I'm so guilty of this, but I'm learning, my son keeps reminding me not to give people the benefit of the doubt. He also says I give people to much credit, for having intelligence. I'm working on that too. I think most people don't have bad intentions but things have changed since I was young, people have changed so I'm sure he's right.
I know I need to start at least doing it less myself. Yet, I don't want to be over paranoid either. A tough balance to achieve imho. I don't want to assume bad intentions in those that don't have it but don't want to be the naive sucker who gets taken advantage of either.
Understandable. You just have to give the person long enough to tell you who they are, and the best predictor of future behavior, is past relevant behavior. If they act one way in the past, it is unlikely that they will change when dealing with you.
Thank you for this post, Athena. Have you considered writing about a psychopath's perspective on relationships (both romantic and non-romantic)? I.e. how psychopaths view relationships, do they really view others as nothing more than tools, how psychopaths deal with ending a relationship (unlike NTs who often have trouble cutting off people, fall back into relationship etc)?
DITTO ON SS Big Red's comment. I was married to someone with schizophrenia for many years (15). A couple years after his death by suicide, I met a man I am certain now (as certain as one might be) had a psychopathic brain. We were a couple for 24 years and knew each other for 34 years. He recently died. I did follow your advice about not being an easy target, especially in the beginning. As the years (lots of years) went by, I let down my guard. Neither of us were familiar with term psychopathy, but he also agreed he could be as he had known since he was very young that he was "different" from most. After reading James Fallon's story and book(2018) , we both agreed that he was born with a psychopathic brain (we were not together as a couple at that point in our journey). Until that discovery, emotionally I had been a mess after he left me without a word -- complicated grief would describe my experience.
Thank you for your guidance and the knowledge you have provided in your writings.
I feel confident when I communicate with others on topics you have shared.
p.s. does SSBig Red have a site? I would like to read more about his findings or be able to gain insight from his knowledge as well?
I have NEVER understood "benefit of the doubt." Even as a kid, I didn't give my trust to people that didn't do anything to earn it. And that resulted in fewer but better quality of friends and associates. I never got why people would make themselves so vulnerable to predatory individuals just to gain popularity. To me, trust is a reward, NOT a given.
I think, to help people, the way you wrote about human interaction as winning/losing a bet, is excellent. If people can truly think of relationships as a wager, because they are, and in terms of investing (how much, when, what are the risk/reward benefits) then many hearts and lives will be protected as a result. My daughter is being taken advantage of by a person not worth her time. I tried to explain that her risk of loss was far greater than her gain (the good old eggs in the basket analogy) but she’s so very young, and being a teen does mean thinking through hormones.
I may be wrong to assume you haven’t any children (I don’t remember reading any posts about it), but regardless, I would be interested to read a series about your opinion/advice on that subject.
I find your unique perspective usually very helpful, insightful, and at the very least, always fascinating. I studied for a long tome to become a psychiatrist (focus was schizophrenia, because it is such an insidious, misunderstood and quite common disease that continues to be bathed in misinformation and stigma) so I have some experience with and knowledge of various “pathologies” and I do think the psychopathic brain very much misunderstood by society. Those with schizophrenia do not have “multiple personalities”. Those with a psychopathic brain are not all mass murderers, but in fact they gravitate and excel in high-pressure positions, like cardiac surgery.
I wonder, to use yet another analogy, what you think of the idea of a spectrum when it comes to psychopathology? The autistic spectrum runs the gamut from the possibly very mild hint of Aspergers’ Syndrome, to the extremely disabled Autistic. Yes, you either have it or you do not, but do you think psychopathology has its own similar spectrum? Or, perhaps intelligence and early socialization plays more of a role in the psychopath’s ability to, for lack of a better word, self-regulate, or mimic the “neuro typical brain’s” responses? What are the factors, do you think, both speaking from experience and from your unique view, that differentiate the “successful” psychopath from the one in the penal system, for example?
Oh, a quick aside, I really hate the term “neuro typical”. Every brain is different, we only barely understand a fraction of it, and socialization, intelligence, education, sociology-economic status all play such a mitigating role in how a person functions and interacts with their world. Labels are necessary when studying people in large groups, but it can still be a simplistic way to view people.
My edit for you today is to point out that to “woo” someone can involve “woe”, for sure - this typo (or autocorrect) is an apt one. (Please know when I point them out it isn’t from a place of superiority, but helpfulness. I find myself publishing things with glaring errors I don’t catch, all the time.
