I was just reminded of this topic today, as I was speaking to a woman who had been going through a divorce and is now reconciling. Turns out the things that were happening with her husband, were due to undiagnosed Parkinson's.
In my case, I suspect my ex had mild bipolar tendencies, made worse by a series of concussions in his 40's. Add that to a perfect storm for MLC and voila.
Of course, most WASs simply suffer from MLC and/or depression, but it's worth remembering that erratic behavior can also sometimes be due to an actual brain disease. Huntington's disease, brain tumors, degenerative brain diseases, side effects from medications, side effects from bariatric surgery (which sometimes leads to compulsive behaviors including sex addiction or gambling)....lots of things can affect behavior.
It's always worth evaluating whether there might be a medical reason, especially if the change in behavior is very erratic or out of character.
Mine appears to have senility. Or so his s25 believes.
Given the things I was told durring the r, I suspect something else, but it's really odd to say the least. Some of the behaviours were always there the lieing the bulling. The temper and anger less so. Both have gotten much worse in the last year or so.
Don't think the anger has improved on the demise of the m either. A friend has a h with demture and she has the same issues as I did, with her h.
My happiness has increased.
kml - just prior to MLC I thought my xh was developing Alzheimers (my father had died of this (or with to be accurate) And just over two years after bomb drop he was diagnosed with an advanced cancer (which was almost certainly present at bomb drop) He has made a remarkable recovery and is still in remission, but I have no idea what drugs he is on
My therapist, who also met with xh diagnosed BPD, held in check throughout most of his adult life.
The change in behaviour was utterly out of character - so I would say probably a mix of physical causes and a growing psychological disorder. Mind you he is still out there crazy as a cuckoo. So what can I say?
That he is. Bea.
Mine just thinking in my thread was always paranoid. Think people had snuck in and deliberately turned the gas on trying to kill him. Someone was always out to get him, someone always had a vendetta. It seemed to dwindle int he middle part of the r, but was coming back in the end. Paranoid about me cheating. Paranoid about me not being safe.
Paranoid about getting prostate cancer or bowl cancer. No one in h family ever died of cancer or had cancer, but xw father did.
H uncle died this year of demture, yes they did seem alike. Told far fetched stories big noted etc.
H had a check up in September 13 which he told me was for life insurance, also said he was as fit as some one only 40. Making me older than his pysical age as given by dr, even tho the calendar age was 50. He also had another check up 25 March 14 according to his bank statement.
Guess that's why he chose a 50yo ow! Cause he's so fit.
There are underlying psychological disorders in all of these situations KML, some mild and some stronger. Of course you can label anything you want to so it's very simple to put a tag on it saying that someone is BPD. In my opinion after all of the stories I have read on here and heard on my own I imagine that we all have spouses that go through either some form of Narcissistic Personality disorder or an Anti-Social disorder. But again, IMHO this is simply putting a tag or excuse for bad choices. Today mental disorders are a dime a dozen because they keep people working in the field of Psychology.
So my point in all this is that no matter what the reason, I could justify it with a psychological disorder so do not put too much stake in it.
Ian
Ian, I agree with you to some extent about putting tags on things, but in the field of neuroscience there are some startling recent developments which validate at least some aspects of how psychotherapy works, including how empathy develops and is stunted, and may be re-developed.
How much of behaviour is 'choice' and how much it is a driven by other factors requires more research before I would be happy to dismiss all MLC behaviour as bad choices made (by implication) by bad people.
My dad made some terrible choices when he had alzheimers, I have a friend with bipolar who did idiotic things before her bipolar condition was diagnosed (and still does when she takes herself off medication). Both of these conditions were fully identified early in the twentieth century (although the symptoms had clearly been present before then)
Even so it took a long time to be more generally recognised, and treatment is still to some extent experimental. I wonder if this phenomenon that we label MLC (and which we know has been around a long time) might prove to be a real disorder.
I am not ruling out the fact that it could be bad choices, and that these people 'ought' not to be doing this stuff. But the personality change in my xh, (and others on these boards) and the subsequent self destructive behaviour by a former loving and responsible human being make me uneasy with a simple diagnosis of poor choices.
You speak very dismissively of keeping 'people working in the field of psychology'. Could you explain why? Do you know what is and is not mental illness?
While one could certainly argue that the temporary psychological derangement that occurs during mlc resembles a disease, I'm talking about the small subset who have an actual organic brain disease.
