Tired of people judging others as if they know what everyone is doing in there lives, how dare that bitch asking you if you commit any crimes, that's not her business, she should tape her nose on her face so it don't fly into someone else's business, lol about the autism, superpower to spot psychopaths and sociopaths, like STFU and sit the fuck down girl, and people with low emapthy don't feel right to you, eh who is asking? No one asks for your opinion, if the world only have people with empathy, then it would be a bag of flipping pool and emotions running and ruling the earth or whatever you call it, it needs to be balanced, not people with their emotional crap alone, better to stay in your place and don't run into us people with low empathy
Them going on with that HSP (empath) mindset about spotting psychopaths as a superpower? They watch too many marvel movies so fecking immature and i can't stand people like them lmao 🤣🤣🤣🤣
A while back, I shared some of what I've learned from you with an acquaintance. She refused to believe it.
A long time ago, I told a coworker about an article I'd read about mirror-image sugar molecules that scientists were studying as a sugar substitute. She said the idea of lef or right handed molecules was ridiculous. She didnt believe it. She knew nothing about chemistry.
I don't run into that kind of attitude often, but when I do, I'm baffled. How can they make any kind of claim unless theyre familiar with the subject? And how can they think that their beliefs about it impacts the fact of it in any way?
People make uninformed opinions on all kinds of things. I agree with your reasoning about psychopathy, but with other topics,. I just don't get it.
What amazes me is the insistence that they are right without being able to answer a single question about the topic that they have drawn conclusions about. Or worse yet, those that will answer the question with provably false information.
I shared Athena's work with three people, all of whom were interested and amazed. I chose them carefully though. On the other hand, I know someone who has spent decades spouting off on so many topics they know nothing about, but I do. It upsets me a lot to see them look such an utter fool, and its so unnecessary. The irony is that if someone is not trained out of this revolting behaviour through parental guidance or by educators, they will think they are doing well, 'winning' arguments and coming across as strong and decisive. Sigh.
It is so true what you say about applying our experience of the world to others. We are sort of brought up that way, these are emotions, these are situations, this is what people usually do and feel. It took me the longest time to even question that simplistic model let alone get past those assumptions. I know someone who does not have the full typical range of emotions, but having no idea that that even existed, it caused years of misunderstanding. I was shocked to find that my (already partly controlled) visceral emotional reactions were seen as performed attempts to manipulate, they were shocked to hear that their conduct could be callous to the point of cruel. Even regarding a friend of ours, who suffered a lot as a child, they cannot understand why what occurred was a problem. Needless to say it took many years and many conversations to work through all this.
I have had this exact issue when it comes to close relationships with others. They filter our interactions through what they understand, and due to that often misinterpret my meaning or my thinking because if they had said or done whatever I did, they would have X reason behind it.
I don't feel X, which means my motivation is very different than what they are guessing that it is, and sorting it out once doesn't usually correct it in the future either. It is still something that I have to carefully explain how I see things.
It can take more than once to sort it out, but the person I am referring to, while sharing many of your traits of emotions muted or entirely absent, is not psycopathic, as their are many other traits and occurences that rule it out. So we have an easier time of it ('easier' being relative!)
People are strange animals. For some reason they want special powers .
I don't think anyone not properly trained can say that someone is a psychopath. Even some or most professionals can't do it. That's why there are a battery of tests made to figure it out.
I think you'd have to know someone for a very long time and have a lot of knowledge, to even get close to being able to make a good guess.
I do think there are a number of people that can tell when something is off, with someone else, not normal.
To say someone is a psychopath, without the proper testing, I think it's really far fetched.
Usually when I read that kind of thing on Qura, what they describe is someone closer to NPD, and I see no way that you can be a primary psychopath and have NPD , there's just to much emotion in NPD, which requires empathy, not for people sometimes but for themselves.
I just think there are way too many disorders out there that people think are psychopathic because of of...x y or z, when they cannot see the whole picture just by some actions that are similar to what is described as psychopathic. People fill in the blanks and think they have figured out everything.
I don't think it's ever that simple and no one has psychopath radar.
This whole ASPD thing isn't helping as far as I can tell either, its like taking apples, oranges, and bananas and saying they are all the same fruit.
I also think it's lazy, grouping them all together and treating them the same. You can't get orange juice from a banana. Sure they're all fruit but it ends there.
Anyway I'm with you on this one. I think it's just rediculous. I've seen some of the things that people say to you on Qura and I just shake my head. They seem to be hell bent on being right, no matter what information you pass along.
I could go on, but I'm sure you know the reasons why they do this stuff by now.
Actually it is something that I still try to figure out the reasoning for as it seem entirely self limiting to me. Perhaps it is about safety, perhaps it is about the ego trip, maybe there is something that I am missing. Just today I got another person that thinks that they know me better than I do:
"It seems to be that you ave a hard time being able to distinguish cognitive and emotional empathy as it seems like with your discussion with another commenter. This to me indictates you might be on the autism spectrum, since autists tend to have bad cognitive empathy."
This is the end of a very long comment where the person conflates ASPD, psychopathy, NPD, and informs me that psychopaths are absolutely sadists.
I should also mention that this is a person that thinks that they are a psychopath, but also has NPD, and of course ASPD... because they are all the same thing. Oh, and they self assessed... so you know that they are correct.
I agree with your self limiting and safety reasons. Some people really are terrified of having to integrate new information. For some people, too, self limiting is not a bad thing, it's the whole point.
I think it has to do with ego, perhaps someone's with low self esteem, someone who wants to feel better or smarter then they actually are. Most people like that try to over compensate.
Or it could be someone with a large ego, who just thinks they are smarter then everyone else.
Either way it's seems like they are trying to feed their ego .
But hay that's just what it looks like to me .
It gives NT's a good feeling to think they are somehow better or smarter then someone else.
If they think you're highly intelligent and they can out whit you, or think they have, it makes them feel better about themselves.
Now I don't know the why of that, because unlike normal ppl I lack ego, but I notice what others do.
Presupposition: all psychopaths fool everyone all of the time, or masking is always perfect.
Expecting it to always be perfect, the psychopath will have to have been exposed to not only the average person, but also the above average, and those were special skill sets of observation, and had enough time to practice with that as well.
No it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just have to be perfect enough, because people assume neural normal by default, and so any supplemental cute as well just slip past the RAS And get filtered out
Presupposition: The psychopath would know that they’re masking works or not in every situation, even if someone doesn’t indicate that they see through it
This assumes that a psychopath is getting honest feedback and behavior from their targets of influence, but it is likely that some of them are giving false feedback or keeping their cards to their chest.
