A Series Of Questions

That seemed interesting to me...

Photo by Ana Municio on Unsplash

Sometimes on Quora, I will get questions in the comment section that seems to be better addressed through a post than in a comment section where they may never get seen. Quora has a bad habit of not informing people of comments or replies to comments, and this series interested me, so I decided to respond to them here.

The comment reads:

I have a few questions about your mask that I never got around to asking

1. Are you able to emulate every emotion convincingly? Can you act afraid? Can you pretend to be irrational and clouded by emotion? Can you pretend to be deeply jealous? I’m especially curious about acting afraid.

2. Which emotion do you find the most difficult to emulate?

3. Are there parts of your psychopathic traits you let past the mask? While I imagine you likely emulate being a normal person in almost all ways, I can’t imagine you pretending to have fears or pretending to be afraid in situations where you feel no fear whatsoever. When you watch a scary movie or go into a dark area or are out in a thunderstorm, do you pretend to ‘jump’ at things that a neurotypical would? Here’s a short list of psychopathic traits I’d be surprised you masked.
   
   Mental toughness: This, while being a staple psychopathic trait, is also just a good thing to have. I’d be surprised to hear that you pretend to be mentally weak when you have your mask on.

   
   Coolness under pressure: Similar to fearlessness, just sounds like an extremely annoying thing to have to pretend you lack. Does your mask hide this? I’d be surprised if you lived your life pretending that you aren’t cool under pressure.
   
   Charisma: This one I believe is the most ridiculous thing to mask. Charisma is extremely useful to have, so I can’t find a reason that you would mask having it.

   
   I’m not psychopathic, but I naturally am just not very scared of things. Bugs, the dark, etc. Even when I do get afraid, it’s oftentimes a weak enough feeling that I can ignore it relatively easily. While others around me have commented on having never seen me scared, it has never caused me any negative consequences from society. Due to this, I can’t imagine ever pretending to be scared. Do you do this?

Starting from the top:

Are you able to emulate every emotion convincingly? Can you act afraid? Can you pretend to be irrational and clouded by emotion? Can you pretend to be deeply jealous? I’m especially curious about acting afraid.

Everything that has to be imitated has to be learned. That means that all things have a learning curve, there is nothing that can be done about this. It also means that anything I have had to imitate that I have never encountered before is not going to be remotely perfect. It may not even be good, so I have to plan ahead for such things.

Television shows, movies, video games, and of course the sounding board that my Significant Other provides for me can be infinitely helpful in this regard. I watch situations that I have never personally encountered and see how they are expected to be responded to. For instance, in a television show where someone has been hospitalized and they are in serious condition, I see how all the characters respond to that situation. Some are going to be distraught, some are going to seek or demand answers, some are going to be withdrawn, some will experience regret about some previous interaction with the hospitalized person, as well as other possibilities such as falling into a caregiving role.

By watching this, and the responses of other characters to each individual’s actions, I can get an idea of what is acceptable, and what is not acceptable in those situations. Oftentimes the responses that are considered “unacceptable” would be my default response, so I know to hide that based on that feedback system. After learning all the different “right” and “wrong” behaviors, I find a good middle ground that works for me, and the circumstances that I am dealing with. Again, this is a learning curve, of course, and as with anything you are learning, studying is very helpful, and in my case, quite necessary.

Can I act afraid?

Yes, I can. I used the same methods to learn this response as I did with all the others, however, I have had in many times during my life been able to study fear first hand which helps me emulate it. I have also listened to recordings that are real that are from terrible events to hear the difference between real fear, and what you might see on television, which is quite different. There is a rather famous recording of an older woman (I think she was in her sixties at the time) whose home was broken into. She had called 911 earlier because she heard suspicious sounds around her house, and in this recording is calling them back because the sounds have returned.

The caller’s name is Ruth and she is explaining to the dispatcher what she is hearing. After a bit, she is quite convinced that there is someone very nearby, and then she begins to scream. The scream is very different than anything you will hear that is produced by an actor. It is a visceral scream of pure terror. It isn’t a call that I recommend the faint of heart track down, but it did earn itself a rather interesting reputation, if not a bit of urban legend status. No one knew what Ruth’s last name was, where the call originated from, what jurisdiction it was in, nor the outcome of the call.

