Double standard for empathy

Some of my readers have wondered how it can be possible to hurt a sociopath's feelings. In other worlds, given that sociopaths seem so calloused and unemotional, how can their sudden bouts of moodiness and hurt feelings be reconciled with their general icy, insensitive demeanor?

Sociopaths tend to have a double standard for lack of empathy, manipulation, bluntness, lack of manners, and generally people's inability to conform to social norms to avoid becoming a boorish leech. I am known for being very frank and upfront with people, calling things as I see them with little to no attempt to use tact, but I can get very offended when normal people do the same thing back to me. They don't do it right (without the same charm, insight, timing, or finesse), and to me it means something different than when I do it -- typically I don't do it with an intention to hurt. Maybe a good analogy is when a small child hits you or lashes out at you emotionally and you retaliate in kind. The child cannot really control himself -- you can. The child does not really know better -- you do.

If you're in a seemingly loving relationship with a sociopath and he reacts with a lack of empathy at something you have said, it is probably because he is unaware of the need for empathy, or he is trying his hardest but is still coming up short, or he would try but he is too tired, or at the worst, he simply cannot be bothered to summon up the emotional reaction you seek. He is like the child, unable to raise his behavior to that particular standard. When people react that way to him, he correctly recognizes that there is latent hostility in the behavior -- an intentional attempt to slight. He knows how normal people treat each other. If you don't treat him that way, he will wonder why (and probably assume the worst).

I don't cry myself to sleep about people hurting my feelings or otherwise being insensitive to me. I'm sure I deserve it most of the time. But if people are wondering how or why sociopaths could be offended by behavior that the sociopaths themselves seem to engage in almost daily, I think it is a little more complicated than a case of being able to dish it out, but not take it.

Living multiple lives

This was an interesting recent comment:


There are ways to help people that still allow the rush of power, said power is simply less benevolent. People who've been helped tend to rely upon those who helped them, respecting their advice and guidance once the results come piling in. Knowing the game can allow you to work around the usual resistances people put up against advice, and can make for faster changes in the individual for the better, making the world ever so slightly a less monotonous place, while still practicing the talent for control in ways that still show results. People in such cases are sort of like rescued pets from an animal shelter; hurt, damaged, needing the help of others because they are too blinded to help themselves, and then there I am, willing to take them in, psychologically nurse them back to health, and turn such a person back upon society who suddenly carries views that partially reflect my own, spreading it. 

I've tried to be a good person, but at certain points of trust, it becomes tempting to see how blindly they'll follow obviously bad advice, much like leading an animal around with a laser pointer. Helping someone become a better person is like watching a plant grow, slow and gently rewarding, where using a lighter to ignite the plant is exciting, but immediate gratification that is as quick as it came. There's pride in one's achievements, but achievements in the realm of life-crushing are seldom as nostalgic as an unburnt bridge you just helped reinforce. Plus, the typical need for reciprocity can have yields for keeping such people around until it's no longer desirable, which, with life-helping prospects as a prior context, can leave you the 55 in a 45/55 split perception of power; the perception of being one step ahead. 

The main part that sucks the most is when good advice has a bad outcome. For myself, it makes me feel as if I failed them in some way, which is damaging to my sense of pride, and I cannot tolerate failure from myself quite as easily as I can from others with reduced senses of awareness, who really can't help but make mistakes as they feel around life blindly in the dark, relishing what few things they can see (could easily have this argument reflected back at me, for in some ways I am blind too). 

I thought this was an interesting comment, the idea that helping someone become a better person is like watching a plant grow. In some ways for me helping people allows me to live multiple lives, alternative realities. It's like a chessmaster who is playing multiple games at once. A blackjack player playing multiple hands at once. It is not enough for my brain to want to maximize my own success, but also to imagine what it would be like to live another life, and succeed in that one as well.

I don't do it for the other person. In fact, a lot of times the people I "help" would rather I had not. A lot of my friends ask me for stock advice. I gave one friend some advice right before the market crash in 2008. They followed my advice, but only in broad strokes and lost a significant sum of money. Interestingly, I used an even more risky strategy with my own money and managed to come out ok. But that is just the nature of probability and risk. Maybe I understand probabilities better than most people because I have a larger pool of observations from which to draw. One major benefit of living these multiple lives -- I understand that there are very few "sure things" in life.

