#so my lack of romantic feelings are not to blame for my antisocial tendencies

[aromantic-diaries]

Honestly I'm glad that the aro community is moving from "we still love our friends and family we're not heartless!" to "we don't need to make up for our lack of romantic attraction with other forms of love" because yeah, our platonic and/or familial relationships are not romance-lite or a substitute for romantic love and a lot of aros reject the idea of love altogether. So yeah fuck trying to appeal to alloromantic people with the whole "we swear we're normal" thing. I don't need to make sense to anyone

Either you accept me as I am whether you understand me or not or you leave me the fuck alone

[cummunication]

Have you encountered a Narc?

The word “narcissist” is used quite frequently in today’s society. Nowadays, especially with the constant use of social media to seek validation, (selfie era) people are both calling and being called narcissistic left and right. Although this may be true that posting excessive or frequent selfies displays narcissism, there is a HUGE difference between narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder, which is a severe mental health disorder. Narcissism actually is normal. Like most characteristics, the trait lies on a spectrum. You can range from mild or healthy narcissism (which helps us get by in daily life) to moderate and severe narcissism (which may impact functioning and maintaining relationships). “Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder with a long-term pattern of abnormal behavior characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance, excessive need for admiration, and a lack of empathy. Treatment can help, but this condition can't be cured. Although this disorder, as most if not all mental health disorders, requires a medical diagnosis, people who fall under the cluster B personality disorders rarely seek help and/or admit they have a problem. Narcissistic personality disorder, as well as sociopathy, hardly ever harms the person who has it, but almost always negatively impacts the people around them. This diagnosis is chronic & can last for years or be lifelong. Narcissistic personality disorder is found more commonly in men. The cause is unknown but likely involves a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Symptoms include an excessive need for admiration, disregard for others' feelings, an inability to handle any criticism, exaggerated feelings of self-importance and a sense of entitlement. The disorder needs to be diagnosed by a professional. Treatment involves talk therapy.” I am extremely empathetic, sensitive and humble. These may be good traits, however, they often lead me to seek the opposite in romantic partners. Due to my low self esteem and modesty, I tend to be attracted to people who are cocky, extraverted, narcissistic and manipulative. I discuss this a lot more in previous posts. Many of my ex’s fall somewhere on the narcissist/sociopath spectrum; some more than others. A particular ex boyfriend comes to mind especially when I discuss NPD. He was your stereotypical narcissist and had almost every single trait of NPD. This led me to be extremely excited at first; as narcissists are very smooth and charming in the beginning stages of a relationship. But along the way, his behavior began to get destructive and out of hand. This developed into an extremely abusive relationship (see more in prior articles). As both the relationship and abuse progressed, I began to explore what led this person to act this way. “Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) involves a pattern of self-centered, arrogant thinking and behavior, a lack of empathy and consideration for other people, and an excessive need for admiration. Others often describe people with NPD as cocky, manipulative, selfish, patronizing, and demanding. In addition to sociopaths, some people display sociopathy, but also have traits of narcissism. These individuals are called narcissistic sociopaths. A narcissistic sociopath is someone who also has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. NPD involves a distorted self-image with intense, unstable and excessive emotions. An unusual love of self, an excessive sense of importance and superiority, and a preoccupation with success and power can indicate a lack of self-confidence. NPD often involves a deep sense of insecurity and a lack of self esteem. Romantic love can evolve into love, but narcissists aren't motivated to really know and understand others. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, narcissists lack empathy. They're “unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.” Sociopaths can be dangerous; they're hungry for power, and they don't feel guilt or remorse. But they're not inherently evil, and some are highly productive members of society” (i.e. Donald Trump, Kayne West and the Kardashians). Narcissists are often very attractive to others because of the high amount of confidence they exude. You’ve probably met and/or encountered plenty of narcissists. You only begin to notice their unhealthy, destructive behaviors when you start to spend more time with them/get to know them on an intimate level. They have no problem exploiting and using you for their own gain. They will turn everything around on you so they make you out to be the “bad guy” and hardly, if ever, admit they are wrong. They’re extremely egotistical, ego driven and they almost never change because they do not believe they have a problem; it’s everyone else. They make themselves out to be the victim and will lie straight to your face because their denial runs so deep, even they believe their own lies. They are very convincing so you need to be careful and know what to look for when dealing with such toxic, malignant people. “Narcissistic abuse refers to any abuse by a narcissist, particularly emotional abuse in parent-child and adult-to-adult relationships. The term was coined in 1999 by Sam Vaknin as the name of his support group for victims of narcissists. Although the cause of narcissistic personality disorder isn't known, some researchers think that in biologically vulnerable children, parenting styles that are overprotective or neglectful may have an impact. Genetics and neurobiology also may play a role in the development of narcissistic personality disorder . Narcissistic rage is a psychological construct that describes a reaction to narcissistic injury, which is conceptualized as a perceived threat to a narcissist's self-esteem or self-worth. The term narcissistic rage was coined by Heinz Kohut in 1972. Narcissistic supply is a concept introduced into psychoanalytic theory by Otto Fenichel in 1938, to describe a type of admiration, interpersonal support or sustenance drawn by an individual from his or her environment and essential to their self-esteem.” If you were raised by a narcissist or have a narcissist in your immediate family, you may be more prone/vulnerable to attracting a narcissistic partner. I am going to do a future post about narcissistic mothers but for now, will quickly mention that when I compared my mother to many of my past lovers, I saw they had a lot more in common than I thought. By no means is my mother a full blown narcissist, but she does have many narcissistic tendencies such as guilting, shaming, blaming and seeing me as an extension of herself. Narcissists love is very conditional and they only approve when you live up to their expectations. Cases of intimate partner violence often includes being in a relationship with someone with a cluster B personality (borderline, narcissistic, antisocial personality, etc.). You find verbal and emotional abuse common in these situations and this is typically how it starts out. Healing from narcissistic abuse is an extremely tough but I promise if you are going through it, you are not alone. You can begin to heal and rediscover yourself after abuse. Sadly, we rarely (if ever) receive sincere apologies from our abusers and closure never comes. But I promise you, if you remove the narc from your life, yes, it will be immensely painful at first, but you will discover yourself and your independence again. Contact the hotline or check out the national coalition against domestic violence website for more resources.

