After following you on Quora, I am grateful how you have clarified what psychopathy is and is not. Also for encouraging me to look into the biological basis for psychopathy. With your literary ability and "passion" for the subject have you considered writing a book maybe something in the vein of 'psychopathy from a psychopath's viewpoint'?
I am afraid I disagree with what you write about low-functioning psychopaths. I think as with all other aspects of their lives, their masking is far from perfect and they are not particularly charming. I would say, it can be that they can be very charming at times, but they will not be able to maintain it for a long time.
I’m sure it must be frustrating to hear the same blind misinformation repeated again and again on this subject. I appreciate your comments and clarification on this article and others like it.
Don't let the ridiculous name of the diagnosis make it worse. I was only diagnosed retrospectively when already much better, and it's just as well, because at the time, the doomy prognosis and stigma might have been too much. I tried weed a very long ago but am one of the minority for whom it always just feels really dreadful, but it seems to help others in many ways and let's face it, psych meds have huge downsides. Turning your existence into something you actually want to live is a good way of putting it. I'm having to do that over again to some extent because like for many people, the past two years have set me back a long way, which I had not expected to happen.
Watch out, if you're perpetually busy and then pass out from exhaustion, you might be misdiagnosed bipolar. (KIDDING!) Well that was my dark joke.....
That made me laugh MC, your joke. I like your comments and responses. They are insightful and have weight to them. I know a handful of people who do not do well with weed. That's totally ok. It, like other meds, doesnt work for everyone. It helps me with my autoimmune disorder, ita actually the only other treatment for mysathenia gravis other than Mestinon, a chemotherapy drug or steroids. Outside of the usa there is a cure I have been told by Drs but it is illegal here. Your above question about the mask, I dont think it's fake, I do the mental comparisons in order to find an appropriate response. I could have a few different emotional reactions to a situation or conversation, and i try to flip thru and find the response the person needs to hear most. Are they looking for a friend to just listen? Do they need advice? Would they benefit from some harsh sounding truth? And I go from there. I try to fit the need of the other person mostly. I dont consider that masking, but I wonder if others would, due to the fact that I can slip on that emotion and take it back off. Example, my friends Mama is on hospice. She was at work and couldn't cry. I cried for her and sent her love. Then I stopped crying and washed my dishes laughing with my son. She needed empathy and he needed laughter. I became who they needed. Personally i feel like im drowning half the time but no onw sees that. They see a brave strong woman whos there for everyone and thats how i like it. I can be honest and open here. Not so much on Facebook or Quora. Too many creeps for my comfort. That however is due largly to my ex stalking me. He would love to see me destroyed and has invested years in trying to do so.
I looked up your disorder, and I'm glad weed helps you with it, it sounds like a rotten burden. It's a good thing that at last nature's drugs are being explored for their medical benefits. I mean, I think the world would be better without something like meth, but there's a lot of value in the milder drugs. In my part of the world, unfortunately, we dont have those options legally available.
You sound like you are very skilled with people. I do try to be what people need and find common ground, but not as much as you. I don't think I can switch from crying empathy to laughter so quickly regardless of what's required in the situation.
I understand why you like to be seen as a brave strong woman. When you get to the point where you can move beyond misery and inertia and banging your head against a wall to stop the pain, and become functional even if you are drowning inside, well that's a triumph. You start to see yourself being the person you once may have barely dared hoped you could be, and the joy of it can be a positive feedback loop that just makes you stronger and stronger.
I guess it's working because your descriptions here of say, how you saw your ex's behaviour, don't sound like they are coming from someone with BPD. It's nice to know that contrary to past medical dogma, it need not be a life sentence!
I do not have any experience with stalker exes. My partner deals with them occasionally in his work and it's pretty bizarre how some people carry vengefulness for so long. Frankly, someone out there wanting me destroyed is one stress I do not think I could cope with.
I am so grateful for your informative articles. My experience with a narcissist is that they have very high sex drives and are very good at it usually. They will wow you and then take that experience away and then basically use you as a vessel in order to fulfil their needs. They will pull out the good stuff in bed after the initial "love" wears off when they sense your going to leave. They usually have more than one lover. And they get attached to you very quickly. I do not understand it but they seem to invest their entire emotional being into a relationship, very dependant on you to meet their needs. But over time, either it's humanly impossible to meet their needs, or they are ashamed or their need and begin to treat you with contempt. Basically everything she said was so far off base. This response from you on her articles is much needed. My last boyfriend curled up into a ball screaming "Dont leave me baby I need you!!!! I cant live without you!!!" Which is complete b.s. as he has lived his entire life without me and has only known me for 7 months total. Boggles my mind. I have never ever heard a phycopath act like that and i never will. There needs to be more accurate information desperately.
