Thanks to a 7 day stay at an inpatient adolescent psychiatric facility (at the age of 12) my daughter learned some things that she never thought of before:

~she suddenly felt "suicidal", (never mentioned this before).

~she learned to "pull at her face", and "hit her own head", when she was trying to convince me that my husband was being mean (which he wasn't...her favorite new ploy), or if she wanted to do something that was forbidden.

~she was suddenly "hearing voices in her head (right after the counselor said, "do you ever hear voices in your head?)...yeah, amazing.

~these "voices" were telling her to commit suicide (this was what she said, when the counselor asked her this question: "and do these voices in your head ever tell you to commit suicide?") yeah, real breakthrough (yawn.)

~after coming home from the treatment center, which she described as "very enjoyable", she suddenly demanded a larger bedroom in the house, saying that she felt compelled to give the neighbor boy oral sex because of her "depression", which was partly caused by not having big enough "windows" in her bedroom. (So we obliged, trying to help her, and because I fell for this con job...and a month later she had her friend over to spend the night and she moved everything into her "old" room because she said it was more "comfortable and quiet") Oh, if you only knew the fights I had with my husband over changing the bedrooms all around for her, for a new room which really meant NOTHING to her!

~She was suddenly "traumatized" by the absence of her biological father (who is also a Psychopath, and left when she was a baby), and said she could only be "repaired", by being able to go back to her previous school (which we removed her from for having sex with the boys there).

~She suddenly had "hearing loss" in one ear (she never mentioned this before), and said it was from when she fell off her bed the year before. She said she hadn't mentioned it the year before, when the hearing loss "occurred", because she didn't want to "worry me" (u-huh, yet she complained daily about everything from pimples, "asthma", a chronic sore foot, "back pain", and she even faked an eye exam to try to get "glasses", just for fun. Seriously, I thought she was a Hypochondriac.
(Oddly, I recall her biological father said he had lost 90% of his hearing in one ear due to a "kick boxing" injury...yet this "disability" seemed to come and go randomly).

yep, I have definitely seen this pattern in my Psychopath.

as soon as i mention a new anything--issue i am challenged by, desire i have, whatever it might be--all of the sudden it is her weakness (but worse, you know, pay attention to me and feel sorry for me) or her desire (oh, you wanted that from Mark, no, wait, i can do it).

the end game for her is to have our fellow family member, L, to herself, and no one else.

the game won't end until i am gone. i do not like that...no, wait, it scares the hell out of me...

hang in there--

Hello Mark

Welcome to the forum. I realise you probably have concerns about identifying your family but would it be possible for you give a little more information to clarify how the dynamics of your relationship works?
The reason I ask is because if the person you think is a psychopath is your daughter or your new partner’s then the situation is very different to her being your previous partner. Age also makes a difference. I am guessing she is the daughter of L?

If she is s psychopath she will never change and waiting for that to happen just wastes valuable time from moving on. It's not always easy to move on and even harder to move right away. They do like to isolate a victim especially from anyone who knows exactly what they are and see what they are doing.

Once we are a bit clearer about the relationship and the nature of your involvement with the ‘psychopath’ then we may be able to offer more insight.

I look forward to hearing more from you and we can put some thought into your situation.

Regards
Jan

Hello Jenna

I also had to smile at your quips, it’s good to see you have retained a sense of humour despite your ordeal.
You seem very certain that your daughter ‘inherited’ her father’s personality disorder and that must have taken a lot of heart searching to accept that. We try to find causes for everything and sometimes the reason is ‘just because it is that way’.

With my partner’s kid I was led to believe that his mother neglected him, which I considered abusive, and that was the cause of his problems but when I went over what really happened the only neglect he suffered was to his education and his sleeping patterns and eating habits. He was given more freedom than any child should have had and when I came along and tried to put some structure in his life he really kicked off. My partner got custody of him at age 6 and the patterns set by the mother pretty much carried on when he got him. It kept the peace to give in to him and also helped alleviate the guilt for leaving him with his mother.
It took me a while to realise this kid was born to become a psychopath. His mother has a personality disorder and so does his uncle (father’s brother) and I am now a firm believer it is ‘in his genes’. I know this is a controversial thing to say but I do believe it. I also know research shows that environment does play a part but as far as I can see the part it plays is to ‘flick the switch’ but the switch has to be there to be flicked in the first place and other kids don’t have one. Therefore anything that happens to them is dealt with in a different way.

