Saturday, March 21, 2015

Sociopath?

From a reader:

Firstly, I'd like to tell you that I'm not a native English speaker, so excuse me, if there are any language mistakes.

I think I may be a high-functioning sociopath, but I also can find some definitely non-sociopathic behaviour. First, I have to tell you that I have cerebral palsy, but it's a light form, so I don't have much problems with it. But why i think I'm a sociopath? 

When I was a kid, I had moments in which I felt I didn't have the same feelings as other people. For example, I was never able to feel love to my parents, and therefore to say them: ''I love you'', or to be moved by a song, and I couldn't make many face expressions. Additionally, I was quite well accepted by people, but strangely I was good contacting mainly with the older ones, meaning that I was the loner at school. But I also had that period when I didn't want to meet new people and I was starting to growl and felt anger (I know that there is too much contradiction, right?). Another contradiction is that, while I was the loner at school, I also tried to be with the other kids and to communicate with them, but most of the time I was rejected. 

Later, at middle school, this tendency continued, but (another contradiction) I started chatting to some of my mates on the Internet and in 6th grade we became friends. My behaviour with them wasn't like the one that is expected from a sociopath - many times I was rude and sarcasstic with them, but it wasn't a big deal. Most of these people are still my friends. 

When I entered high school, the same story began. I tried to get in contact with people, but again I was somehow rude to them and I didn't made any friends (maybe here is the place to say that since I was a kid, I've had moments in which I had thought that I'm better without friends). At the second year, the rudeness peaked and I lost any opportunity to have friends at my class. In the summer I went to an excursion in the mountain, and met there three girls, all one year younger than me, and we became friends. On the next school year I had the idea of stay and repeat the school year, so we can be at the same class. It didn't happen, and, additionally, I started behaving extremely rude with my classmates, which worsed my relations with them (that rudeness was a theatre, but i will talk about it at another point of the e-mail). 

Now I'm 18 and I'm 11th grade, second-to-last year high school student. The relations with my classmates improved, but still I don't have friends at my class.

I think some of my problems at school are caused by my incapacity of feel empathy, gulit, fear (to a lesser extent) and remorse. For a contradiction, I have to say that I'm not very risky person, and even had regret missing some opportunities for meeting new people, for example. Another contradiction is that I don't like thinking much about important things. For example, I decided i want to learn Spanish at high school after the first episode of a Spanish TV series.

My personality is something very relative. I have never had any favourite music style, celebrity, etc. Instead I have taken parts of music styles that I like, and I have used them to try a create an image, but I have always failed. When talking with people, I immitate emotions, so I can be appropiate, but I have problem with face expressions. In last years, I have trained myself to be a good liar, and when I'm with friends, or face a problem at school, it works.

Boredom is something I have always experienced. It had led me to a number of things - changing wishes for jobs, becoming bored of people, imagining making friendships with other people, strange behaviour on the Internet (as you see, imaginary things are also a contradiction, but I will clarify this at the other part of the mail), etc.

At my family things are thew following: my parents say I was very good and sociable child, yet I've had also spend much time alone and i was selfish. Here is where my first problems at school started to influence me. At junior school I was the best student - no need to say that I loved being said that I'm smart and intelligent. But in 5th grade I started failing at maths. As my father is very good with maths, he started helping me to learn the things faster. The problem was that I wasn't understanidg anything and he started to yell at me and sometimes even insult me. After that I have always felt bad, but only for a short time. Another problem was my lying. When I had a bad mark at maths, I was lying that the results hadn't come out yet, but in few days I was ending up with an explanation and a dramatic excuse. Later I continued to lie them about other things, but it led to a paradox where in most cases when I lie, they believe me, but in some cases when I tell them the truth, they don't believe me.

I have a brother. He is 16 months old. When I heard I will have a brother, I turned to the calendar, pretending to see if it was the 1st of April, then I said: ''O.K.''
When he was born, I faked a smile at my face. I have never paid him much attention. But some months ago, something interesting happened. 

I was playing with him (very rare thing) an suddenly put my hand on his throat and I felt a crave to kill him. But I stopped for a second, started thinking, and then I felt horrible. The idea of doing it was horrible. But I continued imagining it and I got into a point when I liked the fantasy and even started asking myself: ''If I kill him, would I feel better?'' But I didn't do it. Now I don't have this fantasy. And it wasn't the first time I had experienced it. When I was a kid, I used to imagine myself killing my then baby cousin, and when I was holding a knife, I've had a craving to kill the person against me, and I even was asking myself: ''What it would be if I do it?''