That seems like a very useful tactic for a narcissist to use.
Was the last one a narcissist? I ask because someone I know has an extremely similar story, fetal position and all, and was diagnosed with NPD. It was a startling display to my friend.
I am honestly trying to figure that out for myself if he is a narc or just a broken human whos hurting deeply, which is essentially a narc at their core. It was very shocking to see a grown man act that way. My son's father is a malignant narc and while he would try to win me back, he never ever ever would reduce himself in that way. His reaction would be hated and violence or he would disappear for weeks on end and pop back up with presents. The sex trick is a fabulous trick. I fell for that for years lol. Even when i knew he had cheated i looked forward to the mind blowing bedroom antics.
Yoir right. Thats why i reserved judgement on what is his mental state. I am not sure. I put the broken human reference because he states he is a broken human. I basically quoted his self description. Everyone has narcissistic tendencies to some degree. I do not know him well enough to pose a guess, nor am I qualified professionally in any way to do so. The narcs i have known, are deeply wounded. Theres a lot of hatred towards that diagnosis. I hated them too for a long time. I dont like to hate and I have found that understanding another persom goes a long way to alleviating that hatred. I chose to see them as the hurting child at their core because it allows me to forgive their actions.
Fair enough, many of us are broken humans, or have been. I don't know about everyone having narcissistic tendencies as such. I mean, we all come to the realisation that we can only ultimately count on ourselves, and we do what we must to protect that, but I don't know when self-interest becomes actual narcissism. I remember the old 'stop feeling sorry for yourself' mantra. And I called bullshit on that right then and there as a kid. I thought if you can't feel sorry for yourself, you, your lone protagonist in this world, who can you feel sorry for? If there is no self compassion, how can you move forward? That's just protestant nonsense at the root, which I despise. Self forgiveness can be a trap, of course, and stop people from moving forward. But to prescribe a mindset with no feeling sorry for yourself, that's utter bullshit, and counterproductive, I raged against that.
I guess I have not known many narcs. Not extreme pathological ones. My father was a regular everyday one, for the era he was sort of normal, we might assess him differently now and consider him pretty bad. Horribly damaging to the family. I too chose to give up the hate and try to understand and forgive. It's probably the best way.
Apart from the understandable public misperception about these neurotypes, I had no idea so much guff was written. Maybe it's not relevant, but I am irked by her tone when she mentions sexuality. There is an air of old Freudianism here, with its preoccupation and prescriptions of what constitutes 'healthy' sexuality. 'Womanisers and sluts', hey. AKA people who like to have sex with many people, no need for pejorative terms. The way they treat partners during these affairs and whether the effect on their own life is positive are up to the people involved to assess, not some crank. And asexuality cops it as well. Dear oh dear.
(On BPD misinformation, a bugbear of mine is the perception that people constantly act out and cause drama and chaos. Not necessarily. Depending on personality and upbringing, there may be enormous effort put into performing normal on a daily basis and staying in control, with most of the pain internalized and only some lapses when overwhelming emotion causes this control to fail.)
A commenter refers to your 'passion' for this work. I think of this site as a 'crusade'! I am trying to call up in my own mind what it would feel like to be so driven and motivated and prolific about such a project, without an emotional component as an impetus beyond the academic. And I can't really! And yet you have mentioned having the same sort of drive with dance, without the usual utter passion that dancers tend to feel. I am going to have to keep digging through my memories until I find something comparable.....
Hey MC I am intrigued by hoir comment about digging thru your memories until you find something to compare it to. I do this also, looking at life with one view and taking old memories and experience of my own as a reference. Is this something that all borderlines do? I dont feel I lack an identity as they say we feel. I feel like a patchwork quilt made up of memories and pieces that I have picked up along the way. I use this mental photography, for lack of a bettet word, it's like I can pick up a memory and view it as a film strip, instead of personally. This allows me to compare what's happening to what it should look like, or how I should respond, or identify with people. I actually wonder if this is what they refer to as a mask... Example, someone says something that catches me off guard. I immediately find a memory (even of a movie or quote sometimes) as to how I should appropriately feel, and respond.
