YouTube Zoom Interview for Lance the Christian Sociopath

 Here's the YouTube description:

Author of Confessions of a Sociopath M.E. Thomas talks with Christian Lance about whether or not a psychopath can be a good Christian and what that might mean, about how the psychopath thinks in very outcome oriented ways (to the point that it might be difficult for them to conceptualize how other people make choices in process oriented ways), about how psychopaths mask and evade detection by pretending to be what people expect of them, etc. 

Co-parenting with a Psychopath: John Doe Part 2

This video gets cut off at the end, but interesting thoughts about psychopathic parenting and co-parenting. Please feel free to share any suggestions you have for John Doe in the comments.

M.E. Thomas · M.E. Thomas interviews Co-Parent with a Psychopath John Doe

When Your Child Is a Psychopath

A reader writes:

I’ve been keeping you in mind, particularly since lately I see more and more nuanced discussions of psychopathology cropping up. Paul Bloom’s ‘Against Empathy’, though I haven’t yet read the full book, is a particular point of interest for me. But I found out today that The Atlantic had published this article very recently, and I wanted to share it: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/when-your-child-is-a-psychopath/524502/

What stands out for me in this situation is the fact that the girl, Samantha, is adopted; I know that children who have been abandoned or through the foster system face greatly increased hardships in their development, which is something I find deeply troubling on a social level. It seems to me that whatever harmful antisocial traits Samantha has may have been exacerbated by past trauma, even as early as her infancy.

Anyway, if you’re so inclined, please read it, and I hope you can take away something useful from it!

Incidentally, concerning the earlier stuff I mentioned about anime - have you ever heard of PSYCHO-PASS (yes, the title is in all caps)? It’s a speculative science fiction series specifically about psychopathy and preemptive judgment in criminal justice. You might find it interesting.

One of the more interesting things for me in the article was this paragraph on low resting heart rate (mine is always just barely hitting 60 beats per minute):

Psychopaths not only fail to recognize distress in others, they may not feel it themselves. The best physiological indicator of which young people will become violent criminals as adults is a low resting heart rate, says Adrian Raine of the University of Pennsylvania. Longitudinal studies that followed thousands of men in Sweden, the U.K., and Brazil all point to this biological anomaly. “We think that low heart rate reflects a lack of fear, and a lack of fear could predispose someone to committing fearless criminal-violence acts,” Raine says. Or perhaps there is an “optimal level of physiological arousal,” and psychopathic people seek out stimulation to increase their heart rate to normal. “For some kids, one way of getting this arousal jag in life is by shoplifting, or joining a gang, or robbing a store, or getting into a fight.” Indeed, when Daniel Waschbusch, a clinical psychologist at Penn State Hershey Medical Center, gave the most severely callous and unemotional children he worked with a stimulative medication, their behavior improved.

And regarding the ineffectiveness of punishment or bad experiences in terms of modifying behavior:

Faulty brakes may help explain why psychopaths commit brutal crimes: Their brains ignore cues about danger or punishment. “There are all these decisions we make based on threat, or the fear that something bad can happen,” says Dustin Pardini, a clinical psychologist and an associate professor of criminology at Arizona State University. “If you have less concern about the negative consequences of your actions, then you’ll be more likely to continue engaging in these behaviors. And when you get caught, you’ll be less likely to learn from your mistakes.”
***
This insight is driving a new wave of treatment. What’s a clinician to do if the emotional, empathetic part of a child’s brain is broken but the reward part of the brain is humming along? “You co-opt the system,” Kiehl says. “You work with what’s left.” 



The article also talks optimistically about the possibilities of treatment, with this caveat:

No one believes that [the boys in treatment] will develop true empathy or a heartfelt moral conscience. “They may not go from the Joker in The Dark Knight to Mister Rogers,” Caldwell tells me, laughing. But they can develop a cognitive moral conscience, an intellectual awareness that life will be more rewarding if they play by the rules. “We’re just happy if they stay on this side of the law,” Van Rybroek says. “In our world, that’s huge.”

4 Stress-Management Techniques for Anxious Kids

Image via Pixabay 

Approximately 50% of mental illness symptoms begin by age 14, even if parents or kids don’t immediately recognize the symptoms. Even if you don’t suspect your child has a mental health condition, you may worry about how much stress he experiences. Stress can have a major impact on the body, especially if it remains untreated for a long period of time. The stress-management techniques below can help alleviate childhood anxiety, whether you’re parenting one of the 17.1 million kids with a psychiatric condition or simply helping your child cope with temporary stressors.

Talk it Out

Sometimes a vent session is all your child needs to recover from a stressful experience. When your child is worried about something, encourage him to talk about what’s wrong. Academic stress, peer pressure or bigger issues like moving to a new school, can all have a big impact on a child’s mental health. Ask open-ended questions that encourage discussion, such as, “Can you tell me what happened at lunch today?” or “I haven’t seen Emily over here lately. What’s new with her?” This gives your child the option to give you a detailed explanation of what’s happening rather than resorting to a one-word response.

If your son or daughter hates talking about uncomfortable topics, give them a journal. Encourage them to jot down anything that comes to mind, good or bad, each day. Consider setting aside quiet time for journaling before bed or first thing in the morning so that your child gets in the habit of jotting down their feelings. If your child struggles with spelling or doesn’t know how to read, have them draw pictures instead. You can also give them a stack of old magazines and encourage them to cut out pictures that they like or relate to so that they can paste them in the journal.

Create a Checklist

Not every episode of anxiety has a specific trigger, but some anxiety attacks stem from a fear of the unknown. You can help mitigate this type of concern by having your child create a checklist that details how to react in a stressful situation. You can create different checklists for common situations or develop one basic sheet that applies to any issue.

Keep the checklist as concise as possible while still covering everything that your child wants or needs. This prevents the checklist from becoming an overwhelming to-do list that adds - rather than alleviates - stress. Kids who can’t read can draw pictures to help them remember what to do when they’re stressed. You can also take photographs of different things, such as your child taking deep breaths or coloring in a notebook, for the checklist.

