Author of Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight M.E. Thomas interviews science PhD candidate Victoria about the dramatic change that's happened in her life since the last time they spoke in Part 4 of the series. They speak about why Victoria was the way she was before, how did it feel to be that way, why she thought to do the meditation program, how that changed the way she viewed the world. They also talk about identity, personhood, agency, the desire to control and shifting our desires to control from things that are not within our control to thing that are properly within our control, the difference between direct and indirect control, "timshel" or thou mayest from "East of Eden," love, process vs. outcome orientation, choosing to move from reactionary emotional to thoughtful responses, accountability for choices, personal boundaries, identity hits, ego, and self-expression.
The meditation program Victoria participated in: https://www.innerengineering.com/
Covey's "scarcity" vs. "abundance" mentalities: http://franklincoveystephenpearson.blogspot.com/2011/01/abundance-mentality-vs-scarcity.html
Paul Graham's Keep Your Identity Small: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
Part 1 of this series: https://youtu.be/EAujim_xKWE
Part 2 of this series: https://youtu.be/TmL55G9xgVU
Part 3 of this series: https://youtu.be/fnFjkWsKKnk
Part 4 of this series: https://youtu.be/ZJ68szHTOPs
More from Victoria on willpower: https://youtu.be/E-IIJoei_hk
I was reading your blog, specifically the post titled “Seeing things as they really are”. On the topic of weak sense of self. I’m really curious as to how that affects people and sociopaths in general. (I would love to read a post specifically on that topic.) I was listening a song by Charles Manson called “My World” which actually mentioned his weak sense of self or lack of ego. (I’m not necessarily sure what the difference between a sense of self and an ego is) Charles Manson was considered either a psychopath or sociopath.(they never really specified, constantly using the terms interchangeably) If you don’t know about him, in a very small nutshell he was claimed to have grown a following, a cult. And then was claimed to use that cult to kill some famous people. He has also been in and out of penitentiary's his whole life. He himself claiming that the penitentiary was his father. You should really check out his interviews, many are available on YouTube. On a separate matter, if you ever get the chance head down to Kentucky. Me and my friend would love to sit down and talk. I suspect myself to be sociopathic, no idea of if i am or not. I’m not going to get a diagnosis mainly because of the negative effects that can occur. But basically before preschool in daycare i made my best friend that we’ll call Sam. We both had a very similar up bringing and have always stayed friends. About a year ago we both started researching about sociopaths, for some reason we were both naturally drawn to this. And when I say we both started researching this i mean that we were doing this separately from each other, not know that the other person even knew about the subject. And one day it popped up in a conversation some how and we both confessed. But what’s really amazing about that is that we both started researching around the same time and came to the conclusion around the same time. You mentioned that you’re trying to learn more about other sociopaths. I can’t say for sure that i am one, but you can make an assumption off the info that i give you. I’d like to know if i am one. Not because of the thought that “oh I’m a sociopath and I’m callous and blah blah so I’m better” but rather that I’m just very curious. Referring to a weak sense of self, i believe that i have one. People always tell me that you gotta find yourself, i guess mainly because I’m the age of 18. But i am confused by that statement because why do you need to find it in the first place? Aren’t you already yourself? And can’t you just be whatever you want? One thing I’ve said before is that “you can’t be something you’re not if you don’t know what you are.” Who am i as of now? I’m 18 and male, and i see the whole world as an opportunity to exploit. I feel that you can do anything that you can do. I’m a very kind and popular person. I have many friends that i got to for if i need something. I have both meaningful and meaningless bonds with my friends and family. I’m nice for one because it’s beneficial in the long run and two because it gives me a challenge for something to do when I’m bored. Which I am a very very bored person. I drive fast, take hard turns and used to drift (until i had to buy new tires ) if i could i would get a motorcycle. I play with fire a lot (or so my friends say) although it’s a lot less than i used to. But i do a lot of thrill seeking activities. I love art, dancing, and science/engineering. I draw abstract concepts of my mood and thoughts. I used to dance a lot being in on a competitive dance team that’s been to Vegas. And i build things all the time, my latest project being an electric bike so i don’t have to walk at college (I’m lazy, or as i see it being efficient). I feel as though i have multiple personalities or masks. Wearing different ones