Author: Torey C. Richards, LMHC

I'm a passionate Behavioral Scientist, a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, and a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional based Florida. I've dedicated my career to unmasking the complexities of human behavior, mental health, and substance abuse. My journey in this fascinating field has led me to work extensively with a diverse range of individuals – from those grappling with chronic mental illness to others navigating the trials of daily life. The opportunity to study the nuances of people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors has been enlightening and truly rewarding. Moreover, guiding people towards transformational changes that break down barriers in their lives is a fulfilling mission I carry with me every day. Currently, I work at a level one trauma center with patients who have suffered unfortunate traumas that include everything from car accidents to shootings and burn injuries. Previously, I held the reins as the Director of Mental Health at a county jail for 8 years, a challenging yet fulfilling role that offered unique insights into criminal justice and mental health. Additionally, I mentor the next generation of mental health professionals as a qualified supervisor for interns seeking licensure, continuously inspired by their commitment and ambition. Beyond my professional endeavors, I'm a Jiu Jitsu practitioner, an avid reader and writer. I hope you'll join me on this voyage of discovery.

Popular Psychology

Lance Armstrong May Be A Narcissist, But We Made Him A Hero

16 Jan 201318 Jan 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHC16 Comments

Like a lot of people, I brought into the Lance Armstrong hype way before the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency implemented him. To me, even back then, wearing the Livestrong bracelets was not so much about supporting Lance Armstrong, but for fighting cancer and challenges everywhere.

A lot of people I talk to who supported Armstrong and believed him when he said he was being singled-out, are angry and many are destroying their Livestrong bracelets.

If you look at those bracelets as supporting Lance Armstrong, then I understand that, but everything is about perception and I think those bracelets and the good his foundation has done can’t be torn apart by his wrong doings.

What does bother me is that he apparently lied so many times, adamantly about his use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). I read in some reports that he threatened to ruin peoples lives, including his masseuse if she didn’t help keep his secrets.

When I watch the many video tapes of Armstrong vehemently denying his use of PEDs, even as the evidence against him mounted up, I started seeing a different side of him.

He no longer was the pristine character I and many others had mad him out to be, but that is our fault. We made him out to be better than he really was.

Once I really started to see Lance Armstrong and not his accomplishments and charisma, I started to see a very egotistical person with clear signs of a narcissistic personality.

I saw a man who was drunk with power. Here was a man who had done more for cancer research and awareness than anyone I can think of and yet cheated in the Tour de France and continued to lie about it for years despite the evidence.

He used his charisma to raise millions of dollars for cancer research, while at the same time cheating and dominating at the sport that made him famous.

Many people in history with narcissistic personalities were charismatic and often started off as good before turning bad, such as Adolf Hitler, Fidel Castro and Jim Jones. There are many present day examples as well, just look around and you’ll start to notice them.

People with narcissistic personalities have big egos that create a need for importance and are often driven to success.

That doesn’t make them all bad people. All of us can be a bit narcissistic at times, but people with narcissistic personalities tend to take it to the point where they can’t recognize when they are wrong or need help because they think they have no flaws and they don’t take personal responsibility.

Lance’s narcissistic personality made it hard for him to take responsibility for his actions and also made him think that he was smarter than everyone else. Even in the face of undeniable evidence, he still tried to hold on to his heroic facade.

The problem is, as people we usually like to characterize people as all “good” or all “bad”, but humans are complex beings with the ability to be both good and bad. When we put someone on a pedestal, only admiring their good side, we are quickly disappointed and hurt when they show us their not so good side, which all of us have to some extent.

A couple of years ago, a pastor here in Orlando who had a past history of drug abuse and sexual defiance, became very charismatic, successful and popular in the community, growing his congregation into tens of thousands, at multiple services at multiple churches and nationally televised.

He was outspoken and passionate about uplifting communities, staying away from drugs and challenging men to be men. People flocked to him and his church and clung to him as if he were the perfect example of a good man and a Christian.

Imagine everyone’s shock when he was found dead in a New York city hotel of “natural causes” with a white powdery substance in his position.

Many people believe the pastor died of a drug over dose, but his congregation and family refused to believe it and til this day his family is fighting to keep his official cause of death sealed. They had made this man out to be a hero, to be perfect, just as many had did with Lance Armstrong, and they didn’t want to tarnish his reputation.

As humans we like to root for people, to champion people and make heroes out of athletes, celebrities, and sometimes people in our communities like religious leaders, and it’s easy to get disillusioned and forget that they are all just people just like us.

I’m not angry with Lance, after all, he is just human, just a man who made some bad decisions along with some great ones including helping raise awareness and research for cancer. I just hope that he will come completely clean and allow us to get to know all of him without the hero facade.

This will require him taking personal responsibility for his past mistakes however, something that is difficult for people with a narcissistic personality to do. The world and I will be watching.

