Friday, March 22, 2013

Family ties

This was an interesting article about how people are more resilient when they feel like they are part of a larger extended family, know some stories and the origins of their ancestors, etc.

The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: develop a strong family narrative.
***

“The ones who know a lot about their families tend to do better when they face challenges,” she said.

Her husband was intrigued, and along with a colleague, Robyn Fivush, set out to test her hypothesis. They developed a measure called the “Do You Know?” scale that asked children to answer 20 questions.

Examples included: Do you know where your grandparents grew up? Do you know where your mom and dad went to high school? Do you know where your parents met? Do you know an illness or something really terrible that happened in your family? Do you know the story of your birth?

Dr. Duke and Dr. Fivush asked those questions of four dozen families in the summer of 2001, and taped several of their dinner table conversations. They then compared the children’s results to a battery of psychological tests the children had taken, and reached an overwhelming conclusion. The more children knew about their family’s history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem and the more successfully they believed their families functioned. The “Do You Know?” scale turned out to be the best single predictor of children’s emotional health and happiness.

“We were blown away,” Dr. Duke said.


Why does knowing where your grandmother went to school help a child overcome something as minor as a skinned knee or as major as a terrorist attack?

“The answers have to do with a child’s sense of being part of a larger family,” Dr. Duke said.
***
Dr. Duke said that children who have the most self-confidence have what he and Dr. Fivush call a strong “intergenerational self.” They know they belong to something bigger than themselves.

I come from a big family and for some reason I learned to see most of them as extensions of myself, so I looked out for them. And they looked out for me. I felt like we were like twigs -- weak apart, strong together. I don't know why I thought that and other children sociopaths see their family as threats. Maybe it's because we were all so smart we spoke a sort of shorthand/twinspeak with each other.  Maybe it was because we had a common enemy in our narcissist father. For whatever reason, I always felt like I was part of something bigger, almost like I had grown up in a mafia family. And it's true, I think it did make me a better person



Thursday, March 21, 2013

Getting better (part 2)

From reader (cont.):

I've seen you say that no sociopaths have reported being helped by your advice and that surprises me, but since you don't think that's what I am, I'm not sure how valuable my feedback will be. None the less, I've appreciated being able to read your experiences and pull what I can from them. 

For example, your observations on emotional hallucinations was kind of revelatory. So, in the past few months I feel like I've had a major shift in perspective, in part thanks to you. I was raised with a very rigid view of myself that was preventing me from examining my own actions and it's such a relief to be able to put that aside. A lot of things are falling into place as a consequence. So, thank you.

I'm sorry to hear your friend isn't coming around. I thought while reading the post that he should get a life coach, maybe for social skills, but it sounds like that's what you're trying to do for him. Maybe you can't teach people who aren't ready to learn, but people who are willing and just haven't had information presented in a way that they can understand might be better bets? I don't know. My projects are generally people who are failing spectacularly and they're easy to motivate once I get them pointed in the right direction. All I have to do is remind them how much pain they're in. (I know, I shouldn't say that, but it's true.) Your projects sound more subtle than I can manage. 

I don't think you can teach someone to be a sociopath, if that's what you meant. It would be about as effective as wishing someone had self-respect, which I would hand out if I could. I'm more concerned with fitting in better and being more likable. What you said today about hitting the wall rang very true. But I don't have an issue compromising, not if it will make the difference between winning and losing. It's not a matter of trust for me, just willingness to take a calculated risk, if that makes sense. 

I doubt I'll take up another instrument and I've been steadily killing every plant I bring home. I've been cooking more but I don't think it has the same effect. I'm planning to go to church regularly because I think it will help me be more likable. Other than that I don't really have a plan. 

May I ask what your friend told you to do? I'd love to hear your adaptations too, if you ever have time to write about it. I'm sorry, I'm asking very personal questions. You know I totally admire that you were able to identify / accept what you are and then figure out what to do. 

For me, I've realized I was seeing people around me as either possessions or enemies. I should stop doing that, of course, but I don't know if that's the primary thing I should be paying attention to. I'm trying to be responsive but I'm concerned about myopia, you know. Maybe finding out the steps you took could help me trace a similar path, if we're talking about the same things. 


My response:


Good question. She's staying with me now for the weekend and I just asked her what she made me do:

"Stop hurting people. That's a good start, if you had to start somewhere."

