The anger bit reminded me of a discussion I had with my colleagues not too long ago. We had a murderer come in for critical surgery which inspired said discussion. A lot of them truly believed they would never commit murder and only 'evil' people could do such thing. No matter how many scenarios I would come up with, their answer was always no. I find it fascinating that people refuse to accept that everyone is capable of commiting atrocities under the right circumstances. Literally just open a History book. It's just that it would take a bit more for some people to get there.
Absolutely, it is a bit ironic. As I see it, it takes a strong view of oneself as oh-so-good to feed this denial. But isn't it dangerous? Not knowing what your breaking point is because you don't believe you have one to begin with?
Eh... Pity with the anger bit, but I do feel like taking all the available solace in the fact they brought up that violence is manyrooted and a people-thing rather than its height being directly proportionate only to degree of psychopatic traits.
That did make me laugh. He was doing so well up to that point, then I saw the word anger and was like 'no, no, no'. (Almost) total lack of emotion really is a very alien concept to NT's, you really have to hammer it home repeatedly for us to get it. And even then we'll forget 5 minutes later. It's just part of our DNA, we can't really conceive of a world without it. That's why your stories of ordinary everyday events and the totally foreign way you experience them are so helpful - we could've heard it said 100 times that psychopaths don't have emotions, but it's not till we hear those stories that we realize oh wow, you REALLY don't have those emotions.
I totally get that, as I have had this experience with neurotypicals a lot. I might write about an incident that happened today, provided the other person is okay with it.
Not sure I agree 100% about a therapist being able to help someone with psychopathy. I could see a therapist being useful to explain things on a cognitive level that a psychopath would have difficulty understanding such as grief or anxiety.
I agree with that notion, but they would have to be a very skilled therapist with a high level of cognitive empathy to accomplish that, and that is a very rare thing to come across.
It might require a lot of research to find one but I would assume there are several that fit the bill. If nothing else I'm sure they would be curious and interested at the possibility of conversation with a person with psychopathic traits.
Thank you for another great post. I need to read it a few more times to follow everything... I had one reaction based upon personal experience, though, re. "defensive projection of blame".
It's a phrase that can be interpreted several ways, like so much in psychology and psychiatry. The person I know whose words best fit "defensive projection of blame", would often do something violent/coercive to get what they wanted. They would then seem to truly blame their target for the violence.
I don't believe they are a psychopath; they would apologize later for the action, seeming to actually feel bad about the harm, they knew that the harm was a bad thing and when not in the emotional phase where they'd be violent, they'd be against that sort of thing happening. The target "made them do it" because they did (X) - something without sound logic - so the targeter was not at fault; it's a shame people did things that made the targeter get violent. So blame fell on the target inside this person's head; "defensive", on an emotional level.
I'd suspect that this sort of emotional dynamic would not take place in a psychopath's thinking, if I understand correctly.
There is also the interpretation of "defensive" as part of a external rationale given to other people for one's behavior, which perhaps a psychopath might do to avoid unwanted consequences from others. This isn't the definition of "defensive" I feel is most used in the psych professions though.
That reminds me of domestic violence cases where the abuser says, "They made me do it. They know how to push my buttons." That, somehow, the other person deserved it.
Yes, same dynamic, but not always done by a partner. Parents or children can do this to their kids or parents, sometimes society uses different words for it. Parents with an abusive older child can face a very complex mess of emotions, if NT.
I think that emotional frustration experienced during a conflict might register in similar way as physical stressor and activates primitive urge to physically fight it off. An assaultant needs to be intimidated and incapacitated for the danger to subside.
And when one is "at loss of speech" due to being ovrwhelmed by emotion, physical expression communicates very well that one is feeling violated. The effect can be two-fold - scaring off the other prty with promise of consequences and inducing guilt and or care by confronting them with the height of your suffering (which lights memory of that emotion from their own exprience and could move them to soothing action for both parties).
Aaand then there is actually believing that hurting them so cruelly (because their circuits are oversensitive to such trigger, especially if they are desperately keeping out awareness of some issue and now it is forcefully brought to their attention by other party) must be intentional. We have bias to asign our actions with circumstanciality and others' actions with intentionality. Not that everyone will always assume so, but the tendency is there.
If the other is significant or relative, that means also higher expectations placed on them than on other people and can (together with being more sensitive to their actions and failures in suplying feel-good) translate to feeling betrayed and thus very strongly retaliative.
Returning back to denial... If they assert dominane and win the altercation phisically that might actually feel like they proved themselves and their point, restored their questioned status. It gave control of the situaton to them. They were crumbling inside, their certainties and sense of self-perception might have been crumbling. Gods help if public standing is also involved since without degree of acceptance in a group we are left on our own ergo we are left to die.
