Well funny to say but relationship wise I incidentially "rewired" myself to a similar set of feelings that you describe for psychopaths. I personally call it a rational outlook towards relationship. Got there ten years ago in a hefty shizophrenia phase.
Sort of perplexing and fascinating at the same time.
"You surprise them by showing up unannounced at their home, they seem to be very blank in expression when they open the door, but that changes when they see it is you."
Interesting stuff. So fun for you isn’t a feeling of emotional excitement. Like with fear, is this lacking the emotional experience so many non paths have but including certain physical responses such as maybe an increased heart beat rate, faster breathing etc?
I understand. BTW came across this reference to psychopathy. Again appears distorted. The crux of psychopathy are shallow emotions due to low levels of oxytocin? That's it? https://youtu.be/qSuzLAP3S24
I enjoy your logic based on reason and facts. But i can't yet accept that 90% of psychopaths are not sociopaths, but functional individual who no not threat society, but are named psychopaths, word which implies pathology. Why do not psiquiatrists, psychologist, use that word with the path suffix, sickness.
You explained that psychopathy is shallow emotions, not sociopathy.
I read and hear so many disparaging references to psychopaths or people that are labeled as such. It is misinformation...
After reading i have those random thoughts that might be mildly interesting to others:
1)
I am wondering what the relation between two mature psychopaths may look like (considering the uncertain statistics at 1%-2% of population it does not occur often but should happen from time to time).
On one hand it must be awesome: two individuals that understand each others boundaries, have no problems directly communicating wants and needs, each focusing on things important for their own and when considering common interests - working together with great synergy effect.
On the other hand: it seems the relation is very prone to ending. When one or both sides see that there are too many things that differ them they will agreeably split apart with no regret (situation like: we had some great time but now we want different things so only option now is to end the relationship and go our ways). This is absolutly great too but i am guessing that this makes those kind of relationships not last in tens of years but rather few months to few years tops.
2)
I find it VERY interesting to understand others perspective on the world. What i mean by this i will try to explain with example:
one day i have watched one silly show where at the end girl and guy end up on a date. And at that moment during discussion it came out that guy is colorblind and all the time he thought the girl was blonde while actually she had red hair. Whole show was just "meh" but this one realisation between the couple was insanely interesting to me even though it was very simple. And this one is actually easy to notice and explain since we have easy testing for colorblindness. I know that understanding how others perceive the world and actually experiencing it are two different things but i love to imagine it anyway.
What Athena is doing here is explaining her perspective on seeing/interacting with the world and it tingles the same curiosity in my mind. And topic here is much more complicated and harder to explain than colorblindness difference in perception from the simple mentioned example and that makes it much more interesting.
"Add to that the fact that we are more than happy to listen to you without butting in or making the conversation about us. Frankly, we have no interest in talking about ourselves, and rarely do for a variety of reasons. This trait is valuable to people that spend a great deal of their lives competing for a moment of notice."
Thought about emulating this, to an extent. But realized if I do so successfully, the other person will be drawn to me for exactly just that. As I'm not psychopathic I have needs and like talking about my problems too, but if I do that will remove what they were drawn to in the first place
Neurotypicsls *NEED* to be with their SO. Psychopaths *WANT* to be with their SO.
When NT's get serious they have to live together, plan their lives out, be in near constant contact, and other things that are exhausting.
Psychopaths don't need any of that. An SO that has her own income, car, house, and is completely independent sounds ideal to me. When she's with me it's because I'm interesting or fun or whatever. When she's not with me she's simply not with me at that time.
Really illuminating article and I look forward to the rest of this series. What got me thinking was the idea of memories not being coded with emotions or any deeper meaning. This is not foreign to neurotypical experience. Many of absolutely everybody's everyday trivial goings on are stored in memory, or not, without any emotion meaning. I went to the store, parked the car etc. Only so much brain space is available.
More significantly, though, are times when experiences that would usually be coded emotionally at least, or even with greater and deeper meaning, are somehow not memorized that way. Some types of depression that fall short of full-on anhedonia will cause this empty non-coding. Say you are glum and make the effort to go out, and you do have a genuine bit of a laugh with your friends, the movie was truly engaging, etc, but afterwards it's very suddenly like it never even happened, almost spookily so. This can occur too for people who maybe seek superficial pleasure in excess until it ceases to be pleasant and they wonder, what the hell am I even doing? There are those times when people seem to be engaging with and even enjoying life, and yet they might say things like how it 'means nothing', I'm a shadow of myself', 'I'm watching myself from outside' etc. We don't really know how exactly this system of ongoing encoding of emotional and deeper meaning works, or why or sometimes fails.
The thing is that while for you as a psycopath, pure event memory is normal and just fine, but for neurotypicals it is awful. We absolutely need that emotional and 'meaningful' level to our memories of we are not to feel we are robots. If it happens for short periods, OK, interesting, just deal. If it goes on and on, the sense of utter wrongness (for our neurotype) can make people suicidal.
“The psychopath wants to spend time with you when it seems fun and interesting, but the more you press them more distant that person may well become.
I have never wanted to be around clingy people, and the more they vie for my attention over whatever it is that I want to do, the less interested I am going to be in spending time with them.“
I think it’s likely this way with a lot of neurotypical’s too.
thank you so much for this insight, athena, your writing is always incredibly eye-opening. looking forward to the next installment 🍂
Well funny to say but relationship wise I incidentially "rewired" myself to a similar set of feelings that you describe for psychopaths. I personally call it a rational outlook towards relationship. Got there ten years ago in a hefty shizophrenia phase.
