Hi APOGS, welcome the forum, this must be Psychopath dad week. In a different kind of way it must be a relief to understand why things were happening with the way and cruelty involved. It wasn't about you and nothing you could have stopped or understood as a young person.

Your brother could be also showing learned behaviour. Is he still in close contact with your dad?

It sounds like your brother has suffered from PTSD for quite awhile, it must relieve you to know he is getting the help he needs.

I hope to hear more of your path to discovery but only when you feel ready or want to.

Glad you found us here.

Di

I combined all the "dad" threads to this one place, kind of a record with so many at once recently.

Starry, how excellent for you that you are beginning to establish healthy boundaries! I learned about establishing boundaries in therapy as well. Isn't it amazing how they work? I no longer have contact with my Ex, the psychopath, simply because that is the only solution to protect myself. This was a process that took months, and it began by establishing boundaries. I can now apply boundaries when dealing with other unhealthy people/draining situations (such as when dealing with my narcissistic mother.) Boundaries will not change the other person, but they will help protect you from the pain of other peoples actions/words. It is good to hear that things are going well with your OT.

Heya,
No, ive never felt rudeness was a good quality, so to answer your question, i have always had an open door policy to my children, brothers, sister, Dad,x wife, friends etc. Blocking my father would seem rude to me, if anyone else is welcome to visit why shouldnt my father. The line is moving in on a perminent or semi perminent basis, that is where things change.
My brothers and sister all live within 15 minutes of eachother, i live 500km south of them and our father moved away after his fall out with my sister, he is about 1500 km north away from them.
You never picked up on the sarcasim in my story about how my dad and sisters relationship desolved then? I always knew who he is, i read his actions and motives, his manipulations of the events. Thats why i struggle with the idea of a phsycopath, if its that obvious to me then surely its obvious to many, if its obvious to many and he is trying to fool people or act , play a role out for a means to an end then i always felt it was because he was not aware he was doing it, lacked the interlect, maturity to understand, to step outside his actions and reflect. Child like at an emotional level.
When our children do it its a tantrum ,or behaviour problems, now if an adult does it he is a phsyco, lol.
Baby in a tank, The leader of North Korea must surely be clasified as a phsycopath?
My brothers are much the same as me, they dont want him, Just one has a wife whom is adimant he isnt going there but what do you do if he is begging at your door? Call the cops?
Its very hard to turn your back.
And as i said, there are others in this, his wife, shes not bright but she isnt a bad person, my half sister and my step sisters, who is it that said charity begins at home, bastard!
I do find it helpful to read others storys and some of the replys, just to build an understanding. It does strike me that there is a huge variety of levels of severity.

Cheers
Monty

Hi Monty,

I'll paste some of your comments, and my thoughts below them.

1) ... he can pretend to be caring and upset, yet his actions show a different attitude from his words.

Yes. Psychopaths don't care if their actions match their words, only sometimes--when they are working to con someone into TRUSTING them. They use false pretenses to gain trust, some researchers call psychopaths "Trust Bandits" for that reason. I think you were a very perceptive 15-year-old, to be able to look through your anger and hard emotions, and see what was Real and what was Fiction.

As many years as your mother lived with him, if she was as perceptive as you are, I bet she knew for a long time before she died exactly how he was.
She likely did 'manage' her life around him and his limitations, and may have used certain strategies that helped regulate some of his behavior. I also bet that you were a far greater comfort to your mother than your father ever could have been, because you sincerely loved her. Even if you or she had managed to get him to massage her back or simply sit with her, doesn't sound like he could have done it in a caring way.

2.) ...he was proud of himself, so many years of marriage, not many people are like me and your mum. He convinced everyone, and himself...

