To All Radqueers Out There, I Have Some Very Useful Tips!!

ASPD + Love

{my experience}

disclaimer: this is talking solely from my experiences and is not going to be applicable to absolutely every single person with this disorder. it’s also important to remember that this is a complex disorder and just because you may relate to this post in some way, does not necessarily mean that you have ASPD.

Connections With Others

my ASPD impacts my ability to connect with others A LOT and in many different ways. a few of these ways include:

• my lack of the ability to relate to, sympathise, empathise or generally care about others.

• my bluntness, saying things without caring how it affects others, putting myself and others in dangerous situations.

• having muffled emotions that result in me having to mask by exaggerating my emotions, almost like a performance, this can result in me reacting in a way that is unintentionally socially ‘incorrect’.

• struggles with seeing others as having any sort of emotional value to me.

• a general unwillingness to be around other people.

to name some examples.

How Does This Impact Your Ability To Love?

in many ways i struggle to care for and form bonds with other people, this therefore results in me displaying a significantly less common want, need or overall ability to form any romantic bonds, as such i do also identify as aromantic which i interestingly have found to be fairly common amongst those with ASPD.

i have a hard time caring for people platonically, let alone romantically so it’s quite rare for me to willingly commit to a romantic relationship of any kind.

How Love Feels To Me

i recently saw someone else with ASPD say that love for them is something that they’re capable of but isn’t necessarily something they feel and is more of a cognitive thing for them. that’s pretty much how i would describe my experience with it as well and is the closest wording i’ve discovered to how i actually experience love.

final note: a lot of people with ASPD are capable of love and not everyone with ASPD will experience it in this way. this is just an informative post shedding some insight as to how i personally experience love as somebody with this disorder and how my mental illness has impacted it.

Welcome to the family, son

I know, I know. I’ve done… I’ve done terrible things. And I enjoyed every second, soldier boy!

Experimenting with color and editing kinda using G-Birkin

The wounds inflicted by the mutation looks like it’s tearing and tugging the flesh, stretching to accommodate the growths spawned by mutating and enlarging cells, looks like taffy being pulled and spun tbh. Not to mention the extra appendages forming from inside, protruding then bursting through the skin of his stomach. For this I made the lesion on his chest larger so you can see the hands that are ready to be born from his insides. It hardens on the outside too, right? Like forming its own exoskeleton? Weird. Kinda sexy.

Antisocial Personality Disorder is a Spectrum

The question that people most commonly ask, while they're trying to figure out if they may have ASPD, or if the diagnosis they received is an accurate one, is: "Can I even have ASPD if I don't do *specific symptom*?"

Even people who have been diagnosed, or medically recognized, for years, still continue asking themselves, if ASPD is the correct diagnosis, based on how they perceive other people's presentation of the condition compared to their own.

Its a worry, that makes sense, since people with ASPD do often have experienced being invalidated in their childhoods, being told they're just choosing to misbehave and also continue being confronted with stereotypes as the "only valid & talked about presentation".

People who question whether they may have this disorder and whether it may be worth it to bring this concern up with a psychologist, often feel intimidated by the public's insistence on ASPD being solely defined by violence and law breaking.

Similarly, people who are diagnosed with ASPD, often feel as if they are not violent enough, or do not break laws often enough, in order to really have this diagnosis.

Other common worries/questions often circle around the lack of empathy, the lack of guilt/remorse, overall emotional intensity, impulsive behavior, having relationships, being manipulative, etc.

There's simply a sort of pattern, where people are concerned whether they have enough of the common experiences, or whether they have experiences, that automatically mean they do not have ASPD.

In the end, the answer to those questions, is relatively easy! ASPD exists on a spectrum, just as any other disorder/condition does.

You need to meet 3 out of the 7 criteria points (in the DSM-5) in order to be diagnosed with ASPD. Those criteria points are only met if your experiences are: not "normal" for your cultural/regional background, cause you impairment in your daily life, have been there for a certain duration of time and are not better explained by other conditions/episodes/etc.