[inanawesomewave]

SOCIOPATH WALKS INTO A THERAPIST’S OFFICE

I started therapy.

There’s a common myth that people with ASPD won’t seek therapy, or won’t respond to it, that we’re far too high and mighty, too deep into our own sense of power and control that we feel therapy would hamper our greatness somehow, or that we would sense a game afoot and the therapy would turn into a back and forth of tensions and manipulations and ultimately become an irresistible power play to the sociopath who has found a new thrill in analysing the analyser. At best, it’s assumed we’ll flippantly disregard all offers for help and remain ignorant and unwell. At worst, people imagine a kind of Tony Soprano/Dr Melfi scenario, the game of life on hard mode, the ultra-violent psychopath fucking with the resilient therapist’s head, what a thrill, how entertaining and devastating everything we involve ourselves in eventually becomes. And this thinking comes from the notion that antisocials do not suffer, and perhaps I’ve been guilty of assuming  this myself or at least projecting it outward. That’s the nature of my personality disorder: I’m afraid of admitting any kind of weakness. But the studies that have been done that measure an antisocial’s reaction to therapy have some flaws. First of all, the samples are always violent, offending psychopaths, incarcerated in prison, and they’re all men, and they’re all on the severe end of the scale. Secondly, studies are never done about a sociopath willingly seeking therapy, only a sociopath (or indeed psychopath) who has been ordered by court to attend therapy, so there’s a couple of glaring errors there — of course people who didn’t want to have therapy in the first place aren’t going to respond. Of course violent psychopaths who have no remorse, rather than some capability for remorse, won’t respond to therapy. They’re already in prison, they’ve already committed their crimes. You can see how there’d be very little to gain there. 
 So why did I seek therapy? 
Because I am constantly, unyieldingly fucking my own life up, and I’m doing it in a way that often feels uncontrollable to me. Everything is a constant battle between the self that I know and the dark night of myself, the part I know is there but can’t actually make out. All I know is it lurks down the dimly lit allies and leaps out of the dark corners of my psyche, and all of this presents itself as a nervy, fizzing, buzzing bandsaw of baseline level contempt, outrage, and a deep sense of something, maybe sadness, that I don’t know the name of, because if you’ve got ASPD you’ve most likely also got alexithymia as a symptom — that is, a subclinical inability to identify or describe your own emotions, a profound lack of emotional attachment to yourself. And it makes sense; if you can’t empathise with other people, you sure as shit can’t empathise with yourself. And there’s that word I use all the time — lack. Everything about ASPD, sociopathy, is defined by lack. The lack I feel the most is the lack of things that make me a warm-hearted, warm-blooded human being, and the kicker is, I lack the language to even begin to talk to myself about that. 
And that was all fine and well, way back when I had no ambitions, no familial obligation, no partner I really had to care about. If I’m honest, before marriage, I only really loved one person romantically, and he tended to my antisocial nature like he was leaving out trash for a local raccoon to come snatch. Never fetishising enough for me to lose interest, but always teetering on the edge of fascination and admiration, and whilst I thought I may have been happy then — I was just wilder. I had no barriers, and for a time, that was perfect. But that guy killed himself, when everyone thought he was happy, and whilst we had both moved on with our lives by the time he decided to end his, it could be that man was using me as a carte blanche for self-destruction; a drinking buddy gone wrong, my no-tomorrow, no-consequences way of living was normal to me, but for all the compassion and beauty and light he had within him, what I thought were similarities in our personalities, were actually symptoms of his suicidality. So really, what did he know? And what if I end up knowing it too?
 Now I’m settled and happy — externally, I’m happy. I’m married to the love of my life. We have a beautiful perfect baby son together. I’m back at university and I’m working toward a career in forensic psychology. I like the house we have. I live close to people I care about. I love my friends. But for some reason, my pervading, reigning emotions are only rage and fear. So I hauled my ass to therapy and I can tell you now, I’m not the only sociopath in the world who's done this, we’re just not supposed to talk about it. But I’ll let you in on this one, and hope I don’t get kicked out of the circle. 