for different people, although I’m pretty sure most people do that. Here are two different examples of times where I’ve acted different. Ex.1 i got a call from a friend. Her voice was almost inaudible. I could tell that she was crying. So i asked “where are you?” I then drove to her car which was in a parking lot. This i found odd, but thinking to myself I knew that she was a sensitive and emotional person so i just assumed that it was just on a whim of some sort. So i hopped in her car, she had just got in an argument with her boyfriend. She had her head on her steering wheel, her hands were clinching the wheel with intensity. She was crying very loudly tears were just pouring out her eyes. I calmed her down and reassured her. Being very attentive and holding the best facial expressions that i could( crying is always hard to deal with, since i never know how to actually act. I always wish that i could just give someone a pat on the back say “there there” and then say “get over it, you’re fine”) she was actually on the verge of suicide so i was being extra attentive marking up lies and connections, just about anything that would give her enough reasons to hold onto life. She hasn’t killed herself yet. Ex.2 it was New Years. I went to a friends party. It was a smaller group of 15 people. But one girl one having too much to drink, on purpose it seemed like to me, i think she needed an excuse to act reckless. But she was very insecure and very unstable. Constantly letting people know that she loved them and that the world loved them as well, some how i guess that helped her feel like she was loved. But she was getting too drunk and dropped a glass that shattered onto the floor. She attempted to go clean it up and almost fell into the glass. As a reference from your book it seemed to me as she was flirting with death. So they stopped her and cleaned up the glass. We all moved out of the basement and to the upstairs cause there were still shards laying around. She stayed down there desperately Singing and moaning for attention. Annoying everyone at the party. I walk to the basement door and from the top of the steps i yell “SHUT THE FUCK UP” she then was quiet, i walked into the room where everyone was and they all were at awe. They slowly began to laugh quietly, because they knew it’s what they wanted to do but wouldn’t. She latter came upstairs, projectile vomited, got on her knees(which were now in the vomit) and proceeded to scoop up her vomit with her hands. It was disgusting, embarrassing, and enthralling to watch. Then she took a shower, went into the kitchen and grabbed a knife and was about to kill herself. I sat on the couch and watched, somebody stopped her. This is by no means extreme in anyway, simply the fastest experience i could think of. For as long as i can remember I’ve always felt apart from the crowd. I’ve never been a part of something. I never belonged to a group of friends or my school or even to my best friend Sam. I believe that i will always feel alone and isolated. How i act is also heavily affected by my mood. I mainly have three moods. One is where I’m irritable, aggressive, impulsive, blunt, callous(more than normal). Two is where I’m very calm, quiet, reflective, rational and calculating. Three is my neutral where I’m in the middle of the two. I have a little bit of high energy great for interacting with crowds and talking to people. The perfect twist of impulsivity and calculating. But perfect mood for doing anything i need done. One thing i find odd is how being nervous affects me. It affects me physically with increased heart rate and maybe a little bit of jitteriness, but i don’t feel that it actually gets to me, my mind is perfectly calm. A difference between me and you is that i don’t have a grandiose view of myself. However that seems to slowly be changing as I’ve become aware of how stupid other people are. It took me a lot longer than you to realize this. I figured this out around the age of 12 or something like that. I believe that’s because my mother tried to me make believe that i was worse than everyone else so i always felt stupider and didn’t judge other people. But i grew out of that perspective and am confident and smarter than most ect. My child hood. In my child hood i was high in Conscientiousness. I remember being just tall enough to reach a door knob as i thought to myself “i wonder what happens to you when you die, does anything happen or are you just dust?” I always would enjoy them moment and try to be one with my surroundings. Or i would sit down and just think, walking around the hallways of my mind for what felt like hours. My cousin that we’ll call Nate introduced me to fire and other things. I remember one memory where me my sister Sabrina and my cousin Nate were all sitting around this green slide in the heat of the summer. The sun was very intense. We grabbed worms one at a time and put them at the top of the slide to watch them wiggle their way down as they turned into crisp. Me and my cousin did things like this a lot. Snails and salt, watching in awe as the snail would bubble and fizz. Me and Sam would go out at night killing fireflies with our hands, tennis rackets, swords, and a can of hair spray with a lighter. We also found a snake