Arya and her ex-girlfriend Frances re her BPD diagnosis

Hello friends! Sorry for the delay on this, I had to do some editing, which I'm bad at. Arya's ex Frances tells Arya that she's been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. We talk to Frances about her diagnosis, her disorder, and her experience with both in the world and in her relationships, including her experience that a lot of people view her diagnosis negatively and tell Frances that she doesn't actually have a personality disorder.

One analogy I thought about with regard to Frances and BPD in general is that if all personality disorders have issues with their personality and sense of identity/self, maybe one way to view them is in terms of how connected they are to their identity. For instance, psychopaths seem very disconnected from their identity. I came up with the analogy of a being pulled behind a motorboat in an inner tube (like I used to do when I was young). The boat is your identity. If you're way behind the boat, like 50 feet back, what the boat does hardly affects you at all, and for psychopaths if someone says something negative about their identity they rarely care because they're so disconnected. Other personality disorders seem more connected to their identity, which also means they're more vulnerable. I think of BPD as being like hanging off the back of the boat, where they're constantly being whipped around, but they're not close enough to actually be in the driver's seat, where people without personality disorders are. 

Arya and I had just been listening to a webinar on criminal sentencing and BPD right before Frances told us about her diagnosis (Arya had no idea before). We had been talking about how terrible BPD sounds like it is for the sufferer, and that we couldn't imagine living like that and no wonder the suicide rate is so high. But also I'm glad that they at least have established treatments. Although I have heard from psychopaths that the same therapies styles have helped psychopaths, so maybe the personality disorders have more in common than meets the eye. 

Victoria Asian female psychopath Part 2

This was a super interesting one for me because I've tried to be less ethnocentric about my view of psychopathy, but with the language barrier and travel restrictions, it's been hard to connect meaningfully with any Asian psychopaths, and bonus a female Asian psychopath. Here's the description from the YouTube video:

M.E. Thomas of Confessions of a Sociopath interviews an East Asian woman in her 20's about why it may be easier to "mask" psychopathy in Asian than western cultures. 

1. There's no real word or sense of meaning regarding psychopath in East Asian cultures. 

2. The social norms are all explicit and easy to follow. 

3. Public displays of negative emotions are frowned upon as being a burden on the rest of the community, i.e. they require the listener or observer to respond empathetically, which is considered a little rude, too individualistic, and a burden on the community. 

We also talk about animal experiments, narcissistic parents, guilt vs. shame, and public shaming and community centric punishments in American law and East Asian culture. 

Just a dick?

In what has become an impromptu series of "Sociopath, or just _____?" (e.g., sociopath, or just puberty? Sociopath, or just smart? Sociopath, or just depression? Etc., a reader wonders:

I'm well aware you get hundreds of emails from people who are desperate to become sociopaths, so they tell you how unfeeling they are and how they don't care about anybody. And after reading your blog for over a year a question began to fester in the back of my brain and I crave an answer. Why would people, at the slightest lack of empathy, jump to the conclusion that they are a sociopath? And the reason i bring this up is, i used to feel like them. At some point in my life i just decided, i love to hurt people, so i must be a sociopath. I now realize that i'm just a douche. I still enjoy seeing people crumble before me when i attack all of their insecurities at once, but I'm not a sociopath or a psychopath. But what i'm confused by is, why is it so hard for people to come to the realization that they are just dicks?

M.E.:

I think you may be confusing lack of empathy with sadism. Some people don't care about other people, but they have perfectly intact empathy. Other people know that they don't connect with people, and it looks (internally) and feels a lot more like what I would imagine autism would feel like. Their brain is not capable of processing empathy the most people's brains (apparently) do. They can pretend that those empathy and emotional connections things are going on, in fact, they can pretend so well that no one else suspects what's really going on.

Although there's certainly bound to be overlap between empathy-impaired people and dicks, a diminished capacity for empathy is different and doesn't necessarily lead to enjoying exploiting people, or even just taking a special pleasure in your own agenda at others expense. So which are you? 

Just depression

I responded to another "am I a sociopath?" email two years later and found another young person who would now describe what she was going through at the time as something very different from sociopathy. I asked her to write how her perspective changed over those years:

During most of my teenage years, I was determined to find the crucial component to my personality; a defining factor. Something has to be wrong with me, because no one else seems to have my problems and issues. In 9th grade, I had friends; none close, but people to talk to during class, and see in the halls. I would act differently around all of them... (it wasn't until two years later that I noticed this behavior). When around the cool kids, I'd act cool, when around the nerds, I'd act nerdy, and so on. I'd take on similar personalities, so I could fit in, and have friends. 

Later on I noticed that my emotions were fading away... as if one day I'd wake up and no longer be able to feel a certain emotion. I first noticed it with embarrassment, from my ability to do anything and not feel that emotion from it... I felt fear at the realization that I could potentially lose my emotions and become void. It was until one day that I no longer feared losing my emotions that I realized was a sociopath. I didn't feel empathy or regret... I didn't care who I upset. Albeit I realize it now, just a teenager's desperate attempt at clawing their way into accepting themselves. 

All of this was from depression, that went unnoticed for years. I didn't know that then. I convinced myself, and others, that I was a sociopath, and I lived by it. I didn't allow myself to feel emotion, and that bit me in the butt. In the latter part of my teenage years I sorta, grew out of that pit devoid of emotion... Back then, I wanted to be important and special. A lot of people going through their teenage years experience this with other categories too. I wanted to be the strong one of my family, no emotions to cloud my judgement... pure logic; like a robot. I take this in part that there was no father figure in my family. I felt like I had to be the man. 

That's not me now... I climbed out of the hole I dug myself into by conditioning myself to feel happiness. What I mean by that is, I would do my best to find something to make me happy during my day... It took a while to feel full emotions again but now I'm at the point where it's a normal part of my life. I have learned that with happiness, comes sadness... and to not block either emotion. Emotions are like yin and yang and you cannot have one without the other. 

Mental health is not self-diagnosis, mental health is accepting your personality for what it is... if you are normal, average... that's okay. I had to learn that. Also of course, seeing a therapist helps, which is what I did to get my anxiety under control. Now, I will be driving down the road and I'll smile at a bright blue day, and I'll smile at a gloomy rainy day. Both are beautiful to me, because contrast is good. 

