The distinctive “look” of psychopathy: gazing into the face of evil

Posted on November 11, 2014 by luckyotter

Gaze into the void…

Psychopaths and malignant narcissists are very good at putting on masks to get others to trust them. They can seem warm and charming when they want to. But sometimes they can be caught when their mask is momentarily down (usually when they’ve been called out–or caught), and it’s here when we see the emptiness and evil inside them.

I’ve described this look before–I’ve seen it on my mother’s face and it gave me nightmares for weeks. I saw it once on my ex’s face when he was drunk and angry. It’s not so much a demonic look (which has a sort of life to it) as a dead, lifeless look that is far worse. It’s a malignant look that makes you want to get away from them fast. Like there’s nothing inside them except an vast and endless black void of nothingness. It’s like standing at the precipice of a black hole, and what can be more terrifying than some nameless void that can suck you into itself–and can even swallow light?

Many people have mentioned the intense stare a psychopathic person will fix you with, even when they are trying to charm you into trusting them. During the “wooing” phase, you may think this intense stare indicates attentiveness and strong interest in you as a person, but actually all they’re interested in is how they can use you and later destroy you. Make no mistake–they are predators out for the kill. If you have met someone who seems to stare at you excessively, or in a predatory way that makes you uneasy, that person is probably a psychopath or malignant narcissist trying to get their hooks into you. RUN LIKE HELL.

I don’t think evil is the opposite of good. I think evil is the opposite of somethingness–evil is pure black nothingness. Here are some examples of the dead, reptilian eyes of known psychopaths and malignant narcissists.

Serial killer Dennis Rader

Convicted murderer Jodi Arias. Her trial footage shows as many fake tears and mask-changes as Scott Peterson’s and none of her “emotions” seem genuine.

Scott Peterson, unfaithful husband who murdered his pregnant wife and unborn child.

Susan Smith, who murdered her two young sons by sinking them in a car she drove into a lake because she wanted to please her lover, who did not want children.

Actress Joan Crawford (“Mommie Dearest”), who was an alcoholic and abusive mother to two of her adoptive children (some reports classify her as having Borderine Personality Disorder with Histrionic and Narcissistic elements, rather than NPD)

In some cases, psychopaths show a distinctive smirk or sneer. Their eyes may twinkle, but it’s a hard, cold, glittering twinkle that is malevolent and creepy. Behind the twinkle, the eyes are still reptilian and dead. You may see this look when they think they’ve pulled one over on you–or perversely, when you’ve pulled one over on them–and they are ready to kill you either literally or figuratively. Here are some examples of this look:

Osama bin Laden, fundamentalist Islamic mastermind who ordered the attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon in 2001.

Mass murderer Charles Manson, who never killed anyone himself but had his cult of followers do his dirty work for him. Some think he’s psychotic and therefore not responsible for his actions, but he’s a psychopath who knew exactly what he was doing and has never shown an ounce of remorse.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, the brains behind the disastrous and dishonest Bush administration and our “preemptive” invasion of Iraq. Cheney and his cronies bailed out or pardoned corporate criminals like Halliburton. How could you trust a man with a face like that?

The Koch Brothers, multibillionaire CEOs who by their words and deeds have shown their disdain and comtempt for the “little people” which includes both the poor and middle class. These jerks have zero empathy and seem very psychopathic.

Former pro football player and actor O.J. Simpson during his famous 1995 murder trial. This insolent expression became his trademark look while he was on trial.

Serial killer Ted Bundy’s infamous look of psychopathic glee. *shudder*

I don’t know this woman, but she is a malignant narcissist who apparently gets her jollies making the people who lived in her building miserable. Someone on another website about narcissists was being attacked by her and called her out. I wouldn’t have included her here, but this is one of the most frightening looking people I’ve ever seen. Her eyes look like those solid black eyes you see in horror movies of demonic people. I have no doubt this woman is as evil as she looks.

Serial killer and alleged Satanist Richard Ramirez.