in his yard one time, we both grabbed sticks and started beating it to death. It was a fun game dodge the snakes bites, after it couldn’t move we then cut off its head and put it in a bowl of salt in his shed so that we could keep the skull. There were a bunch of other things too. One time me and my Sabrina (as toddlers) walked down the neighborhood to the river, grabbed some rocks and started throwing them at ducks. The police cars siren turned off and told us to stop. I’ve always wondered how different i would’ve been i had started the habit of abusing smaller animals(this event with the ducks happened years before the event with snakes and Sam), because up to then it was just bugs. I was emotionally and mentally abused throughout elementary school and possibly before that (can’t remember that far, all those years just blur together to me) i have a good family, i recognize that I’m very fortunate and that what i experienced is nothing compared to others. My mother was mainly the antagonizer. She’s bipolar and possibly has borderline personality disorder. She loved me when it was convenient, when she needed me to do something, and constantly lied to me. One moment i was the best child in the world and then next i was the worst. And I’m not exaggerating that at all. She was very emotional, she taught me that emotions were unreliable and so was love. I was only with my father when i was helping with one of his projects. When there was a complication or obstacle he would always get furious and yell and cuss. It was always so annoying and made me mad. I didn’t want to be like that so i taught myself how to hide my anger. I was never physically abused. However my mother would always yell at me calling me things like worthless and good for nothing. And her face was red and she was very loud stomping through the house making noises by slamming doors, drawers,pans, pots, everything. She always tried to make me feel bad about myself. there was a time when i cried myself to sleep every night in a row for a month. One time i watched a movie where the person said “being yourself is enough” so i asked my mom one day. Isn’t being myself enough? She glared at me with anger and said no. The sadness she made me feel became anger and somewhere along the line i created a dissociation from my self. Life didn’t feel real and i was just like another one of my games.(life still doesn’t feel real) but as i grew up i realized that my mother only acted that way because she was just very unintelligent, insecure, and living a life she didn’t want. I used to hate her but after realizing that i forgave her. This doesn’t mean that she doesn’t aggravate me, she does. But instead i feel indifferent towards her. I was unpopular in elementary school, mainly because i didn’t fit in or understand people. So when i went to middle school i mimicked the popular people and added bits and pieces to my arsenal of personas. Then i became popular and people loved me. I watched a plethora of psychology vids trying to understand people as much as i could. That’s mainly why i got into psychology and am now planning to major in it. Thank you so much if you read all that. I’d love to hear back from you. My response:
I’ll try to write about sense of self again sometime, but I think you already understand how and why it happens to us — we take enough psychological hits to our identity that we just dissociate ourselves from it, like a tourniquet cutting off blood flow to a damaged limb. I think (through usually professional help) we can restore some function to that damaged limb, but it isn't super easy, it's not intuitive, it's hard for us to even have a vision of what it might look like to do something like that, and it's a bit like being lost in the woods trying to find our childhood home that we only remember faintly. And certain things will never be back the way they could have been. I still don't experience affective empathy and probably never will, despite finally graduating from therapy.
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.
Personality traits are so interesting to me. Some people find them to be so rigid -- "Oh, I always do that..." or "Scorpios are just like that." Identity is such an interesting topic to me right now. I have recently become obsessed with this idea of an absolute diva of an opera singer, except she was born in 300 BC in Africa before opera was invented and possibly even before the advent of agriculture in her area, so obviously if she excels at anything, it's hunting/gathering. My religion (Mormonism) has a particularly interesting context for these identity mind puzzles, because we believe that everyone existed before this world and had an entire other life before this existence, which makes accidents of fate seem especially problematic in terms of being emblematic of identity. Another realization I had recently was how easily I slip into the "reality" of a dream. I am only rarely aware that I am actually in a dream. Otherwise, I am 100% committed to my new life as fill-in-the-blank dream scenario, as if that was and has always been the only life I ever experienced. That seems crazy to me, and sort of disloyal to my current reality, particularly since it's so easy and my mind is so ready to do it.