Oops, my bad kml!!
Sorry
How do you define an organic brain disease? Is it naturally occurring or brought on by long term use of medications? My now ex wife has been on ADs for about 30 years. She was not properly monitored or managed. Along with her depression she showed signs of paranoia. Her symptoms grew worse over time. She attempted self medicating along with taking the maximum dosage of her ADs. Finally she attempted suicide. Does she have a brain disease or a psychological issue that has lead to long term damage due to long term medication use? I personally believe from all my reading and long term dealing with this situation that we still know very little about psychological issues and how to treat them.
Lol - no worries, Beatrice. As crazy as your ex is, he may well turn out to be one of the ones that have an organic brain issue!
I know for me, My MIL and SIL both diagnosed Bipolar, both fight depression, I only assumed for some time that was what my W was going through. She had some health issues and opt'd to stay away from western medicine and went holistic. At the time I was more about ... "whatever works and makes you better" ... however this change really seemed to alter her brain chemical balance, what seemed like Bi-Polar and Depression tendencies lead me here learning about MLC. I am not sure if its one or the other, but my gut is there is a mixture of both.
Well my mother was/is bipolar.
She left my father 24 years ago and that did not cure her of being bipolar(diagnosed now for close to 60 years).
So I think the question is did the MLC come out of the blue or was it here for their whole life and MLC made it worse.
Hard to diagnose the degrees of being crazy that is for sure.
Personally I would rather not have to deal with it at all.
Ellie! Would you include neurological lymes in this subset? Not that my ex's medical problems are my concern anymore. Just wondering
Hi Beatrice,
I will throw you off completely here by first saying that I am 3 months from having my Masters in Psychology. I know very well what is and is not a mental illness.
I want to make sure you understand my point however, my problem is that we are too quick to label things as psychological problems before we have done any testing or evaluating and instead make excuses for poor choices.
I do believe that some of these folks have deep rooted psychological issues, but let's not blanket WAS and MLCers as all having them and when an IC labels someone with a disorder let's not take it as gospel.
I speak very dismissively about people in the field because i see what is being turned out these days and some of the counselors out there today are worthless and self serving. A good IC or Psychologist is in it to help the individual and not to keep themselves working. There is too much of that going on today in the field.
I hope that makes sense.
Ian
And how do you know what my qualifications are?
You make sense, and are of course, entitled to your opinions. Others, including myself may disagree with you, on the basis of their experience. I will not however trivialise what you are saying
I believe there are good therapists, and not so good ones, as in all fields. And there is also the need for good research and evaluation of both conditions and the effectiveness of different treatments. I favour an approach that takes in the latest findings in neuroscience.
Since kml politely indicated that this thread is not about psychology, but actual brain disease, perhaps this is not the place to pursue the discussion. I have already apologised to her once!!
Week the. I guess I don't have evidence that my h has any organise brain diseases but some thing sure has/had been going on. Giving his totaly lies time will tell if the man sinks into demure.
given his whole elaborate lies I doubt he even knows the truth, which is why the man lies so effectively.
Linda, yes I was thinking about your husband's Lyme disease. That definitely counts. (Guess the Russian fermented oatmeal hasn't cured him yet, huh? )
Linda, yes I was thinking about your husband's Lyme disease. That definitely counts. (Guess the Russian fermented oatmeal hasn't cured him yet, huh? )
Hahaha… The fermented oatmeal is probably the thing of the past by now… I bet there are some new “treatments” over there…
Sometimes, I think this question if one of those..."What came first? The chicken or the egg?"
In our case, Smokey began abusing drugs when he was 12 to avoid some severe issues at home and some severe (what I would consider organic) anxiety/depression that runs through his family.
It's all such a tangled web. Parent that suffer from severe depression, alcoholism, anxiety, other mental illness, etc...lead to children who can't cope well...who develop crazy coping skills themselves...Using marijuana consistently between the ages of 12 and 48...well, what does that do to your brain? Add a fair amount of alcohol abuse...
Smokey's father left Smokey and his mom when Smokey was only 2. He found he was adopted by his step-father (someone he believed until that point to be his biological father) when he was 12...he started using drugs to ease the pain at 12...His biological father simply quit his son's life. Went MIA as Smokey grew up 15 minutes away.
Our daughters have now experienced the same trauma of having a parent abandon them.
...and the beat goes on...