The whole period where I thought I was a sociopath is not something I'm proud of. It's a little embarrassing because I genuinely believed it. and now I know how stupid it was. Let this be a lesson to all.

Average and unique

I thought this was an interesting NPR interview regarding what it really means to be average (is anyone really?) or unique (is anyone not?). Most of it is with regards to education, but the points made about statistics would seem to apply to general categorizations we make of people (e.g. introvert/extrovert), but also -- to the extent that all psychological criterion take into account the culture of those they are being applied to (pedophilia is not going to mean the same in a culture in which the average marriage age is 13, sadness doesn't necessarily mean your depressed if you are just expressing a culturally appropriate amount of grieving, criminality in one culture is entrepreneurship in another, etc.)  -- to the world of psychology.

Rose talked with us about his new book: The End Of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness.

The opening example you use in the book is that in the 1940s, when the Air Force designed cockpits based on the average measurements of the pilots, there were an unacceptable number of crashes. But when they went back and measured thousands of pilots, across 10 body dimensions, they found that zero of them even came close to the "average" on all 10. So they concluded that they had to redesign the seats and so forth to be adjustable to each person.

Body size is a very concrete example of what I call jaggedness. There is no average pilot. No medium-sized people. When you think of someone's size you think of large, medium, small. Our mass-produced approach to clothing reinforces that. But if that were true you wouldn't need dressing rooms.

So dimensions like height and weight and arm length and waist circumference ...

Yes, they're not nearly as correlated as you would think. Height is one-dimensional, but size isn't. People are jagged in size, in intelligence, everything we measure shows the same thing.

I'm going to quote a line from the book, said to psychologist Paul Molenaar, who is arguing for a greater focus on individual difference: "What you are proposing is anarchy!" How do you make decisions about people if you can't use statistics and cutoff scores and compare them to averages?

People feel like if you focus on individuality, everyone's a snowflake, and you can't build a science on snowflakes. But the opposite has been true.

It's not that you can't use statistics, it's just that you don't use group statistics. If I want to know something about my daily spending habits, one straightforward way would be to collect records of what I spend every day. To take an average for myself would be perfectly fine.

So you can generalize across time, but not across people?

We've got to let go of putting a group into a study and taking an average and thinking that's going to be close enough to universal insight.

Now we have something better. We have a natural science of individuality that gives us a surer foundation. We've gotten breakthrough insights in a whole range of research, from cancer to child development.

Empathy's role in defining otherness

From a reader:

I've begun to take your advice on "getting people to my side", as you called it, by coming out to them. I decided to tell my oldest, and whom I consider my only close friend, about me being a sociopath. He's an incredibly empathetic person, and upon telling him it was almost as if he had lost that ability with me. Like he was no longer capable of empathy or understanding with me because it was such a shock to find out his friend had been lying to him. Even after a decade long friendship (even I'm surprised it's lasted that long) he nearly ostracized me simply for who I am. One of his defining features is that he hates lying, and it's one of the reasons why I told him. He is maybe the only other person I respect, other than you M.E., so telling him became an easy choice. Although, it took him almost four weeks to finally begin accepting it; he nearly hated me up until that point. 

All that got me thinking: was the cause of his negative reactions from his empathy? Was is strong moral compass and empathy the source of his inability to connect with and understand someone who lacks those things? Is empathy the reason people like me, or the gays, or anyone else considered "abnormal" by those with a "moral high ground" get ostracized and alienated? All I want is to be myself publicly without scorn from the people around me. Will this society change in its own, or do we have to make it change?

I don't know the answer to his question. I wish I did, and I'd love to hear people's thoughts on it. Here's my attempt to give some sort of response:

I wouldn’t say that empathy itself leads to this, but I think that the illusion that empathy often gives can lead to this. By that illusion I mean that I don't really believe that empathy is as functional (and certainly not as flawless) as people seem to report experiencing it. Maybe I'm just overly cynical, but I wonder how often people are accurately feeling the same feelings that someone else is feeling. The whole concept seems really foreign and almost absurd to me, like a superstition of a culture to which I don't belong. It seems like such magical thinking to even believe that the common belief of empathy exists. But I think a lot of people have an unexamined faith about it. It feels very real and true to them, so they have no reason to doubt it, or question its failure rate like I do. And it is that faith in empathy, I believe, that contributes at least in part to people treating otherness as they do. The empathy gives them the illusion that we are all connected (or at least the ones that they feel connected to). It emphasizes and validates that sense of connection -- proves it to be true, in a way, to the person experiencing the empathy. The empathy helps people to feel like others are a part of them in some way, because that's how they experience it -- they believe they feel the joys and hurts of another, so how couldn't they be seen as a part of them? But if you can't empathize with someone or they can't empathize back, that sense of identification and connection isn't there. If anything, it's seen as a threat -- not just to the person, but to their whole group of people they do identify, e.g. all white people, or all males, or all gay people. 

I was recently reading an article about the rise of polygamous unions and the calls to have these unions legitimized as the marriages that they functionally are. The arguments in favor, of course, are very similar, even identical, to the same sex marriage arguments. But is there widespread support? No. Why? I think at least in part because those people are seen as other, they're difficult to empathize with. I identify as ambisexual, or at least sexually fluid. I read media sources targeted at gay audiences, especially now as I continue to try to build a stronger sense of self and identity and integrate all facets of myself in the process. They do not support polygamous relationships, not even same sex ones (perhaps especially not those, because they "make a bad name" for the community that has been so successful in normalizing as of late). 

I had to laugh because I recently saw an article lauding a woman for being a gay woman in science with Asperger's. She is quoted thusly: "While I’m not trying to push my ideas on anyone, I’m happy to know there are people that might look at me and feel more comfortable about being themselves." Good for her, and I really mean that. I am so pleased to see other marginalized groups gaining recognition, acceptance, and even accommodation and appreciation for their special needs and attributes. This is not sour grapes but just a fact: no group I am part of would laud me for what I am. No group would not even openly acknowledge me as being one of them. 

