#Actually aspd

[aspd-culture]

aspd culture (onset since young childhood) is wishing the community would talk more about how traumatic it is to grow up like this. not just because of what’s been done to us to make us this way but how traumatic it is to grow up antisocial. i have so much grief about it.

CW, for pwASPD, this may be upsetting to read.

Completely agree, like yes to get this disorder, we had trauma to begin with, but also growing up with ASPD is extremely traumatic itself. The earlier the antisocial traits come up, the more risk the child in question will spend their whole life ostracized and potentially hated for things they cannot control.

A child with antisocial traits appears (in my experience from discussions with prosocials about how they saw me when they met me) to have a similar “uncanny valley” impact that autistic people get. Somehow, it really feels like the second I met someone, they knew something I didn’t know about myself - saw something wrong with me I couldn’t see. I was told I was “weird” by people who didn’t know me - which is the autism - but also people I’d never met said they were scared of me. This sometimes continues into adulthood, or sometimes we get good enough at masking that people stop being able to tell. Regardless, there are almost always a number of years we deal with that, leading us to have less if any friends on top of what we’re already dealing with.

And that’s not all - we also have to deal with the symptoms themselves without having any idea what’s going on. Our brain has been convinced we can only trust ourselves and that everyone is out for only themselves and we can’t trust anyone fully. We grow up often without being able to let anyone but a close few in, if that. We grow up without the instincts or understanding of how and why other humans form these deep social connections and how they’re doing it safely but we can’t seem to be able to without getting hurt.

And humans, as pack animals, need to be around other humans and have close bonds to feel safe since in the wild we wouldn’t have been safe on our own. This means our hypervigilance from PTSD is often exponentially more intense because it is always on the high alert of a pack animal forced to live on its own. That can also strain any relationships with Exceptions if we have any because we may cling to them early on as our brain struggles to try and form the bonds it instinctually feels it needs to survive and protect itself with whatever “pack” it can manage to build. On top of that, any bonds our Exceptions make may feel like they are putting themselves in danger and we need to protect them. In some cases this will cause us extreme anxiety, in others it may lead to us engaging in toxic behaviors to try and isolate them to keep them safe, and in others still it may make us feel forced to abandon them or at least distance from them and lose one of our few close social bonds to protect ourself since we can’t protect them.

Also if the “switch flipped” (for those who had that experience) late enough that we were already in these social bonds, there may have been this sinking distrust of people we were already close to that we’d made some grave mistake trusting them, and closing off to the world like this can be terrifying because it’s a neurological difference - our development isn’t going the way it’s supposed to be and the gap between how our peers interact and see the world vs how we do just keeps getting wider.

And that’s not even all of it - I have an alter who had much less of the antisocial traits in childhood (no alter can have no symptoms of a neurological difference, but remember the reason ASPD can’t be diagnosed under 18 is that the brain has not been set in that development yet - in many ways this alter acted out the goals of a brain trying desperately to develop properly and outrun the closing of the period where I couldn’t socially develop that way), so I didn’t have to live like this all day every day until around 13. I’m sure for those that didn’t have that split but still had their brain attempting normal development, it was even more distressing and traumatic to feel that pull towards people at the same time as that push away from them.

On top of all of that, antisocial traits can worsen or create abuse for the child because the way they act offends authority figures and/or bullies, and this can put or leave us in harm’s way as they choose to actively target us or refuse to protect us the way they would other kids when someone else targets us. And then there’s the disciplinary action and deep cuts to self esteem if the child deals with the more violent symptoms - often, children engaging in those behaviors aren’t recognized as needing help. They’re either considered bad kids or products of bad parents and dismissed or actively berated by the people who could help them to understand what’s happening and do better.

If we ever do understand what’s happening because of getting help, sometimes the professional themselves is ableist and will take that ableism out on a child with antisocial traits.

By the time we accept what’s happening - whether we know what it is or not - we are very aware that our experience is different than the other kids. It’s not hard to see that they’ve been dealt a different - and from the outside, often seemingly better - hand than we have.

If we get diagnosed (or self diagnose) as an adult, now we get hit with the fact that this can’t be diagnosed until adulthood and why. Even when we thought we were stuck with this, apparently someone could have done something to get us back to normal development. Not everyone wants that, but for those of us that do there is so much grief at realizing how low the bar is to help a child process would-be PTSD so it doesn’t become PTSD and especially at how low the percentage of needs that need to be met to form a secure attachment style. Things could have been different. They should have been different. There was so much time and such a low bar to meet and instead we got this.

