Victoria on long-lasting change via meditation and perspective shifts

Author of Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight M.E. Thomas interviews science PhD candidate Victoria about the dramatic change that's happened in her life since the last time they spoke in Part 4 of the series. They speak about why Victoria was the way she was before, how did it feel to be that way, why she thought to do the meditation program, how that changed the way she viewed the world. They also talk about identity, personhood, agency, the desire to control and shifting our desires to control from things that are not within our control to thing that are properly within our control, the difference between direct and indirect control, "timshel" or thou mayest from "East of Eden," love, process vs. outcome orientation, choosing to move from reactionary emotional to thoughtful responses, accountability for choices, personal boundaries, identity hits, ego, and self-expression.

The meditation program Victoria participated in: https://www.innerengineering.com/ 

Covey's "scarcity" vs. "abundance" mentalities: http://franklincoveystephenpearson.blogspot.com/2011/01/abundance-mentality-vs-scarcity.html 

Paul Graham's Keep Your Identity Small: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

Part 1 of this series:  https://youtu.be/EAujim_xKWE  

Part 2 of this series: https://youtu.be/TmL55G9xgVU

Part 3 of this series: https://youtu.be/fnFjkWsKKnk

Part 4 of this series: https://youtu.be/ZJ68szHTOPs

More from Victoria on willpower: https://youtu.be/E-IIJoei_hk 

WeiWei Zoom interview 21 0423

 Here's the description:

M.E. Thomas (author of Confessions of a Sociopath) interviews WeiWei, a personality disordered individual that identifies as having characteristics of psychopathy and borderline personality disorder (BPD). They talk about feeling alien, including understanding at a young age that whatever they are naturally is repulsive to normal people and necessitates masking or pretending to be something else at a very early age just to get along. They talk about how the origin of much destructive behavior of the personality disordered comes from boredom and the boredom comes from a lack of cohesive personal narrative, which results in an existential sense of emptiness.

Blake Part 2 life after prison and Arya this Sunday 11:00 am.

Here's the invite info for this Sunday!

M.E. Thomas is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: My Meeting with Arya re Maura Murray, sociopath?

Time: Nov 22, 2020 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us04web.zoom.us/j/74213343854

Meeting ID: 742 1334 3854

Passcode: iAp41y 

Here's the Blake video on boredom and careers! More invite info up soon.

I get bored

From a sociopath friend:

Creating boundaries, finding outlets

A few of my socio readers have asked how to get to be higher functioning, particularly about controlling some impulses and knowing when it's ok to indulge others. Here is what another reader said:

For me it is a little different. I have a natural talent for art and I use this as a way to explore my impulses and desires without acting on them. My boundaries, sadly, are not that current. As long as I don't get caught, nothing truly stops me. There is a voice in my head that constantly reminds me of what I should not be doing, due to my possible loss in freedom, but most of the time this voice goes ignored. I can say that having a hobby, something that satisfies even for a brief moment, can aide in a form of control. My need to kill and destroy is kept in tact by an obsession I have of collecting objects that have to do with death. I study criminals, watch violent educational programming, and read as (well as collect) reading material on past crimes, violent fiction, and the like. Instead of killing animals I collect the road kill, and macerate the parts to keep the bones. I buy taxidermied creatures, and have photos of x-rays. I keep my urges under wraps by indulging what I want through Internet, books, art, and programming, everything, and I mean everything, besides the actual murder. The criminal television is the most helpful because more than half of the time at the end of the program the criminal is caught. Shows like "Law and Order: SVU" touch nearly every form of sexual perversion you can think of, so seeing it gives me plenty of joy for that moment. In "reality based" programming I hear the thoughts of the detectives, and learn that they are pretty clever and instinctive when it comes to what to look for. Regardless of what they are personally, they still get the job of capture and punish complete, and I get the point, and a tinge of hesitation.

I won't lie and say this hasn't made my temptations worse at times. Other than entertainment, I watch this form of programming to figure out what they did wrong, and how I would have done things differently to get away with it. Once I come up with a list of what they did wrong, I replay the act in my mind, committing the crime myself. In a fantasy it is always easy to assume I can get away with it, but one never knows until they try. The key is to never let it get to that point, repeating the words told to me by some associates of mine. Their words made sense.

