Casey & Family Psychological Profile #7

[Verité]

Thanks.. though I didn't make that one I do like it! May is almost over but Mental health awareness is important all year 'round, IMO. It makes me crazy.. people trying to blame horrible crimes and poor judgement on mental illness. We have morals and a conscience, we know what we should and shouldn't do and unless we are "insane" (think Yates) at the time of the crime, we have a choice. Mental illness is not a murdering disease or a raping disease- it's not a criminal's disease as todays stigma and bias would have us believe. Bipolar does not make us kill- Psychosis does not make us kill. A person with mental illness is no more likely than any other person to commit a crime. They are however much more likely to commit horrible acts upon themselves (self injury, drug use, suicide etc) if they go without treatment.

We are not bad, we are sick but we can get well! Society needs to stop portraying those with mental illness as bad, as dangerous.. what happens when it's their child that becomes ill?! All this time their child knows how they feel about those with mental illness- do they really think their child will come to them for help?! I think not!

Sorry- rambling but it's what i do- I'll never shut up about this topic it's too important

So important that I'm gonna copy it for page 24. Thanks OLG!

 

[OneLostGrl]

Well, CA's brother Rick seems a together enough guy.. as far as I know. He seems to have his head on straighter than CA (which, granted, wouldn't take much).

CA is, BTW, the only girl, and the youngest child of Shirley P.

hehe, yeah gotta love Rick.

 

[songline]

Bolding mine

Flight-from-therapy often happens--especially when therapist moves too
fast with such an intervention, vs. giving "empathic" prepartion to an
adult parent about how difficult it is to hear this/will be to do this/etc.
The patient, almost in panic about the thought of breaking those lifelong
ties, runs away so fast s/he could win a marathon.

Therapists, however well meaning, aren't perfect. . .and patient's sure
aren't, but that's why they go--to garner the strength to do what they
may already know they should do. But they for sure don't want to be
told that by someone else before they're ready to hear (they enter
therapy in a state of denial, usually)!

I don't have any objective data that says this happened, just my own
assumption based on why there's sometimes early-flight-from-therapy.

I am not contradicting you - just an added view. :blowkiss:
The way they handle emotions, I will say the therapist touched someplace deep and that requires feeling deeply and doing some internal work.
I am not sure it is always the therapist who is going too fast.
I am almost sure because I have seen this with some people when they are not ready to take some responsibility they fly.
Feeling deeply for this Cindy type is no carrot to proceed.
Instant gratification is more of what they hope for.
but deep feeling is hard for them. Anger is easier.

When a therapist tells a mom that her drug addicted child needs tough love and they should get out.
Usually about 4 more TV's and stereos are stolen and sold for a fix before mom gets it.
What if Casey's stealing and GA's finding of her pictures finally got them READY to throw her out. Just saying....
Cindy had to be ready to do that. No Mom can do that right away.
But the first suggestion happens long before it is done.
And sometimes they get furious at the therapist and run.

 

[OneLostGrl]

Bolding mine

Flight-from-therapy often happens--especially when therapist moves too
fast with such an intervention, vs. giving "empathic" prepartion to an
adult parent about how difficult it is to hear this/will be to do this/etc.
The patient, almost in panic about the thought of breaking those lifelong
ties, runs away so fast s/he could win a marathon.

Therapists, however well meaning, aren't perfect. . .and patient's sure
aren't, but that's why they go--to garner the strength to do what they
may already know they should do. But they for sure don't want to be
told that by someone else before they're ready to hear (they enter
therapy in a state of denial, usually)!

I don't have any objective data that says this happened, just my own
assumption based on why there's sometimes early-flight-from-therapy.

ITA.

Great quote- and so very true. "Change isn't easy... changing the way you live means changing what you believe about life. That's hard... When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable."

 

[songline]

What a beautiful, yet sad, way to express that. "A soft place to fall." I'm remembering that one, Songline, :blowkiss:

May you always have a soft place to fall sweet fllourish :blowkiss:
When we fall enough times, we get stronger, and if we fall hard we get harder.

 

[songline]

My daughter and her friends will text each other when they are sitting in the car next to each other.

Kids today :crazy:

 

[OneLostGrl]

Just from a naked eye and I do not analyze anyone I had not spent time with. I will go for the very obvious.
CA is very comfortable with anger and anger also keeps people at bay.
CA is also comfortable being in charge - I doubt she can handle vulnerability and helplessness.
Under it all there is some very deep sadness;

A possibility would be: Shirley was a good Mom to the best of her ability. She probably was far from nurturing, but dinner was on the table. While she nourished their belly some areas were never nourished at all.
Could not handle her children cry and said things LIKE: Stop crying or I;ll give you a reason, You are a big girl, you can do this, don't cry. Shirley has a tough outer skin;
Cindy's is tougher; Casey's is even tougher then Cindy.
It 's just all displayed / expressed differently.
I do not think any of this girls had a soft place to fall.
All of them have control numbers running, which often has to do with self preservation.