Presupposition: some people claim to have special powers to spot a psychopath, and they are motivated by ego or other similar drivers.
A lot of people believe a lot of false things about themselves, and have magical thinking.
But this does not preclude the possibility that Bona fide skill sets of observation do not exist that would notice psychopathic traits.
Professional magicians, pickpocket artists, card sharks, and hypnotists might be in the category of possibility here.
In summary, your arguments are mostly true, but you cannot know objectively, but you fool everyone all of the time, simply because you don’t always get the feedback to tell you so
I can tell you my own personal experience. I’m a hyper alert person with PTSD, and I mean or have been a clinical hypnotherapist and stage hypnotist.
And I’ve learned a lot from you quite frankly.
What I pick up on his “something is off “and it’s at the domain of nonverbal communication.
But I’ve never had a box to put it in, I didn’t know if it was autism Asperger‘s, narcissism, psychopathy or whatever.
But there are Tells, like poker tells.
Of course you could simply say those are psychopaths that aren’t good at masking, but there’s no way of proving that.
and I have no idea of how many psychopaths I’ve encountered where I detected no tells at all.
You may pick up that something is different, but without reading that person's mind it is impossible to say what the difference is.
Also, unless they are rather poor at masking, it is not simple to pick up on psychopaths because people are looking for traits that they won't have because they have nothing to do with psychopathy.
There is a possibility that people might be better equipped to consider psychopathy after reading what I write, but I don't think it will have a great deal to do with me past me just giving information that isn't fanciful.
Poorly masked psychopaths don't tend to do well in society, so they end up falling into the dregs. They are often criminals because they are unable to get people to want to be around them. I would agree that they would be easier to guess something is up with them, but not because people are skilled at personality interpretation, but rather because the individual is a failed psychopath.
We can assume to agree on your general point, broadly speaking.
And to be able to dial in what the “something is off” actually is, takes quite a bit of exposure to the psychopath over time, to see it within a pattern or frame.
There’s no magic instant tell, no, you can’t see it in their eyes, they don’t look any different than anyone else.
People are kidding themselves.
I have “dated” a few successful psychopath females and so got to observe long term patterns.
We can assume that most successful psychopaths are capable of masking “enough” for the vast majority of interactions.
Yet some of us can sit at the bar in a local dive bar, and have “just an ordinary talk” with some people, and make them unable to smoke ever again, literally.
There are maybe a under a thousand people on earth that can do that.
Because we aren’t having a conversation with their conscious mind…
It’s the part of us that, when we KNOW the power is out, we walk in our front door, and our hand reaches for the light switch regardless.
I can see how professional observers of people would be at an advantage. But since you say yourself that there are many reasons why someone might give off an 'off' vibe, why are you sure that several,of your dates were psychopaths?
From what I understood at the time, it offered an explanation.
This blog confirms it post facto.
The pickpocket was absolutely fearless, it was like watching an alien being with supernatural powers.
She, just to demonstrate her skill, stoled the wallet of a uniformed police officer in broad noon daylight, on a busy city sidewalk with a lot of people around.
Smooth psychopaths: we nothing unusual at all, because the RAS and normalcy bias screens it out %99 of the time > %1 “l detect” Something is off about them” > it’s nothing, screen it out > They are a little different, aren’t we all, ignore > I’m just being judgmental , ignore > I’m just being paranoid, mind my own business, ignore > maybe they are on antidepressants or something, watch> they seem a little aspie, not important but watch> but I keep noticing tells.. > maybe just a dishonest person putting up a front, use caution > maybe NPD, watch for tantrums and emotional manipulation(simplified) > no tantrums, aloof, might be a psychopath…
"The better tuned emotional empathy might pick up on the hollow emotions if they aren’t able to mimic them accurately".
I must admit that I was someone who claimed to be "able to read people"! Haha though would never specify any disorder. Just a broad idea.
Nowdays my understanding is that I can read only what people shows, and people definitely can show many things even if unconsciously. I remember crystal clear instances when someone was playing a performance and something tiny in their facial expressions screamed fake.
They decided to show me their performance, and I was capable of seeing something. If maybe they didn't show it and acted indifferent I would have not been able to wonder about their motives on playing a performance and put their character or intentions on a certain ballpark. I saw what they shown.
In my experience women were better at going under the radar than men. It's situational dependant too, there might be people who feel more or less comfortable playing a malicious act to you than to others for many reasons and you can pick up on that.
In regards to cognitive empathy, regular interactions can be more reasonable to gauge. But I've seen the craziest cognitive processes when romantic relationships, or honor, were involved. It's nearly impossible to predict what a person is trully feeling or thinking in certain scenarios. And it can be beyond a lenses concept but rather disorders that maybe they refuse to treat - it takes courage to admit smth isn't quite right with you lol.
I want to finish my comment by asking you something:
You've never seen a picture or a person IRL and their body composition (composition, yes) or facial features gave you the impression that they "aren't a good person"? Purely based on phisycal appearance.
I know when I don't like someone, and pick up on it far faster than other people. However, it is because I have been studying people my entire life, so I am able to see things that others miss.
I was curious to see how you dismantle the argument of schizoid personality disorder, because reading your posts made me think of that diagnosis to be the CLOSEST to how I imagine you to be after reading your posts:
-The emphasis is on behaviors and appearances, rather than emotions and feelings;
-The behaviors under that diagnosis do sound like something which NT-s would make out of trying to connect to you, provided that you did not have sufficient motivation to act differently in their vicinitiy;
-It's a highly misunderstood and misdiagnozed disorder (too many similiarities with schizotypal and even some autistic subtypes);
-Its' prevalence (around 5% in USA) does sound much more intuitive to me than 1-2% for psychopaths (I have my own reasons for such an intuition, one which cognitively wouldn't make sense to you now).
I would add to that some things, change a few (such as sexuality - I've read articles where the opposite was proven to be possible for schizoids as well, so this portrait of that disorder is actually old and incomplete) and it really WOULD appear to be much closer to psychopathy than any other DSM V article.
If we can find an existing diagnosis to build on, rather than inventing a completely new one, I don't see a reason for ignoring such an opportunity. Please let me know what you think of that idea!
I'm not sure what you mean by the argument of schizoid personality disorder.
If you are thinking that psychopathy is anything like it you are very mistaken. There is nothing that is even remotely similar between them. I suggest reading answers by Elinor Greenberg over on Quora.
It is nothing at all like psychopathy. The emotional experience is completely different, their thinking it completely different, it is something that is created in childhood, and they experience existential dread which is totally unrelatable to psychopathy. That is like trying to find similarity between the moon and spaghetti.