Practice Breathing Exercises

When anxiety strikes, encourage your child to take slow, deep breaths and focus on his breathing. Have him close his eyes so that there are fewer distractions, and ask him to breathe through his nose rather than his mouth.

You may have seen adults count to 10 or even 20 during deep breathing sessions, but high numbers can be difficult for kids with limited attention spans. Start by counting to 3, and increase to 5 or 7 over time if you feel your child is ready. Have your son or daughter take a deep breath, hold it for the count of 3, and exhale for the count of 3.

Perform Visualization

What’s your child’s favorite thing to do? Is there a special place he loves to visit? When stress strikes, have your child close his eyes and picture his desired destination or activity. Have him incorporate all of his senses during his visualization exercise. If he’s on the beach, he should smell the ocean and feel the warm sand beneath his toes. If he’s pretending he’s eating his favorite meal, he should smell the food and think about how it feels in his mouth.

Remind your child that he is in control and nothing bad can happen during his visualization. The weather is nice, and everyone is happy. There are no tornadoes, spooky clowns, or anything else that may terrify your child.

Coping with anxiety is difficult at any age, but there are ways to effectively tackle worries. Encourage your child to try the techniques above next time an episode of anxiety occurs so that he can find much-needed relief from the situation.

Raised right

From a sociopathic identifying reader about how, growing up, her parents actually allowed her to be who she is:

I've been reading your blog for some time now, in addition to reading your book when it came out, and love how you take things on, in a way that reads quite a bit how I would do it. I'm a sociopath as well and found much  in common with you.

Growing up I was different from early on, I didn't cry like other girls, didn't get upset by the usual things, though on the other hand my patience would wear very thin for a young girl and along with it my ability to tolerate waiting and such. Beyond that I did well in school and did usual stuff like dance lessons. One thing that set me apart from other girls, indeed kids in general, was that I was able to observe people and pick up on how they talked, who paid attention to who and what attention was paid to who. 

Owing to my achievement at school, I did well without even really trying, my lack of emotional meltdowns and my ability to talk to those older than me and offer up things a girl of 7 or 8 wouldn't ever be expected to, an interesting but very advantageous thing happened. I was seen as being grown up for my age and what's more because of that not just a good girl but a girl who couldn't do any wrong. After all if I'm so smart and so grown up then I must know so well how to behave. So even before I ever actually created my outward mask to show people, one was put upon me. 

And this is where the issue of environment comes in even more. I grew up in a well to do suburb and since it was fairly settled down people it's the sort of place where not only do you know your next door neighbor, you know the neighbors across the street etc. So it was a place where people just socialized a lot which fed my observing. Also it was a place where at least among the adults everyone was fairly smart and most had degrees to match. Being that smart people who generally like their lives and what they do like to talk about what they do and what they like, I found another benefit. No matter how far my questions about things went, no one ever thought it too out of place. 

So I was in an environment where a fair bit of my early sociopathy didn't stick out or raise any eyebrows. Also since I was decided to be a good girl, I had it very easy getting away with things. Get a kid to do something and they get caught? Saying I told them to do it would just get them in more trouble. After all I would never tell someone to do something bad. Of course I seized on this and made the most of it. Even when a few times I'd get asked about something, no one ever doubted I was speaking the truth when I said I had no idea about it. It never occurred to anyone I was lying through my teeth. 

Now the other issue is, my parents. They had me quite young, indeed not only were they not married, they were barely dating. However as luck had it they found they were an ideal pair for each other. Even if I came along well before either expected being a parent, there were no negative consequences for me. Unlike some I never experienced neglect, abuse or anything that would show a sign of being a trigger of my sociopathy, as far as anyone could tell I was just born this way. I also never experienced any sort of lack of stability early on. My parents' parents made sure everything was taken care of and any help my parents needed was always there. 

As for my parents they found themselves with a daughter that wasn't a challenge exactly but was different. They noticed my lack of crying and getting upset about usual things but given I appeared otherwise normal they just figured I grew out of it.Though eventually they noticed that I wasn't just not getting upset at usual kid stuff I wasn't reacting emotionally to much of anything. But they figured it probably just a matter of adjusting. After all a 6 year old can't be expected to really process some sad news story on TV. Also I wouldn't appear to get as outwardly excited about things like Christmas and I didn't seem to have much feeling to saying things like "I love you".

Then as my ability to observe people became more and more apparent and with it my ability to engage people in ways beyond my years they did start thinking I was deeply different. There was also my lying but since it was on the level of telling a friend my mom said I could come over, well doesn't every kid do that? Then eventually my mom pieced together a few things and realized I was not just different but different in ways that were not exactly usual. Namely by watching my reaction to a few things, some that happened in person others that I saw on TV, she recognized I not only didn't feel bad for people in pain, I seemed to enjoy it. Indeed during one relevant TV news story she asked why I was smiling and I said I liked it, that it was cool. At this point you'd expect mom and dad, who was told, to promptly flip their shit. Their smart and grown up for her age daughter isn't just different, but at 8 she's showing signs of no empathy, no remorse and sadism. But they didn't, since I wasn't hurting people actively well let me be and just address things if need be.

Then there was, at 9, my swearing which was handled by saying that if I promised to only do it at home I could do it. Plus there was my total lack of sense for any social boundaries, I had no problem not only talking to anyone but just coming up to someone and asking whatever I wanted. Also owing to all my observations of adults I questioned a lot about how things work and are ordered. That  came together to make me rather displeased with the idea that at 10 I had to somehow dress my age, why when I'm aware of things as I am do I have to try to act and dress like someone I'm not all the time?

My parents' reaction was to deal with me as not what I should be but who I was. Instead of trying to impede me or try to get me to be what I wasn't they just let me be. Mom agreed that yes having rules that apply to every girl my age like they were all the same was silly. So she'd let me get clothes that maybe weren't "age appropriate" and then take me out wearing them. Sure some people might give her looks, but she would rather be who she felt I needed instead of who someone else might think she'd need to be.

Different children and identity

An LDS person with two children on the autism spectrum asked me both about LDS reactions and about what sorts of things I would be careful about with my young people who are different (kind of, she asked something slightly different but I obtusely missed it and answered that question instead).

