Apologies

Psychopathic versus Neurotypical...

Photo by Steve DiMatteo on Unsplash

Quick update, for those of you that have asked me repeatedly throughout the years since I wrote about this:

Emotional Experiences of Physical Pain

I got my pasta salad. I know, I was shocked too. Now we just need to get your questions answered. It will happen though, rest assured.

Anyway, that is not the topic of this post. Instead, this one is about apologies, and what matters based on your brain configuration. I am sure that the points I will make about neurotypicals won’t apply universally, but I am positive that when it comes to psychopaths, there won’t be any deviation. It is due to what we value based on how we work.

When I have done something to upset someone that is neurotypical, I have come to understand that actions are not enough to smooth things over. There is also a requirement to address the emotional process as well, if not it being the entire focus. Neurotypcials are dually invested in the practical and emotional aspect of the apology. Let’s go for an example.

Janice and Courtney are supposed to hang out this weekend, and go to a movie together, but on Wednesday, Janice was asked to go to this new club with a work friend. Her work friend and Courtney do not know each other, and Janice doesn’t think that they will get along very well. She decides to tell Courtney that she isn’t feeling well and that they could go out the following weekend. She figures it will be fine. Courtney never likes going out by herself, and the club scene really isn’t for her. There is practically no chance that they will accidentally meet.

Janice and her work friend, Kate, go to the club, have a blast, get very drunk, and take a bunch of selfies together. Janice doesn’t post any of them herself, but Kate does, and tags her in them. Unbeknownst to Janice, Kate’s sister, Rachael, is in a relationship with Courtney’s brother, who is visiting from college.

Through Rachael, Courtney sees the pictures, and knows that Janice lied to her in order to hang out with someone else. It stands to reason that Courtney is hurt, and Janice has to apologize, but simply taking her out the following weekend to make it up to her isn’t going to work. That isn’t going to address how hurt she feels about being rejected and left out. Unless Janice does something to prove to Courtney that she is really sorry, and not simply sorry that she got caught, she will have to find a way to convince Courtney to still be friends with her.

I made it a point to not convey whether Janice is sorry about this or not. It really doesn’t matter to me because the actions have already been undertaken, and there is pretty much no way for Janice to make a convincing argument that this is something that she is genuinely apologetic about. For Courtney, this is about a friend’s betrayal and their disregard for her feelings. Those are the aspects that will have to be addressed. Hurt feelings can be very difficult to mend. Janice has some tall apologizing to do.

There is a saying that the other psychopath that I know has for when someone wrongs him. Neurotypicals apologize to psychopaths in the same way that an apology means something to them. In other words, with their feelings. My friend often replies to this by saying:

“Your emotions are not an apology to me.”

How you feel about what you did to a psychopath has nothing to do with anything to us. We don’t care. You might feel bad, but that’s a ‘you’ problem. Let’s look at the Janice/Courtney situation again. If Courtney were a psychopath, she wouldn’t care about the going out with someone else when they had plans, the photographs, or anything of the sort. A psychopath would care about their time being wasted, and the fact that you demonstrated that you are a dishonest person.

If I were in Courtney’s place, and I had plans with someone, but they have something else that they want to do, just tell me. I don’t care. My response would be, “All right, have fun,” and I would go off and do what I wanted to do in the first place. I am never devoid of human companionship, meaning that I am perfectly happy alone, and I don’t get lonely or jealous. Being bothered by a friend having other friends is completely foreign to me. It makes no sense. However, if someone tells me that they are going to do something, and then they lie and do something else, or they don’t do it, and they don’t give me a heads-up, that is where a problem is going to arise.

If I tell someone that I am going to do something, I do it. If I don’t for some reason, like I forgot, or something comes up, and I am unable to, I tell them that I am sorry about that. There is no sense of guilt or shame attached to that apology. Instead, it is an acknowledgement that I failed in my responsibilities. I also do not say, “I’m sorry… but…”

That is not an apology.

When the shoe is on the other foot, someone fails to do something that they said that they would do, and they come to me with their emotions, that means nothing to me. They feel bad. Good for them. That isn’t my problem. It’s theirs. The way to apologize to a psychopath is through action. Words past, I’m sorry, are wasted. The next part that means something is their actions. Let’s say that a friend of mine and I go to breakfast every week on Wednesday, and then one week they don’t show up, I am going to be mildly annoyed, but I can understand that people have things that come up. Then, later in the day, I get a message with their explanation and also how they feel about it, but then the following week they are a no show again, their actions tell me what I need to know about how sorry they are.

I don’t feel hurt or upset that they didn’t show up, I don’t like it when people don’t do what they say they are going to do, and instead of changing it, they continue doing it.