Another thing I do, if the decision to go through with any impulse is still rampant, is to go through a mental list of pros and cons. I only get through this if I catch the impulse, which is something I am currently working on. On the rare occasions where I do catch them, I get irritated and anxious if I don't act. I can either do what I need to to calm this feeling, or walk away from it, and calm myself down. My laziness usually causes me to go through with the more damaging approach.

Example. There is a girl at my school right now that I am more than close to taking out violently. She is obnoxious, mentally deficient, cowardly, and her constant rhetorical questioning, instead of shutting her trap and listening, leaves me more than livid. Her existence does not contribute anything worthy to this planet. Even her look boils my blood, and there will be a point where my smart ass remarks towards her will not suffice. She used to sit near me, but I know she senses my distaste for her, so she has moved, which has helped. I spend half of the class daydreaming on ways to take her out instead of listening to the teacher. At first my fantasies seem more than pleasant, heavenly in fact, and in moments like this I forcibly question myself.

What will I really get out of this? Will this joy I may experience last long enough? What if this only makes my urges worse? Will I keep having to kill in order to get this euphoric feeling? Will I become a slave to my impulses to destroy? How long until I get complacent? What if I get caught? Where is my future if I do this?

My answers: Pleasure, possibly joy, who knows, find out. Who knows, find out. Deal with it when it happens. Possibly, is this a bad thing? Yes. Not that long. I may get caught, I may not. Prison, but once at the end of the road, who cares what the future outcome is.

Sadly, even after a list of logical reasoning and questions, most go ignored, but the main thing that always sticks out with me is the slave issue. I do not want to be a slave to anything or anyone, and if I fail to control my urges, I will, ultimately, become a slave to my desires. I will be living a paranoid life of never ending dissatisfaction because I'm being controlled by my need to destroy. Not fun.

Sexually my intentions are cruel. I indulge in them for the most part, but I make sure the people involved are, to some extent, willing. I frequent S&M conventions where you have people who want to be humiliated and punished, and though a little more controlled, this has helped. The fact that there is an audience helps a lot too. Being a secretive person, having an audience ruins my chances of completely acting out. Prostitutes are too dangerous to even bother with, as they are nobodies that can easily go missing, if not already, and make the temptation worse. They allow anything to be done to them, and because I don't value much of human life as it is, they would only make it easier for me to disrespect them. The people I have hurt and humiliated through sex wanted it, and what kept me from crossing that line was to constantly remind myself that I don't want to become a slave to this.

The boredom? Something I will just have to suck up and deal with, like everyone else. I don't have any successful methods for this as of yet. I still use art, but lately the drive to fulfill a finished piece isn't happening. I have some assignments that are time consuming, but after a certain amount of time, usually two and a half hours, I need to do something else. I go on spontaneous shopping sprees buying things I don't need just to do something, but being around people acting so foolish only causes my mind to race all over again with violent thoughts. I have medication that I am not taking because it leaves me awake for days even though it is supposed to make me drowsy. Not much aide in this category, tee-hee, sorry.

Is this a reverse psychological way of teaching me how to control myself, by having me write down my methods?
You sly devil ;)

If you were, in fact, clueless as to what went on here, and this wasn't a positive manipulation of yours, then I take back the credit I gave you. Have a grand day, M.E.

Ennui of a puppetmaster

From xkcd:
I was explaining to a friend last night that although part of me likes the fact that she is damaged because her vulnerability gives me a degree of power over her, it is not necessarily something I need to consummate to enjoy. Sometimes, like in physics, potential power can be just as enjoyable as actually exercised power. In the same way that a classic car collector can enjoy cars he never drives or a wine collector enjoys wine he never drinks, sometimes the achievement of some advantage, either known or unknown by the other person, is not a means to an end, but an end in itself.

Moonstruck and cages

This is not really that topical, but I was watching the film Moonstruck on the plane. There are two pieces of dialogue I had forgotten about. The one-handed Nicholas Cage character explains to Cher how he lost his hand:

                               RONNY
                         It's wood. It's fake. Five years ago
                         I was engaged to be married. Johnny
                         came in here, he ordered bread from
                         me. I put it in the slicer and I
                         talked with him and my hand got caught
                         cause I wasn't paying attention. The
                         slicer chewed off my hand. It's funny
                         'cause - when my fiancé saw that I
                         was maimed, she left me for another
                         man.

                                     LORETTA
                         That's the bad blood between you and
                         Johnny?