We exist in world by asserting our will, shaping our environment into what we need it to be. We cannot reshape everything. But certain degree of that is inbuilt and required - with our hands we kill our prey and then rend its flesh with our teeth, we push and waddle through snow and mud and weeds and mass of other bodies, we ground seeds, chop wood, break stone and bones (to suck bone marrow inside). We order things and make observations and threats to order we rely on and stimuli overwhelming our systems are dealt with just as those physical obstacles. There is continuum between arguing back, screaming, slamming fists onto nearby objects and slamming them onto the source of frustration. It makes sense on instinctual level. And culturally might makes right ain't exactly rooted out. Men were long considered as equipped with strength or the purpose of solving problems exactly this way. Parent in relationship to children similarly (which might tie also to "better if I hurt the child in controlled manner than leaving the child to their own devices to harm themselves in uncontrolled manner, they are part of me after all like my hand").
And an anecdote... Sometmes there were debates in our family on various things and I would take part even as younger and the hearing someone prattle on while heving strong sense of how very off the mark they are was frustrating in two ways. One was wasting time by waiting till they fnish their point divorced from reality, or even covering ten points in one speech which makes difficult to adresss each to dismantle the mental construction. Another was this... Feeling of how much trouble such convictions translate into when one acts according to them in the world, esp. with wide-spread conviction. The sheer despair of seeing someone build a badly balanced house and waiting for it to crumble wastefully, dangerously and then even watching them draw wrong conclussions from the event and respond with another stupidity to wrong target. That sort of impression (not neccesarilly correct, but feeling very real) arose in me and listening to such speech was actually making me physically super restless. I needed to do something with that energy. To release it somehow. I did not hit anyone. But pacing, clutching myself, even carefully knocking my head against nearest surface were "taking over me". Feeling like getting more and more inarticulate was also fun spice to have thrown in the mix.
The anger bit reminded me of a discussion I had with my colleagues not too long ago. We had a murderer come in for critical surgery which inspired said discussion. A lot of them truly believed they would never commit murder and only 'evil' people could do such thing. No matter how many scenarios I would come up with, their answer was always no. I find it fascinating that people refuse to accept that everyone is capable of commiting atrocities under the right circumstances. Literally just open a History book. It's just that it would take a bit more for some people to get there.
It is that denial that makes it that much easier to convince them to do it with the right circumstances and emotional push to do so.
Absolutely, it is a bit ironic. As I see it, it takes a strong view of oneself as oh-so-good to feed this denial. But isn't it dangerous? Not knowing what your breaking point is because you don't believe you have one to begin with?
I believe so, yes.
Eh... Pity with the anger bit, but I do feel like taking all the available solace in the fact they brought up that violence is manyrooted and a people-thing rather than its height being directly proportionate only to degree of psychopatic traits.
A bad person is a bad person,no matter what their gender ,personality,race and so on is.That was a good post,good but long.
Long indeed
Asocial was another term related to aspd? When I read that part, I was like "huh??"
Right? That makes no sense to me. I always thought "asocial" meant introverted.
Exactly! I thought the same!
"Aww… look at that… right off the cliff"
That did make me laugh. He was doing so well up to that point, then I saw the word anger and was like 'no, no, no'. (Almost) total lack of emotion really is a very alien concept to NT's, you really have to hammer it home repeatedly for us to get it. And even then we'll forget 5 minutes later. It's just part of our DNA, we can't really conceive of a world without it. That's why your stories of ordinary everyday events and the totally foreign way you experience them are so helpful - we could've heard it said 100 times that psychopaths don't have emotions, but it's not till we hear those stories that we realize oh wow, you REALLY don't have those emotions.
I totally get that, as I have had this experience with neurotypicals a lot. I might write about an incident that happened today, provided the other person is okay with it.
Yes please, we love the everyday life stories :o)
Not sure I agree 100% about a therapist being able to help someone with psychopathy. I could see a therapist being useful to explain things on a cognitive level that a psychopath would have difficulty understanding such as grief or anxiety.
I agree with that notion, but they would have to be a very skilled therapist with a high level of cognitive empathy to accomplish that, and that is a very rare thing to come across.
It might require a lot of research to find one but I would assume there are several that fit the bill. If nothing else I'm sure they would be curious and interested at the possibility of conversation with a person with psychopathic traits.
Possibly.
Thank you for another great post. I need to read it a few more times to follow everything... I had one reaction based upon personal experience, though, re. "defensive projection of blame".
