Sandra L. Brown > Quotes

“What makes psychopathy so different, so surreal, so much like a relational b@$*tch-slap that it nearly knocks her head off?

--The sensation of being emotionally 'jumped' from behind.
--The inability to wrap her head around the emotional-physical-spiritual-sexual gang-bang that just happened when she thought she was with the most wonderful person.

No one can figure out how a dangerous psychopath curled up to them like a purring cat. Half of recovery is just trying to figure out 'what was THAT?”
― Sandra L. Brown, Women Who Love Psychopaths

“Women misjudged his pathology because of his prolific brain-games. He used gaslighting techniques to convince her she had a break with reality. Some survivors called it 'The Ultimate Mind Screw'--sending prominent female executives, attorneys, and doctors into mental institutions to recover from him. Coercion, psychological warfare techniques and Stockholm Syndrome symptoms have left survivors sawed off at the emotional knees by a smooth-talking and ear-to-ear grinning psychological terrorist.”
― Sandra L. Brown, Women Who Love Psychopaths

“Women often feel ridiculous that they let someone this disordered into their lives and they didn't even recognize the symptoms until she was way in over her head and emotionally destroyed. Welcome to the world of psychopathy where many--even most--don't recognize them either! The main characteristic of this disorder is social behavior and social hiding. Psychopaths blend in as 'normal' and manipulate others into believing them. These chameleon-like traits help them to move about freely and remain largely undetected. This is why Cleckley called these traits 'The Mask of Sanity'--because psychopaths can look and act (at least for a period of time) like a normal person.”
― Sandra L. Brown, Women Who Love Psychopaths

“The path to perceiving his disorder in all its destruction is littered with the remains of her mind and soul.”
― Sandra L. Brown, Women Who Love Psychopaths

“Men with hidden lives don’t truly feel connected to people. Their attention is more engaged by excitement, adrenaline, and thrill seeking than by the love of a woman. They desire the high of the moment, the chase, and the challenge of avoiding being caught—by the police, their mothers, or you. (..) They really believe that their lives are their own and they are free to do whatever they want as long as they don’t do it in front of you. Rules, laws, society’s expectations—all are frivolous to the hidden-life man. (..) The number-one enemy of the hidden-life man is an inquiring mind followed by persistent questions and a lively intuition.”
― Sandra L. Brown

“Men with hidden lives don’t truly feel connected to people. Their attention is more engaged by excitement, adrenaline, and thrill seeking than by the love of a woman. They desire the high of the moment, the chase, and the challenge of avoiding being caught—by the police, their mothers, or you. (..) They really believe that their lives are their own and they are free to do whatever they want as long as they don’t do it in front of you. Rules, laws, society’s expectations—all are frivolous to the hidden-life man.”
― Sandra L. Brown

“Stockholm syndrome, wherein people held in captivity begin to empathize and identify with their captors as a way of adapting to their situation. It is too incongruous to be in a relationship with someone whose thinking and behavior are disturbing. Something has to line up, so women accept the pathological thinking and behavior to eliminate the disturbance they feel.

Some women in a hospital program where I worked “sounded pathological” during group therapy sessions. It was later confirmed through psychological testing that they weren’t pathological. They were what we came to call “pseudopathologicals.” Each of them had been in relationships with various pathological men for so long they began to “act” pathological even though they wouldn’t have been technically diagnosed as such.”
― Sandra L. Brown

“Spiritual intuition alerts us when we sense that something is not right or when we just “know” this isn’t the person for us or the place for us to be in. We know these things without any overt knowledge or concrete information as to why we know them.”
― Sandra L. Brown

“It's not safe to love everyone.”
― Sandra L. Brown

“Children pay attention to the truth their bodies tell them. Adults learn to allow their defense mechanisms to alter the truth. As adults we are alerted to danger by bodily sensations that we need to pay attention to. These could include a flash of fear, sweating, a tight stomach, a pounding heart, the hair standing up on the neck, or a general feeling of discomfort that we may be unable to name.”
― Sandra L. Brown

“Stockholm syndrome, wherein people held in captivity begin to empathize and identify with their captors as a way of adapting to their situation. It is too incongruous to be in a relationship with someone whose thinking and behavior are disturbing. Something has to line up,
so women accept the pathological thinking and behavior to eliminate the disturbance they feel.”
― Sandra L. Brown

“Her tale, so typical of women who pick dangerous men, begins with a woman of higher than normal intelligence but with a heart bigger than her knowledge of pathology. [She] was no novice to the subject of psychology. She had gone to therapy and had even been married to a psychotherapist. (..) Based on these reasons, she never counted herself as a woman who would attract pathologically dangerous men, so she never worried. Because she never worried, she never learned about dangerous men or even knew to be on guard against them. [She], even with her knowledge about therapy and psychology, resisted the idea that her man was pathological when I suggested it to her. [He] didn’t “look like” he was disturbed. Where was the drooling, foot-dragging, medicated, glassy-eyed appearance of the extremely deranged? (..) Once [she] decided that [he] was probably indeed dangerous, she spent another chunk of time toying with the belief that “if he only went to therapy he could get better.” [She] chose to believe that decades of psychological research on predatory men was inconclusive in his case. She, like too many women, refused to believe that someone with [his] nature was permanently disordered.”
― Sandra L. Brown, How to Spot a Dangerous Man Before You Get Involved: Describes 8 Types of Dangerous Men, Gives Defense Strategies and a Red Alert Checklist for Each, and