I CALL THIS AN UNFAIR EVALUATION - I NEVER MET THEM,
I am just looking at a screen and that is not enough.

As far as Shirley goes, I agree we have not seen her enough to get a decent handle on how she handles and treats those around her- we have no idea if she lies while staring the person she's lying to right in the eye as she tells them she is not lying (like Cindy and Casey and George do).. etc. We have not been exposed enough to shirley to know anything about her except that she knows her daughter is willing to lie for Casey and that she loved Caylee more than life itself.

But the rest of them? Where I come from.. I totally think we (the public) know more truthful things about this family than any therapist would. Therapists only have what is TOLD him/her and what the therapist observes. If Casey had a therapist he/she would have thought she had a good job, a nanny, was buying her parents home. She would not have known anything Casey or Cindy didn't want her to know. Lying, omitting, switching things around to put oneself (or ones loved one) in a better light (or worse, in some cases) in therapy is quite common.. Therapists that specialize in personality disorders rarely get to see their patients in such a true light (no walls, no masks, no pretending, no denial or finger pointing.. just everything exactly as it IS, at the moment it's happening all right there on the table like a gift) as we have been able to see the Anthony's.

So I gotta disagree with this one- I think the year that these people have been inside of our homes on a nightly basis, spitting out their lies, we have plenty to base our opinions of this family on.

 

[Verité]

I am not contradicting you - just an added view. :blowkiss:
. . .Cindy had to be ready to do that. No Mom can do that right away.
But the first suggestion happens long before it is done.
And sometimes they get furious at the therapist and run.

Yeah, therapists are working to decrease defensive functioning, one of the
most tenacious being denial. Anytime you start weakening my denial,
I'll start to feel anger. . .coz it don't feel good to hear that the 2 big pieces
of chocolate cake I ate tonight (with ice cream, too!) won't solve anything
or make me feel better tomorrow when my sugar high wears off. . .and my mind starts feeling like the sky is falling! No, no, don't tell me that tonite!
Maybe suggest it gently tomorrow when I start wondering why I'm feeling
so lousy and begin to ask, "D'ya think the sky might really fall today?"

 

[OneLostGrl]

(Snip Respect kageykaren)

I find statements like this tell me what kind of habits Caylee's mother had:

George Anthony Statement to LE
July24, 2008

(GA is speaking of one of the vigils the Anthonys had at their home)

GA: ...at our house. There were fifteen, eighteen of, not only a couple of friends of my sons that knows Casey and my son very well. We talked about so much stuff. What happened in the last two years, guys help us out, what's going on? Everything(inaudible)Casey's a good mom. Casey this. Casey's calling a lot. Whenever she's out with Caylee she always had to make sure Caylee was away from alcohol or someone smoking. That's what they told us. Now in the last two, two and a half months, these same friends that she's had for, since she's been a little one, have been over our house. They've been out of the picture.


This sentence says much to me. If: "fifteen, eighteen of, not only a couple of which were Lee's friends who knew Casey" AND Lee very well "all" were saying that Casey "always" had to keep Caylee away from alcohol or someone smoking, I would take that as Caylee was in a situation with a lot of different people who were drinking and smoking.

Caylee was only two and a half when she passed...fifteen to eighteen people don't know me to come by and say stuff about seeing me around. For two and a half...she must have been doing a lot of 'hanging out.'

...I don't take it into any realm other than what most twenty somethings would be doing. No one thinks of these situations always as "parties' per se...it is hanging out-some people smoke some people drink but they are 21 and that can be normal and benign...

but, when you are twenty something and you have a child...this is when the bolded sentence seems insidious to me. Casey should have been staying at home, tending to Caylee, resting up for work and in general being a very good mom. Do I think everyone can live up to that, or that most mothers live up to that all the time or ever, no. Some women become pregnant and they no longer need a "life"...they have the feelings of nurturing come over them...and for those of us addicted to nurturing(it's biological some of us have to be or the species would not have survived)staying at home or spending every moment with those we love(esp children)IS our life. That is usually the kind of woman/person who most cannot understand a mother like Casey's actions, and not just if she was responsible for Caylee's death but things like having her little girl anywhere other than what was 100% best for Caylee-at all times.

Many mothers, young and not so...are more lax with the environment their child experiences. To be bold: some moms party in front of their kids, date and go out, etc. while they are raising them. I don't think that has to be a terrible thing, I don't think that automatically makes you a bad mother or will make your kids messed up but...it still could not have been all that great for Caylee to have been around twenty somethings smoking and drinking all the time. And, if things hadn't turned out the way they did, with Caylee being found...we might be looking at a grown Caylee with some mother issues and a large psychiatry bill.

