There is a strange but empowering freedom to knowing that almost every single person you have ever met, and almost every single person you will ever meet, would fear and despise you and wish for your death if they actually knew the truth about you. You can draw strength from it, set yourself above others.
And the same follower (I presume) sent me this follow up note:
It’s worth noting that, according to the (admittedly rather dubious and hypocritical) standards of society, you and others like you already *are* the bad guys, whether or not you’ve actually done anything bad.
They make a good point, though I do not wish to look too deeply into the exact wording that they use. Many in times of strife use their plight as a means to reach farther and dig deeper for the energy required to make their situation better. I don’t believe the psychopath loses sleep over her position in society, however. Her narcissism already has her believing that she is above others, however the status of being the bad guy can lead to an even more potent ego-boost. When you are better than everyone and feared, what more is there to attain?
Working is a sore subject for most psychopaths. We are insatiable bored, yet we rarely feel the need to fill such boredom with activities that are not of our own choosing. I’m sure that we all recognize that we need money and that employment is a recognizable source of income, but we are also torn by our damnable state of ennui. “I need something to do, but not that“, I’d imagine the psychopathic reader thinking to themselves. We want to reap a harvest but we do not want one bead of sweat to drip from our brows.
A reader asked me a vague question regarding friendship. Am I friends with other psychopaths? Am I friends with neurotypicals? Am I friends with anyone? I have at most one friend. The reasons will become clear by the end of this post, but I would like the neurotypical reader, especially, to think hard about what actually constitutes a friend. Is it someone whose company you enjoy? A person that you interact with online? Can only paramours be friends? Think long and hard and then continue reading after the break.
The quickest way to be discovered as a fake is to lack personality. Too many false psychopaths try to fit in by appearing to be prototypical. They attempt to win legitimacy through descriptions of lurid dreams and deeds without offering anything of what makes them, “them”. They are walking caricatures, devoid of individuality and sanity. They distort their cartoonish dimensions until they feel that others recognize them for what they must be: psychopaths. In reality they are not, however, and the trained eye can weed them out so quickly. Ultimately the reason they think that they can pull the wool over our eyes is because they believe it to be heresy to be an individual, non-prototypical and true.
Relationships have been on my mind a lot lately. I’ve been torn between seeking a more traditional relationship where there are expectations of love, emotional bonding, and care and those relationships that I’d be more likely to succeed with. I’ve listed what is needed for the former. However, I have begun to think of the latter as something a bit beyond my analogy of potted plants, although not by much. The relationship that I am most likely to succeed in involves mutual indifference yet a commitment by the other to “buy in” in order to work.
A respected psychopathic acquaintance of mine over on tumblr gave me the following prompt to write about this evening:
Physical illness and psychopathy. Do we handle illness better than normal people and if not, would typical behavior bite one in the ass? (You have the flu and insist on going out poorly dressed for the cold, or maybe continuously get sunburn because sunblock isn’t worth the…
Essentially, I think this gets at a core feature of ASPD (though accentuated by psychopathy), namely the disregard for the safety of self. Psychopaths in particular take this one step further with their self-grandiosity and borderline delusions of “nothing bad can happen to me.” If you don’t give a shit about yourself and you believe you are invincible anyway, then I think it becomes common for the antisocial to be afflicted with pains and illnesses that could easily be avoided with a bit of common sense.
A great privilege held by the antisocial, and in particular, the psychopath, is the ability to refrain from assigning value judgement to others’ lifestyles or proclivities. Sure, many of us feel that a certain degree of gamesmanship is in order, but one can recognize inequalities without placing charged values on the legitimacy of those inequalities. In essence, we are neutral in mind even if we may not be neutral in action. However, I believe that being removed from the positive or negative emotions associated with the alignment of others allows us a much clearer mind should we choose to strike.
What effect does silence have on the brain? For many with psychological disorders, the ability to speak openly regarding such is compromised. There is great stigma regarding many of the less “cuddly” disorders that ravage many. Few wish to associate with the schizophrenic or the antisocial, for example. So many of us hide in plain sight, forcing ourselves to be mute and contorting our bodies and actions into shapes inconceivable to us. Whether it is the antisocial feigning remorse or the schizophrenic hiding their atypical ways, we enter a form of isolation, being real and honest to no one – including ourselves.
Given that yesterday’s post on remorse blew up my tumblr following, I thought that I’d share the results of a question I asked my therapist. This question was born from the innumerable asks I received regarding other ASPD individuals and whether they were feeling remorse or something else entirely. I was asked if worrying about one’s reputation was remorse if the individual wanted to go back in time and fix it. I was asked if remorse was solely with respect to harming another. I was given comments by readers that ended up more confused than before they read my post. So I asked my therapist point blank: what is remorse?
I’ve committed a great number of grievances in my lifetime. I’ve stolen, I’ve caused bodily harm, I’ve defrauded, and so on and so forth. Never have I really felt bad about any of these sins though. Well, at least not bad for those that I’ve hurt. I often worry about my reputation and my ability to move along undetected. Any pang in the pit of my stomach is internal in nature rather than external. It’s easy for me to say that I do not see the logic in crying over others’ hurt feelings or lighter pockets – which I don’t – but I think that it is just as important to note that such an automatic and debilitating response does not come to me anyway. There is no governor to hold me accountable through self-inflicted emotions. It just isn’t there.