**edit: I wrote this post before I saw his interview with Oprah and walked away from that interview more convinced that Lance Armstrong is a narcissist. In the interview he often spoke in the third person, as if it wasn’t really him being interviewed. He often seemed rather cold, detached and guarded despite this being a “tell all” interview. He touched his face a lot, which is a form of body language known as “The Mouth Guard” which is a sign that someone is unsure if what they are saying is really the truth, or consciously or unconsciously they know that what they are saying is a lie. Maybe Lance wasn’t totally lying, but he was not being completely, totally honest. Still, I think the good his Livestrong foundation has done is much bigger than one person.

Are You In Tune With Your Teenager?

14 Jan 201315 Jan 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHC3 Comments

While working with teens I’ve noticed that there are certain differences between those who are doing well academically, socially and mentally and those who aren’t.

For the most part, teens that are doing well have parents/guardians that show interest in them and their ideas and actually listen to them.

Teens who are doing well report that they feel connected to their parents/guardians, not only because they show an interest in their teens, but because their parents/guardians take time to find out what is going on in their lives.

Of course this makes sense, because teens who feel connected to their parents/guardians have more at risk when it comes to making decisions or taking risks.

When these teens are faced with risky decisions such as using a substance, skipping school or having sex, they are more likely to think about how their decision will affect their parents/guardians and their relationship with them.

These teens don’t want to disappoint their parents or lose their trust and are more likely to be open to their parents advice, compared to teens who don’t feel connected to their parents/guardians.

Teens who don’t feel as connected to their parents/guardians or don’t believe that their parents/guardians are genuinely interested in them, are more likely to take more risks without thinking about the consequences those risks may have on their relationship with their parent/guardian.

They are less likely to be interested in school, to be open and honest with their parents/guardians, to be well-adjusted or to avoid the many traps that await them as teenagers.

When parents are responsive, connected and supportive with their teens, it makes it easier to tackle some of the tougher issues such as discipline and setting rules/boundaries.

Even if you are a really strict parent, your rules won’t receive much lasting respect from your teenager, unless they also believe that you care about them.

I meet parents everyday who are strict on their teens, but their teens have major academic and discipline problems outside of the home. When I sit down with these families, it’s usually clear to me from the start, that they are not connected.

A large part of my job then becomes trying to bridge that gap and create a connection between the parents/guardian and their teenager.

It’s not enough to simple parent a teenager, and you don’t have to be their friend, but you have to engage them, connect with them and make them feel supportive.

You can take advantage of everyday opportunities to connect with your teen, such as while watching television, driving to/from school, dinner time or even setting specific times for a “date” with your teen.

Find out what’s going on in your teen’s life. Make sure to ask questions about their activities and interests. It may seem strange or even uncomfortable at first, but with time it will become easier and feel more natural.

Connecting with your teen may be harder than you expect, depending on the nature of your relationship. Some teens can be tough to get through to and are resentful or argumentative.

The teen years are largely about trying to find independence, so it’s only natural that your teen will challenge things you have taught or are trying to teach them as they try to form their own identity.

Your teen may think that you are being nosy and initially become resistant if you haven’t had a good relationship before this, but be genuine and eventually they will respond in-kind.

Don’t give up however. Chances are they are listening, even when you think they aren’t, and they will remember the lessons you are trying to get through to them. Keeping your messages brief will help with some of that resistance, as teens generally don’t like to be lectured to.

Learn to understand your teen through observing them and learn to respect your teen by listening to what they have to say.

Some other things you can do to foster a close relationship with your child according to theantidrug.com:

Spend time together regularly, doing things your teen enjoys
Talk openly and honestly
use positive communication skills, especially when there is conflict. For example, think before you speak and acknowledge your teen’s point-of-view so he or she knows you are listening.
Acknowledge the positive qualities and behaviors of your teenager.

A quick self-check includes:

Do you praise your teen for accomplishments, even the small ones?
Do you spend time each day talking with your teenager?
Do you regularly have meals with your teen and other family members?
Are you familiar with your teen’s favorite interest and hobbies?
Do you know your teen’s friends?

As I stated in a previous post, the teen years is not the time to stop parenting your teen, but your role as a parent changes just as your child changes from a kid to a young adult. They still need your guidance and for you to effectively guide them, you have to be connected with them.

Popular Psychology, Uncategorized

How Early Is Too Early To Implant Self-Consciousness Into A Child?

9 Jan 20139 Jan 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment

This morning as I watched Good Morning America I saw an interview with “Teen Mom” star, Farrah Abraham, talking about how she waxes her three year old daughter’s (Sophia) uni-brow.

On her blog, sulia.com, Farrah, who is 20 years wrote:

“Recently I could not ignore it, like I know I’ve seen madonna’s duaghter have a stand out uni brow, I remember when I was little I had a unibrow, but I couldn’t remember if there was an age limit, a rule!”

