Jeg har tidligere nevnt den engelskspråklige spørresiden “Quora Digest”, hvor folk kan poste spørsmål og andre brukere, som mener seg kvalifisert, kan svare.
Mange av spørsmålene som stilles handler om psykopater. Jeg frekventerer siden en del, for mange av spørsmålene er relevante for denne bloggen. Dog har jeg i bakhodet at man aldri kan være sikker på at personene som velger å svare, er diagnostiserte psykopater. Det er ingen mulighet til å bekrefte en diagnose. Noen har en formell diagnose i følge dem selv, andre er selverklærte psykopater, mens andre muligens utgir seg for å være noe de ikke er (psykopatiske “wannabes”?). Atter andre svarer uten å være psykopater selv, men fordi de mener de sitter inne med spesiell kompetanse om emnet. Siden er derfor ikke 100 prosent vitenskapelig. Man kan også spørre seg i hvilken grad en ekte psykopat er ærlig i svarene, gitt deres manglende selvinnsikt og hang til løgn. Likevel er svarene ofte interessante og troverdige.
Jeg vil publisere noen av spørsmålene og svarene i dagens tekst. Svarene blir publisert i deres engelske originalform. Hvis noen lesere har problemer med å oversette, så be om norsk oversettelse i kommentarfeltet.
Anerkjenner psykopater feil og mangler de har?
Jack Hodd svarer.
Yes, I do.
- I see myself as smarter than everyone and anyone around me, which I begrudgingly accept as a character flaw.
- I’m untrustworthy, I’ll basically backstab you for a fizzy drink.
- I’m lazy, sometimes not even being bothered to do something that is literally right in front of me.
- I was once almost caught for something I was doing that was bordering on Attempted Murder, which isn’t a good thing in hindsight.
- I can be insensitive; I was once playing Hide and Seek with my Jewish cousin and went “Hide before the Germans find you.”
- I’m emotionally disconnected to everyone, even at my own mother’s funeral, I wasn’t sad nor was I crying, just a bit pissed off that she died on me.
- I can be quite cruel, as I once tried to convince a girl to take her own life, because I was bored back when I was a teenager.
- I can’t be bothered to continue this, reinforcing the laziness.
Hva frykter en narsissist?
Robert Torbay svarer.
A narcissist would fear you if you were able to cause them a great amount of shame.
Despite what the no contacters say, this is not the ultimate way to hurt a narcissist. If you go no contact, they have many avenues to salvage their precious image – for starters they have already smeared you as worthless and crazy. If you however are able to dumpster their image in a very public way, this causes the narcissist incredible anguish.
You see, narcissism is a defence against shame.
At some point in the development of the narcissist, the young child decides that no matter what, they would never feel shame again, not for a minute, not for a second. They would do whatever they could, no matter the cost to themselves or others, to outsource their shame.
An impossible mission.
They do this by using all the procedures you’re very familiar with – gaslighting, silent treatments, word salads, rage, blame shifting and so on.
If you are able to break through the narcissist’s defences – to psychically tar and feather them, mark them as a pariah to all who know them, you will force them to feel shame for which they would have no defence. You are essentially pinning them down and pouring it all over them, like acid onto third degree burns.
By doing this, you have overwhelmed all their defences, there is no way they can explain to so many people at once whatever it is you have done to their image. The way they look at the narcissist has changed – gone is the adoration, the respect, the worship, it is replaced by disgust, repulsion, derision.
Here is where they lose it, become utterly insane and act in the most shameless ways possible.
They become, as esteemed Dr Vaknin has pointed out many, many times, Secondary Psychopaths.
This is what lurks underneath the mask of sanity, somebody totally crazy, deranged, a shameful lunatic.
Horribly embarrassing to be exposed for what they are, and if you have the power to do this to them, to utterly invert their grandiosity, of course they will fear you. No contact would only fell the most weakened, supply hungry of narcissists.
Shame is their kryptonite.
Kan en psykopat føle hjertesorg?
Athena Walker svarer.
When I broke up with my first boyfriend, he cried.
I stared at him unsure of what the problem was. What a strange reaction, I thought to myself. I couldn’t imagine what would cause that. I wouldn’t remember this situation at all if it weren’t for him doing so. I don’t remember his name, nor what he looked like, but I do remember him crying.
Vexing.
I had pets, they died. I never cried.
Psychopaths do not get heartbroken. That isn’t something that we can experience.
