Someone once remarked that I rarely discuss any negative emotions I experience -- joy, elation, success, but rarely sadness. Maybe it's because I frequently forget my negative emotions soon after I've experienced them. Because apart from feelings of disappointment, most of my negative feelings seem to be without context or meaning. If anything, the dominant sensation of them is a sense of meaningless, typically brought on by a lack of sleep or mental exhaustion. I call it feeling "raw." It is a feeling of introspection but without any real thing to introspect upon. The result is a loop of thinking about nothing, which gives me a sensation of nothingness.
Today I feel raw. I knew I would. I have had a murderous travel schedule recently. I've moved and am alone in a new city. Instead of going outside, I spent most of the day watching trite television dramas. I like to watch bad television with unrealistic interpersonal situations in which it feels like the writers are forcing the characters to endure awkward and unnecessary drama as if the writer were an ancient god playing humans like puppets. (For this reason, I have also become a surprising fan of fanfiction.) It reminds me of my own desire to play god and to pit people against each other just to see what sort of effect I might have upon the unsuspecting. This was fine, but one of the main characters died. I had just had a conversation with one of my friends about a mutual friend dying. The death was expected but came unexpectedly soon. We had both planned to visit her before she died, but she slipped away without saying goodbye to anyone, like she did in "real life" at parties, I had joked with my friend. I like to do that at parties too, I thought privately to myself. Maybe I wouldn't mind doing that in "real life" as well. I kept watching the television drama, to see how and why the story arc needed this particular character death, and apparently it was just to throw all of the other characters completely off-kilter and into a spiral of self-destructive depression.
I got up and walked to the (dog) park in my new neighborhood. I have been there often enough to know the perfect place to escape the encroaching shadows of the trees as the seasons change in the northern hemisphere. I listened to music until I just listened to one piece over and over again, from one of my favorite works to play. A small dog came and snuggled up next to me for several minutes. I didn't shoo him away. I took a photo of a crescent moon in blue sky surrounded by streaks of clouds and made it the "wallpaper" for my phone. Maybe seeing it tomorrow (this time) I will remember how it feels to be sad.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Dehumanization
I realized something about myself the other day. It was how I look at people. I have a tendency to break down someone's humanity one step at a time when I talk to them. Not to them of course. They are blabbering on, talking about their lives, while I sit there and smile. I like to ask people questions. They like to talk about themselves. I'm a networker of sorts.
I have one friend who I'm honest with. This person understands me, and doesn't judge me. So, recently I've been thinking out loud to this person, and it's been helping me understand myself a lot better. After I'm done talking to several people I'll go home and talk to my friend about them. Yesterday I came to a realization of the way I break all the negatives about each person down till I get to the point in the conversation of calling them something. I talk about how weak they are. I hate people who are victims. I talk about their addictive past on drugs. I hate addicts. I talk about their boyfriends or girlfriends controlling them. I hate pushovers. They talk about their meaningless boring lives, unfunny jokes, silly ideas, and their watered down opinions that can be changed at the drop of a hat. The most funny part about all of this is the fact that everybody thinks I'm the nicest and most honest person they've met, and as they are telling me that I'm smiling. Thinking. Scheming.
Next I'll go into how they will be useful for me. What they have that I want, or who they know (who I can get to through them) who has something I want. This is how I work. People are tools. They are sheep looking for a shepherd. Sometimes I dabble with the idea that some people were put on this earth to do me a favor. Everything before and after is just their pitiful meaningless life. It's my inside joke. It's actually what I tell people when they do me a favor and I'm done with them.
"You have now served your purpose."
They laugh. Nobody can tell when I'm serious, or whether I'm joking. Mostly because I think they are a joke and I'm laughing at them most of the time. People can't tell when they are the punchline.
I realize what this is. The disgust I have for most people makes me dehumanize them. When I dehumanize someone, their feelings, emotions, and lives are worthless to me. I have no respect for them at all. And they'll never know. They are nothing more than a tool to be used and thrown away. I know it sounds harsh, but that's how it goes. A lot of people want to be used. They seek us out. They find us and throw themselves on our railway track. I can't stop the train.
This is why sometimes I laugh at the comments page on this blog. It tickles me to see anti-sociopaths. Especially ones that are so scared of sociopaths that they comment anonymously. I meet people exactly like them off this blog all the time in my life day to day. I hear them talk about sociopaths sometimes. How they would never fall for their ploys. How they aren't human. Maybe we have more in common than I thought. I've dehumanized them too, only they don't know that yet.
I don't apologize for who I am, or how I feel about people in general. I never will. I think it's pitiful when people apologize for who they are when it can't be changed. Yes, I despise most of you. No, you will not know it. Yes, you will say you never get manipulated. No, it's not true. You are day to day. Hour to hour. You just justify it to yourselves just like we justify our manipulating you.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Sociopaths in literature: Washington Square
“Good for what?” asked the Doctor. “You are good for nothing unless you are clever.”
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Outrageous behavior
I can lose my temper sometimes. When I do, it can flip me from normal, even easy going, into someone possessed by a murderous rage. It's not hotheaded, it's coldhearted. It's also predictable, to an extent. Like everyone, it happens more when I am tired, frustrated, or distracted. Through the use of sleeping medications, I force myself to sleep more than my body naturally wants to, partly to keep a more level head when I am actually awake. I also try to avoid situations in which someone may unpredictably provoke me, typically strangers who don't know me or my triggers, and I am careful to schedule in a lot of downtime and alone time in which to decompress. I've gotten so good at this, it's been a while since my last rage attack. And all of the recent ones have been while I am traveling, when I am most likely to be forced to deal with strangers.
