Red pill blue pill

From a reader:

This morning as I sit quietly in my sunday school room right now, watching as people move past, a thought began to stir in me. Statistically, 1 in 25 of these people are sociopaths. I may not be alone here after all. So I began to examine them. Somewhat amateur profiling, but none the less interesting. I can only wonder if anything them feel as I do, suppressed and hated by the church. I have seen much hate for sociopaths on the internet, but the most villainous and non-christian talk came from professing Christians, of which I am one. I cannot help but wonder, what would it be like for them if we were the majority of the population, whether that population be the world or their sunday school class, and they were hated by the majority simply for being different. I understand that it can be morally wrong to act upon these sociopathic desires, but to simply have them, that is no different than their temptations of sexual sin, drunkenness, or thievery. I wonder what you would ask them if you could ask a question of them? Would you ask the same thing I would, the most commonly asked question in psychology: why? Why is sociopathy so different from all the other human conditions that are upon people due to a fallen sin nature? I always want to know why. Yet I find it too dangerous to ask, for I know their pre-conceived notions and reactions to the knowledge of a sociopath: they are dangerous, exterminate them from a position of power or even from the church.

It is so ironic to me. I now am forced to wear a mask and dance at the stained glass masquerade and pretend like there is no cognitive dissonance with this. I wonder, ME: if I make them all believe that, is it possible to make myself believe it as well? Could I somehow manipulate myself into believing I am one of them, an empath?

M.E.: Unfortunately, I don't think you could manipulate yourself into believing you are one of them, at least not for long. Unlike some of the other personality disorders, sociopaths tend to keep a good deal of self awareness. So unless you had memory problems like the guy form Memento, I don't see it happening. Has anyone else had success trying reverse self-awareness? It seems to me that once you are aware of what you are and that you are different, it would be very difficult to go back?

Memento

A lot of socios have been asking me recently about how they can get themselves to do things or stop doing things. Today I'll address doing things. I'll address how to stop doing things in another post.

First, acknowledge your strengths in this area. Sociopaths are natural doers. More than most people we are able to act without thinking. This decisiveness can mean good things, like efficient execution of what needs to get done in a professional setting, but it can also mean bad things like food poisoning or a black eye from an ill-considered risk.

What are your weaknesses? We're naturally worse at planning ahead than other people. We may want to do great things like climb the corporate ladder, become a crime lord, or otherwise acquire a position of power and influence, but when it comes down to it, a lot of times we just can't be bothered. We'd rather keep sleeping on our parent's couch, bumming off our friends, or otherwise staying under the radar.

How do we do things that are actually worth doing? I think the key is playing to our strengths. In AA they say you can't think of sobriety in terms of never taking a drink again, you have to think of it in terms of, "I'm not going to have a drink today." If you break up whatever it is that you are trying to accomplish in little tasks and rely on your decisiveness to actually execute those tasks, you can trick yourself into accomplishing long term goals.

A good example for me is saving for my retirement. I have always loved money, and it seemed like a good idea to have money to retire with, just in case everyone hates me by the time I'm old, or I've been fired multiple times from multiple different jobs, or I end up becoming disabled somehow and I don't feel like becoming a ward of the state. Most people would think that a sociopath would never be able to accomplish the amount of deferred gratification necessary to save for retirement, but I did. I fully funded my retirement by the time I was 30 because every time I even thought of retirement, I would transfer as much money as I had in my checking account into a retirement account, an account that I set up so that I can't withdraw money without going through a lengthy process. Losing that money feels bad, but like everything else, it only hurts for a moment and then I quickly move on to other things. And of course I never have the patience to try to withdraw the money. It's like my own socio financial version of Chinese fingercuffs.

