Religious moral reasoning vs. guilt and getting better

A reader sent me this video of David Woods (Christian psychopath) talking about his religious conversion and how he gets pushback from other Christians because he still doesn't feel guilt.

First, him explaining (I don't think super well) about guilt. 

Second, him talking about how religious people insist that feelings of guilt are a necessary part of religious conversion/salvation. 

I remember when I got judged by some members of my own church, they said that it wasn't necessarily what I had done in the past that made me such a bad person, but that the way that I felt about it. I thought that was a totally anticipated reaction for people to have because my religion does emphasize to a certain point one's change of heart over the ledger recording one's actions in life, whether good and bad. That is, someone might have a change of heart at the last minute death row style and still be just as worthy of salvation as someone who had been "good" their entire life. On the other hand, it's obvious a mental health disorder to not have the same feelings of guilt and to expect someone to feel differently is like expecting gay people to not be attracted to members of the same sex. So I feel like this thoughts vs. action issue is something that many if not all religions have had to evolve their thinking on as we learn more and more the limits of controlling one's thoughts and feelings.

A quick word about guilt. The way I explain a sociopath's lack of guilt is through sense of self. Shame is something that society imposes on you to make you feel bad because you have violated one of their moral constructs. Guilt is a feeling that you have violated your own moral construct or self construct. For instance, if you think of yourself as being an honest and generous person, you may feel guilt if you behave in a dishonest or selfish way. But if you don't think of yourself in any sort of terms, either as being dishonest or honest, you won't ever have experience guilt because you won't ever violate your own self concept. I think sociopaths can regret that things didn't play out differently, and they can even feel remorse when they understand that it was their action that led to things paying out poorly or hurting people that they didn't want to hurt but maybe in a moment of extra impulsivity they did hurt.

Here's his video saying that before a sociopath can get better, he has to see himself as having a problem or being flawed or missing something, rather than seeing sociopathy exclusively as a super power.

Regret being sociopathic?

From a reader:

I consider myself neurologically atypical if not also sociopathic. I don't have any official diagnosis so I'm not sure if my self-diagnosis is useful.

I wanted to ask about regret for being sociopathic. Much of the website posts and your book resonate with me rather deeply. I see myself in many many of the different posts and comments and stories.
I read the book (having been drawn to it primarily because I have considered myself atypical since my teen years) in only a matter of days and determined that I very strongly matched enough of the factors or variables that would classify me in the socio realm.

I struggle with something of a cognitive dissonance, though. And I'm not sure other identified sociopaths would agree I am in that realm based largely on this factor. I can't fit in anywhere since I behave in manners so out of place and abnormal to the folks at large (social, work, etc.)

But I want to. I see how others act and emote and engage and connect and I get angry at myself for not understanding how to do that and not being able to. I have definitely learned how to feign it, but I find that cuts a number of relationships short because the empathic (to use book language) types try to get me to open up and be vulnerable like they are and I think they see how shallow that pool of mine is or see something else that creates a sense of unease and they remain somewhat distance.

In a few instances I've invested a lot of time and energy into a specific person to get them to convince themselves that I am more and deeper and I feel things just like them. I have in essence made some very good pawns from it. The latest addition to my collection of people is someone who I've somehow managed to totally ...glamour. They are enamored to the point where I've had to detach time and energy from them. To the point where I think I've broken them or gone too far. They adore me, they love me, they want more of me, they dream of me, they masturbate to me. I am overwhelmed that I did this.

The latest ...conquest only happened after I underwent a lengthy period of loneliness / retrospection / self-revelation. I'm in my late 20s now and I identified my last couple of years with the "blue" period from your book, where you seem to have realized just how lonely life can be, for someone who has a rather difficult disconnect from a lot of other run-of-the-mill people.

This is getting long, but ...do you, in some ways or at certain times...regret being sociopathic? Do you have desires to be 'normal?' To not have to think about yourself in these ways? To not have to watch yourself carefully and present a persona all the time? To just...be able to relax and be "yourself" and not worry about being chased up the mountain by torches and pitchforks?

M.E.: I think I definitely do feel that way. It's not necessarily that I feel dysphoria so much as a sense of meaninglessness that can started creeping up on me in my late 20s and took firm hold of my early thirties. If everything is a game, then what's the point of playing? That sort of thing. And there is a lot of effort spent just maintaining a status quo. It just didn't seem that sustainable, at least not when you looked as lasting for decades. So I've tried to expand my mental and psychological horizons, so to speak, in terms of figuring out different ways to be. I don't ever expect to cease being sociopathic entirely, but I guess I am aiming to be more bilingual. 