Having ASPD very often causes a lot of grief, and in return we’re often treated like monsters if we talk about it.

To be clear this is not exhaustive of the trauma growing up with ASPD causes - it is some of mine and some I’ve heard from others with ASPD speak about - but it also isn’t universal. Not every pwASPD has experienced every piece of what I’ve discussed here (for example I have not dealt with every one of these things, but I’ve dealt with a majority of it), what exact trauma they endure from growing up with ASPD involves many factors like what trauma caused it and how old they were when the traits started to show up etc.

Plain text below the cut:

CW, for pwASPD, this may be upsetting to read.

Completely agree, like yes to get this disorder, we had trauma to begin with, but also growing up with ASPD is extremely traumatic itself. The earlier the antisocial traits come up, the more risk the child in question will spend their whole life ostracized and potentially hated for things they cannot control.

A child with antisocial traits appears (in my experience from discussions with prosocials about how they saw me when they met me) to have a similar “uncanny valley” impact that autistic people get. Somehow, it really feels like the second I met someone, they knew something I didn’t know about myself - saw something wrong with me I couldn’t see. I was told I was “weird” by people who didn’t know me - which is the autism - but also people I’d never met said they were scared of me. This sometimes continues into adulthood, or sometimes we get good enough at masking that people stop being able to tell. Regardless, there are almost always a number of years we deal with that, leading us to have less if any friends on top of what we’re already dealing with.

And that’s not all - we also have to deal with the symptoms themselves without having any idea what’s going on. Our brain has been convinced we can only trust ourselves and that everyone is out for only themselves and we can’t trust anyone fully. We grow up often without being able to let anyone but a close few in, if that. We grow up without the instincts or understanding of how and why other humans form these deep social connections and how they’re doing it safely but we can’t seem to be able to without getting hurt.

And humans, as pack animals, need to be around other humans and have close bonds to feel safe since in the wild we wouldn’t have been safe on our own. This means our hypervigilance from PTSD is often exponentially more intense because it is always on the high alert of a pack animal forced to live on its own. That can also strain any relationships with Exceptions if we have any because we may cling to them early on as our brain struggles to try and form the bonds it instinctually feels it needs to survive and protect itself with whatever “pack” it can manage to build. On top of that, any bonds our Exceptions make may feel like they are putting themselves in danger and we need to protect them. In some cases this will cause us extreme anxiety, in others it may lead to us engaging in toxic behaviors to try and isolate them to keep them safe, and in others still it may make us feel forced to abandon them or at least distance from them and lose one of our few close social bonds to protect ourself since we can’t protect them.

Also if the “switch flipped” (for those who had that experience) late enough that we were already in these social bonds, there may have been this sinking distrust of people we were already close to that we’d made some grave mistake trusting them, and closing off to the world like this can be terrifying because it’s a neurological difference - our development isn’t going the way it’s supposed to be and the gap between how our peers interact and see the world vs how we do just keeps getting wider.

And that’s not even all of it - I have an alter who had much less of the antisocial traits in childhood (no alter can have no symptoms of a neurological difference, but remember the reason ASPD can’t be diagnosed under 18 is that the brain has not been set in that development yet - in many ways this alter acted out the goals of a brain trying desperately to develop properly and outrun the closing of the period where I couldn’t socially develop that way), so I didn’t have to live like this all day every day until around 13. I’m sure for those that didn’t have that split but still had their brain attempting normal development, it was even more distressing and traumatic to feel that pull towards people at the same time as that push away from them.

On top of all of that, antisocial traits can worsen or create abuse for the child because the way they act offends authority figures and/or bullies, and this can put or leave us in harm’s way as they choose to actively target us or refuse to protect us the way they would other kids when someone else targets us. And then there’s the disciplinary action and deep cuts to self esteem if the child deals with the more violent symptoms - often, children engaging in those behaviors aren’t recognized as needing help. They’re either considered bad kids or products of bad parents and dismissed or actively berated by the people who could help them to understand what’s happening and do better.

If we ever do understand what’s happening because of getting help, sometimes the professional themselves is ableist and will take that ableism out on a child with antisocial traits.

By the time we accept what’s happening - whether we know what it is or not - we are very aware that our experience is different than the other kids. It’s not hard to see that they’ve been dealt a different - and from the outside, often seemingly better - hand than we have.