With my relatives I have generally a good connection. The only real bad thing I have done was when my grandma died. She died in front of my eyes. firstly, I didn't feel anything, then I forced myself to cry, and cried for 15 minutes. At the funeral I wasn't crying and I was thinking: ''What's wrong with me?'', but, at the end, I forced again myself to cry and thought: ''I cry, so I'm normal''.

The non-sociopathic part of me is related to my behaviour and there are 2 crucial characteristics. The first one is my imagination. With this one I had fulfilled many of my time, and I still continue to do it. It's very various and includes things both from the real and from fictional worlds. I've had fantasies about making friendships with people, having talents like singing, I invented a parallel government of the youth people in my head and was the primr-minister for a while, I've had imagining ideal love and ways to get to know my crushes, etc. The other one is related with something which I call hyperactivity, and the others are calling it extra energy. It consists in constant walking, or jumping, or running inside and outside with stick, pen, pencil, or whatever similar, and it is a way to express the little bit of emotions that I have (a contradiction to what I've said above, but true), because this emotions are the power of this hyperactivity. I even do it in class if I'm bored (it happens almost all of the time) and is something that people around me know that is a part of me, but some of them, like my parents, are annoyed from it and try to stop me doing it. Recently, emotions aren't the power of this movement, because they don't exist, or if they are, I have to think about an emotion to be able to feel it.

There are two less important characteristics, as they are more recent. One of them is that I was a hypohondriac and had diagnosed myself with diabetes, AIDS, schizofrenia, paranoia, etc. Because of the schizofrenia thoughts I started visiting the school psychologist. Now she knows that I think I'm a sociopath, but doesn't believe I am one. The other one is something that I know is very non-sociopathic. I have a problem with my sexual orientation. When i was 11 I found out that I'm gay (I'm a boy) and as I knew that I find out boys as more beautiful than girls, I was O.K. with that. My friends (they are all girls), also. My crushes were boys from school, mainly younger than me. The only year I had crushes older than me was the first year of high school, as I was among the youngest. The feelings were always different, the time - not too much, and they all were boys that I didn't know personally. However, with the last two of my crushes I had strong feelings and I liked them for a longer time. My last crush was from the class of my friends and even started dating one of them. I was hurt, but overcame this for 2 days.

But even of the time when I liked my second-to-last crush, I had the thought that I may like a girl. It wasn't very important, so I forgot it after a while. But recently I realised that since then there was an emerging feel towards girls, which I still want to eliminate. Now I'm in a situation where I find many boys cute, I even have a crush, and it's a combination of jealous when I see him with another girl, and the knowing that I'm hetero.

That's it. I have more information, but maybe I will post it on the comment section of the blog.

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Feline sociopath

This funny SNL skit with a shout out to a feline sociopath at 3:27. "It's not that he's evil, he lacks empathy . . . "


Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Dating advice

From a reader, asking for our advice:

I would like to give you some background. I started talking to this guy online for over a month. We had never met. He would text every day telling me how lonely he was, how he wanted a bestfriend, lover and long term relationship. Weeks later he would tell me he was in love with me, how i was the one for him. I told him that since we haven't officially met that it was questionable how he felt- he insists his feelings were real. We did meet date went great. He said he still felt the same. He asked me to be his girl i accepted. I spent 2 days at his home with him... we had sex. After that i haven't seen him since. He texts now he rarely texts. I've asked him if he was seeing anyone so i can move on he said no. He still texts and ask me for oral sex but never attempted to spend time with me. My question... I want to manipulate this guy to get whatever i want from him and have him wrapped around my finger... and get him to spend time with me, take me out and use him to my advantage and spend money on me. How do i go about doing that? Please help me i am tired of being ' the nice girl who finish last and being used up by men.

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Self-interested silence

From the same reader as the previous post:

Just finished your book. It's astonishing how self-aware and candid you are, without the denial and self-deception that's characteristic of sociopaths. Seems like you put an incredible amount of work both into self-awareness, manipulating people and fitting in. Can't imagine how hard it must be - and if it's easy, even less so.

In the Epilogue you address a lot of things I wondered about throughout the book, especially how risky it must have been to publish it. There must have been people at work or old lovers who read it and figured out it was you, it was them. What was their reaction?