We can cry. A great deal of physical pain might cause that reaction. However, I have a high pain tolerance. I used to dance when I had sprains or hairline fractures in my shin.
Crying as manipulation is very effective though. That I did do. People respond to crying girls. I learned that lesson when I was very young. I am still well aware of that lesson, but dislike using it. Crying is uncomfortable physically. The sinus pressure gives me headaches, and there are more effective ways to get what I want.
Also, as an adult that isn’t the reputation I would prefer to have. An adult woman that cries all the time is not someone that people want to be around. I wouldn’t want to be around them.
So, can we cry? Yes.
Do we cry because we are heartbroken? No.
Kan psykopater bli fornærmet?
Syn Mae svarer.
This question has quite a few solid responses, so I’ll make mine short.
It’s very difficult to offend a psychopath as their self-confidence is extremely high and their emotionality notoriously low. If you’re someone they respect you’re more likely to be able to perhaps insult a psychopath with some nifty word choice, but it’s quite short lived in the rare times it occurs. Generally? Seconds, if that. Rather than offended it displays as more of an annoyance. Again it’s quite difficult. Emotionally fueled things like “Wow, how could you say that to me?” will never genuinely be said by a psychopath after the fact. The times I’ve said things out of vexation that have annoyed my S.O are forgotten quickly and have never been mentioned again — not even once. Once he’s over it, he will never think or speak of it again. I’d imagine other psychopaths are similar.
Hope I provided some interesting insight
Kan en narsissist bli knust, slik de selv knuser deres ofre?
Sylvie Aimee svarer.
Incredibly, yes! Why? Because the Narcissist lives with their failures and the disasters they make of every relationship every single day.
Behind that smirking, plastered-on face of denial and blamelessness lurks a lot of inner turmoil. Yes, they lie about their actions but they are well aware of just how defective they are.
Narcissists are controlled by their lack of providing for their own simplest need: loving and feeling love.
No matter how much you want to hurt them, they’re already destroyed people.
You don’t even need a match.
Er en psykopat mentalt sterkere enn andre personer?
Ken Heilbrunn svarer.
Psychopathy is easy to understand, once you know the basic brain abnormality/variant involved: small amygdalae.
The amygdalae are little mounds of brain tissue that sit at the top of the brain stem. They receive input from our senses of sight and sound and other sources of potential danger. If that occurs, and if there are no inhibitory signals, the amygdalae trigger a reflex fight-or-flight reaction in our brains. In other words, they trigger danger and are responsible for danger avoiding/managing action.
The amygdalae in psychopaths are relatively small. Result: Psychopaths do not feel fear/danger the way the rest of us do. They are born this way. Rare cases of stroke that wipes out the amygdalae have also been reported, causing these patients to have lost their sense of fear from things like snakes and heights.
To summarise how psychopaths experience life, they simply do not care. They feel no attachment to people or to things. They can say and do things without the slightest feeling of remorse, shame, or guilt. What sometimes comes out of their mouths is the most fantastical gibberish, spoken with deceptive confidence. They are con artists of the highest order. They have the feeling capacity of robots.
What you call “psychologically stronger” is really freedom from the constraints and rules of society, which, if violated, cause us to feel guilt and shame. Psychopaths do not feel much of anything. They know right from wrong. But knowing and feeling are two different things.
Thus free to act in their own self interests, they forever remain calm, cool, and collected. This is in contrast to the rest of us self-doubters. In fact, this perceived “strength” and stability draw us to them for comfort and security. They make for efficient fearless leaders, which is perhaps why nature/evolution kept them around.
But underneath that calm, cool, and collected facade resides a coward, in most cases. They are sheep in wolf’s clothing.
Hvorfor er psykopater fryktløse?
Jay Whistler svarer.
It mainly has to do with attentional-processing.
Here’s an example: Let’s say you have a 1-in-ten-million chance of getting hit by a car crossing the street. If I came to you and said “Be careful, you have a 1-in-ten-million chance of dying crossing that street!” you’d think I was crazy, and rightfully so. Why be worried about odds so low?
Your brain is constantly doing calculations in terms of risk-assessment. “How dangerous is this really?”, “What’s the worst that can happen?” or even “Is this dangerous at all?” and you’ll notice, the more dangerous something is perceived, the most fixated your attention is on it and the more worried you are of it. People with OCD for example might be fixated on one threat like germs and are processing it as if it will almost definitively harm or kill them.
