know yourself
“LOOK AT THE PICTURE!WHAT EMOTION?! WHAT EXPRESSION WOULD YOU SAY IS ON THAT CHILD’S FACE?! HONESTLY AND EARNESTLY TELL ME WHAT YOU CAN IDENTIFY THERE!”
“nothing.”
“THANK YOU! GOD! I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE, WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN LIKE THIS.SO STOP FUCKING PRETENDING!”
“okay. you know, i just noticed it in that picture, i guess i’ve always always tilted my head that way in photos.”
some excerpts:
“Everything became a moral issue. I had to be perfect, and I had to have good intentions about everything.If I did something good but it wasn’t from the heart, I would start thinking that it was immoral.”
“for all the psychopaths, including dictators, who had psychiatric reports from their youth, all had been abused and often had lost one or more of their biological parents.”
“As such, it was possible that more than 90 percent of them were abused at some point in their early life. Add to this those psychopaths who protect their abusers, and the percentage could approach 99 percent, or so I reasoned.”
“So emotional abuse or abandonment at the age of a year or two is far more deleterious to the child’s development and later behavior as a teen and adult than abuse or abandonment at age six or ten.”
“If at the age of two a child suffers damage to the orbital cortex, which is involved in ethics and morality, he may never develop a sense of right and wrong and may become profoundly psychopathic. If the damage occurs at the age of eight, the person’s orbital cortex may have helped other parts of the brain understand right and wrong, but he won’t be able to stop himself from committing wrong, as the orbital cortex is also involved in inhibition.”
“Even without specific brain damage, several psychiatric diseases can rear their heads later in life.”
“I say “in love,” but I’ve never truly felt fully emotionally connected to her. My connection with her emerged partially because I didn’t connect empathetically. I never understood her. She was fascinating to me, and still is.”
“my attraction was dominated less by warmth than by entertainment and an intellectual interest.”
“I started to value people for the fun I could have with them”
“most psychopaths are not violent, they often treat individuals in a callous, almost numb way—they just don’t care. But many express caring for something, and often someone.”
“Even psychopathic murderers will express their love for their parents and siblings, even if those same people were the ones who initially triggered the psychopathic tendencies through abuse and abandonment early on in the psychopath’s life.”
“ I knew it wasn’t right, but nobody got hurt so I didn’t see the big deal.”
“Some come from bad families and lash out angrily because their fathers beat them. Most are numb, and it takes a lot to stimulate them. Like an addict, they have to do more and more to get a buzz, they need more and more extreme experiences to feel anything. That can be expressed positively, through romance, or, if they’ve been abused, revenge.”
“People close to you naturally desire to be treated in a very special way emotionally, and not being able to deliver that connectivity from the heart can be a big problem for such relationships.”
“A lot of people would say I’m very giving, and that I do a lot of helpful things for people, but a chunk of that motivation is so I can call on them later to do a favor for me.”
“It’s more fun to manipulate people without violence.”
“Understanding my power to hurt other people does not come naturally.”
“When people drink, they’re more likely to open up, and I think that’s why I like to drink so much. When I’m drinking I feel connected, and that feels good, but mostly because I like having domination over people. I don’t act on it, because I don’t have to.”
“An empathy that saves thousands, but perhaps is impersonal to the point of disregard and even cruelty to the individual humans being otherwise saved by a great humanitarian.”
“I asked myself, “Where is all the truth and beauty and love?” and what this was all about. And I turned my head to the right, and there was my wife, lying next to me. And in and through this moment of epiphany, I saw true love and was completely happy.”
“The revelation that I may have had bipolar disorder most of my life without realizing it floored me.”
“ I cycle through a series of thoughts about mortality, God, the afterlife, the concept of the soul, and the meaning of existence, and eventually arrive at the conclusion that nothing at all matters and life is not worth living.”
“I never considered that these were anything more than my emotional response to my obsession with death and mortality.”
“I started to think that my firm denial of God was a product of, rather than a cause of, depression. (Now I’m not so sure about God; maybe there is a God and an afterlife after all, who knows?)”
“I don’t know anyone who is just a psychopath and nothing else. There’s wide overlap between disorders, in the symptoms displayed, the brain areas responsible, and the transmitters involved. And my psychopathic traits can’t be discussed in isolation because other problems shape how they’re expressed. ”
“In addition, about one-third of bipolar disorder patients, but not major depressive disorder patients, also exhibit antisocial, borderline, histrionic, or narcissistic personality disorders. These people are also more likely to commit suicide.”
“The bottom line was that I seem to be a nice guy, usually, but that I occasionally do things to suggest I don’t really care about other people.”
“What the hell have I done?” I wasn’t despairing, just coming to terms with my cluelessness. All these pieces of the puzzle over the decades were snapping into place. About three minutes later another, different feeling took over. And with all the honesty I am capable of, I admitted to myself, “I don’t care.” That’s right, “I DON’T CARE.”
“I realized at this point in my life that such attempts at making peace with a deity, or my own soul, on a weekly or monthly or yearly basis was a rather pathetic attempt to deny my psychopathy, as if each time I could wash my sins away just by admitting to them and asking myself or a cleric or God for forgiveness. I knew these acts of confession and contrition and seeking of grace would not change my behaviors, but were only performed to make excuses for them. ”
“to change for the better, I would need a plan of behavioral redemption. But the inherent problem I could not shake is that, try as I may, I really just don’t care. There it is again. I do have some desire to keep the people around me happy, but that’s mostly because it makes my own life easier and more pleasant.”
“If what I’m doing is not wrong in any fundamental way, who cares? ”
“Frankly, I find most people uninteresting and boring, but under those circumstances of wildness, they all seem wonderful. ”
“ I don’t think I’ve ever understood morality anyway. As an obsessed child and hyper-religious young teen I was feeding a need for order. I didn’t get morality then, and may not get it now”
“deep down there somewhere is a sensitive, good guy.” That may be the good guy she knew from the early years, before my prefrontal cortex switched to a full cognitive mode, leaving emotional empathy and even some morality in the dust.”
“that little boy is someone or somewhere else now.”
“I do not believe in real altruism—everything we do is at least a little bit selfish”
“My morals aren’t so good, but I do have some sense of ethics.”
“Many people wear masks so they can just get on with life and be liked, accepted, and loved. Few want to be shunned by society”
“If your intentions are no good, hiding them helps you get what you desire, and prevents you from being booted from the community and the gene pool.”
“I have a special relationship with him and I can see the good in him. I know he’s a good boy.”
post script:
to all my friends, i apologize in advance for the future deterioration of our relationships. i feel myself getting worse, slipping away, becoming colder, and i don’t know what to do. i have tried for years,but i cannot stop it. the last good thing i can do,before i am completely frozen in ice, is to be honest about what i am to you, and quarantine myself so i will not harm you any longer. goodbye.
