Sunday, October 20, 2013

Being seen

I've written before about how sociopaths have an uncanny ability to see, understand, and predict people's likes and behaviors. I've also suggested that if people are trying to throw a sociopath off their scent, they poison the well of information. But even if there isn't a sociopath specifically targeting things, people have mentioned that there is something unsettling about being seen for what you truly are. A reader writes:

I read a blog entry from July 2011 from a reader who is married to a sociopath and is herself an 'uber-empath'.  Her comments and your response resonated with me a great deal.  You said:


I think it's really interesting that him being able to see you to your core is a plus in your eyes. Do you think that is atypical for empaths? Don't they like to hide certain parts of them. Isn't that what I sometimes hear marriage self-help types preach? That there should be mystery in marriages? I have sometimes wondered whether that ended some of my relationships. I am always fine seeing people in all their imperfection, but sometimes I think the people I was with were not fine -- did not feel comfortable being laid bare like that.

I don't think 'regular' people do want to be seen so clearly at all, but that it's not something they consciously contemplate or contrive.  Life is mostly about being accepted and I think there is a great deal of fear-driven, unconscious shaping of personality in order to avoid rejection.  If someone is truly balanced, they will let others 'in' over time and with trust, which is a healthy protective mechanism.  They don't have a need to hide parts of themselves but nor do they need to be exposed unnecessarily.  People 'just know' when the boundaries of thought processes they are willing to share with others are being intruded upon and will move away from that.  

Why don't people want to be seen?  I'd guess at vulnerability.  For the same reason people don't reveal all their personal information and thoughts to say coworkers or people they've just met, they don't want someone to come along and just 'take' that information from them.  I'm just guessing but that may be how people feel if they sense that you know a lot about them that they haven't revealed at will.  I'd probably feel that way if I felt that someone who could be a threat to me did it.  Someone I shared an apartment with who has many sociopathic traits once told me that "he knew a lot more about me than I thought".  At the time, I didn't really know what to make of it and didn't worry too much because I didn't see him doing anything harmful.  But when I have thought back to that comment, I find it revealing that he felt the need to let me know that.  Only someone wanting to assert power would make such a comment.  It was a fairly innocuous attempt at letting me know that he was in charge of things... but some subsequent behaviour revealed that he had a pretty serious sense of grandiosity.  Perhaps people feel a loss of control if they feel that you know things about them?  

As a uber-empath myself, I do want to be seen in my entirety, flaws and all.  Otherwise my relationships are unfulfilling; not complete.   

I thrive in emotional environments like funerals and heated arguments, when others don't know what to do.  When I saw a friend last week and asked if she was ok (she clearly looked upset to me), she was surprised that I could tell that she was upset and said that no one else seemed to notice. I've heard this before . I can clearly see people's strengths and weaknesses, why they have a certain perspective, and what piece of the puzzle they are missing.  But I have no desire to use this against them and feel a much greater degree of responsibility to others than the average person.  

I don't know whether my interactions with sociopaths have helped me gain a sense of people. I'd say they've encouraged me to want to understand more and to seek out knowledge about the variety in the emotional lives of others and how they think.  As long as I can remember, I always wanted to understand my own mind, because I knew my perspective of things was different from those around me from a young age.  This has a lot to do with the family and community I happened to grow up in, which was very bourgeois.  I believe my parents are narcissists and that I learned to cater to their emotional needs, so there was training there. Then the efforts to understand my own resulting feelings.  But I'd say it also has a lot to do with nature too.  

I'd say that in the past, sociopaths have been attracted to me because of my openness, flexibility, willingness to be seen and vulnerability.  I was attracted to the intensity I felt and what seemed like deep connections.  And to 'being seen'.  But the on and off nature of those connections is what can be damaging to empaths, and was to me.  

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Quote: Power to the daring

"Power is given only to those who dare lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters: to be able to dare."

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Friday, October 18, 2013

How feelings lead to self-deception

One of my favorite books that explains the way most people navigate their feelings and relationships is Bonds That Make Us Free, by C. Terry Werner, founder of the Arbinger Institute. The book and institute are primarily about self-deception. Here's an illustrative quote:

“Fable: When we're stuck in troubled feelings we believe that all our feelings are true-- that is to say, we believe that by our emotions at that moment we are making accurate judgments about what's happening. If I'm angry with you, I'm certain that you are making me angry.

Fact: Though we truly have these feelings, they are not necessarily true feelings. More likely I'm angry because I'm misusing you, not because you are misusing me.” 

I wrote a little bit about empaths' tendency to endow their emotions with feelings of Truth here.

This recent comment reminded me of this principle:

I think most people don't consider sociopaths as 'unknowns'. Most people think they know everything there is to know, and no amount of reasoning or metaphorical musings is going to change that.