The issue with psychopathy is that we have great difficulty in processing how risky a situation really is. We might know it’s dangerous, but be unaware about how dangerous. If the odds of dying from something are 1/100, our brain sees it more like 1/100,000, if not lower. So it pays little attention and mental fixation on the threat.
Most psychopaths aren’t entirely fearless however. If the odds of death are around 50%, our brain might weigh it at around a 1/20 and we might start to be more attentive, fixated, and hypervigilent.
We are mostly fear-resistant, if not fearless, because of this lapse in attention. There is a distinct difference in the way the danger is evaluated in our head. Little-to-no risk, no emotional reaction. This goes for everyone, but the process is weakened in psychopaths.
Og siste spørsmål i dag,
Hvordan får psykopaten så mange til å like dem?
“Cameron” svarer.
I’ll throw out a couple of different reasons.
- Curiosity
Most people who have interest in psychopathy do so in this “cult classic” follower mentality. They care to understand psychopathy on a level just deeper than what Hollywood presents because they realize psychopathy is bit more than that. But they don’t care to the degree that it would take to truly understand psychopathy, closer to research-level knowledge. Most of YOU are psychological “cherry-pickers”, if you will. The result is the same stupid questions keep getting asked, over and over.
- Attraction to narcissistic traits
It is my belief that a true narcissist is far more charming than a psychopath. Still, psychopaths have a good bit of superficial charm, narcissism, and brimming confidence that can be seen as admirable and even attractive. Narcissistic traits can enhance the boldness we possess making many of us, not all of us, stand out. We are different. We know we are different. You get to see first hand that we are in fact different and you like it. 😉
- Implied superiority
Just the label alone brings about this idea of a fearless badass capable of any feat from saving lives to the most clever serial killer and everything else in between. The psychopath. The “apex” predator. Bold. Fearless. Calculating. These adjectives seem to be tied rather tightly the label. What’s conveniently forgotten are all the negatives (if those negatives haven’t been spun in to other edgy attractive qualities) associated with psychopathy. Many of us have a checkered past. (I do.) Many fail to reach their potential. (I have.) Many of us lack the capacity and desire to contribute to society in a worthwhile way. Many of us impact others (family, friends, etc) in negative ways and it barely affects us, if at all. (True of me as well.) But to the casual onlooker bad boys/bad girls are desirable.
Husk å like og dele tekster du er fornøyd med. Husk også at bloggen har en egen facebookside med samme navn. Lik/følg siden for å få oppdateringer om nye tekster, you tube videoer og annen informasjon.
https://www.facebook.com/Psykopati-og-kj%C3%A6rlighet-1475239182789610
Skulle ønske at det ble oversatt til norsk siden jeg ikke kan engelsk 🤔
Jeg kan ikke oversette hele teksten, men er det ett spørsmål som er ekstra interessant for deg, så kan jeg oversette det.
Det er bare å klippe hele teksten, og oversette den i google translate.. 🙂
Liker.
Kunnskap om psykopater er et så viktig tema, at det burde inngå i samfunnsfag allerede i grunnskolen.
Dette er mennesker som vi alle på et eller annet tidspunkt vil møte, og det er svært vikti gå vite hvordan man kan beskytte seg fra disse.
Samt å unngå å inngå nære relasjoner med disse.
Ennå værre dersom man har dem i familien. Samt på arbeidsplassen.
Jeg likte særlig godt din beskrivelse sist av hvordan du håndterer en leder, med å ikke hilse, samt å lage et stygt/sint blikk.
P.g.a. det så har også jeg tatt meg friheten til å la være å hilse på en psykopatisk/narsissistisk leder som jeg har.
Vedkommende så ut som om hun skulle falle overende, noe som var ca to uker før jul.
Da bedriften kjøpte julegaver til alle ansatte slik de gjør hvert år, så kom det aldri noen gave til meg. Alle andre fikk, men ikke jeg. Jeg trakk da godt på smilebåndet, og skjønte at jeg hadde scoret og truffet mål med å la være å hilse pliktskyldig!
Men den passivt aggressive reaksjonen lot ikke vente på seg. Julegaven er derimot bare tull, og noe jeg uansett ikke ville ha brukt. De tidligere julegavene har jeg gitt til andre, eller kastet, så det er like godt å spare miljøet. Jeg bare later som om jeg ikke har merket det engang.