Guilt

I'm still learning a lot about myself. For instance, I was prompted recently to think about "guilt." A reader writes:

Sometimes I feel what I think may be guilt, but there's always a metaphorical voice in the back of my head telling me, "No, you only feel that way because your image was tarnished." That "voice" is incredibly difficult to pay attention to, by the way. I feel a horrible feeling whenever I do something that hurts someone and it can be linked back to me. If there is no link to me, I don't feel anything. It's very hard for me to differentiate between this and guilt, and I've frequently used it to justify my own humanity. But why don't I feel such things if nobody knows who caused it? It can't be guilt. I only care when there are consequences for me.

I reply:

That is interesting how you feel bad only when you are caught, essentially. I mean, it's a trite phrase -- "he's only sorry he got caught" -- but it is so true for me. I can actually feel really really badly about things that I got caught for, for whatever reason. But the phrase doesn't fit exactly. It's not like I feel disappointed that I couldn't get away with it. I just feel ... out of sorts. I feel like the world is an ugly place where I don't belong. That is what makes me feel bad. Definitely not, "oh, poor person I hurt." It's more like, "poor me for having to live in this ugly world and deal with this." This happened to me very recently when I stole/borrowed something from my neighbor, hoping she would never find out before I returned it. She did find out, though, and confronted me about it. Or she at least asked me about it and I didn't know what she knew so I just came clean, but spun a story of emergency, etc., figuring that would be better for me than to be caught in a lie. But she wouldn't have it. She threatened to call the authorities. Now that seemed like an overreaction by anyone's standards, but for some reason it deeply disturbed me. I think I realized how vulnerable I am, how hated I am just by virtue of what I am. I didn't really think about it at the time, but what you wrote really made sense to me. I wouldn't have felt the least tinge of guilt if I had never been caught, but being caught made me feel all sorts of guilt, or what felt like guilt at least. Maybe it was just regret.

It never entered my mind

I'm mildly to medium-ly obsessed with the song "It never entered my mind."



To me there is only one thing that really can haunt me, and this sensation, whatever it is, is so perfectly incapsulated by this song.  It is partly a worry that I am missing out on something, but it's worse than that.  It's more the worry that I will regret the decisions I have made because I have missed out on something.

One of my favorite movies is the Woody Allen comedy Sweet and Lowdown.  The protagonist is a completely pompous jazz guitarist from the early half of the last century: a delusional, raging narcissist, beautifully talented, but without any real emotion in his playing.   He meets and (sort of) falls in love with a mute girl named Hattie, played incomparably by Samantha Morton.



She puts up with him like no one else will and he finds that even the simplest pleasures of life are made more pleasurable with her beside him.  Still, he feels like he deserves better (or just more) so breaks up with her about halfway through the movie:



He continues his hijinks through the second half of the movie and even marries an icy femme fatale played by Uma Thurman.  Near the end of the movie he runs into Hattie again.  She is married now and even has children.  He is disappointed, but tries to play it off.  Later that night he tries to console himself by doing some of his favorite activities: shooting rats by the train station and playing the guitar.  Frustrated and emotionally overcome he grabs the guitar by the neck and slams it into a nearby tree, shattering it.  He is a man whose only goal was his own happiness, who has consistently chosen without compunction whatever he thought would make him most happy, and yet he is not happy.  As he clubs the tree with the guitar over and over again he screams, "I made a mistake!  I made a mistake!"

This scene haunts me.  This man thought he was choosing happiness, and chose as wisely as he could, but still ended up crippled by regret.  But it's not the fact that he happens to end up alone that's disturbing.  I acknowledge that much of life is chance and all sorts of bad things might happen to me during life.  I'm fine with that.  The thing that haunts me more than anything else is the thought that I could unwittingly be the author of my own unhappiness -- unhappiness so surprising that it never entered my mind that things could play out that way.  It is the ultimate in powerlessness -- not just the thought that nothing I do really matters, but that things I do could matter and actually make things worse.

Of the negative emotions I feel, regret is the saddest and strongest.

It never entered my mind:
I don't care if there's powder on my nose
I don't care if my hairdo is in place
I've lost the very meaning of repose
I never put a mudpack on my face
Oh, who'd have thought that I'd walk in a daze
Now I never go to shows at night but just to matinees
Now I see the show and home I go

Once I laughed when I heard you saying
That I'd be playing solitaire
Uneasy in my easy chair
It never entered my mind
Once you told me I was mistaken
That I'd awaken with the sun
And order orange juice for one
It never entered my mind

You have what I lack myself
And now I even have to scratch my back myself

Once you warned me that if you scorned me
I'd sing the maiden's prayer again
And wish that you were there again
To get into my hair again
It never entered my mind

Shaming (part 2)

I have written before about shaming here and here.  A reader responded with this email:

This is the malignant narcissist again.

I'm exploring the shame/sociopathy thing. I thought you might have some thoughts on it.

I was hungry and tired as I shopped at a big-box discount store. There was just one counter open. I wanted to check out. There weren't any customers in line. Then I saw two fat women pull up with their cart to the counter, ahead of me. They were starting to unload. It was clear it would take a long time for them to put the contents of their cart on the belt. I decided that I just didn't want to wait.

