• Online discourse about NPD collapses into non-mentalizing. Public conversation tends to regress to teleological reasoning – judging people by their behavior rather than their internal experience – and as soon as one participant operates that way, the rest follow. This isn’t a constitutional incapacity; it’s a state-dependent collapse that anyone can fall into under emotional arousal.

• Grandiosity and vulnerability are two facets of one construct, not opposites. When you actually examine the factor structure of the Pathological Narcissism Inventory, the two correlate strongly rather than oppose each other. Pathological narcissism needs both to be a coherent clinical construct: pure grandiosity isn’t a disorder, and pure collapse looks like almost any severe mental illness.

• Trait narcissism is not pathological narcissism. The Big Five traits sometimes associated with “narcissism” (high extroversion, low agreeableness) are heritable but aren’t a disorder, and the DSM’s trait-style framing produces what amounts to “asshole disorder” research. Plus, the same Swedish twin sample yielded a 79 percent heritability estimate when NPD was measured categorically, but only 24 percent when measured dimensionally.

• Most narcissistic presentations show disorganized, not dismissive, attachment. Mark’s dissertation found that disorganized attachment – intense ambivalence about closeness, being seen, and being a self – fits better than pure attachment avoidance for most of the people he sees.

• Two NPD clusters map onto two attachment dimensions. A perfectionistic, externally validated presentation tends to be unstable and high in attachment peroccupation, because the standard of worth is external. A control-oriented, anti-helplessness presentation is more stable and high in attachment avoidance, because it relies on a self-sufficient internal model. See also Narcissism, Echoism, and Sovereignism: A 4-D Model of Personality.

• Depressive personality is organized around loss; narcissism around deficit. In depressive presentations, something was had and then lost – either introjected as self-attack (Freud’s melancholia) or pined for externally. In narcissistic presentations, something was never gotten in the first place, and a compensatory structure forms around the gap. The narcissistic injury is sustained earlier than the depressive injury.

• Idealizing transference shouldn’t be punctured prematurely. Idealization is a developmental fantasy that’s serving a function – like a four-year-old’s belief in the Tooth Fairy. The clinician’s job isn’t to live up to it (that’s impossible) but to refrain from interpretations that disrupt it before the patient has the ego capacities to tolerate reality.

• A successful treatment is one that simply doesn’t fall apart. Mark’s working title for his clinical book is Staying in the Room. Ruptures most often happen when the patient’s internal pressure to perform becomes pressure on the therapist to perform, and the frustration outpaces the dyad’s capacity to metabolize it before the patient leaves.

• Diagnoses are almost always mixed. If there’s one personality disorder there are usually several, and deciding which is “core” versus “stabilizing around the core” is a judgment call. The diagnostic constructs themselves are blunt instruments for what is essentially the most complex system in the known universe.

• Sadism functions to expel intolerable parts of the self. What looks like “joy” in extreme online punishment fantasies is often projection: the bad object holds the disowned weakness, vulnerability, or sexuality, and is then righteously punished. The collective sadistic stance toward “the narcissist” online works the same way. See also The Sadism Spectrum and How to Access It.

• Two etiological paths into NPD. An alien, impinging introject from a parent tends to produce more internal distress and a disorganized, dysregulated collapse. Pure neglect, where the child is effectively raised by the environment and finds validation through achievement, tends to collapse in a more depressive direction.

• The lever for self-help is mentalization, not exercises. In place of homework, Mark recommends mindfulness or Vipassana-style practice that lets a person sit with the experiences typically projected or externalized – the ACT idea of self-as-context: I am the space in which valuations like “bad” and “good” occur, not the verdict itself.

Transcript

Introduction and Mark’s projects

Dawn: Hello, Flitterific listeners! I’m joined today by Dr. Mark Ettensohn, who runs the wonderful YouTube channel HealNPD. Please check it out and subscribe – with the notification bell – to both of our channels. Mark specializes in narcissistic adaptations, which of course are the best adaptations – well, depending on the environment. He has also written a book that’s visible in the background, Unmasking Narcissism – the one in yellow and black. That one is highly recommended too. Let’s jump into it. Do you have any new projects that you’re working on – any new books that are perhaps coming out?

Mark: I do, yeah. I don’t want to over-promise, but I’m currently in the last semester of the academic year. In addition to my clinical practice, since 2018 I’ve been in academia. I was an administrator helping to start what is now an American Psychological Association (APA) accredited program, and at some point I transitioned to a faculty member, so now I’m an associate professor in that program. But I’m stepping away – this is going to be my last semester as a professor. Although I really love teaching, and I find it immensely meaningful, and I really enjoy having an impact on developing clinicians, it just takes so much time. As my channel has grown, I’ve been having a hard time balancing those demands, so I’ve chosen to say goodbye to academia and reinvest that time into publishing and making more content for my channel.

As part of that, in May I’m going to take a week off and focus on finishing one of the writing projects I have in development. This one is a curated collection of clinical essays. Some of them have appeared on my channel, but in spoken form, so this will be reworking them so they’re appropriate for written format, adding things, and so on. The tentative title is The Villain We Invented. It’s going to be about narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) stigma, the “narc abuse” landscape online, the concept of popular narcissism, and the ways that all of that has been twisted up into this mangled construct that we’ve all probably encountered quite a bit online. It comes out soon – self-published, at least that’s the plan. We’ll see how that goes.

Dawn: I’m working on a self-help book for people with NPD, and I think you also mentioned something of the sort, so I’d be quite curious about your take on that. A lot of my friends with NPD want to be very self-determined, very independent, so it’s easiest for them, at least early in their recovery, to work on things by themselves – having a workbook to guide them could be helpful.

Mark: I agree. I have five or six projects in development – I’m a little scattered in that way. I’ve got the book I told you about, a clinical book focused on the therapy process working with pathological narcissism, another book focused on grandiosity, a workbook that’s half-finished, and some other stuff too. The California Psychological Association Convention is coming up, and I’ve submitted a proposal to introduce a new taxonomy of narcissistic self-states I’ve been working on. We’ll see if any of that ends up actualizing, or if it just stays in virtual development hell on my computer.

Dawn: How cool! I’m also working on an AI-based app for mentalization-based treatment (MBT): stillwater.coach hasn’t launched yet, but hopefully will in the next week or so – it’s still in the relatively early stages of development.

Mark: Are you technologically oriented in that way? You must be, if you’re developing an app.

Dawn: Yeah, exactly. I’ve been a software engineer for ages – professionally since 2010 – and more recently I’ve reoriented a bit in the direction of tech entrepreneurship, mostly because of AI and software engineering getting automated now. This was one of the things I felt very passionate about, because of all my involvement with personality disorders, and I’m hoping it will take off. There’s a niche there: currently there aren’t really any apps that focus on trauma-based adaptations like personality disorders. Some try to do EMDR for people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), so it goes a bit in that direction, but nothing that quite fits that mold. In particular, MBT seems sufficiently protocolized that I think I can teach an AI to do it, and also observe how the AI is doing and make sure it’s doing the right thing over time.

Mark: Which may be more challenging than it seems.

Dawn: Yeah, but if it’s totally open-ended psychodynamic therapy, I never quite know whether the AI is doing something that makes sense, whereas if it’s supposed to follow the MBT protocol, I have a better handle on that, and can review some chats – privacy permitting – and make adjustments.

AI assistants and online discourse on NPD

Mark: I have an AI chatbot that I trained on my own material. It’s a membership-tier offering on my channel, and it’s interesting – even with a thousand different safeguards to keep it from doing therapy or doing something that looks like therapy, I’ll still review the chat logs, and every once in a while it’ll pop over into, like, robot therapist mode, and then I have to figure out why it did that and how to keep it from doing that. From my perspective, that’s potentially a liability, especially as a licensed clinician. I don’t want to host a chatbot that’s trying to do therapy, for a number of different reasons.

Dawn: Yeah, but the question answering is super useful.

Mark: That’s what it’s intended for, and it’s got disclaimers all over the place: this is not intended to be therapy, this is not clinical advice, if you’re in crisis, call this number, and so on.

Dawn: I’ll probably also need to copy some of those crisis numbers – that’s something I consider relevant.

Mark: I just feel it’s important to have a number of safeguards in place, because most of the time the chatbots produce a reasonable response, but every once in a while they’ll pull in something that’s an outlier response and present it as though it isn’t. I worry that folks who are in a very vulnerable moment might be led in the wrong direction.

Dawn: That makes a lot of sense. I’ll probably also need to make sure the temperature is set really low, and run a lot of tests with one AI against another, so I have some protocols I can review of how well my AI is doing.

Mark: Sounds very complicated.

Dawn: On your channel, you’re not focusing only on the therapeutic or academic sides – you’re also engaging with what’s going on in popular culture. One thing I’m seeing in particular is what’s called teleological non-mentalizing, which is quite typical of NPD: people see some behavior and jump to a conclusion about what must have precipitated it, while ignoring the actual complexity of the underlying motivations and attitudes of the person who shows that behavior. If someone like Vaknin, who has NPD, does this on a YouTube channel, then it’s easily explainable for me. But if a thousand YouTubers do it – and this is what I’m seeing a lot – when they talk about people with NPD, they’re viewing them as if they were automatons of sorts, without any internal experience. They basically don’t worry about what precipitates these experiences, what’s actually going on inside of them. I’m confused what’s going on there, and why they’re doing that. If you encounter that, do you have any particular approaches or examples that help you explain to people the difference between teleological non-mentalizing and actually empathizing?

Mark: When I think about teleological non-mentalizing – reasoning about motivation based on the outcome of a behavior, right? “A person was mean, therefore they meant to be mean,” or, “I feel offended, therefore you meant to offend me” – I think about developmentally less mature ways of conceptualizing relationality. Little kids don’t necessarily even have a theory of mind, and even if they do, it’s inconsistently applied. There’s a tendency to just fill in the blanks about why something happened, based on how it landed.

In cultural discourse – popular conversations on social media and that sort of thing – I think people tend to regress to the lowest common denominator when it comes to the quality and complexity of the conversation. The nature of the beast is that as soon as somebody shows up who’s operating in that mode, everybody else tends to regress to that mode of operating.

When we’re talking about a group, I don’t think there is usually a capacity, or even a motivation, to treat people like complex, three-dimensional human beings with an internal world of their own. Especially online, where it’s all about how you can score in this argument or this debate, how you can most effectively shut down the other person, or walk away feeling like your worldview has been confirmed. So I don’t really think it’s primarily a problem of capacity – I think it’s partly a problem of motivation and context.

I see it on my channel a lot, although less so nowadays. Word has kind of gotten around that my channel isn’t really a forum that welcomes that sort of collapse of psychology into black-and-white categories of good and evil, narcissist and victim, or whatever. But whenever I venture out to take a look at another channel, especially the more popular ones – God, if I look at the comment section, it’s just chaos. Just projection, name-calling, scapegoating, a kind of piling-on of malice onto this fantasy boogeyman.

That kind of non-mentalizing also shows up in personality disorders and other forms of severe mental illness. I don’t think it’s a constitutional issue – I don’t think folks with those issues are incapable of mentalizing. I think it’s that it’s difficult to consistently mentalize, especially in states of high emotional arousal or distress. There are self-states that can be activated where those capacities are just less developed.

Clinically, part of the challenge is to withstand the accusation, because those self-states typically collapse into a do-or-done-to, victim–perpetrator dynamic, where it’s, “you did this to me.” That’s how it can show up in session, too. I make the wrong interpretation at the wrong time, I say the wrong thing, I don’t respond in a way that feels in alignment with what the patient wanted in that particular moment, and it can set off a rupture, where now I’m the bad object who did the bad thing to the patient.

Negotiating those moments – which are inevitable – is really where the work is. There’s so much of a psychotherapy process that’s basically just sitting around and talking about this and that. Okay, this thing happened at work, this thing happened at home. There might be some emotional arousal happening, but it doesn’t feel like the stakes are very high. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere it seems, comes this moment where some part of the patient that holds a lot of trauma is activated right there, right then, in the dyad. Now the heat is on, and these are the moments where I think change can actually consolidate in a more substantial way.

Idealization, devaluation, and staying in the room

Dawn: This is a good segue to another question that was on my mind yesterday. A while back – this might have been in the handbook for mentalization-based treatment for pathological narcissism – I read the advice that when patients idealize you early in therapy, it’s important to try to moderate that to some extent, so that the devaluation doesn’t lead the patient to drop out afterwards. Basically, to stop the undulations from being quite so intense. Now I’m reading in Eleanor Greenberg’s book that she actually advises trying to live up to the idealization, trying to give the person that idealized therapist model when they want it – which seems to be the opposite advice. Where do you fall on that?

Mark: I’d be curious where she’s coming from. Do you remember the rationalization for trying to live up to or deliver on the idealization?

Dawn: Patients want reparenting from an ideally supportive parent, and she wants to provide that for them for as long as they need it, then wait for them, by themselves, to decide at some point that they don’t need it anymore – that they can recognize her with her flaws.

Mark: I see. I think it’s important as a clinician to recognize that you can never actually live up to or deliver on whatever the idealization is. It’s by definition a distortion of reality.

That said, in a Kohutian framework – a self-psychology framework – there is an idea about not disrupting an idealizing or mirroring transference, partly because the patient might not yet be developmentally ready for that. It might be traumatically disruptive to a developmental process that’s trying to get some traction in the therapy.

But I wouldn’t put it in terms of trying to deliver on the idealized transference. I’d put it more in terms of trying not to prematurely disrupt that transference with an interpretation that undermines it.

It’s like little kids who believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Different people have different ideas about it, but broadly, the idea is that it’s fun and sort of magical to be suspended in that fantasy – this fantasy where there are these benign, benevolent beings that come and shower you with gifts. I don’t know if it serves a legitimate developmental purpose to have that fantasy, but I think most parents have the sense that you don’t want to tell your four-year-old, “You know what? None of it’s real.” That would be traumatic in a way – it would be the constraints of reality intruding on a fantasy that’s serving a function. Now the four-year-old has to deal with the fact that there’s marketing, and what is that, and are parents lying to their children, and if so, why, and does that mean I don’t have to listen to my parents anymore? The world becomes less magical.

That’s true for all of us as we age and grow – the world gets less magical and reality becomes more and more the rule, and we have to deal with that. But ideally, we deal with it as we develop the ego capacities to do so.

In self-psychology terms – and maybe this is what Dr. Greenberg is talking about – if you see an idealizing transference, you don’t want to take it and turn it upside down, because it is serving a purpose. It may ultimately be a maladaptive one in the person’s life, but from a developmental perspective, it is maladaptive because they have not yet matured out of using it. The reason they haven’t matured out of using it is because they haven’t gotten enough of what they need to let it go and embrace the constraints of reality – of their own limitations and inadequacies.

Dawn: On the flip side, there’s the risk of exacerbating the disappointment when the client finds out that the therapist is fallible after all. How often does this happen to you? At what rate do patients drop out of therapy because of devaluation, prematurely?

Mark: I’m sure there’s a dropout rate, but I haven’t quantified it. The clinical book I’m working on – the tentative title is Staying in the Room, but the title I was tossing around before that was Three Failures and One Success – is about all the different ways the therapy relationship can just blow up.

You’re working with a personality configuration that is exquisitely sensitive to feeling devalued or criticized, where there can be an awful lot of interpersonal pressure that the patient puts on themselves – pressure to live up to the ego ideal, or whatever grandiosity might be at work. But that pressure is also extended to other people: pressure to live up to the idealizing expectations, to deliver on certain gratifications or entitlements that the person might have but isn’t necessarily consciously aware of.

There can be a real deficit in negotiating feelings like disappointment or frustration in a way that preserves a relational connection. Instead, the person dumps all of their bad feelings onto the other person and then throws them away – and in fantasy, this house is purged, this house is cleansed. Of course, over time that becomes a cyclical pattern, and there’s a string of broken relationships left in the individual’s wake.

I’ve come to feel that a successful treatment – and there are lots of different ways we could define success – is one that just doesn’t fall apart. We were able to stay engaged and connected long enough that those developmental deficits began to heal themselves, and the person began to develop the parts they need to cope more effectively, to sustain a realistic and stable self-image more consistently.

So yes, I’ve had it happen a number of times. There are a couple of forms it takes. One is an idealizing transference that collapses: I say or do something that undermines the idealization too soon, too early, and the person just – I go from good object to bad object, and they’re gone.

The other thing that can happen is when that pressure to perform that the patient feels – their own internal pressure – becomes pressure in the treatment for me to perform. I try to slow that down and push back on it a little, but there’s this critical zone where the frustration is rising and I’m trying to metabolize it, help them metabolize it, to realize that this is pressure that has always been there, that has never actually produced the feeling of happiness or well-being the person is seeking. They’re asking me to live up to some kind of idealized image that is impossible for me to live up to, so effectively the two of us are doomed as long as this frame holds – this frame of, “give me… why aren’t you giving me what I need?” If we can’t figure out a way to metabolize that quickly enough, then the frustration rises above that optimal threshold, and the person leaves.

Dawn: Is the mechanism behind that something like: they make you part of their identity, so their own expectations on themselves become expectations on you, and then you suddenly have the same pressure they have?

Mark: That’s one of the things that happens. There can also be some developmentally less mature expectations about the world, and perhaps a lower frustration tolerance around those issues. They might be great at tolerating frustration in lower-stakes settings, but when we’re talking about core needs that are beginning to present themselves in the treatment, it becomes this dance.

I can start to see what’s happening, but if I just try to say it, they might not be ready yet to have it verbalized, and it just won’t make sense to them. So I can’t say it – but I also can’t live up to the expectation. Then it becomes about reframing to process: “I’m noticing that frustration showing up again. Can you tell me how it’s showing up? Can you tell me how it feels?” We start to explore the fantasies surrounding the frustration, to play together with it instead of feeling like it’s a whip we’re laboring under.

Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes there’s just too much pressure. Often a third variable is the person’s partner. If they have a partner who’s saying, “you need to go get better,” the partner might start to get frustrated: “Okay, well, it’s been six months of therapy, and I’m still noticing all the things.” And it’s like – yes, and this is a lifelong issue. It’s going to take… honestly, the first year of treatment we’re often just getting a lay of the land. This is a process that takes a significant period of time. It’s not that nothing happens during those early parts of treatment – it’s that we’re setting the stage for all the changes that are going to happen.

But people get frustrated, especially in a cultural mindset where it’s, “you’re the doctor, you fix it.” And I’m like, yeah, but I’m not that kind of doctor. Fixing it is a much more complicated proposition than it seems.

Dawn: The reason this is all so dear to me is that I’ve basically lost a friend that way. There was the idealization cycle – I didn’t recognize it – and then the sudden devaluation, which I started to recognize because I was reading up on things at that point, but it was too late. This friend had a very interesting presentation: very obviously emotionally dysregulated, borderline-style, but she also used defenses that would be more typical of pathological narcissism. She was very concerned with self-esteem and status, had a lot of shame, was very sensitive to that, and was thinking very hierarchically – a lot of her coping was related to hierarchical thinking. I was wondering: what is going on there? I’d call it a mixed presentation of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and NPD.

Mixed presentations, echoism, and the structure of pathological narcissism

Dawn: When you encounter a presentation like that, would you treat the patient as someone with pathological narcissism, or rather as someone with a mixed presentation – or as someone with borderline, and maybe refer them out to someone who specializes in borderline?

Mark: I tend to treat all presentations as mixed presentations. I tend not to conceptualize in terms of just one category of disorder. I do a lot of diagnostic assessments, and those involve a kind of exploration of all the different personality styles or prototypes that might be involved. Then there comes a point where I need to provide a diagnosis, and that is far less exact than one might imagine.

Looking at the different personality profiles and their scores – if there’s one, there are always more than one. It’s never been the case that there’s just been one peak personality disorder and everything else was below threshold. If there’s one, there are many.

So the question becomes: how do I conceptualize this in a way that gets closest to what I think the subjective experience of the person is, but also captures the function of these adaptations? One usually seems to be more core, and the others seem to provide a stabilizing function around that core.

Not too long ago I assessed somebody, and it was like you’re describing – there’s a BPD piece, and there’s a narcissism piece. The door could have swung either way: I could have said, “this is NPD with some BPD-like dysregulation happening,” or, “this is BPD with NPD-like defenses that have developed.” That’s the direction I went, because it seemed to me that the individual was more fundamentally oriented around abandonment anxiety and abandonment trauma, and that this false-self adaptation had developed around it to stabilize it – as opposed to a fundamental narcissistic injury where, because of their experiences, things had gotten dysregulated in a BPD-esque way.

But honestly, that’s a judgment call. It’s highly individual, and in a lot of these situations a plausible argument could be made either way. It speaks to the complexity of the variables and the inexactness of the constructs. To quote Hannibal Lecter, we’ve got these blunt little instruments that we use to try to understand what is essentially the most complex system in the known universe – just one individual mind. So yes, it’s necessarily inexact, where things are right now.

Dawn: This is also very interesting because I have a thesis about what’s called echoism. Craig Malkin has a model of narcissism and echoism at opposite poles of a spectrum. I liked the book Rethinking Narcissism – lots of things in it made a lot of sense to me – but the spectrum didn’t make sense to me, because I know so many people who are really high on both narcissism and echoism, and also something else I call sovereignism, which is probably relatively close to malignant narcissism. But let’s bracket that.

If these things are so structurally similar, and the same person, depending on their social context and who they’re interacting with, switches between echoism and narcissism in their expression, then what’s going on there? To me, it seemed more like people with disorganized attachment.

One model is: people with disorganized attachment, depending on the other person or the social context, either try to collapse that into avoidant attachment, which looks more narcissistic, or try to collapse it into preoccupied attachment, which looks more echoistic.

The other idea is that it might depend on where they feel they are in the social hierarchy. If they’re very low, they take a people-pleasing approach to try to appeal to all the people higher up, which is most of them. If they find themselves very high, they can take a dismissive approach to the people below them and the people-pleasing approach only with the very few who are above them. In the first case they come off as more echoistic, in the second case as more typically narcissistic. What do you think of this seeming dichotomy of two relatively similar things?

Mark: Well, I think of the dichotomous model of pathological narcissism itself. It loses its coherence if you have just a grandiosity factor, or just a vulnerable, depressive, anxious factor – you need both to have the coherent construct of pathological narcissism. If you just have grandiosity, then someone is just grandiose – there’s no disorder there, necessarily. And if you just have the collapse, then that looks like almost any mental health issue in its more severe form. It is the unique combination that makes a usable, clinically relevant construct.

It would seem that these two constructs are strictly dichotomous, or, to use a research term, orthogonal – one measures one direction, the other measures the other direction. But when you actually look at the factor structure of instruments like the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI), which includes both grandiose and vulnerable factors, what you find is that these two constructs intercorrelate in a very meaningful way. It’s not, “the more grandiosity you have, the less vulnerability you have.” No – these two constructs correlate with each other about as far as they can without starting to superimpose. The more grandiosity you have in a pathological-narcissism context, the more vulnerability tends to go up – and vice versa. They are two facets of the same construct.

To the extent that what Malkin is talking about with echoism is something more defined by a kind of preoccupied attachment, or a preoccupation with being too visible or too “out there,” it would seem to be the opposite of grandiosity. I don’t know about that. I think these are two facets of a conflict around being seen, and around what it is to be a self – the subjective building blocks of self-experience.

In NPD, the person is actually deeply conflicted about being visible, about showing up. There are often really inflexible contingencies around when it’s okay and when it isn’t. The same individual, if they feel they’re getting really positive feedback from a group, can launch into untethered grandiosity, and then maybe the next day have the opposite experience and collapse under the shame hangover about how much of themselves got seen, and how conflicted they actually feel about that in the after-party self-state.

I don’t know if I’m answering your question, but I find that in narcissistic presentations – this was my dissertation, actually – yes, there are some that are strictly dismissing-avoidant in their attachment style, but most seem to correlate with something more like fearful avoidance, which would be the disorganized attachment, where there’s intense ambivalence about closeness, about being seen, about being a self. There’s a desire to affiliate, but the stakes can feel really high when that actually happens, and it rarely lives up to all the different internal expectations the different parts of the person might have.

Dawn: There is a bit of a connection between the vulnerable expression and echoism. But the Maladaptive Covert Narcissism Scale has items that go in the direction of, “I have enough problems of my own, I don’t care about other people’s problems,” which are probably what the scale is meant to capture as expressions of the vulnerable side – but they’re basically the opposite of echoism. With echoism, it would be: “Yes, I’ll happily make myself useful to help you with all of your problems, because that’s where I derive my self-esteem from. If I can make myself useful for someone, that’s what builds me up.”

Mark: What’s interesting about that, though, is that from a Pathological Narcissism Inventory lens, that’s considered a form of grandiosity – self-sacrificing self-enhancement, on the grandiose factor. Yet if we looked at it through a different framework, that would be considered something more like an oral personality, where the person is giving of themselves to the point of depletion and collapse. There’s some meaningful component of that which is an old conflict, an old place of developmental impasse.

Different words can apply equally well to different constructs. The word depression or depressive is almost ubiquitous in psychology, and it’s like – what do we mean? Do you just mean feeling sad, or something more like anhedonia, the absence of pleasure? Or can we understand it through a pathological-narcissism lens, because of all the distortions of self-esteem that tend to accompany depression? Is it introjective or anaclitic depression? There are so many variables. Same thing with narcissism – I just wrote a piece on my Substack about how there are at least four different constructs that all have the same name. Everybody’s using them interchangeably, and nobody knows what anybody else is talking about, but everybody thinks we’re all talking about the same thing.

Dawn: You mentioned a study that found that, up to a 3 on the scale, narcissistic grandiosity and vulnerability are uncorrelated, and then they become correlated suddenly once the grandiosity becomes high enough. That study was based on the Five-Factor Narcissism Inventory short form (FFNI-SF), whereas the scale you mentioned several times now is the PNI. Which of these do you prefer for which purpose?

Mark: I don’t use the Five-Factor scale. I don’t subscribe to trait narcissism as a meaningful clinical construct, at least not in my work. I can see how it’s a necessary component of personality research, but I think it’s easy to misinterpret trait-narcissism research.

My main critique of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) model is that it is essentially a trait framework. It treats grandiosity as a trait, and as a result you end up with these nonsense research studies that are essentially saying NPD is not in any way meaningfully correlated with mental disorder – that it’s not a form of psychological dysfunction. If you have dysfunction, you’d expect there to be distress, you’d expect there to be problems in the person’s life, beyond just that people in their life don’t like them. That’s not, to my mind, a meaningful enough standard to call something a mental disorder. But that’s how you end up with the asshole disorder, which is how NPD is treated in most settings, because the DSM model collapses – if you do a factor analysis of it, it’s essentially one factor: grandiosity.

Grandiosity, if you treat it that way as a trait, is probably heritable. That’s where you get these high heritability estimates that use the DSM model. Trait narcissism, on the Big Five, is defined as high extroversion and low agreeableness. And what is that? I don’t know – it’s not a disorder.

This is yet another way in which we seem to be talking about different things using the same words. When I talk about narcissism – pathological narcissism, and there’s a reason we have to attach the word “pathological” to it – it’s because narcissism itself, as a construct in psychology, is neutral with respect to health or disorder. Narcissism is just how the person relates to themself. You can relate to yourself well, in an adaptive way, and we’d call that healthy narcissism. Or you can relate to yourself in a pathological way, and we’d call that pathological narcissism. The fact that we need to attach the word “pathological” to it says that the construct itself is neutral.

So when you talk about trait narcissism, is this a disorder? Is this a construct that can meaningfully be used to understand disordered states? To my mind, not so much. So I don’t tend to use instruments derived from that model. When I feel that model is imposing itself on our ability to understand this disorder, I tend to push back. Let’s define our terms.

I debated Peter Salerno on YouTube a number of months back. I didn’t really have my thoughts straight about this yet – I wasn’t that familiar with his framework. But he’s written prolifically about the supposed high heritability of narcissism. If we’re talking about it as a collection of traits, absolutely – highly heritable. But that’s not the same thing as a disorder. Once we start thinking about it as a form of pathology, all of a sudden there’s identity disturbance. Where does that come from? Is that genetic? Probably not – identity disturbance tends to be more experientially grounded.

Dawn: This is certainly a very important message to get out there. When I look at the FFNI-SF, I see a whole bunch of subscales, and among them a grandiosity and a vulnerability subscale. The PNI has nice validation studies where they tested how well it captures all sorts of facets of mental health, and how much better it does that than the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI). I haven’t seen something like that for the FFNI, but at least from the subscale structure, it seems to capture both the vulnerable side and the grandiose side, so it already seems to be doing a better job than the NPI.

Mark: Well, that’s good. The way the DSM is going with their alternative framework for personality disorders – that’s a combination of a more dimensional approach (degrees of mental illness, essentially) and a trait-based approach. For NPD, the alternative-framework trait is that the person is admiration-seeking, essentially. So it’s this trait model in combination with a dimensional approach.

Any measure that includes something like a severity scale – which in the instrument you’re talking about, which I’ll admit I’m not that familiar with, is likely what they’re talking about with the vulnerability subsection – I think you already have a more robust instrument there, because it includes a component of disorder and dysfunction. As opposed to something like just implausibly high self-esteem – is that a disorder? That’s where things like the NPI go off track.

Depressive vs. narcissistic injury and the two faces of NPD

Dawn: I think we can agree the NPI is not a good model for pathological narcissism. You mentioned earlier introjective and anaclitic depression, so that’s a good segue, because there’s something I find very confusing about the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM) – now in its third version since last year – and also about Psychoanalytic Diagnosis by Nancy McWilliams. There’s a separation where she has the narcissistic style as something very, I don’t know, anaclitic – something that’s empty, free of introjects, or something. And then she has all sorts of other things that are sort of similar – the depressive style, the hypomanic style, the masochistic style – completely separate from that. The depressive style, for example, comes in an introjective version.

What I’m seeing a lot of the time is that, in a way, the folks with NPD I’m friends with are very introjective – they just have introjects that really suck, sort of along the lines of your “harsh introjects” video. They have introjects that tell them they must never show any kind of vulnerability, so as not to make themselves manipulable or exploitable to others. Or introjects that tell them they must perform and never sleep and be the best at everything. These count as introjects in my mind. I suppose there are some presentations of NPD that are pretty psychically empty, but when there’s a presentation – which is the more common one I see – that is introjective like that, do you have a handle on how Nancy McWilliams or other people who use the PDM would classify that? Would they classify it as NPD versus depressive personality disorder, or something else, when someone has such an introjective presentation of NPD?

Mark: Well, I don’t know how Nancy McWilliams would classify it. In one of the classes I teach, the students and I use the PDM and McWilliams’s Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, and one of the projects is group presentations around different personality styles and how you would do differential diagnosis.

So, analytically, the depressive personality style has a kind of direct line from Freud’s work Mourning and Melancholia. Interestingly, when Freud introduces the idea of melancholia, he describes it as a narcissistic object, essentially. The idea is that the individual sustains a loss, and in order to defend against the loss, the ego is split – this is the first introduction of the idea of splitting in the literature. The ego is split, and one piece of the ego is identified with the lost object. The lost object is introjected into the ego, and the ego begins to direct its own rage at the lost, abandoning object internally. That’s what produces the symptoms of melancholia, which was the precursor to the word “depression.” Anger turned inward, essentially. The individual is attacking themselves in lieu of the lost object, which remains idealized.

Freud discussed this as a form of narcissistic object because, in his original model, you’ve got primary narcissism, which is the infant’s omnipotence – the world is me, essentially. Then, once you go through the Oedipus complex, you learn that’s not true, and that sets the stage for the possibility of loving external objects – libido can be transferred externally. But Freud says that when the object is traumatically lost, that libido is pulled back into the self, and this represents a form of secondary narcissism.

Why am I saying all of this? I think what I’m trying to say is that, analytically, the idea of a depressive personality is one organized around loss. That loss can either be introjected in the way Freud is describing – the introjective style of depression, where the person is self-hating, essentially – or it can remain a loss that has been sustained out in the world, and the person is constantly grieving (well, not really grieving, because it’s not productive – but constantly pining for a kind of reacquisition of the lost object).

Whereas narcissism is something where there is a kind of loss, but it’s more like a deficit. It’s more like the person never got what was needed – not that it was gotten and then lost. There’s a compensatory internal structure built around this deficit, as opposed to a way of coping with something that was there and is now gone.

Dawn: So, if it used to be there and was then lost, that must have happened before the Oedipal stage – or at what age would those occur?

Mark: If we’re talking Freud, that would actually be post-Oedipal – it would be a regression. The libido that had been cathected to the internal object is now pulled back into the self.

Dawn: Okay, so at a relatively old age already – four years plus or so?

Mark: If we were to plot these injuries on a developmental continuum… and there might be people watching this who are like, “this guy has no idea what he’s talking about,” and that’s fair – I’m not an analyst, I’m an analytic therapist. I’ve read a bunch of this literature, but I’ve not been through formal analytic training. That said, I’m willing to be wrong. So if we put it on a developmental continuum, the narcissistic injury is sustained earlier than the depressive injury.

Dawn: Interesting – that’s also a useful distinction. Something else I wanted to pick your brain on: I just alluded to all these different kinds of introjects that friends of mine have. To me, it seems like those friends fall into two pretty different groups. Both camps have NPD, and some of them have a mixed presentation of both, but by and large there are some who are very perfectionistic, usually have some pro-social values, and when they make mistakes, they try to hide those mistakes from themselves – to reframe them so they’re not mistakes – and they struggle a lot with very obvious self-deceptions. They always strive to prove their worth to other people, to compete with certain nemeses who are sort of close to their level.

Then there’s a very different camp. These people are much more about never feeling helpless, trying to control everyone else, having maximal power and control over every situation. Their self-esteem is much more stable. The first group usually oscillates between vulnerable and grandiose states and seems really fragile and sensitive, whereas the second group usually has a really stable, high level of grandiosity. They don’t so much compete with any individual person, or seek the admiration of any individual person, because they don’t even respect people enough to seek their admiration a whole lot.

They usually don’t have pro-social values – they’d rather have a kind of false self that’s all around being perfectly selfish, sometimes being evil or something of that sort, and they are sometimes (or often) sadistic. When they make mistakes, they tend to reframe them as something they’ve done intentionally, to maintain this idea of having had control in that situation. Very much about control and selfishness.

These seem very different to me, but both have been diagnosed with NPD at different points. Which of these do you encounter more, and how do you make the distinction? Does it have something to do with attachment styles? Is it the particular false-self adaptation they form that pushes them in one direction or another?

Mark: Gosh, I don’t know. One thought I had: when you were talking about the stability of one group versus the other, that makes some sense, given that the group that is more defended around feeling helpless probably has more of something like an internal locus of control, even if it’s just a defensive one. That would likely result in a more consistent experience, as opposed to the variable one you notice in the group that is trying always to be the best, or live up to – because implicitly there, the standard is external. You’re only the best if everybody says you’re the best. That way of organizing self-experience would be inherently less stable, more reactive to circumstances – whether or not you got the trophy or the prize.

We could loosely map those onto attachment style, where the one that’s more about external validation is a little hungrier – along the dimension of attachment anxiety. “Will I be the best? Will I be accepted? Will I get the accolade? Am I good enough?” There’s an other that’s needed to provide that feedback. So it’s higher in attachment anxiety – something more along the lines of a preoccupied dimension.

The one that’s more about not being helpless – there really isn’t a lot of attachment anxiety there. There’s much more attachment avoidance. “Don’t get too close, don’t trust” – like you said, which I think was an insightful read. That would be more toward a dismissing-avoidant experience.

When you look at how those attachment dimensions… I’m not saying these are styles, necessarily – these are dimensions of attachment. I see attachment as more of a continuous variable than a categorical one. The higher you are in anxiety and the higher you are in avoidance, the more you move into these categorical dimensions of attachment style. But if we think about them more as continuous variables that are constantly fluctuating depending on the circumstance, that’s a better model for understanding a person’s behavior in the moment.

When you look at the correlations of various kinds of psychopathology with these different dimensions of attachment, you find that the preoccupied style is much more highly correlated with measures of distress, whereas the dismissing-avoidant style is hardly correlated with measures of distress at all, because the person has this very well-established internal, self-sufficient model of self: “I don’t need anybody, I’ve got it covered. Even if I needed your help, I wouldn’t accept it, because I can’t trust you, essentially.” That’s probably why you notice less symptomatic variation in that subset.

Dawn: That makes a lot of sense. I also noticed how much attachment is dependent on the state. One friend of mine very readily, all the time, goes into what I would call the vulnerable victim mode, or the grandiose victim mode – there are these aggressor-versus-victim roles you can take, and you can take them in both grandiose and vulnerable states. That friend very happily goes into the victim side. Another friend told me, “Oh my god, no, I would be extremely hesitant before I cast myself in any kind of victim role, regardless of whether I’m actually a victim in any given situation.” I also saw this in another case where a friend tried to recall instances in her past where she was actually in a victim role, and it was very difficult for her to acknowledge that in the first place. I asked her to do the Attachment Style Questionnaire short form, and it came out as extremely low preoccupied attachment, extremely high avoidant attachment. She was in a grandiose state at the time when she took the questionnaire, so it’s kind of expected. The same difference also shows itself in the attachment styles, as far as I can see.

Mark: Yeah. Attachment is a really useful model for understanding a lot of things about a person. I sometimes run into this with my students, where there’s a tendency to think about things only in terms of attachment. Yes, these underlying dimensions of attachment illuminate so much about how we are interpersonally, but we still need the other concepts as well. It’s one of those things where, when a new lens comes into vogue, everybody is using it. Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a good example. People are like, “Whoa, parts!” – and then everything is about parts.

Dawn: I also find that lens very useful. When it comes to attachment styles, they have exactly the same problem you mentioned earlier: they make so much more sense when you see them dimensionally. By definition, most of the population is around the 50th percentile on both axes, and that is generally considered secure attachment. But when I have a friend who is around the 50th or 60th percentile on both dimensions, that friend feels super different to me from a friend who’s around the 25th percentile or so. Even with insecure attachment, there’s a huge difference between people who are more on the insecure end of secure attachment and people who are more on the secure end of it.

Mark: Absolutely. It reminds me of that Substack piece I told you about, on the different ways we use the term narcissism. What it was really about is: how heritable is NPD? The same researcher used the same sample – a sample of twins, in Sweden, I think. The first time, they defined and measured NPD as a categorical variable. The question was, among these twins, how many of them have NPD, and they found this crazy high number – like 79 percent heritable.

Seven years later, using the same sample of twins, they measured NPD as a dimensional variable – like what we were just discussing, where you’ve got, say, avoidance and anxiety, and you rate it that way. The heritability estimate dropped to 24 percent. It’s crazy how different the results can be from how you frame the question. If you introduce a continuous variable of severity – which is how they looked at it the second time, “okay, you’ve got these traits, but how severe are they?” – suddenly the heritability estimate drops to 24 percent, as opposed to just saying, “do you have these traits, yes or no?”

Dawn: Yeah – when you have a scale like that, and you project it onto just above or below some threshold, a lot of information is lost. Taking a dimensional approach is probably always better.

Mark: I think so. That’s how I think about it.

Dawn: I also noticed that when people have disorganized attachment – but, for example, the preoccupied dimension is around the 75th percentile and the avoidant is a bit higher – just the difference between those two is very informative. People who have slightly higher avoidant than preoccupied attachment, even though both are very high, will default to this very control-oriented presentation, with the internal locus of control, in almost all cases.

Mark: For a lot of people, that is just a more stable developmental solution. You see kids do this all the time, where they’re like, “My parents split up. Why? Because I’m bad.”

Dawn: Are they proud of being bad?

Mark: No, but it provides a stabilizing explanation that’s within their control. “If I weren’t so bad, then the bad thing wouldn’t have happened” – as opposed to the much harder thing to metabolize, which is that sometimes bad things happen and there’s nothing you could have done, it has nothing to do with you.

Sadism, etiology, and self-recovery

Dawn: I was also wondering, in that context: fetishes develop super early in life. There are some people who already have whatever fetishes they have around age two or three. Personality disorders take their final shape around puberty, usually. To me, it seems plausible that fetishes that form very early have an influence on what personality disorder a person forms in the end. For example, when someone has a sadism fetish – forms that sadism fetish around age two or three – that leaves them maybe a decade or so until puberty, or a bit less than a decade in many cases, for that aspect of their personality to have an effect on the rest of their personality.

Some people probably try to push that away – “Oh my god, that can’t be me. I need to hide that from everyone, I need to be the exact opposite and totally overcompensate for it.” Other people probably resolve the cognitive dissonance the other way around – they endorse it and are like, “Okay, apparently I am evil. Let’s take all those movie villains as role models and see what evil people do.” Then they also have a more coherent self-experience, just in the opposite direction. I’m wondering: to what extent does sadism, very early in life, have an effect on the development of sovereignism or malignant narcissism?

Mark: That’s a good question. I’d be curious about the idea of fetishes developing that early, and how that’s understood, because – obviously, infantile sexuality (to use the old analytic idea) is a thing. But it’s not necessarily genital sexuality. For that to be a thing, outside of normative play, it’s usually a result of traumatic intrusion of adult genital sexuality into the child’s world. So I’m curious to understand better what you mean by the early establishment of fetishes.

Dawn: More objectively speaking, I recently listened to an interview on Psychology in Seattle, and someone argued that fetishes form so early in life because children are no longer exposed in the way they were in our ancient environment. At some point, there were not really rooms or anything of the sort, and so children early on saw regular sexual intercourse very early in life. Since that’s no longer the case in today’s society, they latch onto something else. For example, when they’re crawling around on the ground underneath some table and see a bunch of feet, they develop a foot fetish in some cases. That’s one possible way it can emerge. I don’t know where a sadism fetish comes from – perhaps television or something. But it seems pretty frequent.

Mark: When I think about fetishes, to my mind that is a category of experience organized around genital sexual expression. “I can get off, but only this way.” So I have a hard time connecting that to pre-latency, very early childhood experiences.

That said, I do think we all have key experiences around which significant aspects of our internal world organize. I wouldn’t call it a fetish necessarily, but maybe it becomes one. So with something like sadism: when I think about what sadism seems to be, it’s the punishment in someone else of intolerable experiences the sadist can’t deal with. Being weak, being vulnerable, being helpless. There’s a tendency, in a sadistic worldview, to identify somebody who appears to embody some of those intolerable qualities, and then punish them – getting a feeling of gratification from seeing, via projection, the bad object punished.

Dawn: That’s one framing. But I could also see the framing that, when you learn from early on that it’s bad – when you’re being taught by your parents that it’s bad to show vulnerability – you introject that. Just as I learned that certain things are moral and other things are immoral, like that if someone is sad I need to comfort that person, these people learn the opposite: being sad is bad. Then they just feel righteous about executing that kind of punishment on the person.

Mark: I don’t know that those are substantially different. You’re right that that is a moral framework many of us carry around inside of us anyway. You see it all the time online, especially around things like pedophilia or child molesters, where everybody’s just sadistic – “burn them alive, cut off all their skin, hang their eyeballs off the…” And it’s like, what? I get that this is morally abhorrent behavior, but where does the seeming joy that this commenter is deriving from this ultra-violent fantasy come from? Is this a sadistic person, or is this one of the few contexts in modern life where sadism is sanctioned?

I do think that part of the function of that communal sadism is to expel or purge something that is unthinkable or intolerable in the self. Not that everybody’s a pedophile, but there are aspects of human sexuality that we don’t like to entertain. “It’s not in me, it’s in them, and now we’re going to torture them” – it’s a way of confirming to the self, “Yes, I am righteous, and they are the bad one.” That same process plays out in all kinds of different ways, and we see that too with narcissism. The “evil narcissist with shark eyes” and all the rest – they’re demons, monsters from hell. What are we really punishing there? I don’t know – it’s different things to different people, but it’s clear there’s some kind of collective sadistic stance toward “the narcissist.”

Dawn: You see that a lot in prisons. There are sadistic inmates, and then there’s someone who’s a child molester coming to that prison, and that particular transgression is used as a kind of Schelling point – a signal that now it’s okay to indulge the sadism. Some of my sadistic friends are quite self-reflective about that – if they want to have fun with their sadism, they’re basically waiting for someone to transgress against them in a particular way to give them an excuse.

Mark: Sadism might just be something I’m particularly defended against. It is one category of human experience that I find difficult to empathize with. It’s not that I can’t sort of get it, but it’s just one spot where it’s hard to really get into the mind of somebody who’s in the throes of a sadistic experience.

Dawn: I have an article where I’ve tried to come up with exercises that teach a non-sadistic reader what it is like to experience any one of, I think, six different types of sadism, so perhaps that’s interesting.

Mark: That is interesting – I’d be interested in seeing it.

Dawn: Yeah, I’ll link it to you, and I’ll link it in the show notes – I love saying these things. I’m a new podcaster, so I love saying those things.

Mark: Perfect.

Dawn: We’re sort of talking about etiology a bit, and there I was also thinking: there’s the model of the etiology of NPD that’s along the lines of what the MBT people write about. There’s some kind of influence they call the alien self, and projections from parents, and then the child – who still tries to find themselves and doesn’t really have a self yet – has this alien self projected onto them. They try to become the person who lives up to those projected expectations, because they don’t yet know that that is not actually them. It’s a failure of contingent marked mirroring – not contingent, but very much marked – and the child forms a false self into, basically, people-pleasing the parents.

But I’ve also noticed that there’s an etiology of NPD that’s basically just neglect. The parent was either emotionally absent or completely absent, and people developed NPD somehow, because they were seemingly parented by their environment. They recognized that certain actions produce something a bit like a love surrogate, even if it wasn’t coming from their parent, because the parent wasn’t there. Somehow the environment takes over a kind of parenting role, which is also not contingent at all, because the environment also does not actually do any kind of mentalization with the child. Are those two different etiologies of NPD?

Mark: That’s a really good question. I think the higher levels of internal distress – and this is just an intuitive sense, I don’t know that I have a theoretical justification for it – likely come from that sort of alien, introjected, impinging phenomenon, where what is “not self” is imposed on self in a way that creates disorganization and a kind of internally punitive, introjective experience.

Versus something more like neglect, and then finding a kind of validation – because you’re good at baseball or something like that. That would probably be more prone to a depressive collapse, but not a dysregulated, disorganized kind of collapse, like you might see in something more like… well, if I think about the etiology of borderline personality disorder, I think there’s often the felt intrusive presence of some introject that the person is consistently trying to both expel and also experience a kind of merger with.

Dawn: That makes a lot of sense. I don’t have a good segue, but I’d also be really interested in seeing whether you have ideas for exercises. When I’m writing this self-help book for people who want to recover from NPD, a large problem is that they don’t automatically have a therapist there to train relational things, so they need to find another person – a partner, a friend, or an AI, perhaps – with whom they can train the relational things. Are there any kinds of exercises you’ve already had good experience with that your patients can do between sessions, or anything of the sort that can help generate some of those experiences?

Mark: That’s a good question, too. I don’t really give homework in my practice. To the extent I’ll recommend an exercise or something like that, it’s mostly around the idea of mindfulness meditation, or a Vipassana kind of meditative experience – one focused on being with internal experience without necessarily having to identify with it, or react to it, cling to it, or push it away.

Things like journaling can be helpful, of course, in articulating what a person is experiencing and holding up a kind of mirror to themselves. But I think the main challenge, especially early in treatment, is just being able to take ownership, in a sense, of these different kinds of experiences that are typically projected or externalized – to be able to sit with the idea that “I feel like I didn’t do a good job,” and just be like, “okay, that’s an experience that’s passing through,” to be able to acknowledge it and then let it go.

This is a kind of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) model – there’s a contextual self versus something that’s, maybe, more immutable. Self-as-context versus a conceptual self that’s labeled “this is bad,” versus, no, I am actually the space where valuations like badness and goodness occur.

I realize I’m coming up against my hard stop here. These are great questions, I really appreciate them, and the chance to speak with you. I’m excited for your channel, and I can tell that you do some really deep and intricate thinking about these ideas, so I appreciate the level of sophistication you’re asking about.

Dawn: Thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge. I really love it when people with extensive experience in some field actually share that in-depth knowledge that you can’t just get from books, because that’s always so much more fine-grained and nuanced than the more compressed versions in books and papers.

Mark: I’m happy to do so. If you ever want to talk again, let me know.

Dawn: Yeah, thank you so much! Have a good day!

Mark: Yeah, you too.

Dawn: Bye!

1. Diagnosis as a turning point. Dorian was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) at 22, which set him on a path from factory work to studying psychology at university – with the goal of becoming Dr. Dorian Steel.

2. The glass box. Dorian describes his relationship with humanity through the metaphor of a glass box – not feeling trapped or isolated, but simply never having felt connected to other people. He’s comfortable in it.

3. Anger as the only real emotion. Of all emotions, anger is the only one Dorian is truly in touch with. He has no prosocial emotions – he can’t feel happy for someone else – but he can be friendly and has a good sense of humor.

4. No fear, no worry, no lost sleep. Dorian nearly fell off Snowdonia with no change in heart rate, faced a potential nine-year prison sentence without anxiety, and has never lost a wink of sleep over anything. Where other people have fear, he has adrenaline and a cold, analytical mind.

5. An overnight transformation. One night, lying in bed, Dorian said a one-sentence prayer – and the next day his entire life changed direction. He left behind the skinhead identity he’d held for five years, covered up his throat tattoo, and began building a new life around fitness, faith, and responsibility.

6. Control as a core need. Dorian describes a dominant need for control and power over everyone and everything – his environment, the people in it, outcomes. He manages this partly through compartmentalization and partly by carefully curating his surroundings.

7. Boundaries are invisible. Without an internalized moral conscience or empathy, Dorian doesn’t see boundaries until they’re pointed out to him – and by then it’s usually too late. He’s tried to get therapy for this, but has been turned away as “too high-functioning.”

8. Fatherhood is the exception. His five-year-old son is the one person Dorian calls “a little extension of me” – and their relationship is probably the only one where he feels somewhat bonded.

9. Regret, loneliness, and self-pity are absent. Dorian has never experienced deep regret, can’t feel lonely because he has no innate desire for human connection, and can’t feel sorry for himself because he can’t feel sorry for anyone.

10. Pain is just a signal. Dorian spent a full day lifting heavy bags and shopping while his appendix was inflamed, only going to the emergency room in the late afternoon. Pain doesn’t fill his perception – it’s something off to the side that he can mostly look away from.

11. Romantic rejection hits differently. Despite not feeling attached to anyone, romantic rejection causes intense narcissistic injury – a wound to ego and pride, not to connection. Job rejection, by contrast, doesn’t register at all. (My guess is that he’s a sovereign.)

12. The dream of the shrinking doorway. In a striking dream, Dorian meets an idealized woman, but the doorway they keep passing through shrinks until she can’t fit. When they finally get home together, the doors are wide open – and he wakes up flooded with adrenaline. He interprets it as being about emotional capacity and vulnerability.

13. The video game analogy. Dorian resonates with the idea that life with psychopathy is like a video game – you’re running around causing chaos, and you always reset the next day. Other people feel like NPCs, with his son being one of the few exceptions.

14. A message to the public. Dorian wishes people would stop equating psychopathy with serial murder and sex offenses, step away from the Netflix dramas and TikTok myths, and actually read or listen to people who live with it.

Glossary

Hare Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R). A clinical assessment tool developed by Robert Hare, used to assess psychopathic traits. It covers interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and antisocial dimensions. Dorian’s prison psychologist administered this checklist during his time on probation. Please see my sequence on psychopathy for more information on the concept.

Narcissistic injury. A perceived threat to a narcissistic person’s self-esteem or self-worth, often triggering disproportionate anger or shame. Dorian experiences this specifically in the context of romantic rejection. Please see my sequence on pathological narcissism for more information on the concept.

Splitting. A defense mechanism in which people or situations are perceived in all-or-nothing terms – entirely good or entirely bad – with little middle ground. It’s a feature of borderline and psychotic personality organization. Dorian notes that his splitting tends to be permanent, which is characteristic of NPD.

Conduct disorder. A childhood and adolescent behavioral disorder involving aggression, destruction of property, deceitfulness, and rule violations. It is often considered a precursor to ASPD in adulthood.

Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). A childhood disorder characterized by a pattern of angry, irritable mood, argumentative behavior, and vindictiveness. Like conduct disorder, it can precede more severe personality pathology.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). A structured, goal-oriented form of psychotherapy that focuses on identifying and changing unhelpful thought patterns and behaviors. Dorian underwent CBT with a private psychologist.

Attachment styles. A framework describing patterns of relating to others in close relationships, typically categorized as secure, preoccupied (anxious), avoidant (dismissive), or disorganized (a combination of anxious and avoidant).

Compartmentalization. A psychological defense mechanism in which conflicting thoughts, emotions, or experiences are kept separated to avoid discomfort. Dorian describes being very skilled at this – putting feelings “in a box” so that others won’t see them.

Anattā (no-self). A concept from Buddhist philosophy referring to the absence of a permanent, unchanging self. In the interview, Dawn references Jamie’s description of a “no-self state” – a subjective experience of not identifying with one’s own body or personhood – which contrasts with Dorian’s strong sense of self.

Timestamps

• 0:12 How Dorian Steel Has Been Doing

• 0:56 From Factory Worker to Psychology Student

• 3:18 Starting “The Picture of Dorian Steel” on YouTube

• 4:58 Factory vs. University – Two Different Worlds

• 6:52 Friendship with Jamie (M.E. Thomas)

• 9:19 “I’ve Come a Long Way” – What Dorian Wants People to Know

• 10:23 Where Does the Motivation Come From?

• 13:50 Finding Christianity Overnight

• 20:57 Tattoo Stories – Barbed Wire and Impulse Bets

• 22:16 What Does Regret Feel Like? “I Don’t Know”

• 23:17 The Glass Box – Never Feeling Connected to Humanity

• 27:10 Anger: The Only Emotion That Arrives in Full

• 27:59 Emotional Regulation – Internal Control vs. Changing Your Environment

• 31:40 In Custody – Napping, Push-Ups, and a Handshake Through the Cell Door

• 36:21 “Slipped into a Skin Suit” – Growing into Himself

• 39:25 Grandiosity – “You Sit Like You’re Better Than Me”

• 41:54 Different Faces – Probation Officers, His Son, and Jamie

• 43:40 The Prison Psychologist Who Earned His Respect

• 47:54 Boundaries – “I Just Don’t See Them”

• 53:35 Why Pity Makes Him Angry

• 54:34 Therapy and Addiction – A Troubling Pattern

• 57:20 Depression and Self-Harm at 16

• 58:55 Agency and Impulsivity – Buying an Illegal Firearm on a Whim

• 1:04:50 Fear – Nearly Falling Off Snowdonia with No Change in Heart Rate

• 1:07:46 “Where Other People Have Fear, I Just Have Adrenaline and Anger”

• 1:13:21 Pain – Lifting Heavy Bags All Day with Appendicitis

• 1:15:08 Relationships, Attachment, and Not Feeling Attached at All

• 1:18:39 Intimacy as a Power Game

• 1:20:11 The Dream of the Shrinking Doorway

• 1:27:10 Romantic Rejection and Narcissistic Injury

• 1:32:21 His Son – “A Little Extension of Me”

• 1:36:00 Life as a Video Game – NPCs and the Glass Box Revisited

• 1:38:53 Bad vs. Out of Control – How Others See Him

• 1:40:51 Childhood Amnesia – 90% of Memories Gone

• 1:44:38 Selfhood – Comparing Notes with Jamie’s “No-Self” Experience

• 1:48:06 Funniest Stories – Chasing a Burglar in His Underwear with a Knife

• 1:56:53 Advice to His 15-Year-Old Self

• 1:57:36 What Does Dorian Steel Actually Enjoy?

• 1:59:41 “Stop Thinking We’re All Serial Murderers” – Closing Thoughts

Transcript

Dawn: Hello, flitterific listeners! Today I’m joined by Dorian Steel. Dorian can tell us a lot more about, in particular, psychopathy. So, how have you been doing?

Dorian: I’ve been doing well. I’ve just enjoyed finishing reading the paper that you wrote about me. University’s going well, and I’m more on the up. I find that the more I stick to my responsibilities, the more I’m on the up, so I’m sticking to that. But I’m very well, thank you. How are you doing?

Dawn: Yeah, cool – that would have been my next question. I can have very interesting times. I have a lot of very emotional conversations with some friends right now. Some of them have, some of them used to have personality disorders, so there’s always something going on. But my next question would have been exactly how your degree is going and what has drawn you into that field in the first place.

Dorian: Well, at the moment I’m on my second semester. We’ve just finished the first one. We’re studying developmental, clinical, and investigative psychology. I’ve got classes for biological psychology as well, and research methodology – I like research methodology a lot.

Dawn: And what drew you into that field? In particular, why is research methodology your favorite?

Dorian: What drew me into psychology? It sort of happened without my realizing. Years ago – I’m 25 now – but when I was early 22, I started to suspect that there was something amiss with me. I went down a rabbit hole, educated myself, and then eventually, months down the line, after a psych eval, I got diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). From then on, I just started learning about psychology in general.

I was a blue-collar worker at a factory, in a food production environment. Anybody who knows that sort of work knows it’s not the most intellectually stimulating. So it took about two years and some kind words from a couple of professionals who put the seed into my head about maybe pursuing higher education. I applied for three universities. I got knocked back by two of them, but my last one – which was the best choice – accepted me. I realized all I do is read up on psychology. It became an obsession, and I realized I’m very smart and could make a good career out of this. That’s what’s led me there. But I’ve needed a nudge.

Dawn: Yeah, I can empathize with that – I find psychology very thrilling myself. You’ve also been very open about your experiences and your whole backstory, and you have your own YouTube channel where you share a lot of stories and details. What motivated you to be so open in public about it?

Dorian: There comes a time when everybody wants to tell their story in one way or another. For me, the idea to start a YouTube channel was suggested to me. I’ve had things suggested to me – that I should write a book about my life and the things I’ve done. But a YouTube channel was the way to go. I thought of the idea back when I was working in the factory, but I didn’t want any of my fellow workers to find out, so I held back and waited until I left and started at university.

It’s called The Picture of Dorian Steel, and it’s going very well, actually. I just did a video that’s got about 1,200 views, and I only started last year in September. I tell stories, give my thoughts and perceptions on various ideas and concepts about myself or about other things in the world. I paint a picture of myself, essentially.

Dawn: What’s different between the people you’re studying with now and the factory workers – that back then you didn’t want to start the channel, and now you do?

Dorian: I’ve got a lot more in common with the people in my class. Obviously, we’re all interested in the same thing. The factory was a very volatile kind of place at the time. Very poor communication between all levels of staff. Don’t get me wrong, there were a few good people in there that I genuinely liked and got on with. It’s just like anywhere you go in life, really. But it was very physical – a lot of heavy lifting. I used to tell myself it’s an extra workout that I’m getting paid for.

That’s how you get through that kind of job, but there are people who’ve been there for over 20, 30 years. Most of their life. And I just thought, I’ve got to do something else other than this. I owe a lot, really, to my diagnosis and to psychology as a whole for getting me out of it.

Dawn: Well, at least the people who do that for 20 years must be jacked by now.

Dorian: Yeah, some of them. But I’m just happy to be out.

Dawn: You’re also really good friends with Jamie Thomas. How did you meet? What is this friendship like, and how did it happen in the first place?

Dorian: I can’t remember exactly how, but I found out about her – bear in mind, I’d first discovered it when I was self-diagnosing. That was when I first saw her interviews on a YouTube channel called Psychopathy Is. They do nonprofit research into individuals with psychopathy. So I saw Jamie’s interviews on there, and one way or another I found out that she had a Discord. Somebody put a message in her server one day saying, “Ted, you should do an interview.” And I said, “If I’m lucky, she’ll ask.” And then Jamie herself responded, saying, “Well, we’ll set up a date – let’s do it.”

I think we’ve done five appearances together on her show. We’ve ended up meeting up in person. We went on holiday together last year in Windermere – me, her, and her partner Aria. It was nothing but good times. I’ve still got our pictures blue-tacked on my wardrobe.

Dawn: Between Jamie and Aria, in terms of your particular psychology, who do you think you’re more similar to?

Dorian: Oh, Aria, 100%. Jamie has described herself as sort of a milking stool – she’s got the antisocial traits, she’s autistic as well, and maybe obsessive-compulsive disorder. But Aria, her partner, is very much the same as me. Very strong in antisocial and narcissistic personality disorder traits. Her girlfriend is like me, but as a little blonde American girl. That is the way to describe it.

Dawn: If you had only about five minutes to describe what you want other people to know about you, what would you tell them? What would you focus on?

Dorian: I’d say I’ve come a long way. I’m much more responsible now, for the most part. Back when I was younger – in school, even as a teenager and as an adult – if you asked me what I wanted to do with my life, I never had an answer. No real sense of responsibility toward myself. Now I have a plan for life, future goals, and principles. Regimes that I stick to. I do a lot of reading, a lot of strength training, a lot of writing. I’ve got a creative hobby. I’m doing YouTube now. I’m keeping myself busy with good things, and it’s all looking up from here.

Dawn: Where does the motivation come from to make those changes?

Dorian: To really start taking things like fitness seriously and healthy habits – it started years ago. I just had a switch in my head flick. I was what you’d call a skinhead for five years, since I was a teenager, and that was very tumultuous at times, as you can imagine. Then five years into it, I’d just turned 22, and I looked at myself one day and thought, “This isn’t doing anything for me anymore.” So I snapped out of it, grew my hair out, and I haven’t regretted it for a day.

I like making progress on something. I’m extremely physically fit and healthy. I’ve just had my appendix taken out a few weeks ago, and the doctors were saying I was going to need all these pills. They tried to give me codeine, even though I told them I’ve had previous substance abuse issues with opioids and all manner of hard drugs. So I refused all my medication. They said don’t work out for the next six weeks, and I’ve already started again. Taking care of yourself benefits you. But it’s all about keeping myself rewarded – I’ve got to be getting some sort of reward from whatever I’m doing.

And it’s nice staying out of trouble, I’ll tell you that much. It’s nice knowing that I’m just being responsible and good now. A bit more prosocial, kind of like Jamie.

Dawn: Can you already tell if your life is a sequence of phases like that? Imagine you do a bachelor’s, a master’s, or a PhD in psychology, and that chapter ends at some point – what would the next step be for you?

Dorian: At the moment, I’m doing my bachelor’s degree with honors. After that, it’ll be a master’s degree, and then – because I want to be Dr. Dorian Steel, I want to have “Doctor” before my name – I’ll be doing my PhD in psychology.

Once I’ve done that, I think I’d like to go on the NHS as a diagnostician for a few years, and who knows, maybe even work with some of the people who diagnosed me. I remember some of them. I remember Nurse Anna, and the head doctor of the department. They were all very professional, and I remember leaving and admiring them. So I’d definitely want to do that for a couple of years, and then probably work in inpatient facilities as the end goal. I’m not sure about being a therapist, though – but definitely working at either a hospital or an inpatient facility.

Dawn: Part of the current reset in your life is also a shift toward Christianity in particular, and that’s something I found very interesting. How did that come about? I can see you have a few different versions of the Bible behind you.

Dorian: Yes, that’s right. I was alone in my bedroom one night, and it’s hard to put a word on it, but I just had an internal shift – this internal experience of myself. I’ve heard other Christians describe it. I just knew I had to admit the fact that there was a God.

So I started reading the Bible every day. I started writing scripture every day as well – anything I read that stuck out to me. I’ve still got my pad in my bedroom, just pages and pages of the Bible. I went to church about two or three months into being a Christian, and the church was good for a while. I even got baptized there. But I had a disagreement with the pastor on their policy regarding sex offenders being allowed to participate in the congregation, and I just left.

Now what I do occasionally – I’m what you’d call an evangelical Christian, somebody in the Billy Graham line of faith – but my dad is a Jehovah’s Witness, so I’ll go to one of the local Kingdom Halls with my dad occasionally on a Sunday. They’re very welcoming of me. They know I’m not a Jehovah’s Witness, and I don’t agree with them on everything, but that’s as good as it gets for me in terms of worship with other people. I still like to do my own thing. But that’s always been me – I’d just rather be on my own.

Dawn: When I wanted religion, I also created my own. But what did it feel like to realize – or acknowledge, the word you used – that there is a God? Was it a feeling, or was it a logical conclusion that you arrived at?

Dorian: It was a feeling. I’ll never forget it. I think I was out of work, had no money, nothing. I was at the lowest of the low. Not stressed, but definitely always thinking about things. It was slightly nervous, but I remember I said a prayer – just a short, one-sentence prayer to myself.

When I went outside the next day, everything looked different and felt different. It’s really indescribable. I’ve never been able to speak in too much detail about it, but it was an internal physical feeling, an internal shift. But I’m always in that state of what we’d call wrestling in the flesh, really wrestling with myself at times.

Dawn: So you prayed for something? Was that related? Did you pray for something, and then it came true the next day in the form of this internal shift?

Dorian: It wasn’t a wish. It wasn’t like, “I want a new car” or “I want a new wife.” I wasn’t asking for something. I was just lying in bed, and I closed my hands together, closed my eyes, and said, “Okay, God, you’re real, I believe you.” And that was it.

But being out of church has affected that a lot. I do think you need a good church behind you, but the church is its own worst enemy. It’s a toughie.

Dawn: Can you try to describe more what the difference was like before and after that shift – in your perception of yourself and the world?

Dorian: In terms of behavior, that did a complete 180. I was unemployed – I was earning money outside of employment, let’s say. I was making ends meet in other ways. And I was extremely objectifying of people, in the sense that people were just literally objects to be used and manipulated for my purposes.

Then my life completely turned around. I wasn’t really dressed that smart. I started dressing smart, taking myself seriously, getting up at six in the morning to work out, getting healthy hobbies, and trying to be a good Christian as best I can. That hasn’t always been the case, and I’m not saying I’m perfect – I know I’m not. As much as my brain might like to tell me otherwise.

Dawn: That’s a remarkable shift, and that it happens so suddenly is impressive.

Dorian: It was at the snap of the fingers.

Dawn: I could imagine someone gradually developing over the course of a couple of years in that direction and then trying to remember what it was like before. But having that from one day to the next is stark.

Dorian: It was very late at night. Pitch black, and I was in bed. I’ll never forget it. The next day, I went and got my skinhead tattoo across my throat covered up. I couldn’t walk around with that anymore. Things started to change and go better, because I put my faith in a higher power. It’s the best decision you’ll ever make.

Dawn: You just touched on some tattoos. Are there any other stories behind any of the tattoos that you want to talk about?

Dorian: I’ve got a funny one. The barbed wire on my forehead – that was an impulse. I’d won money betting on horses. There used to be an old betting shop near where I live – it’s since closed down – but I went in there and bet a couple of pounds on a horse that was something like 100 to 1, or 200 to 1. And it won. So I took the money and went straight to the tattoo studio and said, “I want this done.” Some of them are very impulsive, but I’ve never regretted any of them. It’s a big thing with skinheads – tattoos. It was all about looking tough and all of that. But they’re just there now. They don’t mean anything to me.

Dawn: What would it feel like for you to regret something?

Dorian: I don’t know. I know this isn’t true, but in my head, it sounds stupid – why would you sit around regretting something? What are you going to get out of that? I don’t think I’ve ever felt regret. Maybe once or twice in a moment I’ve gone, “Yeah, maybe I could have gotten more if I chose option A instead of B.” But that actual deep-felt regret – I’ve never had it. I can’t even really talk about it. I just don’t have any experience with it.

Dawn: You’ve used this interesting metaphor of a glass box, or a plexiglass box, to describe your relationship with the environment, the world, and other people. I’d be quite interested in learning more about that – whether that relates to the previous version of you more than the current version, or whether it’s been constant. And what it feels like in the first place.

Dorian: I think it’s more a representation of what I don’t feel, if that makes sense. It’s always been there, always been the same. I’ve just never truly felt connected to humanity as a whole. People are people, and they’re there. But they’re always a little bit different in a way, and I just don’t identify with 99% of them. But I’m not particularly uncomfortable in my proverbial glass box. I’m very much fine in it. That’s just how I see things.

Dawn: Do you feel more isolated, or trapped, or protected by this box?

Dorian: Neither. I don’t feel loneliness, because I have no innate desire for human connection, so I can’t feel lonely. If I want to know if I’m lonely or not, I have to go through a checklist – right, I don’t have any friends, I spend a lot of time on my own, therefore I’m lonely. I don’t have a feeling to tell me that.

I don’t feel isolated from anyone, because I don’t feel it, so I’m not. It’s not about feeling protected either. Maybe protected from other people’s feelings, to a degree. I’ve been known to get angry quite quickly if somebody else cries. I don’t really like other people’s tears.