Along those lines of what is identity and how malleable our personality traits can be, this Washington Post article talks about a natural experiment in which people at, below, or around the poverty line were given additional money, and the resulting impact on the children in those families:
Twenty years ago, a group of researchers began tracking the personalities of 1,420 low income children in North Carolina. At the time, the goal was simple: to observe the mental conditions of kids living in rural America. But then a serendipitous thing happened. Four years into The Great Smoky Mountains Study of Youth, the families of roughly a quarter of the children saw a dramatic and unexpected increase in annual income. They were members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and a casino had just been built on the reservation. From that point on every tribal citizen earned a share of the profits, meaning about an extra $4,000 a year per capita. For these families, the extra padding was a blessing, enough to boost household incomes by almost 20 percent on average. But for the fields of psychology, sociology and economics, it has been a gold mine, too. The sudden change in fortunes has offered a rare glimpse into the subtle but important ways in which money can alter a child’s life. The dataset is so rich that researchers continue to study it to this day.
The impact on the children's personalities was actually quite strong:
Not only did the extra income appear to lower the instance of behavioral and emotional disorders among the children, but, perhaps even more important, it also boosted two key personality traits that tend to go hand in hand with long-term positive life outcomes. The first is conscientiousness. People who lack it tend to lie, break rules and have trouble paying attention. The second is agreeableness, which leads to a comfort around people and aptness for teamwork. And both are strongly correlated with various forms of later life success and happiness. The researchers also observed a slight uptick in neuroticism, which, they explained, is a good sign. Neuroticism is generally considered to be a positive trait so long as one does not have too much of it. *** Remarkably, the change was the most pronounced in the children who were the most deficient. "This actually reduces inequality with respect to personality traits," said Akee. "On average, everyone is benefiting, but in particular it's helping the people who need it the most."
Why? They're still not sure, but also correlated was a better relationship between spouses, better relationship between parents and children, and less alcohol consumption.
What hope for those past childhood age?
For the most part, scientists agree that the window for improvement in a child's cognitive abilities is short-lived. By the age of about 8, children have set themselves on a path, Akee said. What comes next happens, more or less, within the confines of the limits that were created in their early years. One's personality, on the other hand, is malleable well into adolescence. What's more, the changes tend to be fairly permanent. "All of the evidence points to the idea if they change in the teenage years, they will stay changed forever," said Akee. "In this case, the kids will likely maintain a different level of conscientiousness and agreeableness for life." Experts have known about the power of intervention for some time. A lot of previous research has shown that educational interventions can have sizable impacts on personality traits and, in turn, life outcomes. But rarely, if ever before, have researchers been able to observe the impact of a change in income across such a large group.
I read a lot of stuff that suggests that adults with childhood trauma or other less than ideal childhood circumstances should stop whining, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and otherwise become a normal and contributing member of society. I'm sure improvement is always possible, but I know for a fact that some (most?) simply do not have the capacity to do anything of the sort, and due to circumstances that were and still remain totally beyond their control.
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?
A friend recently called me an auteur. She meant that I seem to do things my own particular way, "you are so essentially you. You have such an M.E. signature. You leave an M.E. wake." It's interesting to think about it in those terms, it made me curious about the definition and origin of the word auteur, "an artist whose style and practice are distinctive." Literally meaning "author," it originated as a way to distinguish certain filmmakers whose unique style and artistic vision pervades their films, despite the many other participants in the process. Those filmmakers are the "author" of their films in ways that most filmmakers simply are not, due to lack of control or influence.
I wondered, if I am an auteur of my life, than what is my distinctive signature? I don't feel particularly definite, particularly rigid, or concrete in my beliefs or personality characteristics. My friend is right in that I do happen to have a set of preferences, though, and my choices always reflect those preferences. Although some of those preferences line up with decisions that others based on morality, I wouldn't say that it is a moral code anymore than you could say that Woody Allen's films are uniquely his due to his particular moral code, although it certainly would have some influence.
