Avoiding seeing red

My peacemaker brother was telling me today about some of the weird things he'll do, like park his car somewhere else after he's done pumping gas but needs to go inside the store for something, because he's worried that people will be put out or upset, or a handful of other weird things like that they seem almost overly considerate and polite, or maybe abnormally concerned about upsetting people. I actually identified with the general theme of his behaviors, though. I also try to avoid conflict, but not because it I fear confrontation. I explained to him that it's more that I worry about losing control in situations in which someone might try to confront me about something. The classic example is the DC metro worker story from the book. If someone tries to correct me or shame me about some behavior of mine, that is the most predictably reliable way to make me see red. This is a weakness, as it has big potential negatives for my social capital and clean criminal record, and there are essentially no advantages. So I've noticed that as I have gotten older, I've gotten increasingly more polite and considerate in an attempt to reduce the number of situations in which this might happen.

I thought this recent comment was interesting, along the same lines, with another good potential suggestion for avoiding them:

My rages have dissipated to very rare status the older I have gotten. Might happen to you too. Seems to be the norm according to research. A good way to deal with them is to recognize when you are triggering, keep a journal if you must. Then when you see/feel a trigger coming on step back from the situation, acknowledge it, control your breathing, try to break your focus. The focus break is important since we achieve that hyper focus state and when we reach that BAM in the zone. See if there are any physical triggers too. Low on nicotine or blood sugar drop, dealing with too many idiots in short period of time, frustration, and physical pain like you mentioned. I hit the trifecta day before yesterday and almost went off but I knew what was causing it and managed to clear my triggers before i did to much damage. On an amusing note I appear to have inadvertently trained the people I work with to spot my triggers and they will take a look at me and send me out to have cigs and food when I present symptoms. This benefits everyone. If you can train people around you to be spotters like this and let give you some detox moments then you can usually avoid the meltdown. 

Beating the market by trading like a sociopath (part 1)

I love money.  It’s so impersonal.  In a world where winning is the best thing, money is frequently how I keep score.  I don’t like spending it, necessarily.  Money doesn’t matter to me in itself.  I only like it because other people care about it a lot (more than almost anything else in the world).  Because they care about it so much, they will fight hard for it—against me or anybody else.  It makes the game very fun.  And although it is never high stakes on my part, it almost always is with whomever I am playing against.  I play because it’s a game.  Others play because it’s their life.  People are frequently ruined.

I have an incredibly green thumb for money.  I fully funded my retirement by the time I was 30 years old.  Since I started investing seriously in 2004, I have averaged a 9.5% return in the stock market—257% better than the average returns of the S&P 500 over the same period of 3.7%.  It’s sick how well I do trading stocks.  Beating the market this soundly and consistently is unheard of and many argue it is impossible (or due solely to luck).  In 2011, only 4 out of 5 mutual fund managers beat the market, and only a handful of individuals have managed to do so with any regularity. One Forbes article (“Why Smart People Fail to Beat the Market") put it this way “There are only two ways to beat the stock market in the long-term, net of expenses: one, trade on superior information; two, be lucky.” (Unfortunately, the efficient market hypothesis holds that all available information about a company’s future prospects are already widely known and reflected in the price of a stock,  so that just leaves one way to beat the market.  The one exception is so-called insider information, which is largely illegal to trade upon.).

But I am not trading on better knowledge.  I am a relatively unsophisticated investor.  Instead, I am trading on a special vision.

Ten lepers

I tell people to keep in touch with me when I "help" them "answer" their "questions," and sometimes people do a little, but it never continues even a month after. I'm curious: do any of you still read the site? For those of you wondering if you, your roommate, or your lover is a sociopath, did you ever reach a conclusion? Particularly the empaths in love with sociopaths, did any of my advice really help? Any of my tactics really work? Are you happily involved in a loving relationship with a sociopath now? Or happily finally over him because at last you came to some understanding?

Answer here if you don't mind, with a link to your question if it was posted.

My prediction, though, is that no one will respond, and I haven't decided yet what that says about the efficacy of my advice (or the staying power of empaths reading a blog about sociopaths with any sort of regularity).