Glossary
Borderline Personality Disorder
Borderline personality disorder is a condition in which people have long-term patterns of unstable or turbulent emotions, such as feelings about themselves and others. These inner experiences often cause them to take impulsive actions and have chaotic relationships.
Bully
A person who is habitually cruel or overbearing, especially to smaller or weaker people.
Certified Public Accountant (CPA) – A public accountant who has met the requirements of a particular U.S. state and is therefore allowed to practice there.
Co-dependent – Of or relating to a relationship in which one person is psychologically dependent in an unhealthy way on someone who is addicted to a drug or self-destructive behavior, such as chronic gambling.
Con Artist – A con is someone who uses a confidence game to cheat or defraud people.
Conduct disorder – A disorder of childhood and adolescence that involves chronic behavior problems, such as: Defiant, impulsive, or antisocial behavior; Drug use; Criminal activity.
Congestive Heart Failure – a form of heart failure in which the heart is unable to pump away the blood returning to it fast enough, causing congestion in the veins.
Drug Addiction – The compulsive need to constantly use a drug. This is caused by the body’s physical addiction to the effects of the drug.
Egoist – An egoist thinks the world revolves around him, an egotist is someone who cannot stop talking about himself.
Exaggerate – To regard or represent as larger or greater, more important or more successful, etc, than is true.
Gaslighting – Psychologist Martha Stout states that sociopath’s frequently use gaslighting tactics. Sociopaths consistently transgress social mores, break laws, and exploit others, but are also typically charming and convincing liars who consistently deny wrongdoing. Thus, some who have been victimized by sociopaths may doubt their perceptions.
Jacobson and Gottman report that some physically abusive husbands may gaslight their wives, even flatly denying that they have used violence.
Psychologists Gass and Nichols use the term gaslighting to describe a dynamic observed in some cases of marital infidelity: “Male therapists may contribute to the women’s distress through mislabeling the women’s reactions. […] The gaslighting behaviors of the husband provide a recipe for the so-called ‘nervous breakdown’ for some women [and] suicide in some of the worst situations.”
The Manson Family during their “creepy crawler” burglaries of the late 1960s, would enter homes and steal nothing, but would rearrange furniture to upset and confuse residents.
Immoral – Violating moral principles; conforming to the patterns of conduct usually accepted or established as consistent with principles of personal and social ethics.
Manipulate – To manage or influence skillfully, especially in an unfair manner.
Mind game – Deliberate actions of calculated psychological manipulation intended to intimidate or confuse.
Narcissism – Inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity. Erotic gratification derived from admiration of one’s own physical or mental attributes, being a normal condition at the infantile level of personality development.
Neurodivergent – One whose neurological development and state are atypical – usually viewed as abnormal or extreme..
Possessiveness – Having or manifesting a desire to control or dominate another, especially in order to limit that person’s relationships with others.
Profligate – Utterly and shamelessly immoral or dissipated; thoroughly dissolute.
Search Warrant – A court order authorizing entry to somebody’s property to look for unlawful possessions.
Sociopath – A person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience. Someone whose social behavior is extremely abnormal. Sociopaths are interested only in their personal needs and desires, without concern for the effects of their behavior on others.