Sociopath suicide?

A reader asks if sociopaths ever experience desires for suicide:

I'm going to cut right to the chase with this one.  I believe I might be a sociopath, but I am not sure if that is because I am one, or if I am just trying to search for the easiest explanation for my actions and who I am.  I'll try to give you as many details as I can to help give a full view on my life and why I believe I may be a sociopath as well as why I may not be (If I can remember some reasons I thought of before).  

First a little bit of basics:  I am a 20 year old Caucasian male, and a very logical thinker. 

My whole life for as long as I can remember I have been extremely gifted in lying.  I don't know when it actually started but I know that in kindergarten, I told the first lie that I got caught in by blaming another kid for knocking down a caterpillar in a cocoon in our classroom that we were observing.  I did not knock it down intentionally but I did blame the other boy intentionally.  I knew I could blame him because his mom was friends with mine, so if I told my mom he did it word would get back to the teacher and his mother.  I cannot recall how I got caught, but somehow they found out.  Anyways, ever since then I can recall being able to lie to anyone without it phasing me at all, even if I didn't have to.  

Another trait that I've noticed I have that seems to match a sociopath is a lack of empathy for others.  I have never in my life been able to feel bad for someone else that I know of, or feel proud of them.  I currently have a girlfriend who I love, but I don't know if I love her because of who she is or what she can provide me.  I try to think of the answer and I feel like it's all just a calculation, even though I know I would be hurt if she broke up with me.  I constantly am in arguments with my parents and don't really have anyone I would consider a friend like the definition.  The only time I really talk to a "friend" is if I need something, or I'm bored trying to pass the time.  I can steal from anyone, whether it be a neighbor, my parents, a friend, or a stranger and honestly feel no guilt or remorse, unless I am caught. 

I can also read people's emotions and what they want to hear and/or are looking for very easily. If someone comes to me seeking advice on a relationship, or even just self worth because they are having a hard time I can almost always make them feel better.  I'm not sure if I do this to keep them around, or because I care about them.  The flip side to this is if someone upsets me, I can find the exact way to inflict as much emotional pain on them as I feel necessary, without feeling remorse.  I've almost never apologized, and when I do I don't mean it and just do it because I have to to get something or to stop someone from nagging me.  

The last little bit about myself I'm going to include in this email is that I have a very explosive temper, to the point where I get violent.  I can go from cold to 100% hot and angry in a split second.  The other day I wanted to go get some cigarettes so I asked my mom if I could take the car to go say hi to my girlfriend and drop off some electrical tape for her mom (her mom didn't need it) and when she said she'd just bring me over, I flipped out and threw a ton of stuff, punched things, ended up punching our outside steel door so hard I left dents in it and cracked the frame around the top hinge.  I also have a substance problem, and will really do whatever I can to get drunk or high, except for stupid stuff like huffing gas or something i think might really damage or kill me.  

If you could please get back to me that would be great.  If you have any questions I'm open to answer anything.  Oh, and I forgot to mention the one reason I feel like I am not a sociopath!  I often contemplate suicide, not how but just the thought of offing myself but decide it'd be a bad idea because I don't want to do that to my girlfriend. I haven't ever really tried suicide, I just kind of pondered it because life seems meaningless really.  It gets tiresome interacting with people when I don't really feel an emotional attachment to them.  It's  like playing chess all day every day.  Thank you for taking the time to read this email, and I hope to hear from you soon.

There were a lot of traits that seemed sociopathic to me, but I was wondering particularly about the suicide thing. For me, I don't have a great love of life. In fact I have a bit of a death wish, but it's because life seems so pointless and tedious sometimes, not because I actively feel a lot of suffering. Does anyone else have any experience with sociopaths and suicide?

Sociopath police: True Detective

In hacker culture, there are different color "hats" of people. White hat means you basically just ensure that systems are unhackable. Black hat hackers are the opposite, they're out there looking for vulnerabilities and exploiting them. Grey hackers are somewhere in between. Maybe they're breaking laws, but usually it's not malicious, or it's at least for a "good reason," whatever that may be to them.