Now, another friend of mine tells me that this can be the product of shame. The person feels bad about not showing up and don’t want to face that guilt. Again, that is not my problem. An apology to a psychopath is not repeating the behavior that caused a problem in the first place. If they do, it tells me that their emotions trump their willingness to respect my investment in their word.

Perhaps it is a product of shame, but if your emotions are more powerful than keeping your word, you can’t be trusted. This is another place where psychopaths and neurotypicals separate, and it is a dramatic separation, and that is in regard to trust. For neurotypicals, trust is an emotion. It is created by oxytocin and is not an opt-in sort of thing. This was a revelation to me when I realized it. I have watched people trust others that they clearly should not in my estimation, but they will defend that choice to the death. It also means that when you fight amongst yourselves, with your friends and family, there is this underlying emotion that ties you together.

You have your past relationship and the feeling built within it to maintain that relationship, even when you are angry at one another. That bond and that trust that exists between you helps tether you together and also assists in repairing the rift between you, regardless of whether or not it should be repaired. The emotions of trust and bonding can often keep people in relationships that they should have left long ago.

This is not the case with psychopaths. We lack the ability to process the very thing that creates those emotions, which means that those things do not do anything to help maintain a relationship with us. For psychopaths, it’s actions. Always.

This can be one of those things that can make relationships between us and neurotypicals difficult at the very least. It is two different languages, and while I can observe the process of neurotypicals, I can’t fathom the experience. It’s not possible. As much as something of this sort can be explained to me, it isn’t something that I will ever have a working understanding of.

The same is true of neurotypicals, but I think that there is a total disconnect there that doesn’t exist for a psychopath. We figure out pretty early on that there is a massive difference in how we work, so we spend our lives creating and building that cognitive empathy. We have to figure you guys out if we have any interest in having a good life. That also means that when we are playing the role of blending in, we have to pretend that how you feel about what you did wrong matters to us.

It doesn’t.

What matters is what you plan to do about it. That’s it. Your actions are everything, your works are only there for you. If you say you are going to do something, and don’t, no amount of pretty words of self-flagellation are going to make a dinkus damn to a psychopath.

Now, you might think, well, if apologies don’t mean anything to you when you receive them, they probably mean nothing to you when you give them. Emotionally, you are correct. They don’t. They are a social contract that I abide by because they are important to those around me. I know that they are required, and I have cognitive remorse.

If I see that I hurt someone in my inner circle I can’t feel badly for it, but I can look at the actions and say, I know this caused you harm, and I see why. I do not wish to do that, and doing so was wrong on my part, and then apologize. It’s not because I feel bad, it is because I weighed my actions, deemed them to be unacceptable, and attempt to remedy the situation while also putting into place controls to be sure that I do not repeat the action. There is no emotion attached to this, only rational thinking.

I think that between neurotypicals, there is a lot of reliance on those feelings of guilt and shame to regulate future behavior. This is a poor control for this purpose. Feelings fade, and justification is a very powerful thing. It takes next to nothing for many people to make an excuse of why something is okay even it it breaks their word, or it causes them to cross a line. Often, not getting caught is a motivating factor. It’s okay, if you aren’t caught. Like Janice and the club. She didn’t think Courtney would ever find out, but she did. She found out, and she was hurt.

It would have been a simple matter to call Courtney and ask to reschedule, but Janice didn’t want to feel bad on the front end, but disappointing Courtney, and figures there won’t be a back end, because Courtney will never find out. When that backfires, Janice ends up in a situation that she is going to have a hard time overcoming. She got caught, and now Courtney has no reason to trust her.

Apologies come with many things attached to them, and between neurotypicals I have found that many times a disagreement often will bring in many disagreements from the past. It can’t be:

Janice, “Courtney, I am really sorry that I didn’t tell you that I wanted to go out with Kate that night. I should have, and that was really sh*tty of me.”

Courtney: “Next time just tell me. I would have been fine with it. Instead you lied to me, and that upsets me.”

Nope, it ends up being:

Janice: I’m sorry that I went out with Kate, but remember that one time that you were supposed to come over, but instead you ended up having a piano lesson, and I had to go home from school by myself?”

Like… what? What does that have to do with anything? It’s deflection, but now that Janice has decided that is the course she’s going to take, it gives leave for Courtney to also bring up every past grievance that she might have with her. Not a useful strategy. The only time that I bring up past behavior, is when it is in direct relation to the current situation. Such as someone has already done whatever it is I am annoyed with them about, and they have made the agreement that the behavior wouldn’t be repeated, and yet, here we are. That’s the only time.

In some regard, psychopaths are easier to deal with when it comes to when you as a friend mess up. There isn’t going to be any emotional upset, just an expectation that you will do better. However, you don’t have the past emotional aspects to rely on to stand for you when you are in the wrong, and too many wrongs means there will be no investment of trust in you.