Haha, alright, thanks for the links. I guess I don't understand schizoid at all - after all, I've never seen someone with that disorder create their own website about schizoid PD :D
Lol. After reading the first snip-it I just find it ironic that some random internet user, presumably from Quora fancies themselves a psychopath spotter... yet they have autism, a condition characterized by deficiencies in visual-spatial awareness that verge on intellectual disability in most cases. I wonder what kind of alternate meta reality this person is living in where someones eyes are a determining factor in how psychopathic they are.
Whatever their reasoning is, it is interesting to me that this is their attitude, when there is a lot of prejudice regarding people with autism. They likely don't prefer when they are on the receiving end, but have no problem being a part of the problem.
It's a common trait of autists to not be able to see outside of their own perspective and I'm not convinced it's because they lack empathy because so do I and I'm not like that, it just seems like a genuine lack of insight outside of their own view.
What would happen to a clouded, preoccupied mind, if everything suddenly fell silent? How occupied are our minds normally? Is our mind constantly on, taking on some unresolved stuff that we do not have answers to? Well, yes, for most people, the mind is probably pretty occupied. One day, my mind came to a complete halt. To be more precise, through a series of events, I suddenly gave myself the permission to come to conclusions on all things, without needing anyone’s else’s permission. And everything fell totally silent in my mind. “Well”, I thought, “I am experiencing enlightenment, what an amazing experience!”
For eight months following that day, I was in constant state of nirvana that I would rather not lose again. But I was not in a position to live my life as this state required me to, if I wanted to sustain it. After I fell out of this perfect state, I have been living in awe of psychopaths. It was not clear right away, but while analysing what happened, this has slowly been forming as the conclusion from this experience. And I am amazed at how the rest of us have screwed our lives up with emotional reactions that take away this perfect state that I got to know for a brief time.
When I try to evaluate if someone might either be a psychopath, or have psychopathic tendencies, I use this experience of mine. My working theory now is that the psychopathic state is a somewhat perfect state, that we should all try to achieve. We should start out in a psychopathic state, and we should be chasing that same state through out our life, if we have ambitions to live the life to the fullest.
What is it that stops us from thinking things through when we have information to do so? In my case, it was all kind of emotional blackmail – constant control through my ability to feel emotions from my surroundings. An intense manipulation, from weak people, that had settled for lies, decay, manipulations and delusions. For all kind of different reasons. When I stepped out of this indoctrination, that I should respond emotionally to all kinds of things on cue from manipulative people around me, everything fell in place. I developed super-powers. I had incredible memory, slept like a rock, woke up refreshed every single morning. Had increased mental powers. I could look over a room of people and I saw clearly differences in people that I had never been able to see before. I gave up constant philosophical ruminations and wanted just to enjoy and be in the moment. I possessed such a quick thinking, that I did not need the same perfection that I had been chasing all my live. If you are the fastest thinking person in the room, you will be the one controlling it. All kind of manipulations and lies had kept my mind occupied all my live, it could never stop, because the equations that I was being feed from my surroundings, were so dramatically wrong, that I would never have been able to come to conclusions about them. They did not add up. They slowed down my thinking and clouded my judgement. I shed all the inherited delusions that had been passed down to me after various traumas in my family tree, and after various traumas in the collective in my surrounding. And my mind fell silent, and became an incredible and efficient tool instead of being a constant source of pain and difficulties.
And this has come to be my guiding light in evaluating psychopaths. It is not some evil characteristics or coldness of emotions. It is this stillness of mind, that gives people an advantage over others. That could be used for evil things, for sure. But to be preoccupied with this one possibility, the evilness that having advantage over others could lead to - I think that is one of the grand delusions we have been chasing to doggedly because of our emotional reactions. Psychopathy has a far broader and much more remarkable meaning then we have been imagining up until now.
Interestingly, this is similar to why I think that Buddhism may have been founded by someone that was psychopathic. It is just a hypothesis, but your experience ring true with it.
I often see people that have experienced enlightenment state as adults and their conclusion from the experience is that they should just be in that stillness of mind, and that they are even entitled to it. They want to pin their surroundings down so nothing can cloud their senses again. And they become controlling and even manipulative against others. If that is the conclusion that an adult comes to more often than not, when he reaches this state, imagine what chance a child has to reach any other conclusion. I think people could go into mal adaptive psychopathic practices if they want to stay in this stillness headspace, no matter the cost.
I imagine there are two ways to stay in the stillness. One is to control the environment so that it does never challenge you enough so that your mind gets clouded again. The other one is to strive to master things until they come embedded into your mind and become a part of the stillness and a strength of your mind. The former one could easily become mal adaptive, the second one takes dedication and time, but as time goes by, you would grow and become stronger and stronger. I think though that people with the former attitude will also grow, but slower and they might have burned some bridges behind them or could have damaged their reputation beyond repair so they do not get to enjoy the same strength as the latter one. In contrast, narcissist for example, will never grow. You have to be connected to your senses, your judgement, your thoughts, to master life. If you always live on someone else’s terms, your brain will never be able to build anything and certainly not the strength that it does when we start off from the psychopathic state. We should not hijack children’s development and force them into constantly pleasing others, they have to be connected to their own thoughts and will and energy. They should meet us through their own mastery. But maybe we should not either hand them the condition to live in psychopathic state uninterrupted, because it is easy to think that you are entitled to the stillness of mind. It takes guidance from others to realise that we have to work our way towards the stillness.
That is what is my assumption about you. I see you working towards the stillness, but you maybe started off as expecting it, being entitled to it, and the price is this psychopathy label that you have deferred to. I apologize for the bluntness. It is only my assumption, standing miles away from you, knowing little to nothing about you.
I am in a state of stillness all the time. I have been my entire life. I have to do nothing to obtain or keep it. It is static and never ending. That is what I meant by Buddhism being started by a psychopath. The way that we experience the world is quiet and very pleasant. Watching other people, it is clear that they are not in that state, and their emotional lives make things very disruptive unnecessarily.
I think Buddhism was a psychopath trying to teach neurotypicals how to detach themselves from their overwhelming emotions and not give them so much power.
The psychopathic state of mind requires no maintenance. It is simply there.
Cristine, what you call enlightenment, was actually the last phase of your brain developing, so I would guess at that time you were around 24 or 25 years old, yes?
It's either that or a temporary "emotional burnout" due to too much negativity suffered. I can see both versions being true, because you've decided to describe the situation lyrically, rather than epically (which is another argument in favor of that being an emotional burnout or 25 years old brain development rather than psychopathic state of mind - how often do you see Athena describe things with such a poetic style?)