“So here I am faced with a standout historical moment in motherhood when I can confirm to myself that my little, adorable,most cuddle-able cutie, baby girl has a Unibrow 😦 , I felt bad for her, and I started asking friends…. is this hair just going to fall out… is it just hormones at this age?, well the hair didn’t go away and others started saying it was here to stay.”

In an interview, Farrah said that she was also worried about her three year old daughter being teased about her uni-brow, so she talked to her daughter about waxing it, and even waxed her own eyebrows to show her daughter how it’s done.

“So I tryed to wax her, the second a dab hit the Uni, she touch it with the towel she had in her hand, UHHH so now, wax was in the towel, and I yanked it back ASAP, but fuzz was not stuck to the wax stuck to her Uni, OMG moment, So now sophia was freaking out, so I had to act like it was a cool science project to get the wax off,” Abraham said.

Once Sophia fell asleep, Farrah says she used tweezers to remove the rest.

“The next morning I showed her and told her how well she did and she didn’t even know, She was more intrigued now to be ok with upkeeping her non-unibrow. I could tell she was proud,”.

Farrah says she felt like a good mom afterwards, but some of her fans were shocked and appalled at her post.

As I heard about this story, I wish I could say I felt shocked, but I didn’t. It felt more like deja vu. Like I had heard this story, or something similar to it before.

And then of course I thought about the New Jersey mom who took her five year old daughter to a tanning booth, and the Georgia mom who allowed her ten year old son to get a tattoo.

In almost all of these and similar cases, the mothers seemed to be either clearly unstable, ignorant, uneducated or superficial.

Farrah Abraham, not to pick on her, but she doesn’t come across to me as the most educated and profound person.

At 20 years old, she is in many ways still a child herself. According to Good Morning America, she recently had a breast augmentation, a chin implant and rhinoplasty, which not only implies to me that she is superficial, but that she is also very self-conscious and may be passing this on to her daughter.

I seriously doubt that any three, four or five year old will tease her daughter over a uni-brow, but it’s much more likely that Farrah is self-conscious about it herself and is more worried about what her friends, other people or the media will say about her daughter’s uni-brow than Sophia’s peers.

What does waxing your daughters eyebrows when she is 3 years old say to her anyway? How does that affect her self-esteem and self-consciousness now and in the future?

Teaching your toddler that you should change the way you look to avoid being teased doesn’t sound like a great recipe for a healthy self-esteem and stable personality in the future.

Teaching them to love and accept themselves for who they are does. She can always do whatever makes her feel comfortable once she is old enough to understand what she is doing and why.

Many people may see nothing wrong with this story, or getting their 3 year old’s eyebrows waxed, a five year old tanned or a 10 year old tattooed.

Some comments I have read online say that it’s no big deal and that helping Sophia wax her eyebrows at 3 years old will help her get used to it and help her avoid getting teased in later years.

I don’t think this is the right approach. We all know that kids can be cruel and will tease each other about any and everything.

If they start teasing about her teeth, her hair, the way she walks, the way she talks, should she alter those things as well?

The reality of the situation is to each his own, but every decision has a consequence, positive or negative and even when you think you are doing what is in the best interest of your child, you may be implanting something in them you didn’t expect.

Your Teenager Needs and Wants Your Guidance

8 Jan 20138 Jan 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHC1 Comment

If you are a parent of a teenager, you probably have worried at one point in time about the many issues that face them including drugs, alcohol and tobacco use, dangerous driving, sexual activity, school, peer and social issues.

You’ve probably also worried about losing the influence you have over your teen as they start trying to branch out and find their own identity in the world.

We all know that teenagers face many challenges and changes in the world, and many teenagers like to act as if they can face and deal with these challenges alone.

As a matter of fact, many teens may actually believe that they don’t need any help, but as adults that care about the teens in our lives, we know that’s not always the case.

Teens need guidance. Teens actually want (although they may never admit to it) your help and guidance (just as they actually want rules and limitations).

As a parent, you may think that once your child becomes a teenager, you can sort of step back and let them grow up on their own, stepping in only when they get into trouble, but that is the wrong approach.

Your job as a parent isn’t over, it’s just changing.

Many parents who think like what I just described above, end up with spoiled kids who take no real responsibility for their lives and their actions.

They often believe that they are entitled to many things others have to work hard for and end up becoming young adults and adults with a host of intra and interpersonal problems.

There is some good news however.

If you watch the news or work with a certain population of teens as I do, it’s easy to think that teens today are worse than teens have ever been in history, but that’s actually not true.

Compared to their parents generation, teens today are less likely to become pregnant, smoke, use drugs and alcohol, drop out of school, or commit a violent crime.

They are more likely to volunteer and explore their spiritual side than ever. They are also more tolerant and are more likely to have friends of different races, socio-economic status, religion and ethnic groups. They are also more likely to say tey have positive relationships with their parents.