                                     RONNY
                         That's it.

                                     LORETTA
                         But that wasn't Johnny's fault.

                                     RONNY
                         I don't care! I ain't no freakin
                         monument to justice! I lost my hand,
                         I lost my bride! Johnny has his hand,
                         Johnny has his bride! You come in
                         here and you want me to put away my
                         heartbreak and forget?

Later she tells him what she thinks of him:


LORETTA
                         The big part of you has no words and
                         it's-a wolf. This woman was a trap
                         for you. She caught you and you could
                         not get away.
                              (She grabs his wooden
                              hand)
                         So you chewed off your foot! That
                         was the price you had to pay to be
                         free.
                              (throws his hand down)
                         Johnny had nothing to do with it.
                         You did what you had to do, between
                         you and you, and I know I'm right, I
                         don't care what you say. And now
                         you're afraid because you found out
                         the big part of you is a wolf that
                         has the courage to bite off its own
                         hand to save itself from the trap of
                         the wrong love. That's why there has
                         been no woman since that wrong woman.
                         You are scared to death what the
                         wolf will do if you make that mistake
                         again!

Later he tells her what's up with her life:

 RONNY

                         And what do you know? You tell me my 

                         life? I'll tell you yours. I'm a 

                         wolf? You run to the wolf in me, 

                         that don't make you no lamb! You're 

                         gonna marry my brother? Why you wanna 

                         sell your life short? Playing it 

                         safe is just about the most dangerous 

                         thing a woman like you could do. You 

                         waited for the right man the first 

                         time, why didn't you wait for the 

                         right man again?

I thought this was such an interesting concept -- "playing it safe is just about the most dangerous thing a woman like you could do." I sometimes feel this way when I think about things that might be considered "playing it safe," like planning on being in a job for longer than three years, being in a committed relationship, otherwise locking myself into something, caging myself in or allowing myself to be caged. I realize it is actually a dangerous thing for a person like me to do. I realize that I probably won't be able to stay locked up like that forever and that when I finally try to extricate myself, there may be significant damage to myself and others.  

It reminds me of the letter Amelia Earhart wrote to her husband George Putnam before they wed: "I may have to keep some place where I can go to be myself, now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinement of even an attractive cage." And commenting on her own capriciousness in a letter to a friend, "I don't want anything, all the time." So true.

Boredom: the three year itch

Someone sent me a link to a blog that is apparently written by a sociopath. I haven't read anything else but this post about sociopath's boredom, but I thought it addressed some interesting issues:

I’m suffering from a very specific sociopathic malady just at the moment: boredom. You may think that doesn’t sound so bad, but to a sociopath it’s a huge problem, something we can’t shake off or ignore or alleviate except by extreme measures.

***

So divorce or a breakup followed by serial dating and a new seduction; being promoted or headhunted OR fired – all these provide excitement, chaos to be skillfully negotiated, new people to be charmed and controlled and moulded. You’ll notice that the negative experiences carry the same value as the positive. It shouldn’t make sense, but to us it does. Change is good, and because of our tendency to grandiosity we think we’re equal to anything. We can do anything, deal with anything, overcome anything. We’re not afraid. Sadly when we charge off for our shiny new adventure we can forget that not everybody finds it quite so wonderful, and that it impacts on others in ways we hadn’t considered or felt responsible for.

***

The interesting thing I’ve found, in discussing with other people like me, is that for all of us it happens on a regular cycle. The length of the cycle varies from one to another, but for me it appears roughly every three years. It hasn’t been obvious up until now because with that timescale, naturally-occurring events in my life have often provided change at just the right time. Job changes, pregnancy, college etc all synchronised with my cycle and I haven’t often found myself feeling this way. I’ve also been lucky that the changes I’ve made have fit with the needs of my partner and family, and we’ve never found ourselves materially or emotionally worse off.

***

The interesting thing I’ve found, in discussing with other people like me, is that for all of us it happens on a regular cycle. The length of the cycle varies from one to another, but for me it appears roughly every three years. It hasn’t been obvious up until now because with that timescale, naturally-occurring events in my life have often provided change at just the right time. Job changes, pregnancy, college etc all synchronised with my cycle and I haven’t often found myself feeling this way. I’ve also been lucky that the changes I’ve made have fit with the needs of my partner and family, and we’ve never found ourselves materially or emotionally worse off.