I started watching True Detective, an HBO television series, and while I wouldn't say that any of the characters seem obviously sociopathic, by the time the mystery gets solved we'll probably realize that somebody is. For our protagonists we have a couple of cops. With giving too much away, the straight man, Marty Hart played by Woody Harrelson, makes questionable moral decisions. At one point his partner asks him what it is like to live a life sans guilt. His partner is not much better. Rust Cohle, played by Matthew McConaughey, is a master of compartmentalizing and situational ethics. Sometimes it seems like he is a deeply moral person (he spends a long scene explaining how unethical it is to bring children into this world, yanking them out of nonexistence), but he is also perfectly willing to kill people should the right situation present itself. He is nihilistic, but congratulates his partner after doing something completely unlawful: "Good to see you commit to something". It's not that he doesn't believe in right and wrong, he just had a different view than almost anyone else you would meet (but could it be just a sociopathic code? And actually, Marty's version of right and wrong is only superficially Judeo-Christian. When it comes down to it, they both have a very flexible sense of morality). Cohle is also insanely cool under pressure, is famed throughout the are for reading people, and is an extremely persuasive guy when he wants to be.

Is one of these characters a sociopath? Both? If they are, they are not black hat. Marty comes off as white hat, gradually seems more gray, and some think he's actually black. Cohle comes off as grey, sometimes creeps darker towards black, and every once in a while says something extremely white. But maybe that is more reflective of what he has chosen to do with his life to give himself some sense of purpose. When Marty asks him what's the point of getting out of bed in the morning if he believes life is meaningless, Cohle answers "I tell myself I bear witness, but the real answer is that it’s obviously my programming. And I lack the constitution for suicide." Sound like something you might say, sociopaths? But this is coming from a man whose definition of honorable behavior would be for human kind to "deny our programming; stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction. One last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal." So I don't know.

Or maybe they're just cops. I heard a rumor once that police get their personality tested for sociopathic traits -- you have to have at least some but not too many. That doesn't surprise me, with police officers being in the top 10 jobs for sociopaths. And even if you weren't a cop, I bet dealing with some of that stuff and the frustrations of not actually being able to do much good in the world would eventually leave you pretty morally jaded.

Whatever these two characters are, the themes, plot devices, and overall flavor of the show are sociopathic and both sociopath and empath readers are likely to relate with one or both main characters, oddly enough. (At least at times.)

My favorite line after raiding the cocaine in the police evidence room, "They really should have a better system for this."

Reciprocity

Recently I have been struggling to keep a particular (and essential) professional relationship in any sort of equilibrium. If I act too professionally, I am considered cold. If I get too friendly, I'm accused of "handling" this person, of pretending I like them just to get them to produce better/more work. This person insists that I instead be completely honest and only do anything nice or social with them if I actually "want to," as opposed to merely keeping the wheels greased in our professional relationship. You can of course guess how this person reacts, though, when I am really honest, e.g. telling them that actually I don't want to go out to dinner every weekend and would really rather keep the relationship more professional, etc. Complicating issues is that this person has basically guessed who I am, or at least is aware of some of my more dominant characteristics; in fact, until recently we have laughed and joked about my ruthlessness around the office. And finally, the cherry on top is that this person is an aspie, and not just an aspie but a high strung, short-tempered, angry and emotionally oversensitive aspie. (Either it is my profession, my personality, or both that seemingly make me an aspie magnet).

I have put up with so much in this relationship -- accepted basically every idiosyncrasy of this person and adapted to it. For my part, I get criticized and apologize daily for small hurts I have "inflicted." But if I ever so much as refer to any of Aspie's numerous failings, I am accused of kicking someone while they're down. Aspie wants us to be "besties" instead of "frenemies" or even "water cooler colleagues", but I'll never be truly close with someone for whom I have to not only custom-tailor every response in a way that feels so unnatural to me, but also fabricate an elaborate fiction as to every sanitized-for-consumption thought I never actually had, down to the most intimate detail. I can play make-believe as well as anybody, but there are limits. In the meantime, I desperately need Aspie's technical skills in a very time-sensitive project, so I grovel when I need to, and screen calls when I can't muster up anything else. (Aspie if you are reading this, please do not find where I live and kill me and then you in a murder/suicide).

