Tag: domestic violence

Thank you, Donald Trump, For Making It Okay To Talk About Sociopaths — Readers, you got one in your own life?

by addogsunleashed, posted in aaron stewart heusser, aaron stewart heusser, valerie heusser bates, christy heusser, anxiety and panic attacks, community support, family annihilators, heidi d. hansen, m.a., loss and grief, mental health therapy, portland oregon therapist, post trauma stress, the trauma project, trauma recovery, trauma recovery acumen, vancouver washington therapist

This is the copy of my letter to the Editor today (The Oregonian, The Columbian, assorted other media):

Dear Editor,

As Mary Trump’s book is closer to release, the public will increasingly hear the word “Sociopath” more and more, and I am relieved the elephant in the room is finally acknowleged.


Not just as a means of making sense of and surviving Trump’s presidency. This is permission and obligation for victims to tell our stories and get help for the trauma from the domestic violence that these white collar sociopaths have caused and gotten away with it.

These are the sociopaths among us who can wreck family relationships for sport and hobby, getting a drama fix, getting a control fix, getting a sadistic rush from seeing the helpless fear and pain in the victim’s eyes and voice, and the supreme power of walking away from it without any emotion or conscience.

This is the season for the victims to get their say. This is the time for the victim to get validation and really make visible and demand restorative justice for the sociopath’s damages.


The white-collar sociopath is so perfect in outward markers of success, nobody believes the ex-spouse or children who suffer from their passive-aggressive manipulations and clever avoidance of accountability or their inability to experience remorse or empathy and thereby, get out of the main task of human development, which is to introspect and reflect on one’s behaviors and choices, experience the pain they caused to others, and make personal, authentic change and amends.


The white-collar sociopath does not have it in themselves to reflect, introspect, and become moved by the pain they cause others to make personal, life-affirming changes in their personalities and behaviors. They just see the situation as needing a better manipulative strategy.

Self-pity and low self-esteem tantrums are not an expression of remorse, regret or seeking forgiveness and making true amends.

A sociopath’s response to getting caught, or called-out, or brought to accountability for their destructive and duplicitous behavior is to be insulted that anyone would dare to challenge the veneer of perfection they have so carefully cultivated. They would rather throw the victim under the bus, again and again, than try to feel any authentic remorse for their unattractive choices.


In my professional experience and personal life, I can attest to the danger in extremus that these perfectly presented individuals present. Danger in their behavior, which is often carefully crafted to avoid accountability or visibility, but also danger in that they can efficiently and effectively manipulate the room so that their victims will not be believed.

These sociopaths will pick up strays along the way. Family members and associates who are so sick that they will join him in his abusive conquests, and become visible as sociopaths themselves. Peas in a pod, similar ships finding each other in the night.

Sociopaths will often seek out organizations such as extreme religions, political parties, and community groups to 1. hide their sociopathy; 2. They need that external moral structure to guide themselves through society. They have no inner, genuine, organic moral structure. Without an extreme church or political party to spell out the proper set of black-or-white normal social behaviors, they would be spending much of their lives in prison.


Look for the white-collar sociopath in divorce and child-custody cases, where their domestic violence in the marriage extends into the child custody manipulations. How they can manipulate judges and extended family members and their own children is astounding and painful. But they are not moved by pain. They do not have the cog-wheel inside to be moved by empathy or personal accountability and stop their abuses. That’s what makes them so dangerous.

When caught and called-out, these sociopaths will attempt to ”be sorry,” — but pay close attention to their behavior — it is really self-pity and narcissistic wounds, the insult of having been exposed, that they are displaying.

As a retired child therapist and survivor of an ex-husband who is a white-collar sociopath, his mother, and my own family members who gravitated towards him — ”two peas in a pod” sort of arrangement — I have been saying for years, and still call – out, that if you or somebody you know is saying “nobody believes me because he’s so perfect. He doesn’t look like ‘Joe Six-Pack,’ or “this is what she is really doing, please listen to me, why can’t anybody see what she is really up to” — listen. Look beneath the presentation of the sociopath, exercise your brain to look beyond stereotypes, and listen to the victim.


It’s the undertow you have to worry about when swimming in the ocean.


Heidi D. Hansen, M.A.