Many people thought the call was fake because of these factors, but I don’t think that was the only reason. I think it is because the scream terrified those that heard it so much that they felt the need to believe it to be fake, because the alternative was too horrific to think about. However, let me assure you, the call was real.

How do I know this? I know this because this particular call was used in the training of 911 operators, and what not to do. The operator failed to get the address of where Ruth was calling from, nor her last name. The call wasn’t able to be traced apparently. I don’t recall if this was due to them not having the technology at the time to do so (this call took place in the eighties I believe), or if the operator failed to initiate a trace because they were too busy trying to calm Ruth down. She was understandably quite frightened, but wasn’t hysterical by any means. That is, until she screams.

The other reason that I happen to know the call is real, is because Ruth actually did survive that night, and the origins of the call were finally, very recently I might add, tracked down. I believe she was stabbed, but survived the injuries. She lived until her eighties or nineties, but I don’t believe the person was ever caught.

I write this long story to explain to you that there is a very real difference between fake screams of fear and real ones. I think many people can feel the difference, but I also think that sometimes they are so uncomfortable with that difference that they will make themselves believe that what they are hearing is exaggerated or fake altogether. Ruth’s call is a very good lesson in hearing true abject fear. It isn’t something most people will ever hear and certainly, it isn’t something most people can fake. If I needed to, I can fake that scream.

Screaming is a very powerful tool, especially for a female. If you want people to come to your aid in a bad situation, you need to make noise, and that noise needs to be uncomfortable enough that people cannot deny what they are hearing, and the person attempting to harm you understands how much higher the stakes are now in trying to take/harm you. It’s an investment in safety in my estimation, and one I don’t take lightly.

Can I pretend to be deeply jealous?

Sure, I can, but I won’t. I don’t care that much to do so. I expect my partner to always be on their best behavior, and that includes giving me no reason to have to engage in such things. I find that sort of game-playing exhausting, and I won’t indulge it. I don’t mind people finding my SO attractive. I know that they will, just as people will find me attractive. I know that he is trustworthy, he knows that I am trustworthy. What anyone else does, such as hitting on either one of us, has nothing to do with us. They will be politely turned down, and that’s the end of it. If a partner of mine thought it would be a good display of my investment in them to act in a way that should result in jealousy, they are out of luck, and out of a relationship. I do not have time for such insecure nonsense.

Which emotion do you find the most difficult to emulate?

Long-term care. What I mean by this is continually investing my energy into someone else’s needs. I can do it and will do it when it is required, but it isn’t something that I enjoy. I am not naturally interested in other people, their lives, their problems, their need for companionship. Without a mask, I simply won’t give them the time of day. I have ‘me’ stuff to do. The mask is required or me to focus outside myself and consider them.

An excellent example of this is birthdays. I don’t really have much of an interest in people’s birthdays. In people that have a need for other people’s focus to be on them, like someone with NPD, or HPD, their dislike of other people’s birthdays would be because the focus is on that other person, not on them.

In my case, I don’t want the attention to be on me, but I also don’t want to have to shift my focus all day long from what my focus is on normally (stuff for me) and onto them. I can do this pretty easily in increments. Moment to moment I can pause my self-focus and pay attention to another person, prioritize them, for a short period of time.

Birthdays, on the other hand, that’s an all-day affair. Every time that person is present, I have to refocus my attention to them. If I am typing something, I have to put it away and make them entirely my focus, as opposed to what I normally do, which is to speak to them while continuing my typing. That’s annoying to me.

Fractionally my time is easy to parse out, but when the entire day is not mine, and what I am doing has to always be placed on hold for the other person, that’s not my favorite thing to deal with. It requires the mask for me to be remotely successful at pulling it off.

Are there parts of your psychopathic traits you let past the mask? While I imagine you likely emulate being a normal person in almost all ways, I can’t imagine you pretending to have fears or pretending to be afraid in situations where you feel no fear whatsoever. When you watch a scary movie or go into a dark area or are out in a thunderstorm, do you pretend to ‘jump’ at things that a neurotypical would? Here’s a short list of psychopathic traits I’d be surprised you masked.

We’ll get to that list in a moment. Let’s get to that first question though. Are there parts of my psychopathic traits that I let past the mask?

