Aspies also wear masks?

A reader sent me this video with the comment "aspie's do it too".

"I think we're all taught how to be normal at a very young age. . . generally we're expected to act like everybody else . . . the more practiced we are, the normal we see." It's not just sociopaths, it's aspies, and actually everyone else who has been socialized to act "normal" rather than behaving naturally.


The video discusses how mask wearing is a bit of an issue because it hides the underlying issues and needs of the person.

There's also an interesting reference to mask slipping when someone is past the point of being able to pretend anymore. She also discusses the issue of hiding aggression and other potentially negative behavior.

Another interesting remark, an aspie "It's not that we're terrible people . . . or trying to hurt them or offend them in anyway," but since the aspie is trying so hard to act normally, they get exhausted/drained wearing the mask and the aggression or underlying problems build up until they finally explode.

Also making a realistic plan before social occasions for acting normally and liking to spend time alone to rest.

Sound familiar to anyone?

Also, related?

Acknowledging yourself

I got a lot of emails from people with sociopathic tendencies or other personality disorders asking me what to do about re-connecting with their sense of self. I kind of don't know how I did it, because it was mainly my therapist guiding me through it? But I thought that this article -- How to Become Yourself -- described it in a generally accurate way, particularly re the uncertainty and time and energy required:

Becoming yourself is hard. In theory it’s easy. You do it by looking very closely at the person that you’ve been, digging out bad behaviors by the root and by letting go of anything that holds you back. It’s hard because the You of Before will make a fuss, it won’t give itself up easy. It has gotten used to not doing the good and terrifying things that make life extraordinary. It wants to stay put, it wants to stay shadowed and safe and out of sight. Even once you’ve decided that you want to be different, want to be braver and more yourself, it doesn’t happen at once.

You take the first few steps and think you’ll just keep going like that until it’s done and you’re changed and everything’s better and you feel whole. But it’s not like that. You take a step, you pause. You agonize, try to go back the way you came–find the road blocked, find in some cases it’s gone completely and ahead is something you can’t yet contemplate going towards. You hang stricken in empty space, between states, between the way you’ve been and the way you’re going to be. Between almost-happy-but-not-quite-happy and beyond, to somewhere great, somewhere where it’s not necessary to ask Is this it? Is this all there is?

It’s like in werewolf movies, one self is not big enough to hold the other, more monstrous self. In your case it’s not a monster, but a bigger and more lethal you that comes bursting out of its old way of being. Don’t be afraid of this. It’s okay to be lethal in the ways you fight for your life. Be lethal in your demands for joy, respect, progress. Step out of what is used up and useless, be lethal and unmoved in your certainty that there is peace ahead. But how to get there?
***
By slowing down
We end up in so many shitty situations by not thinking things through, by not recognizing the pull of our own toxic behaviors or the tell-tale signs that someone is bad news and won’t to leave us better than when they found us. Take a minute. Follow the map back. In the past you did this, then this, then this, and ended up here, without anything. Nod like you’ve discovered something, even if you’re just as confused. Decide in the future to buy a new map, and mark with an X places where you are celebrated. Where you’re safe and happy and strong. These are the places most worth visiting. Go to them as often as possible.

By learning to be by yourself and for yourself
It seemed clear growing up that the only way to experience love was to surrender to it. Put up your hands and step off the edge. Be consumed, or else you’re not doing it right. Be captured, or else what’s the point? Be eaten whole by it. Two life changing heartbreaks down the line and I’m starting to think it isn’t true. Because good love’s not a dinosaur. It’s an exchange of light, it’s two people doing right by one another again and again and again until the last time they speak. That’s what I think anyway and I’ve seen at least two cartoons on the subject.
***
By being better
You cannot be a better, gentler you until you start doing better, gentler things. I don’t mean you have to brush a unicorn’s hair or tuck a snake into bed. But you do have to tread more lightly through your life. You have to make calm and brave decisions about what you would like to happen and you have to take the appropriate actions to make those things most likely. Life is a choose-your-own-adventure. Will I be something? Answer yes. Will I end up where I’m supposed to be? Answer yes again, with as much conviction as you can manage. Will I be happy? Answer yes for the last time, as loudly as possible. But it’s haaaaaard. I know. But not forever. It will be easier. Eventually you’ll forget the way it was–the old ache of it; your heart quiet in its bed, your dreams dragging behind you like a tattered parachute. It will be good. You will be good.