Dawn: That’s interesting, because when I get angry, I usually don’t notice it. I just notice that I start to have passive-aggressive intuitions that I usually don’t have, and then I wonder what’s going on. I didn’t used to be in touch with that feeling. So I wonder whether that’s similar with the loneliness – that there’s something going on that bothers you in some subtle way, but you’re not directly in touch with the feeling.

Dorian: Loneliness is just not something that I have. Anger, however – I’m very much in touch with my anger. It comes on very quickly, very suddenly, in vast amounts. I’ve been known to fight or attack people because of my anger, throw people out of my life because of it. There’s really no telling what would truly happen. So that’s why I try my best to avoid people who annoy me, and try to avoid as many triggers as possible. It’s something you have to do when you’re highly psychopathic, if you want to lead a good life. I don’t want to go to prison, because I know I’ll just be angry all the time and probably very paranoid as well.

The only main emotion that I’m really in touch with is anger, I’d say. I don’t have any prosocial emotions. I can’t feel happy for someone. It kind of sounds silly even saying that as a sentence – why would I feel happy for somebody else? Can’t they just feel happy and get on with it? That encompasses a large amount of my emotional range. I can be friendly, I can talk, I like to have a laugh. I don’t think laughing is an emotion, but I’ve got a good sense of humor.

Dawn: You try to emotionally regulate by surrounding yourself with people who bring out the best in you rather than the anger. That’s something I’ve seen from a bunch of friends of mine. Most of them seem to have an internal feeling of control, as if they can control how they want to react to their environment. Others rely much more on self-regulation through changing their environment. There’s this one person who told me that she told her son to call the police when she’s getting abusive, so that they can rein her in. She wasn’t used to being able to do that herself but clearly wanted to. Do you do both? Some kind of internal regulation and external regulation? Or do you rely more on external factors?

Dorian: I’m very good at compartmentalizing my emotions – or any feelings that I do feel. I’m very good at putting the ones I need in a box, tucked away so that you might not see them. That’s always been something I’ve been very good at.

But managing my environment is just as important to me. One of the key needs of somebody with psychopathy is that you have to always be in control of everything – not just your environment, but the people within it. You have to be in control of outcomes. It spreads into relationships, into every facet of your life – that dominant need for control and power over everyone and everything. So they’re both just as important. That’s probably part of where my ability to compartmentalize stems from – because I have to, otherwise I’m not in control.

Dawn: This control thing is interesting. What makes it so important?

Dorian: I don’t know. It’s just in me. It’s just the nature of who I am. What else would I do?

Dawn: What would it feel like to not have control, but in some harmless way – nothing bad happens?

Dorian: If I’m not affected in any way, maybe my pride will still be hurt momentarily. But if there’s no massive real-world fallout or consequences, then in a few seconds I’ll probably just not care and move on. I won’t linger.

Dawn: You had this interesting anecdote about being in custody, where you probably didn’t feel quite the same level of control as usual, but you managed to claw back a bit of that by getting a policeman to shake your hand through the cell door.

Dorian: Yeah, that was when I was in custody – not prison, but the custody jail where you’re taken after you’re arrested. My last arrest was when I was 22, or 23 actually, and it was for allegedly attempting to smuggle a firearm into the country, with ammunition, and a couple of other charges to do with illegal weapons found in my flat.

I got brought in for questioning, and to be honest, both times I’ve been in custody, I’ve loved it, because it’s just like a game of Monopoly, really. To me, it is, at least. Some people really can’t handle it – you hear them having breakdowns. But not me. I’ll go in, do my push-ups and sit-ups, get some food in my belly, have a nap, and then rinse and repeat until it’s time for my interview.

The last time I was in there, after questioning, I stuck my hand out through the hatch in the cell door – which you’re obviously not supposed to do, because you could be trying to attack an officer. But I got this detective to actually shake my hand through the hatch. It was just fun knowing that I could have broken his hand or his fingers, and having that power over that person, even for a couple of seconds – that’s just a thrill for me.

Dawn: Does it feel more like stoicism – that you can make the best of those situations – or more like indifference? What feeling is dominant there?

Dorian: The feeling is power, ego. In my head, I just feel powerful, and I feel it in my body. In my mind it’s: “Yeah, I’m in control. I made you do something.” When I decide I’m going to make you do something, you’re going to do it. That’s just a way of regaining power and control in that situation.

Dawn: And generally, this whole arrest situation – they’re taking some power away from you initially. I imagine it feels like a game?

Dorian: A little bit at first. The thing is, I’m registered as a violent male with the local police due to past instances. If someone reports me, they check that name, and everything’s got codes. I’m registered as a violent male, so if the police have a warrant for my arrest, they have to turn up with what they call Mariah vans – big yellow vans normally used for riots, with grates over the windshield, riot gear inside – shields, batons – and then normally three male officers will come out and get me. It makes a bit of a scene, because people see it.

At first I didn’t like it, and it was a long drive back to the station. I asked them if they had a radio I could listen to, and they said no, they have to be on the police radio the whole time. But it is what it is. You’ve just got to play the game.

Dawn: You’ve also described feeling as if you were slipped into a particular skin suit with regard to your body and personality. To what extent do you actually identify with yourself now – your body, brain, personality, mind, everything – and to what extent do you feel like you’re just operating it like a vehicle?

Dorian: I feel more like a person now, I’d say, than back then. It’s less like I’m operating a vehicle. It’s me. I haven’t got any qualms about being me. I’m very happy with the person I am, and I always will be.

Dawn: How have you grown into yourself, as it were?

Dorian: Truly, honestly, being responsible and being healthy – it’ll do those things for you. I owe it all to my hard efforts. There’s no particular right way or wrong way, just the way that you need to do it. I know a lot of people really do feel distant from themselves. But that’s not me anymore. I think a big part of that is the fact that I’m doing something I want for a living now, with being in higher education. I reckon that has probably played a significant role.

Dawn: I would imagine that increased identification also comes with – what does aging, for example, feel like for you? Has that become something you think about more now that you identify more with your body?

Dorian: I don’t even celebrate my birthday. A lot of people with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) will celebrate their birthdays, because it’s their day. But that’s never been me. Since I was maybe 17 or 18, I’ve just never felt any connection to it. I don’t mind celebrating somebody else’s birthday – if you want me there at your party, sure, I’ll come. But I just don’t see my own birthday as important. I turn 25 in November, but it’s not a reason to get a cake.

Dawn: Grandiose behaviors seem to evoke different reactions in different cultures, and I imagine this varies not only by country but also by the particular social context. Did you observe in what contexts it works better and in what contexts it leads to resistance?

Dorian: The thing is, I was never aware of how grandiose I came across as. It wasn’t until it was pointed out to me – first by my father. My dad said to me once, “You act like you’re the only person who deserves to be thought about.” In my head, I’m thinking, “Do I act like that?” I know I think like that a lot of the time, but I never realized I acted like it. Apparently, when it comes out, it comes out in heaps and waves. I had an old therapist once tell me, “You sit like you’re better than me.” All I was doing was sitting, but apparently it’s the body language.

It’s served me well recently at university. People have come up to me and said, “Do you ever get nervous about anything? You’re pretty confident, aren’t you?” I was just voted class representative at my uni – unanimously. Put in the right people, and they’ll put their faith in you. But some people really won’t like it – they’ll go, “Who does this guy think he is?” You get a lot of different reactions, but generally I’ve been told that I come across as polite and intelligent. I always mind my P’s and Q’s, especially around women. But apparently the grandiosity can seep out eventually.

Dawn: If I want to practice my grandiosity, what environments do I need to avoid?

Dorian: I really couldn’t tell you. Half the time I don’t realize when I’m doing it.

Dawn: Are you usually quite consistent in your behavior and personality across contexts, or do you behave differently with, say, a probation officer versus your son versus Jamie?

Dorian: Massively different. My son – it’s just all about having good times with him. Going to the park, going to the movies. He likes to play-fight me all the time, so he gets to punch me in the face a lot, and he loves it. It’s great.

But somebody like a probation officer – I’ve never really liked a lot of them, because they’re always someone who’s got their thumb over you for a whole year. I’ve had a history of cycling through them. New probation officer after new probation officer, because they all didn’t want to deal with me.

Being with my son isn’t a power game, because he’s my five-year-old son and he respects me anyway, because I’m his dad. That’s just a given. But with someone like a police officer or a probation officer, it’s very different.

Dawn: And with Jamie?

Dorian: We’re just friends. It’s quite simple – we message each other occasionally, and it’s all good.

Dawn: I think I heard in some interview that one of your probation officers, or someone related to that, was actually a highly qualified expert in the field. Am I remembering this correctly?

Dorian: Kind of. He’s not a well-known expert – he’s a prison psychologist. To explain for people who are reading: you’ve got His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, which splits into two – the prison service and the probation service. A lot of the time, when they get criminal offenders like myself who might have a personality disorder or be really difficult and noncompliant, they’ll get a psychologist from the prison service and bring them in to help. That’s what happened with me.

The thing is, with probation now, you have to declare all your social media accounts. Your YouTube, your email, your Instagram – even old accounts you don’t use anymore. If you haven’t declared everything, you risk going back up for resentencing. At the time, I didn’t have a YouTube channel, but I had my Instagram blog where I write about living with psychopathy. They found that, and then they all said, “I’m not working with him. No way.”

So that’s why they brought in Matthew – the psychologist. He’d done work with pretty high-profile prisoners. He’s based at a prison in Liverpool, but they brought him down to probation. I actually ended up really liking him in the end, but at first? No. I hated him. Absolutely hated him. The first time I saw him, he said he could only speak to me for 10 minutes, and I kept him in the interview room for over an hour. I just played mind games with him – funny looks, staring at his forehead and looking back down. Any little trick in the book, just to put him off and let him know I’m in charge.

But eventually that fizzled down, and I grew to respect the guy. He was really good. They ended up doing it where, for my weekly meetings, he’d bring in trainees – people who were training to be probation officers. One or two of them would sit in the interview room each week and observe me and Matthew talking. We did talking therapy. He was the one who administered the Hare Psychopathy Checklist on me, and because he’s a probation officer, he’s got access to all my previous arrest history records and all of that.

Dawn: Did it feel different at the end of your interactions, when you respected him, compared to the earlier ones?

Dorian: Don’t get me wrong, he was an alright guy, but I still didn’t like being on probation. The best feeling was when it was over. I said to him, “I’m not going to see that purple welcome sign” – he had a big purple sign saying “Welcome” at the front desk. I said, “I’m not looking at that again. I’m done now.”

Dawn: You’ve said somewhere that you have a hard time knowing what boundaries are in the first place, where they’re supposed to be, and that of course makes it difficult to respect them. What do you think is the reason for that? For some people it’s obvious, for others certain boundaries are really difficult to anticipate. I’m quite puzzled myself, because there seem to be cultural differences too. How do people pick up on boundaries throughout their maturation process, and why is it more difficult for some than for others?

Dorian: I’ve read up on this, because I did a YouTube video on boundaries recently. The thing is, boundaries come from having an internalized moral conscience. I don’t have any feelings in me that tell me it’s right or wrong to lie to you, take advantage of something, or put you in harm’s way. Along with that comes not having empathy, not having any awareness of boundaries, and not feeling like I should feel guilty or sorry about anything. I just don’t see them until they’re pointed out to me, and normally by then it’s too late.

I’ve tried to get therapy over it, but nowhere will deal with me. Even the hospital that diagnosed me has said they won’t have me back because they deem me too high-functioning. And I’m an unemployed student at the moment, so it’s not like I can afford private therapy.

Some boundaries I can guess. But I will tend to cross the lines eventually, sooner or later, and that can have repercussions. I remember when I was 15, after I assaulted another kid in school, I had to have anger management therapy of some kind. This woman used to visit from some sort of center that dealt with troubled kids. I used to flirt with her. I was a 15-year-old boy – I get now that that wasn’t okay, but at the time I was just loving it. Boundaries – I just don’t see them to begin with. And also because I’m very entitled, so why would there be a boundary if I’m entitled to that anyway?

Dawn: But I feel like you’re aware of some boundaries that I wasn’t aware of until a couple of months ago. For example, I always appreciate it when I share some story from my past and other people express sympathy. I enjoy that. Whereas I think you would rather feel patronized by that. I was thinking of the thing you shared on Facebook, where some university therapist expressed sympathy for something that happened to you in your childhood, and you felt patronized. I found that very interesting, because I wouldn’t have had this reaction. But of course I want to treat my friends the way they want to be treated.

Dorian: Kind of, yeah. Obviously there are very obvious boundaries that I understand. I’ve never been physically abusive toward any girlfriends, things like that. But it’s more that once you’re in my life, I sort of feel like I own you – you’re more like a possession than an actual person, and then I can just do what I want.

Dawn: Where do you think our difference comes from?

Dorian: I’m not really sure. But I remember the thing about the therapist. I don’t like pity being expressed to me. I don’t really like people feeling sorry for me. It just puts me in a situation that irritates me even more. When that therapist said, “I feel sorry for the child Dorian,” I just thought – what is that going to do? It didn’t annoy me until later that night. I just kept replaying it in my head, and I really got angry about it. But it’s over now. It was just a comment made by another therapist.

Dawn: I’m also wondering about therapy in general. I think at one point you observed that some addiction problems – maybe alcohol – were exacerbated by therapy. What’s the mechanism behind that?

Dorian: No idea. I absolutely haven’t got a clue, but I noticed a very distinct pattern. When I was doing talking therapy with my old probation officer, my drinking spiked. And then again, when I was doing cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) with a private psychologist, my drinking spiked again, and there was drug use on top of it. No idea why. I don’t know why, but I know it happens.

Dawn: Do you think it was something circumstantial – like maybe the practices happened to be next to a bar?

Dorian: No, no. I’m not big on going to bars or pubs. I’ve always been more of a solitary drinker – I’d rather buy a bottle of whiskey from the shop and bring it back here. Honestly, I’m sure there is a reason, but I just don’t know what it is.

Dawn: You mentioned you don’t like pity or being pitied. Has there ever been a self-pity type of phase that you want to leave behind, or has that just never happened?

Dorian: Self-pity? No. When you can’t feel sorry for anyone, it also means you can’t feel sorry for yourself. I don’t feel sorry about anything that’s ever happened to me. That’s just a waste of time to me.

Dawn: Have you had phases where you wanted nothing to do with society – to just isolate yourself somewhere away from people?

Dorian: Yeah, definitely. Especially when I was younger. When I was 16, I had a very short – two, three months – but very strong bout of what they call major depressive disorder. I was extremely withdrawn from everyone. It was very noticeable. I was self-harming all the time. Not really eating well. But in general, I’d rather keep to myself. It’s more a preference than an absolute need, if that makes sense.

Dawn: In what way were you self-harming?

Dorian: I was just really, really depressed and down, constantly. I’ve often heard that children with conduct disorder or oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) can go through either an extreme period of depression or anxiety – normally one of the two. And my brain, for whatever reason, just went the depression route. It was physical – I used to steal disposable razor blades and take them apart with a pair of nail clippers.

Dawn: The next section is more about agency and intentionality. You already mentioned the case where you were charged with importing a weapon – a thing called a lifeguard.

Dorian: Yeah, it was a disguisable handgun with two or three rounds of ammunition.

Dawn: I was curious what decision-making itself feels like for you. When you’re on Facebook Marketplace and see a lifeguard on offer that’s cheap – does it feel more like you’re watching yourself make the decision, or do you feel like you are the one making this decision, that you are choosing?

Dorian: Yeah, it’s me making the decision. I’ll just do really risky things on impulse. Quite often. But especially when I was younger – now I’m very mellowed out, so to speak. But back then, things like that, it’s not a big thing. It’s just an impulse thing, and I’m the one doing it. That’s all there is to it.

Dawn: What about minor decisions, like whether to get a coffee or a tea – what does the decision process feel like for you?

Dorian: Just normal. If I want something, I’ll think of a way to obtain it. If I want the coffee, I’ll go get the coffee. It’s not really a big thing for me.

Dawn: Some people have this feeling that something in their brain discreetly makes the decision for them. For me, it feels more like I weigh all sorts of factors – do I feel like drinking matcha now, or my espresso? – and simulate what that would feel like and what effects it would have. And then my actions just flow automatically from that ranking process. Does either one of those resonate with you?

Dorian: I don’t go through any of that. It’s very straightforward for me.

Dawn: Say you chose the coffee, and then someone asks you why you picked it. Where would you go to figure out why? Would you study your past behavior, or would you introspect on some feeling of tiredness, and that the teas here don’t have caffeine, and so on?

Dorian: I would just say I wanted a coffee and I got it. That’s not really anything to get deep about with me. If I see something, I want it, I get it. I’ve got my reasons, and my reason is that I wanted it.

Dawn: Here’s a concrete decision – you closed the viewfinder to save battery. The alternative would have been to sacrifice battery life and be able to see me. If someone was curious about how you made that decision, where would you look for the answer?

Dorian: It’s just a logical decision I had to make, because I need to see you and talk through here. It’s just all logic.

Dawn: Do you sometimes make a different decision than the one dictated by the logic?

Dorian: No, not really. I’m a very logical creature.

Dawn: Fear is a big one for me. I imagine it’s not such a big thing for you.

Dorian: Why do you feel a lot of fear?

Dawn: Throughout my life, it was the dominant emotion for most of my adolescence, and then I got better. I don’t know what your relationship with fear is.

Dorian: Very minimal. Not a lot of it. Even going back to when I was a kid, I think I got conditioned into a mild arachnophobia because my mother has a very severe one, and I was always the one who got the spider out. But I can be around spiders now and I’m fine.

Fear as a whole? No, not really. I remember when I was 15, climbing Snowdonia in Wales with a friend and her mother. I nearly slipped off the peak of the mountain. It’s all icy, and there was nothing to grab onto, but my heart rate didn’t change. Nothing happened physically. I’ve overdosed multiple times, even before I was 18. There were times where I thought I was going to die, but I was never fearful of it. I never had that sensation.

Or when I looked up the charges for the illegal firearm and weapons – even seeing that I was probably looking at 9 to 10 years in prison, it didn’t scare me. It was just, “Alright, I’ll need to do A, B, and C.” I got all my stuff in my flat packed up. I never lost a wink of sleep. I’ve never, ever missed out on sleep over anything.

Dawn: So you have problems with impulsivity when it comes to anger, but situations that would induce fear in other people just leave you neutral?

Dorian: Neutral, or maybe my adrenaline might be spiked, but that’s not going to stop me from thinking logically about the situation and the best way to handle it. My anger is definitely my Achilles’ heel. It’s gotten me into some trouble over the years.

Dawn: Imagine situations that for most people would combine both fear and anger. If someone attacks you, the average person would probably be afraid of the physical danger and also angry that someone would attack them. I imagine you only have the second?

Dorian: Yeah, pretty much. Where I live, it’s a very deprived, high-criminality area, so I’m always on my guard anyway. But it’s more the latter for me. There’ll be no anxiety – just adrenaline. Where other people have fear, I just have adrenaline and anger, and a very clear-cut, cold mind to analyze the situation.

The most people I’ve ever fought in one fight on my own was eight lads – what we call scallies over here. One of them tried throwing something at me, and I just ran into them and started fighting. Again, it’s that reaction: who does this person think they are? And I won, too. The men in my family, especially on my dad’s side, have a knack for having a good fight. It’s a lot to do with genetics, but pride and ego as well. I’ve just never worried about anything, really.

Dawn: In the situation you described – almost slipping off the mountainside – was there a moment of “Oh shit, I’m going to die” and then a moment of acceptance, or was it just nothing?

Dorian: It was just nothing. Especially because I was wearing trainers with no grip on the ice. My friend had a go at me because I kept trying to go right on the edge of the mountain. She said, “Will you move away? You’ve just nearly slipped off, and you’re going to die.” There are no railings or anything up there in Snowdonia – just no safety at all.

My lack of anxiety, fear, and genuinely having this “I don’t care” attitude used to bother my son’s mother. We’re no longer together. It also bothers a lot of people. I might genuinely care about something, but I’m not going to go into a panic or worry about anything.

Dawn: When it comes to fear, I have two different experiences. One is more like a phobia – nervousness and a reflex to run away. The other is catastrophizing, where I don’t feel anything physically, my heart rate is normal, but when I think about the thing I’m catastrophizing about, I have thousands of thoughts about how it could go wrong. Do you only lack the phobic type of fear, or do you also not catastrophize?

Dorian: I won’t overthink too much either. That’s probably partly because there’s no fear there in the first place. I’m a very cutthroat, straight-to-the-point, logical kind of person. I see things for what they are and go from there. There’s no fear, no overthinking, no overplanning. That’s just me.

Dawn: I’ve also been wondering about pain itself. With your recent surgery, for example – does pain feel like literal suffering for you, or is it more of a signal that you can choose to interpret?

Dorian: I can put up with high amounts of pain. I won’t enjoy it. It’s just a part of life, really, isn’t it? It’s a signal, I know that, but it’s nothing too deep. If I feel pain, I’ll try to think of ways to minimize it, but I probably won’t make as much of a fuss as the average person.

Dawn: Does it feel like something that fills all of your perception when it happens, or is it more like something off to the side that you can look away from?

Dorian: I can ignore it for the most part. It’d have to be really bad for it to take over everything I’m doing. Even when I had appendicitis, I woke up with the pain in the morning and I didn’t go into the emergency room until five o’clock in the afternoon. I spent the whole day lifting heavy bags and doing shopping. So there’s a good example for you.

Dawn: Jamie also has a similar story from her childhood. It’s very strange to me but super interesting. I used to have a bouldering partner with a similar attitude. Let’s hop to the next section – relationships and attachment. You mentioned you had a three-year relationship, probably the mother of your son, and it was on-and-off. What caused the offs, and what caused the ons?

Dorian: There were a couple of times where I walked out, but I can’t even really remember why. It will have been a trivial reason. But overall, we were together for 90–95% of it. It is what it is.

Dawn: Do you know your attachment style?

Dorian: What are they? Do they have names?

Dawn: Yeah. My favorite measure is the Attachment Style Questionnaire, short form. There are two dimensions: preoccupied attachment, also called anxious attachment, and avoidant attachment, also called dismissive-avoidant. When someone is high on both, they don’t have one distinct style and just chaotically jump between them – that’s called disorganized. When conflict happens and the person disappears or walks out, that’s associated with avoidant attachment: “I don’t really need this person, I don’t want to deal with this conflict.” With preoccupied attachment, it’s more about eagerness to keep the other person, or testing whether they’re as securely attached as you hope. Disorganized is just a back-and-forth between the two.

Dorian: I don’t really know if I have an attachment style. None of that really describes me. If I want someone in my life – say, a girl – I won’t feel attached to her. So I wouldn’t say I have an attachment style, because I don’t feel attached to begin with. I’ll interact with her in a certain way, but that’s about it.

Dawn: Have you ever tried merging with another person – just sort of adding someone to your identity?

Dorian: No. No interest in it, either. I’m very fine with who I am. If you want to be a part of my life, if you want to merge with my life, we can do that. But I don’t need to merge anyone with my identity. It’s mine.

Dawn: You’ve described intimacy as a kind of power game, and vulnerability as a dangerous weakness in that power game. Where does that come from, and what does it feel like when someone gets emotionally close to you for it to feel threatening?

Dorian: When you say emotionally close, do you mean that they understand me more, or that they trust me more and tell me how they’re feeling more often?

Dawn: I would imagine you don’t feel any vulnerability or threat from me right now doing this interview. But in some relationships, when they get close enough in whatever sense, probably something does start to happen where you feel like it’s a risk.

Dorian: I’d have to say no. I don’t think I’ve ever been through it like that.

Dawn: Is that something you worry might happen?

Dorian: No.

Dawn: There was also a story about a dream of meeting some idealized woman and a doorway, and the doorway keeps shrinking. Can you describe that dream and what you think it represents?

Dorian: It wasn’t a recurring dream – it was just this dream I had once. I had this house that I lived in, and I went on holiday on my own. I met this girl at the hotel, and she had this gorgeous, fiery red hair. Really nice girl. We kept having to go to this other room in the hotel, but the doorway kept shrinking every time. Eventually, the girl said, “I can’t fit through the door anymore – you’ll have to stop.”

So we leave the hotel and make our way back home. She’s going to come and live with me. I end up losing her at the airport, but then we find each other again and go home. Right at the end of the dream, we’re at my house, talking about how we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together. But when I turn around, the front door and the back door are wide open. At that moment in the dream, my heart rate spiked, and I woke up almost ready to fight – filled with intense adrenaline.

I think what the dream meant was that the doorway represented my emotional capacity, or my expectations. The girl couldn’t fit – she wasn’t emotionally compatible, or she couldn’t meet my expectations in a partner. And the door to the house being open, which freaked me out, could have represented emotional vulnerability. That’s my take on it. There’s definitely something to do with my attachment style with women, if I have one.

Dawn: So the first part was about her being able to get to you, or vice versa, and the second part was probably about not her getting out through the back door, but someone coming in.

Dorian: There was no one coming in. It was just me and her, no one else.

Dawn: What would a successful relationship with that woman, or someone else, look like for you? What would the give and take be? What needs would you want met, and what would you be able to give in return?

Dorian: I’m a date-to-marry kind of guy. I want to be married. I want to be a successful doctor. If she wants kids, that’s fine – I already have a son, but if she wants another couple of kids, who am I to say no? Very traditionalist and conservative. That’d be my ideal marriage – somebody who’s accepting of who I am. A girl who can be with a guy who can’t feel sorry for her but can still have a laugh.

Dawn: So you’d be the breadwinner? What would be her role?

Dorian: Primarily a housewife, stay-at-home mother. But if we both want to do things in the community, or if she gets a job or a business, that’s fine, as long as everything else is taken care of.

Dawn: If she has a big business, then both of you can provide financially.

Dorian: Yeah. Well, first you’ve got to go out with the girl, so I don’t think it’ll be happening anytime soon. But in an ideal world, yeah.

Dawn: Why not anytime soon?

Dorian: I’m very avoidant when it comes to women. I get very paranoid and tend to keep my distance. My last girlfriend basically had to crowbar her way into my life to be with me. That kind of gives you the idea. But they say you can meet anyone at any second, so if it happens, it happens.

Dawn: Is there some kind of worry behind that avoidance?

Dorian: Yeah. I realized one day – I think a therapist said it to me – that if you want a successful relationship, you’ve got to compromise and surrender a bit of control. I don’t like the idea of that. But I’m willing to work on it with the right person.

Dawn: What sorts of control would be both likely and difficult to compromise on?

Dorian: Could be anything. All matters, big and small.

Dawn: What does romantic rejection feel like for you?

Dorian: It’ll hurt my ego. I’ll go through what most people would call narcissistic injury. That’s a very big ego wound for me. Which is really weird, especially when you don’t feel attached to anyone. But it’s more a pride thing than anything. I’m very paranoid or fearful of rejection – “fear” is not quite the right word, but that’s what I’m using. I have some borderline traits as well, so those can play up a little bit.

Dawn: What makes romantic rejection so much more difficult than, say, job rejection?

Dorian: Job rejection? I won’t care. It only occurs with romantic rejection. One’s just a job, but the other is a girl that you really like. Apples and oranges.

Dawn: There are all sorts of possibilities for why rejection stings – losing access to something, not getting needs met, feeling unworthy or flawed, losing control. Do any of these resonate?

Dorian: I don’t really know the mechanics behind it, but I just know that’s the way it is.

Dawn: When you do suffer a romantic rejection, do you pine more for the other person afterwards – think about them, think about how much you would have wanted to be close to them? Or is it more about yourself and what it means for you?

Dorian: It’s more about myself.

Dawn: What borderline traits have you noticed?

Dorian: I can tend to split quite easily on people. In some episodes, I can have a very rapid change in emotion – suddenly going from calm to absolutely furious. But then once everything’s calmed down, I’ll be fine within seconds. It’s really weird.

Dawn: When it comes to the splitting, is that something that happens for an hour, a day, a week – or is it usually permanent?

Dorian: It’s usually more permanent.

Dawn: I wouldn’t associate that so much with borderline – much more with NPD. Interesting. When a judge passes some kind of judgment against you, that’s also a kind of rejection in a way. But that probably doesn’t resonate the same way as a romantic rejection.

Dorian: No. When a judge sentences you, it’s not rejection. Unfortunately, you broke the law and got caught. It’s just an unfortunate consequence of life.

Dawn: What is your relationship with your son like? You’ve told me a bit about the play-fighting. Can you elaborate on what that relationship feels like and what you do when you’re together?

Dorian: He’s a young boy, and he’s the spitting image of me. My son is like a little extension of me. I don’t feel deeply bonded to him, but I do really care about him. I always pay his child support on time, I have him every weekend. We’re always doing days out, or sometimes he’ll just want to stay at home – he’s got an Xbox here. We just always have good times. I let him bounce up and down on the sofa, which he’s not allowed to do at his mum’s.

It’s probably the only fully transparent and healthy relationship that I’ve got in my life.

Dawn: To the extent that he’s an extension of you – has there ever been a partner, or anyone else, who felt similar in that sense?

Dorian: No, just my son.

Dawn: Does that mean it feels like his actions reflect on you? His achievements?

Dorian: They can do, in a way. Personality-wise, he’s the complete opposite of me. His mother has always said about our son that he’s the nice version of Dad. He looks like me, but he’s actually nice.

Dawn: He doesn’t have that swinging brick. Where does that metaphor come from? You have a swinging brick where your heart should be, or something?

Dorian: Yeah, that’s something his mother said years ago. This was all way before I was diagnosed. I didn’t get diagnosed with ASPD until a year or two after we’d split up. It’s just a phrase she said to me one day, and it stuck with me.

Dawn: It’s so specific – why is it swinging? We’ll never find out. What would it feel like for you if your son showed similar behaviors to the ones you probably showed around that age, or a little older?

Dorian: I wouldn’t feel deeply about it. His mother would probably get him referred to a child psychologist, and we’d go from there. But I wouldn’t feel bad about it or anything.

Dawn: Some friends of mine describe their role in the world like a video game, where they control a player character running around completing quests, and all around them are non-player characters (NPCs) they can interact with and manipulate. It makes virtually everyone in that world feel very unreal to them. And anything that happens in the game is really removed from who they actually are – if the character is injured or dies, there’s a health bar that goes down a bit, but it’s far removed from them. But they have exceptions – usually a dog, children, a husband – characters that feel much more real to them. Does that resonate with you? And does your son feel like one of those different characters who feels different from other people?

Dorian: Yes and yes. I’d say both of those are true. Especially when you’re a child, with psychopathy it’s like you just don’t really develop any emotional intelligence. You can think about the consequences of actions and words, but you don’t feel them deeply, so you don’t feel the world around you deeply. It’s a good way of describing it. You’re just running around, causing chaos, and you’ll always reset to the next day.

Dawn: And I imagine what has probably decreased is how removed you feel from your avatar?

Dorian: I don’t know – I’m just me. I’m not necessarily removed from myself. It’s just the world around me and other people in it.

Dawn: You described earlier that you’ve sort of grown into yourself, so I imagine you were more removed previously from your avatar, and now you’re more in there.

Dorian: Yeah.

Dawn: And this has had no effect on how most other people feel to you?

Dorian: Not really. I keep to myself for the most part, but people at uni are really nice. I like my classmates.

Dawn: I imagine that’s a contrast to the factory. There are all these attributes – being seen as bad or dangerous, as opposed to being seen as weak or out of control. Some people, in order not to seem bad, will claim not to have been in control. Others, in order not to seem out of control, will claim to have been bad intentionally. Does that make sense to you? Do you see yourself in one of those?

Dorian: I’ve kind of been described as both – “Dorian’s out of control, and therefore he’s being really bad.” But I don’t mind. It’s just the way somebody else sees me. From an outside perspective, I’d say I’m a very put-together, prioritized individual. I’m doing well in life, managing my money better, financially better off. I’m on a good trajectory. I can have my moments where I lose my temper, but I just try to keep out of certain situations, or keep away from a certain type of person who’s going to annoy me. And that seems to be working well.

Dawn: Can I make a return to your childhood? You mentioned at some point that you have some kind of childhood amnesia. Which years are affected, and what exactly is lost there?

Dorian: Probably 90% of everything from being a newborn right through to 17 or 18. I just honestly don’t care about my childhood that much, at all. It’s in the past, it’s gone, it’s done. It is what it is.

Dawn: Did you change a lot afterwards, and that’s why the new version can’t access those old memories?

Dorian: I’d say in some ways I’m a lot different than when I was a kid. But it’s not something I think deeply about, because I don’t need to. It doesn’t benefit me.

Dawn: Did the amnesia start right at age 19 or so, or is it more that years later you noticed you were having more and more trouble recalling those memories?

Dorian: I just noticed it years later, I think. But again, it’s not something that’s on my mind. I don’t live in the past or the future – I just live in the now. I’m always in the present, and that’s just my way of being.

Dawn: If some kind of hardship befell you – a long prison sentence, for example – would you also just be in the present? You mentioned you actually thought at one point that you might go to prison for about nine years.

Dorian: Yeah, that’s right. It didn’t feel like anything. I’ve never been scared of it. The thing is, with prison in this country at least, they’re always on 22- to 23-hour lockdown. What’s motivating me to stay out of prison is the boredom and the paranoia I’d feel in there. I just know it wouldn’t be good for me. I’d go on a mad one, essentially. Probably never get out. I’d be lucky if I did.

They’re very solitary, and very good at making people paranoid and depressed. I don’t know if I’d get depressed, but definitely paranoid. You can’t ever really relax in there. And you can’t really be the best version of yourself in that kind of place.

Dawn: A friend of mine also said that prison would be so boring for her that she would just start fights all the time, which would make the sentence longer and longer, and then she wouldn’t be able to get out anymore.

Dorian: Yeah, exactly. My dad, or my son’s mother, has said the same about me. They said I’d just be starting fights all the time, or stabbing people, because of how pent up I’d be. And I go, “Yeah.” So I’ve always got to keep myself stimulated or engaged with something.

Dawn: Jamie describes this very interesting no-self state, or anattā state, where she basically did not used to identify with what I, from the outside, would describe as herself. I have my own selfhood, which I probably developed in the first two years of my life, and so I just project that onto others. I feel like a separate person with my particular perspective on the world, and I feel intuitively that I’m allowed to move this body but not other bodies. And then I run into people who say, “No, actually, I don’t really identify with my own body.” I found that super interesting. I imagine you probably don’t have quite the same experience?

Dorian: I wouldn’t say so, no.

Dawn: You have your own particular perspective on the world. Is there something that, when you talk with Jamie, resonates about how you perceive the world, or how you perceive yourself in relationship to the world?

Dorian: My relationship to the world is that it’s kind of like – it’s my world, but you’re all just in it. That’s the closest or best way for me to describe it.

Dawn: It’s kind of like a playground. That’s a very clear distinction between yourself and others. Is there anything else where you and Jamie differ in your opinions or takes?

Dorian: I can’t think of any particular opinions that stick out. Me and Jamie are very similar but also very different. On some things we’re worlds apart, on others we’re not. Probably about an even 50-50 mix.

Dawn: In Jamie’s Discord server, what would you say is the ratio of people who are more like Jamie versus more like you versus just different in some other way?

Dorian: Everyone’s different in their own way.

Dawn: So you feel a similar degree of kinship with everyone?

Dorian: I wouldn’t say I feel kinship or friendship. It’s just a place where all different people come to chat.

Dawn: I have a few light closing questions, if you like. What is the funniest thing that’s actually happened to you because of how your brain works?

Dorian: I’ve got one. I remember talking about it in Jamie’s Discord, actually. To me, at the time, it wasn’t very funny. But now I can kind of look back on it and laugh.

I was getting ready to have my son over on the weekend. It was a Friday afternoon, and I was making the bed, getting his pajamas ready, getting everything ready for my kid. I was in my bedroom changing the sheets, and I looked out of my window. In my front yard, there was a young male – maybe early twenties or about 18 – with a balaclava over his face. My neighbor who lived above me was a 50-year-old man, so I knew it wasn’t him.

I opened the window and shouted down at the guy: “What are you doing in my yard?” He swore at me. Said, “What’s it got to do with you?” So immediately I saw red. I was only wearing socks and black boxer shorts. I grabbed this hunting knife – a big, silver, Rambo-type fixed-blade knife I kept in my bedside unit – put my boots on, and just ran outside half-naked. As soon as I opened the door, the guy saw me and ran. I chased him.

Honestly, I was trying to get him. This was years ago, not too long after I’d moved in. I was completely without fear or hesitation – that’s one of the few good things about having psychopathy. You’re not afraid, you’re not overthinking, you’re not procrastinating. You see a threat and you extinguish it one way or the other. I’m glad, in a way, that he got away, because imagine if I’d gotten hold of him – I could have been doing a life sentence. But I absolutely just wanted to get him.

He was probably scoping the place out for a burglary – it’s a high-crime area. We have locks, security lights, alarms, and everything now. But I ran out, chased the guy off, and as I turned to go back in, a woman was about 10 feet away who’d seen the whole thing. I just backed into the garden. I never got done for it.

There are probably loads of other funny things – nearly falling down the side of Snowdonia, getting the detective to shake my hand through the cell door. To me, it’s all very mundane. I have to think about what would be funny to someone who isn’t like me, because to me it’s not funny.

Here’s another one. I don’t even remember it, but my son’s mother told me about it last year. There was a time when we were together and living together. I’d been into town to some shop, and I got into an argument with somebody who owned a local business. She said I came back to the house really angry. Later that evening, my anger had simmered but it never went away. I said to her, “I’m going to burn down that guy’s shop. I’m just going to blow it up right now.”

How many guys have said that and then done nothing? She thought it was just me being angry. But when she saw me start putting my boots on and getting my jacket, she panicked. She was thinking, “Oh my God, he’s actually going to go out and do this.” So what she did – because I think she’d figured out by then that something was not right with me – was she had sex with me. And it worked. We went upstairs, and she said she made sure that when I woke up, there was a big, hot roast dinner ready for me. She said I just woke up and ate my dinner, as if I hadn’t been about to go out and commit arson.

I’ve got no memory or recollection of it. I just know what she’s told me. She was terrified, she said – her stomach was in bits, and she just didn’t know what to do.

Dawn: Unfortunately, arson is such a common first reaction. Very plausible. And the big knife – is that one you still have, or did the police take that when they found the lifeguard?

Dorian: No, the knife wasn’t an illegal weapon – just a normal fixed-blade hunting knife. The blade doesn’t fold. But it was a really cheap knife, and I was using it to cut weeds or do gardening, and it just snapped. So it went in the bin.

I’m sure I’ve done loads of other daft, crazy things, especially as a kid at 15, 16, 17 years old. But I probably won’t care to remember half of what I’ve done, because it’s just another day. Now I’m a lot more reserved and mature.

My dad has said to me, “I’ve seen a big difference in you, slowly over the years. I don’t worry about you as much. I don’t always think he’s going to get nicked. You’re at university now, and we can tell you care about that.” So staying engaged with things that are good and interesting for me – that’s how I’d end things.

Dawn: Caring about something also means having something to lose, and that has flow-through effects for other areas of life. What advice would you have for the 15-year-old version of you?

Dorian: I’d say: do more. Go for even more. Just do what you want – go out and do more.

Dawn: More of anything?

Dorian: More of anything.

Dawn: Is there anything in particular that you actually enjoy? I would imagine that control and winning are pleasurable, but beyond that?

Dorian: I don’t work toward “Am I happy?” or “Am I feeling happy?” The way I do things, it’s more: Am I content? Am I satisfied with the way everything is at the moment? But I do genuinely enjoy the time I spend with my son. I’ve trained him up to be really good at fighting – he’s only five years old, but he throws a hell of a left hook now. He’s an extension of me, and I think any healthy man likes to be a good dad. That’s one thing I enjoy.

I enjoy my studies as well. I like doing my assignments at university, writing academically. And I like going there, because school for me as a kid – especially secondary school – was like prison. It was horrible in a lot of ways. I even had bars on the windows in my old secondary school. It wasn’t a great place. So now I’m sort of getting to relive going to school, but this time it’s good. I’m enjoying it. Just staying on the straight and narrow.

Dawn: That also made a huge difference for me – between high school, where I was forced to be on the property during certain hours, and university, where I actually chose to go and wanted to be. Finally, is there anything that you wish people like me would ask you, but they never do?

Dorian: Not really – not in those terms. But I wish everybody would stop thinking that we’re all serial murderers and sex offenders. Maybe just get away from those Netflix dramas and TikTok and all the myths. Open a textbook once in a while. Look at some actual information on people with psychopathy, or maybe listen to us a bit more. That’s what I’d say.

I’ve had some interesting questions posed to me on my YouTube channel. They’re a good bunch. I think we’re nearly at 140 subscribers now. If anyone’s got any questions for me, you can comment them down below, or go over to my channel and ask me on there. I’ll be taking a look at both either way.

Dawn: I’ll link the channel in the description. You’ll probably do FAQ videos from time to time to answer them.

Dorian: I’ve done one already – a comments reaction. I like doing them because they’re really easy. Somebody in my comments section asked a question, and then another person replied, “He doesn’t bother replying to his comments.” So I had to reply and say, “I am – I just do it in video form.” Which I prefer. It’s just better that way, isn’t it?

Dawn: Makes a lot of sense, and you get a cool new video out of it. That was all of my questions. Thank you so much.

Dorian: They were really good. Thank you very much for having me on, Dawn. I appreciate the offer and the invite. I know we were supposed to do this last week, but we had technical difficulties. We’ve cracked the matrix now, so we’re back. Thanks for having me on, and everybody, thank you for watching. Be sure to check out my channel – the link will be in the description below. And before you subscribe to me, make sure you’re already subscribed to Dawn here. We’ll both see you in the future. Dawn, thank you for having me on – it’s been an absolute pleasure. Take care.

Dawn: Thank you, goodbye, and like and subscribe!

Dorian: Bye.

This is the final article in a series on understanding psychopathy. Previous articles covered the framework, biology, environment, psychological structure, empathy mechanisms, and archetypal clusters. This article explores recovery – without moralizing and with attention to what’s actually possible and what it costs.

Introduction

This article is for people who want to consider change. That’s not everyone. Some people with psychopathic traits are perfectly content and functional. Some don’t experience their traits as problems. Some have built lives that work for them as they are.

If that’s you, this article isn’t a prescription. But if you’re curious about what’s possible – or if you’re experiencing distress and wondering what might help – this is an honest assessment.

Dimensions of Recovery

Recovery isn’t one thing – it’s multi-dimensional. Different dimensions matter for different presentations, and each dimension has trade-offs.

1. Stable life and environment

2. Emotional regulation and behavioral control

3. Insight and mentalization

4. Integration of self-states

5. Developing prosocial values

6. Capacity for guilt

7. Capacity for remorse

8. Access to affective empathy

9. Capacity for secure attachment

Stable Life and Environment

What it means. Achieving stable circumstances – housing, social environment, employment, relationships, legal status, enemies.

Assessment

Stability is almost pure upside for most people. Without stability, it’s often necessary to move from hotel to hotel and from country to country, which makes it hard to plan more than a few weeks ahead. That interferes with collaborative efforts such as most paid work. It also increases the cognitive load trying to learn how the local infrastructure works, time and effort that could be spent on efforts with exponential yields (healing, investment, education, networking, getting criminal records sealed).

Financial stability also makes things cheaper in the long run – fixed-interest mortgage instead of rent, up front payment instead of installments, no high-interest debt, etc. – and has exponential yields.

The worst case is if you’re still stuck in the environment (often the family) that produced your adaptation in the first place. For many people, their parents’ home is a battlefield where they’re trying to survive behind enemy lines. Most of the world (outside war zones) is not like that. In most cases it’s beneficial to get out of there, if at all possible, and gradually adjust to society rather than to code-switch between environments.

The environment one is stuck in can also be one of crime. The resulting availability of crime-based income sources can perpetuate a cycle of crime -> prison -> criminal records -> difficulty finding work -> more crime. Removing oneself from these networks, if possible, will make life harder in the short term but promises and eventual breaking of that cycle. The proximity to crime also increases the risk of wrongful convictions: Some jobs might have a low risk of legal consequences, but someone in your environment might still accidentally or intentionally implicate you in their crimes.

Chaotic environments – whether at home or in criminal contexts – also often come with violence. Depending on the health system in your country, that can be another unpredictable source of tremendous costs, on top of legal fees. Building wealth or maintaining a good credit rating can be difficult as a result.

Finally, stability makes it easier for others to rely on you. Even if they trust your intentions, they’ll need to take into account the risk that you’ll drop your collaborative project because you have to leave the country from one day to the next, end up in jail or in a hospital for weeks or months, lose your car, power, or internet connection, etc.

However, people who love chaos for the thrill (or conversely to beat the boredom) may need to find replacement activities that are thrilling while not threatening some basic stability – a job that is action-packed in itself, anything to do with one’s phobias, BDSM, the sorts of hobbies you can get a RedBull documentary out of. Especially if chaos is one’s comparative advantage, jobs that deal in chaos – like politics or sometimes law – may be attractive.

People who’ve been maintaining their chaos to repress traumatic memories, may need to process those once the chaos has died down. That’s a good investment in the long run.

Building stability in the long run means having something to lose. That’ll generally make you most trustworthy for others, but at the cost that you do indeed have something to lose. Some possible actions will become more costly in expectation.

Emotional Regulation and Behavioral Control

What it means. Developing the capacity to control behavior – to pause before acting, to resist impulses, to maintain consistent conduct.

Assessment

Emotional or behavioral regulation is another very popular recovery step. The benefits compound over time; the costs are real but manageable.

Impulsive decisions often lead to particularly badly executed crimes, manipulability, losing friends and partners, and costs from having to replace damaged possessions. That includes costs from impulsive physical and verbal aggression as well as unpredictable ghosting, moves to other countries, and continual deleting and recreating of social media accounts.

The benefits compound: healing, savings, education, networking, etc. Much like above.

An added benefit is that those who care deeply about self-control can derive self-esteem from their increased ability to know what they’re going to do in the next moment and years down the line.

The madman theory point is worth acknowledging: If you’re unpredictably dangerous, people are less likely to push you even in minor ways because you might just react in (to both of you) irrationally costly ways. Regulation sacrifices this. For some, that’s a loss of a strategic advantage.

Sadly some relationships only persist because of the chaos cycle. If you regulate, those relationships may end – which might be good for both parties, but is still a loss.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is designed for emotional regulation and is considered to not have side-effects, but often drugs like mood stabilizers (lithium and others) are beneficial or even necessary for someone to be able to engage in therapy. These drugs can have side effects, though they vary from person to person, so it might be just about finding the right one (and the right dosage) for you.

With or without the assistance of drugs, you’ll probably go through a practice phase where you’ll still have to think long and hard how to react most effectively in a given situation. That becomes more automatic over time, but the hesitancy may persist beyond its usefulness. That too is a transitory phase.

Insight & Mentalization

What it means. Understanding your own patterns and those of others – what you do, why you do it, what triggers you, what your mechanisms are.

Assessment

I’m generally a big fan of insight because it follows the principle of the Litany of Gendlin:

What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn’t make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn’t make it go away.
And because it’s true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn’t there to be lived.
People can stand what is true,
for they are already enduring it.

Insight is not only intellectually rewarding, it allows you to predict what you’ll do and is the foundation for changing it according to your will – i.e. many of the other choices in this article. If you don’t see it, others might, and then they can catch you off guard when they exploit your hidden vulnerabilities.

But most people are safe, so not only are vulnerabilities that you’re aware of ones that you can neutralize, all your self-knowledge, beyond vulnerabilities, is also what you can share with others to synchronize on expectations. Often being transparent about expectations up front is what gets the job done whereas the other would get pissed if they later showed up as a surprise.

All the skills that you learn to understand yourself better and better are mentalization skills. You can train those in mentalization-based treatment (MBT). You learn to get curious about yourself, form hypotheses of what might be going on with you given who you are and your current situation, test those hypotheses, and learn to accept the results without flinching. These are skills that you can also apply to others and to your interactions with them – they’ll hone your cognitive empathy. You’re probably quite different from most others, so to understand others, it’s critical for you to first understand yourself and how you’re different from others. More understanding strikes me as a fairly universally useful skill.

Lydia Benecke also observed that friends of hers who employ some kind of emotional repression mechanism (friends of hers with various psychopathic traits, probably excluding N-hypoactive presentations) get tired quickly during conversations with her. She hypothesized that these mechanisms are tiring for some. Conversely, not repressing anything, to the best of one’s ability, may unlock greater endurance.

The issues with insight all live at the intersection of awareness and paralysis. I’d choose awareness any day even if I cannot change something, but there is a certain frustration that comes with that. That frustration can be accepted, but I understand when some continue to choose comforting illusions over harsh reality.

Integration

What it means. Bringing together fragmented parts of self – reducing state-switching, developing coherent identity.

Assessment

There is no separate dial “self-control” one can train; it’s always about integrating your interest in achieving more long-term goals with any short-term goals, and then finding a synthesis that you’ll also still appreciate much later. If your personality is split into an all-selfish part and a part that wants to be good to your friends, you can only be consistently good to your friends if you have uninterrupted access to the second one.

Some people have nothing that they could call their self. They have enough insight to know that they are vastly different people from one context to the next, or they have no access to who they are in the first place. This makes it difficult for them to intuit what it is like to have a coherent, continuous self. Even if they want to respect others’ autonomy or boundaries, they can’t intuit what that entails.

That also improves memory access. When parts are maximally separate, you can run into literal amnesia between them – you can only access the memories that are consistent with the expectations that the part has about who you are. In less extreme cases, the memories may be there, but they feel very abstract, like reading someone else’s diary. If you then try to imagine why you might’ve done whatever the “diary” says, you’ll confabulate very different reasons from the ones you had at the time. Or the memories may be there, but there’s a kind of anxiety that comes up when you try to recall them or get close to chat logs that might have the effect – perhaps an anxiety of not wanting to acknowledge the memories or an anxiety of not wanting to reactivate them lest you fall back into the self state that they’re associated with. In a fully integrated state, all of this is chill.

I can’t overstate the game-theoretic advantages of being able to commit credibly. The first advantage is low transaction costs. Jonathan Haidt writes in The Righteous Mind:

Social capital refers to a kind of capital that economists had largely overlooked: the social ties among individuals and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from those ties. When everything else is equal, a firm with more social capital will outcompete its less cohesive and less internally trusting competitors (which makes sense given that human beings were shaped by multilevel selection to be contingent cooperators). In fact, discussions of social capital sometimes use the example of ultra-Orthodox Jewish diamond merchants, which I mentioned in the previous chapter. This tightly knit ethnic group has been able to create the most efficient market because their transaction and monitoring costs are so low—there’s less overhead on every deal. And their costs are so low because they trust each other. If a rival market were to open up across town composed of ethnically and religiously diverse merchants, they’d have to spend a lot more money on lawyers and security guards, given how easy it is to commit fraud or theft when sending diamonds out for inspection by other merchants. Like the nonreligious communes studied by Richard Sosis, they’d have a much harder time getting individuals to follow the moral norms of the community.

But in an environment where high trust is possible (a sufficient fraction of the participants are trustworthy), it also becomes individually rational to be trustworthy! That’s because of gains from trade in iterated games.

One diamond seller has lots of diamonds and needs to pay rent for their store. I don’t have any diamonds but I have a buyer who wants me to select one for them. A trade happens when the seller values the diamond less (abundance, rent) than I do (rich buyer, time pressure). Both of us generate gains from trade by executing it, generating net wealth in the world.

My profit is small in each trade, but I can repeat these trades infinitely many times, for hypothetically infinite profits. It’s just a matter of how long one can maintain the streak. Conversely, stealing the diamond would foreclose any future trades for a hypothetically infinite loss. This introduces a strong positive feedback effect in favor of high trust.

In practice the profits aren’t literally infinite because the seller might retire or we might die. If the seller is less reliable, that will curtail the potential future profits. Same from the seller’s perspective if you are unreliable. If the transaction costs are high due to security measures, that also reduces the profits either of us can make by maintaining the streak. Both factors mean that we both have less to lose, and so can trust each other less. This introduces a strong negative feedback effect in favor of betraying the trust.

High-trust environments make everyone (in aggregate and individually) richer. Low-trust environments make everyone poorer. So it makes sense to seek out high-trust environments and then to play by their rules until you get bored of getting rich.

That brings us to the importance of integration for your choice of environment. Integration is important to function in a high-trust environment and a high-trust environment is necessary if further recovery is desired.

Which brings us to the greatest con of integration: You’re probably already well adapted to low-trust environments, so if you have to continue to function in one – your family, social circles, etc. – integration is no use. It would only give you access to memories and perhaps feelings you don’t want to access, and allow the parts of you to enter into the tug of war that you get when you have parts that often want contradictory things – thrill-seeking vs. surviving to provide for your kids; sadism vs. being good to your friends. Those fights can eventually be settled from what DBT calls the wisemind stance, but it takes practice to get there.

Sidenote: Credible commitments are such a powerful weapon that it’s often good that we usually can’t just credibly commit to anything. Open source game theory is a branch of game theory that studies what would happen if we could fully credibly commit – like throwing out the steering wheel in a game of chicken in a way the opponent can’t miss. The results include commitment races, where everyone tries to be first to commit.

Values

What it means. Developing an ethical framework – principles that guide behavior independent of emotional responses.

Assessment

Where integration provides the scaffolding, values provide the content. A value of reliability is what unlocks the gains from trade from the previous section. A value of respecting others’ autonomy enables respectful relationships. A value of authenticity prevents you from self-deceiving. A value of minimizing harm makes me happy, because I’m a suffering-reducer.

Importantly, values are your own. As you gain more insight, you discover what you actually care about, or at least what feels right to the point where you can commit to it. Brené Brown has compiled a long list of values to choose from or to amend. It makes sense to focus on just the most important core values. (Feel free to call them standards or moral safeguards or whatever other terms suit you best.)

A friend of mine who generally has a choice whether to go into a D-avoidant-type psychopathic state or not indulged in it for five years but found the boredom some excruciating that she even chose her alternative BPD state over it. Values provided her with a purpose in life and the opportunity to contribute to something larger that she cared about. Without it, she didn’t feel like she had a life worth living.

Personally, ethics has been a special interest of mine for decades, so I also find it stimulating to argue for metaethical expressivism over realism, or for antifrustrationism over hedonic act utilitarianism.

Conversely, though, different values often trade off against each other, which introduces complexity in proportion to the number of values involved. Self-interest is just one of them, so the trade-offs will sometimes conflict with it. Finally, all the game-theoretic advantages of credible commitments constrain behavior ipso facto.

Below I mention the function of guilt for training values. For many, certainly G-callous + N-hypoactive presentations, that’s not the most direct way to get there since it might just be very hard to train any capacity for guilt. So if you’re interested in values, relying on habits and on making them part of your identity is the more direct path.

Guilt

What it means. Developing the capacity to notice when you violate your values and learn from it.

Assessment

Guilt is a signal, not a virtue. If you already don’t want to harm people you care about, and you have other mechanisms (values, regulation, foresight) to prevent harm, guilt adds suffering without adding benefit. But if you keep accidentally violating your values, guilt will help you notice it earlier and stop sooner.

Disambiguation: I understand guilt to be the name for the emotion you feel if you violate your own values – say, if you have a value of respecting other’s autonomy, but then you get carried away or overlook something, and someone else does get hurt. It’s similar to a kind of disappointment in yourself but with some added (alarm) bells and whistles. I understand remorse to be the name of the emotion you feel when you do something that makes someone else feel harmed by you.

So when you notice that you keep running into unwanted consequences of your actions, and you find that you already have values in place that should prevent you from taking these actions, and you have sufficient integration that the parts who care and not wholly separate ones from the parts who act, then guilt is helpful as a signal for your practice. It’s like a climbing coach who tells you how to optimize your body positioning on the wall to optimize your climbing performance.

If you’re already doing a good job following your values, guilt doesn’t help boost that further.

Remorse

What it means. Developing the capacity to feel the need to make it up to someone when you’ve made a mistake.

Assessment

This is one of my favorite moral emotions. As clarified above, this is about the other person and whether they feel harmed by you – regardless of whether you’ve followed your values or violated them. You’ll always make mistakes, so it won’t stop being useful.

Core to parenting is what is called “contingent marked mirroring”: The “contingent” part means that you mirror back the emotion of the other person to make them feel understood. The “marked” part means that you evaluate the situation and communicate our evaluation too. For example, if the kid is hurt and crying, the parent may first express empathy with the hurt of the child (this can be completely fake, so long as it’s accurate), and then soothe the child to signal that the bruise is not dangerous.

This is also important when you’re interacting with adults: If you’ve just lost your temper with someone and they look scared, you can say, “Oh my god, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to scare you!” That’s an emotionally charged response that meets them where they are but also signals that you understand that they feel scared. Then you can follow it up with, “I’ll try hard not to let that happen again. Do you need space or a hug? Or ice cream?” That signals that you’re drawing lessons from what happened and are ready to repair. Your friend or partner may have particular preferences for this.

This can feel scary for some because you’re admitting that you’ve made a mistake, and the other can now hold that against you. It’s like you’re indebted to them, and you’re telling them about it. Hence it’s important to keep the repair proportionate. If you’ve broken something, you replace it; if you’ve scared someone, you make sure to make them not scared anymore; if you’ve stolen something, you give it back. If they keep holding it against you for ages when you’ve tried your best to make amends, it’s their turn to show remorse for their exploitative behavior.

Hence remorse needs to be proportionate. It can allow you to be spontaneous and risk-taking because you know you’ll make it up to whoever you might hurt and you won’t lose friends if you make a mistake. It can also curb excessive risk-taking if the possible consequences are things that would be costly or impossible to repair. But it can also have the opposite effect of stifling healthy risk-taking if the prospective remorse is disproportionate.

Affective Empathy

What it means. Developing or restoring the capacity to feel what others feel – to have their distress produce distress in you, their joy produces joy.

Assessment

Affective empathy is quite a mixed bag. Sometimes I love it; sometimes I resent it. I love it when I spend time with my partners. I resent it when it encourages me to look away from the overwhelming suffering in the world. Plus many of my friends act morally without empathy. They have values, insight, and regulation. They channel their sadism (if any) into consensual outlets. They don’t need empathy to be a good person – and developing it would have costs they don’t need.

I agree with Paul Bloom and his book Against Empathy: Empathy is fun, but unnecessary for and often detrimental to moral decision-making.

When I chat with my friends with NPD and see how they struggle in romantic contexts, I feel how scared they are, I feel the anger of their partners, and I feel my own exasperation over how unnecessary these conflicts feel from my vantage point. When they make progress and acknowledge that they’re not actually indifferent to their partners, I feel so proud of them. When they’re grateful for something I’ve helped them overcome, I feel so happy for them. When I repair with my partners and feel how nervous they were before and how safe they feel again, it’s also heartwarming. I’d never want to miss all this vibrancy in my life again.

For those who feel a lot of boredom or emptiness, all this vibrancy would probably also go a long way to keeping them entertained.

But god I have to work so hard to stay motivated for my charity work. The greatest perils in the world are not kids dying from cancer or abandoned cats, because there are at most millions of them and it’s expensive to try to help them more than they’re already being helped. The greatest perils are animals in factory farms, fish and shrimps in aquaculture, farmed insects, animals dying in wilderness from diseases, parasites, starvation, and predation, global catastrophes and more, because there are easily a trillion times as many. Affective empathy doesn’t work for large numbers. You’d expect to care a million times more for a million people than for one, but empathy probably makes you care less. Worse, when you put in the work and save a million animals from suffering, empathy doesn’t even reward you for that. In this regard, it’s a complete scam.

If you want to make great career decisions to help the world, make great impactful donations, design great policies, then you better turn off your affective empathy. Compassion (karuna) doesn’t require affective empathy either. If we want to help at all, we have to triage constantly because we can’t help everyone. Empathy is only in the way of efficient triage. And that doesn’t even touch on intentional manipulation and the things people with high preoccupied attachment do intuitively to tug on other’s heartstrings.

So empathy is a really mixed bag. There be dragons. Enter at your own risk.

Note that even my untraumatized, non-disordered, securely attached friends with G-callous and N-hypoactive don’t have access to affective empathy. They tend to feel guilt and remorse very lightly and affective empathy not at all. Don’t be discouraged by that – but relying on habits and identity to practice values may be a quicker route to success if that’s what you’re interested in.

Attachment

What it means. Developing the capacity for genuine emotional connection – to care about specific people, to be affected by their presence and absence.

Assessment

As someone with mildly above-average preoccupied attachment and very low avoidant attachment, I love attaching to people. It makes me feel safe, supported, and needed. Living alone is not fun for me. Meeting my friends and partners is what sparks joy.

But it’s crucial to attach to the right people. When someone strikes me as deeply genuine, my guard goes down quickly; when someone is reserved or has a history of interpersonal cruelty, I’ll keep my guard up for much longer.

Exposure to manipulation is a cost to me, so I can apply general risk management principles: What does the other have to gain, and how can I increase their cost to the point where the gain is no longer worth it for them while keeping my costs lower than the cost of the manipulation? This can mean taking things really slow, and seeing if they stick around.

The structure of the marketplace is also informative. If the attacker can gain $100 from exploiting you, it might seem like you’d have to invest enough into security to drive up their costs > $100, which might come at a cost of $10 to you. But that ignores that the marketplace may be such that there are plenty of people with sufficiently bad security that the attacker can extract $100 from them at a cost of $50 to them. So most likely, you can get away with investing $6 into your own security for a cost of $60 to the attacker, which is greater than what they’ll have to pay elsewhere. Then it’s no longer rational for them to pursue you as a target.

So attachment is not riskless, but the risks are manageable using standard practices.

Many people are afraid of getting duped just for the sake of the duping, even if it comes at no cost to themselves. Realizing that and worrying less about it can reduce avoidant attachment.

Another cost of attachments is the reduction in flexibility that comes with them as well as the time costs that need to be invested into the coordination. This is a common problem in startups who hire too many employees too quickly and get slowed down even on net by the coordination overhead. Hence there is a sweet spot where the overall joy, safety, and support that come with attachments is balanced against the coordination overhead. If your sweet spot is unusually high, you might consider polyamory. Long-distance relationships are another option to keep the costs from reduced flexibility low.

Finally, attachments can take on a bit of a life of their own, where against your better judgment you find it hard to break away from someone who’s not good for you. That’s a situation where it’s useful to have access to avoidant patterns and use them with discretion, i.e. not toward anyone or any romantic partner but specifically toward one person only.

And that’s it: The perhaps least romantic assessment of love ever written.

Conclusion

That’s the menu. If the cost-benefit ratios of any of these qualities strike you as desirable, you can train them yourself and employ a capable therapist to show you the ropes to speed things along.

Some cool types of therapy that I can recommend are Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) and Schema Therapy. There’s also Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP), which personally always rubs me the wrong way, but it’s also evidence-based.

You know best where your current bottlenecks lie, so you can tackle those first, then add whatever else you desire later on as the cherry on top.

If you have noticed any pros or cons that I have no listed, please let me know in the comments!

This completes the series on understanding psychopathy. Thank you for reading! If this framework is useful to you, I’d love to hear about it! If something doesn’t fit your experience, I’d love to hear about that too!

This is the sixth article in a series on understanding psychopathy. Previous articles covered the framework, biology, environment, psychological structure, and empathy mechanisms. This article presents common clusters – archetypal profiles that tend to co-occur.

Introduction

The previous articles described dimensions – G, N, E, D, B, A, C – and their variants. But people don’t come as random combinations of features. Certain profiles cluster together, producing recognizable types.

This article describes 13 clusters I’ve identified through conversations with friends and observation. These are hypotheses, not established categories – patterns I’ve noticed, not validated subtypes. But they may help you recognize yourself or people you know.

The clusters are ordered by typical distress level – from those who are generally content to those who suffer chronically. Please take this assessment with a grain of salt as self-report and behaviors are unreliable guides to the actual intensity of the suffering. But I’ve tried not to make various common mistakes.

How to Read These Clusters

Each cluster is described with:

• Feature profile. The typical G, N, E, D, B, A, C features.

• Narrative. A developmental story – how this pattern emerges.

• Distinguishing features. What sets this cluster apart.

• Distress level. How much the person typically suffers.

• Representatives. Real and fictional examples.

If a cluster resonates, it doesn’t mean you are that cluster. Profiles are complex; clusters are approximations. But resonance is information.

Tier 1: Low Distress

These clusters involve people who are generally content with their lives.

Cluster 1: The Lucky Primary

The person who has constitutional psychopathy but developed well.

Feature Profile.

• G: G-callous

• N: N-hypoactive (constitutional)

• E: E-I-secure, E-C-normal, E-P-success, E-A-stable

• D: D-secure, minimal other pathology such as well-regulated sadism or masochism

• B: B-minimal

• A: A-observational or A-strategic

Narrative. Born with genetic loading for reduced empathy and fear, expressed neurologically as constitutional amygdala hypoactivity. But raised by attuned, secure parents in a stable environment. The psychopathic substrate is only substrate – it never developed into pathology because there was no adverse shaping.

May have sadistic interests, but channels them into regulated outlets (BDSM, fiction, competitive fields). Has stable relationships, prosocial behavior, and may not identify as having any disorder.

Distinguishing Features.

• No vulnerable phases (not NPD)

• No rigid self-structure (not sovereign)

• Sadism present but regulated

• High functioning

• Sense of self

• No memory of being different

• Very open, unembarrassable, fearless

• Remarkably emotionally stable

• High stress and trauma tolerance

• Often strict but habitual (not obsessive) adherence to personal rules

• Secure attachment style

• Good friendships and relationships

Distress Level. Very low. Life is fine. No internal conflict because there’s nothing to conflict.

Representatives.

• Some portrayals of James Bond

• Surgeon/CEO archetypes

Cluster 2: The High-Functioning Machiavellian

The ambitious manipulator who exploits within legal bounds.

Feature Profile.

• G: G-callous

• N: N-hypoactive

• E: E-I-secure or E-I-avoidant, E-C-normal or E-C-golden, E-P-success, E-A-stable

• D: D-autonomic-asymmetric

• B: B-subclinical

• A: A-strategic

Narrative. Moderate psychopathic loading channeled into conventional success. Good-enough environment provided socialization; intelligence enabled navigation of systems. Uses others instrumentally but within legal bounds. May be ruthless in business but not criminal.

Differs from Cluster 1 in having more predatory orientation – uses the substrate antagonistically rather than collaboratively. Might not see the point in respecting others’ autonomy if they’ve never had a self to feel autonomous.

Distinguishing Features.

• Successful by conventional metrics

• Exploitative but not criminal

• Strategic, not impulsive

• Unlikely to seek therapy

• Often tenuous sense of self

• Struggles with interpersonal relationships

Distress Level. Low. Winning feels good. No internal conflict.

Representatives.

• Real: James Fallon (The Psychopath Inside), various CEOs, politicians, surgeons (see Kevin Dutton’s research)

• Fictional: Gordon Gekko (Wall Street), Bobby Axelrod (Billions)

Cluster 3: The Enlightened Machiavellian

The presence that is really an absence – manipulation as concomitant of a lack of selfhood.

Feature Profile.

• G: G-callous

• N: N-hypoactive

• E: Variable (often E-C-neglect or E-C-chaotic)

• D: D-anatta

• B: B-factor-1

• A: A-observational

Narrative. Constitutional psychopathic loading without a self. Unlike Cluster 1, there’s a felt absence – the distinction between self and other was never learned. Unlike Cluster 5 (sovereignty), there’s no grandiose self-structure, no rigidity, no investment in power.

Manipulation is instrumental, for stimulation, out of a lack of understanding what selfhood feels like, or a byproduct of not making a distinction between self (manipulation okay) and other (manipulation not okay). May be curious about humans as objects of study. Observational relationship to own behavior.

Distinguishing Features.

• Felt absence

• Lacking understanding of personal continuity, long-term planning, self-preservation, etc.

• Observational stance (“I watch myself do things”)

• No rigid (or any) self structure

• May show unusual honesty about self (nothing to defend)

• Boredom is a major problem

Distress Level. Low to moderate. The boredom can be annoying but is rarely excruciating because feelings are hard to locate and not clearly relevant to anyone.

Representatives.

• M.E. Thomas (Confessions of a Sociopath)

Tier 2: Moderate Distress

These clusters involve people who function but face situational distress or external challenges.

Cluster 4: The Street Primary

Constitutional psychopathy channeled into criminal expression.

Feature Profile.