Ennui and hating people

A lot of people wonder if sociopaths ever suffer negative emotions.  The truth is that they do (and usually in response to ennui or hating people) but they soon forget about them.  Here is an example of an email sent by a sociopath to a reader during one such moment:


and this rain, for once, put me in a very bad mood. i don't know what it is about today but i am feeling unusually "alone", and today in particular it is getting to me. i needed to write, i needed an audience to get this out, what exactly i am getting out, not too sure.

i want to ask you random questions but the point would be to get some answers, and i am sure that the chances of getting any are scarce. the people in my life are so disappointing, and i don't think they are doing anything wrong. it's so hard to tell when i am the way i am.

nothing is interesting me anymore. nothing is challenging me, and even at my job where i moved up rather quickly and playing all sorts of games with people, there is no substance. i want this life to have substance, and it isn't good enough. i don't think i am depressed, but overall i am just annoyed that this is it. i can't be more than i already am, personally anyway. i can and will get the money, the power, the position that i want, but then what? in a way i am sick of everything coming so easily for me. why try at all when everything is just handed to you?

it has become more apparent that as time goes by i have to become more secluded to keep my sanity. working with people truly enrages me, and i feel myself losing it all over again. perhaps if this was a sunshiny day i would be all good. maybe it's about that "rag" time, who knows.

i need to be near people that don't enrage me, but that is so hard to come by. you don't enrage me per se, but i also need substance. what to do.....oh what to do.

Starting over

I have been doing the same thing for around 3 years now.  That's my typical expiration date before I let things fall apart.  And that's really what it is for the most part.  I was talking to a friend about this.  I don't think it's self-destruction for the sake of self-destruction.  It's just abandoning my current life for something different, letting my life raft sink.

I thought of the analogy of an etch a sketch toy.  Let's say that you've spent about 3 years working on an etch a sketch drawing (it took you so long because you have a very flat learning curve).  Finally you get to the end, or maybe just as far as you would like to go on this particular design.  What do you do now?  You shake it up and start over.

You could keep it, maybe frame it and hang it up on the wall.  One time when I was in East Germany I actually visited someone's house where that's what they had done, essentially -- assembled puzzles, then varnished the top, put them in a frame, and hung them on the wall.  Not really the point of a puzzle, I thought.  The point is not to have a pretty picture of something to look at.  The point is the process of the puzzle, the enjoyment you get from cutting your teeth on some new game.  Same with the etch a sketch.  Same with life.  To me the point isn't to get to a certain point in my career or relationships or social circle or geography and just stick with it.  To me the point is the process: the planning, the initial steps, the reassessment, the further plotting, the execution, the tenacity, the fulcrum.  Often I don't even stick around to see the final product.  Sometimes I leave the puzzle half finished.  Once I am bored of sufficiently assured of my success (at least in my own mind), I am ready to move on and start over on something else.  

I know there is something coming up that could change my life drastically in about a year.  Otherwise I might be busy shaking things up right now.  But it's kind of weird timing, both close enough in my two year plan that it makes sense to keep doing what I am doing until then, and long enough away that I'm itching to get on with it.

The meaning of life (part 2)

I have the same problem as everyone else here (and anywhere) with boredom, delusions of grandeur, and an over acquaintance with feelings of emptiness and meaningless. I have chided deluded souls before about their Harry Potter syndrome, i.e. wishing that instead of ordinary they were powerful and indispensable, but that is me as well. I tend to deal with it in three ways: (1) try to ignore those feelings as being delusions, (2) try to justify those feelings as being accurate representations of reality by convincing myself that I really am special, and most recently (3) indulging them through religious devotion.

My religion is very self-empowering. I'm basically being told that I'm the equivalent of a superhero all the time -- not just a child of God but a leader amongst the chosen people. This narrative comports well with my delusions of self-grandeur, so it seems authentic to me. I feel like the demigods from the classics. It doesn't bother me at all that my powers come with restrictions or requirements, which I adhere to because the magic doesn't work without them. Am I deluded? Maybe. Am I happier this way than not? I think so. It simplifies things and keeps me out of trouble. I enjoy the ritual and the "spiritual high." Any sort of self denial I do has a tantric, pleasurable quality to it, at least most of the time. Because I am doing good things instead of bad, I feel like the universe should smile on me. I'm not constantly looking over my shoulder.