It took my partner many years to come to terms with the kid he has, we went from complete denial there was anything wrong to blaming his mother during his first few years through to waiting for the penny to drop that he had to change his behaviour and finally accepting there was something drastically wrong. He still had hope for a long time that we could lead by example, give him support and encouragement to improve and many opportunities to have a wonderful life. Nothing stopped the rot. Things just got worse by the day as he found new games to play and ways of manipulating and controlling everything around him. It was when the stealing and destruction became criminal that something had to change.

I do feel for your husband, my patience snapped when my face towel was smeared with faeces (more than once) but how do you say to someone that you loathe their kid? The last time he did it I was packing my bags and leaving him to it! What could he do? We had been for professional help and nothing was available, he refused to send him back to his ‘abusive’ mother and there was no way he would put him into care out of his duty to bring up his kid responsibly. He could have waited until the police stepped in. I knew the decision to remove this kid from our lives would be taken out of his hands at some point and one of those options would happen.

The kid chose for himself to go back to his mother, without a second glance and no contact since. Did I party! He knew he had used his father as far as he could so it was time to ditch him and find a new source of supply.
He was great at leaving people behind and finding gullible new donors.

I loved your description of the double talk! The kid knew exactly what everyone wanted to hear, his hypervigilance paid off there.
I found out “I love you” meant “got you fooled, now I can ask for anything I want”.
The words “I miss you” were never said as he didn’t know what that meant.
As he refused to do any chores whatsoever…”can I go to the shop for you?” meant “can I have some money?”
Phone calls to his gran to see how she was meant “can you send me some money?” or “can I come and stay with you because I want a cell phone, designer clothes, etc etc”
I’m going to try harder at school” meant “the head teacher will be phoning you later over what I did at school today”.
“I’m hungry” meant “I know you have been shopping and there is a weeks supply of nice things that I want right now”. When all he was offered was his meal he would go to the neighbours saying we wouldn’t allow him any food.

I did find most of his lies like this had a grain of truth but the stories built around it demolished any credence but the neighbours had to find out for themselves.

“Can I invite so and so to my birthday party?” meant “so an so can have his 2 best friends to take to a theme park for his birthday and I want to be one of them”. Funny we had never heard so and so’s name mentioned before.

“Can I wash the car?” meant “I want a LOT of money from you”

“I was given a CD of *****” meant “I have stolen your CD of *****”

Every word that came out of his mouth had to be considered for its real meaning and to distinguish lies from whopping lies or whether it was simple conning and manipulation.

He wanted the best of everything and refused to wear anything that wasn’t designer label but of course gran knew ‘how cruel we were not letting him have any nice clothes or toys and gadgets’ so she had to buy them all.
It even happened with food, if I put food on the table he would be in there first digging as deep in to the dish as he could to get as much as he could especially the best bits….even if we had guests for dinner…..he was manic to get there first.

Meal times were a trial! His sense of entitlement to have as much as he could pile on a plate was bizarre, there was never a thought of offering to let a guest go first and there was a sense of panic when he was made to take his turn. As though we would do what he did and he had to keep alert and not let it happen.
Towards the end we fed him first and on his own so there was no problem with portion control. His table manners became so disgusting I couldn’t bear to sit at the table with him.

What you say about therapy is interesting. It is said that it makes psychopaths worse because it informs them of what is expected and they can then act on what they learn. It seems what you experienced shows how little some 'professionals' know. They only way to take anything positive from it is that it confirms the research on psychopaths so reinforces your belief. To an outsider it would appear that your daughter is suffering from anything but psychopathy and is probably depressed or has a mental illness.

I could rant for hours when I think back to those times but I think you deserve your turn now.

It must be incredibly hard for you to acknowledge this is your own biological daughter but at the same time a relief to be able to say it to others who understand without feeling like the wicked one.

Regards
Jan