I am aware that most people have either done this or have put off doing this for all sorts of reasons, so I am not sure who the target audience for this post is. But for those of you who have put it off but are still considering doing it, maybe just a quick endorsement from me that it's difficult and it's uncomfortable and even painful to own certain parts of yourself, and things often get uglier and more sideways before they get any better. But it is a really stable, safe, happy, and powerful place to be. There's a sort of confidence in knowing that you're living a life of integrity that is even more powerful and secure than the confidence the sociopath manifests in not caring about anything. (See also Montaigne on this subject) So it's worth it, in my opinion. Although if you do try it, I think it's best to be super committed to it, otherwise you might end up in a worse off position. 

Good seduction?

I was talking a friend recently who was having a little bit of relationship trouble, specifically a little bit of a lack of reciprocation in interest with a new paramour. My friend is (for various reasons) the type to value being straightforward and direct about things -- the type to bemoan the gamesmanship of modern love, e.g. waiting to respond to someone, not appearing too interested, etc. "Don't wait to text back" are the sorts of platitudes you sometimes see in sappy and misguided social media posts, as if it is so brave and honorable to text someone back right away rather than trying to doing them the favor of making them desire you more than they thought they could ever desire another human being.

This has been a topic that my post-graduating-from-therapy-self has been thinking about for a little bit now -- what role does seduction or other types of potentially "good" manipulation have in healthy relationships? Because my first thought when my friend was telling me this story was maybe my friend needed to read the Art of Seduction, or Dangerous Liaisons, or get any sort of game for the sake of the paramour and for the good of the relationship. Because seducing and game aren't necessary always insidious. I've said it before, and even after dropping most manipulation from my emotional daily vocabulary I still believe it -- everyone wants to be seduced.

I asked me friend, "what is it you like about your paramour"? The answer: mystery, and the charming way the paramour goes about doing things in which everything feels like a pleasant surprise. It's the little things, so little that my friend was almost reluctant to tell me because it seemed silly. Things like giving up your reserved parking spot and parking on the street for the other person, working some connections to get into a hip new place, taking care of everything -- planning, paying, and otherwise trying to anticipate and then meeting another person's needs and wants. In the "old days" they called this "wooing", but they could have called it seduction because what it is at its heart is trying to induce feelings of love, affection, or desire in another person. It's manipulation, but it's not "bad" manipulation, and by that I mean it's not at all unwanted (in a consensual romantic relationship, stalking is another story).

I'm not saying to lie or pretend to be someone other than who you are not to get someone to fall in love with a fantasy. But there is nothing deceptive about (to go back to the earlier example) waiting a reasonable amount of time to text someone back in order to heighten the recipient's anticipation and pleasure when they finally do hear back from you. There is nothing deceptive about encouraging mystery and a sense of discovery between each other rather than dumping all of your personal information and baggage on during the first few dates. It's not whether people deserve or don't deserve honesty, it's that people don't really want honesty in that form in this arena. Maybe that's controversial to say, and certainly there would be plenty of people who probably truly do (anti-seducers, for one). But most just say they want the honesty. What they end up choosing is to be swept off their feet by someone who keeps them guessing, by someone who mixes a bittersweet and puzzlingly compelling blend of frustration and satisfaction in their interactions. Romantic love feels better when it's a bit of a challenge and involves a healthy amount of guesswork and angst. I don't know if it's absolutely necessary to use actual seductive skills to achieve this result, but it's certainly one of the most reliable and effective ways. It takes quite a bit of effort to seduce, and at least some skill. Consequently, there seems to be much more demand than supply for seduction. The fact that everyone wants to be seduced but there is such little actual seduction happening suggests that seducing someone, particularly seducing well, is one of the nicest things you could ever do for another person. Don't you think?

Famous sociopaths in history: Nancy Wake

From a reader (quoting extensively from other sources, not always notated in quotation marks):

I was recently reading about a spy in WWII named Nancy Wake, known as The White Mouse, and it struck me that this woman shows many of the classic traits of a sociopath. Im not sure if you have heard of her before, so here is a not so brief summary:

"The youngest of six children of Charles and Ella Wake, with the next eldest eight years ahead of her, she always felt a little isolated from the rest of the family, with the sole exception of her filmmaker father, whom she adored, but was devastated when, at the age of four, her father abandoned the family – an event believed to have sparked her rebellious nature and fearsome temper. The rest of Wake's childhood was spent waging a kind of guerilla war against her mother and, to a lesser extent, her siblings, which ended only when she ran away at 16."