If we get diagnosed (or self diagnose) as an adult, now we get hit with the fact that this can’t be diagnosed until adulthood and why. Even when we thought we were stuck with this, apparently someone could have done something to get us back to normal development. Not everyone wants that, but for those of us that do there is so much grief at realizing how low the bar is to help a child process would-be PTSD so it doesn’t become PTSD and especially at how low the percentage of needs that need to be met to form a secure attachment style. Things could have been different. They should have been different. There was so much time and such a low bar to meet and instead we got this.

Having ASPD very often causes a lot of grief, and in return we’re often treated like monsters if we talk about it.

To be clear this is not exhaustive of the trauma growing up with ASPD causes - it is some of mine and some I’ve heard from others with ASPD speak about - but it also isn’t universal. Not every pwASPD has experienced every piece of what I’ve discussed here (for example I have not dealt with every one of these things, but I’ve dealt with a majority of it), what exact trauma they endure from growing up with ASPD involves many factors like what trauma caused it and how old they were when the traits started to show up etc.

[justaperson-2010]

𝐁𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐊-𝐀𝐍𝐃-𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆.

BLACK AND WHTE THINKING. THERE'S NO IN-BETWEEN. ALL OR NOTHING.

[snuffpornandmeth2]

Aspd/npd culture is wanting to talk about your experiences but people without aspd/npd just see your experiences as "cringe edgelord" shit so you can't be truthful out of risk of sounding stupid

[aspdculture-is]

ASPD + NPD culture is fighting so so hard to resist the urge to send people hate anons for fun.

loving the narcissistic high that comes from having so much influence over a total stranger's mood (and not feeling at all bad about it), but morally understanding that it's needlessly cruel and perhaps not worth it in the grand scheme of things.

ASPD Culture is

[stitch-away]

anyone else think the aspd/sociopath redditors are lowkey dickheads sometimes. like there are chill ppl in there and most of us with pds are dickheads sometimes. idk ig it's a culture shock going from tumblr to reddit. idk most people on tumblr try to be nice even if it's difficult for them unless they have a valid reason. idk???

r/aspd has a real hard on with talking about "edge lords" and fake sociopaths. like why tf do you care about those ppl bro live your life. why do you care about fakers or edge lords, ableism is ripe enough without them they aren't you're enemy... sorry there are young people trying to figure out their identity who also happen show symptoms of personality disorders. the appropriate reaction is definitely to be rude to them and offer them no constructive advice (sarcastic).

if they do have a personality disorder, being a right dickhead to them and invalidating their experience isn't going to be productive, quite the opposite.

mini rant over. they just pissed me tf off. ig they have a right to be assholes, they can do wtv they want idc

[garbage-tea-party]

I told a friend that I have NPD and ASPD and that I don't feel friendships like normal and that I'm actually an asshole of a person, and they went "It's okay, you're still good underneath 🥰"

And then, one day, when I actually told them "I actually don't care about you that much"

They had a whole mental breakdown, I got called a dick, and then I lost my friendships

So much for understanding me. Thanks guys.

[mxlign]

Me trying not to freak out in public even though I genuinely feel like there’s bugs all over me and under my skin:

[miki-kit]

[i-3at-s0ap]

Elon Musk isn't a sociopath Trump isn't a narcissist Jeff Bezos isn't a psycho they are terrible racist bigoted assholes but I'm begging y'all to fucking give a shit about people with personality disorders. PLEASE.

[the-bonfires-ember]

fellow narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths,

we're going to hear those words being thrown around a lot over the next few years. more than we already do, which is not an insubstantial amount. i want you to remember that you are not monsters, or fascists, or scum.

as more and more people throw around diagnoses they do not care to understand and words that they do not see as harmful, i want you all to remember that you are not alone and that the entire world is not against you.

there are people out there who care and understand and are not afraid. you are not alone, and you are not unloved.

dont let them make you fearful of yourself, you deserve so much better than that.

stay safe

[aspd-culture]

took forensic psych and have aspd. the term psychopathy is only really used in criminal psychology as a way to understand why people commit crimes. there's a big problem with the theory being 1. People have had a hard time applying it to women 2. it describes a very specific person who commits usually violent crime, not a general way to describe why people commit crimes. I also don't like this theory to be clear. "psychopath" is still not a diagnostic term or diagnosis. please don't call people it. (not at you at prev anon). also from my understanding in regards to the theory itself psychopathy and sociopathy mean the same thing

CW: uncensored ableist language.

Please note that while I do not know if this ask refers to the US, my understanding of the criminal justice system and its relation to the psychology field only goes so far as the US so that is what I’m speaking about in this ask.