It's a phrase that can be interpreted several ways, like so much in psychology and psychiatry. The person I know whose words best fit "defensive projection of blame", would often do something violent/coercive to get what they wanted. They would then seem to truly blame their target for the violence.
I don't believe they are a psychopath; they would apologize later for the action, seeming to actually feel bad about the harm, they knew that the harm was a bad thing and when not in the emotional phase where they'd be violent, they'd be against that sort of thing happening. The target "made them do it" because they did (X) - something without sound logic - so the targeter was not at fault; it's a shame people did things that made the targeter get violent. So blame fell on the target inside this person's head; "defensive", on an emotional level.
I'd suspect that this sort of emotional dynamic would not take place in a psychopath's thinking, if I understand correctly.
There is also the interpretation of "defensive" as part of a external rationale given to other people for one's behavior, which perhaps a psychopath might do to avoid unwanted consequences from others. This isn't the definition of "defensive" I feel is most used in the psych professions though.
That reminds me of domestic violence cases where the abuser says, "They made me do it. They know how to push my buttons." That, somehow, the other person deserved it.
Yes, same dynamic, but not always done by a partner. Parents or children can do this to their kids or parents, sometimes society uses different words for it. Parents with an abusive older child can face a very complex mess of emotions, if NT.
God forbid you just walk away from the situation
Right? I do not get the whole hitting you significant other
I don't get hitting anyone unless I have no other options. Battery is a bad charge and brings negative attention. Not a good option
Just a theory here, but...
I think that emotional frustration experienced during a conflict might register in similar way as physical stressor and activates primitive urge to physically fight it off. An assaultant needs to be intimidated and incapacitated for the danger to subside.
And when one is "at loss of speech" due to being ovrwhelmed by emotion, physical expression communicates very well that one is feeling violated. The effect can be two-fold - scaring off the other prty with promise of consequences and inducing guilt and or care by confronting them with the height of your suffering (which lights memory of that emotion from their own exprience and could move them to soothing action for both parties).
Aaand then there is actually believing that hurting them so cruelly (because their circuits are oversensitive to such trigger, especially if they are desperately keeping out awareness of some issue and now it is forcefully brought to their attention by other party) must be intentional. We have bias to asign our actions with circumstanciality and others' actions with intentionality. Not that everyone will always assume so, but the tendency is there.
If the other is significant or relative, that means also higher expectations placed on them than on other people and can (together with being more sensitive to their actions and failures in suplying feel-good) translate to feeling betrayed and thus very strongly retaliative.
Returning back to denial... If they assert dominane and win the altercation phisically that might actually feel like they proved themselves and their point, restored their questioned status. It gave control of the situaton to them. They were crumbling inside, their certainties and sense of self-perception might have been crumbling. Gods help if public standing is also involved since without degree of acceptance in a group we are left on our own ergo we are left to die.
We exist in world by asserting our will, shaping our environment into what we need it to be. We cannot reshape everything. But certain degree of that is inbuilt and required - with our hands we kill our prey and then rend its flesh with our teeth, we push and waddle through snow and mud and weeds and mass of other bodies, we ground seeds, chop wood, break stone and bones (to suck bone marrow inside). We order things and make observations and threats to order we rely on and stimuli overwhelming our systems are dealt with just as those physical obstacles. There is continuum between arguing back, screaming, slamming fists onto nearby objects and slamming them onto the source of frustration. It makes sense on instinctual level. And culturally might makes right ain't exactly rooted out. Men were long considered as equipped with strength or the purpose of solving problems exactly this way. Parent in relationship to children similarly (which might tie also to "better if I hurt the child in controlled manner than leaving the child to their own devices to harm themselves in uncontrolled manner, they are part of me after all like my hand").
And an anecdote... Sometmes there were debates in our family on various things and I would take part even as younger and the hearing someone prattle on while heving strong sense of how very off the mark they are was frustrating in two ways. One was wasting time by waiting till they fnish their point divorced from reality, or even covering ten points in one speech which makes difficult to adresss each to dismantle the mental construction. Another was this... Feeling of how much trouble such convictions translate into when one acts according to them in the world, esp. with wide-spread conviction. The sheer despair of seeing someone build a badly balanced house and waiting for it to crumble wastefully, dangerously and then even watching them draw wrong conclussions from the event and respond with another stupidity to wrong target. That sort of impression (not neccesarilly correct, but feeling very real) arose in me and listening to such speech was actually making me physically super restless. I needed to do something with that energy. To release it somehow. I did not hit anyone. But pacing, clutching myself, even carefully knocking my head against nearest surface were "taking over me". Feeling like getting more and more inarticulate was also fun spice to have thrown in the mix.
I'd like to note I don't get so riled up anymore.
Totally agree