All the hard work society has put into improving teens is paying off, but not without the help and involvement of parents.

Research shows that teens want and expect their parents to play key roles in their lives. They want advice and guidance and they remember your wise words, even when they act as if they are not listening.

The troubled teens I work with usually come from households where they are lacking parenting or have a parent or parents that don’t know how to be parents. Some are just “bad” parents while others are too busy with their own lives to actively parent their teens.

Despite all the good news about teens, the fact is, the dangers are still there. Any parent can attest to that. If they weren’t, there would be no need for my services and I and all the counselors I know who work with teens, are largely overwhelmed with the number of teens that need counseling.

The problems facing teens are often similar and yet different for each one, and some may surprise you.

Like the fact that rural teens tend to have more drug and alcohol problems than urban teens, and that 30% of high school teens reported driving with someone who has been drinking at least once in the last month.

The teens years are much like when your child first learned to walk. Remember how they would look for something to hold onto such as a table or your leg to help steady themselves?

Sometimes they even freaked out when they couldn’t find something to hold on to, but you were usually their to help guide and protect them and make sure that they didn’t hurt themselves.

Although you stayed close enough to help them not hurt themselves if they started to fall, you also gave them enough room to learn and practice their new abilities and watched with joy as they grew in confidence from crawling, to walking, and eventually running.

Adolescence is very similar.

Your teen needs you to be there as they try to find themselves in the world, or they will find something else to hold onto just as they did as toddlers learning how to walk.

If you are not there for them to hold on to, they will potentially find drugs, alcohol, sex, bad influential friends, crime, you name it.

If you are lucky they will find good friends, healthy and safe adults, teachers, counselors, etc., but you want to be the person who guides your child.

You want to be the person that helps your child navigate through the barriers, which means you have to be close enough to give advice and to answer their questions honestly, but far enough away to allow them to start making and learning from their own decisions.

The adolescence are an exciting and scary part of life. Your teens are changing and growing and although they may start to look like adults, their decision making, risk/reward system are far from fully developed, so they still need you to be their for them, or they will look for and find something/someone else, good or bad.

Popular Psychology

My Day Working At A Women’s Residential (Addictions) Facility: Observations And Thoughts

4 Jan 20134 Jan 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHC2 Comments

Yesterday I was blessed to be able to go and work with a group of women in a women’s residential facility. All of these women varied in age from barely twenty to the elderly, yet they all battle some form of substance abuse.

None of them looked like “typical addicts” and they were all extraordinary women.

Many of them were mothers or wives and of course daughters who had lost nearly everything due to their alcohol, cocaine, crack-cocaine, prescription pills, meth or heroin addiction.

One older lady had battled addiction for most of her life and at one point became homeless before finally making up her mind to try to get sober and clean. She has seven months sobriety.

Another woman who looked like she couldn’t have been a day over twenty, but had a five year old child, had been clean for four years before an old dealer of hers found her on Facebook and seduced her into using again.

And another older female had been pretty much a functioning alcoholic for the past five years and then one night out of the blue had an alcohol related gran mal seizure that landed her in the hospital for five days and she was court-ordered to rehab from there.

A lot of the women had tragic stories, including a very young girl who I don’t think was even twenty and was in rehab for the first time after being court ordered into treatment.

She was adopted, her birth mother was a drug addicted, her birth father was in prison and when her adopted father died two years ago she started using any drug she could get her hands on to numb the pain she felt.

Working with these women yesterday in group and individual settings I took a lot away from not only what it meant to become and remain substance free, but also what it meant to accomplish any major goal.

Having a good support system of course is important.

The women who had a supportive family, a supportive group of people such as Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous, supportive healthy friendships, supportive professionals or a supportive sponsor all seemed to be doing better than those who did not.

Having a belief in and a relationship with a Higher Power also seemed to help.

Not that there weren’t many women there who weren’t religious, but it was obvious that those who had some type of relationship with God, the universe, or whatever, seemed to be doing better in recovery compared to does who didn’t.

Also, those who were honest with themselves and in touch with reality seemed to be doing better than those who seemed to be a bit oblivious to reality.

The one thing that bothered me most about a lot of the women in the facility were that a lot of them were lying to themselves as we all do from time to time, especially when trying to stop a bad habit.

Many of the women still had “addict behaviors” not only in the fact that they were lying to themselves, but they were also lying and being sneaky to others.

For instance, this was a smoke-free facility where these women are prohibited from smoking, yet a number of the women sneak out and smoke.

That may seem relatively harmless in comparison to their bigger addictions, but that type of sneaky, dishonest behavior sets the stage for future relapse.

Relapse is not something that usually just happens, but develops overtime in the way a person thinks, feels, and acts.

A sober, clean person may start feeling agitated, lying, sneaking off to do things they know they shouldn’t, etc., days, weeks or months before actually relapsing.

