Tuesday, May 20, 2014

How identity changes behavior (part 2)

The reader continues:

Thanks for your reply. The idea is interesting and I will try this over the next few weeks and see what conclusions I come to. 

Over the last few weeks I have started seeing a psychologist - I feel like I actually need to know what is "wrong" with me - although not sure that I really feel like anything is wrong - things just are. He seems inclined to think that I've got antisocial personality disorder or that I possibly am a sociopath. 

I know in your book that you mentioned one time when a guy told you off for walking down a closed escalator on the underground in Washington you had this "snap" when you followed him with the purpose of assaulting him. I've also had several "snaps" like that but have always snapped out of them before anything has actually happened. The most serious was when I was 21. A friends of mine had been dating this guy who worked as a tram driver. They broke up and one day when I was waiting for the tram at my stop the tram approached and slowed down and I could see that he was driving. I was alone at the stop and he slowed down - just to then not stop and drive off to piss me off I guess. As I stood there the tram slowed down (the next stop was just within sight from where I was standing) and I realised that there was another tram on that stop (probably having issues closing the doors or something) and before I knew it I had jumped down on the track and ran after the tram and all I could think of was that I had to kill this guy. I managed to catch up with it and get onto it just as the doors were closing. I rushed through the tram to the front where I started shouting at the driver (my friends ex) and tried to get the door open. Suddenly someone started shouting at me asking what I'm doing and I turn around and realise that there are 2 police officers standing there looking at me, clearly they had been on the tram and I had missed this as I was so focused on killing him. And then I snapped out of it. The police officers was about to arrest me but the driver talked them out of it explaining that he knew me and what had happened. 

I guess my main concerns with incidents like that is that it's something I don't have control over. Don't get me wrong, they don't happen on a weekly basis, but when they do I feel like I'm not my everyday self, like it's something I can't control. Even though I know I shouldn't act on it, when these moments come all reasoning stops and all that exists in my mind is that focus on killing that person. Do you have any method to control these urges/impulses?

M.E.:

Yeah, I know what you mean. For me, the thing that things that contribute to a feeling of being out of control (1) part of me feels like that's who I really am so I can't/shouldn't fight it, (2) part of me feels like I want to do that thing, (3) I can't really predict when they will happen -- sometimes something like that will trigger me and other times not, (4) I think I really do have attentional issues that make it easy to get locked on to a thought the way a pitbull locks on to its prey, (5) it's often irrational, so I feel like it wouldn't do any good to try to reason with myself, and without reason what else could stop me but physical force, I wonder? (6) the feeling that it isn't me, or at least not everyday me gives me a feeling that I am out of touch with myself.

And other reasons, probably. But I have found the previous exercise is really helpful for all of those things. It doesn't necessarily address them directly, but I feel like it is like the swimming drills I love to do -- doing things differently or even awkwardly often makes you aware of things you are doing wrong much better than if someone told you you were wrong over and over again, if that makes sense?

I have always sort of struggled to identify and track my own thoughts and feelings. I think I always felt like my identity was a moving target. And I used to not care to understand myself, at least not actively. In fact, for a long time I felt like at least a part of me was actively trying to hide certain aspects of my identity from myself. Recently, though, I have realized how much I don't know, and it has started bothering me.

So these sorts of exercises are what I am working on in therapy currently. It's not super pleasant. Little things bother me that used to not, e.g. hopefully this is just a passing phase, but it really bothers me to think that other people know me better than I know me (especially when they say as much).

It's odd. I've always believed that if truth relative, or at least the perception of truth is. But in order to maintain the belief that I am connecting to some basic truths about myself, I have had to believe that there are basic truths about me -- things that are true about me no matter what the situation, even if I close my eyes to them, even if we all agree to pretend they don't exist. And that is starting to seem more "true" to me than my previous beliefs about myself. Because even if I ignore them or convince myself that these little "secrets" about me don't matter, they're still there. And they affect me and my life in ways that I am still hazy about. And I think that's a major reason why it has traditionally been hard for me to learn from experience -- why I have historically kept making the same mistakes over and over again. To the extent that I have deluded myself about who I am, I have also remained willfully ignorant of the causes to a lot of the effects I experience.