Psychopathy is definitely on a spectrum, and in fact it's on two. The fist spectrum is not at all psychopathic to the diagnostic cutoff point of psychopathy. The other is past the diagnostic cutoff point to what is known as the 'A-Lister' or "Above the Snowline" psychopaths that tend to have all of their traits turned all the way up in a toxic presentation. Often these are also lifers in prisons.
Interestingly I heard something quite recently about schizophrenia that I intend to research further. The claim was that patients with schizophrenia who were given high doses of niacin (I believe six grams was the amount), about half had a resolution of their symptoms. Very intriguing, and I have to dig into it more.
With teenagers you are running headlong into a serious problem when it comes to communication, and that of course is the arrogance of rightness. For some reason, brain development certainly ends a heavy hand in this, teenagers are under the mistaken belief that they know everything. Of course they don't, and adults can see the pitfalls that they are heading towards as clearly as day, but they don't have life experience, lack the ability to predict the consequences of their behavior, are very emotionally driven, have a whole load of hormones that they didn't have a couple of years ago, and of most important, they believe that they are right about everything.
They are under the impression that the world is so different from when their parents were their age that their parents cannot possibly understand what they are dealing with, and therefore can be disregarded as an authoritative source on anything. Add to this mix their need to rebel. She isn't going to hear you. In fact she is likely going to actively resist hearing you, and she should in terms of learning about life's chasms.
If she took your word on this guy, then she wouldn't experience the pain that lesson is meant to bring her. She has to learn what that is so she knows why she wants to avoid it in the future. It sucks, you're her parent, you want to protect her, and you see this person as a really bad aspect of her life, but the more you tell her that, the more defensive of him she will become. She will dig in her heels, and the lesson will take longer to come to fruition. Of course if she is in actual danger, you as her parent must step in however necessary to remove that danger, but if it's a hard life lesson, she has to learn it, and many others.
What you do is be there afterwards to give her the next steps. You provide her with the warning to begin with, this lets her know that you are putting her on notice that something is off, and when it occurs as you predict that it will, you let her grieve and feel the pain, while letting her know what she missed, and what to look for in the future to not suffer that way again. Without the motivation to avoid it, she will have no inclination to change. Afterall, she understands the world better than you in her mind.
Thank you for the edit. I will make that correction right now.
The idea of "spectrums" can be oversimplified for some neurotypes, I feel (SS Big Red, I'm autistic, female, diagnosed at age 52.) What is being measured for this spectrum? Is it the actual internal difference in processing, which is really hard and perhaps even impossible sometimes to measure/know, or is it some measure of divergence from someone's idea of "normal" behavior? That also has a ton of issues -- I don't want to spam Athena's site with pages of speculation though. :-)
A lot of us adult autistics have learned to "camouflage" and "pass" as non-autistic, successfully enough that no clinician ever diagnosed us.
I cannot answer for psychopaths or even most autistics; I've only talked with a few autistics similar to myself (older autistic women now have online chats) -- and that in the last few years -- but our success at "camouflaging" is what seems to make people call our autism "mild". It has nothing to do with our internal experience, necessarily. All our sensory issues, internal needs -- that's really not part of that societal assessment on "severity" of autism. Just whether we can hide it.
To "camouflage", I had to have opportunity to study non-autistic behavior intensively over a long period of time using the abilities I do have (which do not include the built-in socializing allistic abilities) *and* I had to have motivation to do so, reasonably consistently over time too.
I have been very interested in reading on "passing", "masking", "camouflaging" as done by different neurotypes... the success individuals have in being accepted by the dominant culture -- mostly folks who we call "neurotypical" -- sorry Red! --- seems to me to be a huge part of this.
(Athena, I think that's how I first keyed into your very insightful and interesting writings on Quora.)
I used the autism continuum as an example only. I’m not an expert. Frankly, truly - we can only really be experts about ourselves and even then, some are good at lying to themselves.
Yes, a certain level of intelligence allows us all to overcome our “deficits”, which you point out, well, I may add, are often the issues which pose problems with successfully navigating the largest cohort of people, in this case yes, the dreaded NT. Of course I think I mentioned we can all wax philosophic on what really is functional, normal, typical, but you stated it correctly - as a numbers game.
No worries about the NT comment - it suits for discussing society at large but individually I still don’t know what it is. I don’t consider myself neuro typical, although I have not been diagnosed as psychopathic or autistic. We can go on about what the threshold for diagnosis should be, too - and we’d only successfully spam Athena’s feed even more, although I suspect that she appreciates our thoughtful discourse and is pleased she has readers who are stimulated by her content, and care enough to discuss it (I assume)?
Very pleased to be thinking the big thoughts with such fascinating individuals. :)
Thank you so much for this post. It was very informative and eye opening for me. In response to this post, I have a request. I wonder though if you could please do a post about Social Manipulation.