• G: G-callous + G-impulsive

• N: N-hypoactive

• E: E-I-avoidant or E-I-disorganized, E-C-chaotic + E-C-neglect, E-P-antisocial, E-A-crime

• D: D-anatta + D-autonomic

• B: B-mixed + B-violent

• A: A-strategic or A-observational

Narrative. Same constitutional loading as Cluster 1, but shaped by chaotic, violent environment. Adversity was physical and chaotic (violence, poverty), not control-focused (controlling parents). Defense was behavioral – fight, survive, take – not self-structural.

No NPD develops because there was no need or opportunity for grandiose self-construction. Trait narcissism may be present (adaptive, useful) but not pathological.

Distinguishing Features.

• No self-image injuries (not NPD)

• No grandiose self-structure

• Criminal history; often incarcerated

• Violence is instrumental and/or reactive

• No memory of empathy or guilt in childhood

• Drug addictions

Distress Level. Moderate, but the distress is external (prison, poverty, consequences) not internal. The psychopathy itself is not distressing.

Representatives.

• Real: Edward Bunker (Education of a Felon)

• Fictional: Tommy DeVito (Goodfellas)

Cluster 5: The Primary Sovereign

NPD stabilized by psychopathic substrate – the classic “malignant narcissist.”

Feature Profile.

• G: G-callous

• N: N-hypoactive + N-dissociative

• E: E-I-avoidant or E-I-disorganized, E-C-controlling/E-C-parentified/E-C-neglect

• D: D-sovereign

• B: B-factor-1 (mostly)

• A: A-strategic, A-retroactive, A-narrativizing, A-selective, A-absorbed

Narrative. Constitutional psychopathic loading meets neglect- or control-focused adversity. The substrate hinders normal moral development; the specific adversity (controlling parent, parentification, neglect) leaves a void and triggers NPD development to fill it. E-I-avoidant prevents the maturation of the amygdala and other brain regions for an N-hypoactive substrate; or E-I-disorganized meets a constitutional N-hypoactive brain. Either way, there is little fear or reactivity.

Where children are normally parented by their parents, these children are parented by the strategies they can find to extract what they need from their environment. They cannot learn that asking for solace or reassurance gets their attachment needs met, because that doesn’t happen, but they can learn that lying and stealing get their material needs met. They repress the attachment needs that are impossible to fulfill and fill the void with the pleasures of exploitation and control.

Result: Sovereignism – NPD stabilized by psychopathic substrate. Power/control orientation rather than admiration-seeking. Sadism is ego-syntonic. Very early sadism onset; the moral emotions never fully form.

Distinguishing Features.

• No classic vulnerable phases but a superficially schizoid retreat

• Sadism is ego-syntonic

• Control/power orientation, not admiration

• Rarely acts impulsively

• Claims rare impulsive acts as intentional (A-retroactive)

• No memory of empathy or guilt in childhood

• Rigidity around selfhood/identity

• Drug addictions

Distress Level. Moderate. The void exists; control-needs are constant work. But grandiosity is stable – no cycling.

Representatives.

• Real: Donald Trump

• Fictional: Frank Underwood (House of Cards), Amy Dunne (Gone Girl), Cersei Lannister (Game of Thrones)

• Clinical: What Kernberg describes as malignant narcissism, though the paranoia is optional

Cluster 6: The Autonomist

Extreme autonomy-preoccupation without full sovereignty.

Feature Profile.

• G: Variable

• N: Variable

• E: E-I-avoidant or E-I-disorganized, E-C-controlling or E-C-enmeshed

• D: D-autonomic (defensive or symmetric), possibly D-avoidant or D-anatta

• B: Variable

• A: Variable

Narrative. Primary feature is extreme autonomy valence associated with high avoidant attachment from early control/enmeshment experiences. May or may not have psychopathic substrate. Organizing principle is freedom from constraint rather than power-over-others.

If symmetric (D-autonomic-symmetric), may have principled libertarian ethics – values others’ autonomy equally. If asymmetric, hypocritical – demands own freedom, impinges on others’.

Distinguishing Features.

• Extreme reactivity to perceived constraints

• Contractarian social model (“I didn’t agree to that”)

• May be principled or hypocritical

• Not necessarily sadistic or predatory

• Rage or withdrawal when constraints imposed

• Functions well until obligations arise

Distress Level. Moderate (situational). Fine when autonomy isn’t threatened; distressed when it is.

Representatives.

• Fictional: John Wick (John Wick), Ron Swanson (Parks and Recreation), Buttercup (Powerpuff Girls)

Cluster 7: The Alexithymic

Appears psychopathic but the issue is access, not absence.

Feature Profile.

• G: G-minimal

• N: N-disconnected (especially insula)

• E: E-I-avoidant, E-C-unattuned or E-C-invalidating or E-C-neglect

• D: Variable

• B: B-minimal

• A: A-observational, A-strategic

Narrative. Appears psychopathic – doesn’t seem to feel or respond emotionally – but the issue is access, not absence. Emotions may be there but can’t be identified, labeled, or articulated. Often comorbid with autism or developed from chronic invalidation.

Key distinction: Not low empathy – low interoceptive/emotional awareness. May respond to interventions that restore access.

Distinguishing Features.

• Difficulty identifying own emotions

• May have somatic complaints

• Relationship difficulties from apparent coldness

• No antisocial behaviors

• May respond to interoceptive training

Distress Level. Moderate. Confused by own reactions; relationship friction.

Representatives.

• Some autistic presentations

Tier 3: Moderate-High Distress

These clusters involve internal conflict and significant suffering.

Cluster 8: The Secondary Sovereign

Sovereignty developed defensively; potentially recoverable.

Feature Profile.

• G: G-minimal or G-reactive

• N: N-dissociative + N-hyperactive

• E: E-I-disorganized, E-C-chaotic/E-C-controlling/E-C-chaotic/E-C-scapegoat/E-C-punitive

• D: D-sovereign

• B: B-mixed

• A: A-strategic, A-retroactive, A-narrativizing, A-selective, A-absorbed

Narrative. Originally normal or reactive child who developed sovereignty defensively. The N-hyperactive pattern (reactive, hypervigilant) got blunted through chronic dissociation, producing current N-dissociative presentation.

Key marker: Remembers being different as a child. The moral emotions (empathy, guilt) did develop initially, then were suppressed. This means they’re potentially accessible – recovery is possible.

Distinguishing Features.

• Remembers being different (the key marker)

• Was reactive/sensitive as child

• Multiple adversity types (violence + control)

• Empathy returning “on good days”

• Sadism may have mitigating conditions (“only if they hurt me first”)

• May have good insight

• Visible state-switching during recovery (vulnerable phases emerging)

Distress Level. Moderate to high, especially during recovery. Internal conflict between original self and defensive self.

Representatives.

• Real: Tiffany, Sara Crouson (“Cluster B Milkshake”), Jacob Skidmore (“The Nameless Narcissist”) gets close

• Fictional: Zuko (Avatar: The Last Airbender), Killmonger (Black Panther)

Note on Zuko. He represents the recovery path: Starts shame-based and desperate for validation from rejecting parent, develops grandiosity and aggression, then transforms through stable attachment (Iroh) and environment change. Ends genuinely heroic. If you identify with Zuko, you may be seeing your own recovery potential.

Tier 4: High Distress

These clusters involve chronic suffering.

Cluster 9: The Classic Narcissist

NPD without psychopathic substrate – empathy present but defended.

Feature Profile.

• G: G-minimal, possibly G-reactive, some kind of high sensitivity

• N: N-normal or N-hyperactive

• E: E-I-disorganized, E-C-unattuned/E-C-golden/E-C-scapegoat

• D: D-narcissistic

• B: B-subclinical

• A: A-narrativizing or A-retroactive

Narrative. Narcissistic personality disorder without psychopathic substrate. Narcissistic structure developed as adaptation to parental projections (unattuned parenting, golden/scapegoat dynamics) but retains capacity for empathy, guilt, shame, remorse – these are defended against, not absent.

Unlike sovereigns, when these folks hurt someone, they must actively avoid mentalizing the victim or use some other trick to not feel it. They are also more likely to suffer as a result of personal setbacks, to idealize and devalue other individuals, and to cycle between very different mood states. Their disorganized attachment is more obvious.

Distinguishing Features.

• Visible empathy and moral emotions

• Oriented toward admiration rather than power (except instrumentally)

• If sadistic, sadism is ego-dystonic (conflicted)

• Cycles between grandiose and vulnerable states

• Drug addictions (cocaine, alcohol)

Distress Level. High. Cycling between states; shame breaks through; constant defense required.

Representatives.

• Real: Jordan Monroe

• Fictional: Don Draper (Mad Men), BoJack Horseman, Tony Soprano

Cluster 10: The Reactive Antisocial

Hot violence and dysregulation – BPD+ASPD overlap.

Feature Profile.

• G: G-reactive + G-impulsive

• N: N-hyperactive

• E: E-I-disorganized, E-C-chaotic, E-C-neglect, E-C-punitive, E-P-antisocial, E-P-peer-failure, E-P-identity-diffuse, E-A-unstable, E-A-addiction, E-A-crime

• D: D-autonomic-defensive

• B: B-factor-2, B-violent

• A: A-externalizing, A-amnestic, A-retroactive

Narrative. High emotional reactivity meets chaotic environment. Never develops stable self-structure or regulation. Remains reactive, impulsive, dysregulated. Violence is reactive (hot-blooded, rage-driven) not instrumental (cold, calculated).

Combined features of borderline and antisocial personality. Splitting, unstable identity, chaotic relationships, overpowering emotions. Substance use common.

Distinguishing Features.

• Reactive, hot violence

• Emotional dysregulation obvious

• Unstable identity

• Chaos in life domains

• Impulsive criminality

• Obvious projections

• Drug addictions

Distress Level. High. Chronic dysregulation; frequent crises.

Representatives.

• Fictional: Tommy Shelby (Peaky Blinders, more sympathetic portrayal); many crime drama antagonists

Cluster 11: The Echoist

Self-effacing, other-focused – the complement to narcissism.

Feature Profile.

• G: G-minimal

• N: N-normal or N-hyperactive

• E: E-I-preoccupied, E-C-scapegoat + E-C-parentified, E-P-failure

• D: D-echoist

• B: B-minimal

• A: A-absorbed, A-selective, A-narrativizing

Narrative. Not psychopathic at all, but included because echoists are the complement to narcissists and sovereigns. Learned to minimize self, accommodate others, avoid conflict. Takes responsibility for others’ actions and feelings, self-abnegates, uses false self defenses to suppress needs, selfishness, anger. May be organized around compensation for a feeling of uselessness or badness or in search of a cohesive borrowed identity.

Often raised by narcissistic parent (absorbed blame, became caretaker) or echoistic parent (copied expectations). May seek out narcissistic partners (intermittent feeling of being needed).

Distinguishing Features.

• Self-effacing

• Takes blame for others

• Feels a lot of guilt and debt

• Accommodating to a fault (to offset imagined debt)

• Attracted to people with strong needs and expectations

• Often depression, anxiety

Distress Level. High. Constant self-punishment, guilt, social self-isolation out of shame or fear of doing harm. Chronic self-neglect leads to burnout.

Representatives.

• Fictional: Various “enabler” characters

See my article on echoism.

Cluster 12: The Messianic

Abstract echoism + grandiosity – self-sacrificing world-saver.

Feature Profile.

• G: Variable

• N: Variable

• E: E-I-preoccupied, E-C-neglect, E-C-parentified, E-C-golden

• D: D-echoist (toward abstractions) + D-narcissistic

• B: B-subclinical to B-factor-1

• A: A-strategic, A-narrativizing

Narrative. Echoist toward an abstraction (world, humanity, future generations) rather than a person. Grandiose belief in own capacity to save/fix/improve the target. Willing to sacrifice self (no need for recognition) and possibly others (ends justify means).

Differs from standard NPD (doesn’t need admiration), sovereignty (not about power for its own sake), and echoism (toward abstraction, not person).

Distinguishing Features.

• Oriented toward abstract values, not admiration, power, or a partner

• Doesn’t need recognition – outcome is the reward

• May use controlling, Machiavellian means

• Self-sacrificing component

Distress Level. Variable. May be content (mission provides meaning) or tormented (weight of moral decisions) or collapsed (benevolent but failed god) or burned out (hit human limitations).

Representatives.

• Fictional: Ozymandias (Watchmen)

• Some effective altruist or political figures

See my article on echoism (includes more examples).

Cluster 13: The Modeled

Learned psychopathic behavior; substrate may be intact.

Feature Profile.

• G: G-minimal

• N: N-normal

• E: E-P-antisocial, E-A-crime, E-A-addiction

• D: D-autonomic-asymmetric, D-avoidant

• B: B-mixed

• A: A-strategic, A-narrativizing

Narrative. Psychopathic behavior without rigid identity that is learned only in adolescence, due to environment that necessitates them. The empathy is there, defended against. May not know other ways to be. High recovery potential if new models are provided.

Distinguishing Features.

• Embedded in criminal peer groups

• Suffering from homelessness or addiction

• Used to be different in childhood

• Can learn alternative patterns

• Substrate is intact

Distress Level. High, due to intact guilt and remorse, and due to whatever drives the behaviors – homelessness, addiction, blackmail.

Representatives.

• Fictional: Jesse Pinkman (Breaking Bad), Michael Polischka (Knallhart)

Distinguishing Questions

Not sure which cluster fits? These questions can help:

1. “Were you always roughly as you currently are, or do you remember being more sensitive and empathic?”

   • Always → Clusters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7

   • Remember different → Clusters 6, 8, 10, 13

2. “When you hurt someone, do you have to avoid thinking about how they feel?”

   • Yes → Clusters 6, 9, 11, 12, 13 (affective empathy present, defended)

   • No → Clusters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10 (affective empathy minimal)

3. “Is it worse to be seen as ‘out of control’ or ‘evil’?”

   • Out of control → Clusters 5, 8

   • Evil → Cluster 9, 11, 12, 13

   • Neither bothers me → Clusters 2, 3, 4

4. “What do you want from others?”

   • Admiration → Cluster 9

   • Control → Clusters 4, 5, 8, 12

   • Resources → Cluster 2

   • Stimulation → Clusters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8

Multiple Clusters

Many people fit multiple clusters or fall between them. This is expected – clusters are approximations, not discrete categories.

Common combinations:

• Sovereignism usually implies autonomism

• Narcissism and echoism can co-occur

• Recovering sovereigns may move toward classic narcissism or autonomism

The cluster framework is a starting point, not a final classification.

Next: The Choice

The final article explores recovery – what it means for different clusters, what’s changeable and what isn’t, and the honest trade-offs involved.

This is the fifth article in a series on understanding psychopathy. Previous articles covered the framework, biology, environment, and psychological structure. This article explores the different ways empathy can fail to influence behavior – because understanding the mechanism matters for understanding the person.

Introduction

“Lack of empathy” is a core feature of psychopathy, but the phrase hides enormous variation. Someone who can’t perceive distress is different from someone who perceives it but feels nothing. Someone who feels distress but doesn’t care is different from someone who cares but acts anyway because rage overwhelms.

This article presents empathy as a pipeline with multiple stages, each of which can fail independently. Understanding where someone’s empathy fails helps predict their behavior and suggests different intervention approaches.

I’ll call this pipeline C for connective or communicative, because it comprises more aspects than just the cognitive (simulation) and affective components that are commonly associated with empathy.

Empathetic Connection as a Pipeline

Connection isn’t one thing – it’s a sequence of processes:

PERCEPTION → SIMULATION → AFFECT → MOTIVATION → BEHAVIOR

Each stage can fail independently:

• Perception. Noticing and recognizing the other’s state.

• Simulation. Modeling what the other is experiencing.

• Affect. Generating an emotional response to that model.

• Motivation. Caring about the emotional response – attaching moral weight.

• Behavior. Translating care into action (or restraint).

Books like Against Empathy make the case that affective empathy is often a bad guide to moral decision marking. I agree. The affective component can feel very lovely and connecting and it can be motivating when there are competing considerations – for good or ill.

As such, what is important in this pipeline is that processes of perception and simulation eventually lead to behavior (which requires motivation). Some of my friends can do that reliably without the affect component, and in many everyday and life decisions – such as where to donate – I try to avoid getting biased by affective responses.

The resulting pipeline goes:

PERCEPTION → SIMULATION → MOTIVATION → BEHAVIOR

Different failures at different stages produce different presentations.

Stage 1: Perception Failures

The other’s distress isn’t registered at all.

C-P-inattention: Not Noticing

Not attending to distress cues. Distracted, focused elsewhere, not looking.

This is the default in our society. Millions of humans dying of preventable diseases, trillions of animals suffering in factory farms, sextillions of animals living in abject conditions in the wild, many more throughout the future. Most people don’t realize it in the first place.

C-P-aversion: Flinching Away

Actively avoiding perceiving the other’s state. Like C-P-inattention but with a defensive purpose behind it. Some pwNPD flinch away from mentalizing people they hurt – they could perceive their distress, but doing so would produce an empathetic response they don’t want to feel. So they avert their gaze.

This suggests the empathy capacity is present but defended against.

This is the default in our society among people who do realize how much suffering there is. They look away.

C-P-non-recognition: Not Recognizing

Sees the cues but doesn’t recognize them as distress. May be related to alexithymia (difficulty identifying emotions) or the difficulty reading neurotypical social cues that autistic people run into. The signal is there, but it’s not decoded.

Most people struggle with this when interpreting the distress cues of fish and most invertebrates because they are too different.

C-P-objectification: Seeing Object, Not Person

Deliberately or habitually classifying the target as an object rather than an agent with experiences.

One example from my own experience: When a friend gets a minor injury and I need to help rather than pass out from empathic distress, I see them as “a damaged object that needs repair” rather than “a person in pain.” This is strategic objectification – useful in the moment, then released.

For some people, this is the default mode. Others are objects, resources, obstacles – not minds with experiences. This bypasses the empathy pipeline entirely, so it’s also useful for empathizing with sadism – i.e. behave sadistically toward literal objects to experience what it is like.

I imagine that most people have an objectified relationship towards most invertebrates, excluding large ones like octopuses. When an animal dies, it’s telling whether people react with indifference, appetite, or wanting to bury the body.

Stage 2: Simulation Failures

These come in two flavors: mentalizing the other and mentalizing the self – or failing to.

C-S-no-pain: Can’t Imagine Pain

If your own pain perception is blunted, you may lack the experiential substrate to simulate others’ pain accurately.

One friend said, “They’re just nociceptive stimuli. I can just ignore them.” If that’s their relationship to their own pain, how would they simulate the agony of someone else’s injury? (Then again I find it more likely that they noticed a lack of fear of pain and confabulated a reason for it when really the reason is that they don’t have a fear response.)

This is not callousness in the moral sense – it’s a genuine simulation deficit. They’re not choosing to ignore your pain; they can’t imagine it because they don’t experience pain that way themselves.

C-S-no-self: Can’t Imagine Attacks on Selfhood

M.E. Thomas (D-anatta) describes having no selfhood to attack. Physical pain she can imagine, somewhat. But humiliation? Self-image injury? These don’t compute because she doesn’t have the internal referent. Or they didn’t. She’s trained her selfhood over the past ten years and how has a better idea of what it’s like also introspectively.

If you have no self, you can’t simulate what it feels like to have your self attacked. This means certain kinds of harm – infractions of autonomy, reputational damage, humiliation, self-image injury – may be genuinely incomprehensible, not merely disregarded. Autonomy is a particularly interesting case because if someone has no self whose autonomy to value, how would they realize that there is one person who they can manipulate (themselves) but not anyone else, unless they’ll make them angry. It’ll seem like a weird and arbitrary social mechanism.

C-S-no-shame: Can’t Imagine the Feeling of Shame

Some people don’t have the feeling of shame. Perhaps they don’t recognize the idea of being part of a social group, and hence motions that these groups make to use shame against them end up being just empty motions.

Such a person might imitate these motions to express their disapproval or persuade someone to do something, but they don’t realize that for the other person, these motions are deep cuts to their self concept.

Along the same lines, it makes sense to recognize simulation failures like C-S-no-guilt (which might cause someone to use guilting motions on another which they would scruple to do if they knew what it feels like) or C-S-no-fear (which might cause someone to act erratically or threatening, which they would try to control if they knew what the fear feels like that they instill).

C-S-projection: Simulating the Wrong State

Simulating what you would feel rather than what they feel. A masochist might project their own relationship to pain onto a victim, imagining the victim enjoys it. A stoic might project their own equanimity, underestimating the victim’s distress. A person who enjoys learning about personality disorders might project their enthusiasm, underestimating the victim’s annoyance at listening to nothing else for years.

C-S-underestimation: Simulating But Minimizing

The simulation happens but the intensity is underestimated. “It’s not that bad.” “They’ll get over it.” “Pain is just a signal.”

This may be related to C-S-no-[substrate] – e.g., if you don’t experience much pain yourself, you may simulate others’ pain as similarly mild.

C-S-hypermentalizing: Constructing False Attributions

Simulation happens but produces inaccurate, self-serving results. “They actually like it.” “They’re not really hurt.” “They’re exaggerating for attention.” “That’s their only purpose in life.” The model is constructed, but it’s wrong – and wrong in a defensive direction.

C-S-impulsive: Acts Before Reflection

The action happens before the empathic/moral processing can complete. The person might have arrived at a different resulting action if they’d paused – but they didn’t pause.

C-S-prospective: Can’t Anticipate Future Guilt

The person can feel guilt retrospectively, but not prospectively. In the moment of action, they can’t access the knowledge that they’ll feel terrible later.

“She gets angry, does bad stuff, and then regrets it. But she can’t anticipate that she’ll feel that way.”

This is state-dependent access – the guilt is real but only accessible in a different state. This may be related to N-disconnected.

C-S-state-dependent: Empathy Only in Certain States

Mentalizing is available in some states (calm, secure) but not others (angry, dissociated). The capacity exists but isn’t consistently accessible.

C-S-temporal-discounting: Future Doesn’t Weigh

Future guilt is acknowledged but heavily discounted. “I’ll feel bad later, but I don’t care now.” The temporal distance makes the future suffering abstract and powerless.

C-S-depleted: Too Exhausted for Restraint

The theory of ego depletion avers that self-control is a limited resource. If so, a person would mentalize comprehensively if they had the energy, but they’re too tired.

C-S-intoxicated: Chemically Disinhibited

Alcohol or other substances interfere with proper mentalizing.

C-S-retroactive: Rewriting to Prevent Guilt

After the action, the memory is rewritten to prevent guilt. “They deserved it.” “It wasn’t that bad.” “They got over it.” This prevents guilt from forming even when it otherwise would – and prevents learning from the experience for the next round of mentalizing.

Stage 3: Affective Failures

Simulation doesn’t produce an emotional response.

C-A-blunted: Weak or Absent Affect

The simulation is accurate, but it doesn’t produce an emotional response. You understand they’re in pain, but you don’t feel anything about it. This is the classic N-hypoactive pattern – the amygdala and insula don’t fire, so there’s no affective resonance.

This is also something that affects most people when it comes to the suffering of invertebrates and fish.

C-A-suppressed: Affect Generated But Suppressed

The emotional response is generated but actively suppressed. This is different from C-A-blunted – the affect is there, but defenses keep it out of awareness. Friends of mine describe practices of automatic or habitual rationalizing and compartmentalizing to not feel bad. The affect would be there if they let it.

C-A-inverted: Pain Produces Pleasure

The simulation is accurate, and an affect is generated – but it’s positive. The other’s pain produces pleasure. This is sadism in the true sense: Inverted empathic affect. It might translate to pain beyond nociception, e.g., humiliation.

C-A-override: Stronger Affect Drowns Empathy

The empathic affect is generated, but it’s overwhelmed by a stronger affect – rage, fear, desire, domination. The person does feel the other’s distress, but they feel their own rage more, and the rage wins. The pain might even enhance a competing feeling of domination.

One friend of mine gets angry, does things that are in violation of her values, and then regrets it and feels remorse afterwards. But she can’t anticipate that she’ll feel it when she does those things. At that time it feels perfectly justified.

This is not absence of empathy – it’s empathy overwhelmed by rage, with retrospective access.

C-A-redirected: Empathic Distress Becomes Anger

The empathic distress is generated, but instead of producing compassion, it produces anger at the person causing the distress – sometimes the victim themselves. “Stop making me feel bad about you!”

This can lead to victim-blaming and avoidance: The distress is aversive, so the source of distress (the suffering person) becomes aversive. Specifically the patterns that I’ve identified are resentment and control-seeking: You feel wronged because someone is asking you for a kind of accountability that has never been granted you in the past; you’ve internalized that you mustn’t show the emotions the person is showing, so you feel like they’re violating your conduct norms; or you’re used to getting endlessly attacked for your mistakes, so you try to never admit to any.

C-A-anhedonia: Sadism as One of Few Pleasures

Some people have generally blunted pleasure (anhedonia), but sadism is one of the few things that still produces feeling. The sadism isn’t about the victim per se – it’s about accessing any feeling at all. Perhaps it’s not even particularly pleasurable, but it is intense, it is a reprieve from the nothingness.

This may relate to the “void” that some psychopathic presentations describe – the emptiness that gets filled with substances, thrills, or sadism.

Stage 4: Motivational Failures

Affect is present but doesn’t translate to moral concern.

C-M-amoral: No Moral Weight Attached

The empathic affect is present – you feel something when you see their pain – but it doesn’t connect to moral value. It’s just information, not a reason to act or refrain.

Here it’s important to distinguish descriptive and metaethical moral realism. (I find the first fairly uninteresting but reject the second, not on the grounds of moral realism but on the grounds of something like metaethical expressivism and a resulting global market of moral preferences.)

Descriptive Moral Relativism (DMR). As a matter of empirical fact, there are deep and widespread moral disagreements across different societies, and these disagreements are much more significant than whatever agreements there may be.

Metaethical Moral Relativism (MMR). The truth or falsity of moral judgments, or their justification, is not absolute or universal, but is relative to the traditions, convictions, or practices of a group of persons.

But some people do subscribe to something like MMR, in which case they attach or don’t attach a moral weight to the same states depending on who is affected by them, where, or in which context.

This is a bit of a catch all for amoral non-responses that are not covered with more specificity below.

C-M-dehumanization: They Don’t Count

The target is classified as not deserving moral concern. “They’re not really people.”

C-M-justification: Feels Justified

Moral concern is overridden by felt justification. “They deserved it.” “They started it.” “It was self-defense.” The empathic information is present, the moral weight is attached, but the justification outweighs it.

This is C-A-override’s sibling: Not just that an emotion overwhelms another, but that it comes with a notion that it feels justified, so the action feels right.

C-M-ideological: For the Greater Good

Higher value overrides moral concern for the individual. “I’m saving the world.” “The ends justify the means.” “One death to prevent a million.”

Ozymandias from Watchmen is the extreme example – killing millions for calculated peace. The empathic information is present, the moral weight is attached (he knows it’s terrible), but the utilitarian calculation overrides.

C-M-competing: Other Desires Outweigh

Moral concern is present but weaker than other motivations – appetite, greed, revenge, lust, ambition. The person knows it’s wrong and feels it’s wrong, but does it anyway because they want to.

C-M-licensing: Earned the Right

“I’ve been good, so I can be bad now.” Moral accounting that permits occasional violations.

C-M-diffusion: Not My Responsibility

Bystander effect logic. “Others could help.” “It’s not my job.” Moral concern is present but responsibility is diffused.

C-M-identity: Empathy Threatens Self-Concept

Acknowledging the empathic information would threaten the self-concept. For sovereigns, admitting empathy might feel like weakness. For some ideologies, empathizing with the “enemy” is betrayal. So the empathic information is dismissed or suppressed.

Stage 5: Behavioral Failures

Behaviors are not sufficiently externally constrained.

C-B-others: Interpersonal Power Differentials

If the interpersonal power differential is minimal, the other person can effectively constrain one’s behaviors. If not, the behavior can’t be effectively constrained at this level, be it in the moment or through feedback to prevent future iterations.

Sources of power differentials: avoidant attachment, physical strength, life experience, martial arts experience, weapons, positions of institutional power, financial power, blackmail material, etc.

C-B-institutions: Institutional Power Differentials

In extreme cases, someone is above the law so that there’s not only an interpersonal power differential but a universal one, the lack of feedback that many dictators suffer from and that, e.g., caused Putin to underestimate the costs of the war on Ukraine.

Mapping Failure Points to Presentations

Different presentations tend to fail at different points. Understanding where the failure is helps target intervention – if there is one.

Why This Matters

For self-understanding. If you know your empathy fails at the simulation stage (you can’t imagine their pain because you don’t experience pain that way), that’s different from failing at the motivation stage (you feel it but don’t care). Understanding your mechanism helps you work with it.

For predicting behavior. Different failure points predict different behaviors. C-A-override (rage overwhelms) predicts reactive violence; C-A-blunted (no affect) predicts cold instrumentality; C-M-justification predicts violence framed as deserved.

For intervention. Some failure points are more modifiable than others. C-B-impulsive might be helped by slowing down, creating pause, like with the DBT STOP skill. C-A-suppressed might be helped by creating safety that allows the affect to emerge. C-A-blunted is probably stable.

For others’ self-protection. If you know someone’s failure point, you know how to protect yourself. C-A-override people are dangerous when triggered; C-A-blunted people are dangerous when you have something they want; C-M-justification people are dangerous when they feel you’ve wronged them.

Next: The Types

The next article presents the archetypal clusters – common profiles that tend to co-occur. Rather than abstract dimensions, we’ll look at recognizable types that readers may identify with.

This is the fourth article in a series on understanding psychopathy. Previous articles covered the framework, biology, and environment. This article covers the D (dynamic) and A (agency) levels – the psychological structures that developed and how you understand your own intentionality.

Introduction

The substrate (G and N) and the shaping (E) produce the self (D). This is the level most people think of when they think about “who someone is” – not their genes or brain scans (not merely their outward behavior either), but their psychological organization, their characteristic patterns of relating, their attitudes and motivations, their experience of themselves.

This article describes the major D-level variants I’ve identified through conversations with friends who have these presentations. It also introduces the A level – how people with different presentations understand and narrate their own intentionality.

These are modifiers, so it stands to reason that someone with only D-narcissistic would not be considered to be significantly psychopathic in any of the many senses, but I rather wanted to include more variants rather than fewer to make the system more expressive. This way it can be used to show, for example, that if someone has D-narcissistic and A-amnestic and acted violently in rage is not lying about not remembering it but actually doesn’t remember it, a sign that a diagnosis of ASPD would be unhelpful for them.

D-Level: Psychodynamic Variants

D-anatta: The Empty Self

The term comes from the Buddhist concept of anattā – “no-self.” Individuals with this presentation have minimal sense of identity. There’s no stable “I” that persists across contexts. At the extreme, there is no “I” ever.

Self aspect. The inner experience is one of absence and direct experience. Identity is borrowed from context: They become what the situation calls for, but it’s a thin mask, not something that actually gets imbued with identity. There’s no intrinsically compelling reason for them to identify with “themselves” more than with others, so respecting others’ autonomies can be unintuitive to them.

Relational aspect. They mirror those around them, take on contextually appropriate personas, and usually don’t feel like they are in touch with anything that is genuinely “them” underneath the adaptations.

Agency style. Often A-observational: “I watch myself do things.” There’s no felt sense of deliberation or choice – actions emerge from some ranking process without an “I” in between. They’ll say things like that they’d rather not travel because they tend to commit crimes when they do, or that their loved ones please call the police on them if they act abusively. It’s as if their own body is as foreign, mysterious, and wayward to them as it is to a third party.

How it differs from other presentations. D-anatta individuals don’t have the preoccupation with power or self-image of sovereigns. Control and grandiosity are means to an end for them, but they don’t need them or have identity invested in them. They may be predatory (D-predatory) in an instrumental way, but it’s not about domination – it’s about getting what they want, filling the void, passing time, or curiosity. When faced with hardship, D-anatta is more likely to say “I don’t care,” whereas D-sovereign is more likely to lean into a kind of stoicism that I call contumacious pride, “You think you can beat me, but pain only makes me stronger!”

Example. This interview with M.E. Thomas describes her no-self experience well. But I’ve also run into someone who talks like M.E. Thomas (or James Fallon for that matter) but has an avoidant vibe. How can someone without a self have avoidant attachment? I will just assume for now that that’s possible, but if I change my mind, I’ll update these sections.

D-narcissistic: The Unstable Self

This is classic narcissistic personality organization – unstable self-esteem, a fear of worthlessness and compensatory need for specialness or admiration, with episodes of shame, anxiety, and sensitivity to rejection.

Self-aspect. A deep fear of worthlessness that is defended against by a positive split on the self where any perceived flaws are disavowed, and the person perceives a lot of agency and optimism, and a negative split where the supposed flaws are conscious but the agency is disavowed to externalize the responsibility for the flaws. For people with a pure D-narcissistic presentation, the positive states are often unstable and need to either be actively maintained through positive feedback or protected by avoiding negative feedback. A view of the self as defined by how it appears to others (a teleological mode) makes it highly sensitive to circumstantial factors, so that these can appear as threats to be defended against.

Relational aspect. A defended form of disorganized attachment where there is often a person who is idealized as ideal source of parental love but who is simultaneously also a threat because criticism, rejection, or boundaries are devastating to the self and can only be tolerated when they can be safely dismissed, which requires the paradoxical devaluation of the idealized surrogate parent. These aspects of self and other – the idealized other and child-like self, and the devalued other and self-sufficient self – are incompatible and require splitting for them to stay unacknowledged. Relationships with those who are seen as mildly inferior are safer, because they can be dismissed as needed, but are also unsatisfying because they don’t provide the safety of paternal love.

Agency style. Often A-narrativizing or A-retroactive in the positive split and A-externalizing or A-selective (true-but-partial explanations) in the negative split.

How it differs from D-sovereign. D-narcissistic is oriented toward positive feedback or admiration and away from negative feedback. It’s organized around a fear of worthlessness and a corresponding compensatory need to be special. D-sovereign (below) is oriented toward power – controlling others. It’s organized around a few of being helpless or exposed to someone else’s will. Crucially, D-narcissistic retains capacity for shame, guilt, and empathy (even if defended against), while D-sovereign has these dampened by the psychopathic substrate, an antagonistic and sadistic or Machiavellian outlook on others, and avoidant attachment more toward civilization as a whole than just individual friends or partners.

D-echoistic: The Self-Effacing Self

The opposite of narcissistic grandiosity – minimal self-assertion, other-focused, needs subordinated to others’.

Self aspect. The inner experience is of having no preferences, or of preferences being illegitimate. The self exists to serve.

Relational aspect. Accommodating to a fault. May attract narcissists (complementary dynamics). Takes responsibility for others’ emotions and actions.

Agency style. Some types are structured along the lines of D-narcissistic, while some might rely on A-absorbed, especially if it’s a borderline-like presentation of echoism: “It’s my fault they did that to me.” The A-absorbed presentation in echoism confuses self and other and is characterized by impaired reality-testing, unlike the presentation of A-absorbed in sovereignism.

See my article on echoism and its relationship to narcissism.

D-sovereign: The Power-Oriented Self

This is my term for the combination of pathological narcissism with psychopathic callousness and ego-syntonic sadism – what Otto Kernberg called malignant narcissism, but with a focus on the control-orientation or sadism rather than the paranoia. As such it’s a wider category.

I’ve written about this extensively in my article on sovereignism. The key distinction from standard narcissism: Sovereigns are oriented toward power and control, not admiration or avoiding criticism.

Self aspect. The inner experience is of needing and enjoying control – of others, situations, outcomes. As such, they’re oriented around a fear of being helplessly exposed to someone else. Others are threats not acutely for a few hours when they say something critical but chronically so that they need to be defensively devalued at all times. This extends to state authorities who are just as much antagonists as are individuals. At first approximation there is no one whose opinion of them deserves respect so their self-esteem can appear stable, affected only by their own perception of their own level of control.

Relational aspect. At first approximation, relationships are only possible through controlling the other (there is no destabilizing need to idealize them) or by psychologically merging with the other, forming one joined identity, which is very risky with humans and easier with companion animals. But I see sovereignism as a particularly stable variation on narcissism, so the first approximation is usually an oversimplification: Some individuals do come to respect others as equals or do engage in mild forms of idealization that are more typical of standard narcissism. Sovereigns almost invariably have high avoidant attachment and low preoccupied attachment in their grandiose moods.

Most people are immune to shaming or guilting from their outgroup – the people who are culturally opposed to them. I’m a bit of a lefty, so if someone were to shame me for being trans, it wouldn’t connect with anything. D-sovereign is like being an outgroup of one – alone and persecuted – the ultimate defense against shame. Ones who are not particularly paranoid may feel closer to an ingroup of one – immune to shame but not persecuted, like D-avoidant.

Why the psychopathic substrate stabilizes it. People with standard pathological narcissism need to break their empathy at the level of the mentalization – the flexible simulation of their own and the other’s mind. They impair their cognitive empathy to keep their defenses intact. This impairs their functioning as better understanding is generally adaptive. Add to that the paradoxical conflict between idealization and self-sufficiency in romantic relationships, and the self-deceptions in standard pathological narcissism become very unstable. Avoidant attachment and even ego-syntonic sadism – not respecting others or actively and antagonistically wishing them harm – work hand in hand with impairments of affective empathy to obviate the need for this self-limiting defense. The pervasive reduced respect for others thwarts the ability to idealize. The result is a personality structure that is highly fortified against outside threats – “I have to humble myself because no one else can humble me,” as a friend of mine put it (paraphrased).

Agency style. A-strategic, A-retroactive, A-narrativizing, A-selective, A-absorbed. Seeing themselves as “out of control” is worse than being seen as “evil” (which is powerful and positive). They may also claim impulsive actions as intentional regardless of whether others may consider them blameworthy. They may say, “First I try positive reinforcement; if that fails, I gaslight; if that fails, I rage as deterrent; and only if that fails, I act remorseful” – but sometimes this is a post-hoc rationalization of a reactive sequence, not genuine planning. When suffering abuse, some sovereigns will blame themselves along the lines of A-absorbed but without confusion of self and other or impaired reality testing: E.g., they’ll claim the abuse is their own fault because they could’ve left or killed the abuser but chose not to.

D-autonomic: The Freedom-Oriented Self

Hypersensitivity to perceived constraints on freedom; autonomy as the core value. Mild form of D-avoidant (only mildly avoidant) and D-sovereign (little sadism or callousness).

Self aspect. The inner experience is organized around freedom from constraint. Any perceived imposition threatens the self. “No one tells me what to do.” The reactive anger can cause momentary callousness.

Relational aspect. Relationships are evaluated through an autonomy lens. Implicit expectations feel like impositions. Only explicit agreements count. “I didn’t agree to show up, so your expectation is your problem.” Associated with fairly high avoidant attachment but stopping short of the antagonistic attitude vis-a-vis society as a whole that characterizes sovereignism or the cold disregard for it that characterizes D-avoidant.

Subtypes.

• D-autonomic-offensive. Controls others to secure own autonomy. “I’ll control everything so no one can control me.”

• D-autonomic-defensive. Reacts to perceived constraints with rage or withdrawal. “You asked me to work overtime? I quit.”

• D-autonomic-symmetric. Values others’ autonomy equally. “I respect your freedom; respect mine.” Principled libertarianism.

• D-autonomic-asymmetric. Values own autonomy, disregards others’. Hypocritical application.

• D-autonomic-non-interfering. Extreme symmetric autonomism: Won’t violate others’ autonomy even to help them. “Your life is your business; I don’t interfere for good or evil.”

Origin. Often from E-I-avoidant and E-C-controlling environments. The child who was never allowed to have boundaries rebels by defending them on a hair trigger.

D-avoidant: The Walled-Off Self

Extreme dismissive attachment taken to its endpoint. Nothing matters; no one matters; independence is the only value.

Self aspect. The inner experience is of detachment – from emotions, from desires, from connection, from society. There was usually a lot of pain that led to this walling-off, but the pain is no longer accessible.

Relational aspect. When attachment is as vital as it is dangerous (disorganized attachment), one can either enslave oneself to it entirely or reject it entirely to escape the conflict. D-avoidant is the result of that rejection, much like D-sovereign: Most people are immune to shaming or guilting from their outgroup – the people who are culturally opposed to them. I’m a bit of a lefty, so if someone were to shame me for being trans, it wouldn’t connect with anything. D-avoidant means being an ingroup of one, the ultimate defense against shame.

Relationships are minimal or purely instrumental. Attachment is threatening. Someone with disorganized attachment may choose this path as a momentary release. Some may lean into universalized anger or hate to reach this state. They can often leave it as suddenly as they’ve entered it.

How it differs from D-sovereign. Extreme and pervasive avoidant attachment is part of D-sovereign but D-avoidant is a purer form that doesn’t imply any preoccupation with control or sadism or a rigid self-image the way D-sovereign does, though individuals with D-avoidant may behave in sadistic ways out of boredom.

D-secure: A Stable Self

A normal self, usually associated with secure attachment.

Self aspect. An inner experience of interpreting perceptions from a consistent perspective; reasonably stable preferences across time and contexts; continuity over time; complexity of contradictory drives that can be resolved.

Relational aspect. Can trust others but also trusts themselves. Respects others’ autonomy but reacts proportionately to infringements on their own autonomy.

Agency style. Often A-narrativizing or A-observational.

A-Level: Agency Attribution Styles

Beyond D-level structure, people differ in how they understand and narrate their own intentionality. This is the A level – not a separate dimension of the self, but a lens on how the self is understood.

A-observational

“I watch myself do things.”

The person has minimal sense of deliberation or choice. Actions emerge from some process they observe rather than control. Common in D-anatta.

Example: “I don’t have an internal narrative anymore. My decisions flow automatically from some ranking process with no intention happening between ranking and action.”

A-strategic

“I plan, then act.”

Genuine prospective intentionality. The person simulates outcomes, evaluates options, and chooses. This may be accurate self-description, or it may be how they prefer to see themselves.

A-narrativizing

“I tell myself a constant story about what I’m doing.”

Real-time rationalization. The person maintains a running narrative that explains and justifies their actions as they happen. The narrative may or may not be accurate.

A-retroactive

“I act, then explain.”

Post-hoc rationalization. The person acts first and constructs an explanation later when challenged. Common in D-narcissistic.

A-selective

“I delayed because I was exhausted.” (True, but only 20% of the picture.)

Picks one true motivation and presents it as the whole story, omitting ego-dystonic motivations. The stated reason is accurate but incomplete. Common across presentations.

A-externalizing

“They made me do it.”

Locates causation externally. “It wasn’t me; it was the situation / my upbringing / their provocation.”

A-absorbed

“It’s my fault they hurt me.”

Takes responsibility for others’ actions. Common in D-echoistic.

Maximizes self-attribution to avoid the intolerable feeling of helplessness. Common with D-autonomic.

A-amnestic

“What mistake? I don’t remember that.”

Forgets ego-dystonic actions. Dissociative amnesia for events that would threaten the self-concept.

Why D-sovereign and N-hypoactive Can Look Tightly Correlated

This is speculative, but it matches a pattern I’ve noticed: The “cold” substrate (low fear, low guilt, low empathic cost) seems to co-occur with NPD more often than a naïve independence model would predict (1% prevalence of N-hypoactive × 5% prevalence of NPD = 0.05% prevalence of sovereignism – or lower if sadism is independent). A few mechanisms could produce this:

Early Trauma

Maybe these sovereigns were born with a regular amygdala, but neglect trauma in their infancy caused E-I-avoidant, and that caused their originally more active amygdala to atrophy at such an early age already (maybe before age 3 or so when they can retain memories) that they remember no time when they still felt different.

• Sovereigns seem to invariably have high avoidant attachment.

• Violent trauma is more likely to cause E-I-disorganized and N-hyperactive or N-dissociative.

• E-I-avoidant also prevents memory formation of attachment traumas (these cease to be traumatic once all expectations of attachment are destroyed), so these sovereigns are more likely to report a childhood that was “normal” or “fine” with little detail.

• Replications of the Strange Situation experiment (ages 9–30 months) show that avoidant attachment is still associated with high stress at that age. This might change as the amygdala atrophies. Perhaps it is these children that consistently develop D-narcissistic, D-sovereign, D-autonomic, and others.

• Some sovereigns are closer than others to “malignant narcissism,” i.e. are paranoid, have ADHD, and generally show subtle signs of N-hyperactive rather than N-hypoactive but exert strong self-control most of the time. Perhaps the atrophy is incomplete in their case. Their etiology is less surprising, and perhaps there is a range from this less surprising to the more surprising (N-hypoactive) presentation due to different levels of atrophy.

Punitive Parenting

Children with N-hypoactive can be challenging to parent, and parents may fall back on punitive parenting methods that incentivize the child to become more conniving to escape the punishments. Parent and child become enemies along the way, which causes the child to develop E-I-avoidant (avoidant attachment) and high trait antagonism, and thus a sovereign outlook against life.

• Arguably, such parenting is more likely to produce E-I-disorganized, but:

• Perhaps there is a temperamental difference that causes some children to develop E-I-avoidant under these circumstances, and

• NPD might serve to bolster the self-concept in the grandiose mood for ostensible E-I-avoidant despite actual E-I-disorganized. I’ve seen some of my sovereign friends in grandiose and vulnerable states, and the devalued self concept of the vulnerable state provides the preoccupied component for overall E-I-disorganized.

Bundled Transmission (Psychopathic Parenting)

A psychopathic parent can “bundle” two things: (1) constitutional callousness/fearlessness (G-callous → N-hypoactive) and (2) narcissism-inducing shaping (E-I-avoidant/disorganized, E-C-unattuned/neglect/controlling). If early care is emotionally thin, conditional, or coercive, children may end up seeking substitutes for reliable love and safety (admiration, dominance, invulnerability) without having internalized stable parental introjects. In this picture, this “vacuum” can be filled to form D-anatta, D-narcissistic, or D-sovereign depending on what gets reinforced.

• This seems less likely to me because G-callous and N-hypoactive from birth should have some shielding effect against attachment trauma and thus NPD.

• Many of my sovereign friends have unemotional or sadistic parents, but it’s unclear whether that’s a sign of G-callous or also N-hypoactive from atrophy and avoidant attachment.

Attachment Compromise Hypothesis

Many sovereigns still want people in their orbit but fear dependence. Control can be a way to do closeness without vulnerability: “I can have you as long as I’m not at your mercy.” That makes N-hypoactive (low fear) and D-sovereign (control-based relating) a stable pairing.

Stability Filter

Pure NPD can be unstable over time: shame collapses, cycling, and relational fallout. Add a “cold” substrate and the grandiose control-structure can become more stable and socially survivable. By the time you’re mostly meeting adults in their 30s–50s, the stabilized variants may be overrepresented in the people who remain networked and high-contact.

Adult Ecology Visibility

By the time you’re meeting people in their 30s–50s, the profiles that stay socially networked and relationship-active tend to be the ones that can maintain stable roles (work, friendships, partnerships). Sovereigns often can (they can be charming, competent, and strategic). Some non-NPD psychopathic variants are less relationship-motivated, less self-disclosing, or more likely to drift into isolation, so you see fewer of them up close.

Taken together: N-hypoactive doesn’t “cause” sovereignty, but it makes sovereignty viable, and certain developmental and temperamental pathways make it reinforcing and stable.

Why Sovereigns Say “It’s Just Strategy”

One pattern I’ve noticed in conversations with sovereign friends deserves special attention: When asked why they do normal, prosocial things – being nice, maintaining friendships, helping people – they often say something like: “It’s just a social tactic. Besides, it makes me look good.”

This sounds suspiciously convenient. Every action, no matter how kind, gets explained as Machiavellian – and the explanation always fits perfectly with the sovereign self-concept. When motivations seem that simple and that aligned with the self-image, it’s usually a sign that something is being compressed or obscured: A-selective.

Here’s how Tiffany explained what’s actually happening:

The Explanation Serves Multiple Functions

1. It’s partly true. Usually the motivation really is strategic to some extent. Early in the recovery, this is typically the only conscious motivation.

2. It’s protective. “I don’t want to be taken advantage of. I hide or obscure whether I’m doing it for a self-serving or altruistic reason.”

3. It covers genuine ambiguity. “It can be difficult for me to tell whether I think someone’s useful or I like them being around.”

4. The strategic language comes easier. The utilitarian/calculating vocabulary is more fluent than emotional vocabulary.

5. It’s an honest warning. “I want them to realize that even when I’m doing it because I think I’m helping them, it can come out as selfish, coercive, and maybe even sadistic.”

The Actual Motivational Landscape

When a sovereign says “I’m being nice because it keeps them around,” the reality might be a combination of:

• Sometimes: Genuine liking – “I like people. I want to do nice things with and for people I like.”

• Sometimes: Utility calculation – keeping someone around for what they provide.

• Sometimes: Control/shaping – “trying to change someone to be a better companion.”

• Sometimes: Just being nice – no ulterior motive at all.

The “it’s strategic” explanation roughly fits all these scenarios, so it gets used as a catch-all. As my friend put it: “That explanation roughly fits the different situations I end up in and is still roughly true if I’m being shallow as well.”

Why This Matters for Recovery

In more dissociated states, sovereigns have an illusion of clarity about their motivations – a typical sign of operating from a false self. In more connected states, they have less clarity – they’re fumbling for words, unsure what they actually feel.

For those in recovery, learning to tolerate the messier, less articulate emotional frame is part of the work:

“I have to allow myself to be more human if I want to feel like one.”

This connects to why secondary presentations have an easier time accessing this whole range of emotions than primary ones. If the strategic frame is a compression of messier underlying motivations (including genuine liking), then recovery involves expanding back to the mess – letting yourself fumble, tolerating ambiguity, using emotional language even when it doesn’t flow as smoothly.

The Illusion of Intentionality

A philosophical aside: The concept of “intentionality” may be less coherent than we assume.

Consider: If you simulate outcomes, narrate what you’re about to do, and then do it, it feels intentional. If you first do it and narrate later (without altering the ordering in the narration), it feels impulsive to many people regardless of when the simulation happened. But the narration doesn’t change the action. What makes one “intentional” and the other not?

The case of people narrating impulsive actions after the fact in a way that changes something about the ordering such that the actions feel intentional is an interesting case, perhaps one that sheds light on how narration works for many of us for all sorts of everyday decisions. The difference is then not so much anything about intentionality but rather what decisions we are ready to endorse as intentional and which we’d rather reject as impulsive. Intentionality becomes a question of values and their influence on our actions.

Someone without an internal narrative (A-observational) may experience decisions as simply emerging – no “I decided” moment, just observation of what happens. I would argue that this is the most accurate description of how decisions actually work, stripped of the narrative illusion.

Our social contract requires that, by and large, every person take responsibility for their own actions. That sentence is loaded with implicit assumptions of common knowledge of selfhood and responsibility, so being caught up in a shared illusion that makes these fairly arbitrary assumptions intuitive is interpersonally useful – a bit like it’s useful to think that you actually believe in God if you want to succeed as a religious leader.

Combinations and Profiles

D-level features can combine. A full profile might include:

• D-sovereign + D-autonomic-offensive. Power-oriented, sadistic, controls others to secure autonomy.

• D-anatta + D-predatory. Empty self, instrumental orientation. A cold manipulator without grandiosity.

• D-anatta + D-autonomic-symmetric. Values freedom, has minimal self, principled libertarian without the heat of D-autonomic-offensive.

Profiles are more informative than single labels.

How D Relates to G, N, and E

The D level is produced by the substrate (G, N) and shaping (E) interacting:

• G-callous + E-I-secure + E-C-normal → D-secure pathology. Constitutional callousness without adverse shaping may produce no pathology.

• G-callous + E-I-disorganized + E-C-controlling → D-sovereign. Constitutional callousness shaped by control-focused adversity may produce sovereignty.

• G-reactive + E-I-disorganized + E-C-chaotic → D-avoidant. Reactive temperament shaped by chaotic adversity may produce a walled-off defense.

• G-minimal + E-I-avoidant + E-C-golden → D-narcissistic. No particular callous loading, but narcissistic shaping produces an unstable self.

The mapping isn’t deterministic, but there are patterns.

Summary

D-Level. Psychodynamic self-structure and relational orientation. Major variants: D-anatta (absent), D-narcissistic (unstable), D-sovereign (power-oriented), D-avoidant (walled-off), D-autonomic (freedom-oriented), D-echoistic (self-effacing).

A-Level. How the person understands their own intentionality. Major styles: A-observational, A-strategic, A-narrativizing, A-retroactive, A-selective, A-externalizing, A-absorbed, A-amnestic.

Combinations. D and A features combine into profiles. A full profile (G + N + E + D + A + B) is more informative than any single label.

Next: The Mechanics

The next article explores how empathy fails – a detailed breakdown of the different stages at which empathic response can break down, and why different people fail to empathize in different ways.

This is the third article in a series on understanding psychopathy. The first article introduced the framework; the second covered genetics and neurology. This article covers the E (environmental) level – what happened to you developmentally, and how it shaped your expression.

Introduction

Two people with identical genetic loading can turn out completely differently. One becomes a functional professional with stable relationships; the other becomes a violent criminal. The difference is often the environment – what happened during critical developmental periods.

But “environment matters” is too vague to be useful. This article develops a more precise picture: What kinds of environments lead to what kinds of outcomes? Why does controlling adversity produce different results than chaotic adversity? How do the pieces fit together?

The E-Level Framework

Tiffany suggested three periods, of which I’ve subdivided the first into infancy and childhood for four developmental periods total, each with its own features:

Each period can be characterized by the type of environment experienced. Different environments at different periods have different effects.

E-I: Infancy (0–2 Years)

The Critical Task: Attachment

The primary developmental task of infancy is forming an attachment to caregivers. This attachment becomes a template for later relationships – a model of whether others are trustworthy, whether the self is worthy of care, and how to regulate emotions.

Attachment Styles

Mary Ainsworth’s research identified three organized attachment styles, and Mary Main later added a fourth:

Secure (E-I-secure). The caregiver is consistently responsive and attuned. The child learns that others are reliable and that distress can be regulated through connection. This is the foundation for healthy development.

Avoidant (E-I-avoidant). The caregiver is emotionally unavailable or rejecting. The child learns to suppress attachment needs and rely on self. Emotions are managed through distance and independence.

Preoccupied (E-I-preoccupied). The caregiver is inconsistently responsive – sometimes attuned, sometimes unavailable. The child becomes hyperactivated about attachment, constantly monitoring the caregiver’s availability. Emotions are amplified to try to elicit response.

Disorganized (E-I-disorganized). The caregiver is frightening or frightened – the source of both comfort and threat. The child faces an unsolvable dilemma: Approach the source of fear, or flee from the source of comfort? This produces contradictory, fragmented behavioral strategies.

Disorganized and Avoidant Attachment and Psychopathy

Disorganized and avoidant attachment are particularly relevant to psychopathy and related presentations. When the attachment figure is absent or irrelevant, the child will ignore them. When they are the source of fear, the child cannot develop a coherent strategy for managing distress in the first place. This can lead to:

• Dissociative responses. The child learns to disconnect from overwhelming experience.

• Controlling strategies. The child later develops either punitive-controlling (dominating the parent) or caregiving-controlling (parenting the parent) patterns.

• Fragmented self-structure. The self develops in unintegrated pieces, without coherent organization.

Many of the sovereigns I know have histories consistent with disorganized or avoidant attachment – dangerous parents, early role confusion, and later controlling strategies. The tendency towards avoidant attachment that they show may often be the result of their NPD (in grandiose moods) rather than genuine avoidant attachment.

E-C: Childhood (2–12 Years)

The Critical Tasks: Moral Development, Socialization, Self-Concept

Childhood is when moral emotions develop, social skills are learned, and the self-concept takes shape. Disruptions during this period can have lasting effects on all three.

Types of Childhood Adversity

Not all adversity is the same. Different types of adversity produce different adaptations:

E-C-unattuned (unattuned mirroring). Non-contingent marked mirroring. The caregiver is present but doesn’t accurately reflect the child’s emotional states. The child’s feelings are met with non-contingent responses – the caregiver’s reactions don’t match what the child is experiencing, usually because they instead match expectations that the caregiver projects on the child. This disrupts the development of mentalization – the capacity to understand mental states in self and others.

This is the classic etiology for narcissistic pathology described by mentalization-based treatment (MBT) researchers. The child develops without an accurate internal model of their own mind, and must construct a “false self” to adapt to the caregiver’s projected expectations.

E-C-neglect (emotional neglect). The caregiver is physically present but emotionally absent. The child must fend for themselves emotionally – there’s no guidance, no attunement, no help regulating distress.

Children adapt to neglect in various ways:

• Machiavellianism. Learning to get needs met through manipulation, since direct requests don’t work. The child practices attunement to needs that the environment can meet if they are extracted from it; the child represses needs that cannot be met that way. Control as surrogate for love. This can lead to the D-sovereign presentation.

• Echoism. Learning to suppress all needs, since expressing them is ineffective or risks punishment. Needs can instead be met by making another dependent on your generosity. Dependency as surrogate for love. This leads to the D-echoist presentation.

• Admiration-seeking. Learning to get needs met by seeking admiration as a substitute for love. If the parents are not forthcoming with love, this alternative can be won from peers, bosses, school authorities, or the public instead. This can lead to the D-narcissistic presentation.

E-C-punitive (punitive environment). The caregiver uses harsh, somewhat predictable punishments. Errors are severely penalized. The child learns that mistakes are dangerous.

This often produces Machiavellianism – learning to avoid punishment through deception, excuse-making, and blame-shifting. It can also produce severe shame and a preoccupation with not getting caught.

E-C-chaotic (violent/chaotic environment). The home environment is unpredictably violent. The child is exposed to domestic violence, physical abuse, or chaotic aggression. The difference to E-C-punitive is its unpredictability.

This often produces:

• Hypervigilance. Constant scanning for danger.

• Aggression. Learning to strike first.

• Avoidant attachment. Learning that people are dangerous.

This is the pathway to the “hot” psychopathy pattern – the reactive, F2-heavy presentation associated with criminal behavior.

E-C-controlling (over-controlling). The caregiver excessively controls the child’s behavior, choices, and even thoughts. Autonomy is suppressed; the child’s agency is denied.

This often produces extreme autonomy preoccupation (what I call D-autonomic). The child who was never allowed to choose becomes an adult who cannot tolerate any constraint. This may manifest as:

• Rage at perceived imposition. Any expectation feels like control.

• Contractarian social model. Only explicit agreements count; implicit obligations are rejected.

• Preemptive control. Controlling others to ensure one’s own autonomy.

E-C-parentified (parentification). The child is forced into a caregiving role – caring for a parent, for younger siblings, or for the household. Normal childhood is lost to premature responsibility.

This can produce:

• Premature self-reliance. The child learns to depend only on themselves.

• Caretaking identity. The self becomes organized around caring for others (a pathway to echoism).

• Narcissistic features. If the parentification was combined with other narcissistic injuries.

E-C-golden (golden child). The child is treated as special, but conditionally – love depends on performance, appearance, or compliance. The child learns that their worth is contingent on meeting expectations.

This is a classic pathway to pathological narcissism. The child develops a false self to live up to all the expectations, but it’s fragile because it depends on external validation and disavows most of the child’s authentic self.

E-C-scapegoat (scapegoated). The child is blamed for family problems, devalued, and shamed. They’re the “bad one.”

This can produce pathological narcissism as the child tries to defend against core feelings of worthlessness. Or it may echoism if the child interprets the core shame as uselessness and tries to earn worth through selfless service.

E-C-normal (normal). None of the pathological properties appear to apply.

E-P: Puberty/Adolescence (12–18 Years)

The Critical Tasks: Identity, Peers, Autonomy

Adolescence is when identity consolidates, peer relationships become central, and autonomy from family develops. Disruptions during this period affect adult identity and social functioning.

Key Features

E-P-peer-success (Peer Success). Had friends, was socially accepted, experienced belonging.

This is stabilizing for grandiose structures. The narcissistic or sovereign adolescent who is popular has their grandiosity reinforced socially. This may produce a more stable presentation in adulthood.

E-P-peer-failure (Peer Rejection). Bullied, rejected, socially isolated.

This can produce shame-based presentations – pathological narcissism with a predominantly vulnerable expression, social anxiety, or withdrawal. For those with psychopathic substrate, it may intensify hostility toward the social world that rejected them.

E-P-antisocial (Antisocial Trajectory). Involved with delinquent peers, criminal activity, or gang involvement.

This is the pathway to F2-heavy adult presentations. Antisocial behavior is normalized; criminal skills are developed; prosocial paths close off.

E-P-identity-formed vs. E-P-identity-diffuse. Did identity consolidate or remain diffuse?

Those who consolidated an identity often struggle with its rigidity whereas those who don’t rather struggle to maintain any continuity in life. Those with diffuse identity may show D-anatta features – minimal coherent self, chameleon-like adaptation.

E-A: Adult Entry (18–25 Years)

The Critical Task: Establishing Adult Life

How did the person enter adult life? This period often crystallizes patterns that persist.

E-A-success (conventional success). Completed education, stable employment, relationships.

This provides structure and reinforcement for prosocial functioning. Even someone with significant psychopathic loading may function well if they entered adulthood successfully.

E-A-privilege (privilege). Inherited wealth, status, or connections.

This provides external structure regardless of internal development. The person may be highly dysfunctional internally while appearing successful externally.

E-A-crime (criminal pathway). Incarceration, criminal career.

This crystallizes antisocial patterns. Prison socializes further into criminal culture; criminal record closes off legitimate paths; the identity becomes “criminal.”

E-A-addiction (addiction pathway). Substance use as primary adaptation.

Addiction complicates everything. It may mask underlying presentations, worsen symptoms, or become the central organizing problem.

E-A-unstable (unstable/chaotic). Failed to establish stable adult life – unstable housing, employment, relationships.

This indicates ongoing dysfunction. Without stability, development of more mature functioning is difficult.

Developmental Narratives: Putting It Together

Let me illustrate how G, N, and E combine to produce different outcomes.

Narrative 1: The Lucky Primary

G-callous → N-hypoactive → E-I-secure → E-C-normal → E-P-success → E-A-success

This person was born with reduced empathy and fear (G-callous), which was expressed neurologically as constitutional amygdala hypoactivity (N-hypoactive). But they were raised by attuned, secure parents (E-I-secure) who provided structure and guidance (E-C-normal). They were socially successful in adolescence (E-P-success) and entered adulthood through conventional paths (E-A-success).

Outcome. Functional psychopathy. They have the substrate but not the pathology. They may be unusually calm, fearless, and emotionally detached, but they’ve developed values, regulation, and prosocial behavior. They probably don’t identify as having any disorder.

Narrative 2: The Street Primary

G-callous + G-impulsive → N-hypoactive → E-I-disorganized → E-C-chaotic → E-P-antisocial → E-A-crime

Same constitutional loading (G-callous), but combined with impulsivity (G-impulsive) and expressed in a chaotic, violent environment (E-I-disorganized, E-C-chaotic). They fell into antisocial peer groups (E-P-antisocial) and entered adulthood through criminal pathways (E-A-crime).

Outcome. Criminal psychopathy. F2-heavy, violent, incarcerated. The substrate was channeled into antisocial expression by the environment.

Narrative 3: The Primary Sovereign

G-callous → N-mixed (hypoactive + dissociative) → E-I-disorganized → E-C-controlling/E-C-parentified/E-C-neglect → E-P-peer-success → E-A-success

Constitutional callous loading, but the key factor is the type of adversity: Controlling, parentifying, rather than chaotic. The person developed sovereignty – a power-and-control orientation that combined grandiosity with callousness.

Outcome. Sovereignism. High-functioning but relationally damaging. Control-oriented, sadistic, autonomy-focused. Functions well by conventional measures but leaves destruction in personal relationships.

Narrative 4: The Secondary Sovereign

G-minimal → N-dissociative (was hyperactive) → E-I-disorganized → E-C-chaotic + E-C-controlling → E-P-peer-failure → E-A-variable

No particular genetic loading, but severe mixed adversity (both violent and controlling). Originally reactive (N-hyperactive), but chronic trauma led to dissociative dampening (N-dissociative). The person developed sovereign features defensively, but remembers being different as a child.

Outcome. Potentially reversible sovereignty. The key marker is memory of being different. This person is likely able to recover some emotional capacity with safety, attachment, and time.

The Environment Selects, Not Creates

An important framing: The environment doesn’t create psychopathy from nothing. Rather, the environment selects which genetic potentials get expressed.

Someone with G-callous loading has the potential for both functional and dysfunctional outcomes. A supportive environment selects for the functional expression; an adverse environment selects for the dysfunctional expression.

This is gene-environment interaction: The effect of genes depends on the environment; the effect of the environment depends on genes. Neither alone determines the outcome.

Tiffany in particular predicts that early neglect tends to lead to “empty” presentations – children who never form much of an identity and scour their social environment for surrogates of parental love through admiration or exploitation – whereas more actively abusive childhoods more likely produce children with harsh introjects – children who take on draconian expectations from their caregivers. Here it is important to distinguish between those who develop actual pathological narcissism vs. those who merely make use of grandiosity or “trait narcissism” because it’s useful in their environment but without any pathological narcissism.

Implications for Understanding

For self-understanding. Knowing your developmental history helps you understand why you developed as you did – not to excuse, but to explain. Understanding the pathway doesn’t change the endpoint, but it may change how you relate to it.

For clinicians. The type of adversity suggests the type of adaptation. Chaotic adversity → behavioral defense. Control adversity → self-structural defense. This has implications for treatment focus.

For prediction. E-level factors help predict outcomes. E-I-secure is protective; E-I-disorganized is a risk factor. E-A-success is stabilizing; E-A-crime is crystallizing.

Summary

E-I (infancy). Attachment formation. Secure, avoidant, preoccupied, or disorganized. Disorganized attachment is particularly associated with later psychopathy and sovereignty.

E-C (childhood). Moral development, socialization, self-concept. Key adversity types: Unattuned, neglect, punitive, violent, controlling, parentified, golden, scapegoat. The type of adversity predicts the type of adaptation.

E-P (puberty). Identity, peers, autonomy. Peer success vs. failure; antisocial trajectory; identity consolidation vs. diffusion.

E-A (adult entry). Pathway into adult life. Success, privilege, crime, addiction, instability.

Next: The Self

The next article explores the D level – how the biological substrate and environmental shaping produce particular psychological structures. What are the different ways the psychopathic self can be organized? What is sovereignty, and how does it differ from standard narcissism?

This is the second article in a series on understanding psychopathy. The first article introduced the multi-level framework (G-N-E-D-B-A). This article covers the G (genetic) and N (neurological) levels – what you were born with and what your brain looks like now.

Introduction

When people ask “Is psychopathy genetic?” or “Is it in the brain?”, the answer is yes – but that’s not the whole story. Genetics and neurology form the substrate on which psychopathic presentations develop, but the substrate alone doesn’t determine the outcome. The same genetic loading can produce a successful surgeon or a convicted felon, depending on environment and development.

This article covers what we know about the biological foundations of psychopathy, with an emphasis on a distinction that matters enormously for understanding prognosis and intervention: primary vs. secondary presentations.

G-Level: Genetic Contributions

What We Know

Psychopathy has a heritable component. Twin studies suggest that callous-unemotional traits (a core feature of psychopathy) are moderately to highly heritable, with estimates ranging from 40% to 70% depending on the study and population. (See Viding et al., 2005, for an influential twin study.)

However, “heritable” doesn’t mean “genetic” in a simple sense. Heritability estimates include gene-environment correlations and gene-environment interactions. A child with genetic loading for psychopathy may also be more likely to experience certain environments (because their parents, who share their genes, create those environments) – and the genes may only express under certain environmental conditions.

Candidate Genes

Several genes have been associated with psychopathic traits, though findings are often inconsistent and effect sizes are small. (See Gunter et al., 2010, Viding & McCrory, 2012, De Brito et al., 2021, and Frazier et al., 2019.)

MAOA (Monoamine Oxidase A). The “warrior gene” – low-activity variants are associated with reduced breakdown of monoamines (serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine). The famous Caspi et al., 2002, study found that low-activity MAOA combined with childhood maltreatment predicted antisocial behavior. However, replications have been mixed, and the original finding may be smaller than initially thought.

5-HTTLPR (Serotonin Transporter). The short allele is associated with altered serotonin reuptake and has been linked to increased stress sensitivity. Paradoxically, chronic stress exposure in short-allele carriers can lead to emotional blunting over time – suggesting a pathway from reactivity to apparent hypoactivity.

OXTR (Oxytocin Receptor). Variants in the oxytocin receptor gene have been associated with reduced social bonding and empathy. Oxytocin is sometimes called the “bonding hormone,” and reduced signaling may contribute to the social detachment seen in psychopathy.