My response:

I've actually had mostly good reactions from other LDS people. I once had a relief society president in one of my wards flip out on me about it, but she tearfully apologized for it the next week, giving me a hug. When the book first came out, I read some amazon reviews, etc., and some mormons were a little down on that, said I couldn't really be mormon or had a terrible understanding of mormonism (and I'm sure I didn't understand certain things very well, and my understanding has constantly evolved, but isn't that true of everyone and do we usually judge people because of it?). I have had a couple mormon friends that may not keep in touch with me because of it, or maybe they're just busy and I'm imagining things. Overall the reception within the church has been much better than without the church. To the extent that things got a little ugly here and there (you probably know what I'm talking about), I can sympathize with what people thought they had to do. I think me writing the book put a lot of people in a bad position personally because it came as a surprise and they very naturally perhaps wondered if I am a practiced liar, what did they really know about who I am. They were stuck between feelings that they had to rush in to defend themselves or others or institutions against a perceived threat and the reality that I've always been basically the same person, pre and post book, I'm just much more open now.

If I had advice to give to anyone dealing with children who are different, it would be to try to be very careful to not damage their identity or suggest that they need to be any different than how God created them to be. My current (LDS) therapist says that the best way that we can worship God is to be precisely the being that he created in us. Questions of identity are tricky, of course, because sometimes we associate with attributes that are just coincidentally related to our socialization, experiences, etc. But I think that's all the more reason to be very careful with how we interfere with people's expression of their identities, because we never know what is truly core to who they are.

I'll give you a quick example of what I think to be bad interference. My 5 year old nephew is differently minded. One of the things he does (did) is pull the front part of his hair, particularly when he was thinking analytically (which he loves to do). It drove his mother a little crazy, so she buzzed his hair. I talked to him about it, and he seemed really sad, thought it would take forever for his hair to grow back, and also felt like it was a punishment or because he was bad for pulling his hair. A week later he told his mom, "See, I pull on my lip now like this [demonstrates] because you cut off my hair. And if you cut off my lip, I'll just do this with my ears [plays with ears]." It wasn't accusatory, and it wasn't critical of her. He just realized that there was a reason why he did the things he did, and that they were so important to him that he had already come up with another contingency plan if he lost the ability to do that thing.

My therapist on this topic says that even things that aren't closely associated with identity, like pulling on hair ticks, can still implicate identity in dangerous ways. He says that although things like certain types of anxiety can and should be confronted in people's lives, if you try to get a child to do it at too early of a stage, it will not only affect the anxiety but the child's other aspects of core identity. 

Sofia the First: Good Little Witch

File this under the heading of good things to show young budding sociopaths or children with other anti-social personalities (aspies? autistics?), Sofia tries to teach her witch friend that she can use her powers for good rather than evil and that it is in her best interest to do so (also good brainwashing about victims giving people a second change despite their fears and reluctance to trust):

Meeting a sociopathic son halfway

From a reader:

I'm sure this is something you hear with relative frequency but I am fairly certain that my son is a sociopath. He is nine years old and he seems to have come upon a time in his life where he is beginning to sense that there is something different about him.

There has been something "off" about him for his entire life, from his epic tantrums to his insensitivity to cues like tone of voice and body language. He would go into episodes where his eyes went dead, for lack of a better word, and he would be absolutely uncontrollable. These same episodes now result in a child who just doesn't care what anyone is saying to him. He simply stands with that blank stare and absorbs nothing. What we were dealing with really hit me when I talked to him about his continued physical violence toward his younger brother. I was trying to get him to empathize with his brother and understand how he felt and my son simply could not do it. He was trying but when I asked about how he thought his brother felt, the only emotions he could manage to think of were "angry" or "happy". He also seemed completely unable to really understand the feelings of his brother, relying on physical cues from his brother rather than any real connection.

My concern is that he has been reacting violently to the tension he seems to be dealing with as a result of his peers advancing emotionally while he does not. He has been fighting with other students, arguing with teachers, stealing, lying, and manipulating. He's chokes his brother, physically fought with teachers and adults, delighted in feeding live lizards to the dog, convinced his teacher he was depressed, and threatened suicide to illicit a reaction. He's been suspended, put in detention, talked to by the school resource officer, had his grades drop, and any number of other consequences. He simply doesn't care and seems to not learn from experience. We've enacted an allowance method that gives direct correlation between his behavior and monetary reward. This seems to be effective, making good behavior more profitable than poor behavior but I don't know how effective it will be at curbing behavior when a strong impulse hits.

I am trying to understand how to help direct him toward a higher level of functionality. I know that he can't really be "cured" nor does he need to be. I just don't know how to help him understand why it is important to behave in accordance to society's rules. I have had conversations with him about it but the value of obeying rules is hard to impart to someone who genuinely doesn't care about the consequences and lacks the control to reign in his impulses. I'm scared that he will end up in jail or that he will really hurt someone someday if I can't direct him to a more productive path.

I suppose my question, after a bit of rambling, is this: Is there anything someone could have done at a young age to help you to understand the value of "the mask"? I hate that he has to put one on but there is no way for him to succeed in life without it. Is there any way someone could have helped you to develop the ability to live more easily in society? I know you did so on your own but might there have been a way for someone to help you to discover it earlier and save yourself some grief? I don't want to label him or make him something he's not. After all, there is a reason that sociopathy cannot be diagnosed until later in life but I want to help him because he is certainly on that path and I think waiting until he is an adult to address the likely cause of his difficulty would be a mistake.

Growing up to be a sociopath?

This was an interesting new comment to an old post, "Sociopath child, to teen, to adult":

It's stunning how accurately this describes my life. I get so frustrated when I hear people say sociopaths are the same person from fetus into adulthood. That sociopaths were heartless, self absorbed little monsters when they were children or they aren't really sociopaths.

But I recall a time of feeling normal and having emotions. Or at least feeling as though I had emotions. Feeling love and crying over things, even if they were actually fake. I don't think sociopathy blossoms until your 20's. It's like a seed of darkness that slowly shallows you as you mature.