As a society, I do think that we want people to feel more comfortable about being themselves (google Mr. Rogers "It's you I like"), but still only if they fit certain acceptable categories, albeit an ever expanding list. Certainly you can't be open about being attracted to children still, nor being diagnosed as a sociopath. That's fine, I understand that's how things are and I actually fully expect things to change with that respect in my lifetime (how could they not? transgenderism was taboo only a decade ago). But I do wonder what role empathy plays in all of this.

(And just to clarify for those who might misinterpret, I don't mean that we have to accommodate all behaviors just because someone is wired differently. Rather I think that we shouldn't keep people out just because they are wired differently if they're able to conform their behaviors as needed. For example, I strongly support increased understanding and acceptance for pedophiles in the sense that I believe that they can't help who they are and that if it was possible for them to be more open about their condition, they could possibly get better help and fewer children would be harmed as a result. I feel the same about sociopaths. No one is advocating for special treatment. But demonizing or ostracizing someone who comes out as a sociopath is compounding the problem, not helping. Yes, the sociopath probably misrepresented him or herself by not revealing that he was a sociopath, but is it really fair to punish them for that evasion when this is how people react to the truth?)

Presidential psychopathy

From a reader:

Interesting video of James Fallon speaking about how most beloved American Presidents score highest on the psychopathy checklist. 

Other interesting points he makes it that Hitler's not a sociopath, neither are any of the other Nazi leaders. Neither are mafiosos typically sociopathic. That's why Hannah Arend calls it the banality of evil, not the evil of psychopaths. 

The usefulness of labels (gay, sociopathic, etc.)

From a not so recent comment:

Labels do not have to be limiting. I like to think of labels as being entries in a dictionary, you can get the general information from them and then turn to the etymology to find out the unique story behind it. In my part of the world, in talking with "queer" sociopaths, labels are invaluable. I get to spend much less time talking about the nouns of a person and much more time discussing verbs and adjectives (what makes them distinct). However, I also fully believe that a label must only be a 'first step'. Let the presence (or absence) of it light a fire that causes that introspection. Labels simply the big picture but the onus is on the one using the label to add the detail.

Rather than rehash what I've written many times to the queer sociopaths and sociopathic-leaning individuals that I communicate with, I'll just paste one such instance. It was in response to a homosexual sociopath that feared adding one more label to his list of many.

"Receiving a diagnosis of psychopathy did not change the person that I am. It merely gave a new vocabulary for the person that I always had been. I could then begin to learn about myself further. There was a word, a diagnosis, for the facets of my life that seemed so alien to others. This diagnosis had research associated with it, which would be a treasure-trove of valuable information for learning. No longer was I a seemingly unconnected mess of behaviors and thoughts. I was able to retain my individuality and complexities, but I now had an idea of what a large part of me was. Like early humans mastering the spoken word, I could now communicate with myself and with others a cherished and important of my being: my psychopathy.


Many argue that the use of labels reduces the individuality of those associated with such. I believe this can be true. I am much more than my gender or psychopathy. I am a complex individual with many nuances and quirks. I am unpredictable, wild, and not caged easily. Would not the diagnosis of psychopathy cage me or put me into a box that I could not escape? I don’t believe so. The individual’s use of the label means much here.

A label can be vital for understanding the conditions one lives with. The chronic pain sufferer the learns they have arthritis can take steps to change their activities as well as accept the potential lifelong pain. The psychopath can learn behaviors to rein in impulsivity and better understand the path they must walk to stay free, while also accepting (which is usually not a problem) that they will forever be psychopathic.

As importantly, this vocabulary allows for concise conversation with others. That said, no two psychopaths are exactly alike: we have our individual differences as well as strengths and weaknesses. However, with a proper explanation, the word ‘psychopath’ can turn volumes of explanation into a few sentences. With those that I correspond with, we can can get to the interesting qualities of the person without belaboring the condition. With myself, I can have a similar conversation, focusing on the quirks that make myself who I am and setting a good portion of the larger picture aside as a single word.

There is no shame in being a psychopath. The diagnosis was a gift for me in many ways. It allowed me to see a bigger picture, even if some details are murky, and allowed me to research the condition in order to live the most fulfilling life possible. It let me realize that there are others like me and it gave me the vocabulary to speak articulately with my confidants as well as my psychopathic brothers and sisters. I am a label? No. However, the label makes many things much easier."

Female sociopath: fact or fiction?

Merve Emre writes for Digg ("The Female Sociopath") on the popularity of the female sociopath in fiction (TV/books, etc.), and the reality. Worth reading in its entirety, the first little bit:

If you don’t know who Rosamund Pike is, you will soon. In October, she will appear in David Fincher’s film adaptation of Gone Girl, one of the most popular and addictive novels of the past decade, as Amy Dunne — the beguiling and cerebral housewife who stages her own murder and frames her philandering husband. Amy’s creator, the novelist Gillian Flynn, has proudly described her character as a “functioning sociopath,” which she is quick to distinguish from “the iconic psycho bitch.” The iconic psycho bitch, Flynn explains, is crazy because “her lady parts have gone crazy.” Think of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, so consumed with desire for Michael Douglas that she boils his daughter’s pet rabbit to death; think of Sharon Stone and Jennifer Jason Leigh (and Kathy Bates and Rebecca De Mornay) chasing men through dim rooms with sharp objects. 

Unlike these women, the functional sociopath isn’t “dismissible” as a slave to her emotions. She is not outwardly violent. Patently remorseless, clear-eyed and calculating, she is chameleonic in the extreme, donning one feigned feeling after another (interest, concern, sympathy, simpering insecurity, confidence, arrogance, lust, even love) to get what she wants.

And why should she feel bad about it?

