Here’s how to recover when you’ve been emotionally, psychologically, physically and/or financially harmed — on purpose
- After all the deception and gaslighting — do you want to be able to trust your judgment again?
- Would having the skills to clearly see reality, manage emotional distress and deal with difficult people make your life easier?
- You’ve been through so much. Wouldn’t it be nice to feel whole and peaceful?
You’ve been manipulated, exploited and betrayed, and you’re shocked to realize that it was all intentional. Just as shocking, no one seems to understand what you’re talking about, let alone be able to help you.
How do you recover from your life being upended by a narcissist, antisocial or psychopath? How do you move forward after narcissistic abuse?
That’s exactly what you will learn how to do in this Lovefraud webinar series taught by Dr. Liane Leedom, a psychiatrist and a professor of counseling and psychology at the University of Bridgeport. She knows what you’ve experienced, because she was targeted by a psychopath herself.
Dr. Leedom has created the first treatment protocol specifically designed to help you overcome the trauma of narcissistic abuse. Her revolutionary approach utilizes the skills training of dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), a proven psychotherapy treatment. She tailored the DBT skills to the experience of survivors like you, so you can let go of suffering and rebuild your life.
Lovefraud is pleased to offer you this groundbreaking and cost-effective program for true recovery from narcissistic abuse. Yes, you can release the past and be happy again. Here’s how to do it.
About the instructor Dr. Liane Leedom
After her own encounter with a psychopath, Liane J. Leedom, M.D., dedicated her research and practice to understanding exploitative and manipulative personality disorders and helping survivors recover.
Liane J. Leedom, M.D., is author of two books: Just Like His Father? A Guide to Overcoming Your Child’s Genetic Connection to Antisocial Behavior, Addiction and ADHD, and Women Who Love Psychopaths: Investigating the Relationships of Inevitable Harm.
She is also author of multiple peer-reviewed studies, including Counseling Intimate Partner Abuse Survivors: Effective and Ineffective Interventions; The Dominance Behavioral System and Psychopathology: Evidence from Self-Report, Observational and Biological Studies; The Problem of Parental Psychopathy; and Did He Ever Love Me? A Qualitative Study of Life with a Psychopathic Husband.
Read Dr. Leedom’s studies at ResearchGate.
In addition to her university research and teaching, Dr. Leedom is currently in private practice as a psychiatrist. She trained in medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. She previously served on the medical staff of several Connecticut facilities, including St. Vincent’s Medical Center, Hall-Brooke Behavioral Health Services, the Hospital of St. Raphael and the Center for Optimum Care.
This Lovefraud series includes six distinct modules for 17 hours of training. Here’s what you will learn:
Skills Module 0: Your first step towards real recovery from narcissistic abuse and trauma
Narcissists, antisocials and psychopaths are predators, and once they catch you, trauma bonds keep you stuck. You’ll learn why disordered individuals behave the way they do, and why it’s so hard to get over the betrayal. Dr. Leedom introduces two survival principles and previews the skills that will enable you to rebuild your life. (1 webinar)
Highlights
- Why the damaging behavior of a sociopath is not an accident
- The core deficit and key obsession that drive sociopaths to exploit others
- How psychopathic personality traits are related to narcissism, antisocial personality, borderline personality and ADHD
- Why sociopathy is not just a moral failing — it’s a biological disorder
- Why, even though the sociopath blames you for your mistreatment, it was never your fault
- Why you continue to believe the sociopath’s promises, even when you have evidence that they are false
- How the sociopath’s good and bad treatment of you creates a trauma bond, and why it’s so difficult to break
- Why it’s difficult to make good decisions when you’re emotionally upset or feeling numb
- Why, after a fight, you forget how badly you’ve been treated and are willing to reunite with your abuser
- How to separate the truth from the gaslighting so you can escape the sociopath’s influence, once and for all
Skills Module 1: Mindfulness to clear your head of sociopathic gaslighting
When the sociopath’s gaslighting has left your mind racing and emotions in turmoil, mindfulness teaches you that you are not your thoughts. Learn to calm your mind, soothe your senses and let go of emotional suffering. (4 webinars)
Highlights
- Why psychological abuse changes how you perceive everything
- How to perceive reality more accurately, not influenced by overwhelming thoughts and emotions
- How accepting what is and no longer fighting reality enables you to feel peaceful and calm
- How to train your thoughts so that they don’t trap you in anxiety, sadness and anger
- The importance of not mistaking your interpretations of events — your judgments — for real facts.