A reader presents what I thought was a relatively similar situation:

I think my ex-boyfriend might be a sociopath, and to be honest with you I don't really care all that much. We're still friends, but I seem to keep setting myself in the line of fire and getting hurt in some fashion. The result is me being upset and him being frustrated because he feels that I have no reason to be upset, and he doesn't think that he did anything wrong.

I want to make our friendship work, because like it or not...I'm hopelessly addicted to this boy - to the point that I don't even care how he feels about me. If he is a sociopath, then I'll know, and I'll be able to tailor what I say and do accordingly in the interests of avoiding future confrontations of the same nature.

We get in disputes, and he somehow knows exactly what to say to end it. Whether it's an apology, a promise, etc...But I always get this weird feeling about it. He's very attentive when I explain how I felt wronged, but not because he feels bad that I feel that way- because he's trying to dissect the feeling that I'm having, so that he can calculate what to say that will counter it. Then he'll come up with a conclusion that he thinks completely solves the problem, and it does - but I always get this underlying feeling of contempt from him. Like he sees me as some sort of authority figure that he's trying to outsmart.

You said: "Like he sees me as some sort of authority figure that he's trying to outsmart." He probably does feel that, in a way. He has to edit himself, restrict himself, and sugarcoat himself for everyone else that he probably resents when he has to do it around you too. He probably thinks that since he accepts and accommodates everything about you, why can't you do the same?

Fear of death?

This funny exchange with a reader:

Hey, it recently hit me that most people don't can't think about death without getting really bothered. 

E.g. you're going to die. If you have kids, they'll all die. Families, races, countries and species all die out. 

Nothing lasts forever.

I suspect a good test as to whether or not someone is sociopathic is can they take the facts - the incontrovertible facts of life - stoically.

Can you imagine going up to a mother with a little kid and saying, "what a nice kid! Too bad he'll probably be dead in 80 years or so. I sure wish he'd live forever - but you know how life is."

I can remember being a kid and black kids would taunt me by saying, "yo mamma." I'd say, matter-of-fact, "I don't have a mother. She's dead. She killed herself when I was 3." They often felt sad and apologized to me; it made no sense to me. One minute they were insulting me, the next minute feeling sorry for me.

Ha, hilarious. Did your mother really kill herself when you were 3? Can I publish this?

It is all true. Yes, you can publish the whole thing.

My experience of it was of misunderstanding. I didn't hate the black kids for being verbally aggressive, too personal and insulting. I thought they were a bit robotic with their insults - the black kids would reflexively say, "yo mama." Of course, it turns out I was the robot.

Conversation with a brother

Brother: I'm starting to realize that I have a talent for getting inside peoples' heads and figuring out what is going on in there. It kind of scares people

M.E.: Yeah, some people are private, or get creeped out by their transparency.

Brother: Yeah. I kind of like that. I think that you and I don't have a set default so we can associate with and understand almost everyone's motives.

M.E.: Yeah, true, we don't have a set default. It's kind of a super power.

Brother: Yeah. We are like super heroes. You and i have the same powers but use them decidedly differently.

M.E.: How so?

Brother: You use them to punish and hurt. Right now, I'm using mine to save a girl's life. So to speak.

M.E.: Sometimes people need punishment to keep them straight. Save a girl's life?

Brother: It's a complicated story involving someone dying of cancer, and the girl in question not feeling that she will be able to live life any more after that person is gone. She came to me because I knew what was going on in her head and she wanted some advice. I don't say it to brag. I'm not proud, it's only the truth.


M.E.: Yeah, I understand. So what happened?

Brother: Nothing yet. I have to write back to her. How is that for a difference between you and me? You aren't a bad influence. ou helped me realize an ability I never knew I had and I'm using it to help people. Of course if you look at it the other way, I could crush her and probably make her kill herself.

M.E.: Ha, that's a good way of phrasing it

Brother: No good

M.E.: Yeah, you could crush her, but won’t. Most of the time I make the "right" choice too :)

Brother: Good. Me too. But sometimes it is fun to be bad ;)

M.E.: Seriously, right? I try to do it in moderation. And only when it isn't too horrible. There are certain wickednesses in my life that are so deliciously dehumanizing that i still lick my lips just thinking about them.

Brother: I think I should do my work now.

M.E.: Yeah, work is good. Idle hands are the devil's tools.