For M.E. Thomas, author of Confessions of A Sociopath, such affective maneuvers are tantamount to “fulfilling an exchange.” “You might call it seduction,” she suggests, but really “it’s called arbitrage and it happens on Wall Street (and a lot of other places) every day.” Whatever you choose to call it, its appeal is undeniable when linked to the professional and personal advancement of women. “In general, the women in my life seemed like they were never acting, always being acted upon,” Thomas laments. Sociopathy’s silver lining was that it gave her a way to combat that injustice, in the boardroom of the corporate law firm she worked for in Los Angeles, but also in the bedroom, where she marveled at how her emotional detachment let her commandeer her lovers’ hearts and minds. Somewhere along the way, pathology became recoded as practice — a set of rules for how to manage the self and others.

No wonder the female sociopath cuts such an admirable figure. Intensely romantic, professionally desirable, she is the stuff of fiction, fantasy, and aspirational reading. And while actual female sociopaths like Thomas are rare, and sociopathy isn’t even recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the female sociopath looms large in our cultural imagination. Amy Dunne may stand as the perfect example — a “Cool Girl” on the outside, ice cold within — but she is not alone. Of late, she has faced stiff competition from fictional females like Lisbeth Salander, the ferocious tech genius in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, or Laura, the shape-shifting alien who preys on unwitting men in Under the Skin. Network television has been even kinder to the female sociopath, placing her at the center of workplace dramas like Damages, Revenge, Bones, The Fall, Rizzoli and Isles, Person of Interest, Luther, and 24. Here, she has mesmerized audiences with how nimbly she scales the professional ladder, her competence and sex appeal whetted by her dark, aggressive, risk-taking behavior, and lack of empathy.

And so we lean in to the cultural logic of the female sociopath, for she is the apotheosis of the cool girl power that go-getter “feminists” have peddled to frustrated women over the last half-decade. The female sociopath doesn’t want to upend systems of gender inequality, that vast and irreducible constellation of institutions and beliefs that lead successful women like Gillian Flynn to decree that certain women, who feel or behave in certain ways, are “dismissible.” The female sociopath wants to dominate these systems from within, as the most streamlined product of a world in which well-intentioned people blithely invoke words like arbitrage, leverage, capital, and currency to appraise how successfully we inhabit our bodies, our selves. One could easily imagine the female sociopath devouring books with titles like Bo$$ Bitch, Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office, The Confidence Gap, and Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman to hone her craft — to learn how to have it all. From atop the corporate ladder, she can applaud her liberation from the whole messy business of feeling as a step forward for women, when it’s really a step back.

The result is a self-defeating spectacle of feminism that finds a kindred spirit in Rosamund Pike on the cover of W, erasing her own perfect face to reveal that what lies beneath might be nothing. Like Gone Girl’s Amy Dunne, who confesses that she “has never really felt like a person, but a product” — plastic, fungible, ready to be consumed by anyone, at any time — the female sociopath is a product of a broken promise made to women, by women. She is a product poised to disappear into the immense darkness from which she came. 

One of my favorite parts of studying music was learning that the representation of women in professional orchestras skyrocketed when they started doing blind auditions (i.e. the judges couldn't see who was performing). When I taught, I told my students to use their initials on their C.V.s and résumés, because it seems like every year there is another study that shows that everywhere in every field there is gender and racial bias. Sometimes I wish we could do the equivalent of blind auditions everywhere. Maybe we shouldn't out any sort of name on our résumés. Maybe we should make that illegal, like it is illegal to put your name on a standardized test. Because why should it matter?

When I first started writing this blog, it was like a blind audition. No one knew who I was, only what I wrote. I didn't realize at the time how great that felt, what a respite from my normal life that was. Without realizing even to what extent, I had been swimming against the current all of my life, until I was allowed to just be me. And then when I came out as being female there was a certain significant portion backlash that wasn't really explainable apart from being a reaction to my gender. (See also, popular science blogger Elise Andrew who got a cyclone of hate only after it was discovered that she was female.) There was probably as much backlash in my sociopath life for being female as there was in my normal life for being a sociopath. And now when I write or say things, it is seen through a different, distorted lens of my perceived femininity. I used to never get accused of the typical "oh man, you won't believe how crazy my ex-girlfriend was" type behavior -- "classic female traits" like self-harm/cutting, attention seeking, jealousy, vanity, histrionics, woman-scorned flavored vengeance, man-hating flavored vengeance, or anything else that is likely to get a woman slapped with the term "crazy". Now I get them all of the time. Which was sort of a surprise to me. Why did it bother people that I had been given the diagnosis "sociopath". Because it really seemed to. They took what I said and twisted it to fit something else, until I was "just borderline." as if the biased-female diagnosis was lesser than the sort-of male equivalent. Until I was "just crazy". Until I was something or someone that could be dismissed as a nobody nothing. Because that's how we marginalize people, I guess.

See also SNL – Red Flag | Katabatic Digital

Quote: Excuses

“The concept of disease is fast replacing the concept of responsibility. With increasing zeal Americans use and interpret the assertion "I am sick" as equivalent to the assertion "I am not responsible": Smokers say they are not responsible for smoking, drinkers that they are not responsible for drinking, gamblers that they are not responsible for gambling, and mothers who murder their infants that they are not responsible for killing. To prove their point — and to capitalize on their self-destructive and destructive behavior — smokers, drinkers, gamblers, and insanity acquitees are suing tobacco companies, liquor companies, gambling casinos, and physicians.”

― Thomas Szasz

Seventeen face of psychopath

In a little bit of a twist on the movie Seven Psychopaths, this post (on a website for victims), gives 17 basic classifications for psychopaths. It's not at all scientific (doesn't really claim to be), but I think it's an interesting exploration of how different sociopaths can appear. Also, there is only 1 of 17 that is a killer (and I think only one other where violence is a predominant trait). You can read the descriptions on the site (some of them are rather lengthy), but here are the categories:

1. THE LIAR/CONTRACT BREAKER

2. THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC "CLIMBER"

3. THE SEXUAL PSYCHOPATH

4. THE EXPLOSIVE PSYCHOPATH

5. THE VIOLENT PSYCHOPATH

6. THE CHARMER, OR "SOUL MATE"

7. THE THIEF OR "COVETOUS PSYCHOPATH"

8. THE QUIET PSYCHOPATH

9. THE BRAINWASHER

10. THE RISK TAKER/THRILLSEEKER

11. THE PARANOID PSYCHOPATH

12. THE 'BAD BOY' OR 'BAD GIRL' ANTISOCIAL PSYCHOPATH

13. THE USED CAR SALESMAN (OR WOMAN)

14. THE MURDERER OR SERIAL KILLER

15. THE MORALIST OR SAINT

16. THE CREATIVE ARTIST

17. THE ACADEMIC PSYCHOPATH

According to this taxonomy, I guess I would be closest to an academic psychopath (somewhat literally). It seems pretty clear that there is overlap between the categories and that one person could show aspects of multiple categories.