On love

I've been in love before. It's been a while, though. I recently watched a film that got me thinking about it -- all about young romantic love and the heartache and the emptiness, and the relentless longing that accompanies it. I was watching it with a good friend, and we both agreed that although film was supposed to glorify love, it made love seem horrible, completely unpalatable -- like a disease. I felt for the characters. I have always been able to identify better with characters in a film than with most of the characters in my real life -- I guess filmmakers deserve the awards and accolades we give them. But more than that, I recognized the characters. I saw in their behavior things I had seen before in people who had been in love with me.

I recognized the facial expressions and the behavior of the people in the film. I'd seen them before: the unrestrained attachment, the devotion, the loss of self, the anxiety, the jealousies, the fear -- above all I recognized the fear. Love really is horrible that way. Even if you love someone and they love you back and you can spend time together, and there are no hindrances or obstacles keeping you from being together, there is always the worry that the person will leave you, or change, or both. I have wondered before how empaths could commit such violent crimes of passion -- I caught a glimpse of how while watching this film.

I could see how the crime of passion starts much earlier than coming home to find your cheating spouse in bed with another. It starts when you have substituted everything else in your world for this person in the sense that this is the one person whose life or death could mean your own. I know that love is helplessness. I feel helplessness when in love, and I can only imagine that to an empath it feels like there is no choice, no volition, that you are no longer the master of your own destiny. You are a prisoner, a slave. I think some people begin to resent that loss of control. I could see how for some love could quickly turn to hate. And why not? Is not the object of your love also the source of your torture? Of an unbearable pain? A heaviness in your life that can only be relieved when in the beloved's presence? You could weep a thousand tears and there would still be no relief.

I wonder about these people who loved me. I'm curious about how they felt about me, and how they feel about me now. Was I faithless in their eyes? Uncontrollable? Was I their life's sorrow? Was i quickly forgotten? Did they always know what or why they were feeling? Did they hate me for it? I've actually stayed in touch with one of them -- we've managed to stay very good friends, trusted confidantes, and I know I'm not the only one who asks these questions. Why love? Why you? Why not anymore? Was there any purpose? Any gain? Apart from months and even years of their affliction, what was it all for?

And yet I yearn to be in contact with all my other loves: those who have moved on, and (to a lesser extent?) those who have not. I don't know what i want from them -- maybe just to have them acknowledge it, just to see behind the curtain into their minds eye. It's a symptom of this new age of media that we have little patience for unknowns. We're so used to having our questions answered, near instantly. I would give anything to watch those times together from their point of view, to be inside my lover's minds when it was all happening. More than anything, I want to feel the depth of their ache for me. I want to know that it was/is real just like I am real. Somehow I feel that it is their ache that defines me, that that is who I am. But their ache, their nauseousness, their fear, their void seem to say so little about who they are as people, and so much about who I am as a person. I created that ache. I caused that pain. Is that why people want to be in love? So they can hurt someone in a way so completely original and unique to them? So they can feel real?

The Unburdened Mind

This is one of the most balanced, accurate depictions of sociopathy/psychopathy I have seen written by a non sociopath, and the comments are hilarious. Highlights from the article:

Many potential psychopaths might not even realize they have the condition, nor has there traditionally been any easy way for others to recognize them.
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The psychopath does not merely repress feelings of anxiety and guilt or fail to experience them appropriately; instead, he or she lacks a fundamental understanding of what these things are.
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Arriving at a disaster scene, a psychopath would most likely gather to watch with the rest of the crowd. He might even lend assistance if he perceived no threat to his own safety. But he would feel none of the panic, shock, or horror of the other onlookers—his interest would fall more on the reactions of the victims and of the crowd.
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Despite this emotional deficiency, most psychopaths learn to mimic the appearance of normal emotion well enough to fit into ordinary society, not unlike the way that the hearing impaired or illiterate learn to use other cues to compensate for their disabilities. As Hare describes it, psychopaths “know the words but not the music.” One might imagine that such a false and superficial front would be easily penetrated, but such is rarely the case, probably because of the assumption we all tend to make that others think and feel essentially the same way as ourselves. Differences in culture, gender, personality, and social status all create empathy gaps that can seem almost unfathomable, but none of these is as fundamental a divide as the one that exists between an individual with a conscience and one without. The psychopath’s psychology is so profoundly alien to most people that we are unable to comprehend their motives, or recognize one when we see one. Naturally, the industrious psychopath will find this to his advantage.

Some psychologists go so far as to label the psychopath “a different kind of human” altogether. Psychopathy has an environmental component like nearly all aspects of personal psychology, but its source is rooted firmly in biology. This has caused some researchers to suspect that the condition isn’t a “disorder” at all, but an adaptive trait. In a civilization made up primarily of law-abiding citizenry, the theory goes, an evolutionary niche opens up for a minority who would exploit the trusting masses.