I almost laughed, reading that your Dad measured the success of their marriage by the years. He may never have felt any empathy in his life (for her or anyone) and been totally incapable of recognizing, much less expressing gratitude for, the "emotional substance" of their marriage...but YEARS are more tangible, you can count those. In a serious vein, I'm sure he actually did feel HOLLOW after her death. Psychopaths depend on the people they latch onto, for obtaining feelings of Security --like Remora fish (sucker fish) depend on sharks and other large fish for meal security and physical survival in the ocean. He may not have had any conscious awareness that he depended on her. So okay, not nice that he glommed onto everyone for sympathy and attention..but not really surprising either..."its always all about him/her" when you're talking about a psychopath.

And here's an different but also common reaction:
The psychopath my father was married to, wasn't SAD he'd became sick and died, she was ENRAGED at her loss of security and 'Self.' She punished his corpse by refusing to sign a release order for either burial or cremation. She made hundreds of raving, threatening phone calls: to my father's attorney, to the director of the funeral home where his body was stored, to me, to all my father's relatives; and she all but destroyed the inside of their mobile home. I had to go there accompanied by the county sheriff, to retrieve my father's Personal Effects. The inside of the place looked like all the demons of Hell had partied there. She had smashed all the china and glass in the place by hurling it at the walls; she used matches to singe and burn all photographs that included my father, and on larger ones she 'burned' holes in his face and then colored his eyes red and drew blood-drips on his face with magic marker, she flung all the foodstuffs in the cupboards and refrigerator all over the place, and it looked like she took a baseball bat to the paneling, mirrors, counters, and cupboards. Her brother had allowed her to move in and stay with him and his wife, but we heard from Dad's attorney that less than a week later he had moved her to stay at a motel. She was 59 years old when she did all this, and she worked as a NURSE in a large hospital. (which used to give me the creeps, but as I came to know and understand more, I realized that she was only interested in the guys she latched onto for security. She probably mistreated her patients by being uncaring and neglectful.

3.) [your daughter(s)]...but if i over protect her, if she is never exposed to any danger, doesn't that make her more vulnerable...

Yes, but there's a middle ground between these two extremes. I'm a firm believer in preventing your kids from drowning by teaching them to be strong swimmers, not by keeping them away from the water forever. BUT you keep them in shallower, safe water, until they have enough strength and skill to evade predators in the deep. You sound like a really loving and dedicated Dad. There are Fantastic lifelong gifts Dads can give their daughters, that Mom's don't have nearly as much influence with. The gift of self respect and the ability to say NO --that just because a guy says "I love you", or pets them up and makes them feel thrillingly desirable, doesn't mean they owe the guy sex. A girl's first boyfriend, in the "PROTECTOR & CHAMPION" sense of the term, is her Father. The way a he treats his wife and other women in his life, how he interacts with Mom and others, gives his daughters a 'model' ( in their head, subconscious even)..to refer to for choosing their future husbands, and for how their their future husbands should treat them. How Father talks ABOUT women TO other guys matters too. What the daughters overhear. You haven't said whether you're married and living with their mom or not, but even if you're divorced or separated and their mother is difficult to interact with, if you make the effort to be polite and fair, your girls will remember later in life, and love you all the more for your sterling self-management in the face of tough times. (No "perfection" is possible, but respect, admiration, gratitude for good contributions to family life, and for having your girls, and sharing responsibility, forgiveness for mistakes, and ways of addressing disagreements that clear the air and come up with solutions both can live with, etc.) Basically, how you manage yourself around women. Later on, if they they have the misfortune to hook up with a guy who mistreats them, how YOU behaved could be their salvation: "hmmm...My Father would never have treated a woman this way,....I shouldn't be treated this way. They'll get help, make changes and improve things, or end it...instead of straggling along trying to make lemonade out of rotten fruit.

aye yi....a long reply, sorry if I sound preachy. But you won't hear more from me for some days.

Can we insert some humor here? - not to make light of your very real problem, but sometimes fantasizing some help for it and having a chuckle are a good thing. This drifted through my head, because of the fish and water metaphors: buy your father a hat, firmly attach a shark fin on the top, (painted styrofoam or rubber)..small enough to fit on the hat but large enough to be visible from at least 50 ft away. Light enough to stick right up and not flop to one side! Spread the word with a knowing smile, that he's not as harmless as he may seem.