With $300, she moved to New York and was soon working as a freelance journalist, which led her to Paris where she apparently led a wild life:
"She once described herself — as a young woman — as someone who loved nothing more than “a good drink” and handsome men, “especially French men.” She found work as a freelance journalist, and managed at the same time to live “Parisian nightlife to the full,” according to Mr. FitzSimons. By 22 this globetrotting Aussie/Kiwi was living in Paris, working as a freelance newspaper journalist during the day and  then rocking out at the hottest Parisian nightclubs after dark.  A tough-as-hell chick who could rarely be found without a double gin and tonic in her hand and designer cosmetics in her purse, Wake had a reputation for drinking hard, telling dirty jokes, and then getting a tall, dark, and handsome Frenchman pick up the tab for her. "

After being sent to Germany to interview Hitler, Wake developed a "deep, deep hatred" of Nazis and devoted her life to eliminating them. She married a rich industrialist, and together they helped rescue refugees, spy on Germans, and smuggle information across enemy lines. She used her charms to manipulate German soldiers:
"Against the suspicions of German guards manning the various checkpoints she had to get through, she regarded her beauty as her principal shield and played upon it to the maximum, openly flirting with many Germans. Using her charms and a native cunning, she was so successful with the Resistance that she soon graduated to taking groups of refugees - often downed Allied pilots or Jewish families - between safe houses until they reached the base of the Pyrenees, where other guides would get them across."

She was soon on Gestapos most wanted list, and after her husband was tortured and killed by Nazis trying to find her, she waged open war against the Nazis, leading a resistance movement of 7,000 men against them.

"In April 1944 she parachuted into France to coordinate attacks on German troops and installations prior to the D-Day invasion, leading a band of 7,000 resistance fighters.  Her chute got stuck in a tree on the way down, and when the local French resistance leader said some asinine thing like "I wish all trees grew such beautiful fruit," or something equally cheesy she gave him the finger and said (in perfect French no less), "Don't give me that French shit." In order to earn the esteem of the men under her command, she reportedly challenged them to drinking contests and would inevitably drink them under the table. But her fierceness alone may have won her enough respect: During the violent months preceding the liberation of Paris, Wake killed a German guard with a single karate chop to the neck, executed a women who had been spying for the Germans, shot her way out of roadblocks and biked 70 hours through perilous Nazi checkpoints to deliver radio codes for the Allies."

"With her coiffured hair and red lipstick, Wake was the epitome of glamour, but when she was dropped into occupied France she became a fighting force.
Even without a weapon, she could be deadly. During one raid she reportedly killed an SS guard with her bare hands to prevent him raising the alarm. "She is the most feminine woman I know until the fighting starts. Then she is like five men," one of her French colleagues recalled."

Despite the violent nature of her heroic deeds, she displayed no hint of remorse over killing.

"Afterwards she would declare: "In my opinion, the only good German was a dead German, and the deader, the better. I killed a lot of Germans, and I am only sorry I didn't kill more."

"Lady was ice-cold.
Known as "The White Mouse" by her German pursuers, Wake spent much of the war as an Allied operative in France, helping escaped POWs and others wanted by the Germans flee to Spain, running messages between the British military and French resistance — and, of course, choking the life out of various Nazis.

"I was not a very nice person," Wake said once, according to the Times. "And it didn't put me off my breakfast.""

"She returned several times to live in Australia, making unsuccessful attempts to get elected to parliament, but had an uneasy relationship with the country of her childhood, feeling unrecognised and underappreciated. This led her to refuse decorations from the Australian government; with characteristic bluntness, she said they could "stick their medals where the monkey stuck his nuts". In February 2004, she relented and was made a Companion of the Order of Australia.

Naturally, not giving a crap about awards and stuff like that, Wake sold off her medals and lived off the money for the rest of her life.  When asked why the hell she sold a trio of Croix de Guerres, she said, "There's no point in keeping them… I'll probably go to hell and they'd melt anyways."
Wake found post-war life uneventful. "It's all been so exciting … and then it all fizzled out. I had a very happy war," she said. FitzSimons told Australian radio: "She was a woman who was always a hair-trigger from being in a rage … and that rage within her was wonderful during the war, [but] it could be problematic when the war was over. She was a force of nature."

"Her volatility and bursts of rage, which had been so effective in the war, did not stop with the peace. A lot about Wake was ill-suited to regular civilian life and she was keenly aware of it. ''After the war ended, it was dreadful because you've been so busy and then it all just fizzles out,'' she told The Australian in 1983.