Thoughts?

Perils of certainty

One of the families I grew up with had a younger daughter who was somewhat troubled. She was the youngest and the family had started having troubles by the time the child was about 7 years old, which is shortly after I met them. The girl was really awkward and annoying in sort of a spoiled seeming way. She seemed oblivious to just about anything going on around her and she would do these really bizarre things or throw fits and scream like she was possessed. I hated being around her and I (along with almost everyone else who knew the family) blamed the mother, who seemed to baby her and not set any limits. Recently I spoke with the aunt of this child. The aunt said that the now 20-something-year-old girl is an engineer and is your basic Asperger's type, which to me explained a lot of what I considered unacceptably obtuse and annoying affectations when I was younger. The aunt opined that the child's mother turned out to be wiser than we all knew -- that the mother understood the child was exceptional, which is what prompted the hands-off parenting style. The theory sounded right to me and it was a relatively small thing, but in that moment I experienced a distinct paradigm shift, not just about this family but about parenting and how well we think we understand people and the world around us, compared to how little we actually know. It made me think of this NY Times op ed, "The Dangers of Certainty" (worth reading in its entirety). The article discusses the author's experience of watching The Ascent of Man as a child, and one episode in particular:

For most of the series, Dr. Bronowski’s account of human development was a relentlessly optimistic one. Then, in the 11th episode, called “Knowledge or Certainty,” the mood changed to something more somber. Let me try and recount what has stuck in my memory for all these years.

He began the show with the words, “One aim of the physical sciences has been to give an actual picture of the material world. One achievement of physics in the 20th century has been to show that such an aim is unattainable.” For Dr. Bronowski, there was no absolute knowledge and anyone who claims it — whether a scientist, a politician or a religious believer — opens the door to tragedy. All scientific information is imperfect and we have to treat it with humility. Such, for him, was the human condition.
***
There is no God’s eye view, Dr. Bronowski insisted, and the people who claim that there is and that they possess it are not just wrong, they are morally pernicious. Errors are inextricably bound up with pursuit of human knowledge, which requires not just mathematical calculation but insight, interpretation and a personal act of judgment for which we are responsible. 
***
Dr. Bronowski insisted that [physic's] principle of uncertainty was a misnomer, because it gives the impression that in science (and outside of it) we are always uncertain. But this is wrong. Knowledge is precise, but that precision is confined within a certain toleration of uncertainty . . . no physical events can ultimately be described with absolute certainty or with “zero tolerance,” as it were. The more we know, the less certain we are.

In the everyday world, we do not just accept a lack of ultimate exactitude with a melancholic shrug, but we constantly employ such inexactitude in our relations with other people. Our relations with others also require a principle of tolerance. We encounter other people across a gray area of negotiation and approximation. Such is the business of listening and the back and forth of conversation and social interaction.

For Dr. Bronowski, the moral consequence of knowledge is that we must never judge others on the basis of some absolute, God-like conception of certainty. All knowledge, all information that passes between human beings, can be exchanged only within what we might call “a play of tolerance,” whether in science, literature, politics or religion. As he eloquently put it, “Human knowledge is personal and responsible, an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.”

The relationship between humans and nature and humans and other humans can take place only within a certain play of tolerance. Insisting on certainty, by contrast, leads ineluctably to arrogance and dogma based on ignorance.

At this point, in the final minutes of the show, the scene suddenly shifts to Auschwitz, where many members of Bronowski’s family were murdered. Then this happened. Please stay with it. This short video from the show lasts only four minutes or so.

 


It is, I am sure you agree, an extraordinary and moving moment. Bronowski dips his hand into the muddy water of a pond which contained the remains of his family members and the members of countless other families. All victims of the same hatred: the hatred of the other human being. 
***
When we think we have certainty, when we aspire to the knowledge of the gods, then Auschwitz can happen and can repeat itself. Arguably, it has repeated itself in the genocidal certainties of past decades. . . . We always have to acknowledge that we might be mistaken. When we forget that, then we forget ourselves and the worst can happen.

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.

The truth, the whole truth, and maybe some other stuff

An IM conversation with a friend about the nature of the blog.

Friend: [after many questions about the blog] Does it disturb you that I am reading your blog now? And commenting in real time? If so, I will stop.

M.E.: No it’s fine, if you’re interested, I’m interested.

Friend: All this stuff is very self-aggrandizing, but it seems consistent with your analysis of sociopaths, which I think you should address somewhere because I bet it is a major critique of clinicians.

M.E.: What do you mean?

Friend: The generalizations, the pronouncements about tendencies, reasons, etc., they are dubious, and so clinicians must be like, ugh, I dont think so. But the point is that sociopaths are nuts.

M.E.: Yeah, I can see that. I write so self-assuredly, answering people’s questions as if I have all of the answers and the clinicians must be thinking that I’m deluded or just plain wrong. But you’re right, that’s part of the portrayal, I think. Everything is just my point of view. This is how I see things, and if my opinions are deluded, they are deluded in an interesting way, I hope.

Friend: Right.

M.E.: I'm not trying to go for balanced info, I'm just talking out of my ass basically.

Friend: Yeah, I think that is the best rebuttal. You never really sell yourself as a scientist or whatever. Honestly this makes me question psychological diagnoses in general.

M.E.: Why? By the way, I am too, they seem sketchy. But then they are better than thinking we are all the same.

Friend: I don’t know, they seem like a random collection of symptoms.

M.E.: Right, it's not clear to me what being a sociopath really means, e.g. whether it's just a personality type, or caused by low fear response or shallow emotions or whatever, what the boundaries are, the outer limits, the root causes. That's why it would be impossible for me to give a whole and accurate account of what a sociopath is. I can just write about what it feels like to me.

