Nature vs Nurture and does it really work?

      There have been countless debates about this between professionals and amateurs alike. What role does nurture have to play and can it override the pathology of a person and manually change the way one is hardwired to behave. Many who have been adversely affected by sociopaths would staunchly refuse. I do not have answers, just more questions. But I will reflect upon this and its about time I tell you guys a little bit about myself. I recently finished college. I now have a graduate degree and two post graduate degrees in marketing and communication - Public relations. It should not come across as a surprise that I chose this field. You need a certain degree of objectivity to survive in it. You also need to understand how and why people react to stimulus. Manipulation is nothing short of convincing. Ethos, Logos and Pathos are the three ways of convincing someone, eventually using them to get what you want. Ironically, I am at my best when I employ Pathos in my daily life.
     Gone are the days when I feel the need to rip apart sheets of paper during bouts of boredom. Gone are the days when I feel those violent urges when I killed critters for the fun of it. I still remember tossing a kitten off the first floor of my building to see if it really lands on its feet. I was particularly fond of it. It walked with a limp after that and was scared of me. Something about its rejection of me made me feel repulsed. I nursed it back to health just so I could play with it again. I was 7 years old at the time. And I have never hurt an animal since then. You would wonder why I am fascinated with animals. I can answer that pretty easily. We have a lot of pet animals in my hometown. It also rains a lot there, I remember feeding little insects to small frogs for self-amusement and on a couple of occasions stoning those frogs to death if they refused to eat. Sounds horrible doesn't it? What made me change? I think it was my parents. They might have seen my behavior as abhorrent. But they never reproached me for that. I watched with amusement on one occasion as the kittens tormented a small mice with a broken limb. They did not kill it, just jumped all over it and made it skitter from one end of the kitchen to the other. I could not stop watching. It made me smirk. But then at the end of it all, they did not kill it. This bothered me for some reason. But I forgot about this incident until recently. As for dogs, I have always been fond of them. At school I never bothered to bond with anyone, only getting close to those who could help me in some capacity. I picked up fights with bullies, stabbing one with a circular in his shoulder one one occasion, but I never bullied anyone.
      At home, I had everything a normal child would ask for. My parents had a VERY healthy relationship and I rarely saw them fight. I have never witnessed domestic violence. My grandfather passed away when I was five. My grandmother displays certain antisocial characteristics. Her own brother squandered their family fortune and lay waste to his own son's life. They even tried to con my father and actually succeed to a certain degree. I have no doubt now that he is a sociopath and the source of my affliction (if that's what you wish to call it). Although my father took my advice at the right moment and kept the damage to our fortune at a bare minimum. I was 16 at the time and about to finish high school.I don't know if I am completely devoid of feelings. I am capable of fierce loyalty. But I only have five people in my 24 year life span who I call friends. Others are just a means to an end. I think trust played a major part in changing me. I only shared some of my darkness to make you readers understand the gravity of my situation at the time. I need time to make more notes from broken memories about possible behaviors of my relatives and those I knew toward me which could have brought about the transformation in me. How I became so passive and tolerant I have still no idea.