I don't know how I acquired my value system. I imagine that every aspect of it was once a choice, although it has been so long since I made those choices that I have long since forgotten how or why they were made, or even the very fact of a choice being made in most cases. I guess I just chose to be the way I am because I preferred it over all other options, at least at the time. There's nothing objectively hierarchical about my choices, no inherent judgment as to the choices of others. It's just what happened to happen due to a confluence of events (and genetics).
Recently I was flying over wooded areas demarcated by winding rivers. I wondered at the lack of logic that informed the flow of these rivers. Some of their path was obvious, avoid a hill here, follow a low land there, but some of it was absolutely random. I wondered at the initial water drop that moved in one particular direction over another, making a bend in the river. Maybe a little pebble forced it one way instead of the other, maybe even something as transient as the foot of an animal. The moment before was a universe of possibilities in which the water could have gone any number of directions. After, the cohesiveness of water molecules combined with the ease of repetition meant that every other water molecule would follow suit, self-reinforcing ad infinitum until the universe of possibilities added up to exactly one result.
We talk a lot here about what certain things must mean about a person. If you look at the end product without analyzing the process, you might be tempted to infer any number of different "truths" about a person, project any number of generalizations based on your own experiences, despite how paltry they are when compared to the universe of possibilities. The truth is that human behavior so often defies definition and explanation that any attempt to take such a pursuit seriously seems ill-fated and ignorant. I have been realizing lately that this futility in achieving real understanding applies equally (if not more so) to attempts at acquiring self-knowledge.
In other words, the more I learn about myself, the more I realize how little I know about everything.
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.
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?
Based on my own personal experiences and the experiences of many others, I have come to believe that there are certain key developmental stages that most (high-functioning?) sociopaths experience when growing up. I believe these developmental experiences are much more consistent across young sociopaths than the trinity of animal torture, fire play, and bed wetting, albeit less observable by a third party.
Sociopath child tends to slip under the radar at first because all young children are self-centered and frequently perverse. He is unaware that he is different from others until about age 11 or 12. At this age, he realizes that he has missed a cognitive/emotional fork in the road somewhere along the way (age of 4-6?), a departure from the developmental path of his peers that does not manifest itself until years later. This manifestation is characterized by a short Asperger's like social awkwardness and social rejection beginning just before the age of puberty. All of sociopath child's hormonally/emotionally driven peers are acting differently, and in ways that sociopath child doesn't understand or respect. Sociopath child doesn't play their game at first, doesn't bother to try to pretend to be an idiot like them, insisting instead that they adapt to him. They do not adapt to him, but rather reject him socially as being a nonconformist "weirdo". It becomes clear to pre-teen sociopath relatively quickly (1-2 months?) that the days of effortless fitting in that he enjoyed throughout his childhood are over. The rules have changed, his survival instincts kick in, and he realizes at some level that even if he can't understand why his peers are behaving the way they do, he must learn to adapt. Specifically sociopath teen must learn how to actively pretend to be like everyone else. In terms of mask-wearing skills, pre-teen sociopath is like the smart kid who has always "naturally" done well at school, who suddenly goes to secondary school or university and realizes that he must study to get good marks. Likewise, although child sociopath "naturally" fit in with ease, pre-teen sociopath must learn people study skills. He will use these skills in monitoring his peers to discover what he is missing and to mirror these traits back to them.
Young teen sociopath eventually overcomes this little roadblock (1-2 years?) by acquiring a baseline proficiency at mimicry and manipulation. This process hardens him to the humanity of others. To accomplish his goals, he has resorted to objectifying everyone around him, seeing them either as targets, threats, or assets.
Teen sociopath gets more reckless with his manipulation exploits as he gets more comfortable with his skills. He sometimes makes mistakes, pushes people too far, makes people very angry. These moments are frequently overlooked or quickly papered over because his peers are in such developmental flux themselves. His worst moments are written off as being hormonally based or isolated incidents. As his peers mature, however, teen sociopath's tactics will begin to seem heavy handed and artificial to them. They will tire of the manipulation and will start responding negatively to his primitive skills.