Friend: Yeah.

Responses to a hypothetical

Ok, we had a good split of responses from the hypothetical. There were 60 total. Approximately 29 people identified as sociopathic. Of those 29, six were diagnosed. Only 16 total people total were diagnosed with anything, including sociopathy. If you're curious to see all the responses, here's a link (there are 9000 total words).

My response to the hypothetical was that if extreme pain was an issue, we should pair up empaths with each other. If it is true that they feel each others' pain and find it painful themselves to inflict pain, then when an empath smashes another empath's fingers smashed with a hammer, that should be a twofer in terms of amount of pain juice. So my main thought was, given that we are in this situation, we should handle the task in the most efficient way possible.

I gave the hypothetical to me extreme empath friend. She suggested that she just wouldn't play. She would spend that time trying to find a way out or just die because she didn't think it was likely that we would be released after the fluid was collected anyway. Interestingly, she has always bucked what most people (including me) would just accept as their lot. For instance, as a child she refused to go to Kindergarten until her father started bribing her with coffee.

Her neurotypical significant other said that he would lock himself up in a room and just hope to avoid anybody, maybe even take a nap because that's how he deals with stress.

Using those three responses and what I predicted would be a fourth, I came up with four categories of responses: (1) cooperative (main goal is figuring a way to get it done, not necessarily to hurt people), (2) opposition (active resistance, (3) avoidance (passive resistance or noncompliance), and (4) sadism (primarily concerned with hurting people). I coded the responses accordingly (see document linked above).

Perhaps people who read this blog won't be surprised, but the large majority of sociopaths chose cooperating. As one person put it, once they heard the rules of the game they became "task-oriented." Why is this? I'm not entirely sure, but when presented with a game like this, sociopaths (high-functioning?) seem less likely to challenge the underlying assumption and more likely to find a way to game the system from the inside. As long as I'm pretty sure the game isn't rigged I'm most likely to play by the rules (and do it better than anyone else by being creative) than to completely subvert them. For instance, in my younger days I would scam people all of the time but didn't tend to outright steal from them.

Cooperative sociopaths were either coldly rationale about getting the job done or were trying to game the inherent weaknesses of the set-up. Interestingly while sociopaths seemed intent on trying to game the system, they were also concerned with the noncompliance of others and how they might try to enforce compliance. They treated the exercise as if it was a game of Diplomacy, tending to advocate for a more regimented and organized approach with due care to isolate the victims and rabblerousers lest their fear, panic, or rebellion spread. (Prompted by a fear of mob mentality? Desire to keep control of the group?)  While the cooperative sociopaths were concerned with emotions and psychological states to the extent they predicted individual behavior, the sociopaths were not concerned with minimizing psychological or emotional scarring, only physical (and they were oddly concerned about that).

In comparison, non-sociopaths who selected cooperation were often concerned about minimizing pain overall, and even emotional pain. Some were worried about minimizing their own pain or maximizing their own chances of survival. Some were primarily concerned with keeping some measure of at least an illusion of control over the situation, or at least being creative with the solutions to the problem.

Interestingly, most of the non-sociopaths answered both questions (how would you feel and what would you do), whereas far fewer sociopaths bothered to answer how they would feel. Even if the sociopath did address how he would feel, it was often in terms of non-emotional reactions, e.g. being impressed, sighing at the bad luck, or just being angry or frustrated.

More interesting still, when asked to imagine the reactions of their "opposites." sociopaths were most likely to focus on their emotions as opposed to what they would do. In contrast, non-sociopaths focused on what the opposites would do, not what they would feel. This suggests that sociopaths tend to see non-sociopaths in terms of their emotional reactions and non-sociopaths see sociopaths in terms of their actions.

Sociopaths also tended to see empath reactions more in terms of group dynamics (e.g., the sociopath would try to predict how they would act as a group), whereas non-sociopaths imagined sociopaths as operating as more of a lone wolf. Again, this is probably true to life -- statistically this situation would have only 1 or 2 sociopaths and the main thrust of the group dynamic would be from non-sociopaths.

I was pleased to see that empaths (at least the ones who visit this site) didn't assume that sociopaths would be uniformly sadistic. Rather, most of them correctly predicted that sociopaths would be rational and efficient (only two sociopaths were coded as sadistic, the other two sadistic responders were BPD and narcissism).

My favorite response about what your opposite might do was from an aspie: "I honestly have little idea."

Thanks for participating!

A hypothetical

A reader sent me this hypothetical that I thought was interesting enough to share with all of you before I give my answer (based on the movie Vile):

"A group of friends stop to pick up a hitchhiking woman only to end up getting drugged by her with a gas. They awaken to find that vials have been implanted in the base of their skulls - which are of course instantly fatal if they are removed, a grinning professional looking woman informs them on TV screens that they have 22hrs to fill these vials with a specific amount of brain fluid, a fluid that is produced during times of extreme pain. Along with another group of unlucky test subjects and with time ticking away they decide to work together and share the burden of reaching their painful target."

I was wondering how you would feel in that type of situation, and what you would do. 

The house is filled with all kinds of tools, from pliers to grills, as well as vats of acid. Pretty much all of your standard household tools and machinery. 

Not only did I think it was an interesting hypothetical, I thought it might serve as sort of a Rorschach test for different minds. I wondered what you all would say in response to that hypothetical. But I don't want you to influence each other or submit to peer pressure. So I set up a Google Docs form where you can respond completely anonymously. I'll collect the responses and publish a sampling tomorrow along with my own answer.

The link to the form is here.

Or here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1vFNymNsUaRr7VP930S-Ay5cgiAIFnPp1ALazZ5qFFQ8/viewform

Sociopath like me

I recently got my waterproof iPod replaced under the warranty. They must have given me one that had been returned, because it had all of this music from the band Skillet and its ilk, which I have not really listened to before. Rather than change the music to my own, I've been listening to this music, trying to imagine what life must have been like for this guy (I assume male, statistically), who happened to have gotten this iPod, perhaps for Christmas, then decided he'd rather have something else instead. When I swim laps to his music selected largely by tempo rather than artistry, I feel like a meathead, and it's a nice change of pace.