COMT (Catechol-O-Methyltransferase). The Val158Met polymorphism affects dopamine levels in the prefrontal cortex and has been linked to executive function, reward sensitivity, and impulsivity.

The Polygenic Reality

Most psychopathy is probably polygenic – the result of many genetic variants, each with small effects, combining with environmental factors. Recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have begun to identify polygenic risk scores for antisocial behavior, but these explain only a small fraction of the variance. (See Tielbeek et al., 2017, for a meta-analysis.)

The practical implication: There’s no “psychopathy gene.” Genetic testing won’t tell you if someone is a psychopath. What genetics gives us is a probabilistic loading – increased risk, not determination.

Parsimonious G-Level Categories

For the purposes of this framework, I propose three parsimonious G-level categories:

These can co-occur. Someone might have G-callous + G-impulsive, or G-reactive alone, or any combination.

N-Level: Neurological Patterns

The Classic Finding: Amygdala Hypoactivity

The most widely known neuroimaging finding in psychopathy is reduced activity and/or volume in the amygdala – the brain region involved in fear processing, emotional learning, and threat detection. (See Blair, 2013, Blair, 2014, Fallon, 2013, Tyler et al., 2019, and Frazier et al., 2019.)

Individuals with amygdala hypoactivity show:

• Reduced fear conditioning. They don’t learn to associate cues with aversive outcomes as readily.

• Poor threat recognition. They’re less responsive to fearful facial expressions.

• Blunted emotional response. Emotional stimuli produce less physiological and subjective response.

This pattern fits the “cold” presentation of psychopathy – the person who can lie without anxiety, harm without distress, and remain calm in situations that would terrify others.

A systematic review basically bore out the finding that reduced amygdala function or size is associated with the “cold” presentation of psychopathy (the negative correlations in the second row above). The studies are confounded by mixing together different disorders under the label “psychopathy” and probably a host of other factors. For example, many fMRI studies are flawed, but structural MRI studies (finding smaller amygdalas) and quantitative fMRI studies (finding amygdala hypoactivity) are unaffected.

Beyond the Amygdala

Other brain regions are also implicated in psychopathy. (See Blair, 2013, Blair, 2014, Tyler et al., 2019, and Frazier et al., 2019.)

Insula. The insular cortex is involved in interoception (awareness of bodily states) and empathic resonance (feeling what others feel). Reduced insula activity may contribute to the difficulty psychopathic individuals have in “feeling into” others’ experiences.

Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex (vmPFC). This region integrates emotional information into decision-making. Reduced vmPFC activity may explain why psychopathic individuals can know something is wrong without feeling that it’s wrong – the emotional signal doesn’t reach the decision-making process.

Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC). Involved in error monitoring and conflict detection. Reduced ACC activity may contribute to the lack of guilt or remorse – the error signal that should follow harmful actions doesn’t fire.

Connectivity. Perhaps more important than any single region is the connectivity between regions. Reduced connectivity between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex means that emotional signals don’t adequately influence cognitive processes. The person can think and feel, but the thinking and feeling don’t talk to each other.

The “Hot” Pattern: Hyperactivity

Not all psychopathy involves hypoactivity. Some individuals show the opposite pattern – hyperactive amygdala, hypothalamus, and periaqueductal gray (PAG, involved in defensive behaviors). These are the positive (red) correlations in the graph above.

This “hot” pattern is associated with:

• Reactive aggression. Hair-trigger threat response; rage when provoked.

• Hypervigilance. Constant scanning for danger.

• Emotional intensity. Strong, rapid emotional reactions.

These individuals may still be called “psychopathic” because of their behavioral presentation (aggression, callousness in the moment), but the underlying mechanism is different. They’re not cold – they’re too hot, with reactive circuits that fire too readily.

The Critical Distinction: Primary vs. Secondary

This brings us to an important distinction in understanding psychopathy: primary vs. secondary presentations.

Primary presentations reflect constitutional differences – the person was born with, or developed very early, a brain that processes emotions differently. They don’t remember being different. One of my friends fits this pattern: She has always had reduced empathy, high pain tolerance, and sadistic interests. Her father is similar. There’s no trauma, no “before” – this is just who she is.

Secondary presentations developed later, often as a defensive response to trauma. The person may have started with normal or even hyperactive emotional responses, but chronic trauma led to dissociative dampening. Their brain now looks hypoactive, but this is an adaptation, not a constitutional feature. Tiffany fits this pattern: She remembers being normal as a child, then adapted to severe adversity by developing sovereign traits. On good days, she can access empathy again. The original capacity wasn’t destroyed – it was suppressed.

Why This Distinction Matters

The primary/secondary distinction has enormous implications:

For prognosis. Primary presentations are likely to be stable. The person may learn to regulate behavior, develop values, develop selfhood, find prosocial outlets – but they’re unlikely to develop empathy they never had. Secondary presentations may be more changeable. If the dissociative dampening can be reversed, the original emotional capacity may re-emerge.

For intervention. Primary presentations can pursue values-based approaches, training prosocial habits, and finding harmless outlets for drives. Secondary presentations may benefit from moving to a safer environment, trauma processing, attachment repair, and interventions that help them feel safe enough to relax the dissociative defense.

For self-understanding. If you’re primary, trying to “develop empathy” may be frustrating and pointless; you’re better off doubling down on your strengths and forming a stable self. If you’re secondary, knowing that you weren’t always this way – and might not always be this way – can be important.

How to Assess: The Key Question

The simplest way to assess primary versus secondary is to ask:

“Were you always like this, or do you remember being different?”

If the person says they’ve always been this way – no memory of normal emotional responses, no “before” – that suggests primary. If they remember being different as a child – more emotional, more empathic, more afraid – that suggests secondary.

This isn’t a perfect test. Memory is fallible; some people may have been different without remembering it; some may confabulate memories of difference; some were vastly different but not in a more emotional/empathetic/fearful direction. But it’s a useful starting point.

Parsimonious N-Level Categories

Case Studies

Some of the profile terms will be clarified in later posts in the sequence.

Case A: The Lucky Primary

Profile. G-callous, N-hypoactive, E-I-secure (secure attachment), E-C-normal (normal childhood).

This person has constitutional psychopathic loading but developed in a supportive environment. They have always had reduced empathy and fear, high pain tolerance, and possibly sadistic interests. But they also have stable relationships, regulated behavior, and prosocial values.

They may not identify as having any disorder. They experience their differences as just “who I am” – perhaps useful in certain contexts (surgery, emergency response, high-stakes negotiation), perhaps something to manage in others (intimate relationships, parenting).

Implication. This person doesn’t need to “recover” from anything. They’re already functional. What they may benefit from is understanding – recognizing that their experience differs from others’, and developing strategies for contexts where their differences create friction.

Case B: The Primary Sovereign

Profile. G-minimal, N-hypoactive (secondary), E-I-avoidant (avoidant attachment), E-C-punitive (punitive parenting).

This person developed psychopathic features defensively. They don’t remember being different as a child because the neglect trauma happened too early. Perhaps their amygdala had already atrophied significantly by age 3 or memories before age 5 or so are missing because they changed too much. They now present as cold, calculating, and sadistic.

But the original capacity exists to some extent. On good days, they may experience flashes of empathy or guilt. They are not complete strangers to fear. They may have stable attachments to a few people (children, specific partners) even while being callous toward others.

Implication. This person may be able to recover – not necessarily to become “normal,” but to regain some access to emotional capacities that were suppressed. This requires safety, stable attachment, and possibly trauma processing. It’s a multi-year-long journey and a different one from primary presentations.

Case C: The Secondary Sovereign

Profile. G-minimal, N-hyperactive (secondary), E-I-disorganized (disorganized attachment), E-C-punitive (punitive parenting), D-max-avoidant (pervasive avoidant attachment).

This person also developed psychopathic features defensively. They remember being different as a child – more emotional, more afraid, more connected. Severe trauma led them to develop dissociative defenses, and their emotional responses became blunted, perhaps from one day to the next as they gave up on parents, friends, society, and humanity. They now present as cold, calculating, sadistic, thrill-seeking.

But the original capacity exists. On good days, they may experience flashes of empathy or guilt. They may have stable attachments to a few people (children, specific partners) even while being callous toward others.

Implication. This person may be able to recover, even suddenly – not to become “normal,” but more likely to enter into a state of borderline personality disorder due to their disorganized attachment, for which there are many treatments like Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT).

Case D: The Reactive Chaotic

Profile. G-reactive + G-impulsive, N-hyperactive, E-I-disorganized (disorganized attachment), E-C-violent (chaotic childhood), D-autonomic.

This person has high emotional reactivity that never got regulated. They experience intense emotions – especially anger – and act on them impulsively, especially in response to perceived infringements on their autonomy. Their violence is “hot” (reactive rage) rather than “cold” (instrumental calculation).

They may be called “psychopathic” because of their behavior, but the underlying mechanism is different from classic psychopathy. They’re not underreactive; they’re overreactive. Their problem is dysregulation, not absence of feeling. They might even experience guilt once enough time has passed since the triggering event.

Implication. This person needs stabilization and regulation skills before anything else. Approaches like Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) may be helpful. The goal is not to develop emotions (they have plenty) but to regulate them.

The Substrate Is Not the Person

A crucial point: The G and N levels describe the substrate – the biological foundation on which the person developed. But the substrate doesn’t determine the person.

The same N-hypoactive pattern can produce:

• A functional surgeon who saves lives

• A successful CEO who builds companies

• A serial killer who destroys lives

What makes the difference is everything else: The environment (E), the psychological structures that developed (D), the behaviors that became habitual (B), and how the person understands themselves (A).

This is why we need a multi-level framework. Knowing someone’s substrate is useful, but it’s not sufficient. To understand them fully, we need to know the whole profile.

Summary

G-level (genetic). Psychopathy has a heritable component, but it’s polygenic and probabilistic. Key loadings include G-callous (reduced empathy/fear), G-reactive (emotional reactivity), and G-impulsive (disinhibition).

N-level (neurological). The classic finding is amygdala hypoactivity, but there’s also a hyperactive pattern (reactive aggression) and a dissociative pattern (secondary blunting). The primary/secondary distinction – “always this way” versus “remember being different” – has major implications for prognosis and intervention.

The substrate is not destiny. Biology creates predispositions, not determinations. The same substrate can produce very different outcomes depending on environment and development.

Next: The Shaping

The next article explores the E level – how environment and development shape the expression of the biological substrate. Why does the same genetic loading produce a functional person in one context and a criminal in another? What types of adversity lead to what outcomes?

This is the first article in a series on understanding psychopathy and related presentations. The series is written for three audiences: people with psychopathic or narcissistic traits who want to understand themselves better, clinicians and researchers who want a more integrated framework, and curious laypeople who want to move beyond stereotypes.

Introduction

I’ve spent about a year trying to understand psychopathy – not just from textbooks, but from friendships. Some of my friends score high on the Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R), and through countless conversations, I’ve come to see that “psychopathy” is not one thing but many things hiding under a single label.

This creates problems. When researchers study “psychopathy,” they may be studying completely different populations. When clinicians treat “psychopathy,” they may be applying the same approach to people who need very different interventions. And when people try to understand themselves, they may find that the label fits in some ways but not others – leaving them more confused than before.

This series proposes a new framework: A multi-level taxonomy that distinguishes what you were born with, what your brain looks like now, what happened to you developmentally, what psychological structures you developed, how you behave, and how you understand your own agency. These are different lenses on the same phenomenon – and using all of them gives us a much richer picture than any single lens alone.

The Naming Problem

The word “psychopathy” is used to describe at least four different things:

1. Genetic loading. Researchers talk about genes associated with psychopathy – variants of MAOA, the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR), oxytocin receptor genes (OXTR), and others. When they say someone is “genetically psychopathic,” they mean the person carries variants that increase risk for psychopathic traits. (For reviews of candidate genes, see Gunter et al., 2010, Viding & McCrory, 2012, De Brito et al., 2021, and Frazier et al., 2019.)

2. Brain patterns. Neuroscientists describe psychopathy in terms of brain structure and function – a smaller or less reactive amygdala, reduced activity in the insula, altered connectivity between prefrontal and limbic regions. When they say someone is “neurologically psychopathic,” they mean the person’s brain shows these patterns. (See Fallon, 2013, Tyler et al., 2019, Frazier et al., 2019, for comprehensive reviews.)

3. Psychological structure. Psychodynamic clinicians describe psychopathy in terms of self-structure and relational patterns – an absent or fragmented sense of self, instrumental orientation toward others, absence of guilt or remorse, preoccupation with power or control. When they say someone is “psychodynamically psychopathic,” they mean the person has these internal structures. (See McWilliams, 2011, for a summary chapter and literature recommendations.)

4. Behavior. The PCL-R and similar instruments measure psychopathy through observable behaviors and self-reported traits – manipulation, callousness, impulsivity, criminal versatility. When they say someone is “behaviorally psychopathic,” they mean the person shows these patterns. (The PCL-R is described in Hare, 2008.)

Here’s the problem: These four things don’t always go together.

Someone can have genetic loading for psychopathy but, raised in a supportive environment, never develop the brain patterns or behavioral expression. Someone can develop psychopathic brain patterns through chronic trauma and dissociation, without any particular genetic predisposition. Someone can score high on the PCL-R through learned behavior, while having relatively intact empathic capacity that they’ve learned to suppress. And someone can have all the neurological and psychological features of psychopathy while never engaging in criminal behavior.

Using one word for all of these creates confusion. It leads researchers to treat heterogeneous groups as homogeneous. It leads clinicians to apply one-size-fits-all treatments. And it leads individuals to misunderstand themselves – either over-identifying with a label that only partially fits, or rejecting a label that captures something important about their experience.

The Heterogeneity Problem

Even within each level of description, there are important subtypes.

At the Genetic Level

Different genetic variants may produce different phenotypes:

• Some variants (like low-activity MAOA) are associated with reduced emotional reactivity and may contribute to “cold” presentations.

• Other variants (like short-allele 5-HTTLPR) are associated with increased stress sensitivity and may contribute to “reactive” presentations – though chronic stress can paradoxically lead to blunting over time.

• Most psychopathy is probably polygenic – the result of many small-effect variants combining with environmental factors.

At the Neurological Level

The classic finding is hypoactivity in the amygdala and related structures – reduced fear conditioning, poor threat recognition, blunted emotional response. But there’s also:

• Hyperactive patterns. Some individuals show increased amygdala and hypothalamic reactivity – hair-trigger threat response, reactive aggression. These “hot” presentations look very different from “cold” ones, even though both may be called psychopathic.

• Dissociation-induced patterns. Some individuals developed normal or even hyperactive emotional responses early in life, but chronic trauma led to dissociative dampening. Their brains now look hypoactive, but the hypoactivity is secondary – and potentially reversible.

• Mixed patterns. Some individuals show hypoactivity in some regions (e.g., amygdala) and hyperactivity in others (e.g., periaqueductal gray). These mixed presentations don’t fit neatly into simple categories.

At the Psychodynamic Level

The internal world of psychopathy varies enormously:

• Some individuals have what might be called an “empty” self – minimal coherent identity, chameleon-like adaptation to context, observational relationship to their own behavior. (See my article on no-self psychopathy and M.E. Thomas’s memoir.)

• Others have a “grandiose” self – inflated self-concept, need for domination, but with psychopathic features stabilizing the grandiosity against vulnerable collapse. I’ve previously called this combination sovereignism – a power-and-control orientation that differs from standard narcissism’s admiration-seeking.

• Still others have developed extreme avoidant patterns – walled-off, nothing matters, independence as the only value.

• And some are primarily organized around autonomy – hypersensitivity to any perceived constraint, rage or withdrawal when obligations are imposed.

At the Behavioral Level

The PCL-R distinguishes two factors:

• Factor 1 (Interpersonal/Affective). Grandiosity, manipulation, callousness, shallow affect. The “cold” features.

• Factor 2 (Lifestyle/Antisocial). Impulsivity, irresponsibility, early behavior problems, criminal versatility. The “hot” or chaotic features.

Some individuals are high on Factor 1 but low on Factor 2 – they’re manipulative and callous but not impulsive or reckless. Others show the reverse pattern. Still others are high on both. These are different presentations with different trajectories and different needs.

One of the most useful models in my opinion is the Triarchic Model of Psychopathy (Patrick et al., 2009), which distinguishes three distinct dimensions:

1. Boldness. Emotional resilience, social dominance, and low fear. (Roughly maps to N-hypoactive, factor 1 features.)

2. Meanness. Aggressive resource-seeking and lack of empathy. (Roughly maps to G-callous, D-autonomic-asymmetric features.)

3. Disinhibition. Impulsivity and lack of restraint. (Roughly maps to G-impulsive, reactive, factor 2 features.)

This model is excellent because it acknowledges that “boldness” (fearless dominance) is distinct from “disinhibition” (impulsivity). A person can be bold without being disinhibited (the “successful psychopath”), or disinhibited without being bold (the “reactive” type). My framework builds on this by adding the developmental (E) and psychodynamic (D) layers that explain how these traits emerge and organize into a self.

My score of 29 puts me in the 8th percentile among women (23 on boldness, 4 on meanness, 2 on disinhibition). The overall distribution in the general population varies greatly by gender.

Another study further subdivided these three factors for better predictive results in their sample (highlights mine):

From the majority of Boldness, Meanness, and Disinhibition scale items, respectively, emerged three factors reflecting: Positive Self-image, Leadership, and Stress Immunity; two factors tapping Callousness and Enjoy Hurting; and two factors involving trait Impulsivity and overt Antisociality. The emergent factors from the Boldness items were differentially intercorrelated with the other emergent factors, raising questions about the structural coherence of Boldness. Further, the Enjoy Hurting and overt Antisociality factors were more strongly correlated with one another than with the other scales from their home domains (Callousness and Impulsivity). All seven emergent factors were differentially associated with the external correlates, suggesting that the three original TriPM factors are not optimal for representing psychopathic propensity.

A third model is that of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (a mock version that gives good results). It distinguishes 8 factors:

1. Machiavellian egocentricity. A ruthless and self-centered willingness to exploit others.

2. Social potency. The ability to charm and influence others.

3. Coldheartedness. A distinct lack of emotion, guilt, or regard for others’ feelings.

4. Carefree nonplanfulness. Difficulty in planning ahead and considering the consequences of one’s actions.

5. Fearlessness. An eagerness for risk-seeking behaviors, as well as a lack of the fear that normally goes with them.

6. Blame externalization. Inability to take responsibility for one’s actions, instead blaming others or rationalizing one’s behavior.

7. Impulsive nonconformity. A disregard for social norms and culturally acceptable behaviors.

8. Stress immunity. A lack of typical marked reactions to traumatic or otherwise stress-inducing events.

They are (with the exception of coldheartedness) sometimes grouped into “fearless dominance” and “self-centered impulsivity.”

The Framework: G-N-E-D-B-A

To address these problems, I propose a multi-level framework with six dimensions:

Each individual can be described as a profile across all six dimensions. Two people who both “have psychopathy” might have completely different profiles – and understanding those differences matters for prediction, treatment, and self-understanding.

The Ordering Is (Roughly) Causal

The dimensions are ordered from most distal to most proximal:

• G (genetic) sets the constitutional foundation – what you were born with.

• N (neurological) reflects the current brain state, shaped by G but also by experience.

• E (environmental) captures the developmental context – what happened to you during critical periods.

• D (dynamic) describes the psychological structures that developed from G, N, and E interacting.

• B (behavioral) is the observable expression of D in action.

• A (agentic) is how you understand and narrate your own behavior.

• C (connective) describes typical interruptions in interpersonal communication, verbal or nonverbal.

This ordering helps us see that the same behavioral presentation (B) can arise from different developmental pathways (E) and different psychological structures (D), including different communicative failures (C), which in turn can arise from different neurological patterns (N) and genetic loadings (G). And all of this is filtered through how the person understands themselves (A).

Profiles, Not Labels

Instead of asking “Is this person a psychopath?” we can ask: “What is this person’s profile?”

For example:

Profile A. G-callous (genetic loading for reduced empathy), N-hypoactive (constitutional amygdala hypoactivity), E-I-secure (secure attachment) + E-C-normal (good enough developmental environment), D-secure, B-subclinical (no behavioral problems). This person has constitutional psychopathy but developed well – they’re functional, may not even identify as having any disorder because they function at the neurotic (healthy) level of personality organization.

Profile B. G-minimal (no particular genetic loading), N-dissociative (secondary blunting from chronic dissociation), E-I-disorganized + E-C-violent + E-C-controlling (severe mixed adversity), D-sovereign (power-oriented, ego-syntonic sadism), B-mixed (high on both PCL-R factors). This person developed psychopathic features defensively – and the key question is whether those features are reversible.

These two individuals might be called “psychopathic” by different psychologists but they are fundamentally different. Understanding the difference matters for predicting their trajectories and for any treatments they may or may not attempt.

What This Series Will Cover

This series will develop the framework in detail:

Article 2: The Substrate. Genetics and neuroscience – what we know about the biological foundations of psychopathy, and how to think about primary versus secondary presentations.

Article 3: The Shaping. Environment and development – how different types of adversity lead to different outcomes, and why the same genetic loading can produce a functional person or a criminal depending on context.

Article 4: The Self. Psychodynamic structures – the different ways the psychopathic self can be organized, including the autonomy dimension and the relationship between psychopathy and narcissism (what I’ve called sovereignism).

Article 5: The Mechanics. How empathy fails – a detailed breakdown of the different ways empathy can break down, from perceptual failures to simulation failures to affective inversion. (This connects to my earlier work on the sadism spectrum.)

Article 6: The Types. Archetypal clusters – common profiles that tend to co-occur, with recognizable presentations that readers may identify with.

Article 7: The Choice. Recovery, if you want it – an honest assessment of what recovery means for different presentations and the trade-offs involved.

A Note on Tone

This series is written for three audiences, and the tone reflects that.

For people with psychopathic or narcissistic traits. I’m not here to moralize or to tell you you’re broken. I think that factory farming is an abomination akin to slavery but at a massively greater scale and that the cuts to USAID are crimes against humanity worse than many wars. Most people are oblivious to that or contribute to it. The median serial killer vanishes in the statistical noise among the horrors of this world. Many of my psychopathic friends are actually doing better than average despite their traits, or perhaps precisely thanks to what they had to learn to make these traits work for them. If they donate $100 to an ACE top charity, they’re suddenly among the crème de la crème of the least harmful humans alive.

So if that fucked-up ne’er-do-well that’s the median person deserves my honesty and respect, so do you. I’ll describe things as they are, including trade-offs that others might not acknowledge. Empathy is fun but also painful and often detrimental to moral decision-making. Regulation is stabilizing but also boring. Attachment creates meaning but also vulnerability. These are real trade-offs, and I’ll respect your intelligence enough to present them honestly.

For clinicians and researchers. I’ve tried to integrate findings from neuroscience, genetics, attachment theory, and psychodynamic thinking into a coherent framework. I’ll provide references throughout and a technical glossary. The clusters I propose are hypotheses, not established facts – but they may help organize thinking about a heterogeneous population.

For curious laypeople. I’ll explain technical concepts as I go and provide examples (real and fictional) to make abstract ideas concrete. You don’t need a psychology background to follow this series.

One thing I won’t do is pretend that all presentations are equally concerning or that change is always desirable. Some people with psychopathic traits live excellent lives and contribute enormously to society. Others feel isolated, desolate, hopeless, or cause significant harm. The framework I’m proposing is descriptive, not prescriptive – it’s about understanding, not judging.

Glossary: Key Terms for This Series

This glossary introduces terms used throughout the series. Full definitions are provided in the relevant articles.

Dimensional Levels

• G (genetic). Constitutional loading from genetic variants. Examples: G-callous, G-reactive, G-impulsive.

• N (neurological). Current brain state, including structure and function. Examples: N-hypoactive, N-hyperactive, N-dissociative.

• E (environmental). Developmental context across life stages. Subdivided into E-I (infancy), E-C (childhood), E-P (puberty), E-A (adult entry).

• D (dynamic). Psychodynamic self-structure and relational patterns. Examples: D-anatta, D-sovereign, D-autonomic.

• B (behavioral). Observable presentation. Examples: B-factor-1, B-factor-2, B-subclinical.

• A (agency). How the person understands their own intentionality. Examples: A-observational, A-strategic, A-sovereign.

• C (connective). What typical perception and mentalization failures interfere in the interpersonal functioning of the person. Examples: C-P-aversion, C-S-no-self, C-A-suppressed.

Key G-Level Concepts

• G-callous. Genetic loading for reduced empathy, reduced fear, and blunted emotional reactivity.

• G-reactive. Genetic loading for emotional reactivity, stress sensitivity, and dysregulation.

• G-impulsive. Genetic loading for impulsivity, sensation-seeking, and disinhibition.

• G-minimal. Minimal genetic loading for psychopathic traits.

Key N-Level Concepts

• N-hypoactive. Reduced activity in amygdala, insula, and related structures; constitutional low reactivity. The “cold” pattern.

• N-hyperactive. Increased reactivity in amygdala, hypothalamus, and periaqueductal gray; reactive aggression. The “hot” pattern.

• N-dissociative. Secondary blunting from chronic dissociation; originally reactive, now dampened. Key marker: The person remembers being different.

• N-disconnected. Reduced connectivity between prefrontal and limbic regions.

Key E-Level Concepts

• E-I (Infancy, 0–2 years). Attachment formation. Key variants: E-I-secure, E-I-avoidant, E-I-preoccupied, E-I-disorganized.

• E-C (Childhood, 2–12 years). Moral development, socialization, self-concept. Key variants: E-C-unattuned, E-C-neglect, E-C-punitive, E-C-violent, E-C-controlling, E-C-parentified, E-C-golden, E-C-scapegoat.

• E-P (Puberty, 12–18 years). Identity, peers, autonomy. Key variants: E-P-peer-success, E-P-peer-failure, E-P-antisocial.

• E-A (Adult entry, 18–25 years). Pathway into adult life. Key variants: E-A-success, E-A-privilege, E-A-crime, E-A-addiction, E-A-unstable.

Key D-Level Concepts

• D-anatta. An empty or absent sense of self; minimal coherent identity. (From the Buddhist concept of anattā, “no-self.”)

• D-sovereign. Power-and-control orientation; combines narcissistic grandiosity with psychopathic callousness and sadism. See sovereignism.

• D-autonomic. Hypersensitivity to perceived constraints on freedom; autonomy as a core value. Reactive (not proactive), non-narcissistic, non-sadistic version of D-sovereign.

• D-narcissistic. Unstable self-esteem; real or inverted grandiosity; need for specialness or admiration.

• D-avoidant. Extreme dismissive attachment; walled-off; nothing matters.

• D-echoist. Self-effacing orientation; meeting others’ needs at the expense of one’s own.

• D-secure. A stable self without any psychopathy-associated traits.

Key B-Level Concepts

• B-factor-1. High on PCL-R Factor 1 (interpersonal/affective): grandiosity, manipulation, callousness, shallow affect.

• B-factor-2. High on PCL-R Factor 2 (lifestyle/antisocial): impulsivity, irresponsibility, early behavior problems, criminal versatility.

• B-mixed. High on both factors.

• B-violent. Violence as a prominent behavioral feature.

• B-subclinical. Trait-level features; functional; doesn’t meet clinical thresholds.

• B-normal. Low to average levels of behavioral traits.

Key A-Level Concepts

• A-observational. “I watch myself do things.” Minimal sense of deliberation; actions emerge from observation.

• A-strategic. “I plan, then act.” Genuine prospective intentionality.

• A-narrativizing. Real-time rationalization; maintaining a running story about what you’re doing.

• A-retroactive. Post-hoc rationalization; acting first, explaining later.

• A-selective. True-but-partial explanations; picking one motivation and presenting it as the whole story.

• A-externalizing. Locating causation externally; “They made me do it.”

• A-absorbed. Taking responsibility for others’ actions; “It’s my fault they hurt me.”

• A-amnestic. Forgetting ego-dystonic actions, or not being able to access the memories while they’re ego-dystonic.

Key C-Level Concepts

• C-P-…. Failures of the perception of distress.

• C-S-…. Interruptions of cognitive empathy or mentalization.

• C-A-…. Deficits of affective empathy.

• C-M-…. Interruptions related to the motivation to act.

• C-B-…. Disinhibition on the level of the behavior.

Key Distinctions

• Primary vs. secondary. Primary presentations were “always this way” – constitutional, from early development. Secondary presentations developed later, often as a defensive response to trauma, and may be more changeable.

• Factor 1 vs. factor 2. The two factors of the PCL-R. Factor 1 captures interpersonal and affective features (manipulation, callousness). Factor 2 captures lifestyle and antisocial features (impulsivity, criminality).

• Ego-syntonic vs. ego-dystonic. Ego-syntonic traits feel consistent with one’s self-image and values; ego-dystonic traits feel foreign or distressing. Sadism that feels “right” is ego-syntonic; sadism that causes guilt is ego-dystonic.

Next: The Substrate

The next article explores the biological foundations of psychopathy – what genetics and neuroscience tell us about the origins of these presentations, and how to think about the critical distinction between primary and secondary forms.

Why It Matters

If you’re reading this as someone with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) working on your recovery, you’ve probably noticed a painful pattern: Moments when someone you care about sets a boundary or asks for accountability, and something in you can’t meet them there. You might deny, deflect, attack, or shut down – even when part of you knows you’ve caused harm.

You’re not broken or incapable of healthy relationships. These are protective patterns – strategies your psyche developed to survive experiences that were genuinely threatening to your sense of self.

But here’s the hard truth: While these patterns made sense when they formed, they’re often the most relationship-damaging aspect of NPD. Partners, friends, and family members can weather a lot, but when someone can’t acknowledge harm or respect boundaries, trust erodes. Relationships that could have survived imperfection often can’t survive the inability to repair.

The good news: These patterns aren’t monolithic. Different people struggle with boundaries for different underlying reasons, and understanding your particular pattern is the first step toward working with it rather than being controlled by it.

This article offers a map – not a diagnosis, but a framework for self-understanding. You may recognize yourself in one pattern or several. The goal isn’t to add another layer of shame, but to make the invisible visible, so you can start to catch these patterns in action and, eventually, choose differently. That is something to be proud of.

The Patterns at a Glance

I’ve identified eight distinct patterns that interfere with boundary respect and accountability. Each falls into one of three styles based on how the defense operates, and each is rooted in a particular underlying wound or fear.

Understanding the Taxonomy

Three Defense Styles

Obscuring defenses work by preventing accurate perception. You don’t see clearly – either yourself, the other person, or what actually happened. These patterns aren’t willful distortion; they operate before conscious awareness. Sometimes you’ll see glimpses of other framings before the defenses shut them down. Sometimes the memories come back when you’re in a different mood. In your recovery, you’ll start to remember them dimly.

Fortifying defenses work by protecting the environment that you need in order to maintain your self-image. These can be unconscious defenses too. You try to find some reframing of reality that protects you from devastating feelings of dependency or inadequacy. The goal is less to hide the reality from you than it is to maintain the scaffolds you’ve build around you to survive.

Antagonistic defenses work by fighting. Rather than not-seeing or wall-building, you’re opposing and defending against the other person. These patterns often feel more ego-syntonic – you’re aware you’re fighting, and it feels justified or like you don’t have a choice.

Two Temporal Modes

Each pattern can manifest in proactive or reactive form:

• Proactive. The defense is always-on or anticipatory. You’re scanning for threats, prefiltering information, or rigidly positioning yourself in certain ways. This can manifest as a general tendency toward avoidant attachment – claiming that you don’t need the other, and that they should rather leave you alone than ask for accountability, even when deep down you actually value the relationship but can’t admit it. It might also manifest as general avoidance in many areas of life, a constant narrative of your pretend reasons for any behaviors, or a compulsion to only interact with people you can control.

• Reactive. The defense activates in response to a specific trigger – a criticism, a boundary, a confrontation. In this case you’re usually clear-minded, but when your amygdala detects a threat (such as someone asking you for an apology), you switch into a threat response state – fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or flop – like you’re in mortal danger, which makes it hard to think clearly and can interfere with memory formation too.

Most people have a mix, but noticing your dominant mode can help you catch patterns earlier.

The Patterns

Disavowal

What it is. The inability to acknowledge having transgressed. When you’re confronted with signs of having made a mistake, the truth is unbearable. Either you’ve preemptively convinced yourself of a reframing or pretext or altogether different narrative, or your threat system reflexively devises one on the spot. A question of connection or relating with another is recast as a question of right and wrong.

The underlying wound. At the core is deep shame. Trauma that has made you feel like you’re never enough, like you’re always at the edge of society or breakup, one mistake away from humiliation or death. The shame is no mere embarrassment – it’s annihilating, identity-destroying. Disavowal isn’t about avoiding accountability; it’s about avoiding psychological death. Somewhere along the way, you learned that being bad or weak or fallible meant being nothing. Perfectionism to the point of self-delusion seemed like the only way out.

How it feels from the inside. Often, there’s no felt sense of lying. The alternative version of events feels true. Either because it is (through cherry-picking facts or framings) or because you’ve meticulously rewritten your memories. When someone insists you did something hurtful, it may feel like a bizarre accusation that doesn’t match your experience at all. Or there’s a flash of knowing, immediately followed by mental static – the knowledge is there and then it’s not there. Sometimes there’s a dreamlike quality: “Maybe something happened, but it feels distant, unreal, like it was someone else.”

Proactive form. A rigid “I’m a good person” identity (or insert a more precise attribute for “good”) that prefilters all contradictory information. You may have a strong internal narrative about your values and intentions that automatically reframes questionable behavior. Shame-inducing information doesn’t land because the identity structure rejects it before it registers.

Reactive form. When directly confronted, your regular consciousness turns off and you launch into an attack-type threat response, as if a tiger jumped out of the bushes and you’re fighting for your life. Some Lovecraftian god of chaos throws massive numbers of excuses and counterattacks your way for you to pick from. You find yourself arguing about the facts of what occurred rather than empathizing with the impact on the other person.

Toward recovery. The path through disavowal begins with building tolerance for shame – perhaps not eliminating it at first, but learning that it won’t destroy you. Self-compassion practices are essential: Can you hold “I did something hurtful” alongside “I’m still worthy of love”? Recording yourself during difficult conversations (with consent) or keeping a detailed journal can help you catch the gap between what happened and what you remember. In therapy, EMDR can process the original traumas that made shame feel annihilating. Mindfulness meditation trains you to notice that flash of knowing before the static descends – that’s your window. Shadow work helps you integrate the “bad” parts you’ve been fleeing. The goal isn’t to become someone who never errs, but someone who can say “I hurt you, and I’m sorry” without dying inside. Or even while loving every bit of the messiness that connects us all.

Differentiation Failure

What it is. Difficulty experiencing others as truly separate beings with valid, independent needs. When your partner expresses a need that conflicts with yours, or sets a boundary, it doesn’t compute. Their separateness registers as abandonment, betrayal, or as if they’re ripping out a part of you rather than as a normal feature of relating.

The underlying wound. This pattern often develops when early attachment was either enmeshed (no permission to be separate) or chaotic (separateness meant abandonment). The wound is existential aloneness – a terror that if others are truly separate from you, with their own centers of gravity, you’ll be left alone, incomplete, or vanish. Secure attachment allows children to internalize “I can be separate and still complete and connected.” Without that, you mistake the merging that happens when someone completes you for connection, and actual connection is unsatisfying because it doesn’t protect you from the knowledge of your own incompleteness.

How it feels from the inside. When someone close to you says “no” or expresses a different need, it can feel viscerally wrong – as if they’re stealing from you, harvesting your organs. There’s genuine shock and confusion: “Why would you do this to me?” Other people’s independent actions feel personal to you. The idea that they have their own inner world with its own logic may be intellectually available but doesn’t feel emotionally real.

Proactive form. Chronically experiencing others as extensions of yourself – satellites orbiting your sun. Their function is to meet needs, reflect value, provide support. Their separateness simply doesn’t register; you may be surprised when reminded they have constraints, preferences, or limitations you weren’t aware of.

Reactive form. When someone refuses a favor, sets a boundary, or expresses an independent need, there’s genuine hurt and betrayal: “Why are you doing this to me?” The boundary feels like they’re cutting out a piece of you rather than a neutral expression of their needs.

Toward recovery. Recovery from differentiation failure is fundamentally about building the felt sense that others exist as complete beings even when they’re not there for you, and that connection can survive separateness. Reparenting work in therapy helps internalize the secure attachment you missed. Mentalization-based treatment (MBT) trains you to genuinely wonder “What might they be experiencing right now?” in a flexible way that is open to collaborative exploration and multiple hypotheses. Authentic relating and circling practices offer structured ways to encounter others’ genuine otherness in a safe container. Mindfulness meditation builds capacity to sit with the incompleteness that separateness triggers, discovering it’s survivable. The shift you’re working toward: from “their boundary is abandonment or robbery” to “their boundary is information about them, and we’re still connected.”

Differentiation Failure (Projective)

What it is. A more severe variant where your own intolerable feelings or motives are experienced as coming from the other person. This isn’t strategic blame-shifting; it’s a genuine perceptual distortion where what’s inside you appears to be outside you.

The underlying wound. This includes everything from basic differentiation failure, plus an additional layer: certain feelings or parts of yourself are so intolerable that they can’t be owned. They must be evacuated, expelled, placed outside. This often develops when certain emotions were forbidden or punished in childhood – rage, selfishness, neediness, interdependence. These parts didn’t disappear; they went into exile, and now they can only be experienced as belonging to others. The wound is: “Parts of me are so unacceptable that I can’t know they’re mine.”

How it feels from the inside. You genuinely experience the other person as doing what you’re actually doing. If you’re angry, they seem aggressive. If you’re withdrawing, they seem cold. The strangler who screams “Why are you strangling me?” isn’t lying – in their experience, they are as much victim as they are themselves. At less extreme levels: “Why are you so hostile?” when you’re the hostile one, with complete sincerity.

Proactive form. Chronically attributing your own states and motives to others. You may be known for “reading” people in ways that reveal more about your own psychology than theirs.

Reactive form. In conflict, your own aggression, manipulation, or selfishness is experienced as emanating from the other person. You feel victimized by the very thing you’re doing.

Toward recovery. The projective variant requires reclaiming the exiled parts of yourself. Shadow work is central: What feelings were forbidden in your childhood? Can you begin to own rage, neediness, selfishness as yours rather than seeing them only in others? Journaling after conflicts – “What was I feeling? What was I doing?” – helps build self-knowledge. Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) trains you to hold multiple perspectives simultaneously: “I experience them as hostile, and I might be projecting.” Circling and authentic relating provide feedback from others about how you’re actually showing up, which can be reality-testing for your projections. In therapy, the relationship itself becomes a laboratory for catching projection in action. Ayahuasca and other psychedelic-assisted therapies, in appropriate settings, can facilitate encounters with disowned parts. The goal: Welcoming home the exiled feelings so they don’t have to live in others anymore.

Entitlement

What it is. An unconscious assumption that things are owed rather than requested. This isn’t arrogance in the simple sense – it’s a defense against the vulnerability of having needs that others can refuse. By assuming entitlement, you never have to feel the dependency, submission, indignity, or risk the rejection inherent in asking.

The underlying wound. Underneath entitlement is often a deep terror of rejection or dependency and what they imply about one’s relative status. To ask for something is to admit you need it, to reveal vulnerability, and to give the other person power to say no. If you grew up with needs that were ignored, mocked, or weaponized, asking may have become unbearable. Entitlement is a workaround: if it’s owed, you don’t have to ask, you don’t have to be vulnerable, and refusal becomes their moral failure rather than your rejection. The wound is: “My needs make me vulnerable, and vulnerability is dangerous.”

How it feels from the inside. You don’t feel entitled in the entitled sense – it just seems obvious that certain things should happen. When they don’t, it feels like injustice rather than disappointment. There’s a qualitative difference between “I’m sad you didn’t do X” and “How could you not do X?” – the latter feels righteous, wounded, betrayed. Making explicit requests feels strange, unnecessary, or even humiliating.

Proactive form. Assumptions about what others will do for you operate invisibly. You don’t ask because asking would imply it wasn’t already owed. You may be surprised when others describe you as demanding, because from inside, you weren’t demanding – you were expecting normal treatment.

Reactive form. When an expectation is unmet, the response is anger and betrayal, not disappointment. This feels like a response to genuine wrongdoing. The hurt is real; what’s obscured is that you never communicated the expectation, or that the other person had any right to refuse.

Toward recovery. Entitlement dissolves when asking becomes safe. Start small: Practice making explicit requests where the stakes are low. DBT’s interpersonal effectiveness skills (DEAR MAN) provide scripts for asking that feel less vulnerable. Self-compassion work helps you befriend the dependency you’ve been hiding from – needs are human, not shameful. Exposure therapy principles apply: gradually facing small rejections teaches your nervous system that “no” isn’t annihilation. Reparenting yourself means learning to meet some of your own needs, reducing the desperate dependency on others. In therapy, explore the original wounds around asking: when did it become dangerous? Journaling can track the gap between “what I expected” and “what I communicated.” The shift: from silent expectation and righteous rage to clear requests and disappointment you can survive.

Idealization Protection

What it is. Protecting the idealized self-image that generates admiration (and thus self-esteem). Flaws must be hidden, denied, or explained away because being seen as imperfect threatens your source of worth. It’s the fortifying flip-side of disavowal.

The underlying wound. This pattern often develops when love and approval were conditional on performance or appearance. You learned that you were valued for what you achieved, how you looked, how you made others feel – not for who you were. The idealized image became load-bearing: without it, there’s nothing. The wound is a missing floor – no stable sense of worth that exists independent of others’ admiration. Imperfection doesn’t just mean you made a mistake; it means a threat to the very source of your worth. The desperation to maintain the image is proportional to the void beneath it.

How it feels from the inside. There’s a desperate, urgent quality to keeping up appearances – though it may be so automatic you don’t notice it as effort. When a flaw is exposed, there’s panic, followed by rapid narrative management: minimizing, recontextualizing, or dissociating. Perhaps you know the flaw is real, but admitting it feels like it would be catastrophic – far worse than the objective situation warrants.

Proactive form. Meticulous image curation. Avoiding situations where imperfection might show. Controlling what others see. This may be exhausting, but it’s load-bearing – without it, you fear the whole structure would collapse.

Reactive form. When a flaw is exposed despite your efforts, immediate damage control, alternative explanations, or sometimes genuine dissociation where the event becomes hazy and unreal.

Toward recovery. The cure for idealization protection is building a floor – a sense of worth that doesn’t depend on admiration. Reparenting in therapy is key. It offers the experience of being valued for who you are, not just what you achieve. Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) can train you to recognize in other when they’re read to love a flawed you more than a perfect you. Self-compassion (Kristin Neff’s work) trains unconditional warmth toward yourself. Start intentionally revealing small imperfections in safe relationships – exposure therapy for the fear of being seen as flawed. Mindfulness helps you notice the panic when a flaw surfaces, creating space before the damage-control reflex kicks in. The goal isn’t to stop caring about excellence, but to survive being seen as human.

Devaluation

What it is. Diminishing the other person’s worth, value, or standing – making their needs, feelings, or boundaries not matter by making them not matter. This protects against envy, against others having power over you, and often against your own history of being devalued. It’s the flip-side of idealization.

The underlying wound. Devaluation often serves multiple functions. It can defend against envy – if they’re lesser, their successes don’t threaten you. It can protect against dependency – if they’re not that important, you don’t need them. And frequently, it re-enacts what was done to you: if you were chronically devalued, diminished, or treated as less-than, you may have internalized that someone in every relationship has to be “less.” Making it them instead of you feels like winning or survival.

How it feels from the inside. The other person seems genuinely less important, less competent, less reasonable, or less deserving. Their boundary feels ridiculous because they’re being ridiculous. Their hurt feelings are them being “oversensitive,” and you can dismiss them anyway as a them problem. This isn’t strategic – in the moment, you really see them as lesser, inferior, irrelevant. There may be contempt, dismissiveness, pity, or a sense of being surrounded by people who just don’t get it. Sometimes, underneath, there’s a flicker of envy or threat that the devaluation is managing.

Proactive form. Chronically positioning others as lesser. You may have a taxonomy of people’s inadequacies that feels like clear-eyed assessment rather than defense. Others’ boundaries or needs don’t warrant respect because they don’t warrant respect.

Reactive form. When someone sets a boundary or challenges you, they’re immediately reframed as ridiculous, oversensitive, controlling, pitiable, or otherwise not worth taking seriously.

Toward recovery. Devaluation often protects against envy, dependency, and acknowledging flaws – so working with those is key. Shadow work helps you recognize the qualities you’re diminishing in others as things you might fear or want in yourself. Alternately, the previous two sections can be helpful because devaluation is just the flip side of idealization, so as the need to idealize fades away, so does the need to devalue. Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) trains curiosity about others’ inner worlds, which is incompatible with dismissing them as lesser. Gratitude exercises specifically for the people you tend to devalue can also rewire the reflex. If you were chronically devalued yourself, grief work and trauma processing (EMDR, somatic therapies) can help you stop perpetuating what was done to you. Circling and authentic relating put you in contact with others’ full humanity in ways that make devaluation harder to maintain. The shift: from “they’re lesser” to “they’re different, and their perspective is real.”

Control-Seeking

What it is. Perceiving criticism or boundary-setting as an attack and responding by seizing control of the interaction. This often develops in chaotic or abusive early environments where the best defense was a strong offence.

The underlying wound. If you grew up in an unpredictable or dangerous environment – where criticism preceded punishment, where vulnerability was exploited, where you never knew when the next blow (physical or emotional) would land – your nervous system learned that safety means control. Letting someone else set the terms of an interaction, letting a criticism land, letting yourself be accountable – all of these feel like letting your guard down in enemy territory. The wound is: “I was blindsided and hurt when I was vulnerable, so I must never be vulnerable again.” Control isn’t about dominance; it’s about survival.

How it feels from the inside. When someone expresses hurt or sets a boundary, it feels like the opening move in an attack. Your nervous system may go into fight mode before you’ve consciously processed what’s happening. There’s a sense that you have to get ahead of this – that if you let them finish, if you let the criticism land, something terrible will happen. It feels like survival, not strategy.

Proactive form. Constant vigilance. Scanning for threats. Preemptive strikes – attacking potential criticism before it can be voiced. “The best defense is a good offence.” You may have developed sophisticated skills at steering conversations away from dangerous territory.

Reactive form. When criticized, immediate counterattack: “What about when you…?” Overwhelming the other with grievances. DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender). The goal, often unconscious, is to end the interaction on your terms, with your narrative in control.

Toward recovery. Control-seeking is fundamentally a nervous system issue – your body learned that vulnerability means danger. Trauma processing (EMDR, IFS, somatic experiencing) can discharge the original survival responses so they’re not constantly online. The distress tolerance skills from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (STOP and TIPP) help you survive the feeling of being criticized without immediately counterattacking. Mindfulness meditation builds the capacity to notice the threat response arising and pause before acting. Consider whether your current environment might actually require this level of vigilance; sometimes changing environments reduces the triggers. Mood stabilizers can lower baseline reactivity while you do the deeper work. The shift: from “I must control or I’ll be destroyed” to “I can stay present even when it’s uncomfortable.”

Resentment

What it is. Resisting others’ boundaries because you never got to have your own. There’s a deep sense that boundaries being enforced against you is unfair – because it is unfair in some cosmic sense. Just the person who is doing it not is not the same who treated you unfairly. The resentment is displaced from its original target (often caregivers) onto current relationships.

The underlying wound. This pattern carries the weight of developmental injustice. If your boundaries were bulldozed in childhood – if “no” wasn’t permitted, if your space, body, feelings, or preferences were overridden – you learned that boundaries are things powerful people get to have and vulnerable people don’t. Watching others set boundaries activates that old wound: “They get to have what I never got to have.” The rage isn’t really about the current situation; it’s grief and fury about what happened to you, displaced onto whoever is currently asserting a limit. The wound is: “I was denied the basic right to boundaries, and it’s unbearable and humiliating to see others exercise that right against me.”

How it feels from the inside. When someone sets a boundary, there’s immediate, righteous anger. “How dare you.” It feels like they’re the one being unreasonable, unfair, selfish. There may be a sense of “rules for thee but not for me” – not as conscious hypocrisy, but as genuine felt injustice. Underneath, often inaccessible, is grief: the child who never got to say “no,” whose boundaries were bulldozed, who’s now watching others have what they never had.

Proactive form. A chronic chip-on-shoulder about boundaries and rules. Others’ boundaries are inherently suspect, probably oppressive, definitely hypocritical. You may be drawn to ideologies that frame boundaries as control or see yourself as a righteous transgressor of arbitrary limits.

Reactive form. When a specific boundary is enforced, fierce resistance: “You don’t get to tell me what to do.” The intensity is disproportionate to the situation because it’s carrying the weight of historical injustice, not just the present moment.

Toward recovery. Resentment requires grief – mourning that what you didn’t get to have. The rage is real, but it belongs to the past; therapy can help you direct it toward its true source rather than displacing it onto present relationships. Reparenting yourself includes learning to set your own boundaries now, which can reduce the envy of others doing so. EMDR and trauma processing can help metabolize the developmental injustice so it’s not constantly activated. Practice distinguishing past from present: “Is this person actually being unfair, or does it feel unfair because boundaries always felt unfair?” Self-compassion for the child who was bulldozed can coexist with accountability for the adult who’s now doing the bulldozing. Journaling can help you notice when the intensity doesn’t match the situation – that’s your signal that history is present. The shift: from “how dare they” to “their boundary is legitimate, even though I never got to have mine.”

A Final Note

If you see yourself in these patterns, please remember: These aren’t moral failures. They’re adaptations – once-necessary protections that have outlived their usefulness. Seeing them clearly is painful but essential.

Recovery doesn’t mean the patterns disappear overnight. It means you start to catch them, to feel the pull and choose differently, to repair when you’ve caused harm. It’s slow work, and it requires support – a good therapist, patient loved ones, and above all, compassion for yourself.

The fact that you’re reading this, trying to understand, is itself significant. These patterns thrive in the dark. Naming them is the beginning of change.

• Inabsolutionism. A philosophy for finding meaning without needing external “absolution” or a perfect narrative arc; life is messy, and meaning is implicit in our experiences and what we choose to value, not in a final resolution.

• The paradox of control. Rigidly trying to control outcomes often reduces your actual agency; surrendering the need for control opens up more options and allows you to navigate reality more effectively.

• Redefining trust. Trust should not be an expectation of perfection (that you or others will never fail), but a commitment to repair, learn, and do better when failures inevitably happen.

• Healthy vs. unproductive anger. Anger is a valid, motivating force for justice and setting boundaries (e.g., against bullies), whereas hate is often stagnant; anger can be channeled to set precedents that protect oneself and others.

• Process-oriented mindset. Shifting focus from rigid goals (which can lead to teleological, transactional thinking) to enjoying the process itself helps break down obsessive patterns and increases satisfaction.

• The disavowed self. Recovery often involves reconnecting with parts of the self (like creativity or innocence) that were suppressed or “disavowed” so early in life that they are pre-verbal and forgotten.

• Strategic disagreeableness. “Out-assholing the asshole” or “Duper’s Delight” can be a pro-social tool when used to dismantle bullies or toxic systems that don’t respond to kindness.

• Nature vs. nurture in personality. Psychopathy and narcissism likely arise from a mix of genetic predispositions (e.g., “Factor 1” lack of fear) and environmental factors (e.g., “Factor 2” abuse or neglect), leading to different defense mechanisms.

• Empathy as a skill. Affective empathy can be cultivated through a process of mindfulness, understanding the other person’s separate intent (mirroring), and actively imagining their perspective.

• Radical authenticity. Owning your entire self—including your capacity for cruelty, your “messiness,” and your “weirdness”—is the path to genuine connection and self-respect.

Glossary of Concepts

• Sovereignism. A reframing of what is clinically often called “malignant narcissism.” It describes a personality structure focused on maintaining extreme autonomy and control to protect a fragile self, often developing as a defense against a lack of safety or agency in childhood.

• Inabsolutionism. Tiffany’s personal philosophy that rejects the nihilistic need for life to “make sense” or end perfectly. It posits that meaning is generated by the observer (us) and exists implicitly in our experiences, regardless of closure.

• Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT). A therapeutic approach that focuses on the ability to “think about thinking” – understanding that one’s own and others’ behavior is driven by internal mental states (thoughts, feelings, desires) rather than just external circumstances.

• Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). A therapy designed to help people manage intense emotions. Key skills mentioned include mindfulness (being present), distress tolerance (surviving crises without making them worse), and interpersonal effectiveness.

• Teleological thinking. A cognitive pattern where actions are interpreted solely based on their visible outcomes or goals, often ignoring the internal mental states or intentions behind them (e.g., “The pen fell because it wanted to annoy me”).

• Introjects. Internalized voices, rules, or behaviors absorbed from authority figures (like parents) that become part of one’s own internal dialogue (e.g., a harsh “inner critic” based on a critical parent).

• Factor 1 (primary) psychopathy. Associated with innate traits like low fear, low empathy, and high dominance.

• Factor 2 (secondary) psychopathy. Associated with impulsivity, emotional instability, and antisocial behavior, often reactive to environmental trauma or neglect.

• The disavowed self. Aspects of one’s personality (often vulnerability, creativity, or innocence) that were rejected or suppressed at a very early, often preverbal stage of development to ensure survival or attachment.

• Alexithymia. A personality trait characterized by the inability to identify and describe emotions experienced by one’s self.

• Duper’s delight. The thrill or pleasure derived from deceiving or manipulating someone, particularly when “outsmarting” a perceived bully or controlling person.

• Splitting. A defense mechanism common in BPD and NPD where people or situations are viewed in extremes (all good or all bad) with no middle ground.

• Self-transcendence. The expansion of one’s sense of self to include others, allowing for deep empathy and love (often practiced via Metta or loving-kindness meditation).

Transcript

Friendsgiving and the Car Incident

Dawn: Welcome back to this second installment of my interview with Tiffany! How are you doing this wonderful morning?

Tiffany: I’m pretty good, honestly. I’m happy to be awake at an ungodly hour and have something enjoyable and productive to do for once.

Dawn: Yeah, you didn’t sleep, eh?

Tiffany: No, but I woke up at 3:30 PM yesterday, and now it’s 6:00 AM, so my sleep schedule’s been upside down for weeks. I think today is the day that I suffer for tomorrow’s graces.

Dawn: Yeah, I heard that you’ve been to a Friendsgiving! What is that? And do you wanna tell me more about it?

Tiffany: Well, it wasn’t technically as much of a Friendsgiving as we thought. I was really the only person outside of the family invited over. My friend Kai invited multiple friends, and I’m the only one who showed up. But a Friendsgiving… I would say it’s something that happens with a lot of queer people because we don’t have a close relationship with our family, or we fucking hate them, they fucking hate us, or some mix of the above. So we invite our found family and our friends to have that kind of thing that none of us would probably have outside of it.

Anyway, this was her inviting somebody that she was close to in that way, but to her family. So it was nice otherwise. I like Kai’s family a lot. Just the people I chatted with – it was enjoyable, nice food, getting just a little drunk, snuggling with Kai later.

But in the middle of that, we went to go pick up alcohol. I said, “Kai, let me drive your car, I’ll back it out,” because I had pulled my car in behind hers as she had requested. And I backed her car into her house. Not at any sort of rate of speed – it bent the roof gutter drain spigot and scratched her car a little. It started out as her trying to tell me to stop with the most hushed tone. At first, I wanted to get really mad over that, and I thought, “No… I should be more patient and listening, and blame’s not the solution here.”

But I started having an emotional flashback to any issue that damaged property, but especially with cars, with my father. He always provided me a car, but it was always his, and under a lot of spoken and unspoken stipulations. I was fucking going through that.

Kai is a big precious sweetie, but she tries, honestly, too hard to make everybody around her happy and comfortable. In a situation like that, that’s just completely smothering to me. At first, I was just like, “Listen, if you apologize one more time, I’m just going to go the fuck home.” And I almost did. I’m not saying anything she’s doing isn’t well-meaning. She really is honestly trying to help. But I calmed down a bit, and I moved my car to somewhere better.

She ended up following me there to offer me Buspar, which has helped me – I’ve been trialing it through her with her extras. Maybe I could need that when I got more composed, but I just needed the space. I didn’t need the extra information coming into me from somebody bothering me. I told her that I don’t want that. I finally got her to leave me alone while I’m in my car for a bit, and I just started screaming in my car.

Man, as we’re about to actually leave… I had turned it down twice by then, but then she goes to give the Buspar to me in my hand. I take the bottle, open it up, put it back in the bottle, close the bottle, shove the bottle in her purse, and I go, “I’ve said no to this three times now.”

So I was getting close to my wit’s end. It was getting very hard for me to deal with. Her people-pleasing was just being stifling at best, and completely smothering and overwhelming at worst. Eventually, I recovered, and her parents are much nicer about that than my father, which is an understatement. It was completely fine, and in fact, their family joked with me – I think her aunt, her mother, and her grandfather. I was just like, “Oh, yeah, when I was backing up, I noticed the house was not exactly lined up with the road, and I was just trying to nudge it a little, and I tried too hard. I needed to nudge it 2 inches, I accidentally tried to nudge it 2 feet.” That more holistic, neurotypical way of blowing that steam off really helped put me in a much better space.

We talked about stuff like that later, and I think it’s still weighing on her. I think she’s very self-conscious. She saw our friend Lucy earlier – I’d say today, but now it’s tomorrow. Earlier yesterday? Before I went and picked Lucy up to hang out with us. Lucy tells me she was kinda not there, but it could be a different medication she’s adjusting to. But oh no, it has to be worry. I would really like what I had to say to her not damage her, not come off as this cutting criticism that makes her worry about everything she might be doing wrong. And that just stresses me the fuck out.

In moments like that, I need to learn to be much, much more direct and downright near incisive with taking my space and enforcing my boundaries. Just being like, “I just need a minute to collect myself, and I’m gonna leave for a bit. I’m sorry. I’ll be back, everything’s fine.”

I think my default to not do that comes from a ton of places, which is an issue. Like having difficulty trusting that if I don’t try and solve this situation right now, it’s gonna be worse in 5 minutes, and then for the next 5 years of my life. Just being emotionally compromised, and no longer really having much capacity left over to think about anybody’s feelings other than my own.

I just feel bad for freaking out on her. I don’t remember what she did, but she followed me to my car, and she apologized again for nothing, or because she’d taken the wrong lesson from it. I have to open my car’s hood to manually shut it off because the wiring’s weird. I just slammed my hood shut, and it scared her. I really don’t want to be that kind of person that scares people and makes them afraid of when things like that happen. I don’t really want to do that to her. She’s been a really good friend, and we’ve had a lot of fun. I dyed her hair a day or two prior to that – I bleached it and dyed it pink for her. It was really fun.

Tiffany: Yeah, I’m scared of hurting her and losing my gal pal. Just the finer notes of having kinda normal friends, it’s just tough still. I wish I had nicer things… more positive things to talk about, but… That’s still really weighing on me.

Dawn: It is a very interesting analysis of a very complicated situation. Imagine that situation – I would also think about so many things. Like how to make sure that she’s not taking the wrong lesson from the situation, trying to understand where she’s coming from, why she’s reacting in such a surprising way. And oh god, all sorts of things beyond the current trauma that I’m going through – like the flashback and everything on top of that. It just sounds super overwhelming.

Tiffany: Yeah, it was grotesquely overwhelming. One other thing I wanted to mention about that is I think there’s a masculine dimension to this. It seems that most of the men in my life really get me. When I talk about when something happens, I just need space. When I was talking to you about that the day it happened, a guy friend of mine literally came into my DMs on Facebook about it. Like, just getting it, just directly empathizing with it.

In that moment, I don’t want the comfort, I just want to regain control. I want to be more sure of myself again, and then be able to act on that. The comfort and the attempts at help just make it worse.

Dawn: Yeah, I think for me, the misguided apology would have been the distressing part. Because I would have had to mentally model her, try to figure out what I can say to repair whatever she’s misinterpreting about the situation, and I carefully do that in such a situation. I think for me, the comfort would have been nice, but her taking responsibility for something that’s not her responsibility would have been distressing for me.

Tiffany: Yeah, it really was distressing. Like I said, I think there’s lasting stuff concerning that. Like, I think she’s still going through stuff about it. It boils down to that happening, and now she needs help too, and she’s denying herself of it, and trying to help me, unintentionally sacrificially.

And I’m just trying to take care of myself first, and then I will very willingly take care of other people after I’m put back together. She just doesn’t know how to look after her own feelings in that way. Oh, and it wasn’t just one apology. Each apology of hers is like three to five apologies, and each one has its own explanation of why she felt she needs to apologize. Which is aggravating, annoying as fuck. I cannot stand it. I accept it, and when I’m in a bad mood, I put up with it. All the rest of the time we’re hanging out? Because she is a good friend, and she’s fun to hang out with. But a moment like that, it’s just making things worse.

I just get angry that she’s making things worse for herself while not giving me the space I need. It’s very hard for me in a moment like that not to just react like, “Why are you being so fucking stupid?” Like, I know it’s not that, I know it’s her own insecurities, but in a moment like that, that is my default. That’s where I’m going, and it’s very hard to fight. Very hard to manage.

Dawn: Like, for me, the problem was that I didn’t give myself permission to self-soothe, so once my therapist gave me permission to self-soothe, I could easily learn it. For other people, it’s apparently the learning of how to self-soothe in the first place, that they need to practice self-soothing itself? I don’t know which one it is for her.

Tiffany: It definitely seems like the latter for her. It strikes me as dependent thinking, because I really have to help her get her brain into a mode of seeing her own feelings at all. It reminds me of another friend that I used to date. She had a really nasty, narcissistic ex that I had the delight of going toe-to-toe with just once. That helped bring their relationship to an end and have my friend move out of the ex-wife’s house. She’d been putting that off for a ton of reasons. That precipitated stuff, and it was a conflict that needed to be faced.

It just reminds me of when I was talking to her and trying to get across to her, “You can’t be responsible for your ex-wife’s happiness.” Even if you would tell her about what she went through, she really still wouldn’t see it. You’d have to really demonstrate it or get her into a different headspace before she got better at being in touch with her own feelings. So it strikes me as a form of dependent thinking.

Now that I think of it, I’ve been trying to get out of the habit of pathologizing my friends. Not even just because that’s not super healthy, but so that my primary way I get to know somebody, even if I smooth over it with masking, isn’t basically psychoanalysis. I’ve been trying to just let friendships happen and be. But that just strikes me as something that a year-and-a-half-ago me would have noticed a lot quicker. But I had some worse patterns going on. I think it’s better this way.

Dawn: Yeah. Well, you can also just do it from a place of curiosity or something, just without any particular judgment or hypervigilance attached to it.

Tiffany: Yeah, but that depends on the… A, I tend to obsess over it unhealthily, but even then, I don’t want my friendships to necessarily be based on that. Rather, I want more friendships and relationships that are not based on that as the primary or secondary thing. Like, you and I have that. But for a number of reasons, right? If we weren’t talking about this stuff, we wouldn’t be having as much fun. But yeah, no, I want to have friendships that have depth in different things.

Internal Monologue vs. Abstract Thought

Dawn: Yeah, let me be curious once more. One of my notes from the last part of the interview was to ask you how you think. Some people have an internal monologue, some people have an internal dialogue between like 10 people or something, and some people just have silence, like me most of the time – just the thoughts themselves. Others seem to mostly use imagery for thinking. So yeah, I was curious how it works for you.

Tiffany: I have an internal dialogue, but it’s definitely more prevalent and worse when I’m locked in my OCD. When I’m in the moment, or I’m in a flow state, it’s primarily abstract. Like if I’m fixing something mechanical, electronic, or I’m machining something, it’s all abstract and imagery.

But my dialogue can definitely take me over, and it could be hard to see anything outside of what I’m obsessing over at the time, which is like the definition of OCD, how it tunnel-visions you. So I guess I mean to say… in my young adulthood to adulthood, I’ve had much more of an internal dialogue. But up until, let’s say, high school, it was definitely abstract and imagery first, and then I’d have to translate it into words to get my ideas out. And I’m just trying to return to that.

Dawn: Yeah, I think I started with the internal monologue around age 8, and then stopped at age 25, roughly. And yeah, for me, the downside has been that it hindered my introspection, because I pretended that the narration is everything that I was thinking, when it was a small fraction of what I was thinking – just sort of some kind of distilled and sometimes fictional story that I told myself. So, in a way, it hindered my introspection. Have you had that impression?

Tiffany: Yeah, it doesn’t actually hinder my introspection, it hinders my ability to be in the moment. So, forgive anybody who’s a fan of Terry Pratchett, but apparently in some Terry Pratchett books, they described the First Thoughts, the Second Thoughts, and the Third Thoughts.

The First, Second, and Third Thoughts

Tiffany: The First Thought is what you get from spontaneous experience or feelings, right? Just like, “Ouch, that hurt.” And then you think of why? And then the Third Thought is perspective-taking. Second Thought will also, you know, let’s say you’re a very damaged person. Second Thought will also have a lot of those unhealthy reactions. Like another person once told me, the first thing you think is how you grew up, and the second thing you think is how you are. That’s the Second Thought, and Third Thought would be, again, the perspective-taking.

So my internal monologue typically suppresses my First Thoughts. It’s a mix of things. I have plenty of unconscious reflexes for those spontaneous experiences to lead into these more Second-form Thoughts. And I have a lot of self-understanding and rules and ideas of how I and the world work that I can also lean on and go, “Well, if I do this, it’s probably gonna end up in this, and I’ll fucking hate that, or I will fucking love that.” And it keeps me from actually touching my feelings most of the time.

I was able to change a lot of those unconscious reflexes just by getting to know myself better, and some mindfulness stuff. But that’s just still not how my brain registers my spontaneous experience. And so, I’ve been able to do a lot of introspection with my internal dialogue, but in wanting to actually get closer to myself… And not just understand myself. I am learning to let it go. Suppress it, or at least make it a more conscious action when I think in words, you know?

Dawn: Yeah, like, the First Thoughts are also very many, and very nuanced and very complex for me. There are all these different factors. Like if I’m late for something, then there is sort of the frustration over the thing that has led to me being late, then the worries about how people will react, whether I’m interrupting something, or what people will think about me when I show up late for something and they don’t know me yet. All of these things come together.

And then the Second Thought is, “So how do I guilt-externalize now? What can I blame?” And I’m like, “No, you don’t have to do that, chill.” And yeah, I suppose then the Third Thought is how I actually show up and apologize for being late or something, and then nothing else.

Tiffany: Yeah, that’s perspective-taking, usually, right? From what I would glean, developmentally, First Thought is basically your Id. And it’s your base impulses, desires, feelings, etc. And when you’re young, your Second Thought will be more from your Ego. Your Superego hasn’t really formed. And I feel like as you grow older, your Second Thought comes from your Superego. It’s more in response to how other people will react to it. That’s where all the shame and stuff gets internalized.

And then your Ego has now shifted into a place where it’s trying to mediate that again. And my intuition would be that they flip again when one hits a more harmonious state. You know, you feel something, you’re hungry. And you go, “Hmm, I could do this.” And then you think, “Yeah, but not right now, because everyone’s gonna hate me if I eat a pizza in front of them.” That’s my intuition. But I think that makes sense, because our Superego is supposed to be keeping our Ego in check. And it’s when we have a lot of toxic guilt or shame that our Superego would need our Ego to come back and put it in check, you know?

Dawn: Yeah, like I used to have a very punitive Superego, so I think the key was, in the end, to get the Superego to chill out and just trust that the Ego will want the right thing anyway.

Tiffany: Yeah, and that the Ego knows when to check itself and go ask the Superego again. Because in the Freudian thing, your Id is underneath the water. It’s subconscious and unconscious. The Ego is what helps you… the Ego is the beginning of your idea that “I am separate from the world.” And so, it’s as simple as, “I want this right now. Well, I can’t have it right now.” Kind of mediation of your spontaneous experience and how you get that to interact with the world.

And then, your Superego… in the Freudian model, the Superego is both above and below water, and helps mediate them as a whole, and that’s why it’s more other-faced. Because that’s what’s really lacking in Ego and Id. So I would think somebody that’s healthy, their Superego comes in last. It makes sure they perspective-take, but it doesn’t make them hang on it. It’s not in charge.

Dawn: Yeah, and also, what you said about the Superego basically being an advisor who the Ego can turn to, that’s also a nice framing.