Heidi’s Take – Heed and Avoid The Sociopath List:

Aaron Stewart Heusser

Valerie Heusser Bates

Some Clergy in the LDS church

Paul DeBast

Ronald Safsten

Leif Hansen

Melanie Silvester

Rafael Campos

———————————- Who’se on your list? Need to talk about it? I’m available for Peer Mentoring, support, and resources.

What to do next?

  1. Lobby for domestic violence and child abuse laws to include the domestic violence perpetrator’s manipulations of divorce/custody as an extension of their domestic violence.
  2. Lobby for gun laws to disallow anyone with a domestic violence restraining order to purchase, use or get licenses for guns.
  3. Formally include psychological, emotional, financial and spiritual abuse in domestic violence definitions, language and lawful repercussions.
  4. Get restorative justice by means of civil lawsuits against people like Aaron Stewart Heusser (blog posted earlier on this site will explain), extended family members who associate and aid and abet sociopaths/domestic violence perps, when the criminal statute of limitations run out, including financial justice accessing hidden assets of the sociopath like Aaron Stewart Heusser, retroactive to the date of divorce.
  5. Change the family law regarding child custody assessments to make a mandatory three objective assessments, none of them paid for by either party or affiliates of either party.
  6. Restraining orders must be made easy and quickly obtained for any divorcing party’s family members, associates, co-workers, church leaders who aid and abet the domestic violence perpetrator to prohibit their meddling and self-seeking that can or will damage the child.
  7. Retroactive court-ordered sanctions including financial fines, behavioral limitations and psychological exams made and the results entered into public information – available court documents of family members, associates, church leaders, co-workers etc., who aid and abet the domestic violence perpetrator.
  8. “Exchanges” for child custody arrangements made in – trade for removal/amendments to and of domestic violence restraining orders must be prohibited, and violators sanctioned, retroactively, including family members, co-workers, church leaders and associates who aid and abet the domestic violence perpetrator.
  9. Expand the definition and sanctions for perpetrators of parent-child estrangement laws, with emphasis on using estrangement as retribution for making the ex-spouse’s domestic violence public knowledge via a restraining order. Expand the parent-child estrangement laws to include family members of the divorcing couple, associates, co-workers.
  10. Expand the mental health involuntary commitment laws to include mentally ill persons who act-out inappropriately against one or more of the divorcing members, or their children, if and when those mentally ill persons cause emotional, psychological and financial, physical damage via parent-child estrangement, committing perjury, and aiding and abetting unlawful behavior of a member of the divorcing party, participating in slander and defamation as a means to help one of the divorcing parties obtain child custody or parental allegiance to one party at the exclusion of the other.
  11. Item No. 10 behavior when it suits the purpose of alleviation of the offender’s symptoms of a verifiable Axis I and Axis II psychiatric disorder. Cover this lawfully under Danger to Self or Others psychiatric involuntary commitment laws.

Need help? Want to help? Email Heidi at: dog.hotel.hansen@gmail.com. Phone: 360-335-4939.

Domestic Violence Undertow Trauma

by addogsunleashed, posted in anxiety and panic attacks, community support, dissociation, family annihilators, heidi d. hansen, m.a., loss and grief, mental health therapy, portland oregon therapist, post trauma stress, the trauma project, trauma recovery, trauma recovery acumen, vancouver washington therapist

A lot of people think that it is the physical and emotional abuse acts that define the trauma experienced by domestic violence. Remember, from my previous posts, that trauma comes with subtle, even invisible, undertows that are perhaps the most damaging and destructive over the long-term.

One of those undertows comes from how the people around the victim react and respond to the abuse, and how the perpetrator responds nd reacts to his violence.

There is such a thing as “normal.” A big player in a person’s mental health is the personality cog – wheel of empathy, ability to be authentically remorseful for causing pain and destruction, the depth and spontaneous degree to which the perpetrator experiences the pain of his victim, and being genuinely motivated by that pain to make amends, go through a deep and insightful reflection that leads to personality change such that he does not commit violent acts again.

But the undertows get in the way of all that.

Violent and sociopathic people do not have those capacities. Where we would expect to see that remorse and accountability process, instead, when we look closely, we see self-pity. We see how the perpetrator quickly and powerfully turns himself into the victim, needing justice for himself, requiring comfort and care and tending and succor to raise his self-esteem and make him feel valid, loved, even appreciated and respected.

