Sometimes I Think I’d Be A Great Actor Because I’m Already Used To Pretending And Adapting To Whatever

引血成河，积血成海

Why does time go by so quickly? It's been over seven years since I created this account. Who would have thought..

taspdfw you had conduct disorder as a kid and you were physically punished, emotionally punished, grounded, etc but nothing clicked and you just kept doing the same shit. and your parents wonder why you want nothing to do with them.

Imagine the time I was six. I spent half an hour constructing my perfect fortress out of wooden blocks, carefully placing each piece. Every detail mattered, this wasn’t just playing, this was creating something. I looked at it, proud, knowing it was my work, my effort.

Then, some little shit walks by. I watch as his eyes narrow, and for a moment, he considers the easiest way to destroy what I’d just built. With one careless motion, he topples everything, scattering the blocks like they were nothing.

I don’t cry. I don’t scream for help. Instead, I get up, walk over, and grab him by the shoulder. A hard shove, and then I make sure he knows exactly what he’s done. He’s on the ground before he can even process it, his face swelling where I hit it. I don’t care about the blood or the broken tooth. All I care about is the fact that he destroyed something I created for no reason other than his amusement.

The teacher drags me away, gasping: "Look what you did! It’s just blocks, he’s a person!".

But it wasn’t just blocks. It was my time, my effort, and he threw it all away like it meant nothing. And he’s a person? Fine. So am I. And in that moment, his face wasn’t worth respecting.

Looking back at it as an adult, sure, maybe it was an overreaction. Maybe I was too harsh. But that moment wasn’t about rationality. It was about the principle of it. Yeah, I could’ve handled it differently. But I was a kid. That’s what kids do.. act on impulse.

No one cared about the fact that someone else’s selfish act destroyed what I valued. My retaliation was branded as aggression, while his provocation was dismissed as childish mischief. No one asked why I struck back. No one acknowledged that he’d destroyed something I built simply because he wanted to. I was the one who got punished.

At that time, the teacher’s failure was a clear lesson in injustice, that authority will side with the visible victim over the invisible violation, and proof that fairness is conditional, since his pain was 'real', while mine was 'just toys'.

I just realized I’ve never actually experienced peer pressure. Like, people really do things just because others expect them to? They change their opinions, follow trends, or do shit they don’t even want to do just to fit in? That’s so weird to me. If I don’t want to do something, I just... don’t. The idea of someone guilting or pressuring me into something is almost funny.

🌟

A   draw   .  .  ?   I guess you both   loooooose   !

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 @)

the devil couldn’t reach me so he made me feel like i dont belong anywhere.