Asante said:
Cutless said:
To be fair, one can have every biological and neurological precursor to psychopathy without being a terrible person.
Such is the exact scenario that neuroscientist James Fallon found himself in.
 He's not?
He's a lifetime terrible person who fakes being nice in his latter years. Selfish in all things and holding grudges against people for years then collapsing their lives in retaliation with them wondering what happened and why.
Don't you see a predator in that?
Have seen a number of his talks over the years; one of the very first talks he gave after his diagnosis was actually what tipped me off that there may be a similar problem with my own brain.
He talks a lot about how psychopaths brains develop in a different manner from normal brains, with certain areas of the brain being overdeveloped or damaged and promoting or inhibiting certain behavioural responses.
The thing that always caught me is that he is now working on improving his actions towards others even though he does not make an emotional connection with those actions. That approach was really inspiring to me, because it helped me realize that even being broken it is possible to help others.
Reflected on how even in my childhood my connections with friends and family members never seemed to be completely there.
When people who are important in my life die, the event never really seems to impact me. Everyone around me is upset and crying but my emotional state basically comes down to "oh okay, they are no longer here."
When my mother's mother passed away several years ago, I was never able to emotionally comfort my mother in her grieving; even though my grandmother helped raise me from birth, my mother was upset and breaking down and I was unable to really do anything to mitigate that out of a complete lack of comprehension of what she was feeling and how to help people with feelings of loss and grief.
Emotional connections feel really incomplete in my life, and at times that is frustrating to me, due to intellectually comprehending the importance of interpersonal connections, but seemingly never being able to actually make them myself.
The issue with not being able to be in touch with emotional connections to others is that it makes it very difficult to empathize with the pain of others.
Have developed the observational tools to be able to notice certain social cues which indicate when someone is upset or in need of assistance. Do not feel emotionally present in response to those cues, but do make the effort to help the person with what he or she is feeling.
Even without feeling things like regret over enacting revenge over personal slights, it has become possible to intellectually comprehend the detrimental effect such actions can have on others and keep myself from doing such.
When my grandfather recently passed away it was the first funeral I had made a concentrated effort to go to rather than skip; normally events like funerals feel trivial to me in an inner manner, so it becomes incredibly difficult to motivate myself to their attendance. It felt really important and as a large step for me, because my grandfather was a very important and formative figure in my life, even though I am still unable to really feel a sense of loss over his death.
This time, for the first time, I attended the funeral; I hugged all my relatives and friends of the family; I gave them space to grieve and offered a listening ear and sympathy for their tears.
At no point did I feel able to emotionally connect to their pain, but they expressed their appreciation for my presence and my listening.
Personally am rather thankful for his predatory past encouraging him to share his story over the years; it impacted me in a meaningful way that has allowed me to be more supportive of those daring enough to risk being around a psychopath and to comprehend the importance and value of their emotional states.
Think that psychopaths can make meaningful contribution to societies, and rather than the intense stigma around the word we need better support mechanisms that promote more positive behaviour.
Even though anything nice I do for others is admittedly fake, they still appreciate it, and I have been able to get to a space where I fake those nice things because it benefits others rather than it benefiting myself. The powerful thing about it is that even if it is "fake-nice" on my end, it is received as genuinely nice on the other end and generates actual benefit and gratitude. Intellectually I have learned how to do things for others, and even if it does not come from the bottom of my heart like it may for a normal person, it still has a positive impact.
As someone who is quite likely this way due to the development of my brain directly inhibiting my ability to make these sorts of connections, faking it until I get it right may be the only way I ever get it right.
"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." -- the 14th Dalai Lama
Because I'm never going to manage to get it right unless I repeatedly just keep practicing.
Edited by Tantrika (12/06/14 02:17 PM)
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