Monty, Starry, and every one else who has had the misfortune to have experienced life as the target of a psychopath,

Yes...no matter what-all types of craziness and cruelty you've endured, life goes on. I'm going to refer to the bad stuff as "junk" or "baggage."
The problem of going forward and moving ON post-trauma, is that you have baggage you have to "manage" ... somehow, some way, for the rest of your life.


We don't experience pain from good memories, but we do from bad ones. The junk experienced is on board/in mind, forever. (Well, unless you have a stroke or get a brain disease that wipes out your experiential memory.) My point is, your memories are part of the fabric of your Being. Moving forward in life, living on with traumatic memories,is like carrying extra weight around with you that you can't shed. The depth or frequency of trauma, the number of years endured, are different for each person. Some have heavier or more difficult burdens than others. Compare it to carrying a child on your back in a backpack, at all times. I say a child instead of a stone or a bowling ball, because the "baggage" of bad experience is like a sleeping thing that always has the potential to become active...to burst into activity, to squirm, wiggle, struggle, cry out. Situations and events can toggle it awake,trigger remembrance. Everywhere we go, everything we do, how others behave around us and towards us can trigger remembrance. Sometimes you can see it coming or can predict situations and thereby avoid it, but you often get ambushed. For example, you're in an packed elevator with your very fussy toddler, a stranger annoyed beyond his patience blurts out "If that was MY kid I'd give him a smack!," --and suddenly you recall being smacked and shoved in a closet. Memories can trigger loose at the speed of light. Everybody's has some unhappy memories because Life just IS difficult at times for everyone. Survivors of psychopaths have huge baggage; verbal insults, disparagement of their characters and intellects, threats against their life, and feelings that their life was utterly worthless and of no value or consequence at all. Holding the door shut on all that junk is an effort, takes energy. More some days than other days.

Strategies for managing junk work well sometimes, not so good other times.
Some people "compartmentalize" the junk; "park it" to the side, box it and store it in a quiet recess of mind, to keep it inactive and prevent it from popping out to interfere with daily-weekly-monthly life. Some "channel it" artistically...into painting, drawing, music, writing, poetry. Some exert psychic "effort" to deliberately "hold back" recall...as if the memories are stored in a room so packed full of junk it threatens to burst the door open and spill out...you lean on that door, hold it shut when it bulges. Some use mental imagery: imagine a hot air balloon...put your junk into the basket suspended beneath it and turn it loose, to float off into the sky. (It doesn't produce permanent relief, but it's useful for temporary relief.)

I suppose there 'could' be victims of psychopathy who want to, and manage to, "forgive" the psychopath(s) in their lives. I'm not one of them.
I see no reason, emotional or intellectual, to forgive anyone who has willfully and deliberately acted to harm you.
I think some people 'forgive' because it helps them feel better about themselves, larger-spirited than their abuser. But it's not just a question of having "some bad memories." Years of psychological abuse causes actual brain damage. Mental impairments. It's often coupled with physical abuse that caused lifelong physical impairments, --and that's a hell of a lot to ask or expect anyone to "forgive." Victims don't go around telling people all the things that are wrong with them "from abuse", even if they have a pretty good assessment of them -- which most don't, because psychological/cognitive testing is expensive and not covered by a lot of insurance plans.

Main message here is: People don't "get over" abuse. They learn how to "manage" the baggage. People who tell abused people "just move forward, don't wallow in it, get over yourself, stop whining about the past" -- don't understand the problem.

Sinkler,

You are lucky to have a husband who perceived the hidden/disguised problem and helped you see past the veil. Your mom may never have realized what she was dealing with, or maybe did but felt powerless (and was) to change it. I think psychopaths are attracted to marry partners who have a blind spot, can't figure them out, can't quite detect their deceits, and are 'manipulatable'. Over time that partner 'adapts' to the psychopath's needs. If they don't go along with him their life will be even harder. Once you have kids you're stuck because it's so incredibly hard to break free, with the kids, and survive economically and mentally.