My childhood followed the same trend of fitting in to hitting an abrupt wall where I was a weird, socially awkward outcast. Always getting picked on and having a very tight circle of friends, going about life like a dog trying to play piano. It wasn't until my mid to late teens that I started studying psychology and social interaction, picking up books on how to manipulate and pick up women, etc.

Sooner or later I became good at getting what I want (control over men, sex from women). It was then I stumbled upon books about psychopathy, and was slowly starting to manifest all the telltale traits. I'm 27 now, and can't remember the last time I really felt all that much about anything. I think I went through a "mean streak" in my early 20's, but now I'm starting to mellow. I don't feel love, but I don't feel contempt either. 

I think I went through that deep soul searching period to reach this point, and I feel I've done a 180 away from the callous, cynical, reckless ways of the dysfunctional sociopath. I don't feel compassionate, but maybe a little benign. Like the world is undeserving, but I happen to be merciful. I don't see a reason to do harm, so why not try to be civil and let the sheep adore me? 

It was really challenging to write the childhood chapters of the book. I wasn't sure whether to write them in the mindset that I have now about things that I used to think were perfectly normal or innocent (manipulations, certain antisocial behavior, etc.) or whether to write it with the mindset that I had then, with all of the megalomania or delusional thinking that I was heavily subject to until my late teens and early twenties. Like everything with the book, my choice ended up being to basically filter out only the most sociopathic seeming things -- often whatever sounded most sociopathic or interesting to my editor at the time. In a way, doing that unwittingly catered to this idea that we are static individuals -- have always been and acted the same. 

The truth is I don't trust my memories of particularly my early childhood before about 8 or 9 years old. They're too hazy and they seem too dream-like to feel like they really happened to me. Maybe I was more normal than I seemed. Or maybe I was more different than I seemed. I do remember having a sense at the time that I was seemed more ruthless and coldhearted than my peers, but I also have a lot of memories of feeling pretty normal -- upset about regular things that children get upset about and megalomaniacal and selfish but perhaps no more than all children tend to be. I don't know, is it possible to have been normal and feeling emotions and then later grow into a sociopath?

Disgust (part 1)

In celebration of American mother's day, This American Life episode, called Tarred and Feathered (well worth a listen in its entirety), features a very inspiring mother/son relationship. The show discusses a young boy (they call him Adam, currently 18 years old), who realizes around the time of puberty that he was attracted to small children -- a pedophile. He starts watching child on child pornography, which didn't seem too unusual to him because he was close to their ages. As he grew older, however, he realized that he was still attracted to that younger age range. He eventually becomes totally turned off of child pornography when he sees a clip involving an 18 month old baby. From the narrator:

He began reading up on child abuse and was upset at what he learned. He decided he wanted to stop watching child porn, and he needed help if he was going to do that. For that help, Adam turned back to the internet. He posted on a mental health forum, explaining his situation and asking for advice. Two women who were child abuse survivors befriended him. With their help, Adam says he stopped watching porn. But in its place grew a deep depression.

It wasn't like he'd stopped having sexual thoughts about kids. He says he felt like a monster for having viewed the videos, but also just for having the attractions. Some days, he thought about killing himself. He didn't know what else to do. He was 16. He wanted to talk to someone. So he started with a cautious letter to his mum.

Dear Mummy, it begins, I'm writing this letter to you, as I cannot bring myself to say what I need to say to you to your face. It would simply be too painful for me. I am always overshadowed with feelings of depression, guilt, and shame. I'm really sick and tired of covering these feelings up. I want you to let me see a psychologist. I understand you probably have a lot to ask me. But I need some time to get my head wrapped around things. Love, Adam.

He didn't explain the source of the problem, and his mother never asked. Instead, she made him an appointment at a local therapist for a week or so later.

The therapist at first didn't believe him, then made excuses, then she showed disgust. She told him that she couldn't treat him. She told him that she had no one to refer him to. She told his mother against his wishes. He tells how his mother took it:

You know, my mother, I'm sure, reacted the best I really could have hoped for. She kind of put her arm on my shoulder and squeezed a little bit. She seemed to be supportive. I'm sure she was in shock, probably kind of horrified, but at least she was able to hide that. And the fact that she was able to do that, it meant so much to me.

The mother continued to be supportive, and apart from the few subsequent therapists that have seen Adam. She hasn't even told her husband.

The parallels to sociopathy are fascinating. There is basically no scientific understanding of what to do with a pedophile ("It is a gigantic black hole in science."). There is no treatment for a pedophile that has not offended. Because therapists don't know how to handle them, they often get caught up in mandatory reporting laws, which caused the number of self-referrals to drop precipitously "because folks are too afraid to reach out for help. The consequences are too high." And none of the panic/paranoia related to pedophiles is actually scientifically supported:

"Another thing that has not been researched in-depth is if having an attraction to kids makes it more dangerous to be around them. On its face, it seems obvious. But there is no evidence to support it."

About the lack of research:

For years, Letourneau has been trying to change all this, to get money for research, and for prevention programs. But there's not much money for that. Funders don't want to be associated with pedophilia research. The stigma is too great. Even someone like Letourneau, who wants to do this research in order to prevent children from being abused, has been called a pedophile sympathizer, simply for advocating these programs.

Elizabeth Letourneau
If we can prevent this, we can prevent a lot of harm and a lot of cost. And we just don't. It's nuanced. It's difficult to wrap your head around. It's a lot easier to say these guys are monsters. Let's put them in prison. Let's put them on a registry. Let's put them in civil commitment facilities. And forget about them.

Even the numbers are similar to sociopathy: "1% to 3% of men would meet the diagnostic criteria for pedophilia".

After searching online for any help with his condition and finding nothing, Adam started his own support group:

Everyone I've spoken to has a story about how the group saved them. A 22-year-old college student told me this one.

Anonymous College Student
There was a time when I was really running out of hope for the future. I was unemployed, and I felt like no one was going to give me a shot. And I felt like I had literally no shot in life. And I kind of wanted to kill myself. I didn't do it. The first thing I thought of was especially Adam, in specific, but the rest of them as well, that I couldn't let them down like that.

