Schizoid (part 2)

From a reader (cont):


Anyway, along the same line, I think sociopaths who operate this way are the intelligent ones, and the ones who act immorally are simply irrational or less intelligent people, regardless of their sociopathy. If this is accurate, I think this is what creates a problem with normal peoples' perceptions of sociopaths. They only hear stories about ones who act irrationally, because these are the only ones who appear abnormal. Then it is attributed to sociopathy, even though I really doubt this is the reason for how they act. It's more the same for "empaths" than it might appear. Let's say someone gets really jealous because they're in love and their romantic partner cheats on them. Someone with very vivid feelings that affect their actions could decide to kill the third partner. They might really want to kill that person because of their strong feelings, and this would probably be seen as normal. But most of the time they won't, because it's irrational and overall it would not benefit them. But there are some instances where stuff like this happens. If normal people were to be consistent, they would say: "Empaths are evil, look at what their emotions make them do" and point to those exceptional cases. Unfortunately people are really inconsistent and also probably don't want to relate to themselves, and simply want to fit into a group and try to make that group seem superior. I could go on longer, but this is getting kind of long.

I don't think I am a sociopath but I'm really not normal at all. I think I'm schizoid. I wanted to mention some things about it. It sometimes seems in a way like an inverse of the sociopath. I feel things that "empaths" feel but I can't display them. I also rarely ever derive motivation from feelings. My emotions almost never drive me to do anything. And especially things relating to relationships. I rarely derive motivation from anything really, but when I do it is usually from rationality, not how I'm feeling. And also by not being able to "display" how I'm feeling, I mean that I might go to someone's funeral and not cry and not want to stay and not understand why people even have funerals. That doesn't mean I wouldn't feel sad about it, but I just don't have the physical reactions that normal people have. It seems like somehow, we have some strange similarity? But still, it sounds like an inverse is because it seems as though sociopaths are often lacking in inner feeling but have more ability to mimic normal physical  responses, yet schizoids have a lot of inner feeling, but lack any ability to mimic normal physical responses. It seems like if normal people have two halves of full emotions, we are each missing the opposite half. I don't know.

Lastly,  even though I said I am probably schizoid, I would prefer not to work with categories. I was somewhat interested in your opinion on this. You wrote one post about "sociopathic spectrum", and really I feel like everything is a spectrum. Categories don't make sense when each person is slightly different.

Well, my writing is really disorganized. Sorry. Maybe it will at least interest you in some way.

My response:

This was was very interesting and I wasn't surprised to read at the end that you identify as schizoid. I agree with almost everything you said. The one thing that I sort of disagree with is your characterization of antisocial behavior as being something that less intelligent sociopaths engage in. I used to believe this as well, now I think it's really more a matter of preference. I live in an over-priced, crowded, noisy, and often inconvenient city. There are studies that suggest that being raised in a city predisposes you to mental illness. Am I an idiot? I think it's just a matter of trade offs and knowing what you are willing to accept in exchange for what. For me, I have a great and supportive family so I would never defraud them. It would me like cutting down a lucrative fruit orchard to farm marijuana illegally. But if my family was not great and supportive, the economics of it would be different.