Sort of perplexing and fascinating at the same time.
Literally the story of my life. Currently I am unattached and people will ask if I am lonely. They don't want to believe that I'm not.
does this make everyone to LOL:?
"You surprise them by showing up unannounced at their home, they seem to be very blank in expression when they open the door, but that changes when they see it is you."
-smiles-
Interesting stuff. So fun for you isn’t a feeling of emotional excitement. Like with fear, is this lacking the emotional experience so many non paths have but including certain physical responses such as maybe an increased heart beat rate, faster breathing etc?
Such an interesting article, Athena. Is it very burdensome and/or tiring for you when you have to mask for someone? Does it feel like play-acting?
This kind of relationship (sans the NT contributing side) sounds…infinitely more relaxing.
I understand. BTW came across this reference to psychopathy. Again appears distorted. The crux of psychopathy are shallow emotions due to low levels of oxytocin? That's it? https://youtu.be/qSuzLAP3S24
Dear Athena
I enjoy your logic based on reason and facts. But i can't yet accept that 90% of psychopaths are not sociopaths, but functional individual who no not threat society, but are named psychopaths, word which implies pathology. Why do not psiquiatrists, psychologist, use that word with the path suffix, sickness.
You explained that psychopathy is shallow emotions, not sociopathy.
I read and hear so many disparaging references to psychopaths or people that are labeled as such. It is misinformation...
After reading i have those random thoughts that might be mildly interesting to others:
1)
I am wondering what the relation between two mature psychopaths may look like (considering the uncertain statistics at 1%-2% of population it does not occur often but should happen from time to time).
On one hand it must be awesome: two individuals that understand each others boundaries, have no problems directly communicating wants and needs, each focusing on things important for their own and when considering common interests - working together with great synergy effect.
On the other hand: it seems the relation is very prone to ending. When one or both sides see that there are too many things that differ them they will agreeably split apart with no regret (situation like: we had some great time but now we want different things so only option now is to end the relationship and go our ways). This is absolutly great too but i am guessing that this makes those kind of relationships not last in tens of years but rather few months to few years tops.
2)
I find it VERY interesting to understand others perspective on the world. What i mean by this i will try to explain with example:
one day i have watched one silly show where at the end girl and guy end up on a date. And at that moment during discussion it came out that guy is colorblind and all the time he thought the girl was blonde while actually she had red hair. Whole show was just "meh" but this one realisation between the couple was insanely interesting to me even though it was very simple. And this one is actually easy to notice and explain since we have easy testing for colorblindness. I know that understanding how others perceive the world and actually experiencing it are two different things but i love to imagine it anyway.
What Athena is doing here is explaining her perspective on seeing/interacting with the world and it tingles the same curiosity in my mind. And topic here is much more complicated and harder to explain than colorblindness difference in perception from the simple mentioned example and that makes it much more interesting.
I guess what i want to say here is: thanks!
"Add to that the fact that we are more than happy to listen to you without butting in or making the conversation about us. Frankly, we have no interest in talking about ourselves, and rarely do for a variety of reasons. This trait is valuable to people that spend a great deal of their lives competing for a moment of notice."
Thought about emulating this, to an extent. But realized if I do so successfully, the other person will be drawn to me for exactly just that. As I'm not psychopathic I have needs and like talking about my problems too, but if I do that will remove what they were drawn to in the first place
Neurotypicsls *NEED* to be with their SO. Psychopaths *WANT* to be with their SO.
When NT's get serious they have to live together, plan their lives out, be in near constant contact, and other things that are exhausting.
Psychopaths don't need any of that. An SO that has her own income, car, house, and is completely independent sounds ideal to me. When she's with me it's because I'm interesting or fun or whatever. When she's not with me she's simply not with me at that time.
Really illuminating article and I look forward to the rest of this series. What got me thinking was the idea of memories not being coded with emotions or any deeper meaning. This is not foreign to neurotypical experience. Many of absolutely everybody's everyday trivial goings on are stored in memory, or not, without any emotion meaning. I went to the store, parked the car etc. Only so much brain space is available.
More significantly, though, are times when experiences that would usually be coded emotionally at least, or even with greater and deeper meaning, are somehow not memorized that way. Some types of depression that fall short of full-on anhedonia will cause this empty non-coding. Say you are glum and make the effort to go out, and you do have a genuine bit of a laugh with your friends, the movie was truly engaging, etc, but afterwards it's very suddenly like it never even happened, almost spookily so. This can occur too for people who maybe seek superficial pleasure in excess until it ceases to be pleasant and they wonder, what the hell am I even doing? There are those times when people seem to be engaging with and even enjoying life, and yet they might say things like how it 'means nothing', I'm a shadow of myself', 'I'm watching myself from outside' etc. We don't really know how exactly this system of ongoing encoding of emotional and deeper meaning works, or why or sometimes fails.
The thing is that while for you as a psycopath, pure event memory is normal and just fine, but for neurotypicals it is awful. We absolutely need that emotional and 'meaningful' level to our memories of we are not to feel we are robots. If it happens for short periods, OK, interesting, just deal. If it goes on and on, the sense of utter wrongness (for our neurotype) can make people suicidal.
“The psychopath wants to spend time with you when it seems fun and interesting, but the more you press them more distant that person may well become.
I have never wanted to be around clingy people, and the more they vie for my attention over whatever it is that I want to do, the less interested I am going to be in spending time with them.“
I think it’s likely this way with a lot of neurotypical’s too.