This last bit is a particularly good consequence. I am terrified that I am going to live to be 120. I know I could always kill myself, but I haven't had the fortitude and strength of conviction to do it thus far, who knows if I would even be physically able to do it then. I want to make sure that whatever I am doing in my life is sustainable, or easily retractable, or at the very least untraceable. Writing the blog violates that rule a little bit, but I guess there is such thing as being too careful. I'm particularly paranoid about the internet's ability to record things for all eternity. Shelley ridicules Ozymandias (“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”) while standing in front of the crumbled ruins of his "works," but now even the commonest of common men in the developed world will be immortal via Google's aggressive cache projects. There are a thousand things I can think of off-hand that I would rather not have immortalized.

But this long, rambling justification for the way I live reminds me of my closeted gay friend who works a nightmarish expat job for the money, is paranoid about touching public door handles, has two regular maids who don't know about the other just so neither thinks he is as unkempt as he is, spends the little free time he has sleeping or on role-playing games, and is secretly enamored with his straight best friend. I know my life seems equally ridiculous to the casual observer. Maybe that's why no one really talks about the meaning of life -- they have already found out what works for them, but are just too ashamed to discuss the sordid details.

The meaning of life (part 1)

A reader asked:

Hey dude, you know what would be interesting? An article about how sociopaths deal with boredom. What is boredom for a sociopath, why is it that it is so hard to deal with it and what do we do to not get bored. I am also curious about it. Thing is i am scared of the emptiness within myself. it's like when i was younger i used to have all these feelings that managed to keep me from getting bored by myself, you know, i had a way to meditate. but now whenever i am alone all i can sense is an empty space and for some reason i feel scared about it. it's like if i don't hold tight onto something i might fall into emptiness and never come back, dunno exactly. anyway, it's that emptiness that i want to know more about and how to deal with it.

Good question. I address this issue a little bit in this post. I was sort of made fun of for it in the comments of this post.

The human psyche really is so fragile. We lie to ourselves all the time about our existence and the meaning of our existence, like my recent post about free won't. Ignorance really is bliss in a lot of ways, but no matter how we try, we end up catching glimpses of the meaningless of life. I don't know why, really, but your question reminded me of Clive Wearing, a former musicologist, now the most severe form of amnesia ever documented. Every minute or so, he forgets absolutely everything and experiences a feeling of being born ex nihilo -- as if he never existed before, but now suddenly he does. He keeps a journal in which he writes over and over again, "I'm awake! For the very first time!" "I'm alive! For the first time!" "This is the first moment of my consciousness!" I think about him sometimes and wonder whether his life is horrible or wonderful.

What do you think about the subject?

I read the post and i think you are kinda right. That's how i feel, like living in a foreign country, gazing at the view but not being able to make any real interaction with the environment. I have been recently diagnosed with immature behaviour by a psychiatrist because i can't really make real progress in getting more mature, and i have to because i just dropped out of college because i was getting bored. Now i have to start all over again cause i don't want to skip college. I think it's true what you say about our meaningless existence also. I keep lying myself with fantasies about me being some kind of "chosen to do great" like that harry potter thing you talked about but i can see through the fog i create that i could also be a looser like everyone else. The "bad" thing is that realizing that i am just like everyone else doesn't change me. It's like i can't accept it willingly. I go on doing what i do and i feel kinda bad cause my psyche doesn't want to stop playing and realize that it has to get it's ass to work. Guess this unchangeable emptiness is something i have to get used to and work myself off to start doing some actual work. Guess this is why i reminded you of that amnesia guy. No matter what i do i can't change my perception upon life. I am still a kid even though i am 19.

About what you asked, i think he is having a good life feeling the beginning of his existence all the time like that. If he doesn't remember and the thrill keeps coming and coming i think he lives kinda happy all the time. Even though if someone explained to him his condition from a to the z, i think he would be kinda sad but not for long, right? Reminds me of the movie "First 50 dates" with adam sandler. If the people around him keep his illusion alive he doesn't have any reason for which to be unhappy and i guess that is all that matters. Sure, he won't do anything with his life being stuck in that loop hole but for him it doesn't matter, right? If i get to think of it he could be unhappy if he realized at the end of the loop that he is loosing his memory. That would be a moment of unhappiness, which would only make his existence pitiful but not horrible. Is pity a feeling a sociopath would feel? Hm...