I’ve also included this Court TV program covering the arrest and trial of murderer Scott Peterson. Notice how he uses tears to manipulate the police and interviewer, but how insincere he seems and the way he arranges his facial features into whatever “mask” he thinks will help his case. There are those who insist he is not guilty (and I had my doubts too) and of course being good looking like Ted Bundy, he had a number of “groupies” who defended him, but he’s an intelligent manipulator and after watching this video, I absolutely believe Scott Peterson killed his wife and unborn son in cold blood.

We All Need a “Mother”

Posted on November 11, 2014 by luckyotter

This article is right in keeping with my own attendance at RCIA (the classes one takes to become Catholic) and what I am learning. As the child of a malignant narcissist mother, Mary is about as unlike my mother as it’s possible to be. I need a ever merciful Mary in my life! I’m also finding that, rather than the dogmatic, intolerant, bloated religion Catholicism has a reputation of being, that’s it’s actually one of the most loving and tolerant of all Christian religions–and probably the most authentic (being the oldest and apostolic church Jesus actually founded).

I’m also taken with this writer’s affinity for Buddhism, which I’ve dabbled in myself. Buddhism, rather than being a religion, is more of a philosophy. You can believe in one God or not. I don’t think reincarnation and karma are reconcilable with Catholicism (or any other form of Christianity), but these beliefs have a lot going for them and there are a lot of good arguments in their favor. I’m reblogging this article because it puts a lot of the thoughts I’ve been having into words much better than I can.

Holy shirt!

Posted on November 11, 2014 by luckyotter

Be honest. Do any of you women suffer from holy shirt syndrome? I have a lot of thin cotton tee shirts, and every last one of them has an array of tiny little holes right in the front at the bottom, over the belly button area.

This is a huge mystery to me. My first thought was clothes moths, but that couldn’t be it, because why would the clothes moths only attack the same area of every tee shirt? Besides, I haven’t seen any clothes moths and none of my other clothes suffer. Belts? No, that couldn’t be it either. I never wore belts until very recently after I lost a bunch of weight because that was the only way I could get my old pants from falling off. I have had my holy shirt problem far longer than that. Someone suggested seat belts might be the culprit, but it happens even in cold weather when I’m wearing a coat and the seatbelt is not touching my tee shirt. Tucking my shirt into my pants can’t be it either because I never tuck my shirt into my pants.

Today I Googled “tiny holes at bottoms of tee shirts” and was shocked to find out this is actually a common problem and everyone else seems as mystified by it as me! For some reason I thought no one else had this problem. Anyway I found this article saying it’s caused by leaning over kitchen counters. Hmmm, I guess it’s time to start wearing an apron. Somehow I don’t believe it though. I’ve had brand new tee shirts I hung in the closet and never wore to cook anything, and somehow the holes still appear.

I don’t get it. Does anyone have a better theory of what causes this? And what can be done about it?

Almost there!

Posted on November 10, 2014 by luckyotter

I just need 8 more followers to hit 200!

High anxiety

Posted on November 10, 2014 by luckyotter

I’m having one of those days again. You know, those days where you feel like all your nerves are beeping and buzzing and flashing the red DANGER sign. I deliberately stayed home from work today because I felt like sleeping in (and honestly, I wasn’t feeling well–I think I’m coming down with a cold, the flu, or maybe Ebola). But once I got over the anxiety-inducing hurdle of actually calling work, I curled back into my nice warm bed, expecting to drift into pleasant dreams, but instead I couldn’t go back to sleep! This happens A LOT when I try to relax: my mind starts racing and my heart begins to palpitate, while all my morbid, negative thoughts of unnamed disaster start to overtake my brain. This always happens, especially when I’m trying to relax.

When I was young I never had this problem. The 20-something version of myself could languish in bed until 2 PM or even later, with nary a sense of guilt or anxiety. I would drift into the most incredible, lucid-like dreams like someone on a mushroom high. I woke up ready to take on the world. But things have changed. As I’ve grown older, my attempts to sleep in just make me feel like I deserve to be punished and my body responds in kind. What’s up with that?