Because these blog posts are chapters of the book I am writing on trauma, I draw from not only my clinical acumen and professional experience and observations and training, but from my personal perspective and experience as a victim.

When my son’s father, Aaron Stewart Heusser physically assaulted me at a mother’s day brunch at Cannon Beach, Oregon, I found him naked and curled up in a fetal position in the bathtub, trying to cry but without tears. He moaned and whined about being unworthy of love.

And, despite my years of training as a trauma psychotherapist, I found myself kneeling over him in the tub, patting his back, rubbing his shoulders with an outpouring of tender loving care, using a soothing, comforting tone as I reassured him and buoyed up his self-esteem, trying to heal his wounds.

Then I caught myself. The undertow was sweeping me out to sea and I knew better and was allowing it. I was comforting the offender. Wait.. Isn’t the offender supposed to be comforting me? Healing me? SAying he is sorry?

So I got up, changed my posture and told him I was insisting he go to a therapist first thing in the morning.

That psychologist diagnosed him with Anti-Sical Personality Disorder, Major Depression, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

The first thing Aaron Stewart Heusser did was call his mother. After that, he was enraged as was she, that someone had the gall, the audacity to say that her “golden boy” had a flaw.

Then Aaron Stewart Heusser’s violence and other forms of abuses towards me really took off, and no, there was no more therapy for him. I was stuck in the undertow, vulnerable and frightened, being pregnant with our son.

The undertow of perpetrator manipulating the victim into providing him succor and self-esteem boosters continued ad nauseum.

Later in the process of child custody mediation, the mediator asked Aaron Stewart Heusser what he felt was the main problem in our marriage, and Aaron Stweart Heusser replied, “she doesn’t respect me.”

The mediator told me it was a lost cause, Aaron Stwart Heusser’s anti-social personality was not capable of insight or remorse or change.

During our divorce, I represented myself, Pro se. I subpeoned and deposed Aaron Stweart Heusser’s supervisors nd adminsitrators and financial officers of Timberline Software of Beaverton, Oregon, where Aaron Stewart Heusser worked.

I was aware there was a financial undertow occurring, but needed to provide hard evidence to the judge. And Timblerline would not comit perjury, and so revealed to me that Aaron Stwart Heusser had indeed solicited administrative decisions to hide his salary increases, bonuses, stock options, other forensic accounting matters revealing other hiding of assets from his son, by financially abusing me in the divorce.

When I revealed this in Multnomah County Court, and Timberline administration testified to all that, the Judge threw is pen down and struck his fist three times on his desk, yelling to Aaron on the witness stand, Do you know what a lousy thing that is to do to your wife?” Over and over, 3 times.

Aaron Steweart Huesser began to cry in the witness chair. The judge rolled his eyes, stared at Aaron and yelled, “those are crocodile tears. You are not sorry for what you have done to your wife, you are sorry you got caught. Do you need to take a moment to cry for yourself outside?”

Right there, the Judge stopped the undertow with a strong whiff of reality and sane perspective.

The Judge called out what normal should look like, and called out Aaron Stwart Heusser using the oldest trick in the book for domestic violence perpetrators, which is to make himself the poor pitiful victim who needs other’s pity and cossiting, manipulating his victim to buoy him up and ignore the bruises, broken parts, and carry the burden of the consequences of his actions that truly do belong to him.

Just like with my older brother Leif Hansen of Leif’s Auto Collision Centers, Portland, Oregon. On more than one occasion, Some friend of Leif’s would call our father to come immediately because Leif was actively suicidal, had a gun and a knife laid out and was going to comit suicide.

Being the designated caregiver in our family, I was dragged along and told to talk Leif down from suicide. I was in late elementary school-middle school at the time.

I found Leif Hansen in these times in a drunken state, with visible lines of cocaine on the dresser or bedside table, half dressed and filthy, reeking of booze in visible clouds of pot smoke, with weapons out beside him for suicide.

I did what I was told, used my innate counseling skills and talked Leif down. I was patted on the head by my father and mother and older sister Diana Hansen-Young for being such a good counselor and such a good girl.

But I had this nagging undertow making me seasick inside… I knew why Leif Hansen was suicidal — He had participated and supported the sex abuse his BFF committed against me in The marriage bed.” And Leif kept it all silent.