This happened to me once years ago when I had bought a used ipod from a friend of a friend (a Brooklyn hipster before anyone knew what that was). I would wander the streets of my city listening to Sufjan Stevens, Xiu Xiu, and Neko Case. It was so fascinating to me to make that the soundtrack of my life for those months. For one, my music taste was for once very of the moment. For two, it happens to be very easy to to get concert tickets for up and coming acts before they've made it national, which was fun to see these artists in very intimate settings. But I also just felt like I was peeking into the head of this particular guy. The songs he chose to exclude from albums told me as much about him as the ones chose to include. (Also, the experience made me wonder, does absolutely everyone have a Michael Jackson song tucked away on a laptop or MP3 player somewhere?_

You learn a lot from people by stepping into their shoes for a little bit. I know there is a mix of people who read this blog: some who identify as sociopaths, some with other diagnoses, some who love/hate a sociopath, and some who are just curious. This invitation is probably most directed to the curious.

People have often opined to me that sociopaths are hated because the particular individual does bad things, not because the diagnosis itself maligned and misunderstood. In my own personal experience, this doesn't ring true -- there seems to be quiet a bit of pejorative force to the label/diagnosis. (I had a long holiday conversation with a cousin whom I hadn't seen in a couple years. He told me how he spent a long weekend worrying about how I might try to kill him or his children, finally deciding that it was not too likely.)

So here's the invitation: pretend to be a sociopath. Do like the guy in Black Like Me. Act otherwise completely like yourself but with this additional label. I'm curious to see what people think about what it feels like to have people see you through the lens of that label.

And as a parting gift, this classic from Bobby Caldwell who was advised to disguise his whiteness.

Psychopathy, autism, and pointing fingers (part 2)

Not surprisingly, some people found the call for greater understanding and more careful (and empathetic) use of the term and diagnosis of the disorder psychopath to be a bridge too far.

One person has suggested that the term is not ableist or any other -ist because it perfectly accurately describes people who are the bane of humanity and should be rightfully outed and oppressed lest everyone else should be oppressed. The evidence this person provides are google image searches.

The one for psychopath:

The one for autism:

See everyone! Psychopaths are all portrayed as old white males (never mind that autism is also portrayed as very white male)! They can't possibly be oppressed. The diagnosis can't possibly be misunderstood. But it is that very white/evil/male/oppressor portrayal that the original article criticizes:

"In radical communities working toward intersectional social justice, the figure of the psychopath is invoked all too often to characterize members of oppressive classes, especially when they are in a position of political power in addition to apolitical structural power."

Psychopaths, in other words, or merely those who share traits with psychopaths aren't these ubermensch who only oppress and are never themselves to oppressed because they are far too clever. Sometimes psychopaths are children. Sometimes they are people who were abused as children. Sometimes they are people from disenfranchised races (one study found that African-Americans were twice as likely as white Americans to be assigned this diagnosis) or low socioeconomic classes, circumstances that they had no control over. The unfortunate reality, as the original author argues, is that the actual use of the word psychopath to diagnose (typically people who are institutionalized) "is most often a tool for criminalizing poverty, blackness and brownness, and disability."

But some people think sociopaths deserve as much as we can throw at them and more. Proving the earlier point about people with a particular disorder disavowing any similarity or mistreatment of other disorders (e.g., arguments like "my diagnosis is misunderstood, not like these other people who really are monsters") :

When most people think of the word psychopath, they imagine Ted Bundy, Adolph Hitler, son of sam, Dexter, the zodiac killer, jack the ripper, brutal megalomaniac dictators.

For these people the label of psychopath fits perfectly. However we should actually be focusing more about the corporate psychopath, the CEO, the stockholders, the ruling class who show no empathy or remorse, who manipulate and ruin societies and economies.

Psychopaths are the people who oppress, they benefit from being psychopaths because they have no moral restraints whatsoever. That makes them oppressors, most of them are men, white and cis. Again, oppressors.

Erasing this label can only serve the psychopath, the oppressor and the ruling class.

We have to be able to tell people that the emperor has no clothes. To deal with these people we have to open our eyes to the evil they do, and label them for what they are, manipulative dangerous psychopaths. Only then can we hope to remove them from the places of high power, by shaking off our collective apathy and paying attention when someone calls someone out for acting psychopathic we take away their power to manipulate.

Your boss who takes credit for your work all while manipulating people to believe you are useless? Psychopath.

The person who abuses laws and rules to oppress people. Psychopath.

The person who uses bureaucratic excuses to deny needing people social services. Psychopath.

Your therapist who plays games with you, makes you jump through hoops and then still denies you real care. Psychopath.
***
Psychopaths benefit from being psychopaths, dont defend them. Call them out as the oppressors they are.

The thing that this proposal has going for it is its simplicity -- bad person = evil psychopath and deserves to be outted as such. I can't really criticize this proposal because the actual reasoning behind method of diagnosing and treating sociopaths is hardly any better.

The first author argues against the use of a label but rather just focusing on those who manifest certain behavior:

“My advice: Be precise in your language and say that oppressive structures are violent and manipulative. Say that those who abuse their structural positions of power act with reckless disregard for other human beings. Say that they are callous and unabashedly wielding the power that comes with their privilege.

But don’t call them psychopaths.”

The critic's response:

So, you don’t want us to use the word psychopath, but instead describe them as a psychopath instead? That wont change the reality that people will still use this in a racist and ableist way.

Yes, the only thing that can change the reality that people will still use "psychopath" in a racist and ableist way is if that term stops being a slur we hurl at our enemies or a scapegoat for all of the evil in the world and rather acknowledge what it as what it purports to be -- a mental disorder. 

Psychopathy, autism, and pointing fingers (part 1)

This was an interesting article from an autistic activist who is also anti-ableism in all its forms about why psychopath is a too often misused and maligned term/disorder:

I have become used to being told that I do not have feelings, that I am innately incapable of relating to other people as human beings or having any empathy at all, that this is a core component of what it means to be autistic. I have become used to hearing this said constantly by so-called professionals, dramatically by television personalities, clinically by journalists and academics, and casually by friends, acquaintances, family. But I have never become used to the feeling of absolute devastation weighing somewhere deep in my chest each time I find myself on the receiving end of this accusation.