This hypothesis is supported by the apparent success many psychopaths find within society. The majority of these individuals are not violent criminals; indeed, those that turn to crime are generally considered “unsuccessful psychopaths” due to their failure to blend into society. Those who do succeed can do so spectacularly. For instance, while it may sound like a cynical joke, it’s a fact that psychopaths have a clear advantage in fields such as law, business, and politics. They have higher IQs on average than the general population. They take risks and aren’t fazed by failures. They know how to charm and manipulate. They’re ruthless. It could even be argued that the criteria used by corporations to find effective managers actually select specifically for psychopathic traits: characteristics such as charisma, self-centeredness, confidence, and dominance are highly correlated with the psychopathic personality, yet also highly sought after in potential leaders.
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A lack of empathy does not necessarily imply a desire to do harm—that comes from sadism and tendencies toward violence, traits which have only a small correlation with psychopathy. When all three come together in one individual, of course, the result is catastrophic. Ted Bundy and Paul Bernardo are extreme examples of such a combination.
* * *
The reasons we look up to these conscience impaired people are unclear. Most likely it has something to do with the confidence they exude, the ease they seem to feel in any situation—a trait that comes easily in someone essentially incapable of fear or anxiety. Maybe we’re easily suckered in by their natural glibness and charm. Or maybe on some level we envy the freedom they have, with no burden of conscience or emotion.

Schizoid (part 2)

From a reader (cont):


Anyway, along the same line, I think sociopaths who operate this way are the intelligent ones, and the ones who act immorally are simply irrational or less intelligent people, regardless of their sociopathy. If this is accurate, I think this is what creates a problem with normal peoples' perceptions of sociopaths. They only hear stories about ones who act irrationally, because these are the only ones who appear abnormal. Then it is attributed to sociopathy, even though I really doubt this is the reason for how they act. It's more the same for "empaths" than it might appear. Let's say someone gets really jealous because they're in love and their romantic partner cheats on them. Someone with very vivid feelings that affect their actions could decide to kill the third partner. They might really want to kill that person because of their strong feelings, and this would probably be seen as normal. But most of the time they won't, because it's irrational and overall it would not benefit them. But there are some instances where stuff like this happens. If normal people were to be consistent, they would say: "Empaths are evil, look at what their emotions make them do" and point to those exceptional cases. Unfortunately people are really inconsistent and also probably don't want to relate to themselves, and simply want to fit into a group and try to make that group seem superior. I could go on longer, but this is getting kind of long.

I don't think I am a sociopath but I'm really not normal at all. I think I'm schizoid. I wanted to mention some things about it. It sometimes seems in a way like an inverse of the sociopath. I feel things that "empaths" feel but I can't display them. I also rarely ever derive motivation from feelings. My emotions almost never drive me to do anything. And especially things relating to relationships. I rarely derive motivation from anything really, but when I do it is usually from rationality, not how I'm feeling. And also by not being able to "display" how I'm feeling, I mean that I might go to someone's funeral and not cry and not want to stay and not understand why people even have funerals. That doesn't mean I wouldn't feel sad about it, but I just don't have the physical reactions that normal people have. It seems like somehow, we have some strange similarity? But still, it sounds like an inverse is because it seems as though sociopaths are often lacking in inner feeling but have more ability to mimic normal physical  responses, yet schizoids have a lot of inner feeling, but lack any ability to mimic normal physical responses. It seems like if normal people have two halves of full emotions, we are each missing the opposite half. I don't know.

Lastly,  even though I said I am probably schizoid, I would prefer not to work with categories. I was somewhat interested in your opinion on this. You wrote one post about "sociopathic spectrum", and really I feel like everything is a spectrum. Categories don't make sense when each person is slightly different.

Well, my writing is really disorganized. Sorry. Maybe it will at least interest you in some way.

My response:

This was was very interesting and I wasn't surprised to read at the end that you identify as schizoid. I agree with almost everything you said. The one thing that I sort of disagree with is your characterization of antisocial behavior as being something that less intelligent sociopaths engage in. I used to believe this as well, now I think it's really more a matter of preference. I live in an over-priced, crowded, noisy, and often inconvenient city. There are studies that suggest that being raised in a city predisposes you to mental illness. Am I an idiot? I think it's just a matter of trade offs and knowing what you are willing to accept in exchange for what. For me, I have a great and supportive family so I would never defraud them. It would me like cutting down a lucrative fruit orchard to farm marijuana illegally. But if my family was not great and supportive, the economics of it would be different.