As late teen sociopath begins experiencing more pushback/blowback from his increasingly riskier exploits, he will begin to see that the majority of his life consists of manipulation and mask wearing. Late teen sociopath begins to truly understand who he is only after one of his friends hates him.
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Despite his increasing social difficulties, late teen sociopath will try to ignore the warning signs that suggest that he is not just different, but damaged. This is, after all, the only way of life he has ever known. He will do anything to maintain his status quo, including going to war against anyone who would threaten it, including himself.
Self-deception will reach a fever pitch in the early twenties as he tries to convince himself that nothing is wrong with him or what he is doing. Young adult sociopath will eventually hit some form of rock bottom, however it is that he defines that to himself. If he is smart, this will be the impetus for him to do some deep "soul" searching, and come up with some other, more sustainable way of living. If he is not smart, he will keep repeating this pattern indefinitely -- cheap manipulation tricks, backlash, self-deception, return to the status quo of cheap tricks.
For the sociopaths who move beyond the cycle of self-deception, the typical age of self-awareness is early to mid twenties, although it can still happen into the early thirties.
This is what I have come to expect in the portrayal of the development of a sociopath from small child through his mid-twenties, at least in broad strokes. Again, I think these are relatively consistent experiences, at least among high-functioning sociopaths. Depending on where the sociopath is in the stage, though, they may or may not see things this way. For instance, child sociopath doesn't realize he is manipulating, pre-teen may not necessarily be able to articulate a missed "cognitive fork," etc., but I have found that sociopaths who make it out of the cycle of self-deception will more or less recognize themselves in this description. Thoughts?
It was hard for me when you were born. Baby number three is always hard because when there’s two there’s one for each parent, but when there are three it’s hard. And you came so close to Jim. And Jim was taking his sweet time getting potty trained, so I had both of you in diapers for like a year. And that was before the disposable diapers were popular and they were expensive so we had cloth diapers and I had to wash them and hang them out on the line because we didn’t have a dryer. So it seemed like that was my whole life was taking care of babies, changing diapers, washing them, hanging them out. I think that was the time I went a little nutso. I remember I just started freaking out sometime and dad had to call grandpa and have him come over and talk me out of it. I don’t know, just the stress and everything probably piled up. In those days I wasn’t very good about keeping on an even keel. I’d let thing build up and build up and then just start flipping out. We thought you were perfectly healthy, but you had thrush at birth and the thrush got worse, which made you not want to nurse. I would try to calm you down by nursing you. You would just be upset and there was nothing we could do to get you to stop crying. You would cry until you were exhausted and then sleep for a while. So that was a very trying time. Finally, I don’t remember how old you were until we finally took you into the doctor, and they checked you out and said you had thrush. You had a herniated navel too, probably because you were crying so violently. That was sad, my poor baby. I just remember the family get together at the beach when you were crying and everyone was trying to be the one to hold you and calm you down but nobody could do it so I just took you and went away with you walking around the whole park. I would sometimes just leave you in a room to cry. There was nothing else to do. I put you on your stomach on the water bed because you seemed to like it. So you would cry and fuss, the waterbed would rock you and you would finally go to sleep. In some ways I think that made us bond more because I was very emotionally involved with you and protective of you, wanting to fix what was wrong and wanting you to be better, happier and healthy. So I think I was maybe a little extra attached to you. Dad would be the one who would say, “Just put her in a room and shut the door.” Because we lived in that little dinky house, so there wasn’t anywhere where you could escape the noise. I wonder what Jim and Scott thought of that. I don’t remember focusing on them at all, I was just so wrapped up in you. Poor Jim, because he was just a little guy. He probably got ignored a lot when this screaming baby came along and kicked him out of mama’s world. I can’t remember hardly anything about your childhood. I remember you drowning as a child. I can’t remember who noticed you back there but then when I saw you, it seemed like you had let go of the boat. But I just remembered feeling totally frantic and I remembered just having this sick feeling and praying that you would be ok. It seems like we had to go down the river a little to be able to pull over to the side of the river. I can’t remember how they called to get people to come help. I ran up the beach, sick with worry. I guess you just kind of came to and started breathing. You seemed to be pretty