But they did find Caylee...and so now people want to know what kind of mother Casey was. I understand because I wanted to know also. That is a complicated question with a complicated answer because all of us are complicated human beings. Layers and layers...but we can come to a personal overall opinion based on feeling and some information.

This is my personal opinion that is based on how I was taught...but mostly what is in my own heart. I do not think a good mother, a mother who is in tune with her child, who has properly bonded with that child...would ever have them in the situations that Casey had Caylee in-even the most benign.

My cousin and I were born six months apart, she has three girls and one boy. I watched as she went after man, after man...asking her girls about the profiles on the internet: "is he cute for mommy?" to her girls. I think that is being a terrible mother. I am from the school that you give up yourself when you have a child, but I also do not realistically expect teen and twenty-something mothers to suddenly be super responsible nor do I begrudge them wanting to have a "life.'

Casey did not want to have Caylee. Cindy made her, then lorded Caylee over her. Cindy is not a good mom either, in my book. She is the opposite of the story above. She was not the young mom that took her child to friends where they were smoking and drinking...good mom? No...she also never became in tune with her daughter, never truly bonded with her either. Its not whether you are a mom who parties or a mom like Cindy who likes everything too look like she is salt of the earth- a bad mom is a disconnected mom.

Casey learned to be a poor mother from her mother...and after reading the SP interview...I see where Cindy got her mothering from. For a missing great granddaughter SP shows more concern for her missing cat, she calls her son an idiot or stupid-for (paraphrased)"telling lies about Casey/Cindy/George on a web site" and even when LE corrects her and goes about in a long and detailed way to express to her that her son was DEFENDING CA/CA/GA she STILL insists he is an idiot...and she trails off onto some other subject...hum. She wasn't listening to what the officers were telling her...she was stuck on what Cindy told her happened-that's not someone who looks at the now moment and lives in reality.

Caylee was last in a line of cold mothers.(My guess at what part of her souls business was this time):blowkiss:

I am waiting for the trial to understand more. I am making a opinion based on just what I know but in doing so...I don't think anybody was really looking out for Caylee for her sake: not her mother, granddmother, grandfather, uncle or greatgrandmother. It's not that I doubt that they love just how they love.

Update: I wanted to add: I do think the behavior of all the people in Caylee's life makes them crazy. I would call these people crazy. Is that a reason to let them off the hook? Is that a reason to find Casey "not guilty" if she did do something to hurt her daughter? Not to me. Say she is crazy but you still have to have justice(whatever that may be).

...jmo...

Great post! The entire thing is hard to grasp and so very sad!

 

[OneLostGrl]

Yeah, therapists are working to decrease defensive functioning, one of the
most tenacious being denial. Anytime you start weakening my denial,
I'll start to feel anger. . .coz it don't feel good to hear that the 2 big pieces
of chocolate cake I ate tonight (with ice cream, too!) won't solve anything
or make me feel better tomorrow when my sugar high wears off. . .and my mind starts feeling like the sky is falling! No, no, don't tell me that tonite!
Maybe suggest it gently tomorrow when I start wondering why I'm feeling
so lousy and begin to ask, "D'ya think the sky might really fall today?"

Perfect! Now give me the darn cake!

 

[OneLostGrl]

KC also asked her father to come see her, then stood him up.

My guess is that she was playing yet another manipulative game, with the folks.

GA can't get her out of jail. He does not have the power to do that.

Now, another reason why she might want to see GA alone, is that CA annoys her with questions about "what she thinks" might have happened to Caylee. She's had a couple of nice tantrums, behind that. GA just kind of goes along with what KC says.

And she said as much.. that Lee would ask questions and Cindy would take over.

George, she could "seduce" (not sexually- get your mind out the gutter, girl!) by pretending to love him, by pretending she wanted to make things better between them. I would not be surprised to hear they have teamed up in the past for a common goal. George is a sucker and about begs for attention, acceptance and love from whoever he speaks with.

 

[OneLostGrl]

I agree with all the above posts (page 22). Brini's right-on that no way
could any developmental perspective on impaired empathy be used in
court/or as a defense, and it's so close to shifting blame to the parent for the
criminal behavior of a young adult that I, almost shamefacely, presented it
here. But it does tend to explain.

All afternoon I've been thinking about the revelation of Chiquita about the
instances of ongoing belittling in the maternal lineage of adult males. I feel
badddd about that. If I should ever dare to do that to the fine man who's
my son, I feel confident he'd put me on a longgg time-out. . .certainly until
I made an amends (if I could even find him after such verbal abuse) that convinced him I'd come to my senses and would never do it again.
But I can't even envision a time so bad that I'd want to have him bear the emotional scars of my insults.