They start lying to themselves, saying things like, “I can just have one drink” or “I can just take one hit and walk away, I know how to control it now”.

Before you know it, they are back in the thick of their addiction, driving under the influence to get more alcohol or selling whatever they can get their hands on to get more drugs.

Most of these women displayed some of those signs of a future relapse, from sneaking off to smoke, to being angry and irritable, to the woman who had the seizure asking me:

“How much do you think I’ll have to drink for that to happen to me again, because it scared the hell out of me. I don’t want to drink any more, but I just want to know if I have one drink, or two drinks, how many would it take before that happened again?”

Although she’s telling me she doesn’t want to drink again, she is lying to herself. It is obvious that in her conscious or unconscious mind, she is trying to figure out if she can get away with drinking “just a little”, but she is an alcoholic, and knows that there is no drinking “just a little” for her.

The women sneaking off to smoke, will be the same women sneaking off to drink or get high once they are out of rehab. That is “addict behavior” at it’s best.

Just like in trying to quite anything from smoking to losing weight, people generally relapse and it takes a few tries before they get it right. Relapse at some point is usually expected which is why there is often a focus on relapse prevention.

One of the biggest things to know about relapse is that if you mess up, if you have a drink, or a hit, or a donut, it doesn’t mean you just give up and give in. You can still back away at that point and start over before the addiction truly regains a hold of you.

All the women in this facility are at different points in their recovery and no doubt, for many of them, this will not be their last time in treatment, but hopefully one day they will get it right.

New Years Resolutions

31 Dec 201231 Dec 2012by Torey C. Richards, LMHC3 Comments

If you are like me, every New Year you make a list of resolutions, a list of behaviors, attitudes and other changes you would like to see in your life, and each year you fail to keep any of them.

I don’t even remember what my New Year’s resolutions were last year, but the top three New Years resolutions are:

starting to exercise
eating better
reducing the use of alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, etc.

I’m pretty sure part of my New Years resolution last year included all of those three things including the reduction of caffeine/diet sodas and I can tell you I didn’t succeed in any of them.

Most people who make New Years resolutions, 75% fail on their first attempt to make changes and most people make more than one goal.

Why do people make New Years resolutions and how successful are they likely to be?

Researchers Mukhopadhyay and Johar (2005) did some research on the psychology of resolutions.

They found that people who believe that self-control is dynamic, unlimited and changing, are more likely to set more than one resolution (i.e., “I can lose weight, stop drinking and go back to school, it just takes willpower.”).

They found out that people who believe that we all have a limited amount of self-control that can’t be changed (i.e., “I’m fat because my mother was fat, I can’t change that” or “I smoke because my father smoked, it’s in our blood”) and those who have little confidence in their ability to carry out their goals (low self-efficacy) do a lot worse on achieving their resolutions.

High self-efficacy correlated to a higher likely hood of a person achieving their New Years resolutions and goals in general.

People with high self-efficacy tend to attribute their failure to achieve something as a lack of effort on their part, while people with low self-efficacy tend to attribute failure to lack of ability.

People who are made to believe that self-control is a fixed or limited resource that they can’t change, made fewer resolutions and gave up on them faster, regardless of their level of self-efficacy.

What does this mean? That if you believe that self-control is an unlimited resource that we all have access to and it can help you with your goals/resolutions, you will do better at achieving them. The more you believe in your own abilities (self-efficacy), the better you will do also.

Setting MORE goals/resolutions also seems to help because you will be more likely to succeed at them, while people who set a small number of goals usually go into it expecting to fail either consciously or unconsciously, and thus create a self-fulfilling prophesy to fail.

Researchers also say having the actual skills to make the changes you want to see in your life is helpful.

If you want to lose weight, do you actually know how? Have you done the research? If you want to save money for example, do the research ahead of time, it will make it easier for you to actually achieve that goal.

Being ready to change also helps of course.

Some people say that they are ready to change, when they really aren’t and then are surprised when they fail at making the change they said they wanted to make.

There’s a whole psychology orientation called Motivational Interviewing that is about preparing people to make changes in their life.

Miller and Marlatt (1998) also suggest to:

Have a strong initial commitment to make a change.
Have coping strategies to deal with problems that will come up.
Keep track of your progress. The more monitoring you do and feedback you get, the better you will do.

Ingredients for setting yourself up for failure:

Not thinking about making resolutions until the last minute.
Reacting on New Year’s Eve and making your resolutions based on what’s bothering you or is on your mind at the time.
Framing your resolutions in absolutes (i.e., “I will never do ‘x’ or ‘y’ again.”).

Good luck with all your New Year’s resolutions. Mine include exercising more, eating better and losing weight. How original, I know, but I am going to use everything I talked about in this post to help me achieve those goals and hopefully you will too.

Inside The Mind Of A Potential Psychopath

26 Dec 201227 Dec 2012by Torey C. Richards, LMHC10 Comments

As promised, here is a letter from someone I believe could be a potential budding psychopath.

