Thank you … I felt my article covered an important misconception.

I’ve got a few questions, if you don’t mind:

Most diagnosed sociopaths (i.e., with AsPD) do not generally tell people about their condition because they use the condition for their own benefit, so …

1) Why do you tell people?

2) Why and by whom (e.g., psychologist, psychiatrist, etc.) were you diagnosed, and at what age? Most of those clinically tested are due to a court order, not by volunteering.

3) Why do you feel you would not face the law if you killed or even hurt someone? Most people eventually get caught.

4) At what age did you realize you were different than others?

Like everyone else here, you will remain completely anonymous. I do hope you will answer these questions and explain anything else you’d like. We’d all like to know more.

Thanks.

I am diagnosed with AsPD, and any time I try to explain this to someone they think I’m just going to end up killing them. True, I would kill someone given the right opportunity without any legal punishment, but I’m not a savage uncontrollable serial killer.

The ignorance of people amaze me.

This is why I would like to disagree with you on this point. Of course I understand the example you give, but I do think it focusses on the outsider’s point of view, leading to a wrong answer. It is correct that two sociopaths never will be identical or act absolutely predictably – which is true for any mental disorder. It is also true that lots of people are not willing to understand that axe-wielding and crying “Here’s Johnny!” are not required behaviour of a sociopath. The outsider accordingly needs to educate himself to understand the real characteristics of sociopathy, which will enable him to see combinations of these characteristics in the varied persons they meet. In this, you are correct.

However, sociopaths, at the core of their being, ARE all the same. They are little more than automatons, human bodies inhabited by a brain bent on survival, maximising personal gain and satisfaction of basic needs. Their individual pasts and presents shape them to completely different forms of character, but a true sociopath is always the same PERSON as the next one, because they lack the deeper emotions that determine who, rather than what, we are.

You and me are not only different because I’m an Austrian, speak German, have a different job, a different social background etc. We are different because our emotions give us different goals in our lives, different outlooks on life itself and different opinions in moral matters. Not everything we do or want is for egotistical reasons.

Or, put more simply: I would die for my children without a second of hesitation. You might do the same or not, because your sense of self preservation is too great, or because the relationship to you child was shattered, or because there are other children that also depend on you or… there are a thousand possible answers.

The sociopath will not die for his children. Never. Because, in the end, every sociopath is alone on this world, the only sentient being that matters to him.

In this, they are all equal, and in this, they are all predictable.

I feel strong anxiety in your words, even a sense of panic … I know these feelings well. Try to find someone to speak with, a psychologist or psychiatrist would be best and safest. Who you used to be able to confide in before may not be safe now.

As you are feeling, the evil is mind boggling. Read as much as you can online to educate yourself. Understanding what you are dealing with will help you cope. Take one day at a time.

Take care of yourself.

Did you get past the fears?
Did you trust again? Or, is it more about learning to trust myself first?
Do you ever get that feeling that you’ve gotten your soul back?

It felt as if my soul was completely sucked out of me.

I’ve got a feeling most will say push yourself to do things you normally wouldn’t. I have been but it feels as if it’s taken longer to get past this then i want it too.

Thank you. Please feel free to write more, as I would guess it’s more therapeutic for you than you may realize. I began this site as a place to piece my shattered life together, with no expectations at all. The traffic has been mind-boggling.

You’d think that with so many victims on the planet, that it would be a regular topic covered in mass media. But I’ve come to believe that some of the most successful people in any chosen field: politics, medicine, law, mass media, etc., have simply used their personality disorder to achieve what they have, by using the same tactics that any sociopath uses: other people to fulfill their own agenda.

Politics, especially, seems to be made for sociopaths. Which is why I settled on Country of Liars as the name of this site.

Hang in there.

Mind games are their thing, they get off on gloating about misdeeds they’ve done to a point where I’ve watched people just ignore or laugh when they’re “joking” when they are basically telling them to their face what they’re doing.

My relationship with me ex left me emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually drained. I was left feeling like a zombie on auto pilot. My train of thought was that foggy everything became a challenge and my short term memory was completely shot. After almost 1.5 years of being apart from this nightmare my mind is clear, all the lies and deception become clear and i no longer get anxiety issues. Which I’ve had with my ex for almost the entire 10 years we were together.

The screwed up part is one some level i miss my EX, even though she showed her true colours in the end. A cold, cold evil person with no remorse / empathy for anything or anyone. I missed the person she pretended to be. Once in a while she showed glimpses of her true nature, getting angry over small things, pretending to faint for attention, lying over just about every medical thing possible, she claimed she had dyslexia, bulimia, raped by family members, next door neighbours etc. By the end of our relationship she was sick every single weekend. In the end my mind got that foggy i just couldn’t keep up and ended up sleeping most of the time. I was just so exhausted.

Why am i saying all this? i donno, maybe to get some of this crap of my chest, maybe someone else will read this and see the same things are happening to them and research “anti-social personality disorder” hopefully it helps someone.

That’s what I call “textbook” sociopathic characteristics. As different as they can appear outwardly, behind that uniquely-individual persona, they are all very much the same.

Thanks for your comment.
Larry

“From my own experience, when I’ve told anyone who knows my brother D or my ex-huband M, that D/M is a sociopath, the responses are all fairly similar.

• They stop replying to my emails.

• They never return my calls.

• They refuse to look at my evidence, likely figuring they will only encourage someone who’s obviously lost her mind.

• They’ll tell my brother/ex-husband what I said about him. He laughs and tells them that I’m crazy … strange, but that they believe.

Crazy is often associated with psychotic illnesses, sometimes even schizophrenia[1]. So, that’s believable, but a sociopath?

Harold Shipman was a sociopath. Ian Brady is a sociopath.
D/M is not like Harold Shipman or Ian Brady, so D/M cannot be a sociopath. Therefore, S must be crazy.”