The fact that you feel sad about getting distanced/alienated from your siblings marks you as a human being with normal bonds of affection. THEY should feel sad about losing you! That they don't and instead allow your father's distortions and fictional criticisms to define you, instead of relying on their own real and personal experience OF you to "know" how you are, indicates that they're in mental bondage to him. After you move they may continue among themselves to 'interact' via criticism of you but it will become a stale enterprise after awhile; when it does, your father may entertain himself by pitting your siblings against each other. That may sound like a crappy thing to wish on your siblings, but unless they experience his false-blame and criticism first-hand, they probably won't be able to recognize that's what happened to you.

You're a brave lady.
The fact that your father targeted you instead of either of your siblings, could be because he perceived you as emotionally-different from them, more whole. Psychopaths don't like emotionally whole people whose consciences can interfere with the lies they're spreading. They consider them threats.

I have a sister, in the biological sense only. My grown kids get on my case for how I handle this, saying its not really 'honest' but I have found caution to work better than blunt honesty at the outset of friendships. I want people to have a chance to get to know me, experience me, without our interactions being fettered by commonly held (but erroneous) assumptions. When casual acquaintances ask if I have any siblings, I simply say 'No.' I consider thats not completely UN-true because my sister herself told me I was dead to her, and she certainly was poison for me to be around. If I say "yes, I have one sister", they assume some sort of positive/friendly sibling-relationship exists and dive into painful conversational territory: "Does she live nearby? No? Gee that's too bad, are you able to get together now and then? My sister and I go camping every year"...blah-blah-etc People who AREN'T knowledgeable about psychopaths (and Narcissists, and other mentally disordered people incapable of having honest,friendly, relationships)... ASSUME that any time ANY two people are estranged they are "probably BOTH at fault, there are two sides to every disagreement." < WRONG when dealing with psychopaths.

If a friendship develops with an acquaintance, then at some point I do explain that I grew up in a mal-functional family where our mentally unstable mother alienated my sister from me early on, causing my sister to develop a mentally-ill hatred of me that prevents any possibility of friendship, so we are estranged. If they want to know more, they can ask, and I'll answer.



Works for me

Thank you Kate for putting this all into perspective for me.

That has been the hardest thing for me to overcome. My Dad laid so much guilt/shame on me all the time that it was easy to believe his distorted truths and look to me or my husband as "the bad guys".

My husband is a very overt person. He tells it like it is and doesn't hold anything back. I have admired that about him because everything in my family was always behind the scenes and covert. My husband decided, about 2 years before I did, that he didn't want anything more to do with my Dad. At the time, I thought he was horrible for cutting my Dad out and I felt caught in the middle. I believe that my huband is one of the few people who could have withstood all the hate that was coming from my family and me, before my awareness.

Right now, I am trying to do some damage control with my boss and her parents. My Dad used to have lunch with my boss's parents every week. I started to get the feeling that my boss was beginning to disapprove of me and realized that Dad was now "in my job". I asked my Dad to stop contact with them because it was interfering in my job. First he denied that he said anything. Then he said "I don't give a shit" and called them right after I left. Later, he told me that they had called him.

So, I went to my bosses parents and asked them not to contact him anymore. I tried to make them realize what he does and how he uses people, gives negative impressions, etc. I'm not sure they entirely understand the gravity of what he does but, other than sending a card now and then, they haven't spoken to him or seen him for several months. I'm hoping my Dad won't contact them because he must wonder what I have told them.

Now I just have to speak with my boss.......It's so hard to put this stuff into words. People just don't know how to take it unless they, themselves, have been through it.

Hi Dianne,

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I have been reading everyone's comments, though, and they are very helpful.

I'm not totally sure that my brother will take my Dad in but, if that is what Dad wants, then it will happen. My brother is obviously under Dad's spell now. Any emails I send him are immediately read to Dad and then I get a hateful voice mail from my Dad so I know he is twisting my words as I have only sent positive emails to my brother.