much ok. I mean kind of out of it a little, but I was just happy you were conscious and breathing and back with us. I remember when you had your appendix problem. I always thought that I was pretty good at reading my kids, knowing what was wrong with them, but you were super hard to read. And we had never had anything serious happen with the kids before, so this was a first for us. I didn’t really know or think there was something that was seriously wrong because you weren’t even acting serious until you developed a fever. But when we went in there and it had ruptured and you were so sick, I was mad at myself for not having taken you in sooner. But you were really good at being closed off, showing a brave front and going off and doing your thing and you didn’t really care if you were sick or let little pains get in the way. You were just off doing yourself. So I guess your common sense with your health wasn’t that great. Because I remember you went and even played in a tournament with your appendix either ruptured or about to rupture. So that was crazy. I can’t even comprehend someone being able to do that. I remember you hated the hospital and always tried to get dad to eat your food, which wasn’t very hard. And I remember he had to finish your breakfast that morning so you would get out of there and wanted to get out so bad. And then you had to be in a wheelchair for like 5 days after. And I remember you being at school and seeing how the kids were fawning over you and I realized that you had a lot of friends and people that cared about you. And you seemed to be in pretty good spirits about the whole thing. It’s not like you were like, “I’m in a wheelchair and this sucks.” I think you were kind of enjoying a new experience. But I think you were happy to get better—get back to your fast paced life. You wouldn’t have lasted in a wheelchair that long for sure.
A friend sent me this older NY Times article about teaching at risk youth empathy by exposing them to and asking them to consider the well-being of babies. Why this works, no one knows for sure, but it seems to trigger in them a natural inclination to help altruistically, also shared by primates:
We know that humans are hardwired to be aggressive and selfish. But a growing body of research is demonstrating that there is also a biological basis for human compassion. Brain scans reveal that when we contemplate violence done to others we activate the same regions in our brains that fire up when mothers gaze at their children, suggesting that caring for strangers may be instinctual. When we help others, areas of the brain associated with pleasure also light up. Research by Felix Warneken and Michael Tomasello indicates that toddlers as young as 18 months behave altruistically. (If you want to feel good, watch one of their 15-second video clips here.)
This was something that I didn't know, that we are programmed to help. The clips are fascinating, for instance this first one, where the researcher drops a clothespin just out of his reach. The 18 month old child crawls over to the clothespin, picks it up, works himself to a standing position so he'll be tall enough to give the researcher back his clothespin, which he does (to his own apparent delight).
I wouldn't necessarily call it altruism, though, at least not from my superficial understanding. To me, the impulse seems rooted more in a drive for efficiency (am I projecting my own thoughts here?). In each of these videos, the toddlers help out in a task that obviously requires cooperative effort for success -- a situation in which it is obvious that someone needs help with something, for instance opening a door when someone has their arms full. Without the toddler's help, the door never gets opened and that person never gets to their location, or they do so with much greater cost in terms of time and effort. By helping the researcher, even where there is no immediate promise of reward, the toddler is still engaging in value maximizing behavior that he can hope to benefit from in kind in the future.
This is clearly an evolutionarily advantageous trait, particularly to help out within a particular group or tribe of people. It expands the our ability to consolidate resources in order to scale particular operations. Just like the modern legal fiction of a corporation allows us to pool resources (via stock purchases) to create business entities that no one of us could finance independently, a natural inclination to participate in cooperative tasks promotes the overall well-being of society, which improves our own lives.
Maybe I'm reading too much into all of this, but I've always wondered where my compulsion for efficiency comes from, which will override almost any other impulse. Could it be related to this?
It could also be that the toddler is just trying to pull his own weight, starting to realize that he is a suck on social resources, and wants to avoid getting left in the jungle to die. Which is actually a risk for us all, in some ways. So be good everyone! Or else!
I have posted before about James Fallon, neuroscientist, University of California, Irvine, professor, psychopath expert, and successful psychopath (?) before. I thought this video was worth posting as well because it targets more the personal experience of what his family thinks about who he is and his childhood was instrumental in Jim not developing into a killer, despite his brain and genetic predispositions.
