Wednesday, April 16, 2014

What am I?

From a reader:

Over the past couple years, I’ve begun to think I’m a sociopath, and the most frustrating thing about being it, is that I’m alone in a way that normal people could never even begin to fathom. Granted, I rarely feel "lonely" anymore, but in my heart I know that I am, and always will be, TRULY alone. I will NEVER know [again] what it feels like to long for another person's company, to miss them when they are not there, or to be excited to see them once more. I haven't felt any of that in years. I can't even remember what it feels like. I will live and die alone, forced to watch every person around me chase that high that only emotions can deliver... that I'll never be able to feel... That’s what I mean by alone, I often wondered if other people felt like this and just acted happy to see an old friend because it’s the normal thing to do, but ever since I looked into the human condition of being normal, it quickly dawned on me that me not giving a shit about anyone or anything that doesn’t affect me wasn’t exactly a normal thing.

I’ve often wondered about ways in which I could convey this feeling of total emotional emptiness. Easier said than done though, how can you tell someone who has, say the ability of speech, what it’s like to be unable to communicate with the world? If you told someone to think about it, they could maybe have a rough idea but they’ll never be able to truly understand. But here’s the funny part, I just don’t seem to care about my inability to feel real compassion, I don’t think of it as a loss, or a disadvantage, I have a sort of… indifference towards it, or usually I see it the total opposite nothing more than a gift of clarity and reason, the only way I could ever describe it is if I use my life as an example, because I’ve never really known anyone to feel this way before

I've got a lot of friends. Well, acquaintances, rather. People like me, and not just because of some strange charm that a lack of feelings is meant to give. True, a good bit of my charm is superficial, and yeah, most of my social interactions feel forced or even downright faked, but people like me for a different reasons. Despite my less-than-human existence and my inability to form emotional connections, people are always drawn to me when they need help or advice, I used to think I was pretty emotional before I realised I was only doing it because I felt like it was easier than saying “sorry, but your problem’s a load of crap and the fact you haven’t figured out how to sort it out yet, despite the fact it’s staring you right in the fucking face. Is totally yours to deal with, mainly because now that you’ve told me all about it, it’s not interesting anymore and so I don’t really give a flying fuck.”

But no, people are drawn to me because I know how to listen and care (when really I just know how to pretend to listen and care, when really I just don’t). More than that, I know how to listen without judging. I'm not clouded by petty, trivial emotions, so I don't look at other people with the same silly emotion-based prejudices that everyone else does. If I like someone, I accept them for all of who they are, the good and the bad, but it’s truly unconditional. I can be "friends" with anyone. 

So how can I let people see my reasoning, well think about all your friends. Think about how you feel about them. Hold on to that while you read this next part: 

I've got friends that I've known pretty much all of my life. I've got friends that should be closer than family. I've got friends that have been through hell with me, who would show up at my beckon call if needed... and that bothers me... a bit... because I'll never be able to return that.

It's very hard to explain, but no matter how much I want to want other people, I never do. No matter how much I want to need to feel close to another human being, I never do. No matter how much I want to be human, I never am.

I don't miss people when they walk away. Not anymore. Out of sight truly becomes out of mind. And I do almost feel bad about it from time to time, but it doesn't change. It never does. People walk out of my life and it feels as though nothing has changed, I recently moved to the other side of the country and I won’t be able to see my friends (with whom I’ve spent the everyday with for the past 9-10 moths with, probably about 19 hours day with, whenever I was up, I was with them) and now that I’m gone, they all say how much they miss me, but I just don’t miss them, at all, or even my parents for that matter.

I remember I had to go to a funeral a year or so ago, and it was for beloved family member, someone that I “loved” and “cared” for a lot, but she was a very nice lady, caring, compassionate person. But she always knew I didn’t care for that, and always treated me as an equal even from a young age. I liked her a lot for it, she was the only person who ever treated me the way I wanted to be treated, just let me get on with my own thing (mainly games, television and smoking, once I started last year, she was the only one who didn’t really mind it). She was one of my favourite family members, the more I researched into who I was and sociopathy as a whole the more I thought that she was one, and recognised even from an early stage that I was as well.

But when I found out she died, I felt... nothing. Most of my family were standing around fighting tears or shamelessly crying and I felt cold and empty.

They say I don't feel guilt, but I almost do. I felt what could have been misconstrued as guilty that day. I felt guilty that this women I liked and came-as-close-to-caring-about-as-I-could died and all I could do was think "wow, that's... sad… I guess."