The most predictable aspect of these rages, though, is when someone "calls" me on something that I have done "wrong" when I feel like I have done nothing that would warrant their disapproval. I get angry at the flight attendant who tells me to turn off my electronic device, the metro worker who tells me to not use a particular set of stairs, etc. I know why, I feel like it is underhanded, that they are trying to force me to follow a particular set of rules that I think don't acknowledge, for whatever reason.
The particular set of rules, I realized, are called "social exchange rules." From a Wall Street Journal article about why folks throw temper tantrums when these rules are broken (try Googling the title "Big Explosions, Small Reasons" to get past the subscriber only):
Researchers at Duke University, in a yet-to-be-published study, looked for explanations of why people melt down over small things. Their findings suggest we are reacting to a perceived violation of an unwritten yet fundamental rule. It's the old, childhood wail: "It's not fair!"
Researchers call these unwritten laws of behavior "social exchange rules." We're not supposed to be rude or inconsiderate; we are supposed to be polite, fair, honest and caring. Don't cut in line. Drive safely. Clean up after yourself.
"We can't have successful interactions in relationships, mutually beneficial to both people involved, if one person violates these rules," says Mark Leary, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke and lead author of the study. "And we can't have a beneficial society if we can't trust each other not to lie, not to be unethical, not to watch out for our general well-being."
What makes my losses of temper different, I wondered. Am I the same as these people? I behave civilized, even charmingly. I say please and thank you, wait my turn in line, etc., but largely because this is the best way to get what I want. These are some of the most obvious social rules, whether kept or broken, so I am sure to be seen as a rule follower particularly for these little niceties.
No, when I lose my temper, it's not because I feel like someone has not held up their end of a social bargain, it is because I have been reminded about how powerless I am. The flight attendant has power over me. I try to pretend that we are equals and I could ruin her if I wanted to, but ultimately she could get me kicked off a flight and I would have no recourse. The metro worker looked like God's mistake, but he also has a certain sort of power over me, power to tell me where I can walk and where I can't or else he'll call security. I hate feeling like someone has power over me, hate it so much that I will almost always try to flip the power dynamic in whatever way I can. And apparently get really angry about it when I'm reminded how many people have control over me in countless ways in my daily life. I don't know, it was interesting seeing how the reasons I lose my temper are both similar and different from the way that other people lose their temper. And now I know better how to provoke people (or not) when I choose.
The most predictable aspect of these rages, though, is when someone "calls" me on something that I have done "wrong" when I feel like I have done nothing that would warrant their disapproval. I get angry at the flight attendant who tells me to turn off my electronic device, the metro worker who tells me to not use a particular set of stairs, etc. I know why, I feel like it is underhanded, that they are trying to force me to follow a particular set of rules that I think don't acknowledge, for whatever reason.
The particular set of rules, I realized, are called "social exchange rules." From a Wall Street Journal article about why folks throw temper tantrums when these rules are broken (try Googling the title "Big Explosions, Small Reasons" to get past the subscriber only):
Researchers at Duke University, in a yet-to-be-published study, looked for explanations of why people melt down over small things. Their findings suggest we are reacting to a perceived violation of an unwritten yet fundamental rule. It's the old, childhood wail: "It's not fair!"
Researchers call these unwritten laws of behavior "social exchange rules." We're not supposed to be rude or inconsiderate; we are supposed to be polite, fair, honest and caring. Don't cut in line. Drive safely. Clean up after yourself.
"We can't have successful interactions in relationships, mutually beneficial to both people involved, if one person violates these rules," says Mark Leary, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke and lead author of the study. "And we can't have a beneficial society if we can't trust each other not to lie, not to be unethical, not to watch out for our general well-being."
What makes my losses of temper different, I wondered. Am I the same as these people? I behave civilized, even charmingly. I say please and thank you, wait my turn in line, etc., but largely because this is the best way to get what I want. These are some of the most obvious social rules, whether kept or broken, so I am sure to be seen as a rule follower particularly for these little niceties.
No, when I lose my temper, it's not because I feel like someone has not held up their end of a social bargain, it is because I have been reminded about how powerless I am. The flight attendant has power over me. I try to pretend that we are equals and I could ruin her if I wanted to, but ultimately she could get me kicked off a flight and I would have no recourse. The metro worker looked like God's mistake, but he also has a certain sort of power over me, power to tell me where I can walk and where I can't or else he'll call security. I hate feeling like someone has power over me, hate it so much that I will almost always try to flip the power dynamic in whatever way I can. And apparently get really angry about it when I'm reminded how many people have control over me in countless ways in my daily life. I don't know, it was interesting seeing how the reasons I lose my temper are both similar and different from the way that other people lose their temper. And now I know better how to provoke people (or not) when I choose.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Know Thyself
Many people out there have the opinion that sociopaths have no hope. Therapy doesn't work. Drugs don't work. Why is that? The fact is only you can help yourself. Throughout your life you have relied on yourself, so why would that change when it comes to personal growth.
I'm not here to tell people that they need to be 'good' sociopaths. What is good anyway? Rules and laws are meant to protect people too foolish to see why they are there. Sheep flock to obey them no matter what the cost. We have to develop our own individual principles that we hold ourselves accountable to. This is how you take yourself to a new level.
Several traits of a sociopath can be turned around and used for you or used against you. Ultimately it's up to you.
The fact that you are emotionally shallow can be used to excel you in taking emotions out of the equation and attacking problems at hand with logic. The fact that you are a narcissist can help you stay positive and never accept anything less than number one in any competitive environment. You can use the fact that you are impulsive to take action while others can't pull the trigger. I'm sure you can take this idea from here.
The doors are open for sociopaths. We either succeed highly or we fail dismally. It's up to you to decide where you want to be.
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