I hadn't really thought of it as a BPD thing, and I don't know. I just thought of it as a personality thing. Because I became very interested in everything Athena was writing on Quora, I really looked for parallels in my own experience that might allow me to understand the supposedly very foreign and 'unimaginable'. And the more I did this, the more I thought of. Something for the brain to chew over at 3am! Also I have been a keen cultural traveller and have enjoyed finding my 'weirdness threshold' increase the more places I saw and people I met and my understanding and sense of connectedness grew. It's just something that's important to me.
I would have thought that your using memories and experiences for reference was something any person would do, and we are composed of all those memories and pieces, but perhaps there is a greater need to do this when, as for people with all sorts of mental struggles, we have to 'play normal' and society can feel bewildering. Yes I also compare what's happening with how I think a situation should go, but I don't think of that slight detachment as a mask or acting unnatural. I'm hoping I'm understanding you here? I think for myself I probably looked to comparisons for behavioural guidance a lot more during my insecure weirdo past, but over the years it has become more about just trying to make deeper sense of the world and other people.
It's interesting that you also say you don't lack an identity, and have wondered just for how many people that is really one of their defining symptoms. I always had a strong sense of self, but I suppose others with different dispositions might find their sense of identity more easily ruined by the experiences that contributed to the BPD.
Thank you for acknowledging that people with BPD can be self aware and have both self control, and a good moral compass. Yes we can beast with the best, but that side is not our whole selves. Many of us learn to deal with rollercoaster emotions and how to manage and regulate ourselves..and without medication
I see no reason why that wouldn't be possible. Most of the people that I have communicated with that have BPD do very hard work on themselves. Anyone can be monstrous if they want to be, or allow themselves to be. Those are the exceptions, not the rule.
I acknowledge it because that's how it was for me much of the time. Congratulations on managing to learn to regulate without medication, that's fantastic- I could have got nowhere without finally finding something to take the edge off and give a little blessed relief, and that's when gradual change can happen. I don't think I was very self aware, generally perhaps, but not about my condition! There was little awareness back then, much misdiagnosis, I had never heard of such a condition, and as I thought everyone, including infants, were in perpetual mental pain and all activity was just desperate distraction.
Its a very depressing diagnosis and it's not easy to live out in day to day life. I do smoke weed and Delta 8-10. But no prescription meds. A whole lot of work has went into turning my existence into something I actually want to live. The struggle is real but we can heal a lot of it. And if not, we can work hard and stay perpetually busy until we pass out from exhaustion. Gah I depress myself, time to go make dark jokes.
I thought this author deleted her terrible content? She makes most of this stuff up, I swear, just to attract readers fascinated with the horrors of human nature, whether true or false. It is badly written fiction and unfortunately, frustrates me to no end.
It came back, lucky us. Actually, I have one more that will come out next, and I don't know that it is just for attracting readers. I think that she has a deep fear of psychopaths.
That could be. Perhaps she had a frightening personal experience during an abnormal psych round or something, and has an agenda? I admit that when I first started my own studies, meeting various people in clinical settings was frightening at times, but you need to keep it professional as well. Keep your personal feelings in check, practice thinking rationally, rely on your reading, your mentors etc., and it takes practice. I liken it to the creation of your mask, a bit (just a BIT ;) - but you develop a ‘separation’ from your self - you present a somewhat clinical mask, which is the only way to truly be successful as a therapist, not just for clients, but for yourself. That was my issue-I cared too much and had to step back. Ms. Hale, in my opinion, definitely is projecting some of her own irrational fears, as far as the psychopath goes. Perhaps she has been a victim of abuse? That was an astute observation, by the way. There are definite advantages to being a psychopath, as far as your ‘presentation’ of it is concerned. I’ve said, many times - give me a cardiac surgeon who is a psychopath, as opposed to a neurotypical one, if I get to choose. :)
I wondered about that myself. If so, that is very unfortunate. I hope that she is able to work through whatever it is that is inspiring her writing. Psychopaths are so often the target for people to download all of that anger and hatred into. I would reason that it's simply quite easy to do because of how we are spoken about.