So I finally gave up trying to get back to sleep. I untangled my legs from under the covers, stood on the cold floor and walked to the kitchen where I made a strong pot of my favorite hazelnut coffee (I’m weird–coffee sometimes makes me sleepy) with cream and no sugar, put on some socks and opened my laptop. I read some blogs and blogged a little myself, but the nervousness was still there.

Around 11:30, I could no longer stand laying around in the clothes I sleep in (last night it was a tee shirt with threadbare drawstring pajama pants with Lucky Charms logos and leprechauns all over them) and got dressed in real clothes. But I still feel that unnamed sense of dread. My palms feel sweaty and my heart is in my throat. Should I go for a drive? Mow the grass (which is still overgrown and weedy looking even though it’s been cold)? Read a good novel? Cook something scrumptious that involves plenty of chocolate and butter? Arrange all my books in order by color to make my bookshelves look like a rainbow? I just don’t know. Now I wish I went to work today. I don’t know why I take these “mental health days” when I always wind up feeling guilty for doing so and crazier than if I’d just gone to my crummy job.

The crazy outfit I slept in last night. Maybe going to dreamland with kittens and leprechauns is the stuff of nightmares.

Am I the only one? Do any of you suffer anxiety and guilt when you take a day off from work when you’re not really sick? What do you do to combat your nerves?

A Sunday drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway

Posted on November 10, 2014 by luckyotter

On one gorgeous Sunday afternoon back in June, my daughter, her boyfriend and I decided to take a drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway in western North Carolina, which is close to my home. I thought I’d share some of the photos we took. The view was breathtaking, even though it was very foggy (at that elevation, you’re actually in the clouds). It was coolish and cloudy up there, but very hot and sunny when we returned to lower elevations.

The bookshelves: a better photo

Posted on November 10, 2014 by luckyotter

The photo of the bookshelves in my last post cut off the bottom rows of shelves, so here’s a better photo. Although I sold or gave away a majority of my books, I still have a pretty big collection!

Post #100: my surviving book collection.

Posted on November 10, 2014 by luckyotter

Books and reading have always been my passion. As long as I can remember I always had my nose stuck in a book. I actually used to “cut class” in third grade to go to the school library (I hated 3rd grade the most because I was not only bullied by the other kids but was also bullied by my teacher Mrs. Morse, who had it in for me through the whole year and actually encouraged the other kids to gang up on me.) Reading was my escape, my middle childhood version of creating my own imaginary friends and worlds, and I read on a 7th-8th grade level in the third grade.

My two favorite books as a child were (1) Louise Fitzhugh’s classic “Harriet the Spy” (read the book but skip the movie –Harriet is not your usual female heroine–she’s feisty, neurotic and isn’t even all that nice–she is part villain, part hero, and that makes her have so many dimensions for a kids’ book) and (2) Scott O’Dell’s breathtaking survival story, “The Island of the Blue Dolphins”. How I longed, like the young heroine in that beautiful story, to be stranded for 18 years on a desert island, swim with the dolphins, commune with nature and wildlife, fashion my own hut and raft for fishing, and most of all, spend almost two decades not having to deal with people at all. .

These two bookshelves pictured below contain almost all my remaining books. I keep a few others in the ~~reading room~~ bathroom and a few more on a smaller shelf next to my bed. I used to read an average of 3 books a week but lately I haven’t been reading nearly so much, because I do so much reading on line now.

Yes, that is a Salvador Dali inspired melting clock dripping off one of the shelves on the left hand side. It was given to me as a gag gift last Christmas, but it was the perfect gift for a person like me who loves the random and unexpected when it comes to gifts. The clock works too! (Click photo to enlarge).

I used to own more than 3,000 titles (hell, I could have opened my own little bookstore!) but lack of space and financial necessity obliged me to sell most of the books or give them away to charity. There’s a few books I regret giving up; here are most of the remaining titles that either didn’t sell, or I refused to sell.