I was wondering whether your internal monologue perhaps also helps with bridging self-states? Like, I have this problem that my thoughts are very hard to remember, and they’re very hard to notice in the first place. I mostly just notice the echoes of these thoughts, and then sort of try to figure out what they are experimentally. “Might it be this thing? No, that doesn’t resonate. Might it be this other thing? Yeah, that resonates.” And then I sort of figure out what these original thoughts might have been. They have a certain feel to them, but it’s very diffused, and so I have a really hard time remembering them. They are also super dependent on particular environments, and probably mood states.

So if we instead use something like natural language that’s objective and shared among humans, so also trivially shared among mood states, then that could help bridge them. And so I was wondering whether that perhaps is something that I developed in order to not have amnesia between different mood states, but have something that can bridge the amnesia. And I think when I was 8, I started to be able to do that more, and so didn’t have problems with amnesia. Would that make sense for you?

Tiffany: I mean, I’ll start with what’s going on with you. That’s kind of the definition of why a self-narrative exists, right? Because you know your feelings will change, but you can know some things about you that’ll still be true tomorrow. And no longer being defined by your immediate feelings. So I think that’s just your autistic relationship with the self-narrative. There’s things that are more tenuous to you by nature.

Using MBT and DBT

Tiffany: For me, that’s basically what DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) is, right? It helps me. I’m having DBT and MBT (Mentalization-Based Therapy) myself frequently. And that helps me with a similar thing. If I notice I’m splitting, or I just notice I’m in an unhelpful pattern, I can at least stop and try and synthesize the opposite – like the scholastic method – and go, “Does that seem as reasonable, or as unreasonable? If that sounds just as reasonable, the other extreme, what am I doing? What is this?” And at least get my brain back into a more self-reflective pattern.

If I can synthesize a totally different way of looking at something, if I can get my brain to get closer to the abstract and just get a spontaneous, better way of looking at the situation, or just an attempt at it, I can go, “Yeah, I’m clearly not looking at this in a helpful way, at least, and maybe not objective at all.” And in a similar way, I’m testing the waters of my own perception in that moment, instead of just my feelings. Cause in that kind of moment, I’m trying not to tell myself my feelings are wrong, but I’m trying to tell myself my understandings or my perceptions that are leading to my current feelings aren’t the way to go.

Because only once I bring that back, and I’m back into a more integrated self-state, does the stuff like, “Yeah, but now how do I actually feel? What do I actually want?” come back. Can I do that again? When I’m disintegrated, when I’m splitting or I’m dissociating, I can’t really reach down there.

I certainly try to keep a lot of little things in mind specifically to counter some patterns I notice. And some things just like gaining a more helpful self-narrative and a more helpful view of other people – so internalizing them as values or beliefs to some degree. So that my current perception due to strong emotions is challenged, because I go, “No, that’s not what I believe. And I know I believe that for not no reason. I know I formed that belief over time for a reason, so I really shouldn’t go willy-nilly and just burn everything down right now.”

Dawn: Like, can you perhaps go even more granular? Like, do you use any particular skills or sub-skills from the DBT toolkit? Like from the STOP skill or something? Or some parts of the TIP skill? And is it first the DBT skills, and then afterwards the MBT? How do you use it?

Tiffany: Normally, I would do MBT first. Let’s bring up that Friendsgiving thing again. That helps remind me that my friend Kai is only trying to be helpful. Cause in the moment, I’ll often be reacting to some really negative assumption. Like I said, in the moment when I want to just straight up go, “You’re gonna move the car, right? Okay, good. I’m just gonna go sit in my car for a bit. I’ll be back in 10 minutes, half an hour, everything’s fine. I just need to calm my head down. Please don’t worry about it.”

I won’t want to do that, because if in the moment I have the time to reflect, I’ll go… I’ll think to myself, “Well, what would actually help me if I left the situation? Why am I not just doing that?” But wait, is that what she’s actually doing? Is that what she’s actually thinking? No. And then, with MBT, you then think of it from the other person’s perspective. She’s probably trying to do something more like this. Okay, well now that I know she’s trying to be helpful, I’m going to tell her I’m doing this because this is most helpful for me now. Okay, yeah, right, no, I can trust her.

Because that can help me even within a split. And that can get me out of the thought patterns that are reinforcing the split, or are keeping me from escaping it. It helps me bring about those things I don’t realize I’m projecting. Because MBT basically breaks projection down. If you’re mentalizing, you’re most likely not projecting.

So then, let’s say it wasn’t as big of a deal then. But if I was then also panicked – “She was no longer gonna be my friend,” etc. – then I would probably have to do some DBT steps, because that’s the kind of thing that’s gonna make me split. And I could imagine that then I would react in one way of the split: “I think she like hates me now.” And I would basically be angry that she won’t let me fix the problem. And in the other half of it, I would probably feel more helpless and stuck, because it would feel like a double bind. And then I would think that she wouldn’t help me. So in one, I think that she wouldn’t let me help myself, and the one end of it, I wouldn’t think she would help me. That’s a common split I’ll have.

And you really have to be dealing with a rat-shit person that will actually make both of those true at once. And it’s enough for you to go, “But that’s not really the issue here, is it? Oh…” And I can see then, both from experience with myself, so that kind of brings me back together, re-centers me, and I go, “I’m doing that because I’m afraid this is the end. I’m never gonna see her again. Right?” That I mask the fear with either anger that I think she won’t help me, or hatred that she won’t let me help myself. So that didn’t happen, but that probably wouldn’t be too far off the mark of what could happen.

Dawn: Yeah, what you described at first was pretty close to the STOP skill, though. Like, you first didn’t immediately react, but rather took a step back, went to your car, then observed, tried to understand the situation better, and then tried to proceed.

Tiffany: Well, no, that’s me talking myself into doing that. That’s me getting myself in a mindset where I can see that that’s what I need to do, and then talking myself into doing it. Because at that moment, with mentalization broken down, I’m only perceiving threats, and I handle threats with control. And that’s what I’m trying to break out of. But even in there, even if that doesn’t fully restore mentalization, at that moment, I can see that in a controlled mindset, I can still understand that giving myself space and doing something immediately indecisive to achieve that is the right way to handle it.

No, I normally start a few steps away from something like that, unfortunately. If I would catch myself like that then, and then do the DBT, so that gets me to there. I do stop, and then I can try and reintegrate. So normally, I need to do MBT to myself. I’ll pull from my MBT skill set to be able to access my DBT skill set.

Dawn: Yeah, that’s interesting. I just wonder whether it’s generally useful to install helpful patterns in all mindsets, so that regardless of which mindset you land, you have a helpful pattern there. Like with making friends – in the control mindset, you have something like, “If I’m kind, I don’t manipulate my friends with my charm, then they will continue being my friend, so I can trick them into continuing being my friend.” And then in a more regular mindset, you have something like, “I need to be kind to my friends in order for them to continue being my friends.”

Tiffany: I feel like I’ve tried to do something like that. I try to improve myself in all sorts of little and big ways, but the mindsets don’t really… I think this is just down to the rigidity of the mindset I get into when I perceive a threat. And the rigidity and pervasiveness of my “Control Mindset.” Because I have to waste a lot of fucking effort all day long initially seeing things in a controlled mindset, then talking myself out of it.

The Control Mindset vs. Process-Oriented Thinking

Tiffany: This is one of the aspects of my cognitive empathy. Just let’s say I’m in a line at a grocery store, and this person is taking forever because they’re $2 short. I just want to walk over and shove my card in the machine and go, “Shut up, go away.” And I have to talk myself into empathizing with other people in the situation, like the cashier. It may or may not distress people to get out of that. It can be something as simple as that, that I have to talk myself out of an impulse like that. That’s even the nice one, because if I followed that mindset through, I would do that, and then I’d make sure the person starts bagging their shit up and putting it in the cart fast. Because the whole thing I was really focused on initially was, “I want to get through this line,” and so that’s all I see at first.

So that still really is my default, and it’s been hard to make healthier things in that kind of mindset. It’s been just more worth it to kinda challenge it directly. You need so many more steps. Like, I would have those impulses in the past and talk myself out of them, but then I have to talk myself into it via the utility of it, and the percentages of it, and the odds of it making something worse or better. And if I’m just in bad enough a mood, I stop caring anyway. Or if I just perceive what it is as important enough, I just stop caring, and it doesn’t help.

I started out trying to think of a counter, that maybe you’re just right. But I’m having trouble imagining something in that very control-based and goal-oriented mindset. I guess I could try to change the kind of goals I’m looking out for in general. But I feel like I’ve done that in the past, I’ve been working on that. And none of these things seem to persist across all my different frames of mind and self-states no matter what yet. I’m having to do a lot of manual effort to keep myself somewhere where I want to be.

Dawn: Then I have two hypotheses what might be going on with friends of mine who seem to be doing this thing. Like, what they’re doing is exactly that: they want to have friends, they want to keep their friends, they like their friends, and so they tell themselves, “I’m using my Machiavellian charms to trick these people into liking me.” And they’re just doing that consistently, so the friends are like, “Oh, she’s so kind, I like her.”

I think there are two possibilities here. One is these triggered states, these control mindset states that you were referring to. And the other one is the kind of self-image that a person builds up when they are often in these states. I would imagine that when someone is in these states, but they want to make them ego-syntonic – they don’t want to feel bad about them – that they then build up some kind of self-image where hostile dominance is necessary, and they feel good about being strong and in control at all times.

Tiffany: Yeah, it kind of wraps back on itself?

Dawn: Yeah, like they actually are in a rational state of mind, a rational mindset, and… Yeah, that’s the problem. They think about things sort of not in a triggered mindset, but then they reframe them to fit their self-image afterwards, so that there is no clear distinction for them between the triggered state and the rational mindset.

Tiffany: If I get what you’re saying right, this is the reason why I avoid it. Right? I think I abstractly picked up on it earlier, but I really had to work through it. Really, I had to have you remind me of it, but I kinda unconsciously know that that’s what that is, and that’s why I don’t want to be that way.

Because something M.E. Thomas evolved into that she does, that I was doing, was I started to go from goal-oriented to what she described as process-oriented. Like, she told this story about how she wanted to get to a friend’s house, and her car ended up stuck in a snowbank or something. She ran it off the road because she’s not a good snow driver. The cops dropped her off at this gas station, and so she just walked right in front of an 18-wheeler and went, “Hey, can you bring me to this place?” And that’s a very benign example, but she just keeps going, because the goal of “I want to get to my friend’s house” was there.

And so, in a more process-oriented way, let’s say with the checkout thing, I go, “What I’m trying to do is just get groceries. And I don’t need that to happen in 5 seconds from now for that to happen. That’s okay.” And I think what that’s doing is a non-MBT version of trying to break down the teleological thinking.

So, I read in our last interview that in teleological thinking, one equates desires with wants, and wants with goals. And that shifts it in a language that doesn’t require the mentalization. Because that’s what that is. When you say “process,” really it’s recognizing that this thing is just a desire. It’s not the immediate goal, and it’s allowing internalizing a more abstract and a more flexible goal.

So, I did that, and it would just be harder to maintain if I was emotionally heightened, and especially if I was triggered. And I just recognize all the weaknesses with that, and I recognize the weaknesses with leaning into a self-image that is at least better by default, because that still tends to reinforce the control mindset thinking. Because you hit it exactly: that in order to make that stuff internally consistent, you have to believe that hostile control is often enough necessary and useful, and thus the right course of action. And that’s in conflict with a healthier, more nuanced self-image directly. And they can’t coexist if you don’t want to keep the cognitive dissonance machine going.

Dawn: Yeah, like a friend of mine has a lot of values that she lives by, de facto. She calls them “standards.” And also has this idea that it would be more internally consistent or something to be fully evil, but then wouldn’t be able to have these standards. And so this drive for an internal consistency of motivations toward being evil is in conflict with the standards that serve very useful functions for societal existence. And yeah, then there’s this constant cognitive dissonance between those.

For me, it was the opposite: trying to uphold an image of not making mistakes and being perfect and everything, and totally failing at that, and trying to hide that from myself. And I suppose both of these extremes necessarily break down, then cause a lot of cognitive dissonance?

Tiffany: Yeah, I wanna take one moment to note how much yours is oriented around self-image, and then the other is oriented around avoiding self-image.

Dawn: Well, avoiding self-image is just another self-image, I suppose.

Tiffany: Yeah, just not caring what the self-image ends up being. Well, no, so, like, I internalized values like that early on, and I feel like it’s a springboard, right? When you start to connect those values – those standards you hold to yourself – to the actual impact they have on other people. It can start to turn into a self-image. Because when you realize the value of what you do for people… that’s almost definitionally what a healthy self-image is, right?

And for me, when I started that, it was just very hard to fight all of the other things. It was me reminding myself to fight all of these rigid social patterns. That’s just me reminding myself that when I’ve sat down to think of it, no, it broadly makes sense to be pro-social in these ways. And I’m gonna try and talk myself out of it, and manipulate myself out of it, but I know better, I thought about this before. And I shouldn’t waste my effort right now, and I should lean on that value, that standard I hold to myself.

But then again, at least for me, that did eventually start to recall why I came to those conclusions. And then, as that does, I started to feel things about them. And eventually, I’m able to get myself to get into the point where the rational thinking is there to determine course of action, not the thing that’s doing the reality testing itself. It’s not the thing determining who people are, and why, and what’s going on.

In a world where you don’t care about your self-image, and you don’t have empathy, or you don’t have much empathy, that’s what it all is. You’re just keeping this list of attributes. You’re keeping the score, really. Maybe you’re trying to do it in a healthy way, but you’re keeping the score of “What has this person typically done for me as I’ve done things for them?” etc., and trying to maybe analyze it holistically, but you’re doing it in this very data-oriented, rational way.

And even if it’s just cognitive empathy, empathy is thus another source of information, another source of data. And it’s just recognizing that people are trying to give you that information freely. But in a world devoid of that data stream, you’re having to figure out what somebody’s actually about, and whether they’re good for you, based on just all externalities. And so it just ends up being that.

Dawn: Yeah, that’s also ties it back to the teleological, non-mentalizing problems.

Psychopaths Can Drive Themselves Nuts

Tiffany: Yeah. That’s why psychopaths can drive themselves entirely fucking nuts.

Dawn: Drive themselves entirely fucking nuts?

Tiffany: Yeah, because that’s very obsessional. With stuff that concerns other people, cognitive or affective empathy really helps you know when you’ve come to a conclusion. And if you don’t have that, if you don’t have that inward information stream, you know, it leads you towards some paranoid thinking of thinking of all sorts of other things, because you don’t know where the good stopping point is.

And also, when you’re not really connected with them emotionally, it’s not an intuitive connection. Without that intuitive system to be connected to people, with your connection system suppressed or not there, you’re just going through all these possibilities of what might happen, what might not happen, what that means to you, what that means to them, just purely cognitively, and that’s obsessive. And without knowing where that ends. Without having an intuition to where that ends. If you have a very complex or a very stressful life, you’re gonna just drive yourself nuts.

Dawn: Yeah, I also see how lots of psychopaths struggle with having any kind of empathy or understanding of themselves – so, self-mentalization. And then come up with all sorts of theories of why they might be doing things, and struggle to actually find out why they’re doing things, because nothing probably resonates in any particular way, so everything seems equally likely. Probably have a lot of trouble introspecting on what’s actually going on.

Tiffany: Yeah, absolutely. And then having to just find out. You get pissed off for what seems like this reason when somebody does this thing in this way in this situation, and trying to extrapolate that externally. Imagine having to do that not just with other people, but to yourself. It’ll drive you nuts.

I remember in that M.E. Thomas interview I keep pulling from, she said that that can drive psychopaths nuts if they don’t have a more successful life, or just as you get older, that shit’s harder to keep up.

The saddest fucking part is, I can even remember myself being in the thick of that when my life was hard in certain ways, and I didn’t have as many faculties to handle it, or as much of a support network, and just truly driving myself nuts. Not realizing that I was going into psychosis or something, not feeling the stress, not recognizing my own suffering at all. And seeing a lot of the genuine contributing factors to it, but without seeing the emotional dimension to it.

You know, I’m not gonna just go, “Alright, I’m just gonna veg out in bed for 2 days straight. And do I really have to deal with all that right now? No. So am I going to deal with all of it right now? No! It’s giving your brain the time to reset.”

Dawn: Yeah, I imagine in this case, you’re probably actually not in touch with these internal feedback mechanisms and your actual feelings about the situation. I suppose a variation on that is if someone is in touch with it, but doesn’t trust it. Like me, by the way. Something is only real if I can reason from first principles why I’m experiencing it. And if I’m experiencing it but I don’t know why – like I cannot argue for it step by step – then it’s like, “Nope, that doesn’t make sense.”

Rationalism vs. Feelings

Tiffany: That is so delightfully rationalist-coded. That’s beautifully disgusting. That is my critique with the rationalist community. Not everything can be discovered from first principles, because you can have a first contact with something and not understand it, and you don’t have the building blocks to discover the first principles.

My argument against it would be – and I’m not even saying rationalism is dumb, I just mean it’s unbalanced, in my opinion – that we didn’t really discover chemistry via alchemy. We discovered chemistry by being scientific about alchemy. But alchemy really did start at the object level: “I do this, and then that happens. What even is this?!”

I just actually want to be really clear, I’m not against rationalism, because that’s the kind of thing that, A, brought us germ theory. And if people were more rational at the time, it would have been a lot easier to get people on board with germ theory when we figured it out, or we discovered the hints that it was likely true. Because if you think about it… if you think about germ theory versus miasma theory. Miasma theory seems just so bullshit. Like, it doesn’t pass the sniff test. But also, if you used the evidence at the time… Because what we didn’t understand without germ theory was that the pathogens could self-reproduce, that they were individual tiny organisms. And there was plenty of body of evidence, both scientific and just personal experience, that if you thought for even a second – if you were given the idea of germ theory – you’d go, “That makes a lot of things that have never made sense make sense.”

Dawn: Yeah, but one thing I observe is that in my circles, all the folks who are doing focusing and circling and authentic relating and are into mindfulness meditation and other types of meditative practice, they are all rationalists. Like, the rationalist community is just sort of the hub for that sort of stuff. So do you think that’s a reaction to some other type of rationality that neglected that? Or is that coincidence?

Tiffany: I think it’s three things. You yourself are going through that – that being in a very strict rationalist mindset pulls you away from your feelings. But it’s also pretty rational that mindfulness would help. Right? It’s pretty straightforward. Even if just giving yourself relaxation time, you can go, “Your brain giving an onslaught of information all the time is not healthy.” You have tons of reasons to engage in it even before you have experienced and know the true value of mindfulness.

And the third thing? Oh, rationalists, very rationally, are very much about self-improvement. It’s one of their big obsessions. And that’s actually my favorite thing about the rationalist community. Mindfulness just happens to be one of those things. It’s uncomplicated, it’s straightforward, and it has a lot of second and third order benefits. So I don’t think it’s any mistake that rationalists end up towards mindfulness for positive, negative, and neutral reasons all at the same time.

I would say, actually, if I were to make a real guess, I feel like that attitude of self-improvement – or what underlies it, where the rationalist person would question themselves – is the kind of thing that really lends a rationalist towards searching something like that out. That truth-seeking behavior. I think that underpins all of the above.

This is where I’m getting into philosophy, but this is one of those things that you can rationalize, but I think it has a very reasonable, if not logical but irrational, underpinning. It’s an extension of curiosity. And the way you extend it, the reason you extend it – whether you find something in yourself, to whether you want more, or just you have a moment where you realize you were really wrong about something from mindset or first principles, and you have that flash of going, “Have I been doing this with everything? I should at least consider it!” – that I think rationalism is just a very healthy extension of curiosity. Because ultimately, if you delve deep into all this stuff, I think you know as well as I, even if you just discover the same things you already know, you go, “Well, now I know how that works.” And it’s the curiosity button you’re pushing in your brain, really.

Dawn: Yum! I find it helpful how these communities install missing introjects for me. This curiosity thing, for example, has been super helpful for all sorts of reasons – for self-discovery, and for creating some kind of distance from otherwise overwhelming emotions, and still be able to understand them, still be able to learn from them.

Introjects and the Feeling of Lacking

Dawn: I know I want to take this back to the self-soothing and other purposes of introjects. There seem to be these three different types of people, these three different archetypes.

The one person who has all the healthy introjects, knows how to self-soothe, can use their curiosity to investigate their emotions, and has some kind of truth-seeking drive. When they notice something, then they wonder, “Oh, am I doing this with everything? Am I making some systematic mistake here that I can fix?”

And then there is the person who has all sorts of really bad introjects – all sorts of patterns from their parents that keep them stuck, keep them self-hating, keep them turning away their friends and losing relationships, and all sorts of… going to prison, I don’t know. All sorts of behavioral patterns that they’ve picked up from their parents or some peers in their childhood and that have not served them well.

But then there also seem to be people who have very few introjects, and maybe even themselves feel empty in a way, and don’t really know who they are. Sometimes borrow a particular introject from one person they meet while they meet the person, and then they’re alone at home again, and it’s gone, and they forget about it.

I see that some people seem to associate pathological narcissism with having particular unhelpful introjects – like parents who condition their children very traumatically in particular directions that are important for these parents. Or people who were just neglected a lot in childhood, and so mostly just lack all the helpful introjects. Both of these seem very different to me, but both of them have been called “narcissistic personality disorder” or “pathological narcissism” at different times by different authors, so I’m confused. What’s the connection between those, and with which can you empathize more? Why do they look so similar?

Tiffany: Because I think they both lead to a feeling of lacking.

The first one, the former… you punish yourself. And you deny yourself. So you end up with a feeling of lacking, because you never… You know, let’s say somebody with a more dependent mindset would apologize for enjoying themselves, because they’re afraid they’re being too much. And that introject leaves one with a sense of emptiness anyway.

I definitely empathize with that more, because my primary introject would be my father. But I still empathize with and understand the latter. Because there’s a lot of situations I haven’t had the time to experience it, have my own view on it. And I’ll end up spinning my wheels in my head. Or those will be the places that I don’t realize that I’m not fulfilling or serving. Because there’s no introject – healthy or unhealthy or neutral.

So, let’s say with my desire to do some writing, and my desire to do some art, for art’s sake, just doodle. I had art taken away from me, and then I had stuff that would lead me away from it reinforced when I was young. But I really do like doodling. But I don’t end up there.

When I start drawing, and I make anything that looks nice at all, it feels fucking incredible instantly. But I lack, really, any introject there, so some parts of my creative drive feel empty. Even with the chaos in my head.

I think it’s a spectrum. And it’s just harder to know the stuff that you’re, in a way, devoid of. You’re not devoid of it deeper down, if you can get all the chaos to go quiet. But you’re devoid of a reflex to lean towards it. If you don’t have an introject for something that you kind of really need.

I get that when I’m bored or sad. I’m wondering, and I’m trying to fantasize about what I’ll do in the future. I can find myself thinking of either very practical or very entrepreneurial things. And if I’m tired of it, or I’m just trying to prime myself to think of another way to re-fulfill my life, I can feel this weird emptiness. Like, “Yeah, but where am I supposed to go? There’s clearly something I’m not serving or not satisfying.”

Dawn: Hmm.

Tiffany: What is it? And I’ll be at a total loss. And I can only be at a total loss for so long before my brain will try to reflect something, go back to the things I already know. So I can empathize with both. And I think that it’s a spectrum. And again, I think it’s that both make you feel lacking. With the harsh introjects, my opinion would be that it gives you the feeling of lacking from self-denying yourself these things.

Dawn: Yeah, I could imagine that if someone ends up in a situation where they are just having fun, spending time with friends, but they have these introjects that drive them to be productive, then they might also end up self-hating for that. Like, “I’m currently not achieving anything, I’m falling behind the competition by just chilling here, and I’m such a slacker for that,” and feel the stress from that.

Tiffany: Yeah, and then not be in the moment, and just doing whatever. No, that totally happens to me all the time. Like if I’m at Kai’s house, and I see her parents talking, or I see the activities they’re doing and wishing… Like her stepdad and her cousin Z went out hunting. And I don’t want to go hunting. I just like firearms. I just like guns. Part of me – I’m Texan. That’s like super American. It’s like American squared.

I had to sell my pistol like a year ago. I would like to go with my friend Leon – I’ve reconnected with him, by the way, since the last interview – to the range. And just have fun with our guns, and have something of my own to bring, and not just be going back and forth between his Ruger hunting rifle, and his rifle that chambers .22s – these little tiny almost BBs of bullets. Those aren’t as fun for me to shoot at all. I prefer pistols. And the other reason I want to own a firearm is self-defense, and home defense? Rifles, shotguns make more sense, but you’re not gonna carry a rifle to defend yourself at the cafe or something.

So I don’t have an interest in the hunting, but it still brings up those feelings of what I’ve lost, the inadequacy, and then seeing the life he’s had, that he has this house, and he gets to do these things, and he has this property. And I end up thinking all about all that stuff, and comparing myself to him. Or maybe I’m talking with Kai, and it just makes me think of stuff that I would like to write. And then I just start thinking of all the things I haven’t written, and all the time I haven’t had because I’ve had to spend it searching for jobs. All sorts of things will bring out all of that judgment of myself for not being there yet.

And I have a lot of positive introjects with friends, but I have some counter-negative introjects, too. More from personal experience than an individual person. Like… I’ll be honest, I have a lot of trauma from being myself. From being afraid of myself, being like, “Am I gonna be the reason this all falls apart again? Am I gonna just terrorize somebody?”

Dawn: And a year or two later, never get to see them again.

Tiffany: And you know… it can hurt a lot to think about all those. It could just drive me nuts, even if I’m not in a space where I’m gonna feel guilty over it. Or I’m in a somewhat better space and I know better than to feel guilty over it. It’ll still make me feel hopeless, and helpless, or afraid of myself, and feel like I have no control, or afraid I don’t have anywhere near the control I think I need.

I don’t really enjoy being that kind of person. It can be kinda hard to sleep at night with who I used to be. Even knowing that my old self was usually very principled. Like somebody I recently connected with, our mutual friend Kyle, he’s like, “You know, back then, she even said she got why you did that, but you were just being a huge asshole about it. The reason was your friends, the reason was your principles, and she could understand you and didn’t hate you for it, but she deserved better than to be treated that way.”

And even knowing that I was ultimately a decent person, it still hurts.

Dawn: I wonder if this is a good segue to the topic about Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD), or traits, and the link to psychopathy?

OCPD and Psychopathy

Tiffany: So I got to thinking about that with our acquaintance Laura. Laura… she’s something. And it’s what I was going on and on about before, that being in that world without enough emotional grounding to yourself or emotional grounding to other people, you end up obsessive, because thinking about it more is how you solve EVERYTHING.

I remember recently reading this fiction about vampires, and the vampire virus makes your brain really smart. But vampires tend to be obsessive about things from how constantly and how fast they’re processing everything. And the trope of a vampire I think probably lines up to some murderers and manipulators and sadistic people. To historical psychopaths in the same way that we have the most culturally well-known example of a sovereignism, of a malignant narcissist, would be Maleficent, the Disney villain. We have these fairy tales of people doing monstrous things, and then we think they must be monsters.

So I do think there’s actually a through-line there that’s not a coincidence at all, just blurred by the line of fairy tale, and most of that stuff starting out as just spoken word, folk myth, and not being written down at first.

If I could give you a more concrete example: let’s say I was in this situation 3 years ago. I would not be able to think about really anything besides eating, having sex, or what I need to do to get a job, or what kind of job I need. Not that I can’t put some amount of energy into all of those. But if that’s really all I’m thinking, I’m still thinking about that when I just wouldn’t need to be.

I wish I knew more about the pathology of OCPD, so some of this is a little speculative. I think that one of the commonalities between OCPD and psychopathy would be the attitude of: “Well, I think this. And why do I need to question that I’m right if I figured it out? I’m probably right, I’m just gonna do it.”

It seems that having OCPD comes from a different source of seeing that these rigorous rules and rigidity is what leads towards things working the way that you want. Whereas with psychopathy, you’re given the mind where that might be your only tool of seeking that out, and you’ll end up there. But they both can have reduced empathy and remorse for basically the same reasons of over-externalizing, attributing all of your happiness and well-being and the way you understand the world around you to all externalities.

Dawn: Yeah, like I have some experience with a few friends of mine who have this sort of very addictive, or almost addictive in some cases, type of sadism, where they are kind of aware that they are seeking that kind of pleasure all the time. It’s not just for vengeance or something.

Tiffany: Boredom, yeah.

Dawn: Yeah, they try to control that, but also pretty extreme pleasure in some cases, so that I suppose even if they weren’t bored, they’d still prefer that. But they’re trying to control that in ways that seem very OCD to me, and so I’m wondering: if they get in touch more fully with themselves, with their feelings, with who they actually are beyond the teleological facade… would that help? Would getting rid of all of these obsessive and compulsive patterns help them become happier and have an easier time living a pro-social life, or would it be dangerous because these OCPD or OCD traits prevent them from acting on their sadism?

Tiffany: I think this almost more comes down to a faith in people. You’re basically asking if they got more in touch with themselves, would they be likely to then find out that doing this thing does have immediate pleasure? But even short-term, and definitely mid- and long-term, it has disadvantages. If you’re more in touch with your emotional self, you’re going to care about things that are longer-term. So I do think that that’s broadly true.

You know, that’s even assuming if it gets worse at first. I think that’s a common thread with some of these tougher disorders. NPD is sometimes said as the disorder that gets worse as it gets better at first. Because you’re uncovering all that self-hatred you pretended wasn’t there. You’re actually reflecting now, and you’re doing better, but it feels fucking terrible.

And maybe they might feel better at first, and do terrible things, and then go, “Huh. Yeah, but I really didn’t like it when that person never spoke to me again, either, because I kind of liked them.” Even if it’s a very shallow version, just like, “You know, Saga’s the only person I know that’ll talk about this one thing with me in depth, and what are the fucking odds that I’m gonna find another person like that? And I like doing that.” And you could easily, logically go, “How many different things in my life am I willing to write out about that?”

I guess what would maybe give me pause is if that’s not only a dominant part of their personality, but a primary one. If the primary thing in them is that they’re sadistic. I still would think there’s eventually a path forward, but I would then want to focus on managing it and finding better outlets first. Long enough for them to grasp onto some things that aren’t sadistic. So that as they get in touch with themselves, even if they did some really nasty things, it would eventually be much more likely to hit home.

Dawn: Is there a way… like, I think currently these friends of mine are too afraid of themselves to try anything. They want to be extremely self-controlled and never indulge anything.

Tiffany: Oh, man! Very. Then your question’s almost ridiculous. If they’re that afraid of themselves, the recovery is possible.

Dawn: But in what order? They can’t just be like, “Okay, I will stop being afraid of my murderous longings now,” because that has very sudden, very long-term effects on their lives. You need to just try and start with something easy, like indulge in some ice cream sometimes. I don’t know, how do you get there that you come to actually trust yourself?

Redefining Trust

Tiffany: I think that starts with a redefinition of trust. When I talk with people with BPD that have a different toxic relationship with self-trust, how I try to help them is I tell them that when you trust yourself, you’re not expecting yourself to never make a mistake. You’re expecting yourself in the long game to improve, as you would expect another person – that if they make a mistake, they care, and it will change over time. That the kind of person you can’t trust is someone who makes the mistake and either doesn’t care, or doesn’t do what they need to do to change it.

I think the start with that is just trying to internalize a more nuanced version of trust. Because for them, the problem is trust is absolute.

Hello, Farvel.

I think that’s one of the bigger problematic patterns here, is trust being so absolute. That doesn’t deactivate checking yourself, right? It’s just, “I’m not gonna just outright defy myself with no reason.”

Dawn: Oh, we have another interview guest! Hi, Farvel!

Tiffany: She’s so content already. Or are you getting restless again? What you want, Farvel.

Dawn: Farvel, farewell. I think what would concern them is that there are certain things for which they say that once is too many times, like murder and sexual assault and such. They don’t want to do that even once.

Tiffany: And you go, “Well, if you’re already able to get yourself to not do that even once, or at least once more, then you already have a logical way to trust yourself that that’s not likely.” So you’re at least trusting your current process as far as you know it, right? Again, I still think that it comes down to a more nuanced version of trust, to trust that current process they have. Because if they have that way of thinking, and they have that concern that then drives that fear in themselves, they do actually trust that process, but they’re not letting themselves feel that trust, or lean into that trust.

Dawn: So… The process is okay?

Tiffany: Oh, and then that’s like faith – because that’s faith or belief in yourself. That relates back to self-image. And relates back to letting yourself feel that. And that’s probably stuff they have walls up against. I know I do. We’ve talked about my redefinition of faith as a concept, to give myself faith in myself.

Dawn: Can you describe how this went for you when you developed all of these obsessive adaptations at some point, when they probably served a purpose? I know more recently you told me that you are confident that you don’t actually need them anymore at this point. Like, you trust yourself now sufficiently. What was this like at the time when they were still serving a purpose, and how did you get to the stage where you just think that they have run their course?

Tiffany: Well, the thing that changed is, I told you that I’m basically doing MBT with myself frequently. But I have a cognitive and emotional reflex towards either the imagined outcome of what would happen if I followed this through, or just pattern matching. I have mental reflexes that will kick in and get myself to re-evaluate myself without obsessively monitoring.

So in the past, I would be profusely dominated with strong, negative emotions and fantasies and desires. And I think at that point, it was partly because I didn’t have trust in myself, but that was partly justified. You know, if I was at work, and I found myself wanting to come home and raise hell for no good reason – but I didn’t realize it was no good reason yet – I’d be just obsessively going through the practical and emotional consequences of actions I actually wanted to lead out.

That kind of progressed into my form of cognitive empathy now, but I do also have a lot more positive patterns. I don’t need to do the cognitive empathy to synthesize a better default idea for a lot of situations. Like, if somebody’s nice to me, I’ll just say thank you, even if I felt fucking nothing. Because that’s ultimately less confusing, and who cares? And I don’t really need to put stock in that, or think about it. And at that point, the obsession hurts more than it gains. And again, I’ll have an intuition of when I do need to think deeper.

Dawn: Sounds a little bit like there’s this thread that they use for suturing to close wounds, but after a while it dissolves by itself, timed just right so that when the wound has healed, the thread also dissolves at the same time. So maybe OCD is a bit like that, or like a bit too long-lasting thread?

Tiffany: Yeah, OCD is like, “Okay, well, I sutured it in three different ways, and one of those ways doesn’t dissolve, and then I put a dressing on it, and then I bandaged it, and then I wrapped it in this stuff.” And yeah, maybe my arm that wanted to fall out into 5 pieces needed that. But when you get in the habit of restoring that every day, it’s hard to get out of that habit. OCD is a motherfucker and is very self-enforcing, so I’m having to take different, deliberate action to kinda get out of it. But everything I’ve said… it did serve a purpose, even if to cause the obsession to be helpful and positive, as opposed to negative. If nothing else, like a replacement behavior.

Dawn: Yum! Like, would you generally advise for sadism, for example, to not just suppress and distract and never indulge, but to find harmless replacement behaviors instead?

Sublimating Sadism (Dagorhir & SCA)

Tiffany: Yeah, cause if they’re anything like me, they could put it into aggression in some way. Like, one of the softest core versions of that is combat LARP. I did Dagorhir (D-A-G-O-R-H-I-R) combat LARP in Pennsylvania. There’s several forms of that kind, and they call it “wacky bats,” because you have these foam swords and other foam weapons, and they’re designed to a strict standard that, at least with Dagorhir, you can REALLY wallop somebody. Probably the only gross risk is maybe breaking a small bone like a finger. It becomes tolerable.

And not all of them are like that. Some of them are more roleplay intensive. But Dagorhir was just good old wacky bats, motherfucker. One example of the culture in Dagorhir is the person being attacked kind of determines whether the attack was strong enough. So let’s say I’m fighting somebody, and they don’t really hit me very hard. I’ll go, “Light, light, light, light! Let me show you how hard you’re supposed to hit me!” Just clock them with my 55-inch red.

And oh, man, I miss that! So even the culture of Dagorhir was very sadistically and power-and-controlling pleasurable. Everything about it was great. But it had all sorts of healthy and pro-social aspects to it.

Stuff like that is just a more aggressive equivalent to how a more typical person might sublimate their anger into working out at a gym. And I think that’s more accessible to somebody with sovereignism. Kind of commanding yourself to get past something.

There’s BDSM and kink scenes… Getting into a contact sport? For girls, you could do roller derby. For guys, you could do hockey. Hockey’s a great example, because hockey’s the only sport with jail, right? Just expect fights to happen. And so there is an upward bound to what’s acceptable. It’s not entirely unokay to just get pissed off at maybe even your teammate and go punch him in the fucking face or something. Worst case, you even just get ejected from the game. You’re not gonna get banned from the sport if you don’t permanently injure somebody.

And with Dagorhir, too, there’s still also soft limits. You don’t need to hit anybody more than twice for them to be considered dead and have to go back to start and respawn. And unless you’re into everyone trying to pile onto you, you don’t want to hit somebody as hard as possible every time, or you will make yourself the target.

If they’re more about the body control, you can get into European – either Italian or German – sword fighting, so not the normal fencing, usually, but the broadsword stuff. And if they really want tough, and they have the time and the money to make metal armor, there’s something called SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism). SCA’s weapons are wooden, and so let’s say an SCA helmet has a maximum hole size. You know, with your wooden sword, you don’t want to be able to accidentally go through somebody’s helmet and poke out their eye. But you’re also allowed to just brawl, just fucking walk up and grapple or just punch them right in the fucking face. You’re armored, so you’re allowed to just fight.

Dawn: It’s critical that all these parts have a certain ritual to them – that you go to a particular place that has a particular aesthetic, and a particular smell, and you put on particular clothes for it, and you pay, you check in and you check out, so that the time during which you indulge in these pleasures is delineated at the beginning and at the end.

Tiffany: Yeah, maybe. It feels like, “Okay, I did a session of this.” I feel like there’s also a social aspect. SCA has the strongest social aspect of all this, because they actually have a fiefdom hierarchy thing going on. For real.

With Dagorhir, we’d have our group, you know. Sometimes we’d do smaller skirmishes, brandishing our colors and being part of a bigger thing. But with SCA, the people you’re fighting with and alongside… there’s almost some degree of, “Yeah, well, I’m winning for my team’s honor. I am jousting that motherfucker in the face for my team’s honor, too.” And there’s royalty there. And there’s actually a pretty positive culture around that.

So it may even be a good thing that with maybe the most violent of these, there’s the most safeguards in place, and there’s the strongest social structure. Like, you want to be a part of these people. And you will have more fun if you do that. Or it’s basically necessary.

I think a lot of these are important just by also introducing a pro-social framework that has soft bounds in which this thing is either allowed, encouraged, or just literally necessary.

Dawn: Yeah, I wonder whether that makes something like Dagorhir or SCA superior to, for example, street fighting? I don’t know a whole lot about street fighting, but from what I’ve heard, these people didn’t really know each other, and they were also just sort of meeting up in random places, and there’s probably a lot less ritual and culture and such around it. I would imagine that it’s higher risk of spilling over, or perhaps in the case of my friends, they would probably not trust themselves to let themselves go if they don’t have this clearly delineated ritual to it.

Tiffany: Yeah, no, I… You know, I’ll stop and say street fighting is fun. But in the right circle. People aren’t going to probably let you kill somebody, or maim them past a certain point, because they’re there for fun, ultimately. But if it’s more random, you never know who you’re gonna meet.

Dawn: Yeah, cool. Thanks for all these insights. I’d like to switch to a slightly different topic. There is this question here about hating one’s own weakness, or hating weakness in general. I think you mentioned at some point that you hated yourself for perceived weaknesses. Is that still a problem? And in general, what can one do about that?

Tiffany: Yeah, that’s totally still a thing I suffer from, even if it’s not an emotional reaction, just the way I think, my frame of mind, or just habits. It’s where most of my pathological emotional suppression comes from.

Hating Weakness

Tiffany: I might just be anxious in a situation, and instead of just letting myself feel it and let it be no biggie, I’ll be trying to talk myself out of the anxiety when maybe it’s just so completely reasonable to feel that it’s not gonna go away like that. It can be as mundane as that.

But it can be as much as like: “Alright, well, Tiffany, you plan on staying up all night and all day, so you will stay up until 9pm. You will make no exceptions, and you will rest, and you will get up. And after you eat, the first thing you will do is you will start looking for a job. Because until you make headway on that, what the fuck are you worth? Well, you’re a useless sack of shit. You’re not gonna be able to support yourself, because you keep letting yourself get away with it.”

And the problem of where that gets projected onto other people is because of internalizing that that’s the right and most helpful, most productive way to be. I would say that’s also my primary barrier with empathy, too. Like with the incident at Kai’s Thanksgiving. In my head, just being like: “Why don’t you just shut up for a minute? Why don’t you just not apologize? Is it really that fucking hard?” And the answer is yes, you know? But I’m seeing it as weakness, and in a heightened emotional state when I was triggered like that, it’s very hard to see outside of that pattern.

I’ve always seen that as more of a means to an end. My base goals for the longest time were just financial success, and being able to go and see people, and party whenever I want. And so I’d see strength as the thing that gets me the job I want, makes me perform every day. Keeps my house in order, etc.

I’ve had a different view of it normally when it’s allowing a negative situation to happen. That’s definitely what happened at Kai’s when I backed her car into her house. It’s like, “How was I not looking at the rearview camera her car has? How am I so weak that I can’t just be more patient and take more time and think it through?” And the real answer is I just made a mistake. So there, it’s harder to find the tolerance with.

My pathway has been to just value things other than strength. Seeing more means to these ends was initially a very easy thing to add before I had internalized more kinds of goals than “make a lot of money.”

Dawn: Yeah, ironically, I feel like giving you a hug, but then I would make you feel weak or something as a result.

Tiffany: No, I think this is like the perfect time for that, because I would actually feel like it’s a hug of, “You’re so strong, you learned how to not have to be strong.” I feel like that actually exists in this moment.

Dawn: It’s perfect. Aww, thank you! I was also wondering whether it might be useful to just value a lot of things. Like, if someone just values a hundred things – they value strength, and they value insight, and they value capacity to apologize, and 90 other things that one could value. Then that could give someone just a lot of flexibility for how to view a situation, jump between viewpoints very flexibly. Like, they’re not attached to any one of them, and when they have some narcissistic injury along one dimension, then there are 99 other dimensions along which they are unharmed.

Tiffany: Yeah, no, I think that would work. Even if those standards come back to control, which still seems to be the through-line here, the thing isn’t always strength that that standard is trying to uphold. Those kind of rules people set for themselves are good pathways to valuing things, and I think that’s a good pathway to self-reflection, too. Because then you start asking yourself, “Why do I have that standard I hold myself to? Why would I want anybody to have that standard for themselves? And why would I value it?”

Dawn: Yeah, like I’m also thinking of myself. Last time I had some kind of injury, it was about thinking that I had already healed something, and then noticing, “Ouch, actually, I’m somewhat less healed than I had thought.” And then I was like, “Damn, that hurts.” But at the same time, it didn’t change anything about 99% of my view of myself, so I was still very stable in that situation. Could ask for help, could ask someone to support me at all, and then a couple hours later, I felt great.

Tiffany: I think it’s also funny how rational-coded of a narcissistic injury that is, right? Like, “Oh man, but aren’t I so good at improving myself? Apparently not!” I love it. And that’s probably actually one of the reasons why it was so easy to tank and to soothe, because it has so many other moving parts backing it by nature.

Dawn: Yeah, the next question is actually one that cancels out the previous one really nicely, or complements it. What are the things that you’re most proud of, that you like about yourself most, and appreciate most about yourself these days?

Tiffany’s Appreciation of Herself

Tiffany: Let’s see here. I like that I’ve really leaned into pouring my creativity into everywhere, and showing myself again that I’m just generally creative.

I want to take a pause and just say that I have a hypothesis that this little bugger is why I’m a little more in touch with my emotions at this point in the conversation. Just cause I’m petting your fuzzy belly. She’s winking and happy.

Anyway, I like that I try to be productively helpful, and I’m good at not forgetting the real point of why I set out to do something. Like if I’m trying to fix somebody’s shed door, and it turns out all the wood in the shed’s rotted, I don’t get stuck as easily. I’ll be like, “We just can’t do anything about it today, let’s just go get a tarp.” I’m much better at switching gears.

I like that I seem to be somebody that makes somebody comfortable with saying no. Somebody who is afraid that there’s gonna be backlash when they say no – that I feel like a really comfortable person to them to say yes or no. And I think that’s harder than being somebody that someone’s comfortable saying yes to by a wide margin.

I like that I’ve turned this drive towards hard-won knowledge and sharing it and empowering other people by giving them back that agency, or even meta-agency, that ability to rediscover and reinvent themselves. And combined with my creativity, I’m happy I’ve put that into a wholly new pursuit – this psychology and personality disorder stuff, and emotions – that I thought I was never gonna be good at.

Farvel has changed to using her teeth and claws. We are playing. It is more distracting, but it’s fun.

I like that I’ve learned to enjoy the simple pleasures a lot more. Just going and sitting with friends in a diner, just taking a drive. Just reading a book, just watching a show. Just petting my crazy cat. I mean, that was very hard for me. I was very caught up in all the complicated things. Life felt so complicated.

I like that I started changing my career to sales, and I haven’t backed down on it. I’ve pivoted that in a completely unrelated different direction. It’s not machining this time. It’s sales. And so I obviously have some skill there in my capacity to rediscover myself and my capacity to learn on the fly.

I like that I push people to really, really see themselves first, and that I’ve learned to do it in a way that doesn’t forget other people. I like that I’ve become a pretty good listener. That was monumentally, grotesquely hard. I like that I am somebody that somebody can come to for emotional comfort, at least sometimes.

I like that I own my capacity for cruelty and evil. And I own it, as opposed to feel like it’s this uncontrolled or hard-to-control thing. It’s just one of the myriad many things that I am.

One last really specific thing: I am really happy that some friends have come forward to me and told me that they were able to find closure with their feelings of their narcissistic mom, dad, or ex, because they realized I’m making hard choices to be better, and that means their abuser didn’t make those choices, and they were never responsible for their abuser’s happiness. Ever. That abusive person always could have made those tough choices, and that’s on them. And it’s relieved them. I always hoped something like that would happen, and I really like it is, because it’s really empowering, and it reminds me of how tough the choices I make are, even if a lot of the time I feel like I don’t have a choice. But I guess that’s just me saying I just wouldn’t not do it. That’s not who I am.

Dawn: Yeah, awesome! Congrats!

Tiffany: Thank you.

Dawn: I was also wondering, like, people are often confused when psychologists talk about “objects.” Like within the object relations tradition, it just means “person” or something, it’s a super generic term. But people are often talking about “seeing other people as objects” when they really mean something like teleological, non-mentalizing.

Viewing People as Objects

Dawn: I find that to be a really apt metaphor, though. I don’t do projection as far as I know, but when a pen drops from the table, I get pissed at this pen for dropping. Or if I get some of my hair dye onto the shower curtain. I’m like, “Pen, that’s your own fault for falling down, I’m not gonna pick you up.” Or, “Shower curtain, you’re such an idiot, why are you getting in the way of my hair dye?”

So I think the analogy of saying that people who have this teleological non-mentalizing going on all the time – that they view other people as objects – is actually relatively apt. How would you explain what this is like to have this kind of non-mentalizing mode, and how has this changed over time? Have people sort of gained more depth? And in which cases are they distinguished from literal objects, and in which cases do they resemble literal objects more?

Tiffany: Well, my experience with it is like… You know, there’s weed vape pens, and they’re round, and they’ll just fall off the fucking table. Well, I have ones that are square, and they don’t fall off the table.

When you view things in that teleological, non-mentalizing way, you’re seeing things as like, “Well, that’s your nature, don’t you know better than to indulge in it?” You know, my father would say when he was pushing me to go to college: “People who take a break don’t go back.” Like that’s just human nature. If you do that, it will lead to that, so don’t do it, or that’s gonna happen, and you’ll end up a failure.

It’s this viewing people with this rigid, assumed nature. You’ll see that come out maybe more readily with someone who just has NPD going, “Wait, people aren’t basically selfish?” And I’m like, “Oh! Man, no, I’m like that, and I’m just assuming everybody else is! Oh, great, fun!”

So when you see people like that, you do just see like Newton’s Cradle. Like you pull back the ball and it hits the other balls and it moves them. You see the external stuff that leads towards the current or a possible future outcome.

Dawn: Hmm.

Tiffany: Understanding, valuing, and seeing people’s internal experiences being more real changes that. Just because you realize that’s not why people are being the way they are. They did that because they felt stir-crazy. They felt that way because they were so excited, and they couldn’t stop themselves. And you connect with the joy, the pain that they go through. And so even before it feels very real, it at least starts to really make sense that somebody else has some other goals.

Like, I have the long-term goal of having my own little personal machine and fabrication shop. Somebody might have a long-term goal of just getting a car. And there’s a lot of moving parts in making that happen. They might not even have a license yet. But then the real reason they’re doing that is so they can see their friends. So they don’t have to waste all their time and energy just getting groceries. You begin to see that in people.

And you realize when somebody helps you, it’s because they want that thing to be easier for you, or they know how hard it is without it. And that they genuinely care about relieving the suffering, or the happiness it brings. And feeling that’s real – that’s been kind of first to me. And then I’ll start to more intuitively see that in other people.

And then also just interest. You start to be interested in how somebody got here, or at least all the bullshit they had to go through. And then eventually that connects with how it leads to their goals, how it leads to how they’re feeling. And as those connect, then somebody really starts to have a depth. They feel like they have a life they’ve gone through. And there feels like a weight to it.

But that’s been an incredibly long time coming. Like if I don’t specifically think about it with you, I’d have to really specifically think about imagining you progressing through that and stuff. But I have more and more reasons to think about that, and sometimes those things do just hit on their own. There’s just something within me that it happens to resonate with, and it’ll click.

Why is my nose so itchy? Pardon me. Probably because I’m just slightly allergic to most animals and just had a lot of contact with my cat.

So I think your analogy works, at least for a bird’s eye view. If you could at least somehow add into there that it’s about seeing people only via a myopic, assumed view of their nature – of people’s nature, as if everybody’s nature is the same. Like we’re all the same kind of object, the same kind of machine. Then that is a more complete view.

Dawn: Yeah, a bunch of identical pins or something. A friend of mine recommended a movie to me that seems to have this as sort of a central theme: Anomalisa? I haven’t watched it yet.

The Capacity for Love

Dawn: I was wondering, though, is that also connected to your capacity to love? I think you told me that you’ve gained the capacity for love recently?

Tiffany: Yeah, you know, if I’m being compassionate just from my values and cognitive empathy, I’ll maybe connect with somebody’s goal or struggle at a time. But the moment I start to feel like they’ve done a lot of things that are setting themselves up poorly, I can definitely too easily go back into my more judgmental shape, and just be like, “Why the fuck did you do this to yourself?”

But if I’m closer with the person, I will at least be in the habit of wanting to see the smile on their face, of actually valuing them. I’ll know more of their story. If I have one of those fleets of judgments, I’ll have stuff in mind that will make me go, “Yeah, but do I really want to think of them like that? Don’t I know them better than that?”

Let’s say some people I’m very close with, like Riley, or my housemate, Rowan. I really vibe with Rowan. And they live their life very differently than me. One of the ways Rowan relates herself to me is she said she’s a big collection of beige flags. And she’s done a lot of things that to me would be very passive. But I’ve internalized this valuing of who she is and why. She supports the people in her life. But she also doesn’t want to rock the boat every chance. There’s a lot of things where she’s just lived and let live, when maybe she really should have moved on. But that’s kind of counter to some other parts of herself. And I will much less readily jump to the judgment. And so I have some love for her. It definitely started with her providing this house to live in for me without complex stipulations. And for Riley. Because Riley needs a place. Riley’s important to me.

See how if I have an actual love for the person, it’s a lot easier. I’m not talking myself into something or talking myself out of something. The way I learned love with Riley was it started out like I just at first realized that they put up with so much of my shit. And that at least gave me the reason to have almost unqualified, but deep emotional trust with them. And then from there, I learned that they are interested in my happiness broadly. Not just in this moment, but through life. Period. And they really understand and feel for the struggles I’ve gone through that have led me up to this point.

And I’m just like… “And that’s never gonna go away. And you love me! The reason you forgive me isn’t cause you think I’m worth being put up with. You just love me.”

And that was a lovely moment. The very first time I really felt that, it caught me off guard. It was harder for me to commit back the same way. It took a while before I felt my same love for them… But that also grew. And there’s truly a wonderful feeling when you realize you both love each other. You know, you feel all that fuzzy feeling?

Dawn: Yep.

Tiffany: Yeah, I had just not experienced that, I think, until late 2023? Early 2024? And it caught me off guard. I’m like, “Wait, this is what love feels like? What? Love has a feeling?”

Dawn: Which is…

Tiffany: The silliest sentence ever! Like, of course it does. It’s a feeling. Love has a feeling. And, hmm. Already missing my cat, thinking about that. I love her so much! She’s my little girl!

Dawn: Yeah, I hope that answers the question. I wonder whether your ability for affective or emotional empathy is also connected to that. You said you need to be in a good state of mind, and look at someone you care deeply about, and then focus your attention just right, and then you can experience it sometimes. I was wondering whether you have instructions for how to actually get there for people who’ve never experienced emotional empathy?

Three Steps to Emotional Empathy

Tiffany: Yeah, it’s a 3-step process.

Number one, you gotta understand mirroring. You have to understand their happiness for you is their own happiness, just cause they like you being happy. And you didn’t make them do it. They saw the smile on your face, and they’re just happy for you. So you need to do that… that also reinforces that your emotions are separate, which is the base thing of empathy.

And then you need to be able to be in the moment, in a positive way, trying to enjoy things. Or if you’re trying to comfort somebody, be in the moment and allow yourself to experience whatever. If you’re trying to help somebody, maybe understanding their negative feelings will help you help them better. Be open to it, because maybe you’ve gone through the same sort of just insane bullshit struggle and it’d be nice to not feel alone. That second step is mindfulness. To allow the feelings to happen in the first place.

And then what I try to do is, if you can get that far, as they’re telling me what’s going on, I’m trying to put myself in their shoes. Instead of just imagine it, because that’s different than imagining it from my perspective. Try to imagine it from their perspective. As they’re telling you things, let it paint a picture in your mind. Let it not have immediate reference to what you understand about yourself. Just trust that you can understand what a person means with what they say, and imagine that it’s them. And if that connects with something you can emotionally vibe with, odds are you have good chances of feeling something.

I remember one of my most recent moments when I was just struck by it was with my housemate, Rowan, and they were telling me something they went through, and I actually felt bad for them. And that’s the rarest one, for sure.

Or let’s say my housemate Lauren, who I enjoy as much as she can be annoying – but I’m sure I can be the same way, so it’s not a judgment! Often I’m just in a weird mental state, or I’m worn the fuck out. And she’ll be telling me something she’s excited about. And I’ll remind myself: “She’s telling me this stuff because she’s comfortable with me. She wants to share this with me.” That’s again, that mentalization thing. So this is a little deeper than mirroring, but I’m reminding myself of her intent. That it matters to her to share this with me.

And in reminding myself of her separate mind state, her separate intentions, desires, and feelings, I can go, “Wow, yeah, no. I’m happy you’ve gone through that, because that was really important to me when that first happened for me, too.” She’s a younger trans girl, and I’m helping her through some stuff. And I can feel the sense of milestones. But I do have to just kinda clear my head of all the fucking bullshit that’s going on, and just listen to her – that mindfulness thing.

I said that out of order, but those are still those three things: Reminding yourself the other person’s emotions are separate/their intent, and then mindfulness, and then trying to let it evolve. I just listened, and I thought about it, and I’m like, “Yeah! That’s fucking fantastic, Lauren!”

Dawn: Oh, that’s so sweet! Yeah, I hope that enough people will see that and be able to reproduce it, or we can make it part of the handbook.

Tiffany: We’re definitely making it part of the handbook. Even if not explicit steps. Or maybe part of the tips and tricks. Because I think for someone just starting recovery, all three of those individual steps can be incredibly challenging, and they can be even more challenging to hold together simultaneously.

Dawn: Yeah, we’ll need some more instructions. I suppose I should add for the viewers that we’ve been thinking about creating a recovery handbook for Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Tiffany: Yeah. There’s not a lot of good literature around it for the person trying to do it. And I think that’s very important for somebody with NPD, because odds are, they’re going to want to do it themselves.

Dawn: Even if they’re with a therapist, they want it to be…

Tiffany: Their own fucking handiwork, they wanna own it. They want the sense of pride. They want to be the person to do it. They want to be where the buck stops.

Self-Sufficiency and Rebellion

Dawn: Yeah, I was wondering about self-sufficiency, whether that’s more often a rebellion against a dependency on society in general, or dependency on a particular other person, or even a rebellion against a dependency on oneself.

Tiffany: Well, just as an aside, for something like this, it’ll be part of the identity diffusion. It’ll be interleaved with your genuine desire for self-sufficiency. It’s likely to be an authentic part of the person, too, even if they have a reactive element. That’s the reason why someone would develop NPD instead of BPD, because they have this lean towards being that kind of person.

You’re saying rebellion against self or society? I feel like that’s just down to one’s lived experience. It really depends, I would say, if it’s someone with NPD, it’s where you find their resentment lies. Do they feel like they weren’t given a fair chance in life? Do they feel like they’ve just not been recognized for what they already are? That might be more down to an individual person, like their boss, or their father.

Do they feel like they had it, or they were going to have it, and they fucked it up? And they failed at either keeping it or achieving it? And that would probably be more rebellion against the self. I think that’s just very individual.

Dawn: Yeah, I imagine that psychopathy could factor into it for lots of people. Sort of, if they haven’t internalized these norms of society, they do feel like they are being fettered by them. And then that systematically leads people with a psychopathic bend to feel that they need to rebel against society itself to maintain their self-sufficiency.

Tiffany: I think that hits the nail on the head. I’ll give my one psychopath friend as an example. He showed up to that wedding with me dressed as a deliberately disheveled clown. He even had a rope belt. Actually, I think that was the coolest thing. But when I met him, I didn’t know that that’s how he was gonna show up. He wants to be what he is at face value, and people can take it or leave it. So I think that’s an example of that interleaving with an authentic value towards radical authenticity.

Another typical psychopathic value I’ll bring back to myself. With my value of self-determination. Feeling like I can’t let myself make the mistakes that contribute to making the world worse in the way that it holds me down.

Like, my pharmacy is really far away now – well over an hour away. But when it was 30 or 40 minutes away, I would still drive all the way to them, because I’m like, “No, I’m going to maintain my loyalty to this place that’s treated me right, because they’re this little tiny pharmacy.” And I will not allow myself to waiver from supporting this, or they’re just gonna disappear.

A negative would be… I will never own an iPhone. I think that’s an easier one for people to understand. Apple really makes the world shittier in a lot of ways. And I definitely judge people for owning an iPhone, even if it is useful for them. Because in the long term, it will still make it shittier for them in other domains. It contributes to making “Right to Repair” worse. It contributes to slave labor in other countries. And that actively adds to the world, so there’s things I will not allow myself to do. That is in defiance of the world that has held me back.

But the same thing came out in high school in a more nasty way. Seeing all these people with better families and better support, and being able to juggle their responsibilities – and totally ignoring my own lackings in keeping up on my homework and shit, and blaming the system. Or with all my fucking speeding tickets. Being a very hard case to talk myself out of not just blaming the system. I went to jail for just speeding tickets for 30 days once. Pennsylvania does suck, mind you. Most of our speed limits are based on the physics of cars from the 60s. And speed traps just generating money for little shit towns. And that’s all true, but is it really that hard of myself to ask myself to not do 95 in a 65?

So no, it totally can happen. If I imagine myself more like my friend who never learned to socialize in the same way… He said as much that that definitely held him back. And that’s genuinely true. But it can lead one to resentment of, like, “Fuck that, then I’m just necessarily not going to conform, because it won’t get me anything anyway, I don’t know how to do it right, who cares?” And I say that critique even valuing what he does. I think it’s cool.

Dawn: Yeah, that kind of leads into a question. For me, the analogy that came to mind was that my social anxiety caused me to be very introverted de facto for a long time. It was very hard for me to build and maintain friendships, and to even notice in the first place that that would have been beneficial. And then once the social anxiety was gone, and I started to be more extroverted, a lot of these things just sort of automatically fell into place. So how did you rewire yourself to want to do things and to do things more automatically and more fluidly?

Rewiring Social Habits

Tiffany: There’s two things. I did used to be way more asocial. I just defiantly didn’t want to take part in all sorts of things because I felt like I had been outcast. And I’m just like, “Fine. Then I’ll just be the fuckin’ outcast asshole.”

I really didn’t start to be the kind of social butterfly I am until I was like 27. I knew all these car guys from 4chan, and we made the “Dirty Jersey Car Meet.” And I started meeting them, and they liked me, and they thought I was interesting, and I went, “Okay, I do have a place in this world.” And it was just fun. And it was just this activity I liked.

But I will dig it up with my career. So I got a taste of software engineering, which is the thing I wanted to do my whole life. But I crashed out of it. I only had a year, 12 months of it. And then I went back to machining. And really, for me, it was transitioning. Because I didn’t pass as well at the time, and it made it such a hostile fucking environment. But the other part of that is not adding more scars to my hands and body unnecessarily on somebody else’s dime.

I was stuck in Kentucky for a year and a half, and for a year, I was part of NAMI Bowling Green. I was officially their secretary, and I was on the Board of Directors. And initially, just having that title, Secretary – I was able to… that made me feel important. And that was enough to start me, to motivate me to do even more and change other patterns.

But that still rings true with my career stuff. Instead of feeling like, “I’ll never get the kind of career I want, I’ll always have these jobs that suck because this is all I’ve ended up being good at because my dad bullied me into being a mechanic,” I had to challenge that. My dad had put this weird idea in my head that salespeople are just useless because it’s easy. And the reality is, is that he and I have a certain set of skills. So we don’t see it as too difficult.

And to just allow myself to be good at what comes easy. Not force myself to do what was more difficult just because that felt like that must be where the real value in this world is. And not just tangibly, because you know when you’re machining, you’re making real stuff. But like when I was designing and selling closets, I was using real, tangible skills. I was coming up with a real layout and a real solution for their needs. I was just also trying to upsell them on things and stuff. You know, those skills that seem soft in one way might really be more tangible than one thinks. Like, I can get really freakin’ poetic about the skills that made me a good machinist, but it still made a tangible thing. It all starts in here, and it initially feels intangible, no matter how tangible it works out.

So for me, it’s been still kind of outcome or goal-oriented in that way, right? I see sales as this expression of my soft skills? And then, thus, this is a way to use my soft skills as a pathway to make decent money eventually. And that money gets me the machine shop that I actually own, that I want, etc.

I’m not sure I know how to speak about it well outside of it being goal-oriented, but just opening one’s mind to that there’s other ways to achieve the same dreams, aspirations, or goals than the rut you think you’re permanently stuck in – that you feel resentful that you’re stuck in – can be really, really powerful, in my opinion.

Dawn: Yeah, I resonate a lot with this idea of doing something hard instead of the thing that’s easy for you, because it feels more like work. It feels more like external confirmation that I’m doing the right thing or something, as opposed to actually having fun whilst also being effective.

Tiffany: Yeah, and like when I’m gonna go to type up those bullet points I gave you… That will still feel like work, right? Like, I haven’t picked the day to do it, because I’m gonna need to give myself a few hours. It’s still gonna feel like work, I’m just also going to enjoy doing it, most likely. Definitely gonna enjoy the result. We don’t need a toxic relationship with labor.

Dawn: Yeah. I’m wondering whether you would also like to take a quick break? I’d like to make a coffee, would pause the recording for a bit.

Tiffany: Yeah, I think I will make myself coffee as well.

Dawn: Mmm, perfect, yeah, then let’s do that.

Tiffany: Bye. See you in a bit!

(Break)

Dawn: And we’re back from the break, as they say on Psychology in Seattle. It’s always like “We’ll need to take a quick break,” and then a second later, “We’re back from the break,” and yeah, that was a very quick break.

Tiffany: Yeah, you have no idea if it was 30 seconds or 30 days.

Dawn: Yeah, no idea. And our listeners also won’t know how long our break was. You mentioned last time that you have certain mood states that you currently cycle through sometimes – not like these alters that you used to have once upon a time, but sort of relatively well-connected mood states. And yeah, I was wondering which ones those are, and how your friends can help you manage those if they want to help you get out of one, or get into another one. What you would like them to do?

Managing Mood States (Self-Pity)

Tiffany: Well, I’ll start with self-pity, so I can start thinking about it. And then I’m probably gonna have to come back to it, because my intuition would be my answer is: I don’t know what you’re gonna do! Slam me against the wall? That worked last time! Anyway, no, I’m not joking at all!

So… when I get into self-pity, it’s like self-defeatingness. I will go as far as saying, “No, you know, I believe things could be worth it, but I just don’t want to live through it, even.” And I don’t know, if I can see it in the time, I have to be reminded that the joy is there, and the joy is frequent, and the weight of the world just feels upon me.

I guess I answered it. For once, I’ve remembered what has worked. But I’ve gotten angry, too, and been like, “No, but I… I know I get happy sometimes, but it’s still not worth it.” And it’s just like reminding me of any one really good time, or reminding me of… What did I just say? See, I have this much trouble remembering what it is. If I get myself in that head zone, to try and remember it.

Dawn: Well, we are like 3 hours 28 minutes into the interview, so you can now record the reminder to yourself, and then I turn that into a YouTube short, and whenever you need that reminder, you can play it back.

Tiffany: Yeah, no, I remind myself that the joy happens. It’s definitely more frequent. And what I’m going through is just as temporary as the joy can be. But also, for me, it’s just like reminding myself: “Tiffany, you’re just sad you don’t have a job right now, and you can’t afford to go do anything. And getting another job sounds like it’s gonna suck. And at first it will, and you’re right. But just like before, it’ll probably turn around!”

That one can be hard to get me out of, because I’ve argued against that during there. I wonder if somebody could just tell me, “Tiffany, do you really believe you can’t do it? Do you actually believe that you can’t do it?” And getting me to challenge my feelings of helplessness or hopelessness? Because that’s really the thing I’m obscuring, this feeling of helplessness or hopelessness.

I’m sorry, one second, my cat’s about to cause herself a problem. Bargains with cats. She’s trying to play with the lid on a soda. And I don’t want her trying to caffeinate herself, so I’m just gonna take the lid off and let her play with it.

Dawn: Dang it!

Tiffany: Well, she likes the straw anyway. Alright, that’s good enough. I really don’t need a caffeinated Norwegian Forest Cat. Oh my god.

Dawn: Long cat becomes fast cat, too.

Tiffany: I’ve seen her in zoomies, and it is truly a brown blur, but faster. She flew by the kitchen door. And it’s not that she was a blur, it’s just very briefly you could see this long brown mass in view, and then the immediate blip next, you could no longer see her. It was silent, just… How fast is she going? Oh my god.

Anyway, yeah, self-pity is… It’s not necessarily the most frequent one, but it’s the one that sucks the most to get out of. I’ll get into a state of not really wanting to get out of bed, really. For a number of reasons. I even get helps being… that’s easy, that’s intuitive, even. I can just be told that I’ll enjoy myself once I get up, or I’ll feel like it’s worth it once I get up, whether I’m going and running an errand, or I wanna get up and… Oh, like when I had to get up and go to the Thanksgiving, and had to be reminded by an outside source that, yes, I will enjoy myself when I get there. Because can I really argue with Riley over that? No, because I know they know me.

Dawn: Hmm, yeah, I know this problem. Sometimes I also have to force myself to do things that I know cognitively will make me happy.

Tiffany: Yeah. Or let’s say if I get into my kind of obsessive, I don’t know, panic? One is, let’s say, making a character for a tabletop RPG like Pathfinder. Really, I just need to stop and let my brain calm down. There’s a lot of… anytime I’m gripped by something. But I just can’t get my mind off of it, because I’m OCD locked. I just need to take a second, because what I’m really doing is I’m trying to solve the emotions. And then magically have no problem sometime. And the real answer is, I got overwhelmed, or just a lot happened in my head, and I just need to take a second.

That could happen just if somebody’s talking to me, and we get into some emotionally deep stuff, and I just wasn’t ready for it. Like if I just don’t know the person well yet, and I don’t know how they’ll react… Don’t know if it’ll become a big pain in my ass. Just give myself a second. Recenter. I can’t believe I’m more patient with other people than myself now. I’m a little surprised.