What I call enlightenment I actually see as chance outer conditions coming together which freed me from the emotional blackmail we so often think is a normal part of healthy life. Something triggered a storm of new connection at a high speed in my brain. I think it gave me an extra chance to rewire my brain, as an adult – where I could reject all the emotional blackmailing bullshit that did not hold any water, but which I was vulnerable against as a child. I think we can achieve a quite advanced brain development at a very early age. When we do so and there is no adult around to realise how advanced we are to guide us in how to navigate it in a world that is on the whole quite underdeveloped, I wonder if that would be one of the condition that have to be in place, if we allow us to wonder what part if any nurture plays in the development of psychopathy. But if children have a guide to manage the clear and still mind of a young child, it can do wonders, I believe. But we are masters at swiping up our children at a very early age, into extremely emotionally manipulative agendas, which take away their natural stillness of mind and clarity, and sends them into a rabbit hole of impossible tangled perverted connections which contradict each other at every turn and force us to live in perpetual brain or/and body fatigue.
After I acquired suddenly a complete stillness of mind, and my behaviour and attitudes changed dramatically from that experience, people all of the sudden started commenting on my mental strength and fast thinking as some negative trait, which they suspected I possessed to manipulate them in their own passiveness and floating meaningless frightened and paranoid existence. I learned from then on, that to be virtuous or good or even just ok of a person, you have to sacrifice your needs and wants and thoughts to be a proper person. According to the lesser developed in society. Those same people, highjack the development of their own children and frighten them into taking care of everyone else’s needs first or else they will be called names which are meant to be negative and down putting, like selfish, controlling and cold. But by doing that, they halter the incredible brain development that could take place at a very early age.
I hope my brain was not reaching its full potential at that moment. I think that believing you have reached the top in development, will make you blind to mental development which might still be out of your reach, but you might be able to acquire in the future if the conditions come up for it.
I am not labelling myself a psychopath, but I changed my grasp on what was at the root of psychopathy, and I believe that children that get to develop freely in that psychopathic state for the first years of their lives, will become unusually talented, whole and balanced. Either as sharp minded psychopaths that can read every situation effortlessly and manipulate it to their own gain with ease, if they choose so – or as unusually well rounded healthy highly intelligent individuals, that have the ability to excel in life if they choose so. And all kinds of variation of those two extremes that you can think of. Psychopaths are likely to grow out of their worst characteristics with time, I think that speaks to the potential of the state they find themselves in. The self-sacrificing narcissist or co-dependent for example, is on the other hand likely to naturally get worse with time, unless some really extensive intervention is injected into their lives.
Athena says “ The psychopathic state of mind requires no maintenance. It is simply there.” I believe that to. I believe that the psychopathic state of mind should be your foundation to build all further development onto. If you disrupt that state in a young child, if you hijack the child’s mind, it will end up disordered in one way or other. Because you can not build anything on top of a sacrificed, clouded, lost and dishonest mind. If you teach a child to think of all others first, their job will be a bottomless pit, a never-ending task, so they will never get the chance to take care of themselves, they will not even get to know themselves because they will be to busy trying to please groups of persons that do not even know themselves what they most need or want. If you teach a child to take care of itself, that is a doable task. You can master that, and when you do, you will get bored and have plenty of time to meet the needs of others if you are thus inclined. But it will not be appreciated or understood by all the self-sacrificing people that are all around us.
Thank you for the highly detailed reply, but I still do not see an answer to my question here xD It makes me wonder why?
The question was: a) when did that happen? While you were 24/25? Sooner? Before? The point of that question wasn't that you have achieved your "top development" or "cognitive function" then, but rather that's when the brain matured completely and ONLY THEN can you even start climbing to the top of your development.
and
b) If not at age 24/25, could it perhaps be a result of "emotional burnout", that is, too much negativity leading to your brain "giving up" from own and other people's expectations, a state of mind which I quite clearly associate with "enlightenment" as per your description, but which unfortunately doesn't last forever?
Again, thanks for replying in such high detail, but I need answers :D
My age is irrelevant in my opinion, and also from data. People experience those enlightenment experiences at any age. I explained that I believe this happened because of chance outer conditions. At the moment it happened it was not related to other people or where I was in life at that exact moment. It happened because of drug cocktail I was taking after being wrongly diagnosed with a medical condition. And I have also tried to explain that the clarity that I gained, was from being able to free myself from all emotional connection that I have made in life up to then, old and new, and look at myself like an outsider. The drugs started the same enthusiastic brain connectivity probably as the one we experience when we are new-borns. I even felt like I was reborn (not in a religious meaning). My brain did not give up, it was prescription drugged by an incompetent doctor who did not know what drugs he could not mix.
The reason I say that my enlightenment high did not last longer then eight months, is because the complications of modern life are very imposing. In a sense I am actually somewhat living in an enlightened state every day now, I just don't enjoy it as effortlessly like Athena, I am not enjoying the high of it. I know what it is and am unwinding my life to be able to gain the strength that I know she has. To really be in the pure state, and not just know of it or just know how to get there. The last ten years I have been rearranging my life in the right direction so I can have what Athena has. The clarity and stillness, while still navigating the relationships that I chose to keep, but some of those people are manipulating and difficult, and I am playing my new part and giving them time to realise that their old games do not work any more. Many I will probably let lose in the end, but as of now, I am learning a lot in communicating with them from my new reality and perspective. I have still not arrived at the place I want to be at, it will take time, but is getting closer.
Here's a thought. It would be fascinating to hear about you and your psycopath friend, what you though of each other when you met, any clues, how you ended up disclosing to each other. I do realise that this is a bit personal so I'm not holding my breath! Just a thought.
He is more private than I am, which is saying something, which is why there are very few details about him. Everything that I do say about him is cleared first by him, but he wouldn't write anything for this. It's not his thing.
Fair enough! Maybe in your much later career, once prosocial psychopathy is recognised and accepted as being just what it is. (It may happen, just maybe, considering how other forms of neurodivergence are so much better accepted nowdays.)
Tired of people judging others as if they know what everyone is doing in there lives, how dare that bitch asking you if you commit any crimes, that's not her business, she should tape her nose on her face so it don't fly into someone else's business, lol about the autism, superpower to spot psychopaths and sociopaths, like STFU and sit the fuck down girl, and people with low emapthy don't feel right to you, eh who is asking? No one asks for your opinion, if the world only have people with empathy, then it would be a bag of flipping pool and emotions running and ruling the earth or whatever you call it, it needs to be balanced, not people with their emotional crap alone, better to stay in your place and don't run into us people with low empathy
Them going on with that HSP (empath) mindset about spotting psychopaths as a superpower? They watch too many marvel movies so fecking immature and i can't stand people like them lmao 🤣🤣🤣🤣
It is very amusing when I get people that make these claims. They never see their hubris.