It depends on the circumstances. Most of the time there is no reason to. I present what people expect to see and they are happy to see it. I don’t watch horror movies with people that don’t know I am psychopathic, and often people that want to watch horror movies with me want to because I am psychopathic. Not only does it assuage their fear, but they also enjoy my commentary. They all know that the lack of fear makes it easy for me to see plot holes and find the characters’ behaviors ridiculous. Watching horror movies with me are a bit like watching MST3K. If you don’t know what that is, trust me, search for that acronym on Youtube, and thank me later. Especially if you like stupid cheesy movies. It’s a good time. All right, onto the list:

Mental toughness: This, while being a staple psychopathic trait, is also just a good thing to have. I’d be surprised to hear that you pretend to be mentally weak when you have your mask on.

Mental weakness can be useful from time to time. Especially when something doesn’t interest me. Pretending that I don’t understand it is an exceptionally handy way to get someone to shut up about things I don’t want to hear about.

Coolness under pressure: Similar to fearlessness, just sounds like an extremely annoying thing to have to pretend you lack. Does your mask hide this? I’d be surprised if you lived your life pretending that you aren’t cool under pressure.

I will evaluate situations to see if there is anyone better qualified than me to be in control. If someone is drowning (not that this has happened, I am just using it as an example) and someone else used to be a lifeguard, I would rather they handle it. Hopefully, other people will help them out and I can have the pleasure of not being bothered with it. If I have to involve myself, I will, it is a necessary action, but if there is someone better qualified, have at it, man. I will be on my merry way, acting distraught about that terrible thing I just witnessed. Whatever works is what I am going to use.

Charisma: This one I believe is the most ridiculous thing to mask. Charisma is extremely useful to have, so I can’t find a reason that you would mask having it.

Really? You don’t? I can tell you that charisma can be a real freaking pain in the ass. No kidding, an absolutely annoying thing to be. Without trying I have people that will just start downloading their problems onto me. I mean complete and total strangers that have never spoken two words to me suddenly telling me all of their life worries, and not knowing why they’re doing it. If anyone should know, it would be them, but nope, not a clue. They will outright tell me that they have no idea why they are telling me this, or that they haven’t told anyone else this, but here are all their deepest darkest secrets.

Also, try being the one that everyone focuses on when you walk in. I don’t so much notice this, but other people do, and it annoys them. My friends get very annoyed because people have a habit of staring. A friend of mine will run defense in stores because it irritates her that people will simply stare, follow me, get hyper-focused on me, and all of this is without me doing anything. I have had several stalkers, several of which have never spoken to me before. Others because they had ONE conversation with me, and for whatever reason, can’t let it go. When you are someone that has charisma, people are drawn to you. Even when a psychopath tries their very best to blend in, we still stand out. You have no idea what that would be like if charisma wasn’t masked to a very large degree. Like swatting flies at a meat market.

I’m not psychopathic, but I naturally am just not very scared of things. Bugs, the dark, etc. Even when I do get afraid, it’s oftentimes a weak enough feeling that I can ignore it relatively easily. While others around me have commented on having never seen me scared, it has never caused me any negative consequences from society. Due to this, I can’t imagine ever pretending to be scared. Do you do this?

Fortunately, I have not had occasion to have to pretend to be afraid of bugs as the times that I have been around them, I tend to be at home, so the people around me know how I am. Weirdly, bugs love me, especially praying mantes. And when I say they love me, I mean they LOVE ME. When they are around they flock to me. I walk outside and four of them just land on me out of nowhere. When I am inside, whatever window I am nearest there are always at least two hanging onto the glass.

Moths will light on my fingers when they are in the house and need to be taken out. They fly away from everyone else, but I put my hand near them, and for a second they flitter about, then they land and allow me to walk them outside to safety away from the cats that want to eat them. Spiders will crawl onto me and allow me to find them a place outside. Why do they all like me Probably the lack of fear and no intention of smashing them. I haven’t had occasion to have to do any of this in front of strangers, however. Same with the dark. If I have to pretend to be afraid in the company of those that do not know, I will if it benefits me. I won’t if the opposite will benefit me. So long as the choice I make is consistent with the mask that they are used to.

Masks are interesting entities, and they require a lot of work to construct, and maintain. There are a lot of moving parts. Neglecting any of those parts can result in rather negative consequences, so they are best minded at all times.