In the common belief by the general public, one means a non-violent person with ASPD and the other is a violent person with ASPD, but some others believe one means ASPD and one means NPD. I don’t know if that’s what the courts believe.

For the record, psychopathy in criminal psychology still describes ASPD and is considered a personality disorder just as ASPD is, they just call it psychopathy. It’s a continuation of the ableist term now brought into the criminal justice system.

The issue with criminal psychology is that it rarely holds as much weight in court as forcibly applying a true medical diagnosis to a person, and besides, if they use a medical diagnosis they can permanently attach it to that person even outside of the criminal justice system.

That is done on the stand or by “independent” psychologists (aka not done by the psychiatrist or therapist of the person even if they have one) with ASPD most frequently because the symptoms are almost all suspiciously based on things that could be diagnosed without any knowledge of the person if it’s assumed they’ve committed a crime.

On top of that, even if they’re using criminal psychology, that shouldn’t even be a thing. To say that criminals somehow have some different psychology that isn’t related to medical psychology is blatantly demonizing and dehumanizing. Criminal psychology being somehow its own type of psychology using different terms is extremely problematic in numerous ways, and is to be quite honest extremely ableist and again a way of dehumanizing people who have committed or are assumed to have committed crimes (another issue prevalent in it is putting the cart before the horse in cases where people have been falsely accused).

Attempting to assume that a criminal must have some inherent different psychological function that separates them from “normal” people is a way the courts force the concept that criminals are evil or in some other way so damaged that they can be mistreated and forced into the only legal type of slavery. It helps people sleep at night to think they could never commit that type of crime and neither could any of their friends because they are “normal” as well as to avoid thinking of the fact that our method of separating dangerous people from potential victims is to lock them in a metal cage like an animal and mistreat them. If they’re somehow different from everyone else, then they’re either subhuman or non-human and then it’s okay in the majority of the population’s eyes. It’s also often used to perpetuate the racism and ableism already present so that people who don’t want to admit out loud can still be racist and ableist because “statistics prove these people are violent and savage”. People with ASPD, NPD, schizophrenia (and other disorders that experience psychotic episodes), amongst other disorders often fall victim to the ableism here - the “reasonable” assumption in the general public’s eyes is that these people are by default violent with some rare exceptions and therefore are less than. In fact, this belief goes so far as to bring out the eugenics that a massive amount of the population believes in - that these people “shouldn’t be allowed to breed” such that they can avoid future criminals.

As a child and teen I fell into this same belief (“bad person” not eugenics), the way everyone else in the US at least is - and then as an adult I found out that it was not only not the case but in fact is to some degree a known lie to allow systemic cruelty and slavery. I was then victimized specifically because seemingly “normal” people I knew well suddenly committed violent crimes against me, furthering my understanding that this logic is flawed at best by ignorance and at worst by malice, racism, and bigotry. This forever killed my childhood dream of being a cop and keeping my Exceptions and children & animals safe from all the “bad people”.

For the record, it doesn’t seem like you’re defending this in your ask. The reason I am explaining why that’s invalid is so that people don’t go “see it does have a medical meaning” or “see I can use it to describe criminals or people I think are violent”, etc.

Plain text below the cut:

CW: uncensored ableist language

Please note that while I do not know if this ask refers to the US, my understanding of the criminal justice system and its relation to the psychology field only goes so far as the US so that is what I’m speaking about in this ask.

In the common belief by the general public, one means a non-violent person with ASPD and the other is a violent person with ASPD, but some others believe one means ASPD and one means NPD. I don’t know if that’s what the courts believe.

For the record, psychopathy in criminal psychology still describes ASPD and is considered a personality disorder just as ASPD is, they just call it psychopathy. It’s a continuation of the ableist term now brought into the criminal justice system.

The issue with criminal psychology is that it rarely holds as much weight in court as forcibly applying a true medical diagnosis to a person, and besides, if they use a medical diagnosis they can permanently attach it to that person even outside of the criminal justice system.

That is done on the stand or by “independent” psychologists (aka not done by the psychiatrist or therapist of the person even if they have one) with ASPD most frequently because the symptoms are almost all suspiciously based on things that could be diagnosed without any knowledge of the person if it’s assumed they’ve committed a crime.