Amen! :blowkiss:

 

[OneLostGrl]

Very excellent post. I believe you hit the nail on the head about behavior being passed down "generationally". I thought that from the git go, but didn't want to distress all the people who thought SP was the epitome of grandmotherly sweetness and virtue. As people age they usually chill out.
Once again, EXCELLENT post, thank you.

My opinion only

Bold is mine-

ITA, and see it in my own mother. She is in treatment, mind you, but she just doesn't "have it" anymore. Treatment or not, she's gotten weak in her strong places, she has developed fears she never used to have (ones she wasn't aware of anyway).

 

[Verité]

Perfect! Now give me the darn cake!

You got it! :birthday:

(It's not really my birthday. I just pretend like it is. . .in a backward sort of way. . .anything to reduce the guilt while I promise, "I'll quit tomorrow!")

 

[OneLostGrl]

Gee, you sound like a therapist. LOL :genie:

Sorry, it just struck me funny. :blowkiss:

haha that's what I thought too when I read that post. "And how does that make you feel?".. hmm? :bang: LOL

 

[claudicici]

...i don't entirely agree with you ,chiquita,i don't think a good mother should give herself up at all,i think it is important for the child to know that the mom has her own interests,i also don't think it's bad to have your child around people that smoke or drink or if you smoke or drink yourself....i don't think any of that would have been a problem for caylee...i think it all comes back to kc not being able to grow up herself and to be mom to caylee because of cindy's control.
i think it's very interesting what you say about shirley,it makes me look at her in another light.i thought what a sweet lady,when i first read the interview...but you're right,she belittles her son and doesn't show much concern for cay

 

[MAMABEAR]

I think the reason she didn't want to talk to CA or LA was because they ask to many questions. She wanted to talk to GA because I think she figured out who had gotten rid of the dead body that was in her trunk. She stated that she "didn't know where Caylee was"--maybe she didn't. But she knew that it had to be somebody in the family. GA was the only one who wouldn't look straight in the face (eyes) ---the only one NOT asking a bunch of questions.

Maybe she did finally find out that GA had gotten rid of the body thru the letters/notes JB-----then she knew that DC was looking for the body in the woods and figured the "family" took care of Caylee's bones (hid them better) (CA was probably gonna plant her in the back yard) and when she saw on TV that LE had the body---her goose was cooked---jig was up---now she will fry and all that good stuff.

 

[Verité]

t "And how does that make you feel?".. hmm? :bang: LOL

Oh, No! That question is my #1 pet peeve of "therapist-speak,"
to be asked by someone who should know is so unempathic and
probing, "And how does that make you feel? (It's what Kohut calls,
experience distant, like the therapist has no clue, when instead s/he should
move inside your realm of experience and reflect back empathically.) But, i
hear this HDIMYF all the time, even from TV shrinks like Dr. Dru.

If it get's posed to me, i feel an attack of smart-aleck coming on, "Ohh, it
makes me feel like maybe -- chocolate cake!" (Got a one track mind tonite).

 

[OneLostGrl]

I think the reason she didn't want to talk to CA or LA was because they ask to many questions. She wanted to talk to GA because I think she figured out who had gotten rid of the dead body that was in her trunk. She stated that she "didn't know where Caylee was"--maybe she didn't. But she knew that it had to be somebody in the family. GA was the only one who wouldn't look straight in the face (eyes) ---the only one NOT asking a bunch of questions.

Maybe she did finally find out that GA had gotten rid of the body thru the letters/notes JB-----then she knew that DC was looking for the body in the woods and figured the "family" took care of Caylee's bones (hid them better) (CA was probably gonna plant her in the back yard) and when she saw on TV that LE had the body---her goose was cooked---jig was up---now she will fry and all that good stuff.

I thought the same thing (that she knows he did or at least felt like he had gotten rid of Caylee's body) when she cried during that first bond hearing when George was on the stand. It's sure possible.

 

[OneLostGrl]

...i don't entirely agree with you ,chiquita,i don't think a good mother should give herself up at all,i think it is important for the child to know that the mom has her own interests,i also don't think it's bad to have your child around people that smoke or drink or if you smoke or drink yourself....i don't think any of that would have been a problem for caylee...i think it all comes back to kc not being able to grow up herself and to be mom to caylee because of cindy's control.
i think it's very interesting what you say about shirley,it makes me look at her in another light.i thought what a sweet lady,when i first read the interview...but you're right,she belittles her son and doesn't show much concern for cay

I'm with ya! I don't think it's healthy for anyone to "live for" anyone else including their children. But many people see that as love..