A while back, I shared some of what I've learned from you with an acquaintance. She refused to believe it.
A long time ago, I told a coworker about an article I'd read about mirror-image sugar molecules that scientists were studying as a sugar substitute. She said the idea of lef or right handed molecules was ridiculous. She didnt believe it. She knew nothing about chemistry.
I don't run into that kind of attitude often, but when I do, I'm baffled. How can they make any kind of claim unless theyre familiar with the subject? And how can they think that their beliefs about it impacts the fact of it in any way?
People make uninformed opinions on all kinds of things. I agree with your reasoning about psychopathy, but with other topics,. I just don't get it.
What amazes me is the insistence that they are right without being able to answer a single question about the topic that they have drawn conclusions about. Or worse yet, those that will answer the question with provably false information.
I shared Athena's work with three people, all of whom were interested and amazed. I chose them carefully though. On the other hand, I know someone who has spent decades spouting off on so many topics they know nothing about, but I do. It upsets me a lot to see them look such an utter fool, and its so unnecessary. The irony is that if someone is not trained out of this revolting behaviour through parental guidance or by educators, they will think they are doing well, 'winning' arguments and coming across as strong and decisive. Sigh.
I know several people that are the same way, and they are quite exhausting to deal with.
It is so true what you say about applying our experience of the world to others. We are sort of brought up that way, these are emotions, these are situations, this is what people usually do and feel. It took me the longest time to even question that simplistic model let alone get past those assumptions. I know someone who does not have the full typical range of emotions, but having no idea that that even existed, it caused years of misunderstanding. I was shocked to find that my (already partly controlled) visceral emotional reactions were seen as performed attempts to manipulate, they were shocked to hear that their conduct could be callous to the point of cruel. Even regarding a friend of ours, who suffered a lot as a child, they cannot understand why what occurred was a problem. Needless to say it took many years and many conversations to work through all this.
I have had this exact issue when it comes to close relationships with others. They filter our interactions through what they understand, and due to that often misinterpret my meaning or my thinking because if they had said or done whatever I did, they would have X reason behind it.
I don't feel X, which means my motivation is very different than what they are guessing that it is, and sorting it out once doesn't usually correct it in the future either. It is still something that I have to carefully explain how I see things.
It can take more than once to sort it out, but the person I am referring to, while sharing many of your traits of emotions muted or entirely absent, is not psycopathic, as their are many other traits and occurences that rule it out. So we have an easier time of it ('easier' being relative!)
People are strange animals. For some reason they want special powers .
I don't think anyone not properly trained can say that someone is a psychopath. Even some or most professionals can't do it. That's why there are a battery of tests made to figure it out.
I think you'd have to know someone for a very long time and have a lot of knowledge, to even get close to being able to make a good guess.
I do think there are a number of people that can tell when something is off, with someone else, not normal.
To say someone is a psychopath, without the proper testing, I think it's really far fetched.
Usually when I read that kind of thing on Qura, what they describe is someone closer to NPD, and I see no way that you can be a primary psychopath and have NPD , there's just to much emotion in NPD, which requires empathy, not for people sometimes but for themselves.
I just think there are way too many disorders out there that people think are psychopathic because of of...x y or z, when they cannot see the whole picture just by some actions that are similar to what is described as psychopathic. People fill in the blanks and think they have figured out everything.
I don't think it's ever that simple and no one has psychopath radar.
This whole ASPD thing isn't helping as far as I can tell either, its like taking apples, oranges, and bananas and saying they are all the same fruit.
I also think it's lazy, grouping them all together and treating them the same. You can't get orange juice from a banana. Sure they're all fruit but it ends there.
Anyway I'm with you on this one. I think it's just rediculous. I've seen some of the things that people say to you on Qura and I just shake my head. They seem to be hell bent on being right, no matter what information you pass along.
I could go on, but I'm sure you know the reasons why they do this stuff by now.
Actually it is something that I still try to figure out the reasoning for as it seem entirely self limiting to me. Perhaps it is about safety, perhaps it is about the ego trip, maybe there is something that I am missing. Just today I got another person that thinks that they know me better than I do:
"It seems to be that you ave a hard time being able to distinguish cognitive and emotional empathy as it seems like with your discussion with another commenter. This to me indictates you might be on the autism spectrum, since autists tend to have bad cognitive empathy."
This is the end of a very long comment where the person conflates ASPD, psychopathy, NPD, and informs me that psychopaths are absolutely sadists.
I should also mention that this is a person that thinks that they are a psychopath, but also has NPD, and of course ASPD... because they are all the same thing. Oh, and they self assessed... so you know that they are correct.
I agree with your self limiting and safety reasons. Some people really are terrified of having to integrate new information. For some people, too, self limiting is not a bad thing, it's the whole point.
I think it has to do with ego, perhaps someone's with low self esteem, someone who wants to feel better or smarter then they actually are. Most people like that try to over compensate.
Or it could be someone with a large ego, who just thinks they are smarter then everyone else.
Either way it's seems like they are trying to feed their ego .
But hay that's just what it looks like to me .
It gives NT's a good feeling to think they are somehow better or smarter then someone else.
If they think you're highly intelligent and they can out whit you, or think they have, it makes them feel better about themselves.
Now I don't know the why of that, because unlike normal ppl I lack ego, but I notice what others do.
I certainly can see that being a motivation for it.
Oh Boy…
This might get interesting.
Presupposition: all psychopaths fool everyone all of the time, or masking is always perfect.
Expecting it to always be perfect, the psychopath will have to have been exposed to not only the average person, but also the above average, and those were special skill sets of observation, and had enough time to practice with that as well.
No it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just have to be perfect enough, because people assume neural normal by default, and so any supplemental cute as well just slip past the RAS And get filtered out
Presupposition: The psychopath would know that they’re masking works or not in every situation, even if someone doesn’t indicate that they see through it
This assumes that a psychopath is getting honest feedback and behavior from their targets of influence, but it is likely that some of them are giving false feedback or keeping their cards to their chest.
Presupposition: some people claim to have special powers to spot a psychopath, and they are motivated by ego or other similar drivers.
A lot of people believe a lot of false things about themselves, and have magical thinking.
But this does not preclude the possibility that Bona fide skill sets of observation do not exist that would notice psychopathic traits.