A brief background:

This is a 16 year old male that came to see me for feelings of hatred and anger towards “everyone” as well as potential auditory hallucinations and symptoms of depersonalization.

He is currently in danger of failing school and follows none of the rules set for him at home and receives little to no consequences for that. I asked him to start keeping a record of his thoughts so I could help him analyze them.

This is a sample of his thought journal:

I feel irritated. I swear people are trying to make me gun them down. I’m trying very hard to keep my cool, but it’s thinning really fast. Everyone here disgusts me. The teacher is getting on my fucking nerves. I just want to pop a bottle in her face.

She makes me sick. Her voice is getting on my nerves. If I had telekinesis I would use it to spin everyones heads. I hate you all. It’s hard for me to focus on my work. I’m just not capble of doing it. I wanna go home. I am trying to do my work but I can’t focus.

I am not in the mood to do anything. God I hate everything. The guy [teacher] is asking for binders. I want to take the binder and smack him with it. If I had the power to burn things it wouldn’t be good for anybody because if I burned somebody I don’t think I would feel sorry.

I am writing this while I shoud be doing my work, but I don’t think I give a shit. Fuck the life. This is fucking stupid. I hate the people, the class, the school. I don’t dislike, I hate everything and I don’t know why. If these people were to die tomorrow I wouldn’t give a damn.

Class is almost done and this bitch is wasting my time. Fuck her. In class people talking and i just wanna slash their throats. They including the teacher are all useless to me. They’re all disgusting. Why am I in a classroom filled with imbeciles, morons, idiots, everyone I hate.

I was sad because my friend wasn’t here today. I usually see him in second period, but he’s absent. I was sad because out of everyone I talk to, he’s the one I’m most comfortable with. He’s kinda like the twin I wish I had.

Ever since the 7th grade, way before that, I had been having daydreams of a different life, one I had control over. In those daydreams I have a brother named ______. He’s my heart, the one I feel connected to and when I’m not having those daydreams I feel depressed and want to cause people harm and sometimes for no reason.

Sometimes I imagine myself being God and other times I start to believe it. If I were God I would cause a great flood and take out the people I hate in the world and replace them with people I don’t. I don’t see why people are laughing. If I were to slit their throats I bet they wouldn’t any more. I’m tired of these stupid people.

I want to make them know that I am better than them. I’m sitting in tech class and I want to take the keyboard and slap the two students in front of me in the head until I get tired. These people underestimate my powers because if they knew what I could do they would be afraid.

These people are nothing to me, but ants. I could just stomp them with my foot and they would be dead, but I’m too nice and theres no point to go to jail for these dirty people. They are not worth my time. I fucking hate people. Their shit is so stupid.

Why is everything this way. I’m talking and thinking, but it’s disorganized. I can’t remember much of most things that I am thinking. I just want to go somewhere that I can just do whatever I want with no consequence because if I were to kill someone I wouldn’t want to get in trouble for it.

I’m not ready to clearly say that this guy is a psychopath as his symptoms are also typical of a couple of other personality disorders.

However, it’s obvious from his writing that he hates people, finds it almost unbearable to be around most people and feels as if he is better than everyone. He talks about hurting and killing people and saying he would probably feel nothing.

He also talks about people as if they were just insignificant insects. As if other peoples existence alone irritates him.

He has daydreams where he imagines himself as God and even starts to feel like God in real life with thoughts of destroying everyone.

Sure, he says he would never do these things, not because they are wrong or he would feel bad, but because he doesn’t want to suffer the consequences. Probably much like many of the mass murderers who committed suicide after their crimes felt.

I’m not going to say that this guy will hurt, none the less murder anyone, but I am saying that he is showing clear signs of psychopathic traits that need to be dealt with before he ever gets to that point.

I’ve been working with him on this for the past few weeks, helping him analyze his feelings and thoughts and challenging them, but I am getting his family involved because I think he may need more intensive treatment than I can provide in the current setting I am working with him in.

He really is a good kid with lots of potential, but if he falls through the cracks he can easily end up spending the rest of his life incarcerated and/or ruin other peoples lives. I’m determined to do my best to not allow that to happen.

Popular Psychology

Is Your Child A Psychopath? Signs You Should Be Aware Of.

21 Dec 201212 May 2017by Torey C. Richards, LMHC94 Comments

As we continue to look at, investigate, try to understand and prevent tragedies like the mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School, I thought it would be a good ideal to look at the three categories of people the usually commit mass murder:

Those who are delusionally insane
Those who are deeply and suicidally depressed
Psychopaths

In rare occasions there are combinations of the three or substance users or in extremely rare cases, brain tumors that cause mental and behavioral changes such as in the case of Charles Whitman.

When it comes to psychopaths however, they are the easiest to explain, and yet often go the most unnoticed.