In the case of ASPD, that means that you can meet criteria if you, as an example, check off the symptoms for impulsivity, irresponsibility and aggression OR check off the symptoms for the disregard for others, lack of remorse and law breaking OR...you get the picture. Theres a really big amount of combinations for the symptoms alone and an even bigger amount when it comes to how severely you experience each symptom.

Lets look at this with the example of lacking remorse! You can theoretically have ASPD without ever meeting this criteria point, if you meet enough of the others AKA you can have ASPD and still feel a shitload of guilt for the things you do. You can also partially meet it, by lets say, not feeling remorse for people unless they're really close to you, or only for specific actions/situations. You can have problems with feeling remorse emotionally, or you can have problems with understanding the concept cognitively, or both.

If you deal with episodic apathy due to other conditions, you may also experience a lack of remorse without that ever being caused by ASPD, but it may cause you to meet other criteria points to a higher/more frequent degree during those episodes. You may, as an example, break laws more frequently or have a higher amount of impulsive behaviors during which you disregard other people. Which could be symptoms you already experienced before, but now that you don't feel sorry for it, it happens more often until the apathy episode ends. In these cases ASPD symptoms and symptoms from other conditions influence each other and cause a complex individual presentation.

This is true for every single symptom, for every single person. A lack of one specific symptom doesn't immediately disqualify you from having ASPD. Thats just not how the criteria works.

Additionally theres a lot of experiences that, while associated with ASPD & used to support the diagnosis, are not in the criteria list themselves. So they aren't technically necessary, even if they are observed in a lot of cases (this includes the lack of empathy and muted emotions).

Now, while all of that is true, theres also a point to be made, that ASPD, in criterion A is characteterized as a pattern of "disregard for and violation of the rights of others, occuring since age 15". This pattern is then "indicated by three or more of the following" seven criteria points. Your symptoms, therefore, do need to form said pattern and be present relatively often and in a way, that indicates, that this is your day to day reactions and not something that just happens once in a while.

Another thing, thats maybe important to think about, is that the DSM-5 only mentions a few possible ways symptoms can present. It cannot and will not cover the whole range of possibilities.

Which means, that you may meet the criteria points without even realizing it, because you simply present in a way that deviates a lot from the common stereotypes.

Did you know that you can meet the criteria point for aggression, if you're only verbally aggressive? Or if your immediate reaction is aggression, but you let it out on yourself or in ways that just are not visible for other people? A lot of people think its only physical fights, or obvious lashing out, that get you to meet this criteria point, but theres a lot more to it and this is true for all the symptoms!

Impulsivity/failure to plan ahead, can absolutely look like the more stereotyped reckless spending, reckless driving and dyeing your hair a bunch of colors, but it can also be stuff like: saying things before you stop to think about them, booking a ticket to another country for in an hour without considering whether you can get there in time or how you'll fly back, leaving the house in a rush because you see your friends are in town and forgetting your keys and phone inside and having to call a locksmith from your neighbours house at 3am, frequently staying up at night because you wanna just play one more game or read one more book and failing to consider that you have work in the morning, calling in sick because you dont wanna get up and it sounds like a good idea but its actually the thing that gets you fired etc.

A lot of this can also tie into irresponsibility, which is more than just not showing up to work, or not paying your debts back. Irresponsibility can range from not caring for your children properly, to consuming unsafe things, to not caring properly for yourself while you're ill, to putting off repairs on the house because you can't be bothered to do it until its too late.

So yes, you can have ASPD as long as you meet 3 criteria points and criterion B-D. Yes, even if:

• you feel guilt/remorse

• you develop deep bonds to others

• you love cute things and "childish" stuff

• you have hobbies you're passionate about

• you feel empathy

• you've not broken the law (tho you need to make sure you still meet "conduct disorder prior to age 15" requirements in other ways here!!)

