Hello.
I haven't been to the website in a long time. Over a decade ago I had a very enjoyable Ask/Tell thread about working onboard a Cruise liner. I work well in a question/answer situation.
What I can offer here is the perspective of a person who has lived the majority of their life insane, realized one day in his 30's that he had been insane, and then gaining the knowledge to understand what was actually happening to him.
From birth, because of genetic causes it seems, I have a general attenuation of virtually all internal sensations from my body. The technical term is Primary Psychopathy. Because of the severity of that disconnect, I'm also disassociated from myself.
I don't feel things. That's the simple understanding of it. There is a lot more to it then that.
Far more so then simply explaining to people such as yourselves, who likely feel somewhat, what not feeling things is like(Which is interesting it seems), but instead what it does to a person as you develop and learn about the world is my hope for this thread. What existence is like with none of that coloring your perceptions of reality as you live. I don't have a lot of motivation internally to use, but I do have a reflex to answer questions. This format is effective and efficient for me to use as a means of sharing information.
So I’m a psychopath. Technically a self aware primary psychopath if you want to go all DSM-5 on it. I only learned this when I turned 30. The first time I truly felt something besides pain. It made me ask some questions I had never thought of before. I sorted out roughly what had probably happened, and confirmed it with a psychotherapist. It’s genetic. My mother and sister have it a little, and I have it dominantly expressed. It results from some mis-arrangement of neurons contained in the prefrontal cortex that send the complex emotional signals to the brain. It breaks them to be specific. Each nodule ought to have 5 emitters, and I likely have only one functioning. The end use result of this hardware issue is that all internal emotional stimulation is attenuated. In my case, almost completely.
The only way things like feelings can get through to my conscious awareness is by intensity. When an emotion my body is trying to make me feel is expressed incredibly strongly, I’ll start getting little whispers of it in my conscious mind. It has to be incredibly intense though, most things can’t ever make it it seems. A feeling that to a more normal person would be strong and powerful, I don’t feel at all. Something that brings a person to their knees in fear or terror, I get a little wiggle from. The first time I ever felt anything besides pain (Which gets through, but heavily attenuated as well, it travels on those same pathways into the fore-brain) was when I was 30, and I finally lost something I had actually cared about enough to feel it. It was strange. It made me wonder about things I had never even thought.
So, speaking now from a place of clarity and actual understanding of my psychological state, I can plainly say that until I was 30, I was authentically insane. The person I was then had the most bizarre idea in his head about what was going on with reality, and how other people thought and felt about things. I did not know people had feelings for instance. I thought everyone was faking it like I was, and that you were all much better at it then me. This is not what was happening it turns out. It was just me not feeling anything. You other people feel stuff. That was pretty mind blowing. Like a reverse epiphany.
Ask any questions you’d like. I don’t have any shame or humility or ability to be embarrassed. And no reason to lie. I don’t feel any of that stuff. I don’t feel good when I win, or bad when I lose. None of those type of emotions associations exist in me. I have no pride, nor any anger. I wondered for a long time why everyone was acting so strange. Actually figuring it out was monumental. Psychopathy is quite common in the general population, but almost none of them ever become aware that they are different. I can understand that. I'm quite intelligent and I didn't sort out what was going on until I was 30. Most people with this go their whole lives never realizing they don't feel things the same way others do.
I can fully expose the method and systems I used to create facades with which an emotionless person can appear so "normal" to everyone else that they never know or even suspect any lack of morals or ethics or ingenuine reactions. I did this with a 100% success rate until I realized I was a psychopath and ceased maintaining it. I grew up my entire life thinking I was stupid and unable to pretend as well as everyone else, and practiced and practiced until I could. I went through my entire life in an unusual and strange fashion without realizing it.
If this is of interest to any of you, feel free to inquire.
PS. No I’m not a violent murderer or animal torturer.
, a probe, and a forums break