If I come upon thinking I think I have the magical solution for everything, I am bounding myself in leaps for crash-out. That hasn’t happened in a while. But just asking me what I’m gonna do next. Get me out of the logic loop of cycling through how awesome I’m going to be in 10 minutes to 10 months from now, over and over again. And realize, “Yeah, I know I have to take real steps towards that.” Not as common, it happens.

Dawn: How would you contrast the self-pity state against self-compassion?

Self-Compassion vs. Self-Pity

Tiffany: Normally, I would say when I’m being… when I’m giving myself compassion… Man, all the times that are coming to mind are when I was really frantically trying to force myself to do something, or I was emotionally or mentally finding myself in some way, and so I’m coming down off of that frantic energy.

When I do self-compassion, it does tend to be caring for myself after I’m either hitting or screaming towards and narrowly avoiding burnout, and I’ll just be like, “You know what? I can take a break. I can go pour myself a bath. I can go outside and just look at the stars for a bit.”

And really, it’s just both giving myself that time, and then just starting to think of what I’ve done for myself, how much better I treat Riley, how good of a Fuzzbuddy Mommy I’ve been to Farvel. I’m reminding myself of how difficult all the things I’ve done are, and what makes me actually strong? That I persevere. Just relentlessly.

Dawn: Not recently.

Tiffany: I’m gonna take a moment to say something that popped through my head that was very positive. That hasn’t as much in recent years, and is starting to come back. The “Like, I may as well try.” Or, “I don’t know, there’s a possibility that what I’m going to do is going to make a real difference, or it’s gonna pan out.” I may as well do something. I may as well try. Or feeling like I can’t not try.

Cause I was thinking of my genuinely psychopathic drive to… Oh, no, no, no, this is it. That who’s crazier? The person who lives a normal life and thinks about what they always wanted to do and never does it? Or the person that drives themselves completely fucking nuts, maybe relentlessly going towards the thing they actually want? Even if you fail, actually trying to do it.

Because I was thinking of how almost merciless I’ve been to myself in my self-improvement at times. But I can’t say that I don’t want to do it, even if it’s like too much at times. For a ton of reasons. I’m trying to set myself up better. I’m trying to have the happiness and fulfillment I never did. Trying to gain all that which I never got. And I just see the obvious paths towards it, and I’m like, “I can’t tell myself to not do it.” I wouldn’t want to not. And yeah, it can drive me a bit nuts, but not doing it drives me a different nuts, and so this is good crazy.

Dawn: Yeah, no, I empathize with that. I also want to rather – well, this sounds overly dramatic – but die trying! Probably not actually going to die trying, then. I’m glad, like you.

Tiffany: So, you know, I think about it, and it’s like not everything that is good for you doesn’t suck. And I think to some degree, that also applies to applying yourself and kind of driving yourself nuts by the effort you put into something.

Dawn: You know, let’s say starting a workout routine. That can really suck, but it’s really good for you, but you don’t really feel like doing it.

Tiffany: Mmm. And I think that can apply to stuff that can make you frantic, too. That maybe would see that it’s maybe… it might seem counterproductive to one’s mental health. But the sense of capacity, capability, potential, control… it’s all so much more positive. Are all obvious positive things. And I think I had a big threshold to get over. I had a lot to overcome in myself and in my life at the time.

Dawn: Yeah. And…

Tiffany: I think it was a good thing I drove myself completely bonkers making myself better.

Dawn: Yeah, cool, I even sort of use this as a heuristic now, that when I feel that I’m afraid of something, then I’m like, “Oh, that’s probably an important challenge for me now. Great that I’ve… thank you for this feeling of fear that tells me what I need to do next.”

Tiffany: Can you try and feel the fear as… trepidation? But like you get to do it.

Fear vs. Trepidation

Dawn: But I guess I also find it just slightly thrilling. Like I want to do a certain thing with a friend, and I notice, “Oh, I have never actually made myself vulnerable in this particular way. This is really scary!”

Tiffany: Oh, no, no, wait, to me, it’s like the goal. It’s what you’re gonna get to the other side. It’s like, “Oh, I’m scared, but I’m about to get through this, I’m about to overcome it, I’m about to finish it, achieve it, complete it, fix it, build it, make it, whatever, it’s about to happen.”

Dawn: Yeah. That’s trepidation. I love trepidation. Oh, okay. Alright, I need to make a distinction between fear and trepidation.

Tiffany: Yeah, trepidation is when you have fear and excitement at the same time.

Counterphobic Behavior

Dawn: Hmm. I’ve also heard of this term, counterphobic, when people have a particular fear, but they consistently act in ways that counters that fear, or that exposes them to that fear in such a way as to prove that they can conquer the fear. That seems like a really cool psychological mechanism where someone with NPD – or like standard NPD, more likely – is afraid of being outdone, afraid of losing, of making mistakes or something, and so they actually throw themselves into every competition that they can find. And it’s an interesting, for me, very counterintuitive mechanism, but they found very useful, in a way, to adopt.

Tiffany: I think it’s very intuitive to me, it’s what I do. It’s like, “Well, I know I’m afraid of it, but I’m about to overcome… I’m about to do the things that lead me to overcoming that fear. This is me getting bigger, better, faster, stronger.” Right? That drives me quite powerfully.

Difficulty with Rupture Repair

Dawn: Yeah. Like, I know to what extent you can put yourself into the mindset of someone with standard NPD, let’s say, but one thing that is very confusing to me are all the different reasons that make it difficult for people with NPD of different brands to do, for example, the relationship repair after some kind of rupture happened. Than to figure out with the other person what happened, apologize often to each other, and figure out how to do it better next time.

And one way, of course, in which it can go wrong is if the person just has too much shame, and so cannot clearly think about what happened, needs to repress the memories of what happened, and then that interferes. I can’t acknowledge any kind of responsibility in the situation.

But then there are so many other reasons as well, like the fear of giving up some control. And probably also some kind of resentment, that perhaps they resent being asked to do something for someone else that they have not been given in their childhood, for example. That could also factor into it.

And then there’s also an interesting counter-phobic aspect to it, often where if someone feels a lot of shame, for example – if that’s the reason that it’s difficult – then has this rupture and refuses to repair it because they cannot face their responsibility in what happened. Then what I often see happening afterwards is that they take a bunch of selfies, and post a bunch of selfies online, or seek contact with the other person whilst pretending that the thing never happened. As if they kind of know on some level that they want to use that situation to grow and to learn how to handle it better, but don’t know how.

Tiffany: Yeah, no, that makes sense to me. I’ll start with that, and then I’m gonna speak directly to my NPDork and NPDemon crowd. But in a situation like that, when you’re working on such… when you still are at a very surface level, they’re basically bolstering themselves with supply right there. They’re getting the positive, strengthening self-esteem feelings from somewhere. And you gave a vanity example with selfies. And then it also helps to distract, and that’s avoidant, and you can see how that just… that’s very NPD.

I mean, like, I’m totally not against doing that just to lift your mood. Like I’ve had some hookups, and I happened to take some more nude selfies of myself. And then I’m in a bad mood. Somebody that I notice some depth that also appreciates my body, I’ll go, “Hey! Wanna see my tits?” And that’ll be great. And then I get… it’s really positive, I get to lay some positivity back into them. They’re normally somebody I like, somebody I would like to appreciate in my body.

But let me try and speak directly to my brothers, sisters, and other NPDork siblings. I would say… idealize it. If it’s something like getting up in front of a crowd. If it’s something like accomplishing a certain thing at work. Just try to make it the potential, but not the necessity. Not that it has to be, but imagine coming out on top. Imagine that you meet another version of yourself. And you tell them. This might do it. You don’t know.

And imagine if it works out! Think of how awesome you’re gonna be! Everyone will see you have pushed through that. And those that don’t… That’s okay. They see you on top already. It’s fantastic.

If it’s something that’s more painful. Just being vulnerable. Or facing a difficult thing you kinda gotta own up to, or facing a difficult conflict? Think of the awesome partner, or of the awesome head of household. The one that can keep it in their head straight. Think of the one that is bigger than the setbacks. Maybe you’ll cry, but that’s because you’re better than denying that from yourself. And from everybody. Everybody else, they just pass it off, and it’s easy. They just say, “Don’t worry, it’s okay. It’ll never happen again.”

And just imagine yourself not held together perfectly, but holding yourself up. And being that head of household, that caregiver, that partner, that girlfriend, that boyfriend, that husband, that wife, that friend. That through those difficult things, inside and outside, stuck it through like nobody else. And you know that that person that matters to you would see that. And you KNOW you see that when you see that in somebody else. That’s what you wish you had. You know they’ll see it.

That felt really, really cathartic to imagine. I’m gonna be honest. So I spoke that from my soul.

Dawn: Yeah, like, one thing that I was wondering about is, are there any other reasons for this difficulty with rupture repair? Like, I think there was the resentment, there was the control and the shame. Am I forgetting any?

Fear of Loss and Shame

Tiffany: I was focused: control, resentment, shame, fear of loss. Right? Technically, shame is an extension of that, but it’s important to note because the shame can still be just straight up a proxy for it, too. It can be interleaved, but it can also just be a proxy for it, because somebody wasn’t allowed to show perceived weakness.

And so, whether it was from a specific situation, or those just came together… This is something I think that can be very uncommon with BPD and NPD, but it can present very differently. This fear that this is the mistake that it’s the end. That they’re all gonna figure it out, that you’ve been a sham the whole time.

And I don’t think that’s too hard to work through if you know the right things. Like, I would say, number one: Do you think friends worthy of you would actually all be fooled? All of them? Or fooled the whole time? Do you think maybe some of them even know and think you’re kind of badass for it, even? And then they find out… And it’s no big deal.

Or thinking maybe somebody really will fucking hate you for it. But they probably hated you for other stuff, too, then, and they haven’t left you yet. So like… Give it a chance. Give them a chance. Give them a chance to prove you fucking wrong. Wouldn’t you want to be proven wrong about this, of all things? You know… anything else? Sure, no. But this… So much easier to be proven wrong. You don’t have to worry about it after that.

I don’t know, this gave me… I just resonate with this. It shows some of the struggle. That’s just the kind of pep talk I would give somebody.

Yeah, let’s hear, fear of loss. It could still come down to safety, too, right? Like if it’s your support network or your career. What are you gonna fucking do if that all falls apart? If maybe you’re not performing well at your job, or you made a mistake at your job. Or maybe you can rely on your lover or your friends in the house you live in. But maybe they’re afraid that they’ll think they’re a lazy-ass louse, and it’ll be the fear of stability. That’s safety.

Dawn: Another one that came to mind is when someone needs a lot of self-esteem juice, and has found someone who idealizes them, but then is afraid that if they don’t look perfect anymore, the person will split on them. The way that they were probably split on someone, I suppose.

Tiffany: I would just say, there’s no way you were perfect from the beginning. You can’t know somebody before you meet them to be perfect. So like, you’ve only gotten better at it over time. It’s fear, not the truth. And it’s an understandable fear, but…

Dawn: I mean, related to that, I also wonder how forgiving people usually are. Like, I have always been too avoidant and internalizing to have tested out how forgiving people are, so I don’t really know, and would be like interesting to sort of get an overview of how forgiveness works for most people, that we actually want to have among our friends.

Forgiveness and Accountability

Tiffany: Well, I think that’s complicated in a number of ways. One of them’s me, one of them’s everybody. Because when you’re first starting out in recovery, you might not have the healthiest relationships. Let’s say someone with NPD is friends with somebody with BPD or NPD. No, that other person might not be that forgiving.

And you know, my friend Leon and I have traded back and forth on this as we’ve hit different developmental milestones, and we came back. I’m fortunate for that. But it doesn’t mean that that’s a guaranteed at all. That might be someone you now never see again, because you hit a deep trauma trigger.

But as you get healthier, and you have people that matter more to you, and you matter more to them, typically the accountability lends people to be more forgiving. Because it’s difficult to understate the power and value of accountability. You really don’t see a lot of it in this world. And then the people that really get to know someone with NPD – point blank, seeing a narcissist be really accountable can be like a thing of awe. Just like, that’s the stereotypical person that avoids accountability at any and every and all costs.

Dawn: And here they are, doing it anyway?

Tiffany: And even if that’s not impressive to that… like my friend Leon, it can impress him sometimes, but he, A, knows what the actual difficulty of the struggle is, also having a Cluster B personality disorder. And it’s also important to him that we are allowed accountability. Because like, how could you be… Man, I remember one of our heartfelt talks before I had to leave Michigan for a while, and he’s like, “You know, these people that see us as a demon, Tiffany, you know? How does that motivate you to be accountable? Isn’t that something you want to support in the world? That somebody is actually doing it?”

So I think that changes over time with the kind of people you get close to as you heal, and the kind of people you keep around as you heal.

But from another thing where it complicates it for me is… We’ve talked about the psychopath thing of over-apologizing. So, I will instead talk about that in the vein of: I have gotten away with so much shit with people and jobs over time. Either deliberately, semi-deliberately, negligently, or passively taken advantage of people’s forgiveness.

People can be almost shockingly forgiving. It’s not a guarantee at all, but people can be almost shockingly forgiving. At least from my perspective. And knowing when I know that, it gives me the confidence to face it, instead of craft another lie, because that’s a better future that I would want to build towards. That at least the reasonable chance is there. Like, I’ll have trouble having faith that it’ll pan out. I’ll have trouble having faith that the person really will be forgiving, but if I can really talk myself into it, I will realize it’s just worth the chance.

No, but genuinely, people can be shockingly forgiving, because people do actually often want to see the best in somebody. Especially if you have any sort of pleasant personality. They don’t want to see you go, for no reason, if you’re a fun or a nice person. You know, a lot of people are nice, but they’re boring. That’s why people often put up with assholes, because they’re at least interesting. Genuinely, for not everybody, but a lot of people, an interesting asshole – at least in regulated doses – is way better than the same boring person who never does anything wrong, every day. Because people don’t generally expect people to never do anything wrong either. People are honest with themselves enough to know that they do wrong as well. Just by mistake, by impulse, by that there’s no way to predict how what you do might hurt somebody unintentionally.

So, maybe on your journey, Dawn, I wouldn’t say test the limits. But I would say you could be as confident enough to test the limits. And if you can do that reasonably true, I would say as a form of radical authenticity and radical accountability. And just being that accountable person, that self-respect of, like, “No, I’m not just gonna pretend these things under the bus because that’s the weak and easy thing.” I would encourage you to experiment with that. You definitely take people’s forgiveness too far more easily than you would think, so if you’re not doing that, you’re probably fine.

Dawn: Yeah, I think for the most part, I’ve started cultivating this mindset of if I’m unsure whether I can do something, then to try it. When I get to know a new person, and I’m unsure whether asking a particular question is something that is okay for them, then I will just ask the question, and then trust that if it’s not, then they will tell me and not answer it.

Eggshell Friends and Testing Limits

Dawn: And then I noticed sometimes when I interact with an “eggshell person” for a moment, and then interact with one of my regular friends again – and by eggshell person, I mean people who make me feel like I need to walk on eggshells around them. When I interact with one of my regular friends afterwards, I’m like really cautious suddenly, and I’m like, “No, no, wait, this is regular friend, it’s not eggshell friend.” And then it takes like half an hour, an hour or so, and then I go back into my regular, more daring mindset.

And yeah, I suppose for the most part, that’s been working fine for me so far, too. Just like try things. But I have lots of habits around not trying. One of my partners noticed this recently, that she told me about their search for apartments, and all of her must-have criteria for an apartment. And then I didn’t say anything, and so she carried on, and then at some point explained what her criteria are. And what happened in my mind in the meantime was, “Okay, she just talked abstractly about must-have criteria for apartments. I’d be quite interested in what they are, but she talked abstractly about it, so maybe she doesn’t want to tell me which ones they are in case…”

Tiffany: Yeah, and when she was just giving you like an overview, so you had something in your head to kind of place it, you know? You knew why she wanted it, right? Yeah, she’s talking like a normal person.

Dawn: She expected me to ask what the specific criteria are. Like, it was not only that she would have been open to that question, but it was the one that she expected me to ask. And we talked about this afterwards, and it was quite eye-opening that I just sort of anticipate what might be a problem with the other person, self-censor, and then don’t do things that would have been even positive in this case.

Tiffany: And don’t you think that’s funny? It sounds to me like your intuition for what you should ask next is just getting negated, but the same thought process is happening, but you’re afraid to follow through now. You know? And it’s just like, trust yourself.

Dawn: Yeah, trust myself, or just like… Just try it, just fuck around and find out.

Tiffany: I’ve been trying to have the value of: I would want a friend to challenge me because they would want to see my happiness, right? My fulfillment. So I would want friends like that. So I am accepting, to some degree, that if I lean into that, it might lose me friends. Because not as like they’re a bad person, but that’s probably not the kind of person I’ve won if I can’t challenge them, because they’re probably not the kind of person that would challenge me.

And the other way of thinking of it more empathetically is like… Because this can apply with someone who’s gentle but insecure. And I’m still trying to find the balance here, because I don’t want to overwhelm people. But I think of helping them get through this difficult thing that someone else might not. I see myself as helping them challenge this thing that they feel threatened by, or they’re scared of. And even if that’s not abrupt, even if it’s not aggressive, I think it counts.

Like, there’s somebody I know I want to get in touch with her again. She lost someone important to her this year. But she’s someone I definitely want to choose my words with. But I really want to put that effort in, because I want to help her get through that. And that’s still ultimately the goal, the desire, right? And that leaves some flexibility in it. And that also gives me some patience for some people that can be more eggshell-y, but that they are worth it, it’s just a longer game.

Dawn: Yeah, I love my eggshell friends, too. I’m looking through some of the remaining questions. There is the question from the shadow work section, basically your Facebook post about wishing that you could have your innocence back? Do you remember that one?

Loss of Innocence

Tiffany: Yeah, I’m gonna go read my most recent. One of my most recent posts, I’m pretty sure you saw it, you liked it this morning, and it made me go, “Oh, she’s awake, I can bother her, and see if I can do this earlier than normal.”

Loss of Innocence

I said: “I often feel like I’m holding onto a ghost dream. One of a version of myself that didn’t survive the needle’s eye of survival and forced change. I wonder what’s left of her, but I admit sometimes I feel a part of myself so deep that even SHE had already forgotten her, too.”

And but that’s on the same themes. When I posted that and I thought about it, I realized that I’m afraid there’s some important part of my being, my fulfillment or satisfaction, that’s gone. Or there’s enough in me that’s in permanent conflict with it, these aspects, that they’re just part of who I am now. And they either negate it or subdue it. Or keep me from being my full self.

I’m afraid that I’ll never feel the real joy in life that I sometimes used to. And some of that’s like my recovery’s been long and difficult. I definitely experienced like… Oh, this is such a silly phrase: intermittent joy. But don’t we all? But, you know, just intermittent… sometimes I do just enjoy myself, but it never seems to be part of anything bigger. And I’m not saying it like has to be, it just… it feels truly, ultimately transient. Like it’s just completely random.

And I’m afraid in some way whether I’ll be… whether I’m being a bit dramatic, and it’s like some near-complete psychic death, or absolute psychic death. Over some important parts of myself. Or just, like I said, older, more innocent parts being in permanent conflict with some nastier – or at least the potential to be nastier – newer parts. Just in permanent conflict, it can never… And I could never embody them the same way.

I’m afraid that having that change… Or I’ve lost something that’s just fundamental to me being a human. Finding happiness in life. I know happiness isn’t a feeling, it’s like a more general state of being. To finding that deeper joy that isn’t just hysteria. Because I’ve been through an awful fucking lot getting to this point. And maybe I am closer, but I don’t really feel it. I don’t really feel like I am closer to that at all, and I don’t know whether I have that intuition because the future I dream is so different now? Or because I idealize that younger version of myself. Like… It’s a mix of things, I don’t know.

Dawn: But I’ve also had very sudden changes in my life. Like, last summer, I became very self-loving very suddenly. And this summer, I suddenly stopped feeling guilt for the most part. When I was learning things, then there was usually also some sudden cliff where it became really easy. So like these sorts of things have happened to me a lot.

Tiffany: Yeah, you know, it’s not… I’m sorry, it’s just because it leaves me without words. It just weighs on my heart heavy. Such a complicated feeling. Obviously, you’ve seen my statuses on social media, that feeling has evolved, and it’s still very incredibly complex and nebulous. And it might be that it’s like because it’s from a dozen and a half different places.

And I do wish I could just sometimes go back to being a person who could never imagine myself cutting someone down. Twisting and coercing them. Hurting them, and enjoying it, or hurting them for joy’s sake. And maybe I’m just messing with the world. Didn’t feel like that was sometimes necessary, or I hadn’t lived through something that made it feel necessary. Maybe it’s just a loss of innocence I’m still processing.

I think we all go through that, but if I told that to my old version of myself? She would tell me… “Are you kidding me? You’re not dead yet. Don’t give up. You don’t know. You gotta try. How could you possibly live without trying?” And I get a little brief glimpse. It’s nice.

Dawn: I suppose all the listeners will also value all the wisdom that you wouldn’t have had if it hadn’t been for some of the most difficult experiences.

Tiffany: Yeah. I’m sure there goes some of that resentment of what I’ve had to live through, because I’m just like… “Yeah, but I wish no one had to fucking live through that, so I wish I just didn’t have to, who cares?” But I know, I’m sure they would. And I’m sure whatever handbook we put together will also truly ring that truth. It’s still though not, you know… That beautiful world is not the one we live in, we live in a different beautiful world. And isn’t it beautiful I could go through that and find some really tough answers to even tougher questions?

Dawn: What is your experience with providing closure? Like, I know some people who seek closure. I’m guessing that has something to do with identity diffusion. There are some people who seem to be quite indifferent to it, and some people who are like, “No, I never want to talk to this person again for no matter for what reason,” and I never know which person I’m dealing with until I ask them. So I also don’t know how to provide closure, especially after the fact where I’m not speaking to them anymore.

Providing Closure

Tiffany: It could go a variety of ways, some people make that very clear to me. I have definitely lived through too many people who definitely never want anything to do with me again. They make it clear, I have hurt them too deeply.

One weird experience with it was a girl I dated for a year, on and off. She had had – man, this weighs on me heavily – she had had a happy relationship and been married for a while by the time she found me on Facebook again, and asked me to help her find closure to feelings from then. I had damaged her self-esteem so deeply that finding safety and happiness in life was not enough. Man.

And it’s never quite happened like that before or since. Some people, I treated as just reconnecting with them and seeing how it goes. And some of those people then blocked me and never talked to me again.

My closure to myself is just… What else can I do? I’m already doing all the things that add up to being the person I wasn’t at the time that I wish I had been. I can’t go back and change that, and why would I want to make what they lived through meaningless, and not improve myself? And that’s about all the closure I can get sometimes. I can hope they’re happier without me. I’m thinking of one person, of one ex-girlfriend in particular. She probably is happy without me. And that sucks in a way, but I’m happier now than I was then, too, so that is an improvement in the world. And still hurts to know someone is probably happier without you.

But I’m not really the same person I was then, so I should remind myself not to directly compare myself with who I was then. If I met them now, it really would be different. And not to hang on that of what could never be, but just like… I learned the lessons I needed to.

Closure for stuff like this is incredibly tough. Like, before I found out Leon had changed his appraisal of what happened through another friend, it was just like my closure was: “I hope he learns better for himself. I brought it as far as I could. I didn’t just let it happen.” And so I really only cut things off when it was tearing my life down. And not only was I just tearing my life down, but all the things I tried to keep things going forward just ultimately were tearing me down more. And I didn’t at the time cut him out of my life maliciously or anything, or even with anything less of having given it my best. And then not to discount that I stuck around because I would have rathered it just work out. And so why else would I… what else would I have done? Left sooner and been sad that I didn’t try hard enough?

You know, closure for this kind of stuff is really tough. But if we get to the inabsolutionism question, I’ll expand upon that.

Dawn: Please tell the viewers about inabsolutionism.

Tiffany: The inabsolutionism is my personal life philosophy. It is, in my mind, my evolution of absurdism. And so, absolution is this like… you do something that sets everything straight. Frees you from the weight of the things you’ve done, and the guilt and stuff, it’s been reversed, made up for, paid off. And part of that is closure. Right? Wanting it to all tie together neatly.

And some of it is also a direct attack on nihilism itself, and the point of view, the mindset that leads you to try to iterate nihilism into absurdism. And in both of those, the people that dreamt up nihilism were like, “Well, if I die one day, what’s the point?” And really, they’re struggling with the fear of death, the fear of it not meaning anything, etc. They’re struggling with these existential dreads, and something that would be an absolution would free them from it. But they’re not really facing it.

Dawn: They’re deflecting it.

Tiffany: Right? They’re living with the dread. As opposed to either accepting it, or embracing it. Or turning it on its head. And I feel like I can turn it on its head.

The other core part of the point of view that I don’t like about them is that their meanings are… They make meaning explicit instead of implicit. Nihilism makes it clearer, where it speaks of meaning as being explicitly about what happens after your death that propagates on, or if anything feels meaningful enough before then to really count. And I genuinely think that’s all bullshit, and it’s all up to things that aren’t you. And I don’t think any of that is necessary, it’s a major overcomplication.

Inabsolutionism: We Named the Stars

I came upon this way of thinking. I got the seed to it when I was contemplating the ineffable awe I would feel looking into a beautiful, clear, starry night. And I realized we are the ones who named those stars. That if I wasn’t there, if I was dead or never born, I would not be feeling that. And so, that magical feeling is really within me. If we weren’t here, and we did not name the stars, they would just continue on being their gravity-powered thermonuclear incandescent, vaguely spheroid engines of physics. Devoid of meaning. Right?

And there’d be nothing wrong with that, or nothing right, it wouldn’t matter, they’re just stars. But they mean something to us. And so let’s say when we name a star or we name a constellation, it already had some meaning within us, and we made a name for it to give a name to that meaning. And so it is, to me, as simple as: If something means something to you, if someone means something to you, it means something, and it means that thing to you. That’s it. We are the seed of meaning.

And that is my ontology… my tautology. Of how WE are ontological. We’re arguing over where meaning starts. But I think meaning has an ultimately irrational basis. Like, why do you do the thing? Cause you like it. You know, you can go really deep into, let’s say, why I like cars. I like cars in 4 different dimensions. I like driving them fast as much for the adrenaline, as much for the skill it takes. And the latter is an intellectual thrill. The former, you could see the adrenaline comes from a different part of evolution, like hunting. The immediate satisfaction of fixing it. The community, etc. And what I figure out at the end of that is that I like cars.

It’s not that all that intellectual pursuit of understanding it is meaningless either. It’s just meaningful in a different way, it’s another part of it. And that we should not make the initial meaning of just “I like cars” hinge upon whether it ultimately makes sense or fits into some framework.

And so, within this amalgamation of ideas I’ve put forth, I then invite somebody, instead of to think of a life like a book, to think of life like a diary or a journal of somebody you love, or of found footage. Because unlike a book, we don’t have neat covers. Even the first starting page, where we start – you know, we didn’t write that. Our parents did. And you have no idea when that last page is going to be, and if it’s going to tie up nicely. We cannot define our front cover. We have no idea where the rear cover’s gonna end. Life is so fucking messy.

Dawn: Hmm.

Tiffany: And we should not bound ourselves by feeling a necessity to make it all make sense. To try and find that absolution. Where it all falls apart, where all the difficult parts fall away, and it all falls into place. And instead, like I said before, where we should have a healthy relationship with work, with labor. Find meaning in the difficult things.

As somebody who rarely feels guilt or shame, I’ve realized the weight of guilt. You know, the weight of negative feelings of loss. Because, let’s say with my cat dog passing, he’s my best friend! He’s the most important person in my life for the longest time. And I can’t decide when his passing would happen, but that didn’t make a single minute of a single day of those 15 years less meaningful. It doesn’t end cleanly, it doesn’t matter.

And you get to decide what you do with that meaning, and I have. And so instead, to give it implicit meaning – it all implicitly already has meaning. And you can describe it if you want, but the things you do, you do them because they matter to you. You do them because they matter to somebody else. They already mean something, and to not ever predicate that on anything. You don’t need to. Just unnecessary.

And like I said, so then embrace the negative. Embrace the weight that it gives the positive. Embrace what you have to go through to get to the positive. Embrace the trudgery and say, “Yeah, but I got through it.” Because the real part of that story that matters there is the person that lives through it, the person that tells it. It’s not only meaningful because you got through it. But it is meaningful to you that you got through it.

And thus, we can let go of our seeking of absolution. And embrace life in its positives, and its negatives, and its neutrals, and its unclassifieds. What do you think of that?

Dawn: Yeah, I love it! Like, in particular, also the messiness of a life without absolution is something that allows me to relate to so many people. Like, I think if I didn’t have any messiness, or if I were to repress any kind of messiness, then that would just block me from relating to most people, or all people. Probably just make me feel isolated.

Tiffany: Yeah, I sought absolution my whole life, and I think I could call it a number of other things, but it fits enough a part of the philosophy, and it sounds strong, impactful, and badass. You could have called it, instead of saying absurdism, you could have called it “embrace the cosmic joke.” You could have called it something else, and it would still mean the same thing, and the words can attach to it and get meaning assigned to them the same way.

One other thing I wanted to note is that it’s more self-oriented. Like I said, that nihilism predicates itself upon the meaning of your life after you’re gone, or to other people. Instead of orienting it to yourself. And to each individual person’s self, and the meaning they already live, embody, and hold, even if they recognize, acknowledge it, embrace it, understand it, or not.

Optimizing Meaning (Equanimity)

Dawn: I have an excessively rational question about that. So, like, inabsolutionism sounds like it’s agnostic about the particular meaning. Like, it’s about meaning in the abstract, but it’s agnostic about the particular meaning that a given person will assign to whatever happens in their lives. So, how do you optimize the meaning that you want to assign for things? Like, there’s probably some kind of optimal meaning to assign to different things, given whatever you want your life to be like.

Tiffany: I think that’s got a partly abstract and a partly more discrete answer. Because the abstract answer is: “Well, it depends on the person.” Which is true, but I think I’m gonna give a good example of just one thing. You can take one thing from multiple people’s perspective, and you can see that each person has a different way they would want to take it forward.

You know, let’s say you move away from your parents’ house. They’re going to be sad, but they will see it as you moving on. You’re probably not going to stress about that the same. You didn’t give birth to yourself. To you, the same act will be whatever specific thing you’re working towards, or gaining independence.

But in a more explicit, a more discrete and practical way is: You want to try to go towards what does not downplay the positive, neutral, or negative aspects of your life. With some equanimity.

Because if you try to throw all the negatives away, you will lose the weight of the positives, or at least lose the weight of what got you there. If you try to throw the weight of all of it away, you’re just trying to avoid the pain of the negatives. If you try to be a practical cynic and downplay the weight of the positives, you forget… you know, you can become very outcome and solution-oriented and become very capable, but you lose out on the joy, and the implicit meaning and the strength of what the positive things you can do for yourself and for other people have. And it can steal motivation from you to do some of the stuff that might seem more frivolous, but might turn out really stirs your soul.

I guess that’s what I would say that you would want to find: equanimity in valuing and the weight of the positive, the negative, and the neutral. And not try to force them to fit into something that they aren’t. Or not try to wish one of them away.

Because I think that actually also gives you a more realistic view. Like, don’t downplay your misery. Don’t pretend it didn’t happen. Or you know… It doesn’t mean you might not forget it over time, because it’s not like what you need to think about anymore. But don’t devalue what you’ve had to live through. It was hard. Don’t devalue your suffering any more than your happiness. Is that rational enough?

Dawn: Yeah, certainly. Like, I’m way more on the self-pity side, I think. Like just yesterday I caught myself in this respect, like my life is totally fine, and still I have this impulse to whine about the times in my past when it wasn’t. And yeah, I think I’m sort of the opposite.

Tiffany: Well, you know, let’s maybe try an exercise. Because so let’s say if we don’t want to downplay them, and we want to give equal weight to the positive things, it’s like: What lessons did you learn from the negative things that brought you those positive things? What positive things would you not really understand the depth and the value of without those negative things? What things that sucked?

You know, you don’t want to pretend they didn’t just suck. Some things do just suck, and they don’t teach you anything. And there’s value in that, too. That shows us that sometimes life can make no sense, and that instead can show us a sense of compassion for ourself and other people. Especially with mental illness stuff. For instance, even just as simple as depression or anxiety. It just sucks. Maybe you learned some lessons along the way. But the bigger lesson is, we should do our best to not do the things to people that give them depression or anxiety. Right?

And so if you put too much weight in either of them, you can’t come to that sort of conclusion. And not allowing yourself to give too much weight to any of them forces you to try and find value, if not meaning, because you’re not trying to steal away the value of even your suffering. You know, that’s something you lived through. It’s meaningful to you to never live through that again. It’s meaningful to you to perhaps help somebody avoid that ever happening.

And you may never be able to help somebody with that. And it may never matter like that. But so what? You also don’t know that. That has a lot of definites, but none of them are like preordained or predestined, and none of them try to truly alter any of the other things, and none of them try to throw anything else out.

Dawn: It’s a bit like when someone like me, without much car knowledge, tries to buy a used car, and then buys a car with all sorts of hidden defects for way too high of a price, and then has to get lots of repairs afterwards, and then has like an actual working car.

Tiffany: Yeah, maybe you might end up with a working car, or you learn that that dealership sucks. Before you learn the mechanic friend that you should actually listen to? Or you learn how to avoid that again, because maybe it’s literally an unavoidable lesson. Maybe that’s the only way you end up learning the lesson. And maybe not because of anything other than life circumstance. It might just be where you live, and that one dealership doesn’t seem sketchy, but they are, and there’s no way for you to know.

Or maybe your needs and your preferences tend you towards wanting a car that sucks and you don’t know it. Like there’s a car called the HHR, and then there’s another one called the PT Cruiser, and they’re conceptually and functionally similar. Do not buy a PT Cruiser. Note if you bought an HHR, you’re probably fine. And it could just literally evolve from your needs and your preferences.

You know? And if you try to seek the absolution there of trying to get rid of the bad feelings, or trying to make it all make sense, you might end up throwing away your preferences. And not realize that there is a better car than a PT Cruiser that fits all your needs and wants.

That’s a real example. I talked somebody out of a PT Cruiser. And there’s a lot of reasons to like… the PT Cruiser and the HHR were goofy marketing ideas, in a way. They had a deliberate, semi-retro look. But in reality, they’re like this mid-sized vehicle that’s not too big in any dimension. It’s like an expanded hatchback, it’s like a miniature station wagon before we had crossover SUVs. And you know what? They’re not so high off the ground, and heavy, and expensive like an SUV. They’re arguably a way better idea.

Why PT Cruisers Suck

But two examples of how bad a PT Cruiser can be. They have a light bulb that no other car takes. And so, since they don’t make that anymore, you have to buy an adapter. For their headlight? And that’s an important part of a car! And so it’s just stupid by inception, and that’s just so they can make the headlights look really long and fit the body right.

And then another one is, I was fixing the air conditioning on one, and the fan is necessary for air conditioning to work. And Chrysler’s instructions on it were actually too updated, and it said, “There is no specific separate fan relay anymore, it’s all part of this big box now.” Do you know what? They were wrong! There was a fan relay. It’s a simple-ass fan relay, like it’s still the 1960s. It’s right there, right where you would think it is, on the fan. And that was the whole problem, and we drove ourselves entirely freaking nuts. So the documentation isn’t good. They just suck.

Dawn: Why didn’t they call it a PT full cruiser?

Tiffany: Because, I don’t know. Unless Chrysler isn’t selling to boomers, they don’t seem to know how to do anything right. And I mean that. Like Challengers and Chargers are reasonably okay vehicles, and they’re sexy, and they come with big engines, and they can come in all-wheel drive if you want. And you know what? They’re not specifically good at anything other than being like fast and sexy. But that’s why a person buys that car. So, like… Okay.

But they don’t really know how to do much else right but minivans. And even then, in my opinion, a Dodge Grand Caravan is not reliable. They tend to have a lot more features that you would want on a minivan. They’re a desirable and capable minivan, but they still kinda suck to own. I wish Chrysler didn’t suck, they do some really cool things sometimes. But broadly, Chrysler sucks. And that is one of my few broad rules. I’m not even like that with Ford. I have exceptions of Fords I’m either like okay with. Maybe I wouldn’t own one, but I know why a person would. Don’t buy a Chrysler.

Dawn: Okay. Let’s do it! Thank you!

Tiffany: Mopar, don’t buy a Chrysler, don’t buy a Dodge. They make capable trucks, but it’s the same thing, they’re not the most reliable. They’re very capable, but they’re not very reliable.

Car Rants: Chrysler, VW, and Saturn

Dawn: What about the Volkswagen Lupo? It’s so cute!

Tiffany: The Lupo? They’re okay. Why not a Golf, though?

Dawn: That Lupo was cuter!

Tiffany: But how about you import a Suzuki Cappuccino? It’s as cute as the name sounds. They’re microscopic.

Dawn: I need to Google that. No! Right! Oh, I wish I could like easily share the screen now for the viewers, but yeah, that’s very cute!

Tiffany: Yeah, right, no, there’s cars that are just straight up cute. And then, this is really confusing, the New Beetle. And I mean, quote, “New Beetle,” end quote. Because the beetle… the current Beetle we have is the second generation Beetle. The one just before it was not called the Beetle, it was called the New Beetle.

That is the only car ever with an integrated flower holder. Little tiny flower vase, like, just above where the ignition switch is. And they did a lot of cute things in there. They’re not too hard to work on. I wouldn’t say they’re desirable for most people, but there’s nothing wrong with them. So I think Volkswagen Beetles can be actually like pretty practical and cute. Get one and have someone vinyl wrap something cute on it, and now you have a sturdy car that handles well. Just don’t get the inline 5. That sucked.

Dawn: Hmm? Inline 5?

Tiffany: Yeah, that was a 2.5L engine, and they stretch all their timing chains. All of them.

Don’t buy a Mini Cooper. They’re even cuter. But… maybe they’ve changed, but they’re one of the hardest cars to work on I’ve ever seen, and they have BMW prices, because they’re basically BMWs in a way, except they’re not. And then their parts aren’t like well-made? So you buy these BMW-priced parts that are pieces of shit, that are hard to install, and then they have weird Mini Cooper versions of the BMW engines? So if they have a supercharger, the superchargers tend to go. If they have a turbocharger, the turbocharger tends to go. If they have neither, the timing chain tends to stretch. So the solution is to not buy a Mini Cooper. I think they finally changed, but they managed to ruin everything.

Another my favorite quirky sub-brand that sucked like this was General Motors, Chevrolet, birthed Saturn out of their forehead like Zeus and Athena. And they had like good ideas. Saturns were made with all plastic body panels, so if you get in a fender bender, you glue a new fender on. Now, they’re not main anymore, so you can’t do that now.

But the mistake they made is they let Saturn do whatever they wanted, and Saturn invented their own gas engine, their own diesel engine, their own automatic transmission, and their own manual transmission, and they all had problems. And what they really should have done is like let Saturn maybe make the whole interior themselves, or just borrow components and switch gear to build the interiors of the dashboard. And then do the innovative, cheap car stuff, like the cheap body panels and stuff, build the frame lighter, etc. The stuff that would make it a better, cheap, or practical car, and then just shove whatever Chevy engine and transmission that’s good enough that fits.

My best friend Kyle, he loved these boxy Cavaliers that came in V6 for forever. So he’d have these 94s. And he’d have like 92, 94, 96, he had a bunch of them. And we would need to get an ignition coil for it. That ignition coil was in General Motor cars from 1988 to 2012. So you could go to O’Reilly’s and get 3 of them, and then you could go down to Advance Auto and get 3 of them, and then go down to Napa and get 3 more, because they normally will have them 3 at a time. It’s normally V6s. I then go down to AutoZone to get another 3. Could buy 12 that are on the shelf and not even have to go to another brand of parts store. Because it’s such a ubiquitous part.

Dawn: You could get high-quality versions.

Tiffany: Of all of the most vital stuff on these cars, because of that. And Saturn could have totally leaned on that with the like big expensive drivetrain stuff, and maybe the suspension stuff, and they didn’t. Saturns didn’t need to be special, they were supposed to be good at not being special, which is way harder.

Tiffany: My weird fantasy there is Saturns came in right-hand drive. For postal wagons, for rural postal wagons. Because if you don’t know, our mail trucks are right-hand drive, the steering wheel’s on the right. So they can access mailboxes and stuff easier. So Subaru ships some over, of theirs, because they’re Japanese and they already have those. Steering wheel on the right, ships them over for that purpose. And Saturn was sold in Japan! So they had right-hand drive versions. And Jeeps still come in right-hand drive from the factory, if you ask, for that purpose. Because sometimes rural routes in America mean a dirt road.

Anyway, and so I’d want to get a right-hand drive Saturn Postal Wagon. And thanks to General Motors inbreeding, it shouldn’t be too hard to put in something completely irresponsible, like the turbo V6 from a Saab in there. Because that was a Saab-only version of that engine, but that V6 was still a Chevy engine. And then you could find a 6-speed front-wheel drive automatic, which is totally a thing that exists that would fit that V6, and have an unreasonably fast, stupid, fun-to-drive car that is like the most grandma or single mother station wagon on Earth, and then for no reason it has the steering wheel on the right side. It would be an unreasonable nuts of a car that only exists because you can play LEGO blocks with some Chevrolet stuff.

You could do that with almost anybody, but Chevrolet is the best, worst offender of this of all. There was a Chevy Cavalier – well, there’s also the Toyota Cavalier. The Bubble Gin Cavalier was sold in Japan. That’s a Toyota with a Toyota badge on it. So you can order that Toyota badge. And it comes in a package that says General Motors on it. That’s like buying a part for a Nissan, and it says BMW on it or something. It’s preposterous. They even had some Australian-only brand, the Asuna. The J-body is the beautiful, ultimate whore of car-vehicle platforms. So, you can benefit from that if you want to do really weird, preposterous projects only a car nerd would want, and only a car nerd would know is possible.

Dawn: I’ll pass, I think that’s a bit of… It’s a car, so it drives, but would probably still fly over my head. Maybe one day when all the software engineering is automated, I need to relearn. Like, I was hoping to learn some job that has to do with high-pressure cleaning, like high-pressure water cleaning, because that seems fun. But maybe I need to go into cars or something instead, whatever is needed.

Tiffany: I don’t know what it was before, but like your understanding of people and yourself made me think, “Is she autistic?” And your dream job of being pressure washing. Well, that is… I will never have doubts of your autism again, Dawn. Never again in my life. I remember when I was like 6 or 7, my dad let me play with the pressure washer to clean the porch.

Dawn: Same time!

Tiffany: He taught me how atom bombs and hydrogen bombs worked, and how fuel injection and air conditioning, the physics, the phase change works. There’s really awesome stuff to love my dad. Like, think of how powerful and good of a formative experience of letting your 7-year-old use the pressure washer, use this badass tool…

Dawn: Dangerous tool instead of like…

Tiffany: Instead of infantilizing the kid and think they can’t do things and showing them what you can do. You know, and there were other, I would say, cooler things he let me do, but I think that was one of the most dangerous things he ever let me do when I was young, because a pressure washer could totally take your toes off if turned up.

Dawn: Okay, now I was wearing shoes. Maybe we were pressure washing something at the same time. Like…

Tiffany: For a couple years apart, I suppose.

Dawn: Yeah, I really enjoyed that. I wanted to go back to the meaning, though, because I had thought of a great segue back then, which doesn’t work at all anymore now.

Tiffany: Doesn’t matter. Immaterial.

Responsibility and Failed God Mode

Dawn: Alright, so we were just talking about meaning. And one way in which I changed my meaning recently was that I’d always felt responsible for everything, so like everything bad that happened in the world, I felt responsible for, because I could have prevented it.

Tiffany: That is the most unempathizable thing I have ever heard a person say, and I hear it all the time. I’m like… I have to take myself… just like, I need you, my friend, to know… Why would you do that to yourself? Go on.

Dawn: And I realize that there are certain inconsistencies with that. Like, for example, throughout all these one or two decades that I’ve felt that way – and like really all my life to a lesser extent – just sort of my understanding of the suffering in the world changed, but the principle behind it had been the same for decades. I had never taken responsibility for all the good things.

Tiffany: Oh, that’s shame, isn’t it? I just had a lightbulb moment, that’s shame that leads you towards that, isn’t it?

Dawn: Shame and like I don’t know, some kind of failed god mode or something?

Tiffany: I… no, no, I just had the light bulb moment of like, that’s so irrational, what’s the most irrational thing I can think of? Shame! You were grown up and shamed into thinking the bad things in your life are your fault. It blows my mind that somebody CAN be shamed into thinking that things totally outside of their life are their fault. But if I can imagine that shame is real… it makes sense. I have to reverse it. I have to think, if someone shames you, the feeling is so strong, you’ll start to believe it, even if it makes no fucking sense.

Dawn: Yeah, well, it makes sense, like I could have prevented those things, hypothetically, if I had…

Tiffany: I’m so sorry! That’s so stupid! Why would they do that to you! That’s idiotic.

Dawn: I don’t actually know where this came from originally. I just for as long as I can remember, I’ve always felt guilty for things that I failed to prevent. Some kind of survivor’s guilt that I remember even feeling in early elementary school. And my thinking was that it’s probably better than helplessness. That my mind was sort of like, “Okay, you can either feel helpless about these things, or you can have some kind of illusion of control and then feel guilty instead.”

Tiffany: If you feel good, and you feel that people around you that are feeling bad are seeing you, you’ll feel like they’re judging you, and you’ll feel the shame for it.

Dawn: Yes! How did you know?

Tiffany: I’m only understanding that right now as I speak it. That is… what do you mean, how did I know? That has taken approximately 30 months of self-work for me to comprehend, woman. Like… I refuse to let somebody make me feel that way. It’s dumb. No, I’ve just finally understood it! The only way for me to empathize with it is like… It’s so dumb that that can be done to you, and that it’s so dumb that somebody would do that to you. I don’t know if that line of logic makes any sense to you, but that’s the only way I’m able to comprehend that you were shamed into…

Dawn: Like, I mean, I don’t know whether people who see me being happy whilst there are things that I fail to prevent, whilst there are suffering that I fail to prevent, are actually judging me for that. But if I think that they are, then my projection of what they’re thinking is essentially shaming me, so I’m basically shaming myself via this projection.

Tiffany: No, I figured that out, it’s blowing my mind.

Dawn: Yeah, so that is my failed god mode. Just like feel responsible for everything so I don’t have to feel helpless.

Tiffany: One second, please. Alright. The lovely girl that was sleeping in my bed is no longer sleeping in my bed. No, sorry for me to derail that. My friend Lucia.

Dawn: Sorry to derail that for you. You’re expressing this feeling, but I’m just like… hit me, kinda.

Tiffany: It… Anyway, go on, Dawn.

Dawn: Yeah, so I was thinking that being a failed god kind of sucks. Feeling guilty for everything so I don’t have to feel helpless kind of sucks. So an alternative way to frame that would be, like, it is also inconsistent. Because of what I said earlier about not taking responsibility for all the good things that I also didn’t prevent.

And so instead I figured I’d take all the suffering in the world and divide it by a power-weighted sum of all the actors that have responsibility to prevent it, or have some power to prevent it. And then that leaves me with a lot less responsibility, with a tiny fraction of that responsibility. That’s perhaps more manageable. And so in a way, I’ve just reassigned the meaning that I wanted to give to different things, and made the whole experience a bit more bearable for myself.

Tiffany: I’m still processing it. So, to try to bring it back into my world… I am, like, you know, how I hold myself to the standards of not participating in things that I think contribute to bad shit, yeah, right? Apple. And I don’t have to feel somebody else’s judgment for that. In fact, I know there’s people who would judge me for thinking that people who buy Apple are kinda dumb. And I don’t care! Why would I care? I know they’re wrong. Like… I see the bad they do.

And so then I’m just introspecting on how much that reaction is not there for me, to give myself a comparison point. Did you say that shame gave you a sense of control?

Dawn: No, the guilt. Like I pretended to have control over these things to not feel helpless, and then the cost for that was the guilt.

Tiffany: I see, and so the guilt helps resolve the shame.

Dawn: Yeah, I don’t know about the shame in that context. What I feel is just guilt, and then when I’m like, “Wait, why?” Then I’m like, “Okay, because I don’t want to feel helpless, I want to feel control.”

Tiffany: I can understand trying to guilt yourself into something like… At least with my parallel, you know… It’s not the healthiest, but I’ll hate myself into doing something. But I view that as metaphorically whipping myself, punishing myself, doling out punishment to myself to try to bring myself into line.

Dawn: Yeah, I used to do that too. I don’t anymore.

Tiffany: I’m sorry, I won’t get back to the meaning portion of it, I’m just still trying to process it. Cause from my point of view, somebody needs to give me a reason, or I need to have values that would make me want to not do something. And so shaming me won’t work. So the reason why hating myself works is because it’s proverbially like whipping myself. It’s like if you want me to do something I really don’t want to do, you can just punish me into it. I won’t… you know, I’m not submitting, I’m just complying. Good job. You know?

It’s hard for me to view shame as anything else other than something that… I guess there’s healthy shame. I guess, I don’t… I don’t even want to believe that! You know, not even that we can’t use shame healthily. It’s just so disproportionately powerful. Especially in a modern society. So it’s hard for me to see shame as healthy. I can see guilt as healthy.

Shame vs. Guilt

Dawn: But it’s hard for me to see shame as healthy, because shame to me just sounds like legacy code. The old legacy code that hasn’t been removed yet.

Tiffany: Yeah, because guilt can at least reflect either your values or just the harm done to somebody that makes all the sense in the world. Shame just seems like an overpowered, unnecessary, extra version of guilt.

Dawn: Yeah, exactly. And so much like childhood traumas due to different forms of conditioning through shame. I think we could just get rid of it. Like before birth, intervene a bit in the genetic code, and then remove the shame. That would probably prevent a lot of bad things without enabling same amount of bad things.

Tiffany: Yeah, I think if everyone still had guilt, but nobody had shame, we would probably live in a better world, because then an asshole can’t shame you for something completely illogical. Right? This is why shame feels stupid. The person is making you feel bad. You know, if you punch me in the face, it makes me feel bad. But why is punching me in the face gonna make me think that that’s my fault on its own, in and of itself? Maybe they could, but it won’t in and of itself, but shame has the power to do that. And so I feel like shame gives disproportionate power to assholes to just make you feel bad until you believe something that’s wrong.

Whereas healthy guilt is just like a lesson. You know, once you learn your lesson, the guilt can float away. Doing bad things isn’t supposed to feel good.

Grandiose Fantasies

Tiffany: Anyway, my experience with that… Having felt like I failed myself, my father, and just felt like unforgivable, like damned, in a way. That the only way that would compensate for all the people I’ve hurt, all the mistakes I’ve made… When I felt my worst, those grandiose fantasies did involve inventing fully automated luxury gay space communism. And that’s a great aspiration to have, but I used to put a lot of my self-worth into that grandiose delusion of like I was necessarily on the golden path to that, to a practically jobless, automated, resource-based world.

And so I just, I don’t know, the pathway to meaning for me was easy there. You know, in the same way you were saying before, I have a ton of individual things. Like really, what that was, was a synthesis of everything either I already was capable of, or I wanted to be, or I was growing into be. It was a synthesis of basically all the positive things of me turned up to infinite, basically.

Just splitting those out and valuing them individually is what I did. But it was still more of the time thing, really internalizing that. Since I can’t… there’s no guarantee of meeting that grandiose fantasy. So what? That was never on me? And I have all these awesome things that if we had a world like that, or we were trying to build that world, it would contribute to it?

And also, I was combating feelings of fakeness. You know, I’d tried all my life up to that point to just get more emotionally regulated and stuff. Let alone hold down a job, let alone do anything I dreamed of. And so I felt like maybe my fucking intellect was fake, too. And I had fooled myself into it along the way.

And even before I really wrestled with that face on, that feeling of fakeness was there in different cordoned off pieces throughout me that would contribute to that. So I guess there was just like learning it’s not just raw intellect that will fix your life. You still need to have the right tools. You still need to know the actual things you need to challenge in yourself. And stop treating yourself like a perfection machine. Because I know that’s a question you had: “How did I find meaning when I found out I’m not like some God?”

Dawn: Exactly. After realizing you’re not God. That’s the question that I have on my list, so you already segued to it perfectly.

Tiffany: Well, you know, like all the things I said, that doesn’t mean that I can’t use this kind of creativity and depth of insight to help people in a way that most people can’t. Or I’m learning like the psychopath version of empathy is really sophisticated. But then simultaneously, it’s easy to keep my emotions from mixing up with the other person’s. And not get bogged down having to feel emotion after emotion, and just work through it like a logic problem. And I can help people really work through some complex stuff, comparatively trivially. And just like practice. When you’re doing Mentalization-Based Therapy (MBT) and DBT to yourself like all day, every day, for a year and a half, two years straight…

Dawn: You get good at it. Yeah.

Tiffany: But I think I learned a greater depth than that. That’s another thing I like about myself: my commitment to my tribe. Towards trying to find the real problem in something. Like my dad taught me that, just with mechanical stuff. Like I said with the PT Cruiser, it’s not that you can’t fix it. It’s that it’s obtuse to fix. It has problems it just doesn’t need to have. That the solution is that this sort of car shouldn’t exist. It’s that this sort of car should be normal.

Knowing How Things Work (Electric Water Pumps)

Why does Saturn suck? It’s not because they have plastic body panels, or the cars were cheap as shit. They’re supposed to be like that. It’s because they didn’t rely on the reliable things they had for what should be a normal-ass basic commuter car.

That sort of thinking… or let’s say BMW switched to electronic water pumps, and they also got rid of their radiator temperature gauges. If you still had a temperature gauge, and it still at least partly told the truth… They most car gauges lie to some degree, because people have complained about it at some point. 1980s Volvos ended up with what’s called a “temp faker,” and that’s literally what it’s called in the instructions. That outside of certain operational parameters, it just slowly raises the value to nominal and then just keeps it there. Because people who didn’t really understand what was going wrong with their car saw what looked like a non-ideal value and read too much into it.

That wasn’t as big of a deal back then, but when you move to an electric water pump, that has a different kind of failure mode. If it’s only pumping a third as hard, if you had a temperature gauge, you could see that this thing reaches too high a temperature too often, and it didn’t used to do that, and you could catch it. By that point now, the only sign you’d have is that the red temperature light lights up on your dash. And now your car’s in limp mode, and it’s gotta get towed. You don’t know until it’s too late.

Electric water pumps aren’t evil. It’s that there’s no graceful failure available anymore. And it just strands you.

I try to take that kind of thinking with my mental health and other people’s problems. And so I guess I basically set out to ask myself and try and find an answer to the question of: “Why is recovery so hard? What are the actual points me and other people get hung up on that would maybe make me stuck and why?” And that gives me as much insight into myself as a person, any person. To me in particular. And teaches me a lot about other people.

Asking those sorts of questions and actually getting answers teaches you things about where our lightning-powered thinking meatball meets reality. It’s not a totally rational design at all. It has lots of quirks and features.

Like, one good example M.E. Thomas ran into with her therapist that she found to be totally anti-intuitive – and so did I when I first learned it – is that losing something negative about yourself still hurts, because you kind of process it as a piece of you dying. And it’s just because it attaches to identity, and that’s how we experience identity. And no other reason. And knowing that empowers you greatly, and it helps you get through the difficult parts of change.

Somebody healthier, but not healthy – someone who might have severe depression, but that’s their primary part, their biggest problem – it feels like that old version of themselves is dying. But if that’s your only problem, and you work through that grief and get over it… really, the thing they’re learning that’s hard for them is grief. And eventually, you probably can do that, even if you don’t learn the finer points.

But somebody who’s never had a stable sense of self, or basically never had a sense of self at all? The answer to that is so unintuitive that it really does help to have somebody tell you point-blank that this is how this basic part of you works, because the rest of it is not gonna regulate itself through there. You’re learning how to regulate yourself for the first time for so many of these things as an adult.

I’m really happy I have that mindset. I really love and appreciate my motherfucker of a father for teaching me that. It teaches you something deep. He taught me how to figure out how to think about something. And then you learned that’s a thing you could do, that you could learn new ways to think.

I feel like that’s something a rationalist really would understand, right? Especially somebody that just so casually goes, “Oh, yeah, a few years ago, I turned off my internal narrator, and it had all of these clear first and second order benefits.” You know, and to most people, that’d be stupidly abstract. And it’s not abstract to me at all, I get it. But that’s that same kind of thing. You learn that, and then you go, “Wow, I could really game this… that my thought meat.”

Dawn: I have like two friends who can do all sorts of weird shit with their brains. They can like up and down regulate all sorts of emotions, and attachment to different things can change their level of agreeableness or disagreeableness at will.

Agreeableness and Disagreeableness

Tiffany: I’m working on that last one, but I’m having to learn what agreeableness and disagreeableness is to me. Because I’ve recently learned more deeply what it means to have an antisocial personality. And like… You saw in that one thread where I vaguely whined about something. And she knew exactly what I was bitching about. She’s just like, “That’s my baseline, I can’t stand it when people are like that.”

Yeah, I can’t stand it. Like when people try and just help me over and over when that’s just not what I need. They don’t know my needs. And just the thought pattern of getting mad at somebody for trying to comfort me. And getting mad at them hurting themselves and shooting themselves in their own foot, and just making everything worse.

Normal people don’t get mad about somebody over-apologizing, maybe. Annoyed or tired of it, but I’m just like… “Oh, my fucking god, how are you so dumb! I know it’s not that, but it’s just… Ugh!”

And that realization… I realize that’s pretty fucking antisocial. It causes me problems all the fucking time. And it’s made me go: “What antisocial aspects do I want to keep? When and why?” And I think that will answer a core of when and why I would want a certain amount of agreeableness or disagreeableness. And in a certain way, too. I wanted to share that.

Dawn: Yeah, just… I also want to have just the right amount of disagreeableness or agreeableness for the right situation.

Tiffany: I mean, like, you know, it will be said, you could change every sentence in a conversation, honestly. I want the flexibility. I want to know why, so I can make it a decision on the fly.

Dawn: Yeah, like I kind of adopt to the other person and the situation. But for me currently, within a very small band, I’m going all the way on the agreeable side, and then if the other person is relatively disagreeable, then I’m like, “Okay, let’s play a little bit with that.” But you know.

Tiffany: That’s so very human, but that is an obvious hole to me, because it’s like you’re just energy matching. And that might escalate something you don’t need to. And your stance is now dependent upon… Bam! And so that’s not rational to me.

Dawn: Oh, I only do it when I want to, not generally. You know, when I’m feeling playful or something. But sometimes there are also people who I want to show that consistent agreeableness to, because I want to give them some kind of corrective experience to some other experiences that they’ve had previously. It’s totally dependent on the situation, what I think is useful.

But you mentioned, “I surrender control to regain agency.” Do you remember that? What you meant by that?

The Paradox of Control

Tiffany: So, I believe that’s really the paradox of control itself. The more you have a control mindset, the more you’re bound to specific outcomes, or following… And it makes you more rigid. And so surrendering allows you more options. Because you’re accepting that maybe you will do something that actually does matter, but you can’t have a control mindset to see those other options, and it actually gives agency back. I think the concept of control is broadly, but not entirely, very paradoxical.

Dawn: Yeah, I see this a lot in our groups with people who are very deep in the control mindset. They frame it as a kind of power, but when I empathize with “Do I want to be like that?”, then I feel mostly the inflexibility of it, and I’m like, “Yeah, I want to be like that 0.1% of the time, I would like to have the option, let’s say.”

Tiffany: Yeah! Or like, you know that if it would work out in their head like that… in your head like that. It would feel great, right? But you know, it’s not real. It’s not really what happens.

And the other flip side to that is people are more likely to do what you want if your primary thing isn’t trying to control them. And then part of that’s also surrender, because then accepting compromise. Getting 50% of what you want is better than 0%. So finding a common ground, and leaning them towards something that’s more like what you like. But not entirely, because you’re also accepting what they like. Still will likely net gain you.

Dawn: Yeah, that’s also like a nice mechanism that sort of aligns incentives. And people just use their empathy to care about each other, then she can turn any kind of gain into a mutual positive sum, kind of Pareto improvement of the situation.

Tiffany: I think it’s still more complex than that. Because I think there’s times where that doesn’t work out in a practical sense. But at least in the immediate moment. Helping people with their feelings at least gets you past whatever’s blocking actually moving forward.

Because sometimes, even after… You know, an extreme example. Let’s say you have you, and me, and another friend of ours. And you two are the normal ones, and I got mad at something, and I really don’t want to compromise. And initially, helping me feel better is probably gonna lead me back towards the mindset of where I would compromise.

Imagine you, another person, and a narcissist are at a table. I don’t know, the narcissist might end up compromising with you, but not while they’re still fucking pissed! I think that extreme example still breeds true for a lot of less extreme examples.

Dawn: Yeah, I think I read this in a bunch of books as well. There’s like this beautiful metaphor of the Sun and the Wind having some kind of bet. Who can undress someone who walks on the beach? And the wind tries to do it with brute force, and fails, because the person just wraps themselves in their coat more firmly. And then the sun does it with warmth, and the person freely takes off the coat, and the sun wins the bet.

Tiffany: I forgot about that one. I remember that. I was very young when I first heard that. Yeah, you know, what I just said strikes me as something that can be a very high social awareness. Someone… it’s a powerful soft skill.

But I think just if you have a more self-serving or malicious intent, it could be kind of a psychopathic mindset of, “Alright, I’ll make you feel nice, and then after we’re done making you feel nice, I’m gonna talk you into what I want.” But you know, if you put some practicality and compassion into that, it’s not strictly psychopathic at all. But I find it interesting that I’ve ended up there from the complete other end.

Dawn: It feels natural to me that those would be separate.

Tiffany: That people’s thinking and people’s feelings – even if they aren’t aware of it in the moment – can be ultimately totally independent of one another. Because the feeling could be transient. And in the moment of feeling that thing, they won’t necessarily think that at all.

Compromise vs. Blame

Dawn: Yeah, but I think like also when you have a situation like that, where someone resists some kind of compromise, oftentimes the framings of the situation are different. Like the party that seeks the compromise is probably in a collaboration framing, where they are trying to achieve something together with the other person. And the person who resists is sort of in a blame mindset, where they’re trying to figure out who’s right and who’s wrong, so who has to take the blame for whatever happens. And then breaking the person out of the right-wrong mindset and getting them into the collaboration mindset again makes it only possible to negotiate fairly afterwards. Not because it would have been unfair before, but because negotiation was just not on the table.

Tiffany: Yeah, absolutely. I can think of gentler and rougher versions of that. Like, let’s say somebody’s not going to get really into a compromising mindset. I’d be like, “Look, if you really want to blame somebody, we can frickin’ blame somebody! And this problem is still going to be here. And you can live with that, and I can’t, and I don’t care, and I’m going to solve it. So if you want to do it that way, we’re gonna get through this, and we’re gonna solve the problem, and we’re also gonna find the person to blame since you want it so bad.”

Dawn: Cute!

Tiffany: That’s… I don’t know why my mind leans me towards the “How do I out-coerce the coercive person?” But it could also be just a fantasy I’d love to do that. But I could imagine a more middle ground, that somebody just doesn’t yet understand that kind of value, and really you have to help them feel like people are gonna be accountable, we’re gonna make a solution that has you in mind too, etc. And then just kind of doing the compromise and negotiation. Even though they’re uncomfortable with it. But now that they’re at least not stonewalling it.

Dawn: Yeah, this worked really well for me at one point. There was a project, one person wanted to drop out, the project was kind of failing, and I noticed that the person was really dead set on blaming me for the failure. Didn’t see the point in that, but then again, taking the blame for that toward that person just didn’t seem to have any negative effects that I could think of.

Tiffany: I would love that.

Dawn: I would get off on that, it’s like, “Fine, if you want me to be the asshole, I will.” You know?

Tiffany: If that’s really what you want, I’ll give that to you, buddy. I’m the biggest cunt on Earth. I’m glad you finally recognized it. Let’s move on. If you want me to be the demon… I love that shit. It makes me feel powerful, because I’m letting myself be bad. I’m being stronger than my reputation, or whatever.

Dawn: Yay!

Tiffany: And this person thinks they’re so in control, and it’s just like… “All I had to do was lie to your face, you dumb bitch. And you were gonna go along with it anyway, and you think you played us.”

That’s that shit! Laura once said it. She called it Duper’s Delight.

Dawn: Yeah, exactly.

Out-Assholing the Asshole

Tiffany: And I like that there’s positive versions of it. I should remind myself of that, that there are very positive ways of out-assholing an asshole. And it being genuinely helpful and productive. Kind of having that asshole in your heart helps you do it.

Dawn: Yeah, I feel like sadism and Machiavellianism come from sort of a similar place, but Machiavellianism is very much easier for me to empathize with, or to experience myself, compared to sadism. So oftentimes, I try to tap into that when I try to empathize with what a situation feels like for someone. It’s so much closer, in a way.

Tiffany: Yeah, this is just a marriage of the two, right? Like, in a moment like that, I’m just thinking, “What do I gotta do that makes this move forward?” I’m just taking a little sadistic pleasure in doing it. You know, if I’m really upset with the person, it will help me get over the fact that I feel like I have to do it, for sure. And that’s definitely part of where my sadism came from, of having to do the thing I really didn’t want to do, but it does work.

Dawn: And allowing or enabling some of the Machiavellianism when necessary. We’re getting toward the end of the question catalog. There are a couple more questions that I want to save for the very end. But do you have in your notes any answers whose questions I haven’t asked yet?

Tiffany: No, I have to drive her home, so I had to schedule that. Not off the top of my head.

Dawn: We’ve explored a lot. There are lots of questions that seem to me that they touch on things that you’ve mentioned already. I think I can skip over quite a few of them now, and go right to the closing section. One of them is: how you are in general feeling about this whole conversation?

Tiffany: You know, hopefully wistful. And I think that’s how I feel about my whole recovery. It still feels really daunting, but I really don’t have any real reason to doubt that I’m going to get somewhere I want to be. Whether I know what that is.

Wistfulness and Whimsy

Dawn: Yeah, what could that look like?

Tiffany: I want… I want to really feel my whimsy again. I still feel compelled to do it. But I still feel like I’m going through the motions in my playfulness and my whimsy.

When I light up somebody’s face from something I’ve done, especially something from some aspect of myself I’ve nurtured a bit… I do it in my own unique way, or I do it in a way that most people don’t know how? Whether it be just for entertainment, or helping somebody through something? I want to feel that again. Feel the person light up through their face. And I have a strange, unknowable sense that that’s gonna happen, and it’s possible, but I have no idea how long that’s going to take.

I can just tell I’m doing so much good. But I only feel like the victory of it, and not the delight. I wanna feel more deeply what I am in people’s lives. I can feel like I’m not even belonging, I can tell I belong. But I wanna feel like I’m somewhere, something… and someone… more than just know it.

And I feel like if I get to whatever point that is, I will be capable of giving that back. And showing somebody else the splendor of life. I feel like I could. But maybe I already do, and I don’t know it. I don’t know.

Dawn: When you described the three-step process for experiencing emotional empathy, it sounded like you were already able to tap into exactly this delight, however briefly.

Tiffany: Yeah, but this is deeper, because those emotions feel fleeting, and they don’t seem to stick onto me slowly as layers and feel like I’m a part of people’s life. The connection part of it’s very tenuous. Like, I can be sitting with somebody and really getting to know them, and I can just tell that that’s what’s happening. And it’s really weird when you can see that so acutely without having to think about it, but not feel ANYTHING from it.

It’s one of my most alienating experiences to see, to watch somebody gain this deep connection from me and feel it. And I’m not feeling any of it. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt that before, but I can tell that it is long-term possible. And so that means that all the moving parts of my recovery are starting to coalesce.

And you see, this is a microcosm of itself. If I hit that point, I’ll have the feeling of accomplishment of having gotten to there. And I can tell I’m getting towards there, but I can’t feel it.

Dawn: Yeah, I associate that with Metta meditation. Like, for me, when I feel this connection with another person that I actually talk to, then it’s an amazing feeling, exactly as amazing as you think it is. But I get something very similar from Metta meditation.

Metta Meditation and Self-Transcendence

Tiffany: What’s Metta meditation?

Dawn: It’s when you try to feel love in general, sort of a training for feeling more love. And you train that by first starting out easy, feeling love towards someone you actually already love, like Farvel, for example. And then expanding it from there. Either to yourself and feeling self-love, or to another person that’s more difficult to love. And then you try to really understand where this person is coming from.

