Here's another over an hour interview I did with someone I have never met or talked to before, Mr. Fatal:
Confessions of a Sociopath author interviews sociopath spectrum former army paratrooper infantryman Mr. Fatal. They talk about how well suited psychopaths are for the military, as first responders such as firefighters, police, and other risky occupations, professions such as surgery that require clarity of thought and less emotional and empathic attachment, etc. per Kevin Dutton's book the Wisdom of Psychopaths. They also talk about how a psychopath would respond to military and martial arts training and the role of honor in those disciplines (Mr. Fatal is one of many generations of warriors in his family). They talk about the cycles that psychopaths develop through, including the playground stage in the early 20s and the "reckoning" of the late 20s and early 30s and about the role that sense of self plays. They also talk about the stigma of psychopathy, including hurting animals (Mr. Fatal loves animals more than most humans) and other natural variations or expressions of the personality disorder that you might see amongst the populace.
At the suggestion of one of our friends, I created a Discord server. This invite lasts only 24 hours, but it's under Sociopathworld: https://discord.gg/9c5seYKe
Confessions of a Sociopath author M.E. Thomas interviews John Doe, who has been in a relationship with a psychopath for the past few years. They talk about the pluses and minuses to being in a close relationship with a psychopath, some of the things he wishes he had done differently or wishes she could have done differently, and some advice he would give to others in a similar situation. He also shares his thoughts on self-acceptance, and how the stigma against sociopaths makes the situation worse not just for the psychopaths but for everyone.
This upcoming Sunday 1/10/21 we'll have on a guest who was in a relationship with a sociopath.
M.E. Thomas is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Relationship with a Psychopath
Time: Jan 10, 2021 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
We had such great feedback on the Brad longer Zoom that I'm experimenting with the longer format, so this morning I did one with just Arya and Elsa (the time constraint doesn't kick in unless there are multiple people on the call) and I continue to like the results. I'll probably either continue to do one on ones to avoid the Zoom time limit or just bite the bullet and buy a pro Zoom account. If I do the former, I'll upload the one on ones to YouTube and post here. I'll also do a live shorter Zoom session at least once a month. If you have strong opinions either way, let me know in the comments!
From this morning's one on one with Arya and Elsa:
Author of Confessions of a Sociopath M.E. Thomas and two 20 something female psychopaths discuss the role of compartmentalization for neurotypical people and for psychopaths. Normal people experience their self as a stable concept and when they have experiences that are inconsistent with their self, they experience cognitive dissonance. To avoid or resolve the cognitive dissonance, they can do one of three things: (1) change their behavior to be consistent with their self-conception, (2) change their belief about their self to be consistent with their behavior, (3) compartmentalize and essentially ignore the dissonance. Psychopaths do not experience these things as much because they have a very weak sense of self.
There is a second use of the word compartmentalization, which is to keep thoughts and parts of our life separate to avoid conflict, to avoid worrying or being concerned about something, or to be more efficient. In this second sense of the word compartmentalization is something that psychopaths tend to do frequently, perhaps even better than normal people. Because of their weak sense of self, they feel less conflict from holding inconsistent viewpoints or manifesting inconsistent behaviors.
In the past couple years I've finally been able to identify and contextualize my feelings. I call it a sort of emotional puberty because emotions that other people have learned to understand and cope with, I'm still a little shaky at.
I saw someone's tweet thread a few days ago about how people are rage porn-y to avoid dealing with like sadness, grief, loss, pain, fear, uncertainty. I didn't even re-tweet it because "duh."
Still think that whatever its ostensible subject, an enormous amount of performative rage on the internet--and its audience counterpart, rage-seeking--is about using rage to suppress more normal anxiety and sadness about quotidien things like death, aging, loneliness, failure.
This morning I really felt the truth of it. My family is musical and I have over a dozen nephews and nieces who also have various musical talents. My sister suggested we do a family music album for my mother for Christmas. All my nieces and nephews did a song that my brother lovingly collected, spliced, and mixed for the past month. I even for the first time in over a decade downloaded some recording software, set up a mixer, bought an xlr to usb cord and did hours of recording for just 6 minutes of album time. The family had been hyped about this for a couple months and the plan, at least as I heard it from others, was to watch her open and listen via zoom, which would also be our family Christmas zoom time. One sibling had done nothing for the album but burn the cd, but was also the first one there at my parents' house Christmas morning and had my mother open it and listen to it without us in true Leroy Jenkins fashion. I woke up to seeing posts in the family chat, etc. about how much she liked it, but I didn't want to see posts, I wanted to experience it with her.
My feelings were at first surprise, then confusion, then anger, which I didn't want to be the dominant feeling of my Christmas. On the one hand if I had anger and disappointment then I wanted to feel it and not sweep it away into the land of resentment, but I didn't understand why I was as angry as I was. I texted my brother and told him that I was 3/10 sad about him not waiting for us. He said he was sorry and he hadn't understood that was the plan. I had in my mind a bunch of rejoinders, like he would have known that was the plan if he had bothered to participate and read the family group messages and/or use a little common sense (what person gives a gift to a person that they themselves didn't buy or make?). I did explain to him directly that people who contributed had wanted and expected a listen party. But as I was typing more to him I realized that probably no one said that explicitly to him because he was out of the loop about most of it. And we have a little rule in my family that people cannot be held accountable for others' unexpressed expectations. So I found myself apologizing to him for getting upset about an unmet expectation I had, but had never expressed, and said that it was unfair to him that I left that expectation unclear but was still upset with him about it. And after I sent the text, I found that my anger had been released and I cried just a little bit with a sense of loss for what I had been anticipating most about Christmas this year. And it didn't feel good, but it felt much better than relying on the anger to shield me from those feelings of sadness.
See also below "trying to avoid big [feelings] by focusing on small ones you're more comfortable with."
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