Personality Disorders Support Group
Personality disorders form a class of mental disorders that are characterized by long-lasting rigid patterns of thought and behaviour. Personality disorders are seen by the American Psychiatric Association as an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the culture of the individual who exhibits it.
Is there anyone on here with acute Antisocial PD? I"m aware that most that do don't really seek out help, I was just curious. I'm really just tired of wasting my time and energies maintaining myself from heavy consequences, and in essence accomplishing nothing with artificial sense of self importance and irregular accomplishments. I'm in a clear minded phase right now, having to deal with yet another heavy consequence. I don't want to be a hermit to maintain, since I keep falling into antagonizing cycles, being that no matter where you turn there's some sort of compromise or artificial feeling of 'playing the game' you have to do to avoid living on the street, end up in jail, or being perpetually outside having to use people to get by, At the same time the 'wolf' lifestyle only has one end to it, basically one of the above, really. I read on another forum someone simplifying it down to, there's sheep, there's wolves, and there's sheepdogs to protect the sheep from the wolves. I think I'd rather be a sheepdog, even if I really inside am compelled to be a wolf. I've tried being a sheep, it just doesn't work for me. And wolf, well - you can only go so long before you say enough consequences to that, at least for me. Makes it hard to really look at where you're at and fool yourself into thinking you've accomplished anything. What do other people do who try to maintain, even when they have no feeling of really wanting to or limiting yourselves? Just curious.
I had a friend who I suspect had anti-social tendencies. He was in the military for 17 years. There, he was able to use his wolf like tendencies for the good. I think he liked killing but he fought in the army because he was needed. He liked the thrill. Some of those years were spent training people to use weapons. He traveled all over Europe and Asia to do this. Around the age of 43, he returned to the US and started working in the food industry. When I asked why, he said, "I got tired of killing." He said he liked working at Trader Joe's and he was promoting democracy one green bean at a time.
Some others become butchers. Others work as cops. Lots of people with the condition you have work as cops. I don't know what it means to have a criminal record but maybe someone can tell you what your options are. Not all criminal records preclude you from jobs.
Hope this helps
Sigmund
Not all criminal records preclude you from jobs like being a cop or being in the army, if those are of interest to you.
Can I ask you something? You said it felt artificial to play by society's rules. Does that mean you feel alive when you are using people, or walking the streets doing .... business of sorts?
You might already know this but antisocial personality disorder burns out eventually. It takes some people until they are well into they are into their forties but it happens. Maybe being artificial won't be so artificial when this happens, if it hasn't happened already. Then there are more jobs you would want to do.
I heard a business man once call WallStreet the "Concrete Jungle." Working in business altogether is very dog eat dog, so start there.
Let me know
Come to think of it, I know someone else with narcissism (not far from an anti-social personality ) and she is an art therapist for kids and adults with personality disorders. It is true. I think it helps her that she has some experience with what they are going through.
Thanks for the reply. I'm actually in my mid 30's now and having tried different combinations of aggressive careers like army/security and pro/creative kinds, even mixing them both at the same time, I haven't found a good mix that will let me burn it out and be able to adapt to filling out more a norm role. The violence didn't bother me, that was perks for being there, it's just that my aggression builds up being in heavily structured organizations and tended to get in trouble in that department quite a bit.
To answer your question, yes, I'm more happy when I can let myself off my own chain and roam. and eVen happier when I run across people who are (and forgive me if I'm putting this badly, it's a little difficult to find words at times) 'people who act negatively or hurtful towards other people' (because this seems to be a positive site and I can't come up with a description better than the word I'm thinking of, lol). Though I've come to understand people aren't one thing, and just act badly at times, the more someone acts like that, the less restraint I feel to not give them some 'business'.
And that's a fun word, by the way, thank you for using that, that's a good non-specific label. It's been perptually my experience that describing how exactly I'm feeling or details usually means no constructive discussion.
When I'm not letting myself roam, I'm just piling up aggression until my social mask slips, usually causing problems of some kind. Then I end up losing balance of restraint and using/hurting people and whatever I've built up with people or structure comes crashing down. Most of my energy is spent just maintaining some degree of marginal functionality until I can burn off the peak at that time.
Having gone years left to myself putting together mechanisms to deal with things and avoid direct exposure, getting wrong help, etc, I'm just now pulling it all apart to figure out where to go from here.
I haven't tried homeopathy very much, I haven't seen many offerings that are strong enough to cut through strong feelings or moods. As far as I can remember the only thing that seemed to help a little was kava kava, (think that was what it was), to occasionally put me in better mood at least, to get a handle on acting a better way around people without flare ups, but I got warned that tolerance was easy to build up for that.
About the Wall Street/business suggestion - I've before (and currently) been in phases of trying to work within the corporate world, and either it's too tempting to 'go with the flow' and be completely and openly amoral, or see too much going on that I just want to turn back at that environment and and, well, make some business of my own that way, lol.
Thanks for the reply back, it's literally taken me a few hours of coming back to this to not get rambly. Not being a cliche, but it's very hard to objectively talk about.
You discovered everything I was talking about-ok.
I still say homeothy could help. Your case might really be easy to diagnose, too since people
Needing animal remedies are less common (there are remedies made from animals for people who say they are aggressive and
Independant... There are others). I say this without apologizing bc everyone could use a remedy.
This is what I found.
I am guessing that this disorder does not necessarily preclude psychopathy but just may in some cases mean that a person is not particularly sensitive to other's needs and that they may be aggressive.
It looks like you have recieved many good responses.
Good luck.
I'd say that as long as an individual can function in society with a minimum of polite responses such as "Please" and "Thank you" and obey the basic laws and not be violent, then there is NO LAW that says one has to be social by any means.
If one desires to be more social, I'd think that one might look into Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and medications of various sorts.
If you looked at the case of my father, who is an emotional cripple, you would find that his parents were not emotionally sensitive to him and they did not speak to one another for months on end. So, therefore, I'd believe that behind the desensitization is a whole lot of pain that would have to be worked through.
The greater difficulty is having to act so abstractly all the time to mimic what's acceptable in situations, that I'm not really sure at times what I actually think. Breaks from people (unless I just want to go back to 'being bad' as the label goes) usually last a month or two to get my balance back. And that's kind of hard to justify, really, sometimes. It just feels like I'm doing all the work trying to be civil when other people just, idk, i guess that's the complaint of most people going through something. Thanks for the input, I don't know if I'm sounding sincere but I do appreciate it.