And for me, the trick is also to understand how I am like that person. So it’s easy for me to feel love for myself, and for people who are sufficiently like me. But then to expand that to people who are unlike me, I need to know how would I have become that person? So, what genes would have to have been different, what temperaments, what childhood experiences would have to have been different for me to have turned into that person? And once I can close that gap, and I feel like I’m that person but for a few little tweaks here and there throughout our lives, then it becomes really possible for me to merge, or to expand my identity to include the other person, and feel that.

Tiffany: I’ve had two shocked faces in this span. Because the first one was me realizing: “Why would I want to feel the love I have for Farvel for somebody else?” And I realized, very succinctly, I am selfish with my love.

Dawn: And I need to ponder that. That is…

Tiffany: A hell of a realization.

Dawn: You have plenty of it, you can give it freely! I love people I would never want to meet.

Tiffany: I’m just delighting at the novelty of that phrase, that’s astonishing. I’d have never come up with that phrase on my own, I don’t think.

Because I hope this would maybe even be a pathway towards this, but… Sorry, it’s so meta to me still. I guess why it’s called meta-meditation. It’s already like a complicated thing in my head to put myself in somebody’s shoes. So it’s challenging. When I have those moments of spontaneous affective empathy, that is what happens. It’s very… my brain’s not very good at it yet. And I would like that to be more natural, even if not constant. And I feel like that’s like a stepping stone from where I’m at, to where you’re at. And I don’t know that it has to happen linearly. But at least I know the shape of the lacking. Or the shape of the yet-to-be.

Dawn: I think that is what they call self-transcendence. Like, I told someone about this, a friend of mine, and she was like, “Oh, that is self-transcendence.”

Tiffany: I’ve never understood what it is. No, and now I understand what it is.

Dawn: Like, I just described that to a friend yesterday, how identification works for me. That I sort of highly identify with this body and algorithms that are sort of like it. I suppose one partner of mine is sufficiently similar that she’s also a sufficiently similar algorithm that there’s a lot of identification going on.

But then, I think sort of in general, humans are like a high level of identification, because a lot of them are fairly similar. Then all mammals, I think, are also like very similar to me, so there’s also a high level of identification. Then all animals that share culture. I think culture, having sort of a pack, and then having some shared culture within the pack, I think that is also something that makes it easier for me to feel a high level of identification with the animal.

And then all sorts of animals that don’t have that, like most invertebrates… That’s sort of where it gets a bit more difficult with the identification, where I feel like I don’t really understand what it is like to be that animal.

Tiffany: I understand it. I don’t know if I can do it, but I get it. Because I do that with Farvel. Because when she just jumps up into my hand… Or where she rubs into my face… Or when she was snuggling with me, laying on my feet, and then I watched her fall asleep and her head just fall off my foot, and then she woke up with the strongest trill of like, “Oh my god, I have mommy!” And I just want to feel that.

Dawn: Because I’m like, that has to feel so wonderful.

Tiffany: And I could put myself in her shoes. In her brittle paws. And that… I get why a person would do that now. Never understood. I’ve never understood what it is or why, but that also unlocked a realization of why a small self works the way it does. Real simple. If you don’t have much of a self-container at all, doing the process you’re talking about doesn’t grow empathy, it just like starts replacing the self you have.

And that’s the psychopathic mirroring thing? You know, where if I go to emulate somebody, and I try to take on parts of them… If they’re with a tenuous self-container, or suppressed one, then I become those thought patterns. So that’s why a psychopath would have defenses against empathy. Because it wipes your… it wipes your slate.

That’s really interesting. I need to think on that further. Like what part of the process you’d get hung up on that would cause you to have to stop there, and then develop the defenses that protect you from getting board wiped. Do you get what I mean? That those seem reactive to getting stopped or having trouble reaching the point where you can have a persistent or independent self-state from the people around you.

I thought you might think that that’s interesting, because it’s a genuinely new realization to me.

Dawn: Yeah, totally. I also wonder whether that could explain why a neglectful upbringing can lead to either this pure psychopathic presentation – for example, M.E. Thomas – or can lead to a more narcissistic presentation. Because I suppose the choice when you have this complete absence of introjects, or this relative absence of introjects with just a few things that you can call your identity – so a very small self… When you have that, then you probably have the choice between either creating some kind of false self to give you stability (and then you end up with this more anaclytic or empty form of NPD), or you can go for the more typical psychopathic flexibility, where you just take on whatever random identity comes your way, or is convenient at a given time.

Factor 1 vs. Factor 2 Psychopathy

Tiffany: I think that actually is more due to genetics. Because like with me, I had the predispositions for my amygdala to do those things, but you know, I suppressed and then atrophied my amygdala. It’s not that things were in… I think Factor 1 psychopathy is more of a lacking.

So the root of attachment is fear. And so, if you don’t have fear, you don’t seek comfort. And if you don’t seek comfort, you don’t form an emotional attachment system. And without an emotional attachment system, all these other identity things don’t precipitate.

But if you DO have one, and you don’t completely shut it off or forego it, you’re gonna end up with some narcissistic defenses, naturally. Because at that level of developmental breakdown, it’s basically a last-ditch effort. You don’t have enough of an identity to just have a borderline state. There’s not enough underneath. You have to have a facade to protect that last kernel. Or at least to mediate it.

Like stuff with good-bad fusion, where you start identifying with the bad stuff to, and it at least mediates it. It’s like a super primitive ego. That doesn’t recognize the interior, and so only functions as an external self-image, and is resultantly a narcissistic facade. That I think is much more genetic predisposition.

And upbringing will certainly influence the kind of personality someone develops, right? Like I’m thinking of another famous YouTuber, Kanika Batra. She’s a very narcissistic Factor 1 psychopath. And then someone who’s pretty in between, because she’s trying to navigate herself, our favorite “Cluster B Milkshake.” Right? Like she can have a narcissistic valence or not, etc. It’s more of a choice to her, it’s a part of her, even if her parts are very tenuous.

I’ve seen very narcissistic psychopaths, and then we’ve all seen M.E. Thomas, who has some trait narcissism, but you wouldn’t necessarily say that’s a defining part of her personality. And I think that’s just incidental base traits plus upbringing.

I guess that is to say that we have a decent understanding of the roots of Factor 1 versus Factor 2 psychopathy. It’s still nature versus nurture. You can still have strong Factor 2, and some pivotal Factor 1 traits. But the amygdala getting short-circuited is such an easy thing to MRI and to track the genetics that we have… It’s one of the few things we have a decent understanding of the pathway to Nature vs. Nurture. Because it breaks down so many things at such a fundamental level.

Anyway, where were you?

Dawn: Yeah, I still find it very complicated. Like the pathway that you described with the underactive amygdala, and so the child doesn’t seek attachments, is one that I find fairly obvious. But then there’s also the one where the child is emotionally neglected, and so also is not able to form attachment, goes into avoidant attachment in order to fool themselves into thinking that they are basically the same, but the amygdala is very active. Anyway, there’s just some kind of suppression going on.

And when that happens, there are those that form more of a psychopathic personality afterwards, and those who form more of a narcissistic personality afterwards. Or some combination. And that is the more confusing one to me.

Tiffany: I think again you could just split that into whether someone has a strong lead towards Factor 1 or not. So let’s say someone with Factor 1 that’s primarily strongly neglected. They’re probably just the stereotype of – for good, bad, or neutral – a high-functioning psychopath.

They might have had a lot of decent things modeled, or at least had a lot of opportunity to discover things, or model them for themselves. Just not been pushed towards more negative things. And then they’re not going to be narcissistic, really, outside of what works and what helps. And other people won’t be of no value to them. But they won’t necessarily have grown up as much of a predisposition to see them as such a potential threat.

And then the other one… You’re gonna get M.E. Thomas. Like, M.E. Thomas was fucking abandoned as a kid at a park once. Like, she was more than neglected. She told a story once of her dad beating down the door. She was like 5 or 6, I think. And her just being like, “Alright, is this how you want to lose control?” And I delighted in that. I wish I had that awareness when I was that young. Maybe it’d fuck me up worse, but I would have loved it. And so you know, she’s healthier now. She has a good head on her shoulders. But you can tell she came from somewhere more difficult, and she had to work through it.

Whereas, let’s say someone who doesn’t have a strong Factor 1… This even shows that if then someone has that environment, but they don’t have the opportunities, they’re gonna end up more adversarial. Right? Usually. And so then, let’s say that someone doesn’t have strong Factor 1, they just have a predilection, they could end up in Factor 2. And they’re just broadly neglected. Their propped-up self-image is just going to be… You know, they might know more about what adults and kids in their life that aren’t their parents mean to them. And they might get a better understanding of people that way? They might even be more obviously narcissistic, but less fragile.

And somebody that then has that, but is abused as well? You know, rather narcissistic, and at least initially rather unstable. And I imagine my counterpart that was just neglected would have less productive risk-taking than I would.

I feel like that would be the major valence. And then, maybe somebody that’s not me, that then had better opportunities… I think that had a similar or worse upbringing to mine, but have better opportunities in their teens, in their early 20s. That person sounds dangerous. They probably up until the wrong moment think they’re unstoppable and fucking indestructible. And have some level of confirmation that things go their way.

I don’t know, being one of those four primary pathways there, it’s not hard for me to imagine the other 3. I think broadly, the worse the kid is treated, and the worse opportunities they’re given, they’re gonna end up more narcissistic. Either for what it gets them, or to compensate. And I feel like for Factor 1, it’s inverted. Because empowering them will give them a reason to be more narcissist – will give them confirmation that they should just keep going.

Dawn: I want to chart it out. I already have a Canva open to make a chart of these things. There are also these other factors that I wanted to take into account, like alexithymia, for example, seems to be sort of a different beast from having an under-functioning amygdala. And then impairment of cognitive empathy is another thing that I also want to incorporate. And then just sort of to understand better how all of these things interact with trauma and interact with neglect versus abuse.

Charting Personality Disorders

Tiffany: Definitely the hardest one for me to understand is like straight up lacking cognitive empathy. Not understanding it. I had very poor cognitive empathy most of my life, so I can get that. I guess that would just be somebody with a Factor 1 psychopath having a very harsh upbringing, and then having no real opportunities given to them later. And then you would be predisposed against giving anybody empathy, even if you’re given a reason later, right? Even if you were capable of it, you’d reflexively or consciously choose not to. I think that’s modelable even if we don’t know the source.

Dawn: Yeah, like I want to chart that, just sort of assume that these things are a given, regardless of what the source might be. And then see like how they interact. Like this was quite successful for me when it comes to some hypotheses I had about the simulation hypothesis, so that we’re somewhere in sort of a tree of simulations. And it was quite insightful, and so I’m hoping that this chart can also be a bit more insightful for me. Because I can’t really keep track of that mentally, I need to actually draw it in some fashion to learn from it.

Tiffany: Okay, when I get off this call, I’ll give you a short outline of those. Because I see it as 6 possibilities, not four. And I do see two of those six possibilities impairing cognitive empathy at least as results, so I think it’s modelable.

Dawn: Beautiful, thanks! Yeah, I also want to turn this into a blog article at some point, once I have a bit more clarity of it. It’s one of my projects to just understand better where psychopathy and the more psychopathic bend of pathological narcissism actually come from. Because they have such a different ideology to what I’ve experienced, and so it’s all a bit foreign to me, I can’t directly empathize with it. But I’ve met so many people now who have some presentation like that.

Is it because part of it’s obviously a tool? And that’s blurry? Like, the compensatory grandiosity and narcissism versus trait narcissism and grandiosity. Like, I view the former as a reaction I would have, and I view the latter as something I do because I know it works.

Tiffany: Yeah, we’ve discussed that. That makes a lot of sense. I think that is one thing that I don’t have enough access to, because I completely misinterpreted how it works socially. But the other thing is like… The sorts of experiences that people often tell me about, the sorts of neglect that people often tell me about… like I can find sort of small parts of that in my life, but they were probably late enough, mediated enough, that they had completely different effects on me. So I can’t really make the connection between that and make that useful in some fashion for empathizing with where they are coming from.

And so I’m trying to ask them lots of questions, and then try to understand better that way, rather than trying to link it to my experiences with not having the opportunity to express emotions and such.

Tiffany: Yeah, I’ll help you with that. I think I can jumpstart with it, because I can empathize with those. I can imagine a more broken version of myself. A better treated version of myself. Etc. Like I had similar struggles at a young age, and I can imagine some traits having been more distinct when I was younger.

Dawn: Yeah, like in particular, when you tap into this empty version… like you have all of these introjects, most of them from your dad, I suppose, some of them from cats, that were helpful in some fashion, and some other ones that were detrimental. But they are definitely sort of there. But you also had like these areas where there was just nothing, like you mentioned how you forget how pleasant doodling is for you.

The Disavowed Self

Tiffany: Well, one concept I want to think maybe to wrap this up that’ll help you. It’s the concept of The Disavowed Self. That’s normally in literature talking about a part of you you suppressed or don’t acknowledge, and you did that early enough that it’s pre-verbal. So those capacities, or those leanings in yourself, do exist, but you’re really going to access them only via mindfulness and meditation and stuff, when you get everything else to shut up.

Or like in my worst meltdowns, when I come back from them with better awareness now… That just… the screaming infant. Feeling like nobody’s gonna come to help her. That no, it’s not going to be okay. But also more nuanced stuff, like your creativity, etc. There’s stuff that if it’s… if you’re suppressing it well before you know what shame even could be. But it’s pre-verbal. Really, the language centers and even most of the abstract parts of your brain aren’t going to register it at all.

It’s buried so deep. And like I said, some of these parts of me are painful enough, they can come out and lead to my worst meltdowns. But there’s other parts that are instead of a terror, or a negative, they’re a positive, unexpressed. And they’re absolutely still there. Like, I don’t have to doodle for even 5 minutes, and it’s there immediately. Right. I can remember my one ink pen – the multiple colors – being taken away in first grade. Or just having the avenue taken away from me well before I had a strong attachment to it.

And so keep that in mind, that stuff like that… even in a mind with strong, harsh introjects can have these empty aspects, because they’re pre-verbal.

Productive Anger

Dawn: Yeah, I suspect that investigating my anger could be helpful for that, because I didn’t used to have any access to it, and then I experienced some at one point, and it was very interesting. And now through therapy, I have sort of a more… like I experienced something, but it’s super mild, and I describe it as “miffedness.”

But I also noticed that when something happens that I intellectually know “this is the sort of thing that would make someone angry,” then I also have some thoughts coming up on some intuitions that are kind of passive-aggressive. And so I’m like, “Okay, there must be some kind of anger there somewhere that I cannot experience.”

Tiffany: My suggestion would maybe be re-diving back into your guilt about feeling like all the problems in the world are yours? Because a reasonable reaction would be to be angry at what set it up for the people, etc. Like, you haven’t lived a life where that would turn into resentment in the same way. So the anger’s probably a lot more fucking primal, to be honest. That’s the most obvious anger to me. And I think it’s a positive thing, it’s motivating, right? If you channel it right, it’s incredibly motivating.

Dawn: Damn. It’s also interesting that I generally only feel anger toward people I care about. So the fact that I will probably in many cases care about the perpetrators of all the suffering that I wish I were able to prevent… It’s probably going to work hand-in-hand with rediscovering that anger.

Tiffany: No, absolutely, that’s exactly what I mean. Just think about my mom. I’m just thinking about 4-year-old Tiffany. A blonde bitch that calls herself her mother swats her with a Teflon mixing spoon, and she’s screaming, and you watch that woman shove food into Tiffany’s 4-year-old mouth. And she just realizes that she has to give up and chew it and try and swallow it. Oh, that makes me angry!

Dawn: I won’t think about that too long. It’s not very productive anger.

Tiffany: But…

Dawn: The problem is like… I very quickly go to hate with these things. Like, I really need to care about the person first to be able to access anger.

Tiffany: Maybe imagine you could be in that scenario, and you have… Maybe you’re a significant friend of the family, and you just didn’t know this is what the home life was like for me. Right? And you find out about it. And then there’s like this parent-teacher conference. And my mother tries to advocate for discipline in the school system. And you’re now in a position to make a difference.

And you know, maybe even some part of you would want to shame her in front of the entire parent-teacher conference or something, you know? Or some righteous anger of, “I’m not letting this bitch get away with this, and she’s gonna know, going home today, that what she isn’t doing isn’t right to that child, and she’s going to know it from every other mouth in the room, including mine, because I’m going to spell it out.”

Right now. How, like, the anger of, “How dare she come in here, and say that! To other adults!” Argumental? Yes! Like, I guess there I get anger at the willful ignorance. My knee-jerk was like stupidity, but like the just ignorant audacity. Ignorant arrogance. The willful ignorance. And I think those are things that really tear down people and tear down society, too.

I’m trying to help you theorycraft a situation where your anger could be productive, even if you don’t have a strong attachment to the person. But you have a strong attachment to somebody they affect. And so you suddenly have a reason to care about her opinion. But not because you care about her.

Dawn: Yeah, gosh, so difficult for me to… like, but I can probably come up with some examples where I care… I probably need to know more about the perpetrator, let’s say, in order to be able to expand sort of my identity toward them, to be able to empathize with them, and I think at that point, I can actually be angry with them, as opposed to just hating them.

Tiffany: That’s so weird to me that you would need empathy to be angry.

Dawn: But is it really like anger that you experience toward people that you don’t empathize with? Or is it like, for me, it’s like when there is some perpetrator that I cannot empathize with, and they are doing some crap, then I think of them like a software bug. Like, I just want to fix them, and ideally, I want to go back in time, distract their parents on the day of their conception so someone else gets born.

Tiffany: I guess here, for me, if it’s personal… let’s say she was doing this and it might affect my kid. You know, I’ll get angry for my kid’s right as an extension of myself. Or if it affects me directly. Like let’s say some idiot at work, and it’s a union meeting, and some idiot chimes up, and I’m like, “Don’t you dare think you’re gonna do that kind of shit that’s gonna do that to me?”

And so, in the same way, if this were reversed, and my mother were your mother, and I was in that situation, I would be identifying with you. And I would be angry for your right. I mean, there could also be hatred, but…

Dawn: I would actually, in a situation like that…

Tiffany: I wouldn’t want empathy. I don’t want someone that’s that nasty to have the power over me to make me feel bad for whatever the fuck they went through. That’s like their own demon to face. Like, I wouldn’t say that they would be unrecoverable, just like… That’s not my problem! Because this person is the person being the problem, and they’re an adult, and they can take ownership of that.

Dawn: Yeah, but like you respect these people more than I would. Like, I don’t want to use your mother as an example, because I don’t know, I’m about to say something fairly extreme, but there are like all sorts of warmongers around the world who are responsible for the deaths of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people, and I feel like zero anger toward them, because I don’t respect them as people. These are bugs to me.

Tiffany: Let’s see what you mean. I’m like angry at their actions, and the consequences of their actions, and the system that enables them, but I do hate the individual person, and my mind would light up with grotesque things I would enjoy doing to them for hours.

Dawn: Haha.

Tiffany: I know, strangely almost relatable. But, no, no, that’s a good distinction. I really wouldn’t be angry at them! I would be angry for the sake of somebody else, and angry at the things happening, because it’s just such an affront to society.

Dawn: Yeah.

Tiffany: Maybe ask yourself… no, you are telling me, because it’s a respect thing to you. And I get that, I use that as a defense. Or a strategy, too. That someone can demote themselves of their respect from me, and it will allow me to be much colder.

But in the same way, if let’s say I faced someone like that, I would be somewhat subduing my hatred, because I know that if I start screaming, I’m gonna look like the crazy person, and no one’s gonna listen to me. But I wouldn’t necessarily subdue my anger, at least to motivate me to do something about it, and hopefully to get people empathizing with me over what should be righteous anger.

There is actually a very utilitarian aspect to it, too, there. That even if those emotions would lead me towards a certain strategy, and giving a certain presentation that is, again, motivated from but not necessarily aligned with how I feel.

Dawn: Yeah, I suppose I’ve been probably also conditioned. Like, I have for forever always cared about things that no one around me cared about, and so I imagine that if I had gotten angry about them, I would have looked crazy, and so I didn’t.

Tiffany: But you have a… I guess this is the entitlement of me. Yeah, but you have a fucking right to be angry. This is the thing I guess we talked about like NPD versus BPD growing. Right? If I were you, I wouldn’t stop thinking that I had a right to be angry. I would just think everyone’s being an asshole to me for shutting me up.

And then I think, “Okay, well… I’m still angry, I still want to do something about it. How do I do this and not make myself look crazy? How do I follow out? How do I find ends to the means of my anger?” That would make me angry, telling me I can’t care about something that’s good and important.

Dawn: Yeah, I think I just, I’m afraid of the helplessness. Like, first of all, I start out being like super angry about this thing. Then notice, okay, there are 100 people in the world who agree with me, I’m not in touch with any of them, I’m completely alone, everyone else perpetuates these things, benefits from them, contributes to them. And if I’m outwardly angry now, then I will just look ridiculous because I won’t find any allies. So I need to find like some kind of clever way of gradually influencing people or something, and then that is something that just doesn’t bear fruit for like 10 years or so, and so I’m really demotivated. Don’t want to have like this anger just make me feel so helpless, permanently.

Tiffany: Well, you don’t have to let it make you feel helpless, or be angry that it would make you feel helpless, because it’s not fair. Like, I’m thinking of a time where it did work. This trans lady was elected to some office. She was one of the other elected officials. And people are being introduced to go on a proceeding of some committee. But she got introduced as “Mr.” or “Sir” or whatever. And so at first, she very smartly addressed the guy as “Miss.” And he was trying to take issue with it, but not expose that anger. And then some other guy came to her rescue.

And it had what looked like might be an unhelpful effect, but I think it’s ultimately helpful, because with some bullies, you have to just force them to tear their own shit down and not let things happen. And then go and try and do it again anyway. That you have to show them that they can’t throw a temper tantrum to get what they want.

So that’s what happened. He started going, “Is this what a civilized rule of law place is like? Is this how we’re going to treat people? She’s a duly elected official, just like you and me.” And they adjourned the meeting because of it. But that means that asshole also didn’t get what he wanted. And he can only self-sabotage so far.

So this is one of those things where it’s kind of like how if you’re trying to escape an abuser, they might do some really nasty things as you’re successfully escaping. But it’s part of that situation dying. Even if it might seem frantic and catastrophic in the moment. Right? That maybe it hurts right then, but that is what a bully losing in an emotional and practical sense looks like. They will not be able to continue to go on doing what they’re doing. And they’re just throwing a temper tantrum.

So that’s a very small case, but then that’s gonna have an impact in that whole state, let’s say. At least where legal proceedings are concerned in that state. That will have weight. This man has now set the precedent that you can’t just do this. So there is value in it. Depending on how you execute it, that it doesn’t let the bullies just silently get away with it.

And yeah, sometimes it’s gonna come out as raucous anger, and sometimes it’s anger motivating something more subtle that you do to stymie their efforts. But giving you the motivation to maybe act nice and respectful, but be completely uncompromising.

Maybe there’s only 100 other people that do it, because maybe… you don’t know! Maybe those other 99 people feel the same way as you do, and disempowered. And you don’t know… But you might have the opportunity to set the precedent the opposite way, instead of let everybody being bullied.

I’m not gonna say it’s a sure thing, I’m just saying it’s like worth considering. And the anger for me is like, “How dare you… how dare you think you’re gonna be an uncontested bully, you arrogant jackass? Standing up there? Haha! Don’t you know today that I am here as well?”

Dawn: So I think there’s utility to it, even if…

Tiffany: Maybe even acting like that if you don’t immediately feel that way. Like I said, setting the counter-precedent. And it is, I guess, a sort of antisocial punishment. Even if you followed out in a very pro-social way. It is still a form of antisocial punishment, because some people… Given either the position, or just how uncompromising piece of shits they are, they’re not gonna respond to anything other than just being shown that they can’t get away with it, they’re gonna get pushed out. And they’re not the only person capable of being an asshole in the room. Even if it’s an asshole with a big, smiling, nice face.

Dawn: Right?

Tiffany: Right? Pardon my pedestal, I just believe we can beat them.

Dawn: Okay, sure, no, thanks for the pep talk.

Tiffany: I’m glad I got there. I didn’t intend it, I had no idea where that was gonna go.

Dawn: Yay, I didn’t know I needed that. I actually am rethinking some career decisions right now, and yeah…

Tiffany: I know, I did that once. I had, I did it with the system, but when I was in high school, I had all these bullies. And of course, you know, I was presenting as a man then, because I was a teenager. And all these bullies were just like calling me gay, and even like assaulting me. One like rubbing the back of my neck and going, “Oh, do you like that?”

And this was… the best part is one of them was a jock. And so I knew that anything like that that could stick would be the end of the world for the school, and so I knew it would compel the principal to act. So, I very rightfully accused them of assault. I just brought up the harshest accusation that fit the facts. Like… one shot. And the biggest, toughest, most stoic motherfucker in the entire building wouldn’t approach me again. It worked in one shot, motherfucker. And he ended up being nicer to me later that year. It worked.

Wow, I forgot about that! I am fucking proud of that! Because I demonstrated strategy and self-control.

Dawn: Congrats! And shit, and… Yeah, I think like M.E. Thomas also has a cool story about getting rid of some bullied teacher. I like it.

Taking Down the Bully

Tiffany: One time I had to engineer the takedown of a co-worker when I was 22. He was a big piece of shit. He really was! Every… he like… pardon me, but I don’t want to sugarcoat this. So, he was a redhead, he was a ginger, and he had no couths to speak of, and he called a customer a “matchstick.”

And pardon my Polishness, but I think I would have… that’s not that culture. Those cultures exist. If I met another Polish person, and there was like a right moment of stopping a dumb Pollack, they would giggle! And I’ve even joked that if you walked down Wilkes-Barre and you yelled “Hey, Pollack!”, three people would turn around and look at you and go, “What!”

But I don’t think that exists within the culture of redheads, of gingers. And he was a bully to everybody in the place. And when I started it, I found out almost every single person in the building had something damaging to say about him. And almost every single person in the building had the same fear that “Oh, but everyone likes him!” No, everyone was afraid to say anything.

And that empowered everybody. You know, aside from literally the most loser person in the place had something to put in writing. Something to say about this guy. And it took him right down. He got fired. No problem, because I empowered everybody else to say it, they now felt safe. Safer.

I started talking about the plan to my assistant manager, who really didn’t like him for the same exact reasons I didn’t like him. I was close to her! So that started the conversation, and I went, “Alright, I have my one person in power on my side. That means if I talk above her head, he can go and ask her, ‘Are you really?’ ‘Alright, if that’s true, we’ll collect statements.’” And they did. And they took him right down.

Dawn: Cool! It was very…

Tiffany: Very well-meaning, but it was deliciously dastardly, too. So, no, that… I wanted to give that. That is a specific example of everybody actually being afraid to say anything bad to him because of the kind of jackass he was. And interpreting everybody else mistakenly as not wanting to say anything. Meaning of a differing opinion, of thinking he was nice or popular. Nobody thought it. So… It depends. Maybe turn the tide. Socially engineer it.

Dawn: I’ve had a colleague like that once, and he was talk-to-able, so that was a plus. But he was also not strategically smart. I think lots of people wanted to have him gone, would have improved the climate at work a lot. But what happened in the end is when he picked a fight with one of the co-founders, that was the mistake that actually got him fired in the end, so…

Tiffany: I’m pretty okay with that. If you can have a conversation with them about it, yeah, maybe not take them down personally. That’s okay, he wrote his own epitaph. You know, you can’t help that.

Dawn: Yeah, I was wondering like whether we want to get to my final question?

Tiffany: Yeah, yeah, no, I just thought all that was important to say.

Dawn: Yeah! Very encouraging.

Tiffany: We’ll break this later. Yeah, what’s your final question?

Dawn: The final question is: what tips you would like to share with other people who want to recover from sovereignism?

Recovery is Self-Acceptance

Tiffany: Mmm, the first part I want to express is my opinion that recovery from any Cluster B personality disorder is broadly a challenge and struggle of self-acceptance. Because all of our adaptations are there just because we weren’t just allowed to just do and be ourselves. And you know… And I think that’s just important to never forget, because I think anybody else with sovereignism can vibe with: We would like to be our most awesome, most self possible. And that was taken from us, in a way.

But we have all the capacity in the world to find it and get it anyway, and undo or reverse, or defy the cards we were dealt. And just go to a different table, and get another hand out. Play the chances again, but on our terms this time.

And I want to share something from my friend whom I used to date: the phrase “People are hell. But they’re also heaven.” And I think that’s a good enough reason to at least investigate what’s good and bad in ourselves, and in other people, and worth chasing down.

Something a little more vulnerable. Comes back to the first thing I said. To be your most powerful self would be to overcome the hand you were dealt. And this world has a lot of cruelty and unfairness with it. And someone like me, someone like us with sovereignism would most likely really understand that. Since we’re adept at dealing with it. And in a world so cruel, we should not deny ourselves from the help of those we see as worthy, or those that see us as worthy. There’s no weakness in having help facing the hardest things within us and outside of us in such a cruel, often cruel and unfair world. And if anything, we need all the advantage we can get, and we deserve any of it.

You know… maybe more finer points? You might not be a spiritual person, I’m not. But mindfulness doesn’t have to be about Buddhism or Zen. It’s just learning harmony in your mind, learning to control the chaos in your brain, learning to quiet it when you want it. And learning to be at peace and enjoy that fucking rest after all the bullshit you go through in a day. Or all the shit you’ve had to do to get where you are or want to be. It’s all of those things. And so rest… Rest is important. Because getting there is tiring, no matter what. And that’s okay. Doesn’t mean we’re not gonna get up and do it again once we’re done resting.

What else? You probably have a complicated relationship with your parents. It’s possible you hate them both. I truly hate my mother. I love my father, but I’m glad he’s dead. He gave me hell, but he did his best to give me what he could. He was a troubled individual like mine. And it makes sense that navigating that might be complicated, because maybe the one parent you do love gave you just as much bad as good, even though that bad was atrocious. And you’re doing yourself a disservice to throw out the good as well. You don’t have to respect them for it. But respect yourself enough to unweave that.

Own your evil. Own your capacity to dispense cruelty. There are times when it might be necessary? If you’re knocking down that asshole in your life, or the life of somebody you care about, or an ally, there’s no shame in taking joy in it. It would help you to do it in measure, but it’s a good motivating factor. Definitely take delight in the opportunity. And don’t let anybody else tell you otherwise, and you don’t have to hide that from the rest of yourself. That’s striving to do better or more. If you hide it from yourself, it’ll sneak up on you. Instead, own it.

And above even other people: Try to learn to trust yourself. But relearn trust, but reteach yourself trust as a commitment, not as a command to yourself. You’re committed to that you’ll do better tomorrow. That trust is not all or nothing. That you will trust yourself to learn. Not trust yourself to never fail. And you have the choice of what and how you trust yourself. And others. And that was just simply a complicated thing for me to learn. It wasn’t obvious, and I wanted to give that very hard-to-figure-out answer back.

And finally, a subtler thing. You don’t have to be like the rest of the people they call narcissists. That’s okay. You always will be a little different, even from the weirdos. And that’s okay, they’re different from you. Because this inflated term of narcissist, even if you don’t get torn down by how society demonizes that word – to the point where maybe we need a new word? Like we’re doing with sovereignism instead of malignant narcissism. Even if it doesn’t tear you down. Don’t mistake what people call narcissism for the magnificent complexity within you.

One last thing. All my beautiful narcissistic psychopaths, all the people with sovereignism. I believe in you, and I don’t care what you think about that. If you really think you know better. Is that how you want to prove me wrong? Do you want to give me that power? I don’t want it! I don’t care. But I think you do. And I think you want to prove yourself right. Good luck. I think that’s it.

Dawn: Oh, thank you so much for all the insights. It’s a wonderful second interview, that final speech with all the recovery tips. Yeah, sweet! Then, I’ll stop…

Tiffany: I love leaning into my grandiosity like that. Especially speaking from like my soul.

Dawn: Sweet! Yeah, and goodbye to all the listeners!

Tiffany: Good luck on your journey, or maybe just, I hope you learned something.

• Sovereignism as a shield. Tiffany explores how the combination of narcissistic (NPD) and antisocial (ASPD) personality traits – termed “sovereignism” by Dawn – serves as a high-functioning defense mechanism developed to survive a “zero-trust” childhood environment.

• Hyper-competence is an avoidance strategy. The discussion reveals how extreme self-reliance and mechanical skill (the “hyper-competent soldier”) can be a way to bypass emotional vulnerability and the need for connection, effectively hiding trauma behind success.

• The nuance of sadism. Sadism is deconstructed not just as “evil,” but as a complex regulatory mechanism used for reclaiming power, enforcing boundaries (”antisocial punishment”), or communicating pain when words fail.

• HRT as an emotional catalyst. Tiffany describes how hormone replacement therapy didn’t just change her body, but altered her brain chemistry enough to force her to process emotions she had previously intellectualized or suppressed.

• Contumacious pride. The interview touches on the concept of stubborn, rebellious pride that acts as a survival engine – refusing to be broken even if it means hurting oneself (e.g., “martyring” oneself to prove a point).

• Recovering from “zero-trust.” The journey from seeing all human interaction as transactional and manipulative to learning “good enough” friending and parenting, and the paradox that you often don’t know you are broken until you want to change.

Glossary of Terms

• Sovereignism. A term coined by Dawn to describe the specific comorbidity of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) with sadistic traits. It characterizes a personality structure built around antagonism, domination, resistance to control, self-reliance, and maintaining a “sovereign” state to ensure safety.

• Cluster B. A grouping of personality disorders in the DSM-5 characterized by dramatic, overly emotional, or unpredictable thinking or behavior. It includes NPD, ASPD, borderline personality disorder (BPD), and histrionic personality disorder (HPD).

• Ego-syntonic. Behaviors, values, and feelings that are in harmony with or acceptable to the needs and goals of the ego, or consistent with one’s ideal self-image. (E.g., sovereign aggression is ego-syntonic – one doesn’t feel “bad” about it because it feels necessary.)

• Teleological stance (or teleological non-mentalizing). A mode of thinking where one interprets actions solely based on their observable physical outcomes or goals, rather than understanding the internal mental states (intentions, feelings, beliefs) behind them.

• Dissociative identity disorder (DID) and other specified dissociative disorder (OSDD). Disorders characterized by the presence of two or more distinct personality states (“alters” or “parts”).

• Splitting. A defense mechanism common in Cluster B disorders where situations or people (especially oneself) are viewed in all-or-nothing terms (e.g., all good/idealized vs. all bad/devalued).

• Consensual non-consent (CNC). A BDSM practice involving role-playing non-consensual sexual acts (like assault) within a pre-negotiated, safe, and consensual framework.

• Factor I psychopathy. Refers to the interpersonal/affective deficits of psychopathy (e.g., superficial charm, grandiosity, lack of empathy/remorse), often associated with “primary” psychopathy, as opposed to factor II (lifestyle/antisocial traits like impulsivity).

• Egocentric vs. object relations. The interview touches on the shift from seeing others merely as extensions of oneself or obstacles (egocentric) to seeing them as whole, separate individuals with their own internal worlds (whole object relations).

• Gray rage. A state involving a cold, calculated, dissociated survival rage, distinct from hot, impulsive anger.

Dawn: Hello, flitterific listeners! I am joined today by Tiffany [Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, X, Facebook], who has narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder – the combination that I usually refer to as sovereignism. She can tell us a lot more about this as a lived expert of that interesting combination of disorders. She has a lot of insight, but is there anything else that you would like to tell the listeners about yourself that is not related to the diagnoses, so they get a more full picture of who you are as a person?

Tiffany: I’m Tiffany. I’m a transgender woman in her 30s. I’m a creative kind of person, I’m mechanically inclined, I fix everything in my house, I fix my car, I fix my computer, whatever. So, I’m always in a problem-solving mindset. Which has ups and downs. I know I wrote a lot more about this, but I’m trying to not quite wing it.

Dawn: Wanna tell me more about your companion animals?

Tiffany: Yeah, so currently, I’m pretty sure she’s who’s scratching at the door. I have a long brown Norwegian forest cat. She’s brown and white and black, she’s what they call a Torby. I think it’s a combination of tabby and tortoiseshell. And her name is Farvel, because I found her behind some shipping containers at the back of a meth den of a motel. She wasn’t quite an adult, but she wasn’t quite a baby, and it was clear she knew what people were, and somebody had to have let her go. And Farvel means goodbye in Dutch. I just thought of that, you know, shipping containers are off in Dutch. And she’ll never have to say goodbye again.

Dawn: Awww!

Tiffany: Very recently, my cat named Dog passed. He was a fluffy and scruffy white Persian with heterochromia – the two different colored eyes – and he was my best friend!

Dawn: Hmm.

Tiffany: And he might have been what literally or proverbially saved my soul. He was the thing in my life I always cared about. And I’ve been around animals since day one. When I was brought home from the hospital, I’m told our cat at the time, Baby, was underneath my crib, day one. So I’ve always been close to cats.

Dawn: You wanna dive more into what influence Farvel and Dog, and perhaps Baby, have had on you, and perhaps on your recovery journey as well?

Tiffany: Let’s see, I don’t know. So, when I was very young, 3, 4, or 5, I thought of Baby as my little sister. She was a Birman, she was white and brown. And my grandmother told me a story once that I was playing rough with her, and she put her paw on my hand. And she stuck her claws out, but between my fingers, not into me. And I apparently said, “Kitty’s got needles in her hands!” That’s the best example I have of memory where she was being a role model to me. You know, the cat was actually being a role model to me. Emotionally, definitely more so than either of my parents at the time.

Dawn: Hmm.

Tiffany: I got Dog when I was 20. And for the first year, I was just so stressed from the hell my dad was putting me through, I didn’t give him much attention. And it took that whole year for me to start feeling bad about that, and regretting it, and becoming close with him, and having allowed him to get close to my father first. He was with me through thick and thin. Weeks on end of rotting in bed, getting scared when I stomp around the house. Sometimes the house taken better care of is litter boxed and food taken better care of, sometimes not. And through all of that, he maintained his personality and his care for me.

And with his passing, it really helped, because I have no way of doubting his judgment, or his love of me, like I didn’t do well enough for him. Like, I wish I had had a better life, to give him a better life, but I’m mostly at peace with that. I’m incredibly sad about it, but I mostly accept it. That gives some meaning, some implicit meaning to the last 15 years of my life, and then the preceding life up to then, because without that, I wouldn’t have been that person for him. One moment sticks out to me. So my dad owned the house I lived in, but he didn’t live there anymore, and he would just come by randomly without prompting, just walk in the frickin’ door. And he tried to greet Dog, and Dog just hissed at him immediately. And so Dog knew! He wasn’t antisocial, but if you came up to him and he just wasn’t in the mood, he would leave the situation. He wouldn’t get aggressive or anything, but he was immediately mad at my dad showing up. And little stuff like that sticks out in my memory that I did it right, or did it good enough that it mattered to him.

Farvel is a totally new experience to me. She can be such a hooligan. Dog wasn’t really a snuggly cat. He would love to chill in the farthest corner of the room with everybody, but he would be all about it. He’d feel like that’s his hangout time. But Farvel asks me to pick her up, and she’ll rub my feet. Rub her face right into mine over and over. She’s an incredibly cuddly and affectionate cat. And having been accustomed to this cat with, not a distance of connection, but a distance of closeness and a direct affection. It’s such a big difference. And, you know, I’m not used to taking care of such a needy cat. But at this point, that’s not that hard. And I love her! She’s my little slinky of a kitty. She’s really long.

And I guess I’m happy I have her after Dog has passed. I’ve always had an easier connection with cats than other animals or people. So there’s somewhere where my heart is always being put into, even if I’m angry at everything and everybody and myself at once. And that’s really helping.

Dawn: How old was Dog when you first met?

Tiffany: Just months. The litter he came from was because my drunk asshole uncle never got his cats spayed or neutered, and would just let them have babies, and we got another one. That’s how I got my three cats previous to Farvel. Dog was one of them.

Apparently, he was born lit. And he was covered in fleas. It was terrible. No, we got him very young, maybe even too young. He maybe needed to be around his mother a little longer.

I still remember him. Being at the base of the steps a little too small to start climbing up them easily, and crying all night.

Dawn: Yeah, I see that sometimes that when dogs grow up around cats, or cats grow up around dogs, they take on some behaviors of the respective other species. Did you notice that you’ve taken on any of the behaviors of the cats that you grew up with?

Tiffany: That’s a good question, I don’t know. That’s really hard to say, I’ve noticed it more the other way. Dog could be avoidant in that way, but in this era of my emotional honesty, I’m a little more like Farvel, at least with somebody that I’m closer to and I want affection from. I can be pretty… I can get sad and full of self-pity and be very clingy. And the one thing constant attention was never not there, but I used to try to deny it. But in spite of Dog’s personality being pretty different from mine, there were still ways in which he would communicate and enforce his boundaries that were like me. Like I said, he would leave a situation if he wasn’t comfortable, but if he trusted you, he would lightly bite you to tell you to stop doing something. Because unless he trusted you, it either wasn’t worth his time, or he wasn’t comfortable. But he would actually be more aggressive with somebody he was close with. Not very aggressive, but he wouldn’t really be aggressive at all with somebody he wasn’t close with, somebody he didn’t trust. And that aspect of him being a bit asocial. He liked it when people came to him. But if you did that, he would get close to you pretty quickly. He would appreciate it.

Dawn: Yeah, I suppose when people are not trusted, and Dog tries to assert boundaries, then the effect could be to just reveal vulnerabilities. Whereas if the person is trusted, then revealing vulnerabilities is exactly what Dog wants in order not to inform the other person not to overstep those boundaries.

Tiffany: Yeah. Yeah, and it was mostly just how to pet him right, you know? He would be pretty picky about how you would pet him, and it could change from day to day. And you’d have to kind of learn his body language, and his moods. And so he wanted that from somebody that he liked, but not really from someone he didn’t know well.

Dawn: Yeah, that’s cool. I think some friends of mine also enjoy seeing that another person can attune to them to that degree. It gives them a particular feeling of closeness.

Tiffany: Yeah, cause I get that. I get that pretty well.

Dawn: Like, another thing that I heard that is very close to you. It’s your waffle maker? Wanna tell us about your waffle maker?

Tiffany: Okay, so I just crash-landed in Bowling Green, Kentucky, after leaving a different place in Louisville that… I’m not judging the people for it, and I don’t want to mention them so they can’t be judged for it. But their house is a disaster, we found another place. And after several hours of driving, and then all the effort to shove all the stuff back in our car, we get to this other person’s house. And as the night draws near, I get in touch with my friend Jessa. And she was living in a bus converted to live in. And she was parked at this commune at the border, I think just at the Tennessee side of the border between Tennessee and Kentucky. I just… even with all of that, I had the energy to go out and see her, because A) people, B) she’s my friend. And I go out there, and we hang out, and sleep over, and I discover… I go and explore the places and the people of the commune with her in the morning, but I take this waffle maker home with me. She had several appliances that people had given her, thinking maybe she needs more appliances because her house is a bus. And she just kept the ones to give to somebody that needed it more. It’s just this nice one that opens like this. Pour it in, close it, and then you can flip it so that it gets coverage. It’s got this ceramic nonstick coating that still takes a season too. And it’s incredibly non-stick. It works really well, and it just makes these thick, Belgian waffles that are so good. And I remember bragging at the time to the person we were living with that, like, oh, you know, after all that, guess what? But I still have energy for people, because now there’s people, so now I have energy. And I went and saw her. And I hadn’t seen her in a year and a half or two years at that point. I didn’t want to miss that opportunity.

Dawn: Yeah, it’s doubly worth it in the end. For how long have you had the waffle maker now?

Tiffany: 2 years? Because I think that was late 2023.

Dawn: Okay, I had imagined that it happened longer ago.

Tiffany: No, I’ve just been through a lot in the last 3 years. So…

Dawn: Subjective time was much longer, okay. For how long have you been working on your recovery in the widest sense?

Tiffany: It’s about two and a half years. I discovered I have NPD at the end of 2022. But I didn’t really know how or really start working on it until Spring of 2023. So about two and a half years.

Dawn: Was there any particular event that marked that change for you, or tipped you off to it?

Tiffany: Unfortunately, yes. So I had just moved to Michigan, sorta. And I was staying with a bunch of friends. And one of those friends, since the lease was coming up in a few months, and we were uncertain about keeping together, we had a really bad argument one night about who was entitled to have the house if we all split up. And I woke up the next morning, and on my hour drive to work, I slowly fell into this paranoid episode, and I started really seeing things in a distorted way. And that resulted in me figuring out a way to, in the space of a couple hours, go underneath him, and take the house out from under him when it came time. And I ended up being convinced that he meant more. He said some nasty things in that argument, but some of it you could tell was proverbial, or just to demonstrate the strength of his feelings. I took those the wrong way personally, and I ended up smearing his name publicly on multiple social medias. And once I got talked down and realized, no, this person is still my friend – they are not anymore still my friend, mind you, but at the time – I was just filled with this shattering regret. And what that really showed me is I was not managed as well, anywhere near as well as I had thought. It had shattered my perception of my current state. And realizing I could treat people like my father treated me way more easily and freely than I thought, that I had become like him more than I had anticipated. Like, I acted out on him in a way that I had in the past on my father as a defense mechanism. Often when he was doing the same thing to me, to try to fight that fire with my fire. And so I was under the delusion that that wouldn’t come out from anybody but my father. And in retrospect, that was never true. I definitely did that sort of thing to other people, too. Maybe not quite to that extreme, but the same sort of thing. And it’s just devastating.

Dawn: Yeah, big hug! But something must have given you the strength or safety or something at that time to actually be able to confront it? Do you know where you drew the strength to be able to confront that part of yourself?

Tiffany: Riley helped me out of that self-pity episode. But it felt like a mandate from heaven, like I had to confront it. There’s a lot of parts of my struggle that… that’s kind of just how I treat myself. That I just feel like I have to. I know I don’t literally have to, but I feel compelled. And I basically listed the reasons. I never thought I would actually become like my parents. I was under the delusion that I hadn’t. Or it wasn’t as big of an issue as I had thought.

Dawn: Yeah, a friend of mine also described it a way that whenever she discovers that she has some traits of her mother in particular, it feels like a punch in the gut for her.

Tiffany: Yeah, I feel like I lost the battle. I was trying most of my adult life to not become like my parents. And it felt like I failed at that.

Dawn: It’s just a work in progress, I suppose. I’ve seen some YouTube comments from someone who said that he’s in his 80s, I think, and that he’s just woken up from his bubble that he’d lived all his life in, and regrets wasting his life. Waking up from that in one’s 20s… It’s kind of really good in comparison, like, lots of life to enjoy outside the bubble.

Tiffany: Well, 30s, but yeah. No, that was only a couple years ago, so I wish it was my 20s, but I don’t think that was possible. I was financially dependent upon my father and living in the house he owned. I don’t think that was possible, I didn’t have the space.

Dawn: Yeah, having that freedom, moving away, not being exposed to all these patterns all the time that reinforce the parents from childhood? It’s probably really valuable. I think that was also really valuable for me. I didn’t really realize it on an introspective level, but in terms of the timelines, it makes a lot of sense that once I moved away from my parents’ place in 2012, I probably had a lot more freedom to change the way that I thought, and that probably also helped me heal.

Tiffany: No, it’s definitely true for a number of reasons, for sure.

Dawn: Yeah, do you think it would have even been useful? Like, I mean, you needed those patterns, probably, in order to maintain yourself, your safety, integrity, whatever you could maintain of it at all, in the face of your parents, in the face of your dad? And do you think it would have even been useful, or would have been to recover earlier, or would that have just resulted in some kind of self-destruction?

Tiffany: Man, that is a big who-knows-what-would-ever-happen. Let me think so I don’t get my feelings of despair and regret to tangle into that. Because I think I can answer that question. I think the answer would have been yes. At some point, there was a threshold where I was able to work on some things, but overall, the way I interacted and dealt with people was getting worse, and I was also getting better at coping with it when it wasn’t bad. You know, my false self was getting more fleshed out and stronger, but my wounds were deeper. And there’s definitely a point. Like, at some point, I had trouble working at a job and it being night, just from my experience with being forced to work at my dad’s car garage. And at least before that, for instance, I would have had a much easier time staying at whatever job. I would have had more flexibility. And there’s other stuff that works out some more interpersonal too, but that’s an example. I ended up having more patterns and traumas being added for over a decade. And really, he held me back from making my own mistakes and learning from them. So definitely earlier would have been better. Exactly when, I don’t know.

Dawn: By earlier, you mean getting away from your dad earlier, or by changing your mindset to something less defended? Perhaps something closer to where you are now, earlier?

Tiffany: I have no idea how those two could ever line up. Here, let me tell you the story of how I found out. So I’m polyamorous, I date a bunch of furries, and I know somebody. And she got us the party room at Midwest Fur Fest in late 2022. And I go there, and this girl that she brought along… I end up really enamored and obsessed with her. And I think it was the third out of fourth days. We were the four or five of us that weren’t out and about in the convention somewhere else. We’re all tripping on acid, and at some point, a friend of mine casually calls me a narcissist. But this was narcissist trying to help another narcissist. But at first, I’m just like, you’re just insulting me. No! She meant it, authentically, to try to help me out. And then my now-girlfriend, Julie, sat me down and found a decent example of the symptoms of NPD, and I just started to digest it and went, “Oh…” And so it was one hell of a situation to be in, to have the right people to try to break the news to me, to try to explain it and help me through not totally crashing out, finding out, and frankly, tripping on acid to be mentally open enough to not just fall into further denial. Because I was in some pretty stiff denial about a couple of other things, like that I’m a woman. You know, I had managed to really suppress those thoughts and feelings, unfortunately, very well, and very strongly identified with my man persona. And like, I don’t know, let’s say I had gotten away from my father when I was 22. I have no idea how somebody could have talked me into that. I have the issues that I have then, and me receive it. That’s knowing my own limitations is what makes that a big question mark.

Dawn: Hmm. Yeah, I feel that. Lots of things that would have had to come together. Or that, in the end, had to come together for me to heal, and if only one of them had happened earlier, it would have just not worked.

Tiffany: Yeah, Riley and I sat down. Riley was like, “If I had a time machine, when could I have gone back, and what would I have had to say to you to break you out of your cycle and get you to leave your dad’s house at any cost?” And I’m like, I don’t know if that was possible.

Dawn: Yeah, I do the experiment a lot. Like, what would I have told myself if I had a time machine and could go back? Oh, no idea. Yeah, one friend of mine also has been recovering for a couple years, but looking back at her extremely abusive childhood just sees how her adaptation was perfect for keeping her alive throughout that time. And so she doesn’t need it anymore now, and tries to break these patterns now, but when she looks back at her adaptations in her childhood, looks back at those with a lot of love and gratitude. Is that something you can experience?

Tiffany: To some degree. I’m still working on integrating some stuff there. But for instance, you know, I had a complicated relationship with my father. I do think he really tried. I think it was just also very damaged and broken individual, too. I identify with that, I get that. And so he would teach me things about how to deal with people. How to see that somebody’s trying to screw you over, or manipulate you. How to counter-manipulate. But also just how to deal with people, some life skills, a lot of soft life skills, too. But only in retrospect do I realize that this was a spectrum. From just how to carry yourself that’s helpful, and how to interact with people on average, all the way to how to deliberately manipulate people, and the whole spectrum in between. And so I would say that A) him teaching me things like that, and B) adaptations I learned dealing with him were ultimately something I can draw a ton of positive things from. But some of them have been also incredibly nasty.

Dawn: Hmm. Yeah, I imagine when you learn how your dad sees other people, then that probably also informs how you think other people see you. And that probably also induces some kind of feelings again toward these other people. Like, imagine if he is particularly paranoid or something, like he thinks that other people are out to manipulate him, and he tries to defend against that, or he’s preoccupied with that, then imagine that informs how you think other people think about you – that they are preoccupied with whether you manipulate them. And yeah, maybe also how you think other people are themselves, that they might be manipulative. Like, is that also an effect that your dad has had?

Tiffany: Yeah, because I internalized – or transformed, and then internalized – some of his values about people and the world. Positive and negative. He was my gateway to progressivism and leftism, for sure. But you know, he could also be very paranoid and very distrusting and very cynical about a lot of things, too. Like, I have that in common with him. This believing people often can be total scum. But also believing often that people are broadly worth it, and yada, yada, yada. These really conflicting beliefs.

Dawn: Yeah, I take it he was particularly preoccupied with power, control, manipulation and such, and not getting manipulated himself. And not so much with whether the person’s hairstyle is correct, or whether someone adheres to the right kind of etiquette.

Tiffany: Well, from what I could tell, it was his internal feelings of not feeling appreciated being projected as enforcing his pride. Right? And you know, someone could slight him in a business way. And he would then maintain that. He would then do something, talk it out, do some sort of retribution, or change the social or literal contract they had to make sure somebody couldn’t harm his pride. And it was interesting. It could be really blurry. The pride could again then be a proxy for his paranoias of how this person might use it against him. And it could be the other way. He could get paranoias just because his pride was insulted. And so those were the internal reasons, but definitely the way he implemented them was control.

Dawn: Hmm? Was there always a disconnect between the actual cost of some kind of slight that he suffered versus the damage to his ego or to his pride, that he would react strongly even if the actual cost was low?

Tiffany: Oh, absolutely, because the pride was always the justification. Like, I’m saying a lot of this stuff in retrospect, having been able to understand it, and being a prideful bitch myself. That his pride often was a proxy for a lot of it, and it becoming the ends that justified the means a lot of the time. I don’t think that most people were close enough to know that what he was seeking was being appreciated.

Dawn: Did he talk explicitly about pride or honor or such things with you in private, or was he unaware of that?

Tiffany: No, no, he absolutely did. He had some real values. For him, it was prideful, but for him, it was honor. And so it was as much to the standard he tried to hold himself to. To try to be the kind of person he wanted to be in this world.

Dawn: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. For context, your dad has died, right? And your mom? And when did this happen?

Tiffany: My mom’s still unfortunately alive. My dad died in late 2023. He would have been 72. Can you imagine being 33, and your father’s still more than twice your age? Always felt weird to me.

Dawn: Oh… I don’t know, my parents are not so far from that. Yeah, my parents are 75 and 76 now, and I’m 37.

Tiffany: Okay, yeah, you can imagine it. Right, I never meet somebody else who can imagine it. Delighted by that. I always thought, you know, when I was younger, I’m like, “Oh, cool, well, they did the smart decision, they waited until they had more life experience.” But they also waited until they were more miserable about the life they felt they had fucked up, too.

Dawn: Mmm. Yeah, since I needed someone to have a better life as a proxy, vicariously for them or something, and putting that hope into the child? I don’t know.

Tiffany: My dad, for sure. He said the same sort of things, that he didn’t want me to make the same mistakes as he did. But most of what he gave me that was intangible were definitely in his view – and I mean explicitly so, his view – that would allow me to be independent, and lead me towards being self-made in the domain and the vein that I wanted. He thought he was giving me the things to actually set me up pretty well.

Dawn: Hmm? Yeah, interesting combination. Oftentimes the parents have this very fixed idea of what exactly the child needs to do in life, and in this case, it’s more about a fixed idea about how to achieve the thing to do in life.

Tiffany: Absolutely. My mom was a lot simpler. I was her Trophy Genius, and I guess that shows she can, you know, give birth, or she can raise somebody successful, even if she isn’t. I guess I’d just say, my dad had a similar mindset, but you know, he did try to be more proactively involved in doing that, and actually trying to raise me, even if it was just quite the mixed bag.

Dawn: Hmm… Yeah, what influence has your mom had on you?

Tiffany: Ugh… It’s hard for me to describe. But she’s had an influence on how I will judge whether something is a good idea to do, or productive idea, in myself and others. Even when I was 3 or 4 years old, I would come up with these ideas of things I could invent that would maybe improve people’s lives or whatever, and she would strike me down – and I mean that proverbially this time – but she would strike those ideas down in a way, and be like, “No, you know, if it doesn’t make money, it doesn’t work, and it’s not worth trying, that the world will eat you alive.” And so she definitely impacted my core selfishness in that way. She’s definitely the seed of my sadistic qualities. Like, the thing she would say is, “Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.” But then, that reinforced with how she treated me, I had the unconscious impression of, “Well, if I can dish it out, then I can do that. If I can take it, then I can dish it out.” And that doesn’t have much regard to whether that’s a good idea, or morally good or not.

Dawn: Yeah, it also dictates the framing, that the whole framing is about some kind of aggression against one another, like the famous ego-syntonic aggression that it’s associated with, like sadism, and sovereignism and malignant narcissism and such.

Tiffany: Yeah, I tried to resist it. For a long time, which had goods and bads. Until my mom moved away when I was 15, and I was left with just my dad, and they could no longer kind of balance each other out. I maintained my values better, but I had poor impulse control over my aggressions, specifically since I was disavowing it so strongly. Like, when I was a little kid, I was diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder. I was expelled from kindergarten the first day.

Dawn: Oh, what age was that?

Tiffany: I think that’s 5 years old? Yeah, I was expelled the first day. I was not allowed back in that school. It was a private school, my mom tried to give me a better life, a better education, and I ruined it day one.

Dawn: Hmm… Like, can you sort of, I don’t know, do you have enough memories of your early childhood to tell whether there was sort of a time before sadism, and a time once you developed or discovered any of these sadistic pleasures?

Tiffany: That’s a good question. I remember being very young and being very preoccupied with punishing bad people and criminals and having to be talked out of it? It was like it hadn’t really all coalesced. It feels more like the different pieces were there. Because I remember I in preschool, a year or two prior to getting expelled from kindergarten the first day, I punched this bully in the nose and gave him a bloody nose. It’s like a 3- or 4-year-old. And feeling bad that I had done it, but feeling like in the frame of my mom’s viewpoint that I misbehaved. And but also frustrated that nobody cared that these two kids were pulling my arms apart. And I mean that, like, it was ridiculous, and feeling like nothing was going to happen unless I did that sort of thing. But I didn’t take pleasure in it at that point. I definitely did it, and then I felt that pang of, like, “Oh my fucking God! What did I just do?”

Dawn: Yeah, that doesn’t sound like sadism.

Tiffany: No. No, like, because, like I said, I don’t think it was the seat. My mom planted seeds, and I had a fascination with punishing criminals, and I had a fascination with villains and their ability to put all of those negative feelings behind and do the things that achieved what they wanted, which I saw as strength. But those two things – the actual aggression, and how I thought about it – hadn’t made friends yet.

Dawn: Yeah, like, punishing criminals? I was also ambiguous, because some people take pleasure in the punishing, and then want to have some kind of excuse, and so they’re like, “Oh yeah, they’re these criminals,” or these bullies, or cheaters, where they can make up some excuse in order to act out that aggression. But then there are also people who just object really strongly to the particular thing that the person is doing, perhaps out of empathy with the victim, and they just think that punishment is the way to go in such a case. And so these are two very different frames of mind that lead to the same outcome. And if I understand this correctly, when you were younger, it was the second one, where the punishing is just instrumental.

Tiffany: Yes and no, but I think that comes back to the concept of antisocial punishment or aggression in the sadism spectrum. So, I remember, it was a little later in my life, 9, 11 years old, but I fancied myself a landlady that would punish her tenants in different ways that I had to be told were illegal, like shutting off their services if they didn’t pay and shit. And this thinking of, like, you have to punish somebody, or they don’t get it. But I did revel in going further than I felt than you could think was logically necessary. I wouldn’t say I was thinking it exactly like, “Okay, if I do this, then it will discourage that behavior.” Like, if I can remember some of the vague things about punishing criminals when I was 3, 4, or 5, it definitely wasn’t proportionate, and I just wanted to dispense that cruel justice, because I didn’t understand the point of it. Almost like this person is a bad kind of thing, and they had to have that beaten out of them. I don’t know if I’m not priming myself to almost say that. That’s definitely how my mom treated me. But it wasn’t her mindset, but that was definitely what her actions…

Dawn: Yeah, I just reject this whole framework of punishment, but also of rewards, sort of the flip side of it. That you need to condition children through positive and negative reward, instead of just explaining to them why certain things are adaptive or effective, and others not. And so is there examples of rewards being just as damaging as punishments in your life?

Tiffany: Yeah, I think maybe with my mom, let’s say just that emotionally, you know, I was her Trophy Genius, so she would emotionally reward all of these things she wanted me to be. With my dad, I can think of so many examples! So he bought me this workbench. And it was an argument to try to get them to not buy it, because I knew this kind of thing was gonna happen. I tried to get him to spend that money on me on anything else. But anyway, so we have the workbench, but it needs to be assembled. And one of the days that that came to a head, my friend Damien happened to be over. And it’s just the thing he wants to… that Hilly wanted to die on that day. And he even expected Damien to help me clean the room that the workbench was supposed to go into, and he banned him from the house for not being willing. And that ended in one of my episodes of being sadistically coercive and cruel. Like, if I didn’t do that, I would have had hell for days. He blew off when I said, “Alright, so my plan is this, and I think it’s gonna take a couple of days,” and he just started screaming at the idea that it would take a couple of days. Just immediately. Totally lost his marbles. And so that workbench was, at best, a burden, and at times a way to punish me and fuck with my life, and control me and my friends. Even though it was a gift, and was a kind of gift I would otherwise appreciate, you know? I’m handsy, I like fixing and building things. And it was nice, he got me the extra expensive stainless steel countertop I wanted for a couple of different reasons.

Dawn: How did this workbench gift work? Like, was there his, probably unconscious, idea behind that that he could exert some kind of power over you with that, or that it was a reward for something that he still wanted you to do, so that he can guilt you with it? What was the thought behind it?

Tiffany: It was some of the tangible things he was trying to give me towards something that was more productive, fulfilling and successful life. Because that is one of the things that, let’s say, his skills and his values overlap. You know, I value those skills in my life, and I have used them to make money before. And so I think the issue there was that he saw that it was, in a way, foundational to my progress and stuff.

Dawn: Mmm… Yeah, it’s kind of like a nudge to push in a particular direction.

Tiffany: Yeah, and then that was mixed with the pride and him feeling the need to be appreciated, right? That also came out there. A lot of things came out in that incident. Let me see if I can think of another one. I do and I don’t want to talk about my college years. I think I will have to sit down and type about it, because I could accidentally get on into a very unhelpful rant about it. That stinks. I had another one in mind… There are other tools that it was that way. You know, some of it which may have been a gray area, which really weren’t a gift, but were in his mind. I think that’s also an important thing to point out. And I recognize that in myself as being very adverse to somebody not explicitly doing something that they feel like they’re doing me a favor, and they’re not really. That they don’t know it.

Dawn: Yeah, but I have…

Tiffany: A whole defense against that. And like, when he bullied me into working for him at his shop, one little microcosm of that was he thought he wasn’t gonna have enough work for the both of us, and that turned out to be not only not true, he then suddenly expected me to show up 6 days a week. Monday through Saturday. And I had no way to try to escape that life that way. But often, he would be like, “I thought you’d be happy I found work for you to do,” you know? Like, yes and no. And sometimes it would just be that it was a very involved job on a car when I was not in a good headspace, or not in a good portion of my life in events outside of work to just handle that level of complexity and responsibility. And it was very all or nothing for him. He tended to think he was doing me a favor.

Dawn: Hmm, like, it seems like he completely disrespected any of your boundaries.

Tiffany: He bullied me into working for him.

Dawn: Yeah, so that’s kind of like how Dog reacted to your dad coming to your house. So the house being sort of metaphorical for the boundaries, and Dog being like, “I don’t want this person here.”

Tiffany: Yeah.

Dawn: Oracle for how you would have also liked to have been able to maintain your boundaries against them?

Tiffany: Yeah, I wish he had given me a little more respect, like he did Dog. I can… ugh… Oh man, I’m giving myself a minute, cause I’m kind of welling up with my anger at him. It’s really weird to have kind of a grudge against somebody that’s… it’s kind of justified. But also, they’re dead. It’s weird for it to be so sticky.

Dawn: Hmm… no, of course.

Tiffany: And then harder to… like I said, it’s kind of in some ways justified. Because I was never able to get up to any sort of point where you would recognize why I was upset with him. There were times, there were brief times, but, like, with any Cluster B stuff, you know, if the person isn’t really facing their core issues, it’s not long before they regress. I am no different from that, you know, in the past.

Dawn: Yeah, I think I see this in friends of mine, that the ones who have very stable identities, if they are in their adult years, meet someone, and the person mistreats them, then they cut them off, and they’re like, afterwards, they forget about the person, they’re not really affected by that. But if someone has either an unstable identity, or this happens very early in their life, when virtually anyone has an unstable identity, then the person has such a strong effect on my friend that basically, if the person dies, if they completely disappear from the face of the earth, it doesn’t matter, because they live on in the effects that they’ve had on the identity of my friend. And yeah, so it doesn’t surprise me at all that someone’s death doesn’t change that.

Tiffany: Yeah, for sure. That’s really complicated within me. If you haven’t picked up, you know, I caught a lot of good and bad from my dad – values, behavior patterns, traumas, life experience. But the thing I’m working on reframing is that that happened, and I dealt with it, and this is how I dealt with it, and I’m here now. That sort of framing. But I definitely react more like I’m still living with the consequences of that time and that era, and what he did to me. And it can make it feel like he precipitated all the bad things that are still in my life. And there’s some truth to that, you know? I internalized and learned these things from him, and I was financially dependent on him until I was 32. He’s set me up for that sort of thing, but that doesn’t have to determine the rest of my life. But he left his mark. And I find that hard to wrestle with on basically every psychological level, from based identity, patterns and worldviews, to really high-level ways of looking at myself and the world around me.

Dawn: Yeah, these things are all connected, unfortunately. If we could heal them one layer at a time, it would be easier.

Tiffany: It certainly would. I wonder if I try to do that too hard. I think I unconsciously tried to do that too hard.

Dawn: Yeah, as a software engineer, I get annoyed with how entangled all sorts of parts of my psyche and my body and my socialization, society, my friends and everything is. It’s like, no, I want to fix this one module at a time. Who wrote this stupid spaghetti code where everything is connected in chaotic ways? I kind of get annoyed with some god who doesn’t exist.

Tiffany: You know, so I try to take some beauty out of life like that. I feel we as people, as human beings in our physical, literal “we have these kinds of brains”-ness, as good examples of non-intelligent design. Right? Like, psychologically, I can see some things happen to you, and it’s more like you have the circuitry in your brain that then latches onto it. And some of it’s way more specific, like ADHD and OCD are dysfunctions in different ends of the same chemical feedback loop of attention and task organization. And yet we still handle OCD in large part with psychotherapy, too. You can still retrain that network, but we know the mechanism, even if we don’t know how it precipitates into the rest of our brain very well. And so you end up in this hodgepodge of ways in which the human brain has happened to develop, and ways in which you have happened to develop, and ways in which you’ve happened to conceptualize and internalize that consciously. And let’s take that with software, right? You could apply that to a business that now has a complex workflow. Like, with software, I was DevOps at this place, and one of the things I was instrumental in was bringing their continuous integration, continuous development – their Jenkins system – into a more maintainable and modern state. We moved like two major versions on some things. Because some things had just stuck in some version close to when at the company’s genesis. It wasn’t a very old or a very young company.

Dawn: Oh, I don’t remember if it was just under or just over 10 years old.

Tiffany: But there are also a lot of established things that you don’t want to… you’d rather iterate on in smaller chunks. Like, they were bringing in something from their open source side slowly, because it happened this chunk, this module, happened to be vastly superior, but it didn’t really integrate with the rest of the codebase. So they’re working on that over time. But they didn’t do that with everything, that wasn’t wholesale. So it’s like you have to pick and choose the things you try and tear down almost all at once, and stuff you iterate on.

Dawn: Mmm.

Tiffany: And it’s because of that messy process of who were their early clients? What did they want? What features did they discover they wanted? And then they had their open source branch. And that developed independently. You know, the place I worked for in the last machining job I had, we made blanks for other machine shops, actually. They were measuring tools, they’re called plug gauges and ring gauges. And so those shops were doing precision grinding, which is accurate to single hundred thousandths of an inch. And thus, they could certify the gauge to a single 10,000th of an inch. And they didn’t want to deal with stuff that was larger. They only dealing with stuff that’s between 12 and 24 inches. And then they’ll have specific sets in there. These are the only sizes they deal with, and the only profiles they deal with. But the place I was at was multifaceted and multi-purpose. Being the only manual machinist in the place, I was doing all of the low production and custom orders, or repairing something, fixing somebody else’s fuck up. And so we would be dealing with stuff that was on the order of let’s say 96 thousandths of an inch. You know, so .1 inch is 100 thousandths of an inch. But it really couldn’t be 105 thousandths of an inch, either. It had to be just under 100 thousandths. But then I had to machine something that was 17 and a quarter inches wide. And the production flow for a place like that is very chaotic. They’ll have things they make dozens or hundreds of at a time. And then there’s me, I might make 20 things of similar sizes, but one at a time, two at a time, five at a time. And maybe there’s a ton of ways that company could be optimized. But with something that complex, where do you start? And I was close with my boss, who managed that. He would, like… if he handed me work, somebody had personally emailed, texted, or called him and asked him, “Can you do this, and how much?” And he went personally and found that they did have the material to do it, or gave them a quote on the timeline. And so, if I went and got that material, I didn’t have to do the inventory. It was already done over my head, there was paperwork. So one man was responsible for handling that chaos. I saw that there was definitely a lot of room for improvement, but where do you start?