And I was comforting him, making him feel safe, loved, appreciated, valued.

There’s the real trauma for persons of domestic violence and child abuse — how victims are manipulated to caretaking and protecting their perpetrators.

See, if the statute of limitations was still in place right now, Leif Hansen of Leif’s Auto Collision Centers would be on the state Sex Offenders Registry.

There will never be true justice for many many victims of domestic violence.. there really cannot be true justice, even if the legal and our family systems supported the notion that it is the offenders who carry the consewuneces, not their victims.

But calling out these patterns to offer experience, hope and strength — and validity and setting the healthy and sane perspective straight, is well within our power.

Don’t swim in the undertow, post a sign to keep others out of the water.

————————-By Heidi D. Hansen, M.A. copyright2020, reproduction prohibited

. Contact Heidi: dog.hotel.hansen@gmail.com.

The Trauma of The Vacuus

by addogsunleashed, posted in anxiety and panic attacks, community support, dissociation, family annihilators, heidi d. hansen, m.a., loss and grief, mental health original art, mental health therapy, portland oregon therapist, post trauma stress, psychiatric service dogs, the trauma project, trauma recovery, trauma recovery acumen, vancouver washington therapist

Do you have, or have had, a Vacuus in your life?

Are you a Vacuus in someone else’s life?

As most of my readers know, I am writing and publishing a tell-all trauma book about my own personal story living in a family filled to the brim with sex abuse, emotional and physical abuse, crimes, sex and drug addiction, deceit, exploitation, and manipulative games that destroyed my bond with my son.

If what happened to me as a child was happening now, several family members and siblings, some of whom are high profile public figures, would be in jail.

In my childhood era, my family got away with keeping the secrets and living in duplicity. One world, sordid, dirty, twisted, sociopathic. These same persons also created a simultaneous world for people outside the family to see — solid mormons, close-knit, service oriented, caring and compassionate, prominent politicians, big-name business owners, published and famous artists and writers — while actively participating in the abuses, and making decisions that kept my sex abuse experiences a secret that led to severe post traumatic stress and clinical depression in childhood on into adulthood.

My new book will feature the sly, hidden destructive dynamics of my siblings Leif Hansen of Leif’s Auto Collision Centers in Portland, Oregon, Diana Hansen-Young of Hawaii State Legislature and painter-writer fame, Melanie Silvester, professional genealogist in the Mormon church, evangelist for the Mormons, and others.

How these individuals became Vacuus is unknown to me, as they are all about 14 years older than me, but I will be speaking directly to the choices they made that knowingly allowed sex abuse to run rampant in my young life, and the sadistic manipulations they used to cover it up, and assist in helping my ex-husband, Aaron Stewart Heusser, to get away with domestic violence in the marriage, and extend his domestic violence into child custody and get away with turning our son against me with dark lies about me that has caused my son not to want to talk to me or see me in nine years. He is 22 now.

The Vacuus.

Vacuus is a term I have given the vile, viscous villains in an imaginative tale I wrote called “The Muse Academy.” (www.themuseacademy.wordpress.com).

But Vacuus are not entirely fictional, in fact, they exist and thrive in hiding in plain sight in realtionships, settings, tasks and contexts of all variety.

Vacuus are persons who steal your narrative, or manipulate it to suit their own sadistic needs, the lust for drama gossip, the pornography of fabricating crisis, conflict and chaos, the evil of splitting close bonds apart, splitting people apart and sowing contention just for the sport of getting a drama fix — that would be sibling Melanie Silvester and Diana Hansen-Young.

Hard to believe, given Melanie’s presentation of the supra-righteous poster woman for the Mormon church and its holy values, that she would destructively align herself with my ex-husband, Aaron Stewart Heusser to fabricate high drama and crisis for her own drama fix, while partnering with him in such a way that he could lie in court testimony to underhandedly and illegally seize custody of our son.

Hard to wrap my head around, how Leif Hansen and Diana Hansen-Young can deceive the public, their voters and constituents and customers and advertisers and vendors — with such sly duplicity, and keep all their dark, twisted behaviors a secret from all of them.

This is the passive-aggressive, sneaky, depceptive and duplicitous way in which the Vacuus work their wiles.

You wake up one morning and your life is turned upside down and you don’t know how that happened, but then you spot the stink of Vacuus footprints all over the home and you know, Melanie and Aaron and Lei and Diana have been at it again.