Professional magicians, pickpocket artists, card sharks, and hypnotists might be in the category of possibility here.
In summary, your arguments are mostly true, but you cannot know objectively, but you fool everyone all of the time, simply because you don’t always get the feedback to tell you so
I can tell you my own personal experience. I’m a hyper alert person with PTSD, and I mean or have been a clinical hypnotherapist and stage hypnotist.
And I’ve learned a lot from you quite frankly.
What I pick up on his “something is off “and it’s at the domain of nonverbal communication.
But I’ve never had a box to put it in, I didn’t know if it was autism Asperger‘s, narcissism, psychopathy or whatever.
But there are Tells, like poker tells.
Of course you could simply say those are psychopaths that aren’t good at masking, but there’s no way of proving that.
and I have no idea of how many psychopaths I’ve encountered where I detected no tells at all.
You may pick up that something is different, but without reading that person's mind it is impossible to say what the difference is.
Also, unless they are rather poor at masking, it is not simple to pick up on psychopaths because people are looking for traits that they won't have because they have nothing to do with psychopathy.
There is a possibility that people might be better equipped to consider psychopathy after reading what I write, but I don't think it will have a great deal to do with me past me just giving information that isn't fanciful.
Poorly masked psychopaths don't tend to do well in society, so they end up falling into the dregs. They are often criminals because they are unable to get people to want to be around them. I would agree that they would be easier to guess something is up with them, but not because people are skilled at personality interpretation, but rather because the individual is a failed psychopath.
We can assume to agree on your general point, broadly speaking.
And to be able to dial in what the “something is off” actually is, takes quite a bit of exposure to the psychopath over time, to see it within a pattern or frame.
There’s no magic instant tell, no, you can’t see it in their eyes, they don’t look any different than anyone else.
People are kidding themselves.
I have “dated” a few successful psychopath females and so got to observe long term patterns.
We can assume that most successful psychopaths are capable of masking “enough” for the vast majority of interactions.
Yet some of us can sit at the bar in a local dive bar, and have “just an ordinary talk” with some people, and make them unable to smoke ever again, literally.
There are maybe a under a thousand people on earth that can do that.
Because we aren’t having a conversation with their conscious mind…
It’s the part of us that, when we KNOW the power is out, we walk in our front door, and our hand reaches for the light switch regardless.
That’s who we watch.
I can see how professional observers of people would be at an advantage. But since you say yourself that there are many reasons why someone might give off an 'off' vibe, why are you sure that several,of your dates were psychopaths?
Great question
They told me so.
One was a stripper that worked her way up to married a software millionaire.
The other was a watch thief, pickpocket that eventually married a wealthy porn producer.
They found me to be nonjudgmental, intelligent, and useful at the time.
Note they were spectacularly selfish in bed, that appealed to me, I’m curious if that’s a common trait.
After they told you, did that make sense to you and fit with their life/actions/temperament?
From what I understood at the time, it offered an explanation.
This blog confirms it post facto.
The pickpocket was absolutely fearless, it was like watching an alien being with supernatural powers.
She, just to demonstrate her skill, stoled the wallet of a uniformed police officer in broad noon daylight, on a busy city sidewalk with a lot of people around.
Handed it to me.
This is why it’s so hard to detect psychopaths
Structure:
Smooth psychopaths: we nothing unusual at all, because the RAS and normalcy bias screens it out %99 of the time > %1 “l detect” Something is off about them” > it’s nothing, screen it out > They are a little different, aren’t we all, ignore > I’m just being judgmental , ignore > I’m just being paranoid, mind my own business, ignore > maybe they are on antidepressants or something, watch> they seem a little aspie, not important but watch> but I keep noticing tells.. > maybe just a dishonest person putting up a front, use caution > maybe NPD, watch for tantrums and emotional manipulation(simplified) > no tantrums, aloof, might be a psychopath…
Or loop back to the beginning
"The better tuned emotional empathy might pick up on the hollow emotions if they aren’t able to mimic them accurately".
I must admit that I was someone who claimed to be "able to read people"! Haha though would never specify any disorder. Just a broad idea.
Nowdays my understanding is that I can read only what people shows, and people definitely can show many things even if unconsciously. I remember crystal clear instances when someone was playing a performance and something tiny in their facial expressions screamed fake.
They decided to show me their performance, and I was capable of seeing something. If maybe they didn't show it and acted indifferent I would have not been able to wonder about their motives on playing a performance and put their character or intentions on a certain ballpark. I saw what they shown.
In my experience women were better at going under the radar than men. It's situational dependant too, there might be people who feel more or less comfortable playing a malicious act to you than to others for many reasons and you can pick up on that.
In regards to cognitive empathy, regular interactions can be more reasonable to gauge. But I've seen the craziest cognitive processes when romantic relationships, or honor, were involved. It's nearly impossible to predict what a person is trully feeling or thinking in certain scenarios. And it can be beyond a lenses concept but rather disorders that maybe they refuse to treat - it takes courage to admit smth isn't quite right with you lol.
I want to finish my comment by asking you something:
You've never seen a picture or a person IRL and their body composition (composition, yes) or facial features gave you the impression that they "aren't a good person"? Purely based on phisycal appearance.
I know when I don't like someone, and pick up on it far faster than other people. However, it is because I have been studying people my entire life, so I am able to see things that others miss.
I was curious to see how you dismantle the argument of schizoid personality disorder, because reading your posts made me think of that diagnosis to be the CLOSEST to how I imagine you to be after reading your posts:
-The emphasis is on behaviors and appearances, rather than emotions and feelings;
-The behaviors under that diagnosis do sound like something which NT-s would make out of trying to connect to you, provided that you did not have sufficient motivation to act differently in their vicinitiy;
-It's a highly misunderstood and misdiagnozed disorder (too many similiarities with schizotypal and even some autistic subtypes);
-Its' prevalence (around 5% in USA) does sound much more intuitive to me than 1-2% for psychopaths (I have my own reasons for such an intuition, one which cognitively wouldn't make sense to you now).
I would add to that some things, change a few (such as sexuality - I've read articles where the opposite was proven to be possible for schizoids as well, so this portrait of that disorder is actually old and incomplete) and it really WOULD appear to be much closer to psychopathy than any other DSM V article.
If we can find an existing diagnosis to build on, rather than inventing a completely new one, I don't see a reason for ignoring such an opportunity. Please let me know what you think of that idea!
I'm not sure what you mean by the argument of schizoid personality disorder.