I was victim of that for all of my schooling. It was a very traumatic experience. Looking back, I do not know which of my friends were pretending to be my friend. And I do not know which of my friends were waiting for an opportunity to present itself so they would have an excuse to undermine me behind my back.
The reason I ask is I am terrified of having that happen to me again in the workplace especially since, like with school, I have to return to the same environment every day, toxic or not. I may be able to avoid the bully, but if my peers believe the rumors from that bully, reporting that bully to HR will not solve the problem of others ostracism of me. This causes me great concern since networking is an extremely important part of your career. I don’t want a bully’s negative influence over my co-workers to jeopardize career opportunities that I could have in the future.
From your observations and perspective, could you please share any insight you have on social manipulation? And if possible could you also answer, to the best of your ability, the following questions:
1. What makes you an easy target for people to bully? What signals do you give off that perceive you as an easy target? A Quora post stated that if, “You are soft and sweet, kind and thoughtful, the teachers praise you, you keep to yourself, you don't want to cause trouble, you try to do the right thing always, you are a people pleaser, you don't have a bad bone in your body,” then people see you as easy prey. Is this true? And if so, what can you do?
2. What are the situations and signs of someone ‘testing’ you to see if you will allow horrible behavior to take place?
3. In response to those tests/ situations, how do you set boundaries with bullies that are firm but not rude? And what do you do if the bully’s response to your boundaries is indifference?
4. How do you deal with passive aggressive behavior from bullies or people you have to deal with in general?
5. How do you deal with other people who believe the bully’s lies?
6. Lastly, you say “people need to earn your trust, over a long period of time, and by demonstrating who they are both towards you, and everyone that they know.” What is your idea of a long period of time that would help you understand a person’s character? What are the warning signs? What are the small moments that indicate that you should not be around this person or trust this person?
Thank you so much for considering my request and for reading this lengthy post.
I'm so guilty of this, but I'm learning, my son keeps reminding me not to give people the benefit of the doubt. He also says I give people to much credit, for having intelligence. I'm working on that too. I think most people don't have bad intentions but things have changed since I was young, people have changed so I'm sure he's right.
It's sad really.
What was it George Carlin said?
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Now remember, half of them are stupider than that."
It certainly lends perspective.
True, unfortunately
Some of them can lack reasoning ability, but be very good at forming what I like to think of as mobs... Mobs can Trump intelligence.. (cough)
I know I need to start at least doing it less myself. Yet, I don't want to be over paranoid either. A tough balance to achieve imho. I don't want to assume bad intentions in those that don't have it but don't want to be the naive sucker who gets taken advantage of either.
Understandable. You just have to give the person long enough to tell you who they are, and the best predictor of future behavior, is past relevant behavior. If they act one way in the past, it is unlikely that they will change when dealing with you.
Very sensible advice. Bearing it in mind.
Thank you for this post, Athena. Have you considered writing about a psychopath's perspective on relationships (both romantic and non-romantic)? I.e. how psychopaths view relationships, do they really view others as nothing more than tools, how psychopaths deal with ending a relationship (unlike NTs who often have trouble cutting off people, fall back into relationship etc)?
I have written about this a great deal on Quora, and I will likely port some of those responses over here.
DITTO ON SS Big Red's comment. I was married to someone with schizophrenia for many years (15). A couple years after his death by suicide, I met a man I am certain now (as certain as one might be) had a psychopathic brain. We were a couple for 24 years and knew each other for 34 years. He recently died. I did follow your advice about not being an easy target, especially in the beginning. As the years (lots of years) went by, I let down my guard. Neither of us were familiar with term psychopathy, but he also agreed he could be as he had known since he was very young that he was "different" from most. After reading James Fallon's story and book(2018) , we both agreed that he was born with a psychopathic brain (we were not together as a couple at that point in our journey). Until that discovery, emotionally I had been a mess after he left me without a word -- complicated grief would describe my experience.
Thank you for your guidance and the knowledge you have provided in your writings.
I feel confident when I communicate with others on topics you have shared.
p.s. does SSBig Red have a site? I would like to read more about his findings or be able to gain insight from his knowledge as well?
I'm not certain. The comment was very interesting. Perhaps your comment will inspire the creation of a new Substack.
I have NEVER understood "benefit of the doubt." Even as a kid, I didn't give my trust to people that didn't do anything to earn it. And that resulted in fewer but better quality of friends and associates. I never got why people would make themselves so vulnerable to predatory individuals just to gain popularity. To me, trust is a reward, NOT a given.
Hey Kyle, good to see you over here.
I agree, the benefit of the doubt is simply trouble that hasn't happened yet.