This must be true for almost everyone, I imagine. And maybe it is disturbing for everyone -- for empaths because they have such a strong sense of identity that may or may not encompass all actual truths about themselves. For someone like me, the disturbing part about not knowing myself is the lack of control I feel and the sense that others can exploit that knowledge gap against me.

Maybe this is how we get sociopaths to care about things that they don't naturally care about?

Monday, May 19, 2014

How identity changes behavior (part 1)

I thought this conversation with a reader was a good illustration of what effects a sense of identity (or lack of) has on behavior. From a reader:

Thank you for your excellent blog and lovely book. I started reading the blog a few months ago and finished your book a few weeks ago.

Though I've never been diagnosed with any form of disorder I recognise myself in what you're writing. I've always known that I was different but until I started reading your blog I didn't realise how I'm different.

The first time I actually realised the extent of my odd-ness I was 16. There was this girl who went to the same class as me, we were friends growing up and we lived in the same street. When she was 13-14 or so she turned a bit wild and we weren't really friends after that. I just found her nasty and disgusting. When she was 16 she one night took a drug overdose and died and the next day in school we were told about it. I remember everyone being upset and crying except me. The only thing I though about it was that she had done the world a favour - after all she would probably have grown up living on benefits having loads of babies just like her mum and the rest of her family had turned out, so actually it saved us all the inconvenience of having to pay for it via our tax. And I couldn't understand why nobody else though of it like that - I really didn't understand why people seemed upset and kept crying. Later in the evening when my mum got home she asked me about it - and me at that stage not having realised how inappropriate those thoughts were in the eyes of most people - I said it straight out, exactly what I felt. I have never seen my mum reacting that way, although she of course knew I didn't really respond emotionally as most people (such as laughing at the movie Schindlers List aged 13 which made my teacher a bit nervous) she probably had not realised just how cold I actually am. My mum's face went pale and she didn't know what to say, she just stood frozen for a few minutes and then walked away and we have never discussed it again. And that was the moment I realised how different I am different from most people and I started censoring myself more.

Something I've been wondering about is your being Mormon. I've always been very interested in religion - quite randomly since my family is not religious at all. And I've always wished I was religious. I did my degree in Sociology of Religion and did very well - I was offered doing a PhD but after spending 5 years wearing the mask I had to get away and put on a new mask, so I moved abroad instead and now I live in London having a successful job. I therefore know more than most people about the LDS church and I kind of get what you mean that it is quite a sociopathic religion. I wish I could commit to a religion, I would probably choose Christianity (a desperate hope that even a cold hearted sociopath like me would be shown some mercy on the day of judgement?). And even though I can on an intellectual/philosophical level accept that there is a God - I simply can't motivate myself to follow it. Any attempts I have made to believe in God or practise a religion fails as I eventually loose interest in it. I guess it's because I struggle with long-term goals, I just can't motivate myself to do it when I don't see any result after a few weeks/month. I read your blog about how to break goals down to smaller pieces and I found it very useful. Do you think it's possible to do the same with religious goals? And in that case how? Because ultimately the rewards for religions is something beyond here and now, and even beyond this life. Would be very keen to know your thoughts.

My response: Interesting question. I have the added benefit of religion being pushed upon me by my family and little religious community, so that does make it easier. Maybe it would be best to start with what you believe. I know that is often hard for us to dig into, but I think that we (like everyone else) have beliefs that we aren't really aware of. Take for instance, some little thing that annoys you. Do this right after it happens. Mark a piece of paper with four columns. In the first, describe the situation. In the second, write the most irrational thought that you had as a result of this situation (e.g., this person doesn't deserve to live or I'm the best). Identify whether this belief seems to be related your conception of your own identity, your role in life (or your beliefs about the purpose of life), or your sense of individuality (not typical with sociopaths). In the third column, write down any personal conclusions, e.g. the other thoughts you had that weren't irrational. In the last, write down your reactions for these three categories: emotional, physical, mental, if any. Don't do this more than a couple of times per week. I think you will discover some beliefs that you didn't realize you had.  

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Retributive justice

For some reason, this skit reminded me of some of the discussions we have had about retributive justice.



Also here. Also, not that they have the woman character get hysterically and angry.