On top of that, even if they’re using criminal psychology, that shouldn’t even be a thing. To say that criminals somehow have some different psychology that isn’t related to medical psychology is blatantly demonizing and dehumanizing. Criminal psychology being somehow its own type of psychology using different terms is extremely problematic in numerous ways, and is to be quite honest extremely ableist and again a way of dehumanizing people who have committed or are assumed to have committed crimes (another issue prevalent in it is putting the cart before the horse in cases where people have been falsely accused).

Attempting to assume that a criminal must have some inherent different psychological function that separates them from “normal” people is a way the courts force the concept that criminals are evil or in some other way so damaged that they can be mistreated and forced into the only legal type of slavery. It helps people sleep at night to think they could never commit that type of crime and neither could any of their friends because they are “normal” as well as to avoid thinking of the fact that our method of separating dangerous people from potential victims is to lock them in a metal cage like an animal and mistreat them. If they’re somehow different from everyone else, then they’re either subhuman or non-human and then it’s okay in the majority of the population’s eyes. It’s also often used to perpetuate the racism and ableism already present so that people who don’t want to admit out loud can still be racist and ableist because “statistics prove these people are violent and savage”. People with ASPD, NPD, schizophrenia (and other disorders that experience psychotic episodes), amongst other disorders often fall victim to the ableism here - the “reasonable” assumption in the general public’s eyes is that these people are by default violent with some rare exceptions and therefore are less than. In fact, this belief goes so far as to bring out the eugenics that a massive amount of the population believes in - that these people “shouldn’t be allowed to breed” such that they can avoid future criminals.

As a child and teen I fell into this same belief (“bad person” not eugenics), the way everyone else in the US at least is - and then as an adult I found out that it was not only not the case but in fact is to some degree a known lie to allow systemic cruelty and slavery. I was then victimized specifically because seemingly “normal” people I knew well suddenly committed violent crimes against me, furthering my understanding that this logic is flawed at best by ignorance and at worst by malice, racism, and bigotry. This forever killed my childhood dream of being a cop and keeping my Exceptions and children & animals safe from all the “bad people”.

For the record, it doesn’t seem like you’re defending this in your ask. The reason I am explaining why that’s invalid is so that people don’t go “see it does have a medical meaning” or “see I can use it to describe criminals or people I think are violent”, etc.

[4ngelfvck]

I asked a friend who is a sociopath (diagnosed with ASPD, he refers to himself as a sociopath which is why I’m calling him that) what love feels like to him and how he knows when he loves someone.

I loved his answer. He said “Routine. If they are a part of my routine and feel familiar and comfortable and I would feel like something is missing if they weren’t there, then I think I love them.”

I have bpd with ASPD traits and I think his answer was so cute. I think that is what love is like for me too but I’ve never heard it so succinctly explained, perfect summarization.

[youlookkindadead]

i've seen quite a bit of confusion about this, so let me attempt to clear things up :

empathy is the ability to feel somebody's emotions as though they are affecting you personally. for example, somebody tells you "my dog died last night!" -> you now feel as though you've lost a pet personally -> you feel grief and sadness just like the other person. not everyone has empathy. it's a trait some people develop and others don't. some have high empathy, some have low empathy, some (like me) have none.

sympathy is the ability to understand and care about somebody else's struggles, even if you don't feel them yourself. so, somebody tells you their dog died -> you realize how this affects them emotionally -> you care about this person, and are upset that they are suffering. not everyone has sympathy either! it's a scale, just like empathy.

compassion is doing something to relieve another person's suffering or make them feel better. somebody tells you their dog died -> you don't want them to remain upset -> you come up with ways to help them feel better, like offering comfort and distractions, or other forms of support. compassion is a learned trait, not something you can be born with like empathy or sympathy. anyone can learn to be compassionate, although some may struggle more with it than others; it's a skill, just like anything else.

however, none of these are required to be a good person. that's a choice you make on your own accord. i hope this clears things up!

[aspdculture-is]

ASPD is not caring about nobodies, same as that previous submission said. But it's a visceral hatred for those who don't matter. Because if they can offer nothing, they are useless and ought to be dragged into the street and curbstomped for so much as looking in my direction.

ASPD Culture is

[asherwentinsanelol]

yknow qhat i love seeing? people with the "scary" or "mean" or "evil" disorders getting silly with it. thats definitely destigmatizing it /srs

like, if audhd people get to joke around about their disorders, not always treat it with an absurd amount of weight, so does everyone else. i love you aspd people who make jokes about your disorder, you deserve to do that without being called an edgy teen. i love you npd people make memes about it. i love you scary people who get to destigmatize your disorders by laughing.