6:55: His mother tells him about how Lizzie Borden is a cousin of his. On one line of his family there were at least 16 murderers.
7:54: He decides to check the brain scans and DNA of his family members for the brain signatures and genes linked to psychopathy. He discovers everyone is normal except for him, who has the brain scan signature of a killer and all of the genetic markers predisposing to impulsivity, violence, etc.
10:05: Reaction from his family "I knew there was always something off. It makes more sense now." "Everything that you would want in a serial killer he has in a fundamental way." "It was surprising but it wasn't surprising." "He's always had a standoffish part to him."
11:00: Jim is honest with himself "I have characteristics or traits, some of which are . . . psychopathic." he gives the example of how he could blow off an aunt's funeral. "I know something's wrong, but I still don't care."
11:40: Why wasn't he a killer? "Whether genes are triggered or not will depend on what happens in your childhood."
12:28: "It turns out that I had a unbelievably wonderful childhood."
I think this is an interesting and accurate portrayal of what a high functioning psychopath might look like. I think people expect to see very obvious differences, but frequently they're not obvious or they're not really visible. It's like this response from Jennifer Kahn, author of that NY Times Magazine article on psychopathic children, when asked about whether the child's behavior was more or less extreme than she expected:
I think I expected Michael to be more immediately extreme. When I arrived, he was on his good behavior, but he did get extreme later in the night. Something that Waschbusch said he struggles with is that it is hard to define what is prepsychopathic behavior and what is behavior caused by a different kind of problem — it does tend to cross different diagnoses. It wasn’t the screaming or fits or slamming the toilet seat that struck me; it was the calculated coldness and the flip between emotional states. But I had expected it to be more obvious. When I entered the house, of course, I was thinking of adult psychopaths who have led criminal lives for decades, which is normally how they come to our attention. I was maybe expecting a child version of that, but of course that’s kind of ridiculous. Even among adult psychopaths, that would be a small minority.
I've been reading Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman and thinking about how and why I became a high functioning sociopath. Psychologists and scientists believe sociopthy is some combination of genes and environment, which makes sense, particularly in light of recent research suggesting that not only do genes matter, but that the body's varying expression of the genes appears in response to environmental or other factors. As Dr. Goleman says:
If a gene never expresses the proteins that could direct the body's functioning in a given way, then we may as well not possess that gene at all.
If there were some triggering event or environmental force that triggered my sociopathy, I think it was just as likely something that happened to me as a baby than something within my conscious memory. For instance, when I was an infant I had a particularly bad case of colic, a poorly understood condition affecting infants whose main symptom is "frequent, inconsolable crying." According to my parents, I cried incessantly, and according to my medical records I had to go to the doctor for a ruptured navel due to excessive crying. I'm sure my parents did as well as they could, but it no doubt must have been difficult to tolerate such a child, much less nurture it.
Dr. Goleman says that although the brain doesn't reach maturity until 20, the biggest growth spurt is in the first 24 months of life. He also cites a study regarding the importance of the very beginning of a mammal's existence in brain programming:
[A]t least for mice, a vital way that parenting can change the very chemistry of a youngster's genes. [A] singular window in development [is] the first twelve hours after a rodent's birth--during which a crucial methyl process occurs. How much a mother rat licks and grooms her pups during this window actually determines how brain chemicals that respond to stress will be made in that pup's brain for the rest of its life.
The more nurturing the mother, the more quick-witted, confident, and fearless the pup will become; the less nurturing she is, the slower to learn and more overwhelmed by threats the pup will be.
The human equivalents of licking and grooming seem to be empathy, attunement, and touch. If [this research] translates to humans . . . then how our parents treated us has left its genetic imprint over and above the set of DNA they passed down to us. And how we treat our children will, in turn, set levels of activity in their genes. (pp. 152-54)
The book is not all that helpful for sociopaths, and has a low opinion of us generally, so I wouldn't recommend taking the time to read it. But maybe I'll post some other sociopath-specific information I find.
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