Artig at du følger opp mitt eksempel med lederen. At du ikke fikk julegave grenser jo nesten til en HMR-sak, mot lederen. Men flott at du tar det med et smil og later som du ikke merker det, i tråd med gråsteinmetoden. Men dine kolleger bemerket det kanskje?
Hei! Dette spørsmålet omhandler ikke innleggets tema, men vil få ut noen tanker og håper på et godt svar. Det jeg sliter med er å klare å stole på noen nok til å utvikle et seriøst forhold. Det er litt over to år siden det ble slutt med P, og i den perioden har jeg møtt fem ulike personer som jeg har datet. Når jeg ser tilbake på det, er det jeg som har avsluttet det hver gang. Fordi med en gang det begynner å utvikle seg til noe seriøst, blir jeg stresset og jeg klarer ikke stole på vedkommende. Jeg sliter også med selvtilliten, og tenker hele tiden at de kommer til å finne noe bedre eller snakker med mange andre. I tillegg blir jeg altfor fort betatt, og kan begynne å tenke på de hele tiden, la det påvirke meg hvis de er fraværende eller svarer sent på meldinger osv. Det verste er at jeg egentlig ikke liker dem så mye, dette høres sikkert rart ut, men noen ganger kan jeg føle meg kvalm når jeg er med de. Det kan være småting som gjør at jeg ikke synes de er attraktive i det hele tatt selv om jeg kanskje syntes det på starten, og som gjør at jeg kjenner meg kvalm. Også får jeg en ekstrem angst på starten av datingen, hvor alt er usikkert og jeg kjemper imot å utvikle følelser i tilfellet ting ikke skulle funke og jeg skal sitte igjen med hjertesorg. Samtidig som det blir en lært hjelpeløshet – hvor jeg tenker at det ikke er vits i å åpne seg for meg, fordi det ikke kommer til å vare uansett. Alle disse følelsene påvirker meg så mye at jeg bare avslutter ting tidlig i fasen uten at det er en spesiell grunn til det, også tenker jeg hele tiden “jeg finner noen bedre enn dette også og kanskje er det noen enda bedre der ute”. Friheten med å være singel er deilig, men så kommer lengselen etter å ha noen i livet, så skjer det samme igjen; Jeg møter noen nye, avslutter det, er alene en stund og slik foregår det. Jeg vet ikke helt hva jeg skal gjøre – jeg har lyst til å utvikle et langvarig forhold, men er det kanskje slik at jeg ikke er klar for det? Det føles nesten som jeg liker ideen av å være sammen med noen, men ikke faktisk å være det i realiteten.
Her er det mange ulike scenarier.
1) Du har datet 5 p/n på rad (lite sannsynlig).
2) Ditt selvbilde ødelegger for deg. Du er mest bekvem når du bli avvist, fordi dette bekrefter ditt selvbilde. Når folk faktisk liker deg, så tror du noe er i veien med dem.
3) Du er intolerant. Noen blir det med alderen, du har kanskje hørt uttrykket “nå har jeg vært enslig så lenge at jeg er blitt sær”. Det er noe i det. Vi blir mindre fleksible med alderen. Les også teksten min “homomiljøet la veien min åpen for psykopaten”. Der skriver jeg om hvordan man kan mislike andre, hvis man via deres dårlige egenskaper blir konfrontert med seg selv.
4) Du dater for tidlig etter din relasjon med p. Og husk at det er individuelt. Noen trenger ett år til å reorientere seg, andre trenger ti år.
Takk for svar! Kjenner meg veldig igjen i punkt 2 og 4. En kombinasjon av et utrolig lavt selvbilde, i tillegg til traumer fra psykopaten som plutselig kan bli trigget, gjør det mer vondt enn hyggelig å utvikle et forhold med noen. Kanskje jeg trodde jeg var klar mye tidligere enn jeg tok antok, eller at det er mer “lysten” til å være klar som gjør at jeg presser meg selv til å møte andre. Fordi det er noe med det at når man klarer å utvikle et forhold med noen etter psykopaten, får man en følelse av å være “normal” igjen. Ikke kjenne seg som fengslet av sine traumer, eller tenke at man selv er problemet fordi psykopaten allerede har kommet seg videre for lengst. Men det beste er nok å fokusere på seg selv, selvbildet vil også kanskje utvikles etterhvert som man klarer å nå mål man har satt seg, og faktisk gjøre noe for seg selv.