"But I still hurt people."

"Yeah, but you're more selective now. You don't just do it for everyday pleasure on people you love. Like you're not addicted anymore. You're just channeling better."

"What else?"

"If you can tap into the ways that empaths love and understand what love means to them, you can be contented with your offers. Even if they're not satisfying to you, you can recognize them as something that has value. Tell her that there is no cure. You just have to learn other people's languages so you know what they're talking about, you can understand and appreciate that there are valid perspectives other than yours. Everyone wants to be heard, you know? That's why you have this blog."

She helped me to be able to accept arbitrary frameworks, like religious codes, and just try them out and see if I liked my life better with them rather than just immediately dismissing them as something that could never work for me (like my friend who is struggling with is life right now does). So oddly, she made me have a more open-mind about things. I remember she made me see that even small behaviors had longterm consequences. She made me always be polite to strangers, which thing I had done only off and on before. And I liked it better, things seemed to go smoother. And to not play games with those closest to me, to not say or do whatever I felt like doing. I think she largely just helped me to broaden my perspective, you know? Another friend was telling me today that her stepson said that he can't imagine ever being truly happy unless he had a T-Rex to ride. I thought, I can see how this is a legitimate opinion for him to have, but really it's because he has incomplete information about himself and life, so he is likely to be wrong. And I guess that's how I used to be too -- it wasn't like I was wrong in my opinions or they were irrational, but they were just very ill-informed in a juvenile sort of way -- like all I could see was myself and everything else in terms of how it directly affected me. I didn't understand that people were so different from me and in particular and interesting ways. I didn't realize how much they hated certain things I did. I didn't realize how much richer my life could be if I sometimes looked beyond myself. And when I finally tried it, it was obvious and revelatory at the same time. Maybe like the first time I realized that I could float, after having understandably believed that I would just sink.

I wonder if this helps (again).

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Getting better (part 1)

A reader writes:

I hope you don't mind me saying this, but you sound 180* away from the guy writing a couple years ago. Specifically this, "Do you think it might be better to just believe that people can be lovely and so it is no great shame that you are just the same as everyone else?" That's a really healthy and benevolent view of humanity. I'm not there yet, but it sounds like a good place to be. 

I have to ask; you garden, you blog, music and I think you mentioned a relationship that's pretty healthy, it sounds like these things are helping you. Do you have other suggestions / protips / caveats? I'm asking because in people I've observed almost nothing helps them overcome their personality disorders. Falling in love with a healthier person seems to help and life threatening illness can also have some effect, but who wants to wait for a cancer scare or get to the end of their life to figure things out? Maybe that's where choosing the better part comes in. 

I hope you write about things getting better, if in fact they are. I hope you write about what's changing and what's staying the same. I know your blog is about sociopathy, not recovering from sociopathy, but that would be my special request. 

My response:


Yeah, I have actually thought about maybe making my next book about this topic. The thing is, what works for me, I'm not sure will work for anyone else, and probably not most. I do think the gardening helps. Playing a musical instrument helps. There are a lot of things that I can identify in my own life that help, but I am just not sure anymore. I'm a little pessimistic lately maybe because a friend (not quite neurotypical, but mostly) has been stuck in a rut, and as sort of a project I decided to try to help him out of it. But I haven't managed to make any sort of discernible difference. And another time I was coaching someone to take a graduate school exam and I thought, I should for sure be able to help her get out of the lower quartile by teaching her how to game the test, but I couldn't. So now I think maybe I do things in a particular way and it's impossible to teach someone? I thought of this when reading Daniel Birdick's recent comment:

I’d only add that this analysis becomes almost instinctual by the time you reach adulthood. To use PP’s car analogy, it’s like learning how to drive. All of your movements as a new driver are conscious and therefore awkward. But after a while, everything that goes into becoming a decent driver becomes instinctive and automatic. That’s how it eventually is with reading people and social situations. Only, I suspect you have to learn how to read people using “bloodless rationality” as your default mode in childhood, so that by the time you’re in your late adolescence, it becomes second nature.