From the narrator: "In a different world, this person would be talking to a professional, not a 19-year-old with no training at all. Or maybe this person would just be in prison" beca
use there are no current ways of dealing with people in this situation. But the very fact that they exist suggests that pedophilia isn't necessarily un-manageable. It has prompted at least one researcher to talk to the members of the support group in order to devise possible early prevention and other treatment programs.

Can you imagine finding out at some point in your life that you are different, and for the type of different you are there is no help or sympathy but only disgust?

Quote: Hardened

“Young bodies are like tender plants, which grow and become hardened to whatever shape you've trained them.”

― Desiderius Erasmus

Child sociopath: Early intervention as treatment

Sociopathic children represent a unique quandary for people who love children and hate sociopaths. They are also the most impressionable, which some see as an invitation to target them with attempts at early intervention. From Fox News:

Criminologist Nathalie Fontaine of Indiana University studies the tendency toward being callous and unemotional (CU) in children between 7 and 12 years old. Children with these traits have been shown to have a higher risk of becoming psychopaths as adults.

"We're not suggesting that some children are psychopaths, but CU traits can be used to identify a subgroup of children who are at risk," Fontaine said.

Yet her research showed that these traits aren't fixed, and can change in children as they grow. So if psychologists identify children with these risk factors early on, it may not be too late.

"We can still help them," Fontaine said. "We can implement intervention to support and help children and their families, and we should."

Neuroscientists' understanding of the plasticity, or flexibility, of the brain called neurogenesis supports the idea that many of these brain differences are not fixed.

"Brain research is showing us that neurogenesis can occur even into adulthood," said psychologist Patricia Brennan of Emory University in Atlanta. "Biology isn’t destiny. There are many, many places you can intervene along that developmental pathway to change what's happening in these children."

How do you accomplish this early intervention?

"You don’t have to do direct brain surgery to change the way the brain functions," Brennan said. "You can do social interventions to change that."

Fontaine's studies, for example, suggest that kids who display callous and unemotional traits don't respond as well to traditional parenting and punishment methods such as time-outs. Instead of punishing bad behavior, programs that emphasize rewarding good behavior with positive reinforcement seem to work better.

Raine and his colleagues are also testing whether children who take supplemental pills of omega-3 fatty acids — also known as fish oil — can show improvement. Because this nutrient is thought to be used in cell growth, neuroscientists suspect it can help brain cells grow larger, increase the size of axons (the part of neurons that conducts electrical impulses), and regulate brain cell function.

"We are brain scanning children before and after treatment with omega-3," Raine said. "We are studying kids to see if it can reduce aggressive behavior and improve impaired brain areas. It's a biological treatment, but it's a relatively benign treatment that most people would accept."

I'm conflicted about this news. On the one hand I am reminded of very well-meaning attempts at early intervention for children of first generation immigrants, Romani children, aboriginal children, native children, and other efforts at forced integration and assimilation into the "norm." On the other hand some sociopaths really do suffer immensely. To the extent that these efforts demonstrate society's increasing awareness of sociopaths and desire to cater more carefully to sociopathic needs, e.g. using very consistent incentive schemes instead of punishment to achieve desired behavior, I see it as a step in the right direction.

The traumatized child

A few people in response to the book or blog have accused me of narcissistically wishing that the world would accommodate me and other sociopaths, rather than us adapting to the way the world already works. The funny thing about that suggestion is that adapting to a hostile environment is how I got here in the first place. I was raised in a home with parents who were always self-involved, often neglectful, and sometimes violent. Ever since I can remember, it was always me adapting to them and my environment (or more like me rolling with the punches) rather than experiencing any special accommodations for me and the person I was growing to become. I often think that my lack of attachment to any sense of self derives from these childhood losses. To my child mind, there was no point to becoming attached to something or care about it in an emotional way if it could disappear, be destroyed, or be taken from me the next day. Of course this is not the way that every child responds to those sorts of environmental triggers, nor was my childhood even remotely close to what I consider real trauma and abuse. But I feel like I experienced enough (obviously) to not only trigger whatever genetic propensities I had for personality disorders or other mental health issues, but also to understand how influential one's childhood experiences are in shaping the person that one eventually becomes.

From the NY Times under the headline "Teaching Children to Calm Themselves":

Children . . . who experience neglect, severe stress or sudden separation at a young age can be traumatized. Without appropriate adult support, trauma can interfere with healthy brain development, inhibiting children’s ability to make good decisions, use memory or use sequential thought processes to work through problems.

Do these children expect the world to accommodate them?

The education system responds bluntly to kids with these challenges. The standard arsenal of disciplinary measures — from yelling and “timeouts” to detentions and suspensions — are not just ineffective for children who have experienced traumatic stress; they make things worse. By some estimates, preschool expulsions are 13 times more common than K-12 expulsions — a finding that, given the bleak future it portends for these children (and the associated costs for society), should send alarm bells ringing across the nation.

I don't actually think these children expect anything, much less to be accommodated. But is it a good idea to accommodate them? Probably, at least as long as it is cheaper to accommodate them and provide them with adequate coping mechanisms while they are young rather than leaving them to continue their behavioral issues into adulthood, and all of the accompanying social costs that would entail. At least that is the economic rationale for whether it is a good idea. Is there a moral one? And if so, does the moral one say that we should help them? Or maybe that we shouldn't accommodate bad behavior (the classic parental excuse, "he just wants _____, so don't give it to him)? Maybe our moral beliefs cause us to believe that people should bear all responsibility for controlling any behavior that is even remotely volitional? Or do we only start saying those sorts of things about people once they've turned 18 and become an adult who still has behavioral problems (i.e. after society has already failed them)?

One of the most interesting parts of the article to me was what sort of "special accommodations" were advocated for these children:

Luke is receiving individual therapy. But he is also surrounded by caregivers who understand his needs and know how to respond when he needs help. Through the Head Start Trauma Smart model, teachers, parents and even the bus drivers and cafeteria workers who interact with children receive training in trauma.

This allows them to respond more skillfully, rather than reacting out of anger, frustration or resentment. Indeed, one of the biggest lessons for teachers and parents who undergo this training is that the very first step is learning how to calm, and care for, themselves, especially when they are overstressed.