And now….(drum roll please!)…I have reached 100 posts. 🙂

Post #99: Blast from the past

Posted on November 9, 2014 by luckyotter

Even though I came of age in the late 1970s and am not a member of Gen-X (although I’m pretty close), I actually prefer the music of the 1980s and 1990s. The 1990s in particular had groundbreaking, exciting music that I still enjoy today. In the car on the radio today, I heard this song, which I had nearly forgotten. It has a positive message and great hook and everytime I hear it feels like the first time all over again. It’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact this song is 21 years old (the same age as my daughter). My son was not even two when this hit the airwaves. I was still so young really (early 30s). There’s nothing quite like nostalgia for a lost time–nostalgia is like dark chocolate: both bitter and sweet.

When I look back on the 1990s, they sort of remind me of the 1960s turned on their head. It’s hard to explain, but the ’90s have the same kind of psychedelic feel to them that the 1960s had but are much “darker” than the 1960s. The ’90s seem “dark” like the ’70s, but in a more psychedelic, surreal way with lots of indigos, deep reds and blacks rather than the browns, hunter greens and harvest gold of the 1970s. I don’t know if this makes any sense, but each decade to me has a color, pattern, or group of colors that I associate with it.

Bizarrely, the early 1990s today seem like a simpler, even more innocent time–a time when there was still no Internet (for the average person anyway), rock music was still getting airplay (and was still good), people had become cynical and distrustful of institutions but the economy was still chugging along, 9/11 hadn’t happened yet, Clinton was still president, MTV still played music videos, and people still primarily used landlines or pay phones to talk to their family and friends (big clunky primitive cell phones were only affordable to rich Yuppies who used them for business). There was no such thing as Smartphones, Facebook, Twitter, or social media. People still wrote letters, sometimes emails, and called their friends and loved ones rather than texted them. Kids still played outside (although there were plenty of video games to keep them entertained). Commercial radio today is vastly different than what could be heard in the 1990s. So much has changed since hen.

As an addendum, I want to mention an excellent BBC documentary, in which a middle class British family spends one month “living” through the years 1970 – 2000. Each day is a different year, and everything from the clothing to the food to the technology available at that time (in Great Britian, which was behind the United States in the 1970s) was painstakingly recreated for each year (day) and their house decorated appropriately for each decade. It’s also fascinating to watch how the family adapts to all these changes, and how hard the “primitive 1970s” were to the children of the family, who were all born in the 1990s:

The videos can be seen here:
Electric Dreams: The 1970s
Electric Dreams: The 1980s
Electric Dreams: The 1990s

Counting down!

Posted on November 9, 2014 by luckyotter

This is my 98th post. Only two more and I’ll have 100. Back on September 10th when I started this blog, I promised myself I’d write one post a day. I wasn’t sure I could do it. But I’ve outdone myself, since September 10th is only 60 days ago and this is my 98th post. That motivates me. I think I might be able to reach my goal by tonight.

OM (Harsh Reality) always likes to help us new bloggers and provides regular showcases for us to link to our blogs on his site. Today he asked what our Top Ten posts are. I had never looked to see what they were before, and wasn’t too surprised to see my first Furry article at the top of the list, since that is the only article I’ve written that STILL always appears in my Top Posts list on my homepage. It also got a huge boost from Twitter. I think it’s one of my best written articles and the title is awesome. The #2 spot article, which was a rant back when I was a newbie and wasn’t getting many views or followers, got a big boost from a reblog by OM, which gave my entire blog the push into the cyber-universe it needed. Never again would I log into my account in the morning to find only crickets and tumbleweeds.

Here is my entire Top 10.

2014-08-11 to Today

Title		Views

My son is “furry”–got a problem with that?		515
I’m frustrated.		282
Part Two: finding myself: a hopeless task if you depend on narcissists to do the job for you (late adolescence/early adulthood)		192
Raised by a narcissist: my story of psychopathic abuse (childhood and adolescence)		137
Sleeping with the devil: my marriage to a psychopath		87
I made a little deal with God today		76

Gratitude		57
Furries revisited.		56
Narcissists who use 12-step programs to further their agenda		55
A new insight on being the only child of a narcissistic mother	53

So today (or the latest, tomorrow) I will reach 100 posts. I’m also nearing another milestone: 200 followers. I never thought my blog would be this active in two short months. I want to take this opportunity to say “thanks” to all you awesome people who are following and reading my blog.