Empathy is what makes us human.

It’s no wonder that the idea of psychopathy is terrifying. If psychopathy means the inability to experience empathy, and empathy is what makes us human, then psychopathy is literally the dehumanizing condition. Psychopaths populate crime dramas, horror films, murder mysteries, and thrillers. It’s the casual diagnosis for mass murderers, serial rapists, and child abusers.

But it is also deeply personal, profoundly ableist and sanist, and rooted in a complex, interlocking web of structural racism, ageism, and sexism.

She draws connections to autism and sociopathy and criticizes those with disorders who distance themselves from other disorders for the sake of seeming more normal to the ableist:

In response to frequent claims in the media and by policymakers that autistic people lack empathy (and are therefore violent psychopaths), many people in the autistic community, including autistic activists, begin the process of disavowal.

“No, autistic people are nothing like psychopaths. We are more likely to be the victims of crime while psychopaths are usually victimizers.”

“No, someone who would shoot dozens of innocent children wasn’t autistic. That’s not autism. That’s mental illness.”

“An autistic person wouldn’t commit such horribly violent crimes. Only a psychopath could do that.”

If empathy is what makes us human, and autistic people are as human as anyone else, then we must have empathy. It must be some other kind of person who doesn’t experience empathy. It must be someone who is truly psychopathic. This is the logic path that afflicts so many disability communities. Disavowal of one another has become a way of life. Many autistic people routinely decry the use of the slur retarded, yet assert in the same breath that they aren’t crazy or mentally ill. 

I love this tendency amongst people to distinguish their own failings as being somehow more excusable than other people's failings, e.g. "my limitations on empathy are not as serious as yours," or "my impulsivity or violence is due to excess of emotion, not lack of emotion," or "I'm only violent when I'm misunderstood, but you can be violent based solely on opportunism."

For more on the problems of stigmatizing mental illness, either coming from within or without the mental illness communities, see also United States President Barack Obama.  

Soft sociopathic traits

A lot emails that I receive from people describing their sociopathic traits strike me as being not quite placeable (nothing inconsistent with the diagnosis, but nothing really suggesting it either). This one seems to share a remarkable number of the "soft" sociopathic traits -- not quite in any textbook or diagnostic criterion, they are still traits that show up remarkably frequently in the sociopaths I have come to know. These soft traits include things like sexual fluidity, the particular instrumental way that charm is used, the obliviousness to certain things and hyper awareness at others.  From a reader:

As I’m sure since the subsequent publication of your book you receive these types of emails and attempts at correspondence daily, I will attempt to make this little stab at conversation short and sweet. Just a footnote here, I have no desire to exploit you and this is not an attempt to parallel our experiences. I suppose I am contacting you to relay some experiences of mine and perhaps receive some feedback.

My friend recently proposed the term, “sociopath” to me in passing conversation. I laughed off his name calling because I reasoned with myself: I grew up in a loving, stable environment, I have always had friends and significant others and I’ve always been keenly aware of my significance to them. I am not some brooding psychopath. I will admit here that I was unaware of the difference between “psycho” and “socio” and incorrectly found them mutually exclusive. However, the term “sociopath” sizzled in my brain for quite some time and I decided to delve into studying this alleged “disorder” and try to either self-diagnose or abandon the subject completely if it wasn't applicable to me. I reevaluated nearly every memory I can tap into and here’s just a sample of the conclusions I've come to:

By the age of 18, I had been arrested for assault, theft, and possession of criminal tools, vandalism, and a negligible complicity charge. At the various times of these altercations, I always was able to weasel my way out of the worst possible consequences. In my family’s eyes, I was a merely a victim of circumstance of hanging around the “wrong crowd” or being “scared, anxious” to be going away to college. At the time I think I believed those explanations myself. I have been in several altercations and what I refer to as “battles” with my family members often resulting in periods of estrangement with them.

Each one of my relationships throughout high school and my young adult life ended with a bang. The first ended in me cheating and spreading a rumor that my boyfriend had essentially taken advantage of me sexually. The second ended in cheating on my part as well and in a fiery battle with her parents that ended in a restraining order against me. The third was almost identical to the second. During these relationships, I would always befriend my significant other’s circle of friends and more often than not they all ended up liking me more than my girlfriend/boyfriend. I never felt particularly attached to my boyfriends or girlfriends, I always felt like, “well, I’m young, I don’t have to care about them or take these relationships seriously.” I have always identified as a bisexual. I like the differences between sexes and have never been able to adequately identify with one or the other. I am sexually fluid. This has always stirred confusion with those who have been in relationships with me and I've often heard they feel threatened by everyone around me, male or female.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I was considered above average. I was and still am an avid reader and consider myself to be fluent in many musical instruments. I excelled in every activity I tried, guitar, drums, English, horseback riding, swimming, and softball. Music became somewhat of an obsession for me and I have become integrated in an underground community of musicians. I won several awards in academics and was able to attain a generous scholarship to a school I couldn’t otherwise afford. My family is exceedingly proud of me and I have always known I was the “favorite” to my various grandparents, aunts, and uncles.

I began waitressing at a small diner at the age of 16. I charmed my way into the hearts of many customers who still contact me after transferring to a different store several hours away. I consider myself to be the ideal employee, by befriending upper management and kissing a little ass I am mostly free to do as I please without consequence. However, I have managed to get approximately 5 people fired and dozens written up.  

You’re probably wondering why I failed to pick up on these things earlier or even realize how “abnormal” I am. The only explanation I can come up with is that maybe that’s just how the emotional and physical world naturally occurs in my mind. My “normal” is just maybe a variance on the society’s perceived notion of normalcy. I could go on forever but again, I am lazy. I realized rather quickly how much I assume the role of “sociopath” by textbook definition and although I have statistically come into contact with many sociopaths, you are the only one I have found to be formally diagnosed and have a way to contact.