Psychopathy is a type of personality disorder.

Many people think that they can identify a psychopath by the way they look and act, but that is not usually the case. Most psychopaths are very charming and very good at hiding their psychopathic tendencies until pushed or cornered.

Psychopaths seem to be born with an inability to empathize or feel sorry for other people. They have a complete disregard for other peoples feelings and suffering and can commit horrible crimes, or tell painful lies without so much as batting an eye.

Most psychopaths don’t know that doing something is wrong because they seem to lack the gene that makes us feel bad, or guilty, when we do something wrong such as lying or hitting someone for no reason.

They often have to be taught and reminded over and over again that something is bad or wrong, and then they have to remind themselves that it is bad or wrong, because they can do it and not feel bad about it at all.

They just don’t seem to be able to feel or care about other people or living things and may go on to torture animals in childhood if they are the sadistic type of psychopath and enjoys seeing/thinking of torturing other living things.

Eric Harris, one of the Columbine shooters seemed to fall into the category of a psychopath (also called sociopath). He once wrote that humans were as disposable as fungus in a petri dish.

His journal was littered with remarks about how much he hated people and wanted to kill everyone (I have a letter from a teenager I suspect may be a psychopath or budding one I will share later).

However, most psychopaths hide their hate or careless disregard for others and are usually witty, endearing and charming.

Psychopaths with high IQs often become criminal master minds, politicians, successful business people, etc. while ones with poor intellect and education tend to end up in jail more.

Levi King is a psychopath who went on a killing spree in 2005 that ended with him killing five people in two different states including three people in one family and the family dog (he thought he had killed the whole family, but one little girl managed to survive by playing dead). He reported killing these people because it relieved tension he had been feeling and gave him a sense of peace for the first time in his life.

As a child, Levi King once set his sister’s bedroom on fire because he was mad at her. As a teenager he even shot his cat to the point that it was literally blown to pieces. He also had broken into a home and sat it on fire just because he could.

As a child, he had all the signs and symptoms of a budding psychopath.

At the age of 15 he dropped out of school, started having run ins with the law and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of 20. He was 23 when he committed the murders and expresses no remorse whatsoever. He is currently serving a life sentence.

Like all psychopaths, Levi King is unable to relate or feel for other people, although he is intelligent and charming enough to hide that flaw just like Ted Bundy was so successful at doing.

General Characteristics of a Psychopath

self-center and self-important. Almost anything they do for anyone is only because they see a benefit for themselves it.
need stimulation and are easily bored.
deceptive behavior and lying
conning and manipulative
little remorse or guilt
shallow emotional response
callous with a lack of empathy
living off others/ predatory attitude
poor self-control
promiscuous sexual behavior
early behavioral problems
lack of realistic long term goals
blaming other for their actions
short term relationships
juvenile delinquency
short term relationships
breaking parole or probation rules
varied criminal activity

Signs Your Child May Be A Psychopath

Setting fires
Severe cruelty to animals such as killing and torturing them
Persistently hurts, bullies or violates the rights of others by stealing or vandalizing their property.
Continuously breaks major rules such as running away or breaking curfew despite knowing the consequences.
Shows no guilt when confronted for doing wrong (i.e., pushing another student down the stairs).
Shows a persistent callous disregard for other people’s feelings, not just siblings (i.e., pushing another student down and being unmoved by their crying or distress).
Persistently doesn’t care about how well they do in school, even when they know there are clear expectations and they are capable of doing better.
They appear cold and unmoved, only showing emotions to intimidate or manipulate others.
Blame others for their mistakes instead of taking responsibility.
Fearless, doing new and reckless/dangerous activities.
They are unmoved by threats of punishment.
They are highly motivated by reward and what they will get out of doing something, even if that act will hurt others (i.e., stealing, lying)

A combination of many of these signs alone are not enough to be worried about, but if there are enough signs and you are alarmed by your child’s behavior, I would recommend having them seen by a mental health professional as they could be signs of something else, such as childhood trauma and PTSD.

As always, if you believe your child has behavioral problems, have them evaluated by a qualified professional instead of attempting to self-diagnose them which can have damaging effects on your child.

*EDIT: Just yesterday (9/25/13) I interviewed a 7th grader who has been making his own explosives, threatening to blow up himself and/or other people, blowing up random things, tortuing his mother’s cat, kicking and hitting other students and teachers at his school so much that he has gotten kicked out of school several times and his family is currently looking for a new place to stay because they got kicked out of their apartment complex for his behavior and the fact that he has killed several ducks around the lake at the apartment complex. His mother brought him in because she was scared of him and he had recently attacked his 4 year old sister for taking too long in the bathroom. When I asked him if he had any remorse for attacking his sister, hitting other people, having his family kicked out of their complex or killing the ducks, he flatly answered “no”. Nothing seemed to affect him, even the threat of hospitalization and jail. Without intense therapy at the least, I see this kid growing up to be not only a menace to society, but potentially a psychopath. He stated clearly that he doesn’t care about other people or their feelings and he has exhibited that on several occassions.