 One thing you’ll have noticed with this blog and probably with the antisocials in your life is that we are in a constant state of over-examining and analysing our own processes. To borrow a hackneyed metaphor about psychopathy, we run like machines. But the machine has malware, incredibly hard to detect, but everything is bugging from the deepest recesses and nothing is really working, although the machine’s kind of running fine even if too hot, too glitchy, sometimes it blows up. We think we know everything that can be known about ourselves and this is probably a protective mechanism. I know most of us come from a lot of childhood neglect and abuse, so it makes sense we'd internalise that critical parental voice telling us we’re useless, worthless, unlovable, and turn it into a kind of, “aha! You’re wrong! I know EXACTLY what I am at all times and last I checked, I was none of those things” fuck you to our childhoods. What I didn’t realise, and maybe you’re the same, is that deep down, perhaps I feel useless, worthless, and unlovable, only I wouldn't know if that were the case, because I don't know the names of my feelings. 
 My therapist is a good guy. He’s well-dressed, friendly, and empathic in a way that gives me pause, sometimes intimidates me. Twice now I've had these eerie, uncanny moments where he’s said “but you didn't deserve that, you were a child”, and visibly winced with pain as I've matter-of-factly spoken about my early experiences. I didn’t hate it. I don’t know if I loved it. I something-ed it. At the very least, I noted that he’d done that, appreciatively. He’s taught me things about myself too, gross ugly things, like lifting up a rock and showing me all these wriggling, dirty bugs beneath: “See that weird creature with a million legs and no eyes? Those are your narcissistic tendencies. You do have them. You have a bit of a superiority complex and that's why you don't like to talk to other people. It’s because you don’t love yourself and you’re transferring that onto others. You hate other people because what if they end up being your mother? That’s why you’ve got to be superior and mighty but it doesn’t materially mean anything. Oh, and you see that fucking huge worm there? That’s your dismissive-avoidant attachment style. You don't know this but you keep yourself at a distance from love and intimacy because you're frightened of it and you think if you remove yourself from it you'll be safe from it. Weird, right? Oh, and this thing, not sure if it's a slug or what, that’s your perfectionism that you’ve told yourself all your life is one of your most beneficial traits, look at it there writhing into itself. What you don't know about this peculiar beast is that it's hurting you and everyone around you. It’s not “drive”, it’s not “a will to succeed”, it’s a boorish sense of pride and self-imposed notion that you can't stop, ever, in case you die. And you know you can work and work and improve and improve and you can get the grades and get better ones and create targets and hit them all, but it won’t make you love yourself. And you’re holding a negative view of others who don’t work as hard as you but you know what, unlike you, they’re happy”.
Okay, he didn't word it in those ways but this is a blog, I’m here to keep you entertained I don't know what my goal is. A better relationship to myself? Maybe. Other people? Let’s not go crazy, I’m hardly an altruist. But honestly? I’d rather die than give my son the kind of life where, in 30 years time, he’s sitting in a therapist’s office, lifting up the rock, recoiling at the ugly creatures. Especially if one of those creatures is: “ever since your mother died you’ve felt nothing but pain and self-blame”. 

I’d go on to tell you how I feel about  this, but there’s no words I know of. There’s probably a lot of them that exist, though. I’ll keep you updated.