his verbal and psychol. abuse and manipulation of me throughout our 32 year marriage. I simply answered that I wouldn’t be able to carry on in our marriage, that I was emotionally spent.
From there I did move out and filed for and recieved a divorce.

Ouch. For someone like me who believes that Love Conquers Alllll, this is tough.
My actions seem abrupt to our 4 kids, of course. I feel awful about what this has done to our relationship. But I simply cannot be caregiver to someone who believes that I am out to harm him, number one, along with believing that it is his duty as ‘husband’ to guard me.

Misframing, is a very good term. I misframed all of his behavior which turned out to be very convenient for me as I was raising our kids, which I had a great time doing. They are all awesome.

I believed any of the myriad characteristics were simply answerable by a lack of maturity.

I also believed, as he put it, that ‘it’s a guy thing’, that guys don’t understand their wives.

* In public he walked behind me, because he was slower than I. Without fail he also embarassed me in public, or tried to. In restaurants I would ignore or change his focus by asking questions about the menu.

*He had a hearing problem….in one of his ears…maybe the right, maybe the left.(even though the specialist declared him to have perfect hearing)Auditory Hallucinations.

*Beliefs about medication that were nonsensical, “aspirin changes my mood, I don’t want to take it.” “Antibiotics put me right to sleep. They make me sluggish, I don’t want to take those.” This after his taking nursing courses.

*Repeatedly verbalized beliefs about others being out to destroy him, his work, take away his work, lay him off…

*His repeated ‘misunderstanding that the open heart surgery was not needed, all the doctor and hospital was doing was getting all the money they could out of him, etc.

*His repeatedly verbalized belief that he shouldn’t have gotten married and had kids when he did and then second guessing himself with, “Maybe now is as good a time as any other….”

*After spending months over the past year gently but firmly drawing him out he finally admitted that he was never fond of going out to dinner with me because he believed that whatever restaurant we were at, I would leave that restaurant with another man.

I spent my entire marriage misframing, interpreting, encouraging and overcompensating for someone who I don’t even know! How about that!

Love does conquer all. I love myself and him enough to know and admit I cannot be his or anyone else’s MENTAL HEALTH CAREGIVER. Character Disordered people (Paranoid-Schizophrenic) don’t want mothering or caring from anyone.

I made a hard decision based on the fact he did not believe he needed help and on what I came to understand to be a potentially dangerous situation, if I continued in that. Although he never raised a hand to me or oddly, never raised his voice, he did occasionally quietly remove personal property to destroy it behind our garage. I needed to be able to walk out on my own power.

I told myself I needed a break from thinking and analyzing this stuff; at times I absolutely hate the subject of psychology because of what has happened, even though I’ve been learning a lot and have great regard for those who have some mastery of it. I must feel the need myself to have mastery over my own life and how to do that without paying attention to these things and dealing with them now, is beyond my comprehension. I want all this to become somewhat less important than it is right now. Eventually the space and time elements will help that.

All this is written with complete regard for the guidance God, has given me also.
The correlations in scripture, especially Proverbs and Psalms regarding human behavior, are evident and have been real helpful. Lots of Losers, Manipulators, Narcissists, etc.
I am very grateful for the clarifications on this site and thankfully now, I will be visiting more at my liesure.

Thanks for that clear presentation. I am in total agreement on your points. Keep rambling!!!

The gender question is a great one. Although there is no hard data on this, but after years of experience I have some ideas. I also have mounds of feedback from readers of my works and from workshop attendees. About 7 out of 10 readers and 6 out of 10 workshop attendees have historically been women (although that leaves a surprising contingent of men!). As will become clearer in some future posts, I think there are some contributing variables that are more common to men that shape personality types which tend to be more character disordered. Among these are a greater propensity for aggressiveness and for ego inflation. Whether nature or the cultural environment plays the greater role here varies I think. But it’s hard to overlook the role of cultural values because every day it appears that females with such traits are either growing in number or are at least coming to the fore more. I do think that there are characteristics far more common in women that make them vulnerable. Many women don’t seem to “get it” intellectually or emotionally when it comes to understanding the motivations of their partners, especially when those partners are abusive or exploitive. They dismiss their “gut” or intuitive hunches in favor of more Polyanna-ish thinking. I think this is partly due to a culture that values reason over intuition and a zeitgeist in which we’re not supposed to make negative judgments about people. But the greater issue appears to be a hesitancy on their part to accept that someone else can be so different from them. It’s a case, I think of classic, neurotic denial. Believing someone really is the kind of character your gut tells you they are is unnerving, unpleasant, and hard to accept. It reduces anxiety to pretend things aren’t as your gut tells you they are. Plus, there’s that seemingly benign but destructive message that filtered into the public consciousness from traditional paradigms that EVERYONE is basically the same and to some degree neurotic and if they do display problems, it’s only because they’re struggling with fears and insecurities just like you. Messages like this helped women learn not to trust their guts. The other thing is that exploitive and abusive men have “radar” for naivete, unsureness, and emotional vulnerability in women and seek out relationships with these kinds of women (the vice-versa is also sometimes true).

In my book, I talk about two other characteristics that women in particular display when staying in abusive or exploitive relationships. They get trapped by what I call the “slot machine syndrome” whereby after they come to terms with the reality of the situation, they face a choice to part with a substantial investment of time, energy, life effort, etc. (it’s like when you realize the one-armed bandit has taken you but you think about all the money that’s in there and say to yourself ‘maybe if I give it one more try…’). In severely abusive relationships, women have come to trust their gut and they realize at a very deep level what others have too long discounted, namely that the most vulnerable and dangerous time for them is when they make the choice to end their torture. Having come to realize the true character of their abuser, they know instinctively that there isn’t a restraining order on earth that can keep them safe. That’s why good support networks are so critical.

Well, I think I might have rambled a bit too much. Anyway, those are some of my thoughts.

I have exactly the same kind of stories to tell, it’s the same process for the client – except that I work the opposite way around – we clarify the gut hunches and out of them comes the reframe! If I introduced the reframe first for me this would be a matter of introducing more “counselling conventions” – OK, much more accurate ones, but still reinforcing the power relationship.

What I will do with clients is point out that these stories are common, that there is a recognisable pattern.

I think our work may not differ much at all in practice, but I feel that element of whether the analysis is found within the client or supplied by the therapist is vital.

What about the gender element? Any ideas?

I agree if the therapist does not catorgorize and get a clear picture he or she could damage their patient or patient! That’s why in a abusive relationship marriage counseling often times ( more so then not ) creates more damage. I am learning that their really isn’t very many therapists out there that can handle the job of a character disorder. They seem too afraid to judge it as such!

Funny that an expert actually fails the client under these circumstances. Right now I just talked to a women and her counselour is clueless… actually has been highly rated in the state.. But it is not a shock to me…Easily wrapped up for the controller manipulater type.. Actually it was a slam dunk. It is disappointing since so many seek help and don’t recieve it..

Expert in the area of domestic violence know and state they are few and far between. I sure hope that changes for their is high need for that all over the world.

So if you work a board for educatiung people in this field. Someone better start writing some really useful educating materials on it.
Its obvious if you have done work here, you have agreater grasp of the scenario. And could help teach other colleages.