The process is similar to what happens in the movie Memento. In Memento, the protagonist suffers from acute amnesia, where every 10 minutes or so his short term memory is lost. He doesn't remember anything from after the brain injury that he suffered when his wife was murdered, but he is determined to find her killer despite his condition. His workaround is to write himself notes, even tattooing certain pieces of information on his body. If he reads a note in his own handwriting telling himself to do something, he does it without question. Spoiler alert, but as we continue to watch him in the movie, we realize that he is not always honest with his future forgetful self. He will intentionally mislead himself, knowing that his future self will unquestionably follow orders, and he does all of this for one purpose -- not to find his wife's killer, it turns out, but just to be happy, to give his otherwise empty life meaning. It's a movie and it's not an exact analogy, but it's the same idea -- use your foreshortened vision to force yourself to do things that you otherwise would not, to do things that other people cannot.

Embracing hedonism

A reader sent me this interesting video of Daniel Kahneman, father of behaviorial economics, talking about happiness.


Particularly he talks about how when we think about happiness, there are two selves that we should consider that are basically in constant conflict: our experiencing self and our remembering self. Our remembering self is a storyteller. Our remembering self is typically dominant in our identity in a very history is written by the victors sort of way. Something could happen one way, but because out remembering self is the one that either chooses to retain that memory or let it slip away like so many millions of other moments that we will never think upon again, it basically has the last and only word on whether we will remember something as having happened. The remembering self is vulnerable to particular biases like the focusing effect, which allow it to distort experiences to fit the stories.

It's easy for me to see this distinction in my own self, but I feel like my remembering self doesn't have quite the sway over my experiencing self that it does with most people? Like my friend who is obsessed with making money -- that is a very remembering self thing to do, to suffer through a difficult job in order to have the satisfaction and achievement of making money. I have never been that way. I live day to day. I specifically chose a job that leads to my greatest day to day enjoyment. My attention is by far directed to what is actually happening in this moment, rather than what happened in the past or may happen in the future. I bet this is true of all people who tend to be more hedonistic than goal oriented. I honestly don't see my life in terms of milestones and achievements (at least not solely, like others I know). I can actually think back on my life of experiences, I think, and not allow my remembering self to re-write my history, but to see days upon days filled with pleasure and believe that is the main accomplishment of my life. Of course that's going to mean that I make different choices than remembering selves would, and am probably ultimately more happy because it's easier to change your current moment to one of happiness than it is to change your entire life and self-concept.

But it is interesting hearing about how other people view their life. It's given me more insight in how other people think. And if your remembering self is all that matters, then maybe it makes sense to go Memento style and just re-write your own history.

How to detect when someone is lying

Everybody has some ability to detect whether people are lying or not, though some of us are better at it than others. Psychologist Paul Ekman has developed a tool that he believes will improve that ability for everyone. Ekman is a leading authority on reading microexpressions (unconscious facial expressions that in a split second can reveal the owner's true thoughts) to detect lies. His work has been dramatized by the American Television show Lie to Me. I haven't had the time to use the microexpression training tool, but apparently it takes only an hour. It's available at www.PaulEkman.com.

I think the ability to read microexpressions would be more useful against empaths than sociopaths. Why? Because sociopaths have a less rigid sense of self, they are able to actually believe their own lies much better than empaths are. For instance, I am able to compartmentalize quite well -- just like the protagonist in the movie Memento, I'm able to tell myself lies that I can actually believe. Once I believe a lie, any microexpressions seen on my face would seem to support the lie, not undercut it. Empaths, on the other hand, seem to need a stricter sense of identity. Although I'm sure they unconsciously lie to themselves all the time and microexpressions wouldn't be able to detect those lies, they seem much less able to consciously lie to themselves to the point of believing the truth. In those situations, the ability to read microexpressions would be a very useful tool against a lying empath.

Contextualizing emotions

I was trying to describe to someone the other day what emotions feel like for me. It's not like I don't feel them.  I feel a lot of different emotions, but some of them I don't recognize or understand. By that I mean that sometimes (actually a lot of the time) it feels like my emotions lack context. They're not completely without context. It is sort of like I am watching a movie, but backwards. Not completely backwards--like I am watching 30-60 second increments, and then skipping back in time to the next increment. Or when you read an email chain, but start at the most recent email and read back in time. You can get an idea of what is happening, but because the conversation is not really linear -- does not progress organically (at least to your eyes) -- there will always be holes to your understanding. It's sort of like the character in the movie Memento trying to make sense of his surroundings when every seven minutes or so, he forgets what came before.