This should be taught in middle school.
I think, to help people, the way you wrote about human interaction as winning/losing a bet, is excellent. If people can truly think of relationships as a wager, because they are, and in terms of investing (how much, when, what are the risk/reward benefits) then many hearts and lives will be protected as a result. My daughter is being taken advantage of by a person not worth her time. I tried to explain that her risk of loss was far greater than her gain (the good old eggs in the basket analogy) but she’s so very young, and being a teen does mean thinking through hormones.
I may be wrong to assume you haven’t any children (I don’t remember reading any posts about it), but regardless, I would be interested to read a series about your opinion/advice on that subject.
I find your unique perspective usually very helpful, insightful, and at the very least, always fascinating. I studied for a long tome to become a psychiatrist (focus was schizophrenia, because it is such an insidious, misunderstood and quite common disease that continues to be bathed in misinformation and stigma) so I have some experience with and knowledge of various “pathologies” and I do think the psychopathic brain very much misunderstood by society. Those with schizophrenia do not have “multiple personalities”. Those with a psychopathic brain are not all mass murderers, but in fact they gravitate and excel in high-pressure positions, like cardiac surgery.
I wonder, to use yet another analogy, what you think of the idea of a spectrum when it comes to psychopathology? The autistic spectrum runs the gamut from the possibly very mild hint of Aspergers’ Syndrome, to the extremely disabled Autistic. Yes, you either have it or you do not, but do you think psychopathology has its own similar spectrum? Or, perhaps intelligence and early socialization plays more of a role in the psychopath’s ability to, for lack of a better word, self-regulate, or mimic the “neuro typical brain’s” responses? What are the factors, do you think, both speaking from experience and from your unique view, that differentiate the “successful” psychopath from the one in the penal system, for example?
Oh, a quick aside, I really hate the term “neuro typical”. Every brain is different, we only barely understand a fraction of it, and socialization, intelligence, education, sociology-economic status all play such a mitigating role in how a person functions and interacts with their world. Labels are necessary when studying people in large groups, but it can still be a simplistic way to view people.
My edit for you today is to point out that to “woo” someone can involve “woe”, for sure - this typo (or autocorrect) is an apt one. (Please know when I point them out it isn’t from a place of superiority, but helpfulness. I find myself publishing things with glaring errors I don’t catch, all the time.
Thanks again for the smart viewpoint.
Psychopathy is definitely on a spectrum, and in fact it's on two. The fist spectrum is not at all psychopathic to the diagnostic cutoff point of psychopathy. The other is past the diagnostic cutoff point to what is known as the 'A-Lister' or "Above the Snowline" psychopaths that tend to have all of their traits turned all the way up in a toxic presentation. Often these are also lifers in prisons.
Interestingly I heard something quite recently about schizophrenia that I intend to research further. The claim was that patients with schizophrenia who were given high doses of niacin (I believe six grams was the amount), about half had a resolution of their symptoms. Very intriguing, and I have to dig into it more.
With teenagers you are running headlong into a serious problem when it comes to communication, and that of course is the arrogance of rightness. For some reason, brain development certainly ends a heavy hand in this, teenagers are under the mistaken belief that they know everything. Of course they don't, and adults can see the pitfalls that they are heading towards as clearly as day, but they don't have life experience, lack the ability to predict the consequences of their behavior, are very emotionally driven, have a whole load of hormones that they didn't have a couple of years ago, and of most important, they believe that they are right about everything.
They are under the impression that the world is so different from when their parents were their age that their parents cannot possibly understand what they are dealing with, and therefore can be disregarded as an authoritative source on anything. Add to this mix their need to rebel. She isn't going to hear you. In fact she is likely going to actively resist hearing you, and she should in terms of learning about life's chasms.
If she took your word on this guy, then she wouldn't experience the pain that lesson is meant to bring her. She has to learn what that is so she knows why she wants to avoid it in the future. It sucks, you're her parent, you want to protect her, and you see this person as a really bad aspect of her life, but the more you tell her that, the more defensive of him she will become. She will dig in her heels, and the lesson will take longer to come to fruition. Of course if she is in actual danger, you as her parent must step in however necessary to remove that danger, but if it's a hard life lesson, she has to learn it, and many others.
What you do is be there afterwards to give her the next steps. You provide her with the warning to begin with, this lets her know that you are putting her on notice that something is off, and when it occurs as you predict that it will, you let her grieve and feel the pain, while letting her know what she missed, and what to look for in the future to not suffer that way again. Without the motivation to avoid it, she will have no inclination to change. Afterall, she understands the world better than you in her mind.
Thank you for the edit. I will make that correction right now.