Below is a short documentary done in 1992 about Beth Thomas, a child who suffered from sexual abuse and reactive attachment disorder (I’ll write about that in another post soon) and seems to show early signs of psychopathology.

Psychopaths are all around us in one form of another. Read: The Psychopath Next Door by Martha Stout and Dr. Hare’s book, “Without Conscience” for more detailed information about psychopaths.

Popular Psychology

18 Dec 2012by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment

Popular Psychology

Before Adam Lanza, Seng-Hui Choi, Eric Harris And Dyland Klebold, There Was Charles Whitman

18 Dec 201218 Dec 2012by Torey C. Richards, LMHC4 Comments

As the nation and the world continues to mourn for the victims of the Sandy Hook shootings and for Newtown, Connecticut altogether,

we are finally having some extensive and serious dialogue about gun control and mental illness.

It usually takes something like this to happen before people talk about these issues, but something I was thinking about was the continued argument I have been hearing about banning assault rifles as if that alone will stop mass murders from happening.

I don’t necessarily want to get into that argument, but it made me think about people like Timothy McVeigh who used racing fuel, fertilizer and a rental truck to blow up a building and kill 168 people including children attending daycare.

It also made me think about one of the earlier, popular mass murders on a school or college campus done by Charles Whitman at the University of Texas in Austin on August 1, 1966.

Leading up to the shooting, Charles Whitman had been suffering from tremendous headaches, health problems and abusing amphetamines.

The day before his rampage he begin writing his suicide letter which included:

I do not quite understand what it is that compels me to type this letter. Perhaps it is to leave some vague reason for the actions I have recently performed. I do not really understand myself these days. I am supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man. However, lately (I cannot recall when it started) I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts.

Around midnight the next day he drove to his mother’s house and killed her, stabbing her in the heart and leaving a letter saying that he loved her. Apparently he wanted to rid his mother of the troubles of the world.

He then drove home and stabbed his wife three times in the heart while she slept and finished writing his suicide note including saying:

“I imagine it appears that I brutally killed both of my loved ones. I was only trying to do a quick thorough job […] If my life insurance policy is valid please pay off my debts […] donate the rest anonymously to a mental health foundation. Maybe research can prevent further tragedies of this type.”

He requested an autopsy be done to see if there was an organic reason for his terrible headaches and increased irrational and disturbing thoughts. Thoughts he said he couldn’t take any more.

He then prepared for his rampage and went to the University of Texas at Austin with weapons that included two rifles, a shot gun, a hand gun, a machete and some knifes. He shot several people before reaching his destination, which was the observation deck on a tower on campus.

From there he would shoot and kill 14 people while injuring 32. An autopsy would reveal a highly aggressive and fatal brain tumor that would have likely killed him within the year.

This tumor no doubt was responsible for his irrational thoughts and violent impulses.

Before the murders, Whitman did seek help for his headaches and violent thoughts and impulses from no less than five doctors, including a psychiatrist he visited once and said of the psychiatrist:

“I talked with a Doctor once for about two hours and tried to convey to him my fears that I felt come (sic) overwhelming violent impulses. After one visit, I never saw the Doctor again, and since then have been fighting my mental turmoil alone, and seemingly to no avail.

Medical records released from Dr. Heatly, the psychiatrist he saw only once say:

“This massive, muscular youth seemed to be oozing with hostility […] that something seemed to be happening to him and that he didn’t seem to be himself.”

And:

“He readily admits having overwhelming periods of hostility with a very minimum of provocation. Repeated inquiries attempting to analyze his exact experiences were not too successful with the exception of his vivid reference to ‘thinking about going up on the tower with a deer rifle and start shooting people’.”

The above statement is chilling because that’s exactly what he ended up doing. If he would have been involuntarily hospitalized then for homicidal thoughts, maybe all of those people would have been alive to see another day.

Sometimes trying to find the origin of mental issues is difficult, but it seems like Whitman at least tried and was failed by his doctors (or maybe just the victim of the period of time he was living in).

If his brain tumor could have been found earlier, or if he could have been hospitalized in a psychiatric institution, maybe the murders could have been prevented.

There are no doubt evil people in the world who commit mass murder like the one at Sandy Hook, but I think for the most part, people who decide to commit mass murder, have underlying emotional/psychiatric problems, that if caught and treated early enough, could prevent such senseless tragedies.

The tragedy at Sandy Hook and the many more before it have no doubt brought us to a place where we will change the way we do everything from protecting our schools, to protecting our communities from guns and those with mental issues that need to be kept safe from others and themselves.

I just hope that as we grief and eventually heal as a nation, that the talks about reform don’t die down until the next tragedy rips us out of our false sense of security and throws us back into outrage and panic.