- Why, when dealing with a sociopath, it is better to be skillful and effective than it is to be right
- Why sociopaths exploit what people believe in the most and how to protect yourself from their future faking
- Why the normal rules of being in a relationship do not apply to sociopaths and how this messes with your mind
- Why you must acknowledge this truth: Sociopaths cannot love you, but they may want to possess you
- Why if you don’t work on your recovery, you are at a high risk of being victimized by another sociopath
- Why emotional invalidation is so harmful and what to do when it’s happening to you
- Why you try to get validation from the invalidator and how to stop this pointless exercise
- What happened when your mother or father invalidated you and how now, as an adult, you can validate yourself
- You’re a compassionate person — here’s how to be compassionate towards yourself
Skills Module 2: Recovery from the bodily effects of toxic stress
You are emotionally overwhelmed, but the demands of life must still be met. You have intense pain that can’t be resolved quickly. This is when you need crisis survival skills to help you slow down, calm down and think. Dr. Liane Leedom teaches you exactly what to do. (2 webinars)
Highlights
- Recognizing the signs of crisis — stress, arousal and intense emotional pain
- How sociopaths create Level 10 crises — in which acting on your emotions will have severe consequences for you
- How being abused leads to dysfunctional thinking, flawed beliefs and chronic vulnerability to crisis
- Four crisis skills to change your body chemistry so you can think before you act
- How ro relax your muscles and slow your breathing to quickly reduce your level of upset
- How distraction reduces the intensity of your emotional reactions
- How mindfulness enables you to overcome the harmful conditioned responses created in you by the sociopath
Skills Module 3: Strategies for reducing emotional distress and vulnerability
Involvement with a sociopath is emotionally brutal. Still, mindfulness enables you to regulate your emotions, so you can decrease your suffering and vulnerability. Learn strategies for changing your emotional responses, even in tough situations. (4 webinars)
Highlights
- How to endure and live a meaningful life despite the chaos, pain and challenges inflicted by the sociopath
- How the sociopath’s values — power and control — affect you and what to do about it
- Qualities that make life worth living and how sociopaths ruin them
- How to accumulate positive emotions over the long term, enhancing your enjoyment of life
- Why negative feelings are not necessarily bad
- The benefits of treating emotions as important sources of information
- Three effective strategies for regulating your own emotions
- How to regulate your emotions through problem solving, step by step
- What it means when you say, “I love you,” and is it true?
- Normal biological changes that you feel when you’re in love — even with a sociopath
- The secret to dealing with painful emotions
- Should you confront a disordered person about a serious lie?
- Your anger at the sociopath is certainly justified — so what do you do?
- Why you are right to be afraid of the sociopath and what to do about it
- What to do when your ex has moved on and you feel like you screwed up the relationship
- After the sociopath, why emotional regulation is so difficult and how to overcome the challenges
Skills Module 4: Evidence-based tools for dealing with sociopathic behavior
Why is sociopathic behavior so shocking? Because it violates your longstanding beliefs about what it means to be human and how people should act. Therefore, when you have no choice but to deal with sociopaths, you need different skills and approaches. Dr. Leedom teaches them to you. (2 webinars)
Highlights
- How to cultivate your own healthy relationship behaviors,
- Why knowing your values and goals helps you deal with difficult people
- How destructive relationships affect your physical body, safety, self-esteem, happiness and peace of mind
- How chronic abuse impacts your behavior with everyone
- Why you want sociopaths to believe you’re either not aggressive or too scared to be aggressive
- Approaches that do not work for getting a sociopath to cooperate
- Why when you stop doing what the sociopath wants, you temporarily see more bad behavior
- Why the best way to talk to a sociopath is to say as little as possible
- How to end destructive relationships safely
- Why when you’re going after the sociopath, you must go all the way
- Four critical strategies for getting what you want from anyone
Skills Module 5: Post-traumatic growth and spirituality
The sociopath’s betrayal was devastating, but with the skills you learned, you can overcome the pain and build a life that you enjoy. By abandoning unhealthy mind sets and cultivating wisdom, you can achieve self-transcendence — the final stage of adult development. (1 webinar)
Highlights
- Psychopathic behavior in parents and how it affects their children
- Challenges parents face when you realize your child is disordered
- How to thrive even when there are sociopaths in the family
- How self-transcendence enables you to detach from thoughts and emotions, so you don’t see them as your identity
- How gratitude, compassion and awe enable you to experience the presence of something greater than yourself
- How to make meaning of all your experiences, even those with the sociopath
Cost and credits
Dr. Leedom’s program includes six modules for a total of 17 hours of skills training. You will learn how you got into the situation with the sociopath, why it affected you as it did and how you can recover. The value is $400, but Lovefraud wants you to recover, so we’re offering it to you for only $149. Once you purchase the course, you can access it online as long and as often as you want.