And a few moments later, it was as if nothing at all had happened.

I know I'm a different. But am I right for thinking I’m a sociopath?

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Meet ups

A couple people have asked me to put them on a mailing list or to email them if there is ever any sort of activity in their area that they can attend, even something informal like meeting up for coffee. I had been keeping a list of those people, locations, and contact information, but I've lost it. So I created a link to a Google form soliciting the same information. It's completely optional and anonymous, but the idea is that if something big comes along, I can email you. Or if I ever happen to be in your town for something, there might be a chance to meet-up at an event, etc.

Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1JglHcrACWZMOiNOk2CaqNKQeVTsDCLgdWUJTl-vAu8M/viewform

And can we all promise not to kill each other, should any of this happen? :)

Monday, April 14, 2014

Enough about religion

A reader asks about my religious faith:

Good evening ME,

Thank you for an interesting blog.

Lately you have been writing quite a bit about your religion. I am curious , do you REALLY believe in any of your religion? One of the basic traits of sociopaths is, according to Hare and others, “free from delusions” and I dare say that anyone who is not delusional cannot believe in any religion since they by definition require you to believe something that clearly cannot be true (mostly because there never is any real evidence at all, just books and pastors but also because if you look at any religion with a clear mind it is quite obvious that people believe it because others have told them to believe it in combination with that reality(there is no heaven etc. ) is unbearable for empaths).

I am not saying there cannot be grains of truths and/or wisdom in any religion but the basic tenets cannot an are not true. Do you see this?

Yeah, I realize that a lot of people don't understand, or don't like, or don't like reading about how I relate to religion. And I'm sorry if it seemed like I over-posted about it before. I don't mean to inundate readers with anything they'd rather not hear about. I started posting more about religion when the book came out because I was no longer as worried about hiding certain aspects of myself from being used to identify me. Before that, I intentionally kept most of what I posted generic, both for the identity purposes and so people who shared those traits could project their own experiences onto what I wrote to be able to relate better. After doing that for several years, I thought that it might be interesting to change it up by giving people a more fleshed out portrayal of someone who has been diagnosed with this disorder. I know some of you didn't like that change, just like someone of you didn't like any of the other changes that I've made or things that I've done in the public eye. But I don't really know what I'm doing or have a master plan. I just try things out and sometimes they work ok and sometimes they are disasters.

But yeah, after the book came out I started talking more about things I had been quiet about before: being female, more about being in my particular profession, and more about some of my other specific formative life experiences.  Because I do feel like a lot of the way I think and present to the world is influenced by these things: growing up in a big, smart, (a little trashy) Mormon family; being female; studying and practicing law; being American and a Californian; being a classically-trained musician; etc. I don't think those things necessarily have much or anything to do with sociopathy, but they do have something to do with the sorts of choices I make in how I live my life. And I realize that a lot of people (most?) are not interested in me as a person, and I realize a lot of you believe that I am a narcissist for various reasons (maybe even narcissistic personality disorder? which I definitely show signs of), including that I talk about myself a lot (and use the word I and me a lot and seem delusional, or as my friend puts it, like a megalomaniac). But thanks everyone for your feedback and I hope to do better. But also sometimes I wrote posts more for niche audiences (or at least hope to), because although I understand that not everyone is interested in certain topics or certain aspects about me, I think others are? Maybe other Mormons, other musicians, other INTJs, or other people who have been diagnosed as having Asperger's (as my most recent therapist suggested, funnily enough). And often I just use this blog as sort of a journaling project to write about the things that are on my mind, not knowing whether they will appeal to outside audience or not. So feel free to skip the posts you find boring or inapplicable, and hopefully we'll pick up with something more to your liking in a later post.

But here is what I replied to this reader:

This is an interesting question. First, I think that everyone suffers from delusions because we cannot correctly perceive or understand reality. So when they say free from delusions, I think they are largely making the distinction that sociopaths do not suffer from psychosis. There may also be a small distinction between other personality disorders like narcissism, which seem to be a little more out of touch with reality than sociopathy manages to be?

In response to religion being delusional, we are always being delusional in some unknown way. We used to believe that homosexuality was unnatural and a mental illness. We used to bleed people. We used to think the world was flat. I do not flatter myself that I would have been immune to any of those delusions had I lived in those times and with that knowledge. I'm aware that the things we don't know vastly exceed the things we do know. So believing, perhaps delusionally, in religion is not a problem for me.