Disturbing truth and the fear of unknown

                                                                
      True to my nature, I lost interest in updating the blog after just one post. It was probably an insecurity about divulging private information. We like to keep our friends close, enemies closer and our true secrets closest to ourselves. And this includes the way we truly feel. What caused this sudden burst of enthusiasm? A very valid question. I have been visiting the psycopathfree website for quite some time now. I just want to see what they do there. Its quite a cluster-fuck of people whining and cribbing. I wish I could blame them Most of them are right about blaming us. But you are in real trouble if you start generalizing. Even people like us. Not to mention some internet trolls make matters worse. There was a particular post over the website which called us demon-spawns and what not. I had a hearty laugh and moved on. However, there was a peculiar character who claimed to be one of us and flamed the poster. Most people claiming to be sociopaths online or who say that sociopaths can be 'good' are not sociopaths because a sociopath is morally ambivalent. Good and evil are interchangeable terms. Also, one cannot exist without the other. The brighter the light, the darker is the shadow it casts.
    I am a bit more comfortable divulging information about myself now. 'Coming out of the closet' seems to be a fad these days. I would attribute my willingness to M.E. Thomas though. Although I would never be willing enough to reveal my true identity like she did. The last thing I want is to disrupt my perfectly comfortable lifestyle. For one, you could never identify me for what I am if you were to meet me. I do not fit any stereotypes usually associated with sociopaths, although I DO share every trait. I have even left emotional wreckage in my wake. So, going back to my topic, I recently opened a new account on psycopath-free to enlighten some people in the most friendly and kind words humanly possible. Unfortunately the account was deactivated within 5 minutes of my first post. It is what propelled me to action. I do not feel anger. I feel frustration; in full force. And I was frustrated when they would not listen to reason. Its like they choose to be blind. It has been at least an year since I have hurt someone emotionally. But that was before I was self-conscious. Honestly, I was causing more harm to myself than others. This seems to be the general theme with our kind. I am not trying to make a pity play about not having feelings, just trying to say that we are fundamentally different and I for one do not regret it. Do I feel superior to others? Sure I do. But its not because of the lack of emotions; its because I understand them better than a LOT of empaths.How do you think sociopaths manipulate empaths, they understand the entire spectrum of human emotion and can look at it objectively. We read facial expressions and responses to certain cues. Over a period of time, if we spend enough time with an empath it is even possible to predict their responses. This is usually the phase when a sociopath would start pushing you buttons. Its because he knows EXACTLY what he is doing. Also, this is a sub-conscious process meaning we learn it like an empath learns social scripts and other emotions.
     I will leave you guys with this today. Ask questions if you have any. In the next article I will share a bit of my background. Suggestions for topics are welcome. Don't bother flaming, such comments will be deleted without replies and a fuck to give.
   

The Discovery

         

       

                    SOCIOPATHS!!! This word has different meanings for different people. Those with no knowledge on the subject simply categorize them as 'insane,' or 'mentally ill.' But what does this word really mean? Sociopaths are people who show a very limited range of human emotions, lack empathy and are considered harmful to the society. According to experts, 3% of the men and 1% of women in the world are sociopaths. The general understanding is that these people are sadistic, destructive, animal torturing savages who would go out of their way to destroy you. But is that necessarily true?


                    This topic caught my attention during the ethics class, when I shocked some people by revealing how I feel about certain sensitive situations during a class discussion. After the class, I actually had a friend approach me and ask me if that was how I really felt. She is a former student of sociology and criminal psychology who has read books like "without conscience" and "confessions of a sociopath." When she confronted me and asked me to consider the fact that I could be a sociopath. My reaction to this was hysterical laughter. How could I be a sociopath? My idea of a sociopath back then was that they were mentally disturbed people with a particularly traumatic childhood and a predisposition to commit violent crimes. Just the way they are depicted in most movies.


                  At first I discounted the notion, but decided to do my research anyway, as with anything new I come across. After reading the book "confessions of a sociopath" by M.E.Thomas however, I was surprised to find the similarities in our thinking and behavior. The way I think, behave, and react to the people around me, I was more similar to her than I have been to any other person I have met before. In fact, I considered my behavior to be normal, and was surprised when someone reacted negatively to my approach.

                 Finally, after deciding that it wouldn't really harm my interest, and to satisfy my own curiosity, I set up an appointment with a psychiatrist. After answering a series of questions, and giving a few tests, she determined that I had a condition called "ASPD." It took her over 30 minutes to convince me by illustrating examples from the incidents I shared about my life. That was two months ago. Between that time and now, I read even more blogs and articles online, articles of people sharing their "traumatic" life experiences when dealing with a sociopath. As always, I determined that if people are stupid enough to fall for emotional manipulation, then they deserve it. After all, there is no place for emotions in making life choices. I grew up watching people getting depressed because someone treated them badly, I watched with contempt as my friends recovered from messy break-ups, never understanding why someone would get hurt by something which is irrelevant to their existence.

              To wrap it all up, the main purpose of this blog will be to share my experiences, and give you empaths some insight into what and how I feel about things. Needless to say that I will not reveal my identity. I like to fly under the radar, makes my life easy.

P.S. I will try to keep the blog updated as much as I can. I intend to publish weekly articles.