In other words, one of the primary goals of the training is to try to minimize the caregivers' own emotional reactions to the child's behavior -- to focus on calming their own selves down first. Does that suggest any plan of action to empaths who deal with sociopaths on a regular basis?

One bus driver who underwent the training explained how it changed the way she sees the world:

“I used to be the kind of person who said, ‘The way it looks is the way it is.’ But I don’t look at it that way anymore,” McIntosh said. “There are things that happen to people that we don’t know about.”

And as a director of a similar program argued:

“We’re built to succeed as human beings. If that normal process gets disrupted, we need to do anything we can do to put it back on track.”

Could it be that sociopath children who have experienced trauma have already come up with a way(s) to put their lives on track to overcome their chaotic environments? But in a way that is both more efficient, powerful and more objectionable than people would like to see in their child victims of trauma?

Mental illness for children: Disney's Frozen

I have nieces that are obsessed with the Disney movie Frozen. I haven't actually seen it yet, but they have explained to me the entire plot and I have probably heard them belting out the Let it Go song a couple dozen times. The song is sung by Elsa, the older sister of Anna. Elsa was born different, had special powers that she didn't understand or know how to control. A primary plot point of the movie is watching how Elsa learns to how to become her best self.


Since I am Mormon, I've been also been exposed to the "controversy" of how this movie promotes the "gay agenda" by encouraging children to identify as being gay, which has been hilarious. But, as my sister said "I think it's actually about sociopaths," tongue in cheek. Not surprisingly, however, many people have made serious parallels to mental illness, particularly bipolar disorder:

Disney released a new movie called “Frozen” last month, and in doing so, has provided us all the chance to begin cultivating awareness. The movie showcases two main characters — sisters, Anna and Elsa. Anna is a warm, charismatic social butterfly; her sister Elsa, bourn of a darker nature, and though wildly charismatic too, grows up to be more cold and emotionally withdrawn. These two characters symbolize the conflicting dual-nature of my manic/depressive personality — manifesting the ongoing struggle always, to overcome the great force of inner darkness so that my inner warmth and goodness can shine on through.

Why is this such a big deal for children to have this sort of role model for mental health awareness?

For me, Elsa is an important character not just because she needs to learn to accept herself the way she is, but because the writers show through her just how devastating and terrifying it is to fear your own soul. There is no terror and sadness like that of thinking you are bad and you do not want to be. It leads to a type of self-sacrifice that actually makes you unable to heal. On accident, Elsa's parents taught her to be afraid of herself and the only way to protect others was to sacrifice herself. So she shut herself off from the world, becomes filled with fear, and she never knows love and belonging.

Many people can relate to this archetype, especially people who have been physically or emotionally abused who were told they deserved the abuse because they were "bad" and that if they were just a good person then they would not get hurt. I am glad we finally have a character in mainstream media that shows how trauma can effect you and that bad behavior does not mean you are a bad person. (Which is why I love Elphaba from Wicked and the Beast from Beauty and the Beast.) My son says the most important line in the movie is in the song "Fixer Upper" that the trolls sing where they say: "People make bad choices if they're mad or scared or stressed." For some people if they are scared enough, even their ability to make a choice is taken away from them. I feel like this scene from the movie best shows Elsa's fear and how much she wants to never hurt anyone.

And these types of stories are one of the best ways to introduce children to these sorts of concepts, to teach them that there is nothing evil or insurmountable about mental illness, in themselves or in others. From G. K. Chesterton:

Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.

"I knew I was different when I was a child..."

I thought this comment posted here on July 7, 2013 at 9:42 AM was a good compliment to the recent posts on being told you're a sociopath:

I absolutely knew I was different when I was a child. My parents and all the "adults" I knew were emotional beings. I could not understand why they were so dramatic. I could not understand why they yelled, hugged, cried and talked about their feelings. It was bizarre to witness and I could not relate. Nor could I relate to my emotional siblings and classmates.

As an adult, I have to remind myself to hug my relatives when I see them or else they get quite cross. I comply to avoid their sad eyes, questions, and messy emotions.

I was strong willed as a child and learned to be deceptive to avoid punishment. And, of course, for the thrill of having "pulled one over" on authority figures.

I was always the schemer and the ring leader in pranks. I reveled in my ability to shock and bother others. I was always the calm, calculating one of the group. To this day, I never panic. I don't worry about social norms. Nor will I have them forced upon me by people I couldn't care less about.

Granted, there are places where I am no longer welcome. I guess those people never got the joke. Just because I thought it was funny doesn't mean they did.

I've been told by others that I am a cold person but I disagree. I can feel some emotions but usually think they are a waste of time. Who wants to float in an emotional cloud? I just want to have fun. I am the life of the party. I am a thrill seeker. Is there anything wrong with that as long as I do not physically harm others?

I learned at 2 years old not to harm things. I caught a butterfly and wanted to kill it, so I did. I stuffed it in a soda bottle and filled it with water. I watched it struggle and become still.

I didn't feel remorse about killing it but did regret that I would no longer be able to enjoy the beauty of its fluttering from flower to flower. For some reason, it seemed very important to me to remember that lesson and so I did. I may mess with your head and your heart but I will not physically harm you unless you attempt to harm me.

I had a boyfriend hit me, probably because he couldn't control me. Besides, I'm small in stature and seemed like an easy victory. I responded with a ferocity that alarmed him just enough to give me the advantage. I am very proud of the physical scars he bears from that encounter.

A message to empaths: Leave us alone and mind your own business. You cannot "fix" us and we do not desire your pity unless we can use it to our advantage. If engaged, we will win. We always do.

Cheers.

Mental illness explained for children: Lilo & Stitch, Stitch Has a Glitch

"Lilo & Stitch: Stitch Has a Glitch" is probably the best children's film I've seen that deals with mental illness. The first Lilo & Stitch introduces the character Stitch is an alien who was originally built to destroy:

"626 was designed to be a monster, but now he has nothing to destroy. You see, I never gave him a greater purpose. What must it be like to have nothing, not even memories to look back on in the middle of the night?"

But Stitch does find a greater purpose in becoming part of the family of a little Hawaiian girl named Lilo who tries and largely succeeds in taming his aggression.