I wonder if this is why you get flooded by hatred from BPD people, they are so full of emotions, and it has to go somewhere... Is it directed at phycopaths in an attempt to let it out on someone who society says wont care? I dont want to hurt anyone. I remove myself from people who bring that out in me. It doesnt stop me from feeling tho. I wonder if they see you as a safe dumping ground? Just a thought I had whole reading
No, by that I meant she experienced emotional suffering whereas I did not. For instance, being adopted bothered her greatly. To me it was like telling me at four that the car needed to go to the shop. It was inconsequential to my life.
This chimes with me although my situation is different. I was marked as the black sheep early, always considered wrong and a problem, with my sibling was very much and obviously favoured. I felt everything catastrophocally, he kept his head down and felt less and was abused less. I don't think being adopted would have bothered me in principle except that in my situation I would have seen it as the reason for my abuse. I found out at 21 that my father had been married before and was deeply shaken, and my first thought was do I have siblings?, but apparently no. That I now have a great relationship with my brother regardless seems to me some kind of unlikely miracle, but he is a great person, and I am not, but I put In the work. In so many toxic families it seems not to go that way. So I am thinking what it would have been like to have a sibling who felt nothing bad, ever, and had no conception of everyone's pain? Absolutely dreadful. And beyond confusing. Poor girl. Life is just awful sometimes.
Reading your stuff I was reminded of a book I had years ago, likely back in the mid '80's by a self described 'hitman'
He described himself as "asocial and law abiding" meaning that he didn't break even speed limits without a reason. He had a lot of interesting examples of his vocation including have associates he'd call on who had a range of skills including sexual sadism.
He never used the term psychopath or made any sort of psychological claims but his self description was dead on for being an incredibly dangerous "above the snowline" A Tier psychopath. And of course he was nothing at all like these goobers describe psychopaths.
After following you on Quora, I am grateful how you have clarified what psychopathy is and is not. Also for encouraging me to look into the biological basis for psychopathy. With your literary ability and "passion" for the subject have you considered writing a book maybe something in the vein of 'psychopathy from a psychopath's viewpoint'?
I might well do that in the future.
Yes, do.
I am afraid I disagree with what you write about low-functioning psychopaths. I think as with all other aspects of their lives, their masking is far from perfect and they are not particularly charming. I would say, it can be that they can be very charming at times, but they will not be able to maintain it for a long time.
That is a very fair point
I’m sure it must be frustrating to hear the same blind misinformation repeated again and again on this subject. I appreciate your comments and clarification on this article and others like it.
Don't let the ridiculous name of the diagnosis make it worse. I was only diagnosed retrospectively when already much better, and it's just as well, because at the time, the doomy prognosis and stigma might have been too much. I tried weed a very long ago but am one of the minority for whom it always just feels really dreadful, but it seems to help others in many ways and let's face it, psych meds have huge downsides. Turning your existence into something you actually want to live is a good way of putting it. I'm having to do that over again to some extent because like for many people, the past two years have set me back a long way, which I had not expected to happen.
Watch out, if you're perpetually busy and then pass out from exhaustion, you might be misdiagnosed bipolar. (KIDDING!) Well that was my dark joke.....
That made me laugh MC, your joke. I like your comments and responses. They are insightful and have weight to them. I know a handful of people who do not do well with weed. That's totally ok. It, like other meds, doesnt work for everyone. It helps me with my autoimmune disorder, ita actually the only other treatment for mysathenia gravis other than Mestinon, a chemotherapy drug or steroids. Outside of the usa there is a cure I have been told by Drs but it is illegal here. Your above question about the mask, I dont think it's fake, I do the mental comparisons in order to find an appropriate response. I could have a few different emotional reactions to a situation or conversation, and i try to flip thru and find the response the person needs to hear most. Are they looking for a friend to just listen? Do they need advice? Would they benefit from some harsh sounding truth? And I go from there. I try to fit the need of the other person mostly. I dont consider that masking, but I wonder if others would, due to the fact that I can slip on that emotion and take it back off. Example, my friends Mama is on hospice. She was at work and couldn't cry. I cried for her and sent her love. Then I stopped crying and washed my dishes laughing with my son. She needed empathy and he needed laughter. I became who they needed. Personally i feel like im drowning half the time but no onw sees that. They see a brave strong woman whos there for everyone and thats how i like it. I can be honest and open here. Not so much on Facebook or Quora. Too many creeps for my comfort. That however is due largly to my ex stalking me. He would love to see me destroyed and has invested years in trying to do so.