The belt was quite long - there was a 10 foot gap between the women unloading their stuff and the clerk. Rather than wait behind them or ask them if I could go ahead, I impulsively ran up to the cashier (10 feet ahead of the fat women) and handed her my stuff. She started to ring me up.

After a few seconds, the women behind me figured out what had happened. They wound up taking their stuff off the belt and moving to another clerk (also fat). They complained to themselves and the clerk about my behavior. As I heard them talking, I started to feel a bit ashamed.

As I left, one of the women I'd bothered said, "thanks for the chivalry."  I said to her, "you're welcome."  I was feeling nasty. Perhaps in the future I'll take a tip from you and giver someone like her a rage-filled glare.

When it was all over, I was a bit shocked at how selfishly I'd behaved. But then I realized, I didn't feel any guilt. I still don't - I don't figure that I did anything wrong. I didn't want to wait behind the hippos as they unloaded their stuff.

 If I'd done something illegal, they'd have called the police. If I'd done something against the rules of the store, the store personnel would have done something - but they did nothing. In the end, all that happened was that I was rude and some fatties got some ruffled feathers. I've broken laws in public before. Sometimes people say something to me about them. When that happens, I tell them that if they don't like it, they should call the police. In the same vein, if the women don't like what I'm doing, they should call the police or talk to the store management.

Later I reflected on things. My action was a bit unfortunate. Perhaps I should feel some guilt about the action (I don't). I do feel a bit like a bad person - but only because they called me on it. Had they not noticed, had they been blind or had I been anonymous, I just wouldn't have cared.

I figure this case is an example of why people assume sociopaths are a danger to society. If everyone acted the way I do, our civilization would fall apart.


I responded: I am usually am not full of rage unless I feel like I have been attempting to comply with the strictures of good social behavior and people still give me a hard time about things.

I very much identify with this thought that if you weren't called on it, you wouldn't feel badly at all.  Although I am starting to wonder more and more if neurotypicals also identify with this feeling and it's not unique to the "dark triad".  Shall we publish it and see what they say?

Regret vs. remorse

I have actually forgotten where I got this from, but I thought it was an interesting etymological explanation of what I have always intuited about regret vs. remorse.

I always think of connotation - REMORSE "1325–75; Middle English < Middle French remors < Medieval Latin remorsus, equivalent to Latin remord ( ere ) to bite again, vex, nag ( re- re- + mordere to bite) + -tus suffix of v. action, with dt > s; see mordant" Defined as a "deep and painful regret for wrongdoing; compunction." Remorse seems to follow a morally wrong decision. REGRET "1300–50; Middle English regretten (v.) < Middle French regreter, Old French, equivalent to re- re- + -greter, perhaps < Germanic ( compare greet2 )" Defined as alternatively "a sense of loss, disappointment, dissatisfaction, etc" or "a feeling of sorrow or remorse for a fault, act, loss, disappointment, etc." It is interesting that regret's second definition denotes a relationship with remorse but I have always thought that regret follows a decision that can be morally wrong but might just be a function of maturity. We have remorse for something that is unequivocally wrong and we feel regret for something that could be wrong but might just be stupid.

For me, regret means either feeling bad about something I get caught at OR a missed opportunity. Remorse is more connected to morality and is when I feel bad because I know what I have done is wrong (according to my conscience and internal compass).

I agree particularly with the last paragraph--that regret is wishing things could have gone differently, and remorse seems to be associated with a sense of guilt.

Regret

I don't know if I have ever felt remorse, but I've definitely felt regret. I have several formerly close friends/former love interests who no longer speak to me. The first couple times it happened were particularly heart breaking. I was just starting to realize that I was different, but reckless about it still and a little in denial about the extent of the difference. To one I even confessed that I had a tendency to treat people in my life like paper napkins -- use them all up and then dispose of them. I didn't really mind being different back then, but I already understood how toxic it could be to others.

One particular old incident still haunts me. I had a rocky friendship with someone I admired a great deal. A long school trip coincided with our most recent fight, and we had to spend time together on a bus. At one point in the trip we were stopped and I watched my friend get off the bus. I looked out the window and saw the person engaged in an impromptu game with classmates. Taking advantage of the moment, I rifled through my friend's belongings and found a personal notebook/journal. I was so desperate to know what my friend thought of me that I immediately starting skimming it. Less than a minute later i looked out the window and couldn't see my friend anywhere. I panicked, threw the notebook down on the ground, and started running for the bus door where I encountered the friend. Trying to distract and buy myself time, I playfully tackled my friend to the floor. My friend was charmed by the playful gesture and seemed willing to reconcile. Once my friend looked over and saw the journal on the ground, however, I knew it was all over. I'd never seen hatred like that in someone's eyes before. I knew in an instant what I had done and what it had cost me.

I don't blame people for hating me. I hate myself a little. Not everything destructive in my life was my fault or anything I would have done differently, but some of it I deeply regret.