For what purpose? So Melanie could get her drama high, and Aaron could control her to the point of making her lie to the judge because he didn’t want to share our son, he wanted to own our son. Our son was a possession for Aaron, and a game pawn for Melanie.

Like any addict, the drama fix, the gossip fix, the crisis fix, the power fix, the control fix, the ownership fix, must get bigger each time to get the same addicted satisfaction.

Its how Vacuus get their jollies.

I cannot get back what was lost, and likely to remain lost, with my son from the sociopathic duo of Melanie and Aaron, but there is a legal option for me to sue them both for child estrangement. I am actively researching that as a point of my recovery from their trauma, which is restorative justice.

So, there is The Dramatist Vacuus, the Gossip, the Empty, the Void, the Sadist, the Destroyer, the Stomper, the Bully, the Thief.

The Bully and Stomper would be Leif Hansen.

You’ll have to buy the book to find out how.

Do you have any of these Vacuus in your life? Are you secretly hiding and denying the fact that you might be one of these to other people?

Ammends must be made, accountability taken, consequences allowed to take their natural course and the burdens and pain put back on the shoulders of the perpetrators, not any longer on their victim’s backs.

Persons of trauma learn to suspend their judgement, to mistrust or second-guess their inner voice, their gut instincts, so they tend to go along with the Vacuus instead of claiming and displaying their own truths, the facts that Vacuus want to deny.

My encouragement is to trust your Self, your perceptions, your initial judgement-calls, so the Vacuus don’t have a void to fill. You’ve claimed your space and are outwardly making it known that the Vacuus no longer have a seat at your table.

Know that speaking your truths, or simply acting with choices based on your truths, will bring some blow-back. The Vacuus do not like paradigm shifts. Not only do they not want to give up their power and control, they are deathly afraid of being exposed. Shining a flashlight under the bed poofs away the boogey-man. Shining light on dark secrets will bring you peace, ultimately, because you are no longer allowing Vacuus to rent rooms in your head and heart and soul without paying rent while destroying your property.

Self-care is a necessity, not a luxury. Self-care includes setting boundaries, maintaining your privacy, disengaging from persons who do not respect these. Distancing your Self from destructive person’s manipulations, stop being the focus of their possessiveness, get out from under their ownership, dodge their compulsions to write your narrative for you.

Build yourself a place of peace in your home, and inside your Self that you can carry with you everywhere you go, and quietly dwell in there, and communicate with others from that space, everywhere and anywhere.

This place of peace is still, it is reasonable and from that posture life becomes reasonable.

It is both a refuge and a shield from Vacuus storms.

Your mind, you heart and personality are yours and only yours. You are a child of creation, creativity is innate within you — so go on and create your Self the way you want that artwork to be.

Thanks for reading,

Heidi D. Hansen, M.A.

email: dog.hotel.hansen@gmail.com

Do You Have A Family Annihilator Sitting At Your Holiday Table?

by addogsunleashed, posted in family annihilators, heidi d. hansen, m.a., mental health original art, mental health therapy, portland oregon therapist, post trauma stress, the trauma project, trauma recovery, Uncategorized, vancouver washington therapist

You may not even see the family annihilator, he or she may be invisible, but you will certainly be feeling and reeling from their destruction.

There are two kinds of Family Annihilator: The Silent Stealer, and the Invader – Infector.

This holiday will be especially difficult for those families who have lost children in divorce and custody battles. These are areas of vulnerability that a Family Annihilator just cannot resist. They may have already done their deeds of damage and all you can do is try to breathe.

Family Annihilators are compulsive, driven by insatiable needs for control, drama, possession, violence, sadism, with unending narcissistic appetites. They need to divide and conquer other people’s family relationships, or own and possess other people’s children in order to feel valid, real, alive, potent, just to feel their own skin.

They are cunning and often passive-aggressive, although many are overtly violent and will have domestic violence, rape, molestation, or emotional abuse in their background. They have often lost their own children or partners due to these personality disorders, and were unwilling or unable to get effective treatment and so they resort to a rudimentary satisfaction which is to act-out those patterns on other people’s families and their primary relationships with their children.

“Well, don’t they care about the children?” You might ask. “It’s one thing to act-out against another adult, but to harm a child to accomplish a perverted control compulsion is hard to fathom.”