For more information on the webinar content, take a look at the learning objectives and program agendas.
Although this course does not award continuing education credits, you will be able to download a certificate of achievement upon completion.
If you’ve tangled with a sociopath (psychopath, narcissist), your brain has been fried and your heart has been shattered. But you can create true recovery for yourself. This webinar series gives you the skills to achieve it.
Customer reviews
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I am still working through the material but this course is a must for anyone suffering post narcissistic, sociopathic and psychological abuse. The recovery tools are extremely helpful. The hosts have LIVED the experience in addition to having credentials. I’m am curious to see what else they offer! Highly recommend!
This course is evidence-based and informative. Donna and Liane understand the interpersonal dynamics of sociopaths. They provided the space to process and practice new skills that are helping me navigate through a tough time. Thank you!
Dr. Leedom’s course is unique and rare, yet very much needed, training and educational resource for complicated problem of emotional trauma.
Dr. Leedom is an expert in the field with deep understanding of the clinical problem as well as sound training and research experience in neurobiological process that leads to creation of a trauma response. In her series, not only she gives her audience the tools to manage the acute emotional stress and consequences of mental trauma, but also puts this clinical problem into context of a broader understanding of the pathological human interactions from evolutionary perspective.
I would recommend Dr. Leedom’s course not only to general public and mental health experts, but also to other professionals, like teachers, doctors, and legal experts, as a valuable information about the impact of an abusive behavior on human mind.
Dr Leedom and Ms Andersen have a first-rate program. This course connects you with what is likely the premier source for help for anyone who encounters a psychopath or a sociopath. I do not think there is another group like theirs – possibly world-wide.
Hi. Much of the information and skills re: DBT, CBT, etc. I am very familiar with from prior therapy, both outpatient and inpatient. I agree with the value of these skills and resources, although, just like many other resources, they are difficult to grab ahold of during an episode, stressful moment, conversation, or trauma causing (triggering) event. Role playing is helpful to gain the best chance of being competent in using them in real life.
I enrolled in the course due to my recent meeting of someone who displays sociopathic traits. What was unexpected, and incredibly valuable, is the revelation that my mom is a narcissist. This is answering so many questions I’ve had over my 64 years. I had no clue. I completely overlooked the possibility that she had a disorder. I knew she wasn’t very maternal, caring, compassionate or empathetic, however I always made excuses for her behavior or protected her. Now I am beginning to get clarity on so much. Oh my goodness, all of us, seven children, so much trauma and pain. Even still.
I shared some of what I learned last week with my physical therapy assistant. She was very moved by it. When she had a moment, she sat with me and shared that she has not spoken to her mom in five years. She has identified her mom’s behavior as narcissism. She is much younger than me. Her only sibling, brother, along with Aunt’s, Uncle’s and cousins are taking the mom’s side and lashing out and shaming her for not ‘forgiving and having a relationship with her mom’. Oh gosh, I was so glad to offer her some understanding and kindness/compassion. I shared your site information with her.
As usual, my path to you is not random and has a beautiful purpose to bring healing from pain. I am grateful.
Thank you.