If you are thinking that psychopathy is anything like it you are very mistaken. There is nothing that is even remotely similar between them. I suggest reading answers by Elinor Greenberg over on Quora.
https://www.quora.com/profile/Elinor-Greenberg
Or listening to her interviews with people with it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ODFnKRO3wo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHLU0HZAYSo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icEIZN6_V90&t=3s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0bnbFyWGeA&t=3s
It is nothing at all like psychopathy. The emotional experience is completely different, their thinking it completely different, it is something that is created in childhood, and they experience existential dread which is totally unrelatable to psychopathy. That is like trying to find similarity between the moon and spaghetti.
Haha, alright, thanks for the links. I guess I don't understand schizoid at all - after all, I've never seen someone with that disorder create their own website about schizoid PD :D
It's interesting
Lol. After reading the first snip-it I just find it ironic that some random internet user, presumably from Quora fancies themselves a psychopath spotter... yet they have autism, a condition characterized by deficiencies in visual-spatial awareness that verge on intellectual disability in most cases. I wonder what kind of alternate meta reality this person is living in where someones eyes are a determining factor in how psychopathic they are.
Whatever their reasoning is, it is interesting to me that this is their attitude, when there is a lot of prejudice regarding people with autism. They likely don't prefer when they are on the receiving end, but have no problem being a part of the problem.
It's a common trait of autists to not be able to see outside of their own perspective and I'm not convinced it's because they lack empathy because so do I and I'm not like that, it just seems like a genuine lack of insight outside of their own view.
What would happen to a clouded, preoccupied mind, if everything suddenly fell silent? How occupied are our minds normally? Is our mind constantly on, taking on some unresolved stuff that we do not have answers to? Well, yes, for most people, the mind is probably pretty occupied. One day, my mind came to a complete halt. To be more precise, through a series of events, I suddenly gave myself the permission to come to conclusions on all things, without needing anyone’s else’s permission. And everything fell totally silent in my mind. “Well”, I thought, “I am experiencing enlightenment, what an amazing experience!”
For eight months following that day, I was in constant state of nirvana that I would rather not lose again. But I was not in a position to live my life as this state required me to, if I wanted to sustain it. After I fell out of this perfect state, I have been living in awe of psychopaths. It was not clear right away, but while analysing what happened, this has slowly been forming as the conclusion from this experience. And I am amazed at how the rest of us have screwed our lives up with emotional reactions that take away this perfect state that I got to know for a brief time.
When I try to evaluate if someone might either be a psychopath, or have psychopathic tendencies, I use this experience of mine. My working theory now is that the psychopathic state is a somewhat perfect state, that we should all try to achieve. We should start out in a psychopathic state, and we should be chasing that same state through out our life, if we have ambitions to live the life to the fullest.
What is it that stops us from thinking things through when we have information to do so? In my case, it was all kind of emotional blackmail – constant control through my ability to feel emotions from my surroundings. An intense manipulation, from weak people, that had settled for lies, decay, manipulations and delusions. For all kind of different reasons. When I stepped out of this indoctrination, that I should respond emotionally to all kinds of things on cue from manipulative people around me, everything fell in place. I developed super-powers. I had incredible memory, slept like a rock, woke up refreshed every single morning. Had increased mental powers. I could look over a room of people and I saw clearly differences in people that I had never been able to see before. I gave up constant philosophical ruminations and wanted just to enjoy and be in the moment. I possessed such a quick thinking, that I did not need the same perfection that I had been chasing all my live. If you are the fastest thinking person in the room, you will be the one controlling it. All kind of manipulations and lies had kept my mind occupied all my live, it could never stop, because the equations that I was being feed from my surroundings, were so dramatically wrong, that I would never have been able to come to conclusions about them. They did not add up. They slowed down my thinking and clouded my judgement. I shed all the inherited delusions that had been passed down to me after various traumas in my family tree, and after various traumas in the collective in my surrounding. And my mind fell silent, and became an incredible and efficient tool instead of being a constant source of pain and difficulties.
And this has come to be my guiding light in evaluating psychopaths. It is not some evil characteristics or coldness of emotions. It is this stillness of mind, that gives people an advantage over others. That could be used for evil things, for sure. But to be preoccupied with this one possibility, the evilness that having advantage over others could lead to - I think that is one of the grand delusions we have been chasing to doggedly because of our emotional reactions. Psychopathy has a far broader and much more remarkable meaning then we have been imagining up until now.
Interestingly, this is similar to why I think that Buddhism may have been founded by someone that was psychopathic. It is just a hypothesis, but your experience ring true with it.
I often see people that have experienced enlightenment state as adults and their conclusion from the experience is that they should just be in that stillness of mind, and that they are even entitled to it. They want to pin their surroundings down so nothing can cloud their senses again. And they become controlling and even manipulative against others. If that is the conclusion that an adult comes to more often than not, when he reaches this state, imagine what chance a child has to reach any other conclusion. I think people could go into mal adaptive psychopathic practices if they want to stay in this stillness headspace, no matter the cost.
I imagine there are two ways to stay in the stillness. One is to control the environment so that it does never challenge you enough so that your mind gets clouded again. The other one is to strive to master things until they come embedded into your mind and become a part of the stillness and a strength of your mind. The former one could easily become mal adaptive, the second one takes dedication and time, but as time goes by, you would grow and become stronger and stronger. I think though that people with the former attitude will also grow, but slower and they might have burned some bridges behind them or could have damaged their reputation beyond repair so they do not get to enjoy the same strength as the latter one. In contrast, narcissist for example, will never grow. You have to be connected to your senses, your judgement, your thoughts, to master life. If you always live on someone else’s terms, your brain will never be able to build anything and certainly not the strength that it does when we start off from the psychopathic state. We should not hijack children’s development and force them into constantly pleasing others, they have to be connected to their own thoughts and will and energy. They should meet us through their own mastery. But maybe we should not either hand them the condition to live in psychopathic state uninterrupted, because it is easy to think that you are entitled to the stillness of mind. It takes guidance from others to realise that we have to work our way towards the stillness.
That is what is my assumption about you. I see you working towards the stillness, but you maybe started off as expecting it, being entitled to it, and the price is this psychopathy label that you have deferred to. I apologize for the bluntness. It is only my assumption, standing miles away from you, knowing little to nothing about you.
I am in a state of stillness all the time. I have been my entire life. I have to do nothing to obtain or keep it. It is static and never ending. That is what I meant by Buddhism being started by a psychopath. The way that we experience the world is quiet and very pleasant. Watching other people, it is clear that they are not in that state, and their emotional lives make things very disruptive unnecessarily.