Still, Stitch's bad past sometimes haunts him, and "Stitch Has a Glitch" opens up with Stitch having nightmares about his past. Lilo decides to help: "We need to test your goodness level. For example, someone bad would let this Elvis Blue Hawaii lamp . . . smash to pieces against that wall. Or let my favourite book, Plastic Surgeries Gone Wrong, drop out this window to be lost forever. Or let his family member fall to her painful, crushing death. No! See? Look at all the good things you did."

But there is something wrong with Stitch. When his eyes turn green, he starts misbehaving. No one knows what is wrong. But then they figure it out, during Stitch's creation, he wasn't fully charged, which caused the "glitch". "Now his circuits are going haywire. He can't control it."

Lilo's approach to Stitch's problems is to get him to act more like her hero, Elvis Presley, but the plan backfires as Stitch continues to behave poorly and anger many people in their community. Stitch tries to do good things to fill up his goodness level, but it doesn't compensate for the bad he has done in the eyes of his friends.

"You ruin everything."

"It's not my fault."

"Then whose fault is it?!"

Lilo decides to give Stitch one more chance, but only if he promises to do good. Unfortunately he has another bad episode and Lilo snaps at him, "I don't know why I ever believed you."

"Something wrong with Stitch," Stitch tries to explain.

"I know what's wrong with you. You're bad. And you'll always be bad."

The scientist tries to fix Stitch using science, but he can't. Stitch keeps getting worse until he decides to leave because he is too bad and too dangerous to be around the people he loves -- a subtle allusion to suicide that is done in a tasteful way that is still appropriate for small children by having Stitch try and fail to leave the planet on his spaceship. When Lilo finally catches up with him, she fears that it is too late:

"I'm so sorry. I kept saying how I needed you. But you needed me more. You're my ohana, Stitch. And I'll always love you."

In this case there is a happy ending, but there is often not a happy ending when people, family and friends struggle to deal with mental illness. But this film provides an excellent example of these struggles that all ages can relate to. 

Sociopaths = slightly less violent than toddlers

David Dobbs writes for the NY Times about the progression from violent toddlers (everyone), to become less violent children (most everyone) to becoming hardly violent at all adults (a lot of people):

To understand the violent criminal, says Richard E. Tremblay, imagine a 2-year-old boy doing the things that make the terrible twos terrible — grabbing, kicking, pushing, punching, biting.

Now imagine him doing all this with the body and resources of an 18-year-old.

You have just pictured both a perfectly normal toddler and a typical violent criminal as Dr. Tremblay, a developmental psychologist at University College Dublin in Ireland, sees them — the toddler as a creature who reflexively uses physical aggression to get what he wants; the criminal as the rare person who has never learned to do otherwise.

In other words, dangerous criminals don’t turn violent. They just stay that way.
***
“It’s highly reliable,” said Brad J. Bushman, a psychology professor at Ohio State University and an expert on child violence, who noted that toddlers use physical aggression even more than people in violent youth gangs do. “Thank God toddlers don’t carry weapons.”
***
The rate of violence peaks at 24 months, declines steadily through adolescence and plunges in early adulthood. But as Dr. Tremblay and Daniel S. Nagin, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University, found in a pivotal 1999 study, a troublesome few do not follow this pattern.
***
To Dr. Tremblay, the findings suggest cause for optimism: that humans more readily learn civility than they do cruelty.

We start as toddlers. We learn through conditioning, as we heed requests not to hit others but to use our words. We learn self-control. Beginning in our third year, we learn social strategies like bargaining and charm. Perhaps most vital, we use a developing brain to read situations and choose among these learned tactics and strategies.

I wonder if the non-violent sociopaths were the ones that as children started focusing more on negotiation and charm to get their way (as opposed to the violent sociopaths who remained heavy-handed in their techniques).

The rest article is interesting, especially when it discusses how Tremblay became interested in human violence only because he grew up with a father who was a professional football player and was fascinated that there were certain areas of life in which violence was not only accepted, it was praised. See also, glorification of violence in media, video games, and many other areas of our entertainment lives.

Loving unloveable people

My sister told me that I should listen to the most recent episode of This American Life.

It's really interesting, particularly for people who often hear that they are unloveable, because the show really questions what it really means to love. The first half of the show is about a family who adopts a Romanian orphan. The mother believed strongly that people should do things that they're capable of, and she felt capable of adopting a child, even one with special needs. The son, Daniel, was ok for the first 6 months, then rapidly deteriorated when it finally became clear to him that his birth parents had abandoned him to spend his first 7 years living in a crib, and he misdirected his hatred to his adoptive parents.

Daniel was diagnosed with attachment disorder, characterized by a lack of empathy and lack of conscience. Daniel threatened his parents several times, including holding a knife to his mother's throat. His mom stopped teaching him how to read because, in an era of Columbine, she worried that he would independently research ways to hurt her or others. When asked how she could love someone who is homicidal, she responded "Because he was my son! I mean you have to love him or else there's no way out of it. . . . I don't think I ever questioned my love." His mom stayed with him even after the dad had to hire a bodyguard to protect the mom from the son's outbursts, even when an acquaintance of hers and a friend and mentor of Daniel's, also diagnosed with attachment disorder, committed cold-blooded murder.

Daniel started attachment therapy, including a period of 8 weeks in which he could not be more than three feet away from his mother. After that, he ceased to be violent but still stole. He then began "holding therapy", where for 20 minutes a night his parents would cradle their thirteen year old hulk of a son in their laps and feed him ice cream while looking in their eyes and trying to bond. Daniel began to transform, began to help around the house, made friends, and had his old furniture moved back into his room (previously removed as a throwing hazard). His parents raised him to be Jewish, hoping that the religious instruction would help him acquire something of a conscience. After years of being a very poor divinity student, to the extent that he would frequently be taken away from the temple in police cars, he was finally given an award for best student in his confirmation class. In his speech he thanks his parents, saying that he loved them very much. His mom says that it was the most spectacular moment of her life.