"In an interview a decade ago, at the age of 89, Wake appeared to have lost none of her fighting spirit. "Somebody once asked me: 'Have you ever been afraid?' Hah! I've never been afraid in my life," she said."

"“I was never afraid,” she said. “I was too busy to be afraid.”

By most accounts, Ms. Wake never figured out what to do with her life after the war.

She settled, the best that she could, for being a homemaker for her second husband, a garrulous former RAF pilot by the name of John Forward, whom she had met in the mid-1950s and who took up a position as a mid-ranking executive with an Australian textiles firm. Generally, the two were very happy together and John came to cope with being with a woman who was only ever a hair-trigger away from high hilarity or high-octane fury."

How to break up with a sociopath (part 2)

One of the more popular posts here (not a good sign for the enduring likability of sociopaths) is how to break up with a sociopath, in which I basically advocate to take the time-honored defensive tactic (in both the animal and human kingdoms) -- make yourself as unappealing of a target as possible. 

For whatever reason, this suggestion has been sometimes controversial. People wonder why it is up to them to act like a loser just to throw the sociopath off their scent. I don't know what to say to that, except that not everything in this world is fair and I'm just describing what I have found to work best. 

Here is a recent comment on that post with someone working the system with success:

I was finally able to shake my sociopathic boyfriend by becoming annoying, helpless and whiney about things that didn’t involve him in my life. (I am the most independent, self-sufficient person I know). At first, he was just angry, but nothing changed, he still wouldn't leave me alone, still tried to yank my chain all the time and hurt me. But after a while, me acting like I was a total hot mess got WAY too annoying for him. 

I made it seem that I was no longer playing the game with him, but I was far too preoccupied by other meaningless drama and problems in my life that had nothing to do with him. My health, my aging parents, my boring job……….he had no interest in those things.

Since he lacked the ability to care about when I was going through hard times, and also refused to help me (or anyone) in any way, no matter the situation, he got bored because I was no longer engaging with him, and I seemed like I was on the edge of reason because of other things.

He finally lost interest for good and moved on to other ‘marks’ that were easy prey. He’d check back in every once and a while to see if I was back to my old self whom he could get some sort of rise out of. And I kept up the “helpless, depressed, flighty, hot-mess” persona every single time.

I’m free now, but I know if he had ANY idea how I played him on that one, he’d probably kill me.

Here's another recent comment with someone else not doing what I advised:

After doing a ton of research, and actually finding THIS blog, I figured a lot of things out. And I ended things for good with him. I kept it as short and sweet as possible, but put back his own bad behavior on him, told him I no longer found this acceptable because of what it was doing to me, and told him I was done and I wanted him to leave me alone.

(After researching, that was the wrong thing to do, because a sociopath does not want to be called on their behavior or think anything is their fault, but MY self preservation took priority over his mind games! I was no longer concerned with if he was happy or if I was fulfilling his needs, I was trying to save myself.)

Now he's SUPER angry with me and obsessed with getting me (or rather, what i DID for him previously) back. Not that he wants to be nice or anything, but he's angry at me DESPITE how horribly he's treated me, that I no longer love him.

I think the reason he is angry and will not leave me alone is because I stopped the game. And he wasn't quite ready to stop. I think I took that "power" over the situation away from him by refusing to play. And that's what makes him SO angry and obsessive.

I don't get it. My mind doesn't work that way. He doesn't want ME. He doesn't love ME. He got off on the GAME. He got off on thinking he had power over me because I LOVED him.

Now that's gone and it wasn't on his terms. I had no idea where the game ended and had a feeling the final part of the game was to destroy me. To see me fall apart. I refuse to do that. When I get to that point with a person, I cut and run. I simply cannot allow myself to self-destruct for someone who has done so little for me and who has hurt me so terribly. And in his mind, that's unfair. I didn't let him finish the game. THAT'S why he can't let go.

Your man didn't get to finish his game on his terms.

Nobody has to do anything they don't want to do, of course. But realize that you make compromises to keep the peace in your life all of the time. You may feel strongly about abortion (either way), or politics, or religion, etc. etc. etc. But most of the time you don't go around confronting people on these issues trying to get them to validate your own position, when you should know that they aren't likely to do any such thing and any attempts you make to do so will just lead to a heated argument. Likewise, you wouldn't argue with a three year old about what is their optimal bedtime. The easiest way to avoid a confrontation with a sociopath is not to make a big production out of breaking up with them because you find them to be unsuitable, but to make them think like whatever is happening is their decision and they are in control. Public Service Announcement over!