I think Buddhism was a psychopath trying to teach neurotypicals how to detach themselves from their overwhelming emotions and not give them so much power.
The psychopathic state of mind requires no maintenance. It is simply there.
Cristine, what you call enlightenment, was actually the last phase of your brain developing, so I would guess at that time you were around 24 or 25 years old, yes?
It's either that or a temporary "emotional burnout" due to too much negativity suffered. I can see both versions being true, because you've decided to describe the situation lyrically, rather than epically (which is another argument in favor of that being an emotional burnout or 25 years old brain development rather than psychopathic state of mind - how often do you see Athena describe things with such a poetic style?)
What I call enlightenment I actually see as chance outer conditions coming together which freed me from the emotional blackmail we so often think is a normal part of healthy life. Something triggered a storm of new connection at a high speed in my brain. I think it gave me an extra chance to rewire my brain, as an adult – where I could reject all the emotional blackmailing bullshit that did not hold any water, but which I was vulnerable against as a child. I think we can achieve a quite advanced brain development at a very early age. When we do so and there is no adult around to realise how advanced we are to guide us in how to navigate it in a world that is on the whole quite underdeveloped, I wonder if that would be one of the condition that have to be in place, if we allow us to wonder what part if any nurture plays in the development of psychopathy. But if children have a guide to manage the clear and still mind of a young child, it can do wonders, I believe. But we are masters at swiping up our children at a very early age, into extremely emotionally manipulative agendas, which take away their natural stillness of mind and clarity, and sends them into a rabbit hole of impossible tangled perverted connections which contradict each other at every turn and force us to live in perpetual brain or/and body fatigue.
After I acquired suddenly a complete stillness of mind, and my behaviour and attitudes changed dramatically from that experience, people all of the sudden started commenting on my mental strength and fast thinking as some negative trait, which they suspected I possessed to manipulate them in their own passiveness and floating meaningless frightened and paranoid existence. I learned from then on, that to be virtuous or good or even just ok of a person, you have to sacrifice your needs and wants and thoughts to be a proper person. According to the lesser developed in society. Those same people, highjack the development of their own children and frighten them into taking care of everyone else’s needs first or else they will be called names which are meant to be negative and down putting, like selfish, controlling and cold. But by doing that, they halter the incredible brain development that could take place at a very early age.
I hope my brain was not reaching its full potential at that moment. I think that believing you have reached the top in development, will make you blind to mental development which might still be out of your reach, but you might be able to acquire in the future if the conditions come up for it.
I am not labelling myself a psychopath, but I changed my grasp on what was at the root of psychopathy, and I believe that children that get to develop freely in that psychopathic state for the first years of their lives, will become unusually talented, whole and balanced. Either as sharp minded psychopaths that can read every situation effortlessly and manipulate it to their own gain with ease, if they choose so – or as unusually well rounded healthy highly intelligent individuals, that have the ability to excel in life if they choose so. And all kinds of variation of those two extremes that you can think of. Psychopaths are likely to grow out of their worst characteristics with time, I think that speaks to the potential of the state they find themselves in. The self-sacrificing narcissist or co-dependent for example, is on the other hand likely to naturally get worse with time, unless some really extensive intervention is injected into their lives.
Athena says “ The psychopathic state of mind requires no maintenance. It is simply there.” I believe that to. I believe that the psychopathic state of mind should be your foundation to build all further development onto. If you disrupt that state in a young child, if you hijack the child’s mind, it will end up disordered in one way or other. Because you can not build anything on top of a sacrificed, clouded, lost and dishonest mind. If you teach a child to think of all others first, their job will be a bottomless pit, a never-ending task, so they will never get the chance to take care of themselves, they will not even get to know themselves because they will be to busy trying to please groups of persons that do not even know themselves what they most need or want. If you teach a child to take care of itself, that is a doable task. You can master that, and when you do, you will get bored and have plenty of time to meet the needs of others if you are thus inclined. But it will not be appreciated or understood by all the self-sacrificing people that are all around us.
Thank you for the highly detailed reply, but I still do not see an answer to my question here xD It makes me wonder why?
The question was: a) when did that happen? While you were 24/25? Sooner? Before? The point of that question wasn't that you have achieved your "top development" or "cognitive function" then, but rather that's when the brain matured completely and ONLY THEN can you even start climbing to the top of your development.
and
b) If not at age 24/25, could it perhaps be a result of "emotional burnout", that is, too much negativity leading to your brain "giving up" from own and other people's expectations, a state of mind which I quite clearly associate with "enlightenment" as per your description, but which unfortunately doesn't last forever?
Again, thanks for replying in such high detail, but I need answers :D
My age is irrelevant in my opinion, and also from data. People experience those enlightenment experiences at any age. I explained that I believe this happened because of chance outer conditions. At the moment it happened it was not related to other people or where I was in life at that exact moment. It happened because of drug cocktail I was taking after being wrongly diagnosed with a medical condition. And I have also tried to explain that the clarity that I gained, was from being able to free myself from all emotional connection that I have made in life up to then, old and new, and look at myself like an outsider. The drugs started the same enthusiastic brain connectivity probably as the one we experience when we are new-borns. I even felt like I was reborn (not in a religious meaning). My brain did not give up, it was prescription drugged by an incompetent doctor who did not know what drugs he could not mix.
The reason I say that my enlightenment high did not last longer then eight months, is because the complications of modern life are very imposing. In a sense I am actually somewhat living in an enlightened state every day now, I just don't enjoy it as effortlessly like Athena, I am not enjoying the high of it. I know what it is and am unwinding my life to be able to gain the strength that I know she has. To really be in the pure state, and not just know of it or just know how to get there. The last ten years I have been rearranging my life in the right direction so I can have what Athena has. The clarity and stillness, while still navigating the relationships that I chose to keep, but some of those people are manipulating and difficult, and I am playing my new part and giving them time to realise that their old games do not work any more. Many I will probably let lose in the end, but as of now, I am learning a lot in communicating with them from my new reality and perspective. I have still not arrived at the place I want to be at, it will take time, but is getting closer.
Here's a thought. It would be fascinating to hear about you and your psycopath friend, what you though of each other when you met, any clues, how you ended up disclosing to each other. I do realise that this is a bit personal so I'm not holding my breath! Just a thought.
He is more private than I am, which is saying something, which is why there are very few details about him. Everything that I do say about him is cleared first by him, but he wouldn't write anything for this. It's not his thing.
Fair enough! Maybe in your much later career, once prosocial psychopathy is recognised and accepted as being just what it is. (It may happen, just maybe, considering how other forms of neurodivergence are so much better accepted nowdays.)
Possibly