The idea of "spectrums" can be oversimplified for some neurotypes, I feel (SS Big Red, I'm autistic, female, diagnosed at age 52.) What is being measured for this spectrum? Is it the actual internal difference in processing, which is really hard and perhaps even impossible sometimes to measure/know, or is it some measure of divergence from someone's idea of "normal" behavior? That also has a ton of issues -- I don't want to spam Athena's site with pages of speculation though. :-)
A lot of us adult autistics have learned to "camouflage" and "pass" as non-autistic, successfully enough that no clinician ever diagnosed us.
I cannot answer for psychopaths or even most autistics; I've only talked with a few autistics similar to myself (older autistic women now have online chats) -- and that in the last few years -- but our success at "camouflaging" is what seems to make people call our autism "mild". It has nothing to do with our internal experience, necessarily. All our sensory issues, internal needs -- that's really not part of that societal assessment on "severity" of autism. Just whether we can hide it.
To "camouflage", I had to have opportunity to study non-autistic behavior intensively over a long period of time using the abilities I do have (which do not include the built-in socializing allistic abilities) *and* I had to have motivation to do so, reasonably consistently over time too.
I have been very interested in reading on "passing", "masking", "camouflaging" as done by different neurotypes... the success individuals have in being accepted by the dominant culture -- mostly folks who we call "neurotypical" -- sorry Red! --- seems to me to be a huge part of this.
(Athena, I think that's how I first keyed into your very insightful and interesting writings on Quora.)
I used the autism continuum as an example only. I’m not an expert. Frankly, truly - we can only really be experts about ourselves and even then, some are good at lying to themselves.
Yes, a certain level of intelligence allows us all to overcome our “deficits”, which you point out, well, I may add, are often the issues which pose problems with successfully navigating the largest cohort of people, in this case yes, the dreaded NT. Of course I think I mentioned we can all wax philosophic on what really is functional, normal, typical, but you stated it correctly - as a numbers game.
No worries about the NT comment - it suits for discussing society at large but individually I still don’t know what it is. I don’t consider myself neuro typical, although I have not been diagnosed as psychopathic or autistic. We can go on about what the threshold for diagnosis should be, too - and we’d only successfully spam Athena’s feed even more, although I suspect that she appreciates our thoughtful discourse and is pleased she has readers who are stimulated by her content, and care enough to discuss it (I assume)?
Very pleased to be thinking the big thoughts with such fascinating individuals. :)
Thank you for the detailed reply. I’ll respond, just very busy, and wanted to send a quick note to say I appreciated the time and effort. :)
Hi Athena,
Thank you so much for this post. It was very informative and eye opening for me. In response to this post, I have a request. I wonder though if you could please do a post about Social Manipulation.
I was victim of that for all of my schooling. It was a very traumatic experience. Looking back, I do not know which of my friends were pretending to be my friend. And I do not know which of my friends were waiting for an opportunity to present itself so they would have an excuse to undermine me behind my back.
The reason I ask is I am terrified of having that happen to me again in the workplace especially since, like with school, I have to return to the same environment every day, toxic or not. I may be able to avoid the bully, but if my peers believe the rumors from that bully, reporting that bully to HR will not solve the problem of others ostracism of me. This causes me great concern since networking is an extremely important part of your career. I don’t want a bully’s negative influence over my co-workers to jeopardize career opportunities that I could have in the future.
From your observations and perspective, could you please share any insight you have on social manipulation? And if possible could you also answer, to the best of your ability, the following questions:
1. What makes you an easy target for people to bully? What signals do you give off that perceive you as an easy target? A Quora post stated that if, “You are soft and sweet, kind and thoughtful, the teachers praise you, you keep to yourself, you don't want to cause trouble, you try to do the right thing always, you are a people pleaser, you don't have a bad bone in your body,” then people see you as easy prey. Is this true? And if so, what can you do?
2. What are the situations and signs of someone ‘testing’ you to see if you will allow horrible behavior to take place?
3. In response to those tests/ situations, how do you set boundaries with bullies that are firm but not rude? And what do you do if the bully’s response to your boundaries is indifference?
4. How do you deal with passive aggressive behavior from bullies or people you have to deal with in general?
5. How do you deal with other people who believe the bully’s lies?
6. Lastly, you say “people need to earn your trust, over a long period of time, and by demonstrating who they are both towards you, and everyone that they know.” What is your idea of a long period of time that would help you understand a person’s character? What are the warning signs? What are the small moments that indicate that you should not be around this person or trust this person?
Thank you so much for considering my request and for reading this lengthy post.
I'm glad that you enjoyed it
Always happy to do so