The blow-up occurred last November over a period of about 2-3 weeks. I had called my sister to ask her a question and everything about my Dad just spilled out. I hadn't planned to tell her but it was the first time I felt that anyone actually listened to me and treated it with some credibility. My sister then told my Dad the whole conversation. My Dad then started to try and manipulate me to come and see him. Most likely, to trap me into discussion about what I had told my sister. At the time, I didn't realize that my sister had told my Dad everything but I could tell he was manipulating me so I refused to go and see him and kept putting him off. It culminated in him actually going to the hospital for bogus back pain. I suspected it was bogus and have since conferred with a nurse I know who worked at the hospital. Basically, she confirmed that the diagnosis was "complaint of back pain". Any potential diagnosis was ruled out and he was sent home with no pain meds - only Tylenol.

I guess he thought that going to the hospital would have me running to him as it had in the past. I realized, though, that it was just another of his manipulations. There was nothing wrong with him. So....I contacted my brother and told him I was unable to go and asked if he was available. He sounded fine with it but said he had to check on some things and would call me back in 20 minutes. When he called back he was really pissed off (apparently had talked to Dad in that 20 min). Screamed at me that I didn't want anything to do with my Dad (even though I had just taken him to dinner the week before, sent him audio books before that, and sent him $50 worth of supplies the week before that). He said I wouldn't go to see Dad but I'd sure run over there when it was time to claim my inheritance. He said he didn't want anything more to do with me or my husband. He also told me that he knew what I had said to my sister. He accused me of telling her that Dad was a mass murderer - which wasn't true.

At that point, I quit calling my Dad or taking his calls. He left me several hateful voice mails. Told me he had made my sister aware that I was a liar (she hasn't called me back or taken any of my calls since). Told me to "mark him off on the calendar as deceased" and called my husband a "no good sorry SOB". Odd, since my husband didn't have anything to do with all this as far as my Dad was concerned. Then he said I was "too scared to call him back".

In any case, it has been a slow process but I am beginning to give myself permission to let my family go. I don't know why it's so difficult but I have always had a strong sense of responsibility for taking care of my Dad. He doesn't seem to have the same difficulty in quickly transferring the responsbility over over to my brother, however.

I figure the final blow will be removing me from any inheritance which my mother set up a long time ago. That is the only weapon I can think of that my Dad has left with which to "get me back" for realizing what he is/does and trying to tell my siblings.

Kate,

Your comment about how you screen your family history from new acquaintances is dead on for me. Especially your insight as to how people view a troubled family relationship - that it takes 2. But it doesn't with a psychopath. People (even most mental health professionals) can not wrap their head around the idea that someone has NO empathy or that they can NOT be fixed. So there we are, trying to befriend people without them thinking WE are the problem. It's funny though. Because if he was an alcoholic or a physical/sexual abuser, they would immediately relate and see him as the 100% problem. My dad is neither. He's a socially high functioning psychopath. Charming. Engaged. Financially successful. Damn! For the most part, everybody LOVES him. Oh, except for his poor children.

So, I have 2 elderly parents and 3 siblings still doing the dance with my psychopathic father. I am the youngest by 6 years and am guessing that from the time I was little I never trusted him so he was unable to get me 'under his spell'. However, I have been actively involved with the family as is my son and it's insane dynamics.

How can I hide this? I need a story. I've thought of saying, no, i don't have any siblings, no, my parents are dead. But people still want to know the story. Where you grew up blah blah.

Hi daddysproblem welcome to our community.

I guess the only suggestion I can add is to brief and not say much. I have found that many times people ask questions not to really listen to the answer but as a way to begin with what they want to say. How many times do you hear people say "How are you", most don't mean it or listen to any answer.

Maybe just practice the art of being vague.

How engaged are you and your son with your father? Do you live in the same area? Do your siblings see anything wrong or do they continue under his spell?

Di