It is hard to fathom. That is why many people don’t believe it’s possible for Family Annihilators to exist — they just can’t wrap their heads around the part about hurting the children. That’s how Family Annihilators get away with it. Especially in divorce and custody. It can also be an extension of domestic violence.

Konrad Lorenz was a sociobiologist in the 1950’s and is considered to be the father of that field, which is the study of how animals act in groups. In his famous book, “King Solomon’s Ring,” Lorenz tells of his observations of many animal species who act in altruistic ways. He tried to find their motivation for the altruistic acts, and likened that to humans.

Lorenz also observed acts of destruction, sabotage, and violence against an animal’s or species’ own close kin. He asked why, and tried to liken it to humans. His book is very revealing about human behavior more so than animal behavior and I strongly encourage it to be on every home’s bookshelf.

Why do parents love their children more than themselves? Why will they give up, sacrifice their own lives, needs, selves, to give all and more to their children?

And why do some people destroy families?

I myself have witnessed the two types of family annihilators, and this holiday my heart and thoughts will be with those who are also suffering the empty chairs at the holiday table with the spirits of the annihilators pervading the room.

The Silent Stealer needs to control other people so much that he must own the child of the custody dispute, must posess them, to the exclusion of all others and cannot find rest or peace until he has accomplished this and severed any possibility that the other party will be able to share in the child’s affections or relationship.

He must be King. The other parent is a threat to his dominion and rule. Children are objects, things, items and artifacts he accumulates as emblems of his power and rank.

Yet, the silent stealer lives under a rock. He does these things passive-aggressively, looks like the perfect gentleman on the outside, says and does all the right things, dresses and grooms very well, is super smart and does generally what others expect of and want from him. But. But. It’s what you cannot see that is his real life, his duplicity is a cover for the back-story power grab. This is the person who will charm you into a position of relaxation and trust while committing his social violence in ways you will not see until it is too late.

This is the man who must steal his children in a custody battle, and wins. He will not feel the need to justify or rationalize his antisocial behaviors — he will feel entitled to them, and expect others to allow him his due.

Once this person has custody or seized emotional control of the child, he will con and lie and use other people to manipulate things so as to make the other parent not be able to participate in that child’ life. He will construct a new reality for the child, a dual universe, which the child will understand not to dispute or contradict, lying to the child, telling horror stories about the other parent, making that child afraid or ashamed of the other parent, while rewarding the child for loyalty with material possessions and social status.

The Silent Stealer is actually quite impotent and often controlled by more mature, GrandMaster Manipulator-nurturers such as his own mother or mistress, sometimes both being one and the same.

The silent stealer is actually quite dull and devoid of personality and in life when it comes to actual, legitimate power and status. He must con his way through. He has nothing that he hasn’t cheated or lied or conned to get. He has very little social skill in the realm of authentic, deeply engaging and spontaneous relationships. And so the silent stealer is too scared to act alone. He often manipulates cohorts to assist him in stealing the child and sealing the deal sureptiteously.

A sheister lawyer, for example, or his mother to whom he has never fully disengaged, a mother who controls him and wants him all to himself, who refuses to see his flaws and will not let anyone hold the Golden Boy accountable. She owns him. Now she wants the grandchild to own. Together they are partners in crime.

Neither can change, learn or grow from experience. Nor can they feel remorse, or feel for the damage and sorrow that will follow that child all through the child’s lifespan because they have lied and conned and manipulated the other parent completely out of the child’s life. The insatiable compulsion to own the child occludes any sliver of humanity or mature, long-term thinking.

Empathy was never a functioning factor in the first place. Where empathy is, where a conscience is, for most people, the Silent Stealer has a void in his personality.

In my life I have also seen The Invade – Infector Family Annihilator. This type is usually a Borderline Personality who has an insatiable appetite for high-intensity drama, and like a heroin addict, needs a higher and higher intensity of drama each time to get the same high.

This person has long line of relationship carcasses in her wake. This type of family annihilator is a sociopath in that they do not have a conscience about their violation of other people’s rights. As for causing pain and suffering, well that’s more gravy for their own sense of tragedy. It gives them an excuse to indulge in dark feelings and melodrama. They cannot see what they are doing to others — even the child — all they can see is getting the drama jacked up higher and higher, stirring the conflict, instigating crisis where there was none and none needed to be.