[P]eoples' lives revolve around sparing their conscience. All their thoughts and actions must be justified, and they treat their morality as if it's entirely objective. When someone gets a 'bad feeling' about someone, then the source of that bad feeling is evil. I've realized that there are topics I choose to avoid, they give me a 'bad feeling'. When I examine that feeling, though, I realize that it says more about my own inner workings than anything that's happening outside my head.

Racism, bigotry, and discrimination stem not from some objective truth about the targeted population. It comes from parents, the media, and peers teaching young minds to dislike groups of people, and this dislike is rationalized by exaggerations and outright lies until the population is appropriately villified. I hate smokers because I find the stench of burning tobacco absolutely revolting. I hate hobos because they ask for and feel entitled to my money. They force an unwelcome interaction with me, be it through a pervasive miasma or trying to sell me pins and dirty papers.

Black guys and flamboyantly gay guys make me uncomfortable. I don't hate them, but I grew up in an ultra-conservative, ultra-white area. Fortunately, my family is not composed of bigots, so the extent of my racism and homophobicity is that I merely feel uneasy. I understand that this is a learned behavior, and the only way to unlearn it would be to interact with these people that make me feel uncomfortable, to teach myself that they are human, and not at all unlike myself. Most people, however, just consider people that make them uncomfortable to be evil somehow. It's much easier to reconcile their bad feelings this way, rather than recognize, admit, and try to change the fact that they themselves are the ones with the defect.


Thursday, October 17, 2013

Selfish + Pleasure - Pain = Happy

This was an interesting blurb that a reader sent me about one person's idea of success in life:

Be selfish + seek pleasure + avoid pain = success

At first glance, you may think this formula encourages you to be the most greedy and self-absorbed person imaginable. In reality, exactly the opposite will happen.

This formula virtually eliminates all the short-term bad decisions most of us make about diet, exercise, money, and relationships.

If you just want pleasure, you might cheat on your spouse. But if you want both pleasure and to avoid pain, you won't do it.

If you just want pleasure, you will eat rich desserts. But if you want both pleasure and to avoid pain, you will likely eat less dessert.

If you just want to avoid pain, you might lead a quiet, sheltered and safe life. But if you also want pleasure, you will find a healthy balance between safety and excitement.

To use a simple example, I'm a passionate skier with three "kids." During three different periods, I had to give up much of my free skiing time to teach them to ski. That was a little painful - especially in my lower back - but the subsequent pleasure of skiing with my now-expert offspring far outweighed the pain of a few missed powder days. Teaching them to ski was incredibly selfish of me.

Enlightened self-interest that looks like altruism

Add these three elements together, and you will start behaving in a manner that others interpret as altruism. You will exhibit a strong interest in your community, peers and colleagues, because doing so is how you make the formula work on your behalf.

Here's the critical part: you must adopt all three! If you adopt just one, your life won't go so well.

If you just focus on pleasure, you'll end up with a superficial and unsustainable life. If you simply avoid pain, you'll never accomplish anything worthwhile. If you obsess with your self-interest, you'll become the greedy and selfish person I promised to help you avoid becoming.

The reader commented that this is very similar to how I approach my own decisionmaking process. Does this seem familiar to anyone else?

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

A story of exploits: love and marriage (part 2)

I replied:

I guess your wife is right, there are always "other" ways to go about doing things. I don't know if I would say "better," I actually think that what you did was masterful. If your wife is giving you a hard time about it, maybe spin it off as saying, "Look, this is just proof that I would honestly do anything for you. I know you're not planning on coming home with dead bodies in your trunk anytime soon, but I want you to know that if you did, I would be ok with it."

What do you think?

He said:
Since that incident my wife has come to terms with what I am.. or rather, what I am not. Someone who actually cares about the people around us, I say "us" because I do care about my wife.
She knows I don't process emotion "normally". I do love my wife, she knows the way I love is different from say, how her parents love each other or how the couple down the hall way loves each other. She seems to be ok with that kind of love because on the surface where everyone can see it, its the same.

Who's to say that a love fraught with logic and reasoning isn't just as good as what everyone else "feels" ? or whether or not its the same ? Maybe I process the "emotion" on a conscious level where in they process it subconsciously. I know what love is and how you're meant to act when you love someone I just don't "feel" love, for anyone. My wife is smart, attractive and very quick witted she serves a purpose, a barrier, she keeps me happy physically and together we are very fortunate financially, she makes me laugh and she "gets" me, up until that "incident" she had always understood me and made allowances for how I acted, the "incident" as we call it in our home was the first time she knew what I did was conscious thought not instinct which is what scared her I think, but now she has come to terms with that and is dare I say "impressed" with me.

I don't know though I do feel a niggling, like maybe she should be with someone who LOVES her in the true sense of the word. She is younger then me, and so much like me it's not funny, here's hoping she is either more like me then I know or learns to be like me maybe then I wont "feel" bad about keeping her.

I realize I rambled off the subject but though maybe you could use it for another topic ? Who is to say "we" as sociopaths are wrong in not feeling emotions as opposed to using logic and reasoning for a substitute?
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