I looked up your disorder, and I'm glad weed helps you with it, it sounds like a rotten burden. It's a good thing that at last nature's drugs are being explored for their medical benefits. I mean, I think the world would be better without something like meth, but there's a lot of value in the milder drugs. In my part of the world, unfortunately, we dont have those options legally available.
You sound like you are very skilled with people. I do try to be what people need and find common ground, but not as much as you. I don't think I can switch from crying empathy to laughter so quickly regardless of what's required in the situation.
I understand why you like to be seen as a brave strong woman. When you get to the point where you can move beyond misery and inertia and banging your head against a wall to stop the pain, and become functional even if you are drowning inside, well that's a triumph. You start to see yourself being the person you once may have barely dared hoped you could be, and the joy of it can be a positive feedback loop that just makes you stronger and stronger.
I guess it's working because your descriptions here of say, how you saw your ex's behaviour, don't sound like they are coming from someone with BPD. It's nice to know that contrary to past medical dogma, it need not be a life sentence!
I do not have any experience with stalker exes. My partner deals with them occasionally in his work and it's pretty bizarre how some people carry vengefulness for so long. Frankly, someone out there wanting me destroyed is one stress I do not think I could cope with.
I am so grateful for your informative articles. My experience with a narcissist is that they have very high sex drives and are very good at it usually. They will wow you and then take that experience away and then basically use you as a vessel in order to fulfil their needs. They will pull out the good stuff in bed after the initial "love" wears off when they sense your going to leave. They usually have more than one lover. And they get attached to you very quickly. I do not understand it but they seem to invest their entire emotional being into a relationship, very dependant on you to meet their needs. But over time, either it's humanly impossible to meet their needs, or they are ashamed or their need and begin to treat you with contempt. Basically everything she said was so far off base. This response from you on her articles is much needed. My last boyfriend curled up into a ball screaming "Dont leave me baby I need you!!!! I cant live without you!!!" Which is complete b.s. as he has lived his entire life without me and has only known me for 7 months total. Boggles my mind. I have never ever heard a phycopath act like that and i never will. There needs to be more accurate information desperately.
That seems like a very useful tactic for a narcissist to use.
Was the last one a narcissist? I ask because someone I know has an extremely similar story, fetal position and all, and was diagnosed with NPD. It was a startling display to my friend.
I am honestly trying to figure that out for myself if he is a narc or just a broken human whos hurting deeply, which is essentially a narc at their core. It was very shocking to see a grown man act that way. My son's father is a malignant narc and while he would try to win me back, he never ever ever would reduce himself in that way. His reaction would be hated and violence or he would disappear for weeks on end and pop back up with presents. The sex trick is a fabulous trick. I fell for that for years lol. Even when i knew he had cheated i looked forward to the mind blowing bedroom antics.
Hang on, I thought broken humans who were hurting deeply could be BPD or sociopathic or whatever, not necessarily a narc at their core?
Yoir right. Thats why i reserved judgement on what is his mental state. I am not sure. I put the broken human reference because he states he is a broken human. I basically quoted his self description. Everyone has narcissistic tendencies to some degree. I do not know him well enough to pose a guess, nor am I qualified professionally in any way to do so. The narcs i have known, are deeply wounded. Theres a lot of hatred towards that diagnosis. I hated them too for a long time. I dont like to hate and I have found that understanding another persom goes a long way to alleviating that hatred. I chose to see them as the hurting child at their core because it allows me to forgive their actions.
Fair enough, many of us are broken humans, or have been. I don't know about everyone having narcissistic tendencies as such. I mean, we all come to the realisation that we can only ultimately count on ourselves, and we do what we must to protect that, but I don't know when self-interest becomes actual narcissism. I remember the old 'stop feeling sorry for yourself' mantra. And I called bullshit on that right then and there as a kid. I thought if you can't feel sorry for yourself, you, your lone protagonist in this world, who can you feel sorry for? If there is no self compassion, how can you move forward? That's just protestant nonsense at the root, which I despise. Self forgiveness can be a trap, of course, and stop people from moving forward. But to prescribe a mindset with no feeling sorry for yourself, that's utter bullshit, and counterproductive, I raged against that.
I guess I have not known many narcs. Not extreme pathological ones. My father was a regular everyday one, for the era he was sort of normal, we might assess him differently now and consider him pretty bad. Horribly damaging to the family. I too chose to give up the hate and try to understand and forgive. It's probably the best way.
Thank heavens I have no been in a relationship with one. Vain entitled arses, yeah, but just the regular sort, not pathological!