• you're not impulsive at all

• you can hold down a job

• you have children you love

• you care about animals

• etc.

As long as you meet criteria, despite things like that, you have ASPD and no uneducated "but ASPDers never care and never feel and never do x" opinions can change that.

Do keep in mind, that personality disorders usually affect all three: thoughts, emotions and behaviors! If your actions are cruel, but you experience no lack of prosocial emotions or thought patterns, your experience will likely not be grouped under ASPD. If it was, every bully or asshole in this world would be diagnosed with ASPD, but they usually are motivated by prosocial thoughts and emotions as well (just to the detriment of a few specific groups of people).

In my opinion, theres a clear difference between someone with ASPD, that has an overall disregard for people and a bigot, who has a specific disregard for a specific group of people due to a misguided belief, that he is actually helping "his group" by opressing that "other group" => prosocial motivations can be harmful, but harmful prosocial motivations are not antisocial.

That being said, as an antisocial person, it can be hard to differentiate between a disregard for specific groups and an overall disregard, especially if people treat it as the same and use the same terms for it, so its not surprising to me, that many people can't tell the difference.

Long story short:

• ASPD exists on a spectrum because every person has an individual presentation

• As long as you meet 3 criteria points and criterion B-D, you have ASPD, even if you dont conform to stereotypes, or if you do something that people think is an immediate disqualifier

• The DSM-5 only lists examples and not every possible presentation and it acknowledges this itself

• ASPD symptoms are not equal to bigotry, because bigotry is not antisocial. Its harmful prosociality, which makes it that much more attractive to people, because they aren't against society, they are for a BETTER society for THEIR people and thats much harder to argue against. Which may seem irrelevant to the topic, but trust me its especially important right now, because I for one would love it, if people could stop calling people "sociopaths" or "psychopaths" when they're actually bigots, thank you very much.

first posted on my instagram (same @)

ASPD culture is the irony of struggling to look invested while others try to act detached for attention.

ASPD Culture is

Sometimes I think I’d be a great actor because I’m already used to pretending and adapting to whatever people expect. But at the same time, having to do it constantly, on command, and according to someone else’s script? Sounds draining. And what if I don’t even get the roles I want? That's even worse. Pretending is easy when it benefits me, but following orders just for the sake of it? No, thanks.

You’re not a mental health advocate if you don’t support people with ASPD or kids with conduct disorder that happen to violate the rights of others including animals.

These people need support, too. They need treatment, and they need resources to combat any violent symptom that may manifest.

They are likelier to face violent police brutality when being incarcerated. They are likelier to have their civil liberties violated. They are likelier to end up in the system and prone to recidivism because our legal system is based on punishment and not rehabilitation. They are likelier to be murdered and abused by both the legal system and by family members and friends.

They also do not need to be excused from their actions. Both of these statements coexist with each other.

This doesn’t imply to support bad behavior. Everyone should be held accountable for their actions, especially those that endanger the lives and liberties of other people and animals alike, but that doesn’t mean they’re not deserving of rehabilitation or resources to help them not offend and to help them stop offending.

A kid with unchecked and untreated conduct disorder and even an adult with unchecked and untreated ASPD with violent symptoms and a lack of regard for the rights of others are some of the most vulnerable people in society. Think about them in your mental health advocation, but also don’t support bad behavior.

Having compassion for people with stigmatized disorders and advocating for their rehabilitation ≠ excusing their actions. You can have compassion for people with sadistic behavioral symptoms that are in the criteria for conduct disorder and ASPD without being an apologist. Check your ableism towards antisocial adults and children.

ASPD and conduct disorder are not “evil disorders.” Those behavioral symptoms did not come from no where, but from trauma and environment, and they need help the most from a licensed professional but unfortunately, resources are scarce for those living with conduct disorder and ASPD because we are seen as criminal deviants by neurotypicals and neurodiverse people alike.

I never chose this mind, this way of being, but if I could strip it all away, would there be anything left of me?

i love their dynamic sm