Despite all of this, his mother still thinks that it is not possible to teach love. "I don't think the goal was ever love, the goal was attachment . . . I think you can work really hard to create an environment where you can form attachment. You want to create these situations where it's more advantageous for them to attach than to keep doing things their own way and being in their own world, isolated." When asked if she feels loved by Daniel, "Yeah, I feel love . . . I don't think he wants to hurt me, I don't worry about that at all." Although this is not the type of "love" that most people think of as love, the narrator imagines that the mother's pragmatism is exactly what has made her so successful:

"If you're the kind of person who actually needs love, really needs love, chances are you're not the kind of person that's going to have the wherewithal to create it. Creating love is not for the soft and sentimental among us. Love is a tough business."

I liked the idea that a practical approach can really be effective in instilling a sense of attachment (love?) in someone who otherwise seemed incapable of attachment. You can't force someone to love you, but you can indirectly influence them, incentivize them to want to attach. I feel like there are a lot of interesting pieces of advice for parents of a sociopath.

Other interesting parts include the first 5-10 minute discussion about how it used to be a Truth in psychology that parental love was unnecessary and even unhealthy for children. It makes you realize how young and flawed a "science" psychology is.

Fleeting emotions

My sister and sister-in-law have several children that are the same ages as each other. Children all have different personalities, but I have also seen some trends in how these particular children act based on their mothers' parenting styles. My sister is a little emotionally detached herself and is not an overly emotional parent. Her parenting style fosters independence. Her children go places by themselves before they are in the double digits of age. The children have a lot of autonomy, responsibilities, and experience real consequences for their actions. My sister-in-law is more the typical, doting mother. She is anxious and her children live in a safe bubble of love and protection. When her children speak, we stop and listen. They get choices about certain things like what to eat for dinner, but most of the time they are being told what to do from hour to hour. It's easy to see that there is not a one-style-fits-all approach to parenting. Both approaches have their plusses and minuses.

I am grateful for the way I was raised. Some people have called it borderline (or just plain) abusive, but to me it was mainly characterized by freedom and creativity. Even the unpredictable outbursts from my parents had a use, they helped bond me and my siblings together in a way that is still remarkably tight into adulthood. We got along not just because we had to, but because we wanted to -- everyone recognized that it was better that way. We would play music together, play games together, play sports together, and do projects together -- all of which we recognized would have been impossible to do alone. Together we were better, stronger, and happier than we were as individuals. Consequently, my family does certain things very well. We're very good at subjugating our will to the utilitarian needs of the whole. We joke that we're a little like the Borg from Star Trek -- assimilation for the needs of the hive. That might sound like a nightmare for some, but it's really efficient and no one ever feels like they're held hostage to the potential drama and demands of divas and tyrants. Each member of the family has their role and expertise, and the rest of us defer to them on those points when we're together. Because this state is completely voluntary, we're also careful to make sure that no one gets overly disgruntled and opts out completely. If someone is feeling put upon, we address the issue openly and efficiently. People who cheat get informal social sanctions, typically in the form of my sister's wrath. But to make things work this way, no one is really allowed to take things personally or have "unreasonable" emotional reactions and expect to have those feelings validated. Someone can be upset and cry and no one will give him a hard time about it, but unless he can verbalize his problem and propose a solution, no one is really invested in anyone's fleeting emotions.

My sister's family is the only one that approximates this approach with her own children. The results are interesting. Her children are definitely more ruthless, calculating, and calloused than most of their peers (more than they should be?). But they're also really easy to reason with. They understand better than a lot of adults that just because they are feeling an emotion does not mean that it was caused by any particular thing or person -- that they can't control what happens to them, but they actually do have a lot of control over how they feel about things or how they interpret those feelings. They learn this from their parents. When my sister is in a bad mood, she tells her children that she's just "grumpy," so they shouldn't take her reactions personally. My niece picked up on this phrase when she was just a toddler. If you asked her why she was sad, she would frequently say "I'm not sad, I'm just grumpy." She meant that there was nothing in particular that she wanted solved, she was just not feeling happy and to leave her alone about it. My sister's family even plays at emotions, taking "grumpy" family photos the same way that some families take silly photos. They understand that their emotions are labile and often fleeting. The children are not as offended when people don't take their emotions "seriously" because they understand the difference between raw emotional reactions and actual problems that can be verbalized.

I'm sure this isn't the only way to teach children this particular skill and maybe this approach would be impossible for most parents to pull off or would harm most children more than it would help. But I thought that it was an interesting approach, and would be helpful to serve as common ground for parents of sociopaths (particularly if the sociopathic child had normal siblings). 

Knowing you better than you know yourself

I saw this in a recent comment: "How could someone who feels no empathy for others possibly understand how to treat a child?"

It reminded me of something that one of my professors said once in the mid 2000s. He said that sometimes he would be in a bookstore, see a book he wanted to buy, but would put off buying it until he got home and could order it on Amazon. Why? Not because he wanted to get it for cheaper, but because he wanted Amazon to know about the purchase so it would be better at recommending books to him in the future. When I watch Netflix, I look at their recommendations for me, and their "star" ratings guess for how much I would like a particular film/television show. They're pretty accurate. And it doesn't take that many data points to pick you out from an otherwise anonymized list of a half million other Netflix subscribers. It's crazy. It turns out that we really all are special little snowflakes.

Has this never happened to you? That someone knew better than you what you would like? Is it empathy that helps them do it? Probably not, right? Because isn't empathy allegedly the ability to feel what another person is feeling? Does Netflix feel what I feel? Not likely, right? But Netflix still does a great job predicting what people want to watch. If I collect a bunch of data points on you, or a child, or your dog, or anything else, will I also understand how you would like to be treated? Will I know perhaps even better than you know yourself? My loved ones feel this way about me.

Maybe you're not the type of person who would go home to order a book on Amazon rather than buy it in the store (or one of the people making up the statistic that 75% of Netflix streaming selections come from recommendations from the site), but there are plenty of people who would value that unique service quite highly. This is particularly true of children who often have their true feelings and wants/needs superseded and/or ignored by the adults in their lives. And by the way, can empaths really understand what/how children think/feel? Unless they have a lot of time recently around people in that age, I have found that most adults are pretty bad at understanding or even caring about how kids feel.