A completely off the subject observation.
I imagine that a psychopath would be an excellent Blackjack player, and could do well in that vocation
Quite true. It's very hard to read someone with flat affect.
Apart from the understandable public misperception about these neurotypes, I had no idea so much guff was written. Maybe it's not relevant, but I am irked by her tone when she mentions sexuality. There is an air of old Freudianism here, with its preoccupation and prescriptions of what constitutes 'healthy' sexuality. 'Womanisers and sluts', hey. AKA people who like to have sex with many people, no need for pejorative terms. The way they treat partners during these affairs and whether the effect on their own life is positive are up to the people involved to assess, not some crank. And asexuality cops it as well. Dear oh dear.
(On BPD misinformation, a bugbear of mine is the perception that people constantly act out and cause drama and chaos. Not necessarily. Depending on personality and upbringing, there may be enormous effort put into performing normal on a daily basis and staying in control, with most of the pain internalized and only some lapses when overwhelming emotion causes this control to fail.)
A commenter refers to your 'passion' for this work. I think of this site as a 'crusade'! I am trying to call up in my own mind what it would feel like to be so driven and motivated and prolific about such a project, without an emotional component as an impetus beyond the academic. And I can't really! And yet you have mentioned having the same sort of drive with dance, without the usual utter passion that dancers tend to feel. I am going to have to keep digging through my memories until I find something comparable.....
I completely understand why misinformation about BPD is thrown around. I see this often on Quora.
Hey MC I am intrigued by hoir comment about digging thru your memories until you find something to compare it to. I do this also, looking at life with one view and taking old memories and experience of my own as a reference. Is this something that all borderlines do? I dont feel I lack an identity as they say we feel. I feel like a patchwork quilt made up of memories and pieces that I have picked up along the way. I use this mental photography, for lack of a bettet word, it's like I can pick up a memory and view it as a film strip, instead of personally. This allows me to compare what's happening to what it should look like, or how I should respond, or identify with people. I actually wonder if this is what they refer to as a mask... Example, someone says something that catches me off guard. I immediately find a memory (even of a movie or quote sometimes) as to how I should appropriately feel, and respond.
I hadn't really thought of it as a BPD thing, and I don't know. I just thought of it as a personality thing. Because I became very interested in everything Athena was writing on Quora, I really looked for parallels in my own experience that might allow me to understand the supposedly very foreign and 'unimaginable'. And the more I did this, the more I thought of. Something for the brain to chew over at 3am! Also I have been a keen cultural traveller and have enjoyed finding my 'weirdness threshold' increase the more places I saw and people I met and my understanding and sense of connectedness grew. It's just something that's important to me.
I would have thought that your using memories and experiences for reference was something any person would do, and we are composed of all those memories and pieces, but perhaps there is a greater need to do this when, as for people with all sorts of mental struggles, we have to 'play normal' and society can feel bewildering. Yes I also compare what's happening with how I think a situation should go, but I don't think of that slight detachment as a mask or acting unnatural. I'm hoping I'm understanding you here? I think for myself I probably looked to comparisons for behavioural guidance a lot more during my insecure weirdo past, but over the years it has become more about just trying to make deeper sense of the world and other people.
It's interesting that you also say you don't lack an identity, and have wondered just for how many people that is really one of their defining symptoms. I always had a strong sense of self, but I suppose others with different dispositions might find their sense of identity more easily ruined by the experiences that contributed to the BPD.
Thank you for acknowledging that people with BPD can be self aware and have both self control, and a good moral compass. Yes we can beast with the best, but that side is not our whole selves. Many of us learn to deal with rollercoaster emotions and how to manage and regulate ourselves..and without medication
I see no reason why that wouldn't be possible. Most of the people that I have communicated with that have BPD do very hard work on themselves. Anyone can be monstrous if they want to be, or allow themselves to be. Those are the exceptions, not the rule.
I acknowledge it because that's how it was for me much of the time. Congratulations on managing to learn to regulate without medication, that's fantastic- I could have got nowhere without finally finding something to take the edge off and give a little blessed relief, and that's when gradual change can happen. I don't think I was very self aware, generally perhaps, but not about my condition! There was little awareness back then, much misdiagnosis, I had never heard of such a condition, and as I thought everyone, including infants, were in perpetual mental pain and all activity was just desperate distraction.