Maybe each person has to figure out their own selves, what it is that is holding them back. Also this quote I recently featured on twitter that I really love: "I will stay an addict until my last excuse." For me, I think that is what is really holding my friend back from getting out of his rut. He cannot, or will not give up the possibility that maybe he doesn't need to change at all -- maybe he just needs a new job or needs to move to a different city or find someone to love him. I know how this feels, this hesitation to change. It's hard enough to embrace change, you know? But I think it's even worse when the solution is coming from someone else. I'm not saying it never happens, because the person who finally got me to change was a person and I did have to trust her and do things her way, at least for a while until I could figure out what was absolutely necessary to live the life I wanted versus what I could sort of tailor to my own needs/wants/tastes. But I don't think most sociopaths are this open to submitting themselves like this to someone else. They don't understand trust and they are right to think that most people don't understand them enough to give them good advice. I don't know, it's a problem. I'd love to hear from sociopaths who have ever been helped by any of my advice, but I haven't so far.



Tuesday, March 19, 2013

"Psychopath"

From a reader regarding Jennifer Skeem's most recent article debunking sociopath myths:


I think she's much closer to the mark, ironically by not really trying too hard to pin down exactly what psychopathy is. As I recall her main line of attack is focused on the current conception, the Hare model. The two areas that I think are weakest with the current model are where she focuses, namely the idea that psychopathy is totally untreatable, as well as including criminality as central to the disorder. Both of these assumptions are based on faulty data. For a laugh, check out the methodology of the first study that concluded psychopaths weren't helped by therapy. They put a bunch of violent convicts together naked in a room and gave them a ton of LSD. What a shocker that didn't turn out well.

Skeem's revised model is more like the lack of a model. Rather than claiming to have an objective definition she argues that psychopathy should be understood as a nebulous constellation of personality traits. I think this is a much more realistic approach because people are always going to be more complicated than a checklist. The more I read about the subject the more I question if psychopathy truly exists. "Psychopath" is something that you call an other person. Anyone who claims that title for themselves without any reservations probably wants to see themselves that way, for whatever reason.

There's another really interesting section you may want to check out that probably would be better as another post than an addendum to the first. The section is called "Does Secondary Psychopathy Exist?" and I think poses an important question. I don't think that high anxiety, highly emotionally reactive people are psychopaths, even if they may exhibit similar behavior.


For what it is worth, I completely agree with that last part. These people who feel overwhelmed by their emotions -- their emotions are the root of their impulsivity -- that just sounds like something too different to include in our general conception of what is a psychopath, even if the outward manifestations of it are similar.

Monday, March 18, 2013

Diagnose me

From a reader:

Hey, I'm 17 and I took lots of the psychology tests online and the results are that apparently I'm a psychopath. But I would like an opinion from somebody who is one (takes one to know one?). Anyways, I've been called cold and inconsiderate of feelings by my friends all the time. I really don't care what happens to anybody, and I don't remember what it feels like to feel bad for somebody, or maybe I don't know. I've killed a few animals just because I can, for example I was walking in a forest with my friend during a camping trip and saw a baby squirrel that fell out of its nest and was trying to clumsily clamber up the tree, I quickly grabbed a thick stick and rammed it into the squirrel impaling it right through the chest, just because I wanted to, because I COULD. 

Anyways later my friend told people what I did and I twisted it so that it seemed he was a bigger part of it. I never feel bad for anything, and at school when it doesn't benefit me, I enjoy degrading people but when confronted I always seem to talk people into the ground. I also enjoy using people and its surprising how easy it is to convince people that I'm not mean to them when I need to use them. I also don't have much patience for things and get bored much too easily, I've went out to go look for some stray cats or somebody's that might be outside to kill (I did it once by snapping its neck) some animals but never find them. Also here's a big part, I ENJOY making people angry, either get them angry at me or at somebody else. The madder I make somebody, the better I feel, a sense of satisfaction overcomes. But this could come with making people frustrated with things or others. Can you explain that part to me and if it has anything to do with psychopathy/sociopath. 

Also I never feel nervous or afraid, we would have a big test and everybody was nervous except me. I've watched videos on the internet of people being decapitated and in one video the decapitee started screaming and I didn't give a shit. I think I'm pretty smart and constantly challenge myself by taking the hardest classes possible, and I see things way differently than other people do, in the sense that how easy it is to exploit and manipulate people, how feelings never inhibit me and they're pretty shallow I think. Anyways can you get back to me with your conclusion ?
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