M.E.:

A lot of people had a lot of different reactions. I actually have only heard from a couple of people who were sort of victims. One of them (I was really surprised to hear) was just really relieved to find out that was what had been going on and now sort of insists that I update her periodically with what's going on with my life in a very friendly way. I think most of them would rather (1) believe that I'm talking about someone else and not them (if the story is general enough) or (2) recognize themselves but feel like it would be beneath them to confront me about it. This is also partly because at least for a couple of characters, I combined stories and characteristics from multiple people into one to deal with fewer "characters" and to further disguise real events.

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Tone of voice

From a reader:

I'm about two-thirds into your book and I'm struck by the tone of your writing. It sounds non-judgmental and emotionless. Not detached, as these are things you take pride in, but the humanly closest to being objective. Perfectly consistent throughout the book and certainly with your diagnosis.

I know that tone of voice from someone I love. Your book helps a lot in understanding the way he experiences the world and people, primarily me. Jokes that used to deeply offend and shock me, lack of emotion that used to hurt me, his meteoric, self-centred rise in the office are suddenly just who he is and the best he can give in all his sociopathic glory.

I'm very pleased that I'm finally beginning to make sense of him; he's kept me fascinated and puzzled for two years. He's not someone I wanted to love but I absolutely cannot help it. You're probably rolling your eyes right now but this is not about sharing my emotional state. I thought it must be interesting for you to hear about how people try to resist the lure of the sociopath and fail.

He started paying attention to me and trying to seduce me years ago but I only yielded very recently. The intervening two years have been an exhilarating rollercoaster ride of emotions from my side and lost and won games from his. I think the gambling nature of this game just amplified our enjoyment and made the unpredictable rewards more addictive. We've come to share a closeness that I haven't experienced with anyone else, and needless to say, he's an excellent lover.

I've known he's a sociopath for a long time. I don't know if he does but I would imagine so. My challenge was trying to avoid being beguiled, to show him that I see through his pretending, that he has no power over me.

But, incredibly annoyingly to me, I'm helpless. Giving up my wary resistance to admiration and love seems the most rewarding outcome for me. I'm sure it's what he wants, but it flatters me that he wants my love and attention. He's gone out of his way to earn it, even if most of it was what people commonly call "manipulation".

He is not reliable, constant or trustworthy. He can hurt me and let me down badly. He can put the brakes on my career progression even from another part of the business. But he's so brilliant, ruthless and charismatic that I can't help but be in awe of him, admire and trust him despite overwhelming evidence. Sometimes it's like catching a child next to a broken bowl. Of course he keeps asserting it wasn't him, and of course I know it was. The outcome is always the same - I decide to trust him and feel an even stronger bond.

Is it because I'm an irrational or daft person? Far from it. It's not like us empaths are idiots. I'm educated and independent, entrepreneurial and emotionally intelligent. I've never fallen into anyone's trap. I've always excelled at everything I've done and I've always achieved what I wanted. 

The reason I continue to trust him is because I entered into a mental contract. I willingly do this, over and over again. I know what's going on, I can mostly tell when he's playing me. Whatever I need him to be, he is, obligingly. People keep telling me this is not right for me but I think otherwise. In a lot of ways this is a fair exchange. A lot of my needs are fulfilled this way, and to anyone that can tap into them the way he does, please feel free.

This is the brilliant thing about sociopaths - not only luring people into their halo, but enabling people to share a kind of trust that they don't experience with anyone else. You want to see my insecurities, here, take this magnifying glass. I know they are safe with you because you'll play me like a fiddle in places I want to be played.

I get a lot out of that. But even better than that, there are moments when he's unguarded, vulnerable and gives himself up to me. Those moments are my prize, and for them it's all worth it.

Even it they are calculated.

You sociopaths are astonishingly brilliant and fascinating. Offering a glimpse into your minds is a service to humanity that no one has done before. I'm infinitely grateful for it. 

Even just penning the above lines I've had to struggle to keep my candour and stay objective. Perhaps that's easier for you to do, but in some ways, having made a lifestyle of lying, inconceivably harder. Your self-awareness is rare and very surprising in a sociopath. Thank you for the honesty in your tone of voice. I can't even imagine what it took.


Join Amazon Prime - Watch Over 40,000 Movies

.

Comments are unmoderated. Blog owner is not responsible for third party content. By leaving comments on the blog, commenters give license to the blog owner to reprint attributed comments in any form.