This person is a terrific social engager — she can play roles like a chameleon, read the people in the room in a few seconds and adapt her personality to fit in and get the gossip. What wrong with that? You ask. What’s wrong is what comes next. She will get under people’s skin to control them very nimbly and without the other person being aware of it. While the silent stealer controls others from the outside, the invader- infector gets inside another person and controls from the inside of their personality.

It’s like they do not have a Self, and must parasitically inhabit another person’s internal structure to feel real, valid, a borrowed personality.

From this position she can easily con and cheat and lie to get control of the child in a custody drama. Somebody else’s child, somebody else’s life.

Why? What’s the motivation?

To feel real, to feel viable, to be in control, to be Right, to temporarily have a personality and a position of importance.

Why choose custody battles? Why target children?

Because they are easy targets. Like the Silent Stealer, the Invader-Infector is a coward. She and He cannot face the world of adults head-on. They are too weak and know they will not be acceptable if adults saw them for who they really are. Children are easy marks, however, and in the fog of custody war, they can hide their nasties.

The Invader – Infector will meddle in other’s families to the point of destroying the bonds and attachments between parent and child. She must own other people’s children and comes alive in the high chaos of destruction. Then she alone can save the child from the crisis she manufactured. She is the social-emotional version of Munchausen by Proxy disease.

She will have no conscience, just a set of supra and grandiose justifications, usually dramatic narratives in which she is somehow a victim in the tragedy she manufactured. She will control her narrative with false and inflammatory gossip that splits people apart, fabrications on top of fabrications, tall tales with privy information, she will be the One In The Know.

She feels entitled, even religiously called to intervene in other people’s families, which is her cover and excuse for causing the chaos, crisis, confusion and conflict that rob one parent of their child and gives the undue advantage to the other parent. Is there no greater power to have in life than to decide the home of someone else’s child?

The Borderline Personality must always create stark sides to feel safe, so there is no middle ground in her crisis-mongering. Once she has manipulated herself in the driver’s seat, the choices to her are simple. No consequences.

Just like their is no child. To her, the child is a tool to accomplish getting herself a mirror so she can see her Self and other people can too. The child is invisible. To these types of sociopaths, the concept of ‘other’ is non-existent. The concept, reality and validity of Child is non-existent.

This person has such little sense of Self she is ultimately easily manipulated by stronger antisocial manipulators such as the Silent Stealer, who needs a front man. She needs the drama, he needs the delivery person. Two peas in a pod. A symbiotic relationship made in mental illness heaven. The costs to the child don’t matter. There is nothing beyond the high of the intensity and urgency of the moment for the Invader – Infector.

She will have tall tales to tell the child and the general community to accomplish this. Terrible tragic and horrible fabrications that the child will believe, and the silent-stelaer will support and exploit to work his ends. Truth and facts are not her friends. Facts are too boring and accomplish nothing in her drama addiction. She may be ultra- righteous, a pillar of the moral community on the outside, but that’s just a cover so people won’t question the verocity of her pathology. No one wants to be on the receiving end of her manipulations and chaos, so no one holds her accountable.

No one holds the Silent Stealer accountable, either. He looks to good to be “like that.” He’s no “Joe Six-pack.” He’s the perfect gentleman.

So if your holiday table is empty of the child who has been manipulated out of your life in divorce and custody by the Silent Stealer and/or the Invader – Infector, you are not alone. And you are not crazy. They are the crazy ones, it’s just that they don’t look it.

So don’t you look it either. Don’t give them their win. Don’t let your child lose. Use the time away from your child to mend your wounds in your own private way, get stronger and wiser and make a strategy where your child gets a winner of a parent out of you, even if it takes time for that child to see it. You’re still the parent, and your child
still needs you.

And kick out the silent stealers and invader-infectors from your table, your home, your mind, your personality. No matter what they have done to you, the lies they have told about you, the lies and cons they have gotten away with, and been rewarded for, just know that it wasn’t you who did all that. You are not like them. Thank God you are not like them.

Your child needs you so much to NOT be like them.

—- Heidi Hansen

Heidi Hansen can be reached at dog.hotel.hansen@gmail.com, and is available to lecture more on this and related topics for a professional fee of $250.00 per hour.