When I was younger I frequently gave into emotional impulses. I felt like if I was mad there must be a reason that I was mad so I was justified in lashing out in whatever manner I felt proper. In order to rid myself of that behavior I learned to second guess any emotions. I would ask myself: could I identify the type of emotion I was feeling? What was the source? What had prompted the emotion? If I didn't have the answer to these basic questions I would ignore the emotion, writing it off as being (at least probably) an emotional hallucination.

I'm sure that many emotions are "hallucinations" and I'm sure that everyone must experience this to a certain extent. But by ignoring any emotion that I could not explain to myself, I am sure I was also being over-inclusive, thereby excluding legitimate emotions from which I simply lack the ability to contextualize and extract any real meaning. I am unable to separate the wheat from the chaff. Consequently, I am forced to throw the baby out with the bathwater (pardon the mixed metaphor).

Sometimes I wonder if this is the core of what I generally perceive as being self-aware or not amongst the sociopathic population, i.e. the self-aware ones in my eyes are the ones who have realized that their emotions deceive them and vice versa.  It's also why I generally consider narcissists to be unaware, because in my eyes they are constantly acting on bastard emotions that they believe justify reprehensible behavior.

More on self-awareness

I was thinking about the post about self-awareness and how it didn't really convey all that I have been thinking about the topic. In those periods in which I don't feel sociopathic, it's not just that I don't think about it, I have also forgotten other small "details" about my life and history. For instance, when I see other socios say that they have this extensive criminal past I think, well I don't, conveniently forgetting some shady things I have done, like the elaborate shoplifting scheme I engaged in about every other day for a year in college. But it didn't really seem criminal to me at the time, you know? Or I surely didn't do it because it was criminal. I knew that I couldn't get caught and I took all the proper precautions, but I didn't do it for the thrill of doing something "bad," I just did it as a means to an ends (one of the ends being the pleasure in exploiting the particular weakness(es) that allowed me to do it successfully for so long). So although I don't feel "criminal," apparently I am willing to do criminal things if the right opportunity comes along. That is another aspect of what I mean about my lack of self-awareness -- a disconnect between who I was in the past (or can be under certain circumstances) and who I happen to be in this exact moment.

Sometimes when I read the comments and see people self-assuredly asserting some devilish trait or another I think, "how can they know themselves well enough to even say something like that?" I mean, I have moments of clarity about those types of things, but if I don't actively try to remember they slip away, like the guy from Memento. In that same vein, a reader sent me this:

The Sociopath Catchphrase List

"I don't feel emotions like you do."

"I don't get pleasure out of much except the misery of others."

"I never really understand why people do what they do."

"Analyzing people is interesting."

"I like to torture animals to see how they react."

"I love to manipulate those around me."

"I understand emotions in a purely intellectual sense."

"[insert relative] died and I---well, I didn't feel anything."*

"I don't care about people."

"I don't care about the opinions of others, they're just objects to me."

"People are toys."

"Life is just about amusement."

"[insert falsely complex Chess, vampiric, or 'monster'-related social metaphor]"

"People are pawns to be used by me."

"I exploit people."

"I don't need anyone."

"All I see in people is how useful they are."

"I'm a natural charmer."

"I am so intelligent that I manipulate others."

. . .

The list could go on forever. Here's a lovely question: Is sociopathy becoming a container to determine who you are or are people simply lacking identity so much that they'd like to assign themselves to any personality?

*=The pause is optional. Some drag it on for effect, others try to "psychopathically" get straight to the point.

P.S. I'd appreciate it you published this. Perhaps some of the newer tikes would realize that they're not telling us anything new. Hell, maybe they'd come up with some new phrases. I've yet to see a chemistry-related metaphor for emotional apathy.