Saturday, May 17, 2014

Social norms

I have never quite understood social norms, both the concept and how to identify and comport myself consistently with various social norms, which make the findings from a recent study so interesting:

Neuroeconomists at the University of Zurich have identified a specific brain region that controls compliance with social norms. They discovered that norm compliance is independent of knowledge about the norm and can be increased by means of brain stimulation.

The oft-cited complaint about sociopaths is that they actually do know right from wrong, so they should be held to the same standards of behavior as everyone else. The findings of the study were actually consistent with this belief, but interestingly the researchers found that the knowledge of right and wrong was independent of a person's behavior under different brain stimulation treatments:

When neural activity in this part of the brain was increased via stimulation, the participants’ followed the fairness norm more strongly when sanctions were threatened, but their voluntary norm compliance in the absence of possible punishments decreased. Conversely, when the scientists decreased neural activity, participants followed the fairness norm more strongly on a voluntary basis, but complied less with the norm when sanctions were threatened. Moreover, neural stimulation influenced the participants’ behavior, but it did not affect their perception of the fairness norm. It also did not alter their expectations about whether and how much they would be punished for violating the norm.

"We found that the brain mechanism responsible for compliance with social norms is separate from the processes that represent one’s knowledge and beliefs about the social norm," says Ernst Fehr, Chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Zurich. "This could have important implications for the legal system as the ability to distinguish between right and wrong may not be sufficient for the ability to comply with social norms." Christian Ruff adds: "Our findings show that a socially and evolutionarily important aspect of human behavior depends on a specific neural mechanism that can be both up- and down-regulated with brain stimulation."

So if I took a non-sociopath and "stimulated" their brain in a particular way, they too would change their behavior to be more likely to violate a fairness norm, despite knowing that it was "wrong". I guess we're not so different after all? Or maybe does this mean we should be implanting the brain equivalent of a heart's pacemaker in the brains of sociopaths to get them to be more docile and compliant?

The other interesting finding was that people with high stimulation responded highly to punishment but their voluntary compliance went down, and vice versa. That sounds like sociopaths -- unlikely to be influenced by a threat of punishment but also oddly known to be randomly and voluntarily "altruistic".


Friday, May 16, 2014

Am I?

A reader asks:

This entire message will compose of one question; Am I a sociopath? Before I get into it, I believe you'll require some background history.

My family has a history of individuals with little to no emotions, my Uncle, Grandfather and further back. I have a reason to suspect this because of the history they have, my Uncle is a parasitic man living off care benefits from his Psychotic/Schizophrenic sister, attacks people when he drinks, but never gives off body language of guilt or embarrassment when confronted, and Grandfather was entirely selfserving, violent, but extremely cold indiscriminately.
I wasn't abused by any family member as the criteria of ASPD suggests, I was bullied as a child though. Those years are beyond my reach of memory, but I have been told that my educational Psychologist referred me to a child-adolescent mental health service for lack of guilt and/or empathy. What I can remember though from the ages of 11-15 is being 'manipulative, sly, and abusive to teachers, and those distracting from schoolwork' as my principle so eloquently described. In those ages I was arrested twice, once for credible threats to kill and second for drunk and disorderly, there were a few other impulsive acts that got me into bother, but eventually I figured out that I needed to adapt to my environment.

I've only recently turned seventeen, in those two years I've been restricting my need for a thrill to doing things with my 'best friend', a thrill seeker, herself. Now that I've been more introspective, I've noticed that feelings of like or so that a rarely feel are only comparable to the attachment someone would have for an object they wear everyday, but I would discard them if they become non beneficial to me, love on the other hand is very different than what others experience, where they become blinded to everything else but the 'good' in that person, I become practically obsessed, I trail over their lives with a metaphorical comb and enjoy their company, as if they're my own. The sex is different, if it's someone I don't have that attachment to, it's an act, but the other would be consuming. It's unfortunate that it lasts so little time, though, like everything I feel, anger, rage, frustration, all are there and gone in minutes, then I'm just thinking, feeling physically but not emotionally. I don't suppose I *want* to be a sociopath, but if I am then it's just something I've found out about myself. The reason I'm e-mailing you instead of waiting to go to one of the appointments I've been referred to once again, is that I'm curious to see if these feelings (would it be more applicable if I said non-feelings?) are more widespread than I originally thought.

Thank you for your time if you decide to reply.
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