If anything, it has helped me to manage having a personality disorder. For instance, although I don't really feel like I am any particular person or have a strong sense of self, my religion teaches me that I am, I have a soul, and so does everyone else, and our main job in life is to become more perfectly who we were meant to become and to help others to do the same. My religion teaches me that just because I have done bad things does not mean that I am a bad person who is incapable of ever changing or doing good things (or my dad, or anyone else who has hurt me in the past). My religion teaches me that my brain and other physical defects can distort how I see the world, who I believe myself to be, and how I act in a way that is not really "me", and I can do things to minimize those effects and (eventually) become free from those. My religion also teaches me rules of morality are not determined by consensus and that I shouldn't worry about the judgment of other people so much as the judgment of a more perfect arbiter, so I try to focus on the big stuff, like achieving enlightenment, and not necessarily on the small bad stuff that currently happens to be most controversial in the world. My religion teaches me that although I can change, I have been given certain gifts that are essential to humanity, that no one is trash or sans value, and that all of us have a specific role to fulfill as part of the body of Christ. I'm sure some or all of this sounds ridiculous, but the net effects of believing it are good for me, and so I (like everyone else in this world?) maintain certain beliefs that are good for me that may otherwise seem entirely specious.


Sorry for all of the recycled posts. I'm on vacation.

Also, this Brene Brown video on returning to religion as a researcher.


Sunday, April 13, 2014

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Road rage

A funny thing happened to me while I was travelling. I had gotten a car and was having a few problems with local drivers. I had grown up and learned to drive in a place where everyone quickly becomes an expertly efficient driver, or faces very stiff social sanctions, including possibly death. This place had no such rule of the jungle. Everyone, including their cars, was fat and bloated from years of complacency.

I got stuck out on the road during their rush hour, which seemed odd given the size of this place. There was something about their driving that suggested that they were not used to traffic, that maybe it had sprouted up only in the past 5 to 10 years and not everyone had learned to adapt. I was headed south on a broad, multiple lane boulevard and came upon a backed-up the intersection of another large boulevard with highway entrances. I waited in line for two lights, passing the time reading comments from the blog on my smart phone. During the green light that should have allowed me to cross, someone cut into my lane, slowing me down enough to keep me from proceeding through the intersection. I didn’t really mind. I had nothing to do, nowhere to go, and I was entertaining myself with my music and reading material.

Cross traffic took their turn, but quickly became backed up in the intersection. Cars just kept coming even though there was no way for them to clear the intersection in time. When the light turned green for me again, there was a car completely blocking not just my lane, but the lane next to me. I wondered at the driver's stupidity and waited for social sanctions in the form of honking, yelling, and fist shaking, but they never came. Was that my role as the driver closest to her, best informed as to the problem? I let out a few beeps in quick succession, heard a longer one from a few cars back in response, but nothing else. But when I looked at her, I didn’t feel like doing anything more. Both hands were on the wheel at 10 and 2, fists clenched to the point of whiteness. She purposefully avoided eye contact, staring ahead as if realizing she was about to endure the worst 1 minute of her day. She was so rigidly focused on enduring her fate that she didn’t even attempt to move one lane over, which if maneuvered correctly could free up at least one lane of traffic. I felt badly for her.

We waited that light out, staring at her. When she finally cleared the intersection and cross traffic picked up again, I was determined not to let the same situation happen again. I creeped further into the intersection myself, rolled down the window and gave various gestures and commands meant to dissuade others from enter the intersection unless they could safely clear it. When the light turned green, I sped off, taking back roads the rest of the way.

I had a small crisis of identity. Had I just empathized with that woman? Was I finally tapping into that piece of humanity that I lacked? Looking at her, clearly in a state of nervous discomfort, I myself felt nauseated and uncomfortable. Was that me mirroring her own emotions, or was that the heat, the humidity, and my food not agreeing with me? Twenty minutes later I determined affirmatively that it was the food, but for those twenty minutes I had a very Grinch moment of wondering whether my heart was growing three sizes. It wasn't at all unpleasant.

Moral of the story is that road rage kills, kids.

UPDATE: Interestingly, since this post was initially published, research has shown that sociopaths actually can feel empathy in certain situations when their attention is drawn to the task of trying to imagine what it might be like to be that person.  
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