BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

Unfortunately both my emotional and professional lives have been loaded with betrayals. Some were so horrific that they scarred me forever. I don't think I will ever understand why people I loved & cared about or people I worked hard for - decided I was the one to rip to shreds. Never. I will never understand ever what I did in my life to deserve the horrific abusive treatment I have received. But I do know I need to tell the truth in order to heal. Herewith is one of the earliest emotional betrayals I ever experienced. I have re-experienced this same type of trauma a couple other times in my life. The perpetrator never ever apologizes, gives closure or talks to you about it. And if you do tell the truth - you will be smeared and demonized for opening your mouth. Repetition Compulsion doesn't get easier, in fact - it gets exponentially worse each time. I never had a real date until I was near to my 17th birthday. I experienced early puberty and was very ...

The press will never get it, because it sells papers. A woman betrays a man and she's a HORRIBLE WHORE, SCUM , a COMPLETE SLUT. But a man betrays a woman - AND she becomes outraged and goes into a mental tailspin? He might be a CHEATER or DIRTBAG but she's a PSYCHO, SCORNED WOMAN, BUNNY BOILER, OUT OF CONTROL, STALKER , a NUTJOB . Just as the misogyny of the Obots shut down Hillary's rightful chances at the Presidency, misogyny still rules the day because women ARE NOT ENTITLED TO BE ANGRY. Especially when abused & used in interpersonal relationships. Nope, we women are supposed to take it. To women who were taught that it is unladylike to express anger, the presumably therapeutic yelling and cursing of the current let-it-all-hang-out generation is often shocking. But now a major new study has strongly suggested that both the old style of keeping anger in and the newer tendency to release it explosively are equally poor ways of expressing this fundamental ...

by Michele Toomey, PhD At first glance one would imagine that abusive betrayal of love refers to having an affair. That is not my focus here, however. Affairs constitute a betrayal of love, but not necessarily an abusive one. I am placing the emphasis on abusive, and that cruel act must have deliberate meanness, indifference to the pain being inflicted, and more often than not, punishment as its intent. For betrayal of love to be abusive, it must have some or all of these traits. In this particular commentary, I would like to direct attention to the abuse that frequently occurs when a relationship ends. Usually only one person wants to end a relationship. The other is often heartbroken and devastated at the prospect of losing the one s/he loves. Obviously, a very vulnerable time for both, if both have integrity and are invested in each other. However, if the one terminating the relationship lacks integrity, the only vulnerable one is the one being left. Rejection is a stinging...

I address the victims of narcissistic abusers here. But this can warn their friends about how hurtful the stock responses to their pain are. (i.e. 'Get Over It, Move On, You Should Have Known, It Will Pass.. .') If you are the friend of an abused person, don't make it worse. If you can't say what comes naturally and honestly, it would be better to say nothing at all than to say what sounds right because it's politically correct. "He who angers you controls you." Baloney. That popular adage does not pass a basic nonsense check. Look, it says that if we want to be good boys and girls we must numb ourselves so that nobody can make us feel anything. Look again, it is exactly anti-logical, blaming the victim. It pathologizes you, the victim of the narcissist, instead of the narcissist. Stuff like this is my pet peeve. Where on earth does it come from? Once you start noticing how much political correctness is anti-logic, you can't help but wonder (with Ma...

by (the late & very missed) Kathy Krajco People make light of things in order to minimize how bad they are. I think I know why narcissists and other pathological liars think lying is funny and means that they are smart and you are stupid. On my first trip to Europe, first trip to Rome, we hadn't been in Italy five minutes before the first time we got ripped off. When thousands of lira are less than a dollar, a fresh American can easily not notice a couple extra zeroes. I got so sick of being viewed as prey, that I was in no mood to buy anything from any Italian that day we were resting in St. Peter's Square and a guy approached us with some 35 mm slides of the Vatican to sell us. And I should have been interested in those photos, because our camera was on the blink. I didn't mean to be a jerk: I just felt it would be rude to tell him to get lost, so I let him make his pitch. (Now I know that hawkers and telemarketers hate it when you waste their time like that and that ...

By Philip Rucker This is the place where the betrayed wife took her stand. As her husband's affair with an Argentine woman exploded onto the global stage and publicly humiliated her family, Jenny Sanford, 46, and their four sons sought refuge here at their large beachfront cottage on this lush island enclave outside Charleston. In marked contrast to elsewhere across the state, where residents remain riveted by the scandal of Gov. Mark Sanford's disappearing act and affair, Sullivan's Island is the cocoon protecting Jenny and the boys as they strive for normalcy. But it has also been the first lady's war room, where she has given her wayward husband a public thrashing. In the process, she seems to have drawn a new path for the aggrieved spouse of a philandering politician, an episode that has become something of a ritual in American politics. Outside the Sanford home, on Atlantic Avenue near the towering lighthouse, the cameras had disappeared this weekend. Kids splashed...

By JAMES KIRCHICK When Barack Obama was running for president, he vigorously reassured voters of his firm commitment to America's special relationship with Israel. Indeed, he worked to beef up his pro-Israel bona fides long before he even announced his intention to run. In a 2006 speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Obama recounted a helicopter tour over the Israeli border with the West Bank. "I could truly see how close everything is and why peace through security is the only way for Israel," he said. In that same speech, Obama called the Jewish State "our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy." During the primary and general election campaigns, Obama dispatched a stream of high-profile Jewish supporters to canvas Florida, and in a 2008 AIPAC speech, he went so far as to declare that Jerusalem must remain the "undivided" capital of Israel. For all the qualms that anti-Obama "smears" would dep...

Chill, People! It Was Just a Campaign Promise! by SusanUnPC Lyn just e-mailed me to ask if anyone is tracking the number of campaign promises that Obama has broken. Do you know of such a list? I realize it would be rather long, and difficult to keep up. But one would hope. Here’s one of the latest, via Lyn, and from Political Punch blog at ABC News in “ Despite Campaign Pledge, President Obama Refuses to Use Word ‘Genocide’ When Describing Slaughter of Armenians “: Despite a campaign promise that he would boldly use the word “genocide” as president when describing the Ottoman Empire’s slaughter of up to 1.5 million Armenians in the early part of the last century, President Obama deliberately avoided use of that word in his statement today on Armenian Remembrance Day. “We’re profoundly disappointed,” Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, told ABC News. “All the more so because his statements on this in his record before he became president...

"It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of the pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering. ...In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator's first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it on herself; and in any case ...

by Jeanne Safer, PhD. From the political to the personal, Americans are caught in an orgy of forgiveness. Failure to pardon, we're constantly admonished, will blight our lives. Now a psychotherapist counters that popular claim. You can refuse to absolve your lover, spouse, parent, sibling or friend, she declares, and still be emotionally healthy. Flip to any television station these days and chances are we'll be witness to some dramatic episode of forgiveness. We see a mother and daughter estranged for years kiss and make up, a long-feuding couple holding hands and renewing vows, scandal-plagued politicians asking for absolution and granting it to their accusers. Tears flow, hugs proliferate, and the inevitable psychological experts solemnly intone that traditional psychotherapy has neglected this essential element of cure and that studies show that forgiving alleviates depression and enhances self-esteem. What's wrong with this picture? The capacity to forgive is an essent...