Its a very depressing diagnosis and it's not easy to live out in day to day life. I do smoke weed and Delta 8-10. But no prescription meds. A whole lot of work has went into turning my existence into something I actually want to live. The struggle is real but we can heal a lot of it. And if not, we can work hard and stay perpetually busy until we pass out from exhaustion. Gah I depress myself, time to go make dark jokes.
Oh dear, my reply to this ended up at the bottom of the thread. How am I fumbling this?😃
I thought this author deleted her terrible content? She makes most of this stuff up, I swear, just to attract readers fascinated with the horrors of human nature, whether true or false. It is badly written fiction and unfortunately, frustrates me to no end.
It came back, lucky us. Actually, I have one more that will come out next, and I don't know that it is just for attracting readers. I think that she has a deep fear of psychopaths.
That could be. Perhaps she had a frightening personal experience during an abnormal psych round or something, and has an agenda? I admit that when I first started my own studies, meeting various people in clinical settings was frightening at times, but you need to keep it professional as well. Keep your personal feelings in check, practice thinking rationally, rely on your reading, your mentors etc., and it takes practice. I liken it to the creation of your mask, a bit (just a BIT ;) - but you develop a ‘separation’ from your self - you present a somewhat clinical mask, which is the only way to truly be successful as a therapist, not just for clients, but for yourself. That was my issue-I cared too much and had to step back. Ms. Hale, in my opinion, definitely is projecting some of her own irrational fears, as far as the psychopath goes. Perhaps she has been a victim of abuse? That was an astute observation, by the way. There are definite advantages to being a psychopath, as far as your ‘presentation’ of it is concerned. I’ve said, many times - give me a cardiac surgeon who is a psychopath, as opposed to a neurotypical one, if I get to choose. :)
I wondered about that myself. If so, that is very unfortunate. I hope that she is able to work through whatever it is that is inspiring her writing. Psychopaths are so often the target for people to download all of that anger and hatred into. I would reason that it's simply quite easy to do because of how we are spoken about.
I wonder if this is why you get flooded by hatred from BPD people, they are so full of emotions, and it has to go somewhere... Is it directed at phycopaths in an attempt to let it out on someone who society says wont care? I dont want to hurt anyone. I remove myself from people who bring that out in me. It doesnt stop me from feeling tho. I wonder if they see you as a safe dumping ground? Just a thought I had whole reading
Hm, now that is interesting. So a version of why people talk to me about their deepest secrets.
Yes. Extremely frustrating. I know far more about tons of people then i care to. Totally could have lived without their emotional dump
Was the reason your sister wasn't on good terms with you jealousy over your 'charmed' life due to your mask and outlook on life in general?
I think it was because she suffered emotionally, and it was obvious that I didn't. It made her feel that was unfair, I believe.
Suffered because of that crime his husband had committed? I also remember you saying she was not a good parent to your niece.
No, by that I meant she experienced emotional suffering whereas I did not. For instance, being adopted bothered her greatly. To me it was like telling me at four that the car needed to go to the shop. It was inconsequential to my life.
This chimes with me although my situation is different. I was marked as the black sheep early, always considered wrong and a problem, with my sibling was very much and obviously favoured. I felt everything catastrophocally, he kept his head down and felt less and was abused less. I don't think being adopted would have bothered me in principle except that in my situation I would have seen it as the reason for my abuse. I found out at 21 that my father had been married before and was deeply shaken, and my first thought was do I have siblings?, but apparently no. That I now have a great relationship with my brother regardless seems to me some kind of unlikely miracle, but he is a great person, and I am not, but I put In the work. In so many toxic families it seems not to go that way. So I am thinking what it would have been like to have a sibling who felt nothing bad, ever, and had no conception of everyone's pain? Absolutely dreadful. And beyond confusing. Poor girl. Life is just awful sometimes.
Indeed true
Reading your stuff I was reminded of a book I had years ago, likely back in the mid '80's by a self described 'hitman'
He described himself as "asocial and law abiding" meaning that he didn't break even speed limits without a reason. He had a lot of interesting examples of his vocation including have associates he'd call on who had a range of skills including sexual sadism.
He never used the term psychopath or made any sort of psychological claims but his self description was dead on for being an incredibly dangerous "above the snowline" A Tier psychopath. And of course he was nothing at all like these goobers describe psychopaths.
Sounds interesting.
"law abiding hitman" is an oxymoron. Someone should tell him. No wait...that might be bad for their health!