Dawn: Yeah. Like, this is one environment where I don’t really see the point in having chaos. Like, I would think that in adversarial contexts, it’s useful to have chaos. If a country is internally at war between opposing political factions, then it’s probably useful to have lots of laws and a very small municipal level, then state level, federal laws, and so on, and make everything really complicated. Because if some reckless actor tries out some policy, then it has terrible effects in some small area, and they notice that, and then they can roll it back, and it does not immediately have terrible effects on the whole country. So if people are reckless, and people experiment a lot with dangerous things, then I can see that it’s useful to have a lot of chaos in order to limit the bad effects that these things have. But if the environment is cooperative, and everyone wants to work together, then it’s probably better to not have chaos, because that makes it harder to make changes. So, yeah, I don’t know if this company’s probably collaborative, so less chaos would be better?

Tiffany: Well, the picture I’m trying to paint is that it was at least semi-necessary. There was a better way to do it, but he hadn’t had a skilled manual machinist in a while. And even though a lathe is conceptually similar, it’s just spinning things, and you make tapers and cylinders and holes and stuff, it’s much harder to be good at running a lathe, because you’re kind of going down just the base physics of it. It comes more down to, “Is this thing gonna grab my tool and pull it in, and then ruin the part?” The setups are all about that sort of thing. Because you’re trying to balance the time, and the precision, and the quality. Like, sometimes I needed a precise size, but the part could look ugly, it didn’t matter, they were gonna take enough material off. So I could be very quick. And so I was making a lot of those calls as an individual. And so people who ran a mill, a mill will hold the part on a table, and the table moves around. You end up in two totally different ways of thinking. Mills usually run at much slower speeds, or the sheer momentum of it… I like to call the lathe “the altar of angular momentum.” That thing will turn you into a bloody cinnamon roll at will. You could pull the power in that thing, and the momentum has it still spinning, you know? It’s kind of inherently dangerous. And you have to be smarter than the tool and the material. You have a lot more wiggle room with a mill. And so they would use tools in improper ways, or ways that would work on a mill. It would either give very substandard results, or waste a lot of time, or be dangerous! Like I said, if you have a material like brass, it might want to grab on the flutes of the drill. The flutes of the drill are only meant to give way for the metal chips that are being cut to come out. But brass can smear or fracture into little, tiny chunks, and it’ll grab, and it’ll pull things in. And so he had a lot of people that weren’t great at doing that job, so he needed somebody who was able to do some of that individually, and he didn’t have the headroom to do that.

And then let’s say, if I illustrate the difference between me and one of the CNC lathe operators. It depends. You could have somebody that’s just not stupid, and can learn, can do precision measurements. You set it up, and you cut the thing, and every 5 or 25, whatever the requirement is, you measure, and if it’s a little off, you adjust it, or you check the tool, and you change the cutting bit. And maybe for 2 minutes they could be sweeping up, or they could go on their phone, or they could go through notes, or they could sip their coffee. With a manual lathe, it was a “3-limb, 4-senses” kind of thing. I was smelling whether something was burning, even. I had my foot on the lathe brake. And those are two totally different kinds of workflows. So his effort was to set that up. But then that’s assuming everything always works out perfectly. It never does, right? Imagine material comes late. And he has to try to find some pieces of metal that are close enough, and you can change it. And some person will be like, “Alright, well, this isn’t exactly right, so you’re gonna have to cut out more in the middle.” And that person’s smart, and they’ll change the program. And then somebody’s not! And he either has to get somebody, or himself, he has to make the change for that. And then when they’re done using the off-spec stuff, they have to change it back to what’s normal.

Dawn: What you mentioned a moment ago about adjusting how you cut something, depending on whether it has to be absolutely perfect, or whether it’s more important to be fast, and I know they all take off so much material anyway that it doesn’t have to look good, or all sorts of other variations… I think that is something that I’ve struggled with in the past, because I knew how to make the trade-off, how to get the trade-off right. But then I’d be ashamed that someone sees the imperfect product afterwards, if I don’t have enough time, and then that would often compel me to put in more effort than would have been optimal, given the time constraints. Is that something you’re immune to?

Tiffany: No, I’m not immune to it. I’m a perfectionist, it would stress me the hell out. But maybe I’m better adapted at ultimately rolling with it. I got used to the lathes we had, the kind of stuff we had, the tools we had available to cut with, the type of materials we tended to use, and then also separately internalizing what he expected. I learned over time, like, “This company doesn’t really care. This one does. This one wants it to within 5 thousandths of an inch, and they want the surface to be nice.” And once I got to that point, I would then see the overall goal of whatever comes out that.

Dawn: Is visually and measurably acceptable.

Tiffany: That I could go, “Did I get there without breaking too many things, and did I get there relatively quickly?” That’s how I would view it in that. I would reframe the goal.

Dawn: Yeah, like, you want to be perfectionistic about the trade-off instead of the product or something.

Tiffany: Yeah. The result, you know. At least in my mind, efficiency does have that inherent complexity and nuance. I do want to bring it back, because my whole point here is that of starting with where you’re at, and the deliberateness. So, my boss couldn’t change everything about the workflow of the company at once. But he could change one significant thing at once. Once he got me to the point where I was familiar, he could then focus on things outside of me more. And then maybe introduce new products we do, and go back and forth. And the parallel that has to what we’re talking about is that you become consciously aware. Like, something I’ve struggled with in my growth that I’ve kind of coming to a point where I understand what to do about it now – even if I’m nowhere near where I want to be, I’m comfortable with it – is telling myself to push through something, or making myself do something, or both. Cause I can have a tendency to, whether that’s because of perfectionism or maintaining this idea of peerlessness that I do everything spectacularly, try to force myself to do everything all the time, quickly, perfectly, etc. But the things that set me up to that are useful. So let’s say I need to fix my car today, and it’s cold, and that’s gonna suck, and it’s probably gonna hurt my hands. But you know what? I also need to do my laundry today, and I’m probably gonna spend all the time I have to fix my car if I just keep coming back in and out of the house, trying to warm back up. And there’s gonna be a point where it’s literally hurting my hands being out there in the cold, and I’m just gonna be like, “No, I’m gonna get through it.” And that’s that self-sadism we’ve talked about before. And I will have a tendency to want to feed off of overpowering the emotional or physical pain of something. And like I said, sometimes that can be helpful, but I feed off of it without the deliberate awareness. Without the conscious awareness, and thus the deliberateness of the choice, it’s just a pattern.

Dawn: Hmm. Just… I mean, if that is related to your mom’s conditioning, what was her saying about dishing taking a turn?

Tiffany: The “don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.”

Dawn: Yeah, and you’re proving that you can take it, like by working on your car in the cold?

Tiffany: No, I think that was more her workaholic nature. Like, when she was spanking me, she would spank me with a Teflon mixing spoon so it wouldn’t leave marks. How devilish and disgusting is that? But if I flinched in the middle of it, she would swat me again, because I needed to take the punishment well. I remember when I was 3 years old, I tried to ride a bike, and I fell off and I started crying, and she had no tolerance for my fear. She’s trying to put this strength in me. And those are the kinds of things that conditioned seeing anything in the way of these goals or productivity are just straight-up weakness. Just ignore whatever actual costs to your physical or mental well-being. Just do it. Because the alternative is not acceptable. Because the other one, “don’t dish it out if you can’t take it,” I feel more wraps back onto myself, but starts in the frame of other people. It does wrap back on to myself, because then, one time, I did a bunch of stair climbs in my house. And then the next day or two later, it felt like someone had opened up my calves, and surgically sewn in scalpels. And it was painful to walk, and I got aggravated and impatient over that, and I decided to just walk up the stairs, just about run up the stairs in outright defiance. And in my mind, I’m thinking, “Aha, I’m pushing my body to be stronger. It will be harder to knock me down. It will be harder to stop me.” And so there is totally things where I think of improving my ability to dish things out, to always being the strongest person in a conflict. But I feel like that more wrapped back onto myself.

Dawn: Yeah. Like, I would imagine that this also ties in with the teleological non-mentalizing, that when your mom conditions you to suppress feelings of hurt, feelings of needing support, needing reassurance, whatever it was you might have experienced when you fell with the bike, for example – that if she conditions you to suppress those, that they like vanish or something. Like, she’s probably not aware that they just get pushed down, or the person develops some maladaptive coping mechanisms. But if she can’t see it, then it’s not there. Similarly, you’re probably trying the same on yourself. But I don’t know if it’s working. I have one friend who actually says that it’s working, she has very high pain tolerance as a result, but others are probably just fooling themselves.

Tiffany: Like I said, I think it’s somewhere in between. I do have a high pain tolerance as a result, but I still have scars from my foolishness. This was because I just negligently decided to not prepare to torch a suspension part out of a car, and a blob of boiling, flaming, exploding urethane rubber landed on my arm and put a hole in it. And I could have just put on one of my welding jackets. I had two welding jackets I could have put on, and I just didn’t at first. And that was definitely from the pattern of just, “I don’t need to take precautions, I’ll just tough through it and make it happen faster, instead of being weaker.” So I’ve had to reevaluate that, right? But there’s totally advantages. I’m not gonna continue to work on my car until I have frostbite and get gangrene or something. And I’m not going to do that every day and then make myself miserable. But today? Today, that is useful. Today and in this way, that is useful to feed off… to enjoy the pushing through the pain.

Dawn: Yeah, of course, all of these adaptations are sometimes useful. Some people get tattoos to remind them of important life lessons, and in a way, you have scars to achieve the same.

Tiffany: I don’t know if I told you about this one. That one’s harder to show up.

Dawn: Which one?

Tiffany: This one.

Dawn: Is it horizontal?

Tiffany: Yeah, it’s vertical. So, my friend Ed and I broke into an abandoned coal mine, and somebody had come with an angle grinder, and it cut through like 98% of this one bar that was removable, but it was locked. There was a lock on it, so I was cutting straight through the bar, and all I had was my Swiss Army knife that had a shitty metal saw on it. It took us two times of going there, but I had to just push through the misery, the no energy, the having eaten poor that day, the cold and the rain. Every single thing. And I got through that motherfucker. And so, this scar feels like victory.

Dawn: Yeah, cool. A friend of mine also has a bunch of scars and has cool stories attached to each. One of the stories is a bit boring, so I came up with a fictional story, but apparently she doesn’t want to tell lies about her scars, okay? No, I get that, because they feel real.

Tiffany: It feels really real. I did something I cared about in my life, I physically did something. I cut this metal bar, I finished cutting this metal bar in half. And I had to overcome my own physical limitations to do it. And it just feels incredibly real.

Dawn: Yeah, interesting. I also wonder, with all the stuff that you’ve gone through with your dad that was connected to cars, how did you manage to not develop some kind of PTSD related to cars, mechanical work, anything that’s related to that?

Tiffany: I sorta did, I think it was just easier to get through, because I still love cars. Because that turned into resentment. And I think that was my defense, and I was able to process that in a more healthy way later, without it turning into just pure trauma. Like, it felt like my dad had ruined one of my passions for me. And so being angry at him over it allowed me to push the processing off until I could do something better about it.

Dawn: So you use the same defiance that you use when your legs hurt, to push through the PTSD, and then probably have the exposure that actually heals?

Tiffany: I do that, I do that with a lot of things. Like, remember we were talking about anxiety over perfectionism, and I did at that machining job at first, but I am a little too comfortable with making myself do things I’m uncomfortable with. But like you said, just like that example, if it’s with the right mindset, it IS exposure therapy, and it can actually just be directly beneficial. So it’s dependent. Yeah, like, no one was gonna tell me I’m not gonna work on my car or the cars friends I do want to work on, but I did start putting up barriers between people. Like saying, no, I’m not gonna just casually… I try not to work on cars for money. I only try to work out it out of joy, or out of contributing to a specific friend or the community. Like, we do this thing called Pullover Prevention. And I take joy in that. And I finally get to be around a lot of gearheads. And that’s lovely. But let’s say Riley’s car. The other night, I finally got up off my ass, and I replaced their one headlight, and it was difficult, it was in a difficult spot, and it was cold. And it was dark, and I just pushed through, pushed through it, because I owed it to them, and I just wanted to get it over with.

Dawn: Yeah, I wonder whether we wanna switch to the second section, the questions that you suggested. Particularly, you mentioned that you have an identity crisis between the person you were before you, like, your soul was broken? And who you’ve become. And I wonder whether you can walk me through the different versions of you? And maybe also at what ages you transitioned between these different versions?

Tiffany: Yeah, okay, so, the first major change is when we moved from Texas to Pennsylvania, and then it was middle school, really, because of the emotional support special ed teacher. She was enabled by the corruption of the system to be abusive to both myself and all the children, and also the therapist that would accompany the kids. TSS’s, therapeutic support staff. And to an extreme, there was… I had found out some of the therapists had tried to get her in trouble, and they ended up blackballed from the industry. So it was sick and disgusting. But a lot of things happened then, too. My mother cheated on my father, and gave birth to my brother. And so that falling out was happening at the same time. So I was having to be kind of a different kind of person in the presence of my father and my mother. And then I was learning an entirely new hypervigilance at school. I was finally getting put back in some normal classes in middle school, and I remember this one time. I was just sitting there, I had this obsession with sharpening this bag of a hundred-some fucking pencils I had, and I was just sharpening a pencil, and I didn’t realize I wasn’t listening to what this teacher said, and he came over, and within inches of my face, screamed at me. And I just shocked me absolutely loose.

And between that and stuff I could expose to this teacher… When I tried to tell on her, I’m not gonna kill myself over trying to find less childlike language. I don’t wanna go through that emotional work right now. When I tried to tell on her, I used the wrong phrase not knowing, and it got construed as a different kind of misconduct on her part. And I had to explain 6 or 7 times to different people in my professional support system of, like, “Why did you say that?” “Because I didn’t know.” “Why did you say it if you didn’t know?” “Because I didn’t know that I didn’t know.” And no matter how hard I begged them to just trust everybody else’s story on it. In that example, I found out that the only thing I could have done was lie. And I had grown up Christian, and I was very against lying. And I was really too young to… I really went from a vague sense of, “Alright, the institution’s not perfect, but enough of the people in it are good enough that it’s okay,” to the institution being actively malicious. Or the rest of the institution enabling one actively malicious person that was highly in control of my life. Just having that institutional faith completely 180’d was damaging. Having seeing my parents blame each other for this and that, and losing some faith in them. And then learning this new kind of hypervigilance. That was a major change, and that happens when you first start to try to form an identity. And I was trying to fit in, too.

The next major change, I’m gonna try and make this story not long. I was on the 6th day of a 10-day diarrhea episode. And I needed to go to the hospital. I was about to go to bed, and I was just struck with the thought of, like, “I’m having more and more trouble getting up each morning, and my dad is away at work all day. Am I gonna wake up dead? Am I not gonna be able to do this? And am I gonna dehydrate and malnourish myself to death?” And it was the end of the world having that conversation with my father. He had this arbitrary rule – I felt it wasn’t totally arbitrary up until that point – but it was this arbitrary rule of I was not allowed to drive after 10. And so, since he maintained that rule, I couldn’t drive myself, so he had to martyr himself and drive me. He had this very uncomfortable customer’s car he was driving for two reasons. He had his car in the shop, and this car did need some miles put on it to try to test drive something, to get some issue to manifest. And he would not be able to rest in that while waiting in the hospital parking lot. He’s just blaming that all on me and making it my problem. And what really cut me to the core was he said, “Alright, well, no Porsche.” We had this shitty, rusty 1984 Porsche 944. They’re the poor man’s Porsche, they’re not that well built or designed of a car to begin with. It wasn’t that special, just because it was a Porsche. But it was cool, it was fun! But he said, “Fine, no more Porsche,” and I wanted to say, “Fine, I hope it lights on fire and burns your shop down. Fine. Never involve me with car things again. I don’t want a car from you. I won’t even touch your car. If you have to bring me somewhere. Car-sonas are done.”

And it just being the end of the world of something that might have killed me. I found out that there was some genuine risk there. There’s a point where your kidneys can shut down, and the only way to get things to restart is an IV. Right? Your body’s regulation system for taking in moisture is broken. I took in a full IV bag. And over 6 hours, I didn’t have to go to the bathroom once, I was so dehydrated. And I don’t know that it was there, but I was in genuine danger of being in that sort of zone where I was not recoverable without going to the hospital. And that broke my heart. He was my Superman. That shattered me. And the kind of person I was really changed. How I would handle that now is, in advance knowing this kind of thing, I’d already have the keys to the car in my pocket and be ready to belt down the steps. Either to take the car anyway, or to push the issue. To antisocially, aggressively, push the issue of, “I’m gonna fucking do it anyway, so figure out how you’re gonna handle that, and do it right the fuck now.” And I’m not giving you an option. That really broke my faith in how good faith I could be with my father, and I realized the only way to get through that was to consider whether and how and why I would need to be conniving ahead of time, to upwards over my own physical body safety and life. And it also broke me in that that means I can never make him happy enough with me that it’ll set me free, kinda, that I may have to do anything. Things I don’t agree with, that go against my morals or my values. I may have to completely forget entire goals and paths I have in life, and focus on leaving. If I have the fortune, maybe I can combine them, but I need to consider subverting. And at least temporarily throwing out, possibly, anything at all I had held onto.

Tiffany: I had an understanding of how other people were gonna handle this. I had no recourse. I couldn’t do anything about it. I found out later in life my dad thought she was just this teacher I didn’t like, and my mom was complicit! She helped enforce some of the shit, because she didn’t know exactly all the things the teacher was doing. But I was afraid to say, because some of the times I said things, it came back to haunt me. Not directly from my mother, but maybe my mother would talk to some of the other people in my support staff, and it would get misconstrued.

Dawn: Gosh.

Tiffany: Yeah, those are the 3 big… I guess that’s 5. But yeah, 3 people, 3 periods, chipping away at the faith I thought I could place in people.

Dawn: Yeah… it’s like… I think sort of the good enough parent, especially when the child is sick, pays close attention, and comforts the child, and cares for them, makes sure that they’re always there, they always have enough to eat and enough to drink, and especially when eating is difficult and the appetite’s low. Tries to make special food that is particularly easy to eat.

Tiffany: That’s a really good example of projection. She grew up really poor, and wanted me to be grateful for the food we have, and she enforced that quite directly. She would, as early as 3 or 4, she would swat me with that spoon, and then shove food in my screaming mouth to force-feed me. So, quite the opposite of that, an extreme version of the opposite. Needing her to be that was not tolerated.

Dawn: Hmm… Yeah, seems like the exact opposite of a good enough parent. Did you also take on her expect… Like, when she accused you of crocodile tears, did you take that on, or were you like, “No, that’s bullshit,” and I have no way to prove it?

Tiffany: Yeah, I knew it was bullshit, and I had no way to prove it. It taught me more the lesson of, “My pain and suffering will garner no respect or sympathy at all, and I have to get that support and care another way. Perhaps manipulatively.”

Dawn: Yeah, I suppose that’s also the difference between, I don’t know, maybe standard NPD or some other personality disorders, and probably something more sovereignism-flavored. That some people would probably take this on and be like, “Oh, apparently I am evil, apparently I am so bad, and shameful, and so manipulative,” and then they would try hard to be a different person or something, and feel bad about themselves, and hide this part of themselves that doesn’t actually exist, and build up a lot of core shame around that. And you instead… you kind of knew who you are already to some extent, you just didn’t have a way of existing.

Tiffany: Yeah, well, the way I internalized it was, I guess I took it as more like I wasn’t good enough at being the good kid at behaving and controlling myself well enough, right? And I, at that point, identified already with trying to be in control of myself. My mom had been setting the seeds for that pretty early. And no, that is… the thing is, some of that is at odds with my deeper self. I want to be more free-spirited. Even if, as an adult, I like taking on the value of self-determination. But I want it to play nice with my free-spirited nature, I want it to enable that, or just come out in places it makes more sense, like a career. Or deciding the buck stops with me on my car being fixed today, kind of thing. So instead, I internalized these things in a good way that was unhealthy. I internalized these things and viewed them as good, but it was unhealthy for me. I think that’s something you were getting at before, but it’s kind of hard for me to contextualize some of that really early stuff.

Dawn: Hmm… Yeah, I’m trying to… generally, when I see all of these different adaptations in people, I’m like… They’re useful for some things, they’re kind of mostly not useful in the given situation that the person is in. But I want to, in particular, have the freedom to move between them as the situation requires, and not be locked into one particular pattern, or to misinterpret the situation and then pick the wrong pattern.

Tiffany: Yeah, I mean, isn’t that the core issue with it being a personality disorder – the rigidity, right? If you don’t have that rigidity, it’s not a personality disorder, it’s in the neurotic realm. You know, it’s more situational. It’s more from emotional reactivity. It doesn’t necessarily splash damage your entire life.

Dawn: Yeah, like, one friend of mine would be the perfect soldier or something, or the perfect spy or something of the sort, but the country’s not at war! There is no war! It’s just…

Tiffany: Yeah, yeah. There’s a trope in ASPD-coded characters, and it mirrors something in myself and mirrors some characters a friend has written from having experience with people with personality disorders. And, and to a lesser degree, some people I know that only have NPD of this hypercompetence. And in general, I like, you know… “If I’m good at my job, I can manage all these other things in my life, and I have less to worry about.” And then that allows one to sidestep other emotional needs. In two ways, because the other way is gaining something emotionally from having that control and that hypercompetence. But it’s also avoidant, you know? My one friend, he wrote a story of this non-binary character that was a hyper-competent, excellent soldier. And since they’ve poured themselves entirely into that life, you know, they don’t necessarily have a big life outside of that. They don’t have to care about all of those deeper holes in themselves than those other struggles. And I’ve been guilty of that. Focusing on my competency and my success in a career, at my job. Or in my ability to maintain a household, or whatever. And then that’s sucking up my whole life. The difference is, I would still be driven nuts, and lonely, and bored and shit, but it still functioned in an avoidant way.

Dawn: Yeah, I think this is sort of where I draw the line between tiers 1 and 2 in my narcissistic spectrum system. Where people at Tier 1 have mostly borderline traits, and sometimes they find a little bit of something that they’re good at to latch onto, to build a false self to hide behind or hide within, but that only lasts for a couple weeks, or maybe a year or so, because they can never find something that they’re just stably that good at that they can keep it up. Whereas in Tier 2, the person has found something that they are stably good at, like this soldier, for example, so that they can actually hide in that shell permanently for maybe their whole lives.

Tiffany: Or at least semi-permanently, right? I did that with being… that was part of my man mask, my male persona. Mechanical hypercompetency. With being a mechanic, and then a machinist. And that’s a way transition started to make me look at myself, and especially how I was treated in those environments. Machine shops are astonishingly culturally stagnant. Really weird. To be in 2023 and be in a place where you encounter the 80s flavor of homophobia? And just not feeling like I fit in a place like that, and that feeling to start to happen, and going, “I need to find a different path.” That’s why I’ve pivoted to trying to have a career in sales, for a variety of reasons. But for a long time, I was able to lean on that. I was able to fix everything in my house, I was able to fix everything in my life, I was able to always make money fixing or making something.

Dawn: Hmm… Yeah, cool. I mean, you already touched on that when you mentioned that you want to become, or want to be more free-spirited, but, in general, who do you want to be? Why do you want to be that person?

Tiffany: Two things, I guess there’s two big, broad directions. One is embodying my creativity. And the other, I would say, is embodying my playfulness. With creativity, I would ultimately like to be an inventor. Like, my longer-term goal, if I get a decent sales job, I could finance building my own little machine and fabrication shop. And then this is now an example of both. I would then finance that shop by being a job shop, taking on individual things that companies would contract me to. I would like to use that to invent things, but I’d also like to make it a space, especially for queer people, but not exclusively. Just… there’s not a good environment for people to enter the skilled trades, and there hasn’t been for a long time, as much due to how our current flavor of capitalism works, you know? No company wants to put in the time to have one of their old heads teach the new person. And lingering attitudes from that, from these people not naturally wanting to teach, and being too wrapped up in their pride, and not wanting to share any of that hard-won knowledge. And see, like, even if you’re very macho and masculine, right, it’s still not a good environment for that. And then if you’re not macho and masculine, but someone’s willing to teach you, it’s also not a good environment for that. And it’s not even that people will be like that in that environment. It’s exclusively that. It can often be the only tolerated attitude, because it’ll be how a lot of toxically masculine men judge competency through proxy of how you project your confidence. How they judge trustworthiness. And so I’d like to be able to give that back.

I know more than one person, I know two people personally who have the aspiration, locally, of building a garage that people can come and use the facilities. There’s precedence for that. There was this PBS radio show called Click and Clack, Car Talk. And earlier in their life, they made a shop that was like that. And it didn’t make them much money, and that wasn’t the goal. They were enjoying helping people work on their cars by their… there’s now a shop available, and now there’s experts that can keep them from making basic mistakes or teaching them the finer things. But with some of this less service-oriented skilled labor of these trades, there’s really nothing for that. With making something, with welding, machining, sheet metal work, fabrication. There’s nowhere to go but just buy some stuff and go on YouTube, and you can do that with a welder, and you can do that with maybe a small sheet metal bender. But a cheap lathe is thousands of dollars if you buy a lathe big enough to actually make something. You can buy baby lathes that are hundreds or a little over a grand. But you know, you’re not gonna make anything that’s bigger than an inch and a half wide, and a few inches long. Your project space, it could never be more than an addition to something else. It would be very hard to really make a bunch of components for something. Or contribute to something, like make something from a vintage car, or a vintage appliance, a vintage whatever. If it’s any longer than a certain length, or any wider than a certain width. You can’t make that part, and you can’t contribute back, and makers alike have those kinds of interests and passions, right? A lot of makers are just like, “Wow, I just wish I had a lathe.” And I would like to have it both for myself and other people.

But I also… I’m still trying to flesh out how I want to embody my playfulness. Some of that comes out in just socially carousing. And the personas I deliberately project, very much more deliberate nowadays. The outfits I pick, the kinds of get-togethers I try to make happen. You know, it’s pretty deliberately coordinated. One of the things I want there is I want to try to dare somebody to be their most themself they can be. And learn to dare themselves to be that. Like, you know, when I give you my wisdom. That’s genuinely what I hope. I hope that you internalize it not only as one individual way of looking at things, but as a whole attitude of seeing the ways that either passive or active cruelty of, let’s say, capitalism or social constructs can witness upon us. To defy that as much as yourself right.

Dawn: And a more abstract version of that is…

Tiffany: I meet a lot of queers that are… not even as queers, I meet a lot of people that are worried about taking those first social steps. Because they’re worried about making the other person uncomfortable, and I’m like… “That other person is also worried about making you uncomfortable.” You are both anxious about the exact same thing at once, and if you have that awareness, you can help that other person through that anxiousness and yourself the same time, and unlock that. And also be more each other and together than you could otherwise. And that’s just from how we are as humans, and how the kinds of traumas we’ve gotten from the kind of society we’re in. In my view, it does still come back to society. Like, there’s aspects of that in some Asian cultures, you know, the trope where the American kid with Asian parents can’t come home with anything less than an A on their report card. Then a near-perfect score, and they internalize that shame in a certain way. So there’s different cultures that emphasize different aspects of this, and so we are unintentionally reinforcing that upon ourselves. Individually and collectively. And I think this is something that at least my approach is to give the person the power to overcome it in their own individual self and help one other person overcome it in their individual self. And that’s one of the aspects of my free-spiritedness, that I can just see that kind of thing happening, where we unintentionally limit ourselves. And hurt ourselves, and hold ourselves back. Just from the confluence of all of these things.

Dawn: Yeah, definitely. Like, I have definitely, in the past, been very inspired by people exactly in the way that you mentioned, and you’ve also been inspiring for me in exactly that way. That… I can confirm that that’s extremely helpful.

Tiffany: Thank you.

Dawn: How much more energy do you have for more questions?

Tiffany: For now, plenty. I know we don’t want to go on for literally ever, but plenty. Seems like you’re in the mood.

Dawn: Yeah, so the next one would actually be, I think you’ve touched on this a bit, about different personas. You have these nice names for them: Muse of Neon, Mistress of Machine, and what’s the third called? Faye of Misadventure? What’s the pronunciation?

Tiffany: Yeah, something like that.

Dawn: Do they correspond to, like, who are they? What do they represent?

Tiffany: So I have 3 core aspects of my most disavowed self, or parts of myself that I didn’t feel comfortable expressing in a feminine way. And they’re my playfulness, my creativity… I always forget a third one. I’m gonna go get my notes, cause I always forget it. Oh, it’s on file.

Dawn: April has a cool AI-generated script photo for this.

Tiffany: Oh man, I get why she would, too. Curiosity.

Dawn: Oh, yeah, that’s one. That I definitely resonate with.

Tiffany: Yeah, and so let’s say, the Muse of Neon is that social persona of… and they’re basically each two of these three things at once. And the actively social persona. And I would say that’s playfulness and creativity. Creativity with your appearance, or what you want to do with people. And just being playful in how you’re a person with other people.

Mistress of Machine is creativity and curiosity, trying to… You know Bill Nye was that, right? Like that kind of thing, but for more hands-on stuff. Like, an aspect of that is calling a lathe the “altar of angular momentum.” And I have a very… it’s very… I’m not a spiritual person, but it hits that part of me. It feels very spiritual to me. Like, machine tools, I view them as true meta tools. They’re built to modify themselves, and they’re built to make parts for themselves, to make other parts for other things. So, like, if you… the way this comes out in a practical sense, even in this big, giant machine. It was 5 feet, so 2.8 meters wide. 60 inch chuck on it. That could spin hundreds of times a minute, and big enough that it’s two big doors, and you walk in it, and you can sit down on it. Even that had a prescribed way to disable every safety on the machine in case you have to do something outside of the usual. And there were examples that we needed to do that. There was one permanent example where the door alarm was permanently disabled. Because there’s stuff when you’re doing it slower, or you’re just touching the tool off gently, seeing the number on it to make the measurement of, like, “this is my relative zero.” You know, not my literal zero at the bottom of the machine, but this is like, I will count zero downwards from here into the negative. And stuff like that, like, no, you have to have it open, and look at it. And it was also a weird new machine for the company, and they were diagnosing all sorts of problems. And you need to just be able to open the door and look at what you’re doing, or maybe even touch what you’re doing. And another one is we bought a 4-jaw chuck. A 3-jaw chuck, typically, all 3 jaws will go in and out simultaneously. On a manual machine, you do it with this key a turn. A four-jaw chuck, they’re independent. And either you can get it very precisely deadnut-centered, or you could make it offset and do weird things. And so we modified one of those to go on top of the other chuck. And bolt it down for when we needed that. So, we basically had to turn the chuck underneath of it off, and we had to go outside of the bounds of where the machine thought it was normally allowed to cut, that it would alarm out and say, “No, you’re about to make a mistake.” “No, I’m not, I’m the boss, you’re the tool.” And all machine tools have this in common because they’re the machines that build the machines that build the machines. And that’s the kind of thing I like to embody, this, like, “Isn’t that frickin’ magical?”

And the reason I then thus split this off into 3 pairs of two of these aspects is my least embodied part, the Fae of Misadventure is playfulness and creativity. Let’s say in a practical sense of doing something like… I don’t know why, but my first thought is doing redneck dumb shit and blowing stuff up, but it can be more sophisticated than that. Maybe building something truly for the fun of it. Not just having fun fixing something. Or let’s say I wanted to write a novel. Just to get some of my emotions out. But just having fun with it. It doesn’t matter if it does or never does reach somebody else. Just be playfully creative. And then the name, also, I try to… I want to embody… the name is a synthesis between the inner and outer, and how to embody that in other people. Because sometimes, in a non-malicious way, it’s fun to fuck with people, or create interesting scenarios. You know, there’s pranks you could do to somebody. Like, one time, I was at that person I’m no longer friends with house, when he still lived in Pennsylvania. And I had this vial of dissolved LSD, and I was microdosed just enough to just be a little ridiculous. And I rotated a bunch of the furniture in the house. And this did have a positive chaos aspect that it caused the… some of the things, they just kept it that way. It turned out to be better.

Dawn: Well, all the 3 different people in the house thought another person did it. Rotated in what way? Like, upside down? Like, shelves?

Tiffany: No, like, the kitchen table, I rotated 90 degrees, and it stopped being as big of a… they had this one carpet in there. It was a big pain in the ass, and now you could walk around the table easier, and it fucked with the carpet less, and moved a bunch of little shit around. And it’s harmless, and it’s funny, and it gives somebody a puzzle about, or laugh at. But there also turned out to just be practical, like, “I don’t know why we never did that before! Who did that?”

Dawn: Yeah, I love it.

Tiffany: I’m always afraid of getting carried away with stuff like that. For a ton of different reasons, in a ton of different ways. And my fear of myself I guess is what holds me back from that. Like, one aspect of that would be, like, “Let’s just climb this thing.” Out in Ypsilanti, there’s this, it’s called Frog Park, I think. And there’s this causeway, this pathway over the water. But where it intersects, these three of them intersect. The bridge would be two, right? Kind of making up a word. These three pathways meet up in the middle, but underneath, near where they intersect, is this island. Actual Frog Island, this little tiny island. And I could probably get down there, and if I’m wearing the right footwear. And if I can’t find a way to get back up, the water’s shallow enough I could probably get back out. But I’m just like, “Let’s just do that.” And there’s impulse that’s verging on the like, “That’s kinda dangerous, Tiffany, or at least go there with a plan, and the right footwear while wearing shorts in the summer.” You know, because there’s ways for it to work out right. There were two ways that I get down there, and then some of the trees were dead, and I could probably climb up one and get back on. But I need a Plan B. And that urge within me wants to go. If you sit there worrying about Plan B, it’s just not gonna happen. And let’s say with that friend’s house, maybe I would have… I had to talk myself out of not flipping where the washer and dryer were, and I was starting to get into problematic things to fuck with in their house.

Dawn: Did you visit the Frog Island now, or didn’t you?

Tiffany: Not yet, because I’ve just lived far away from there.

Dawn: Aww.

Tiffany: So I gotta wait till spring, that’s okay.

Dawn: Yeah, okay, let me know what to do, please take photos.

Tiffany: Okay, I will. And so some of that’s daring myself, right? To be more me. The girl that climbs trees. Right?

Dawn: I do.

Tiffany: Yeah, exactly! But I’ll hold myself back from that, being like, “Oh, that’s not normal. That’ll put people off.”

Dawn: No, I even walk on the wall.

Tiffany: Yeah. I mean, that can be weird hanging out with some people, but it’s like, I shouldn’t totally limit myself, and some of those things are more socially acceptable when you kinda just do it, and you’re not too weird about it. People are less worried, or they’re like, “What are you doing?” It’s like, “Oh, it’s okay, I’m having fun.” And they realize there’s somebody they can’t contain. I’ve never said it like that. Somebody they can’t contain.

Dawn: I know, for me it has a bit of a histrionic flavor. Like, there was this university commons outside, and there are hundreds of students eating there, and I was looking for some folks, and I noticed there was a wall that started at a staircase. That staircase was going down, so I could just step onto the wall, and then walk around on that wall. At some point it was 2 meters high. Walk around that wall, have a good overview of everything, and could look for those friends of mine. And then I realized it’s actually really cool to be the only person in my bright neon-colored clothing who’s walking on this wall in between all of the people who are eating, and everyone looked up to me and was wondering what I’m doing there.

Tiffany: Oh, man, I get that feeling, too, when I do badass things a girl doesn’t normally do. Either from my strength, or my skill, or even just my assertiveness and social confidence. That still feels more narcissistic to me most of the time, but there’s also this more mischievous part of me. And I think this is a helpful time to differentiate between the narcissistic and histrionic flavors. I guess in a more histrionic flavor, I’ve limited myself from doing it in a more histrionically flavored and playful way by always tying it to my ego. You know, so those are… I think that’s pretty complete. I have subversions of those identities or whatever, but they’re just all for different scenarios.

Dawn: Hmm. When you’re talking about alters, or OSDD, and different parts, emotional parts, or apparently normal parts, do those correspond to those personas, or are these personas new ones that you’re trying to cultivate, whereas you have some other parts still around, or were until recently?

Tiffany: We have both going on. Those personas are… I synthesized those personas as a way to have more awareness and control – not necessarily control, but to be more deliberate. And again, to try to remind myself in times like that to embody my deeper self. And to bring that out over time. And to explore those parts about myself more deeply. But, now, I used to have DID, I had 7 alters, 7 headmates. But nowadays, it’s mostly just child versus parent. I want to take a little tangent. We do have a development thing that, before we get into a full adult mode of thinking, that we do default to child versus parent, parent versus child. And then I read that the child mode can have a kind of helpless or rebellious mode. But my child and parent, they also line up with… Oh yeah, my point is, though, that those are things that are happening that have kind of slotted into how my brain would want to try to deal with those kinds of things. In this big, bird’s-eye picture view, yeah, it can be technically more complex than that, but our brains have this way of doing it, and it has slotted itself in, and so it is thus helpful to think of it like this. At least to understand it at first. Anyway, my child and parent also will line up with victim and abuser, persecuted and abuser. And that’ll come out with my identity crises, like we talked about before. When I’m not a little more organized, I will oscillate between trying to do better in one way with all the control, like how my parents try to treat me. And then I’ll feel like, “Oh no, I became too like my parents again!” And either flip into this helpless, self-pity state, or this rebellious state. And so I’m basically… I have unintentionally slotted the ways in which I’ve unintentionally become like my parents into one of those halves. And as part of my difficulty with self-acceptance. So when I’m more down and out about the things I’ve picked up from my parents and how they can come out in these extremes and negatives, and I’ll be really focusing on my innocence that I’ve lost. You know, all because I did something wrong to somebody, and I’m reflexively hating myself. Hating that whole portion of myself. And I will tend to lose a lot of the positive aspects, like the self-determination. And it’ll flip around. When I’m more in that parent mode, I’ll have that self-determination and whatever, but I can maybe take things too far on myself or another person, and then the cycle continues. And sometimes it can split off a little heavier. Cause I can get… It can almost feel like age-regressing. I’ll feel like a little freaking helpless child, scared of everything in the world, because my parents didn’t help me face the world. They forced me to face the world. And that’ll come out, and it’ll feel like this little kid just wearing an adult shell. And the truth that they matter is, it’s none of these extremes. I have some emotions, or some emotions in some situations that are totally toddler grade in their development. Or I can get into a very toddler-grade level of emotional maturity with some things. But that’s not universally true, but in those moments, it’ll feel like it. It’ll feel like those extremes.

Dawn: Yeah, does it feel like when you’re in the parent mode that… I know there is some part of you that’s picked up a maladaptive way of being a parent from your parents, and then you’re trying to be that kind of person, that kind of maladaptive parent for yourself in that mode, whereas in the other mode, you’re actually the child.

Tiffany: Yeah, I get what you mean. Well, it’ll be reactive. Like, or I’ll be wanting to not be that. I guess it can go either way. Like, I’ll have done something that I would view as irresponsible, and then reactively go into the parent mode to try and compensate for it. And I noticed this also reflects my poorly developed system of connection. Of only ever really feeling like people are seeing me as a competent adult or an incompetent child, and then having trouble seeing other people as anything other than either of the two. And that’s been another specific thing I’ve been working on, because with that realization, I can have just the simple “I want to be a better friend to myself,” and there’s a ton of nuance there, because I can have the open question of “What do I want that to be and why?” Etc. And I’m really happy that that has a really simple reframing that allows the flexible nuance, and can contain a lot of unknowns and a lot of uncertainty.

Dawn: Yeah, like, there’s also parenting books, for example Unconditional Parenting, can convey an idea of what a good enough parent is like. And then there could be being a good enough parent for oneself. Or for the child, for example, to replace the maladaptive parent mode.

Tiffany: Yeah, well, I feel like I’m trying to move away from being so specific of that, because I’ve found my brain doesn’t have a good way of seeing anything other than that. Like, I totally took the lessons from CPTSD work of re-parenting. But in order to really redefine in my mind what reparenting myself is in a broader sense than that, I’ve had to go beyond the bounds of that scope, and change that and go, “I want to be a better friend to myself.”

Dawn: What was the acronym you just used, CB?

Tiffany: CPTSD.

Dawn: Okay. I misunderstood it. Did there used to be only those two, like the child mode and the parent mode? Like, when you say that the parent mode is something that you entered into reactively, then you must have been in some kind of state, then the thing happened, and you entered into the parent mode. So that implies that there are two modes.

Tiffany: Yeah, no, no, there’s the three modes, because the child mode, I could feel rebellious or helpless. But broadly, parent-child. No, I didn’t really have a default there. Cuz before my recovery started, and earlier on, the two ways I express that, one mirrors more nowadays, where I’m trying to imbue that fun, or helpful, or releasing chaos. And then the other one was taking responsibility for everything, you know, the self-determination and the hyper-competence stuff. So those are still broadly still there. That’s something I’m actively working on. Even if I’m not in an emotional extreme, it really… like, when you go “big hug,” right? My emotional reaction, instead of just taking that in, my first reaction was, “What are you pitying me? Why? Like your parent looking down on me.” And it really stymies a lot of connection, even now. So, like, right now, a lot of it isn’t super relevant. But it still gets in the way of core connection.

Dawn: Yeah… I’ve asked friends about this before, if they have these strong, negative reactions to any kind of warmth that has shown them? Because otherwise they feel pitied, as if the other person sees them as weak or something.

Tiffany: It gives me that kind of anxiety of, like, “What did I do? What did I do that would cause you to ask me if I’m okay?” You know, I don’t have a really good solution for that yet at all. Not everybody reacts not well, but just not helpfully. They don’t know what to do with “What did I do wrong that made you say that?” But some of that’s because that’s the only way I have right now of moderating how much vulnerability I have in a situation. To ease into people. When people start giving me all that comfort. Because it can be for their own reassurance, they’re worried they hurt me. And you know, I have this very specific way of managing my own emotions. And so then I have to start answering about how I feel before I’m really ready. And then if I don’t want to do that, I don’t know much what to do outside of trying to preempt or control the person’s reaction to it. I really don’t have a lot of nuance or depth for this yet.

Dawn: Yeah, with friends, you can agree on certain codes or something to describe this in a few words. What’s going on? I suppose I can observe that sometimes there are certain cues that I can guess at what state you’re in, and then I react exactly like you said, ask you how you’re doing, and then if you’re not ready yet to reflect on that, you could tell me in a few words that I can understand.

Tiffany: Yeah… Yeah, and then I let myself expound upon it later, because some of it’s just strong emotions, or makes a ton of different things pop up in my head at once, and I just… It just needs a little bit, even if I keep talking. And that does vaguely mesh with an adult way of socializing. But it doesn’t work with certain other personality types.

Dawn: Hmm… Yeah, I have a lot less going on, usually, emotionally. So I suppose for me it’s not intuitive to anticipate that someone else has a lot going on in certain situations, where the same situation would be very few emotions for me.

Tiffany: Gosh, my one friend who was really bad about it at first. The way she expressed it like that, she’s just like, “I never met somebody that it’s okay to be on the inside of them.” And I’m like, “Actually, no, it’s really bad to be on the inside of me, but I know what to do about it. And don’t make me let it out before I’m ready.” And so that’s not an easy thing to answer in her limited viewpoint, either. It’s really… I really have a hard time understanding not how somebody could get that there are people like that in this world, but how that could become such a strong expectation that it is so likely that it is dangerous to let someone fall into themself.

Dawn: What is her viewpoint? I didn’t understand it.

Tiffany: That she said it as that she hadn’t met somebody that the inside of them is safe. So what she meant by that is that if she has to retreat into herself, she may need help being pulled back out. For a variety of reasons. Whether their turmoil starts and is being held in, or she starts to close off and then doesn’t open those things back up, whatever. But again, my frustration is that with her viewpoint, it also made it hard to explain that it is more nuanced with that in me. It can be a bad place on the inside for me, but I’m just very adept and familiar with it. So I couldn’t say that’s her either. At least I didn’t feel comfortable yet.

Dawn: Hmm. Yeah, I think one of my partners is like the person who can only introspect in therapy sessions, or shortly before therapy sessions, because it’s so overwhelming. And I think for me, everything is harmonious inside, so that is actually a safe place. And then I suppose you just have the skill to work with that, it’s another variation.

Tiffany: Yeah, it could be a safe place inside of me. But it doesn’t have to be.

Dawn: Damn. You mentioned having had 7 alters at one point. Do you remember, can you describe them? Do they have names?

Tiffany: They did. One was my name proper. One was Tiff, one was Jude, one was TJ, one was Cal. TJ became my really young self. It’s hard to remember all of them. I know one was most of the positive aspects of my man persona, one was the interject from my dad, one was the disavowed parts of my femininity. One was a mishmash of things. One thing that was going on was one of them would get split into 5 more. I noticed that there was a different transition between one of these five and one of the other two. And eventually, I noticed one was an amalgam of the other. And then those two big ones, the other one didn’t have any major splits, in a way at all, it was just one half of the major split. No, it’s very hard to remember, I was pretty psychotic and chaotic at the time. You know, I had a lot of identity diffusion, a lot of identity fragmentation, and I was psychotic.

Dawn: Hmm. Was there amnesia between them?

Tiffany: Mostly, no. Not entirely, because it was more sectioning off aspects of my life. Like, if you notice when we’re talking, it takes me a bit to get in the headspace to really think about and contextualize what my mother did to me. And then when I do that, I have to take time to kind of come back out to what my father did to me, because those things have lived in different places of my life. So, yeah, not as much in the immediate life, but through to my deep past, yes.

Dawn: Yeah, were there some that were usually fronting, and some that never fronted, or how does that work?

Tiffany: Yeah, the parts of myself that I could express femininely that had not been disavowed, that fronted the most. The one that was not subdivided fronted plenty. I’m having trouble. Because the one that was the interject of my father came out the least. But yeah, it’s a very hard time for me to put that kind of identity stuff together. I was totally identity soup.

Dawn: Boom. Like, one of them is named Tiff. Did you choose that one in the end, or how did it work?

Tiffany: No, I… in going into myself, I realized I was split into a bunch of different pieces, and realized I had no way of putting all of those together under the banner of my own name. And that was just the one that was closest aligned to who I was becoming.

Dawn: Yeah, so quite different, but sort of post-integration. You just picked up the name again?

Tiffany: Well, yeah, but I think that was pretty inevitable. Yeah, cause I picked my name late 2021, and I realized I had such a fragmented identity early 2022.

Dawn: Yeah, when did you integrate it?

Tiffany: Late 2023 is when I was basically integrated. Like, I could be stressed into fragmenting again. But I was broadly integrated. Like now, I can still be forced to feel all of my fear I’m disavowing all the fucking time and feel like a child. And feel like that little girl again, and terrified. And I guess I’m less disavowing my fear nowadays, and rationalizing around it. But I’m working on that, too. But yeah, this child parent way of things is still there. And there’s still some integration going on.

Dawn: Yeah. Were your parts all broadly on board with the integration, or did that take a lot of negotiation and convincing?

Tiffany: That took a lot of negotiation and convincing. There was overall consensus, but they were more agreed than didn’t, and some disagreed on what, why, and how. And it just came down to, “This isn’t happening unless I use all of the parts of myself, and I’m not healing unless I have all the parts of myself. See? This is why.” And they’re like, “Oh…” So it was just not being able to hold the fact that those things were disavowed and came out sometimes under the banner of myself for a while. Like, I really strongly identified with my man persona. And so transitioning gave me a major freaking identity crisis. And there was just a lot of things that I had buried, or I had convinced myself that this is masculine, and had convinced everybody else somehow. And I even had an initial reaction to that was then being averse to all my masculinity and flipping back between that. And seeing my femininity as weakness, and being averse to it. And stuff like that just fragmented me to pieces. I don’t know, it was pretty inevitable for me to fragment and then come back together, I think.

Dawn: Like, I think HRT also had an interesting, unexpected effect on that.

Tiffany: Yeah. So, I was actually bullied into trying HRT. I went and hung out with this girl. I was on an encrypted group chat with a lot of people, myself and one other egg. But this one girl, she lived in this group home at the border in New Jersey, and I was bored, and I went and drove there. I was near there, I was at my friend’s house in Philadelphia. And I go there, and we do some shenanigans, and so she… I went into one of these modes where I was talking about gender, but not acknowledging that I had feelings about it. And only slightly nicer words, she was just like, “Bitch, shut the fuck up, I have a bottle, try some. I have a bottle of ginger, if you’re so curious.” And my other friend just said, “You know, one won’t do anything.” I’m like, “You’re right.” And so I tried that, and it just started to get my brain chemistry better, and I started to connect with feelings, whether I wanted to or not. And initially, the way that showed is my feelings would resolve more often. Sometimes I would be stuck on something for days or weeks, and so now it could be minutes or hours. But my capacity to connect was still almost not there. And it actually made me much more chaotic and sometimes much more tyrannical and much… It made my outbursts worse, because my feelings were no longer something I was familiar with, and much more intense, even if they were easier to resolve most of the time.

And eventually, it’s like I had my egg crack in HRT. Something like 9 months into HRT, 3 months after I picked my woman’s name, I went, “I have to allow myself to let my femininity to be as important to me as my masculinity, and maybe more important.” And I felt part of myself dying accepting that. It was so weird. It was very hard. But yeah, that’s the kind of realization that normally gets someone to try HRT, but I kind of needed my brain chemistry rebalanced with HRT to get me there. And the acid trip I picked my name on. That have helped push things, if nothing more than committing to a woman’s name and pushing myself into that space where I’ll only be able to deny it for so long, right?

Dawn: Hmm? By pick the name, you mean the complicated spelling?

Tiffany: Yes.

Dawn: Like, heh, okay.

Tiffany: The complicated spelling, and then being like, “Woohoo, secretly, I’m Tiffany.” Yeah, it was very egg mode stuff for being on HRT for 9 months.

Dawn: Oh, cool!

Tiffany: And nowadays, I’m just Tiff or Tiffany. And my true name is for the privileged few, quote unquote, and some of the anonymity that provides.

Dawn: Yeah, cool. Yeah, I can see that I went from extremely shallow emotions, sort of very rarely, a little bit, hardly in touch with them, to, “Oh, I can actually feel things in my body now, and I can distinguish emotions better, that’s so cool,” to some limited access, I think? So, yeah, HRT has had the same effect on me, just on a much lower scale, somehow.

Tiffany: Yeah, it is really interesting. I think it’s just cause I think that’s a part of our personality we have kind of in common of being at some distance with our emotions by default. Not disallowing ourselves from them, but just, like, that’s not where the steering wheel is, but it is where all the most important lights in front of the steering wheel are, you know? Or at least some of them, right? And I definitely tend towards doing it that way. I’m getting there in a similar place where I’m having these bouts of strong emotions, but then I’m very placid most of the time. Well, I wanted to say halcyon, but not quite so tranquil and peaceful, per se. Just, almost not much of anything going on there. Then I start getting in my head, I start thinking too much. And then I create a problem?

Dawn: Yeah, I had a couple years ago… there was this diagram of different types of emotions and different intensities of it, and I noticed for me, the whole anger thing was missing, I didn’t have a lot of boredom either, a bunch of things were just completely missing. But for example, guilt was one that was super intense for me. And now, I think I’m sort of just making it all similarly intense, trying to equalize it a bit more.

Tiffany: Mine, I’ve noticed that I don’t want to change is a secondary emotion, fear and respect. That is the feeling of submission. I can only completely fake that. I remember doing that when the submissive person, the masochist I know, I’m just like… “Will you please help me? Tell me what to do, beat me, I can’t do it! It feels weird!” I don’t have a submissive bone in my body. And I don’t want to change that. I guess it’ll just mean if something like that happens, maybe I’ll fear and respect somebody at the same time. But then that makes apprehension instead. Because then, that kind of thing, when something like that happens, my fear gets shunted to anger or something similar. Either anger or disgust.

Dawn: And anger’s fine. I can deal with anger, disgust is when I start losing respect for the person.

Tiffany: Absolutely. Cause that’s the same part of the pie slices that leads towards shame, and guilt and regret. That’s a whole thing about intent, right? Like, me trusting the person’s intent that I’m afraid of them because I don’t feel safe, but not because they don’t give a shit that what they’re doing might be harmful to me. Like, a misunderstanding or a mistake has happened, or I’ve misinterpreted something. And if I feel fear and it gets shunted to something else, it makes it really hard to then go back, realize it was fear, and realize I am misjudging their intent. Misinterpreting or presuming their intent. We were talking a lot about that, where the psychopathy, the ASPD aspects, at least for me, are often in these problematic ways of thinking. It kinda boils down to, I’ve told people, that whole part of me is from being accustomed to a zero trust, a permanent zero-trust environment, and somehow trying to survive in it. And needing to operate, needing to do things that would normally require trust, and either faking it, or giving it in a very tentative manner. And because it won’t have that connection to lean back onto.

Dawn: And so, you know…

Tiffany: We were talking about this, like, this whole world of, “If I don’t know how to, or I don’t feel safe with connecting with people, how do I navigate this world, what kind of world do I start seeing?”

Dawn: Yeah, like, the trust is one thing. I remember that when I had this intense fear of overstepping my status or something, and then getting punished for that. I thought that the probability was like 10% or so that I would get punished for it, and thought that the punishment would be that I get expelled from society and die on the streets or something. And both of these things come together.

Tiffany: Powerful! Shame is powerful.

Dawn: Yeah. And then I had both. I dared more and more things over the past year or couple years, and learned that the probability that anything bad happens is really low. Hardly ever happened. But I also learned, I think that was important, that if something bad happens, it can’t harm me. Like, I had this borderliner friend who actually shamed me or attacked me for something that was exactly my trigger, and then that turned out to be completely harmless. Like, it actually happened, and I did not die on the streets. And so I think both of these are important. That A, you can learn to trust people again, learn that you’re not in this low-trust environment anymore, that some people are trustworthy, but also B, that if someone does betray you, that you can survive that, and that oftentimes nothing bad happens as a result. Is that connect?

Tiffany: Yeah, and I think a lot of like what I said before, I think a lot of that is me just disavowing any feelings of fear, right? Because I don’t recognize it as that at first. And so I can’t negotiate with myself. It gets, like I said, it gets shunted to anger or disgust, or something, or disappointment. And because that feels like that’s something I can do something about it, and that’s… I’m trying to learn a framework where I’m not viewing everything as, the way I handle it is control. Because for instance, the way you handled that was not control. Control would have probably made things worse. Like, one simple way I try to tell myself is just, “It’s not socially helpful for people to have a big issue with everything you do. Frequently, let alone all the time. It’s not gonna happen.” And so, from that, people will tend to be conciliatory, or look for a solution. But I do still have some fear of social isolation from overwhelming people. Or harming them. And that comes back to my fears of getting better, and stuff.

Dawn: Fear of?

Tiffany: Fear of not getting better, rather. Yeah. Not getting better enough that something’s just become either too innate. Or even just fearing that it’s gonna take forever. That the experiences I need to learn the comfort and learn the strategies will take so long that, “Oh yeah, I’ll be happy and safe in my 60s or 70s. That’s totally worth it.”

Dawn: Hmm… Yeah, no, like, a friend of mine is also… the usual timeline is like 2 to 4 years, and a friend of mine even started her recovery in her 50s? Well, 49 or so, I think, but basically 50s, and just the NPD part she mostly overcame within one or two years or so, and then there was a whole bunch of particular CPTSD triggers that she needed to work on, and a bunch of other things, sort of a bit of a long tail, but I think after 8 years or so, most of that stuff was overcome. So she kind of put it at 8 years, and I think there was even a gap in between, so she didn’t even work on everything continuously.

Tiffany: My big thing is that I just want to be able to hold down a job, have a space of my own. That sort of thing. And then maintained some friends. And you know, from my own past experience of being me and how difficult it’s been, it makes it feel like it could take an incredibly long time to get to that point where I have a hard time imagining holding down a job, and a place on my own, and a car that’s not almost as old as me, with over 200,000 miles, giving me expensive problems all the time. I have a hard time imagining that being true at the same time as a lot of other things not worked on much more thoroughly and deeply. And I imagine it has to be true, though, that I’ll get to a point of financial and personal stability with still tons of work to do, but not… But it’s hard for me to imagine what that looks like.

Dawn: I think at some point you enter a bit of a positive feedback loop, where your environment becomes safe enough and stable enough that that’s giving you much more space, and more stability. Also, like, more positive reward from making progress internally, then there’s this thing that, as the emotions feel more listened to, more attended to, they become more manageable, and then people can’t hurt you as much anymore either, because the emotions are so much more tame. And yeah, so I think at some point there’s this runaway positive feedback loop that just catapults someone onto the neurotic level.

Tiffany: I’m hoping I’m basically in that sort of situation. The people I’m living with, and also my personal decision to… I broke off with my engagement with Riley, and then I broke up with them, just like, “I can’t stand, I can’t survive and tolerate, the permanent, repeated whiplash of doing something that hurts them, and feeling helpless to change.”

Dawn: And then coming back from that.

Tiffany: And that was a tough decision to make, but I have the feeling it’s instrumental. I would have never made a decision like that. Because if I had in the past, I would have cut them out of my life. I wouldn’t have been able to tolerate having them around. Or even if I would, I just wouldn’t want to. I’d want to move on. And so, I’m keeping this person around in my life, and trying to grow a different kind of friendship and relationship with them. And I’m open to the future and stuff, and it feels pivotal. Feels like it will grow into something. Even just the deliberateness, that kind of decision being made…

Dawn: Yeah, like, these things that hurt them, are they specific to the favorite person dynamics, so that if you have a different kind of relationship, they would not hurt so much anymore?

Tiffany: I don’t think so. The stakes just feel lower. I feel like I have to be less perfect? Quote-unquote, right? It’s easier to hold myself to a more reasonable standard. And then it’s also more easy for me to hold them to a more reasonable standard. And then it’s also telling myself I could survive without being engaged to somebody. And that’s important, too. I think that’s the really big, important part. The first part is more helping me manage and heal symptoms, but this is something new.

Dawn: Hmm? Yeah, I think previously we’ve mostly talked about features of avoidant attachment, but this seems to be more like you overcoming preoccupied attachment?

Tiffany: Yeah, with certain people, I’ll get very clingy with. Right? It’s, in other words, there’s a threshold. I’m default avoidant because I have trouble not obsessing over somebody once I’m attached to them.

Dawn: Like, I think I would call it avoidant when you don’t trust people, when these old patterns come up where you used to grow up in sort of a zero-trust environment, and so that is something that just induces avoidant attachment. I think when the avoidance comes from a place of consideration of what dynamics you would otherwise enter into, then I wouldn’t class that as avoidant attachment.

Tiffany: Interesting. One thing that confounds it is the, due to it being zero trust, you know, I’d have to be in situations where I needed something from somebody practically or emotionally, but I needed to somehow mediate not really being emotionally connected or available to them. And it made my boundaries very porous, but then with that lack of connection, I wouldn’t have as much of an issue just riding most people out of my life. Not all, there would be exceptions. And so, like, somebody… my friend Athena… one of her roommates… I left some of my leftovers in their fridge, and they… one of their roommates didn’t think to check and just ate it. And I took that so personally.

Dawn: I caused fucking problems for these roommates.

Tiffany: And I was happy to deal with all of the complexities that added to being a girlfriend of Athena’s, and then just a friend, and then eventually I stopped talking to Athena, too. I handled it by just going, “Alright, enough of this shit.” And trying to change that pattern. I’ve made amends with the housemates. And I’m just trying to have a normal friendship with Athena, instead of having to date her to feel like there’s enough mutual obligation that I can trust her, and she can put up with me. So I don’t know, I’m not sure that falls cleanly on any of those lines.

Dawn: You’re recovering, so it makes sense that you have the old pattern of the avoidance and distrust, and dismissiveness, perhaps, of some people, and the new pattern of, like, actually, I know better now, and I can overcome it.

Tiffany: Yeah, but there’s also this hypothesis people have had of disorganized attachment being you have one, and then you’re forced to do the other sometimes. And the attachment center of your brain literally goes haywire there. And that’s why, because the comfort feels scary.

Dawn: Yeah… Yeah, I think I was probably always high on preoccupied attachment. But then in high school, I decided at some point to give up on avoidant attachment. Like, I was very paranoid and didn’t trust people, and at some point, I was like, “Nope, I think the opportunity cost of all these lost connections is too high. I’d rather want to be hurt a bit more often, and in turn not lose out on those connections,” and so I doubled down on the preoccupied side as opposed to the avoidant side. So, yeah, like, I think in that case, I was probably already quite preoccupied, and was just sort of using avoidant attachment from time to time as necessary.

Tiffany: Yeah, it’s like without understanding the healthier version of it, you know, only seeing the only solution you’re seeing at the time is the extreme. Because you didn’t really know what something more nuanced looked like. And I’ve always tried to manage myself and my connections so manually. Like, I just… all I can say is I know that with the right person, I get really clingy, but outside of that, it could be just obsession for attention, or something more. Or it could be I force myself to be closer to the person because they are good enough friends to me, or I do need something from them. And that all sounds really haywire to me, and I don’t know what to make of it.

Dawn: Hmm. Well, I definitely empathize with the preoccupied side of it.

Tiffany: I care about Riley a lot. You know? Tired of hurting them.

Dawn: That’s true. Yeah, I just had a chat with a friend who probably also has high preoccupied attachment, and seems to have just dated someone for a month. Probably has disorganized attachment, probably borderline, and yeah, seems also in this like, totally loves him, but it’s not working, it’s just a constant push and pull.

Tiffany: That’s uncomfortable, that’s a shame.

Dawn: Hmm. Yeah, I was also wondering, in the context of the seven alters that you mentioned, you also mentioned to me at one point that you had the state where you were able to dissociate from all alters at the same time, where you were basically in a no-self state, identity-less state, and I was curious what that felt like, whether you had any kinds of preferences in that state, how you interpret your perceptions? Sense perceptions and such?

Tiffany: That was there for a couple of reasons. So, normally, when I’m in that state, it’s been because I really form myself around the objective I’m after. So, either I’m so overwhelmed that I’d be like psychotic, or too dissociated already. And then forcing myself to operate a certain way. Or kind of the other way around, where I realize there’s one objective I need to achieve, irrespective of what’s going on with me. Well, so the first one, I would be much more conscious about what things I’m doing. I’ll be very OCD about it, very OCD about all of my actions and goals, and following through on them. And still forming myself around those objectives. But a more extremified state, that’s probably actually more chaotic, but a more extremified state is like… Everything’s going wrong, and this one or these 5 things – like the times I’ve had to move in an emergency, and all sorts of things are going on around me. And just whatever I have to do, whoever I have to be at work, whoever I have to be to the people that let me borrow this thing I need, whatever I have to do to get myself up at the right time to do this, whatever I form around the objective. And then, an even more narrowed version would be gray rage, because that’s the objective… for me, that is usually the objective of “survive.” Right, and in all of those states, I’m trying to actively manage or completely suppress any and all of my impulses and reactions.

I think that the first one, where I would just be really stressed, and I would have to function, even though I was heavily dissociated. That’s the one that can still exist nowadays. I used to default towards that sort of hyper-competence mindset. I think partly I didn’t want to show anybody anything was going wrong. I didn’t want to have those feelings exposed and then have to frickin’ deal with them. I said, in the other state, it’s just like a different kind of, “I need to still function,” right? It’s like an emergency is happening, and I feel like there’s emergencies going on inside me, and I do know better that I can do it, and I’m just telling myself, “Nope, I just have to do these things.” And that was more of being my own hero, or being a hero to somebody to save the day sort of mindset. And I just feel when I’ve been in gray rage, when I come out of it, the best way I could describe what I was like in that state is just like a very sentient, caged animal. Like when I thought that somebody was gonna try and commit me into a mental health ward, and then I did something worthy of that. I told her that “if you even try, I’ll fucking kill you right now.” And whether I was bluffing or not, it took like half an hour before my adrenaline came back down, and I realized the fucking scar that could leave of just doing that, and I was just like, “Oh my god!” And that person broke up with me the next day.

Dawn: No. Hmm.

Tiffany: That’s interesting to note. I’ve seen people, like, they dissociate, and then they can’t do anything, and I’m like, “Wow! You’ve had the grace, the fortune of your life, to, like, when you dissociate, you get to not function?”

Dawn: Good for you! No… I’ve tried to scan my memory for vaguely similar instances, and I think I go into some kind of hypervigilance, workaholic type of mode or something.

Tiffany: Yeah, that’s kind of like what the first one is, when I’m just so stressed I’m dissociating, and I have to keep all the moving parts in my life moving anyway. Like, let’s say with machining, like, I can’t not have my brain working. Or with sales, I can’t not… I can’t be dead there as a person. The thing I’m there for, I’m paid for, is my personality, etc. I can’t show up and be just there. The jobs I’ve had are not those kinds of jobs. So, and I’ve thought about this, but most of the time I have, for better and worse, I have parts of my life. The aspects of my life are like that, in that they can be hard to maintain when I need to give myself rest.

Dawn: Hmm. When you say dissociated in this context, do you mean there’s identity dissociation, where you are like separate from any and all alters, or do you mean depersonalization, where you feel separate from your body?

Tiffany: It starts as the… it’s when it gets more extreme than the first one. Because it would be hard in a state like that for me to answer anything about what I actually want, as opposed to need. And it’ll… I’ll have to fully intellectualize who and what I am and what I have to do to continue being that in each individual person’s life. So, like, I’ll have an understanding of identity, but I won’t have any feel for it, or any intuition for it at that point.

Dawn: Yeah, I think when people live their whole life in that state and don’t know anything else, then identity is like a very fleeting thing that’s just sort of briefly imprinted on them by another person.

Tiffany: Yeah, like, for me, in the past, to some degree now, too, but it can just feel who the person expects me to be. And that has been my way of understanding connection and friendships and relationships. So it’s very narrow. It’s not even like that information isn’t useful and relevant, but it’s very narrow.

Dawn: It’s basically the line between people-pleasing and psychopathy is probably a bit blurry.

Tiffany: Yeah, because psychopathy leans you towards being agreeable so that you’re always in a good state with the people that you want to be. And when you compromise your… when you’re willing, so willing to compromise your values to keep certain things going. Or apathetic about compromising your values. Like, not really considering it at all. You will do things that are people-pleasing, but at least for me, since I’ll interpret that as the obligations I have to the person, or their expectations of me, I’ll also only see them as seeing… I’ll also only understand obligations from them and my expectations of them, and it’ll really limit how much of the depth of the person I can understand or experience. And it is funny that somebody like that can then just cut somebody off! Just go, “You’re gone.” And that’s that porous zero-trust thing, not having any sort of real intuition on how to navigate any of that, and having to intellectualize all of it.

Dawn: Hmm. Yeah, it was like a weird experience for me when some bosses of mine who had some expectations on me, and I delivered on those expectations. Okay, great. And then suddenly they had like a complicated interpersonal conflict, and I tried to mediate between them, and I literally had to constantly… I heard them say something, and I had to think, “Okay, how would I feel about this if a friend of mine had told me that? Okay, how would I respond to a friend of mine?” Let’s say exactly those words, because it was like having this hierarchy differential, and at the same time having to do friendship things. It was like very manual for me.

Tiffany: Is that part of the preoccupied attachment, too? Like, for me, if it’s with me or the boss, or a boss and another person, and I can see that it could affect me in a way later, you know, I’ll want to intercede in some way, and try and help the situation. You know, that sense of control, because preoccupied attachment can lean you towards that control, right? Where you worry that it’ll be the end of the world, so you want to solve those feelings they’re having, and you don’t realize that’s what you’re doing.

Dawn: Hmm? Yeah, it was like a very conscious decision in that instance. I was already interested in all this stuff, and they had the conflict, so I was like, “Yep, sure, I can help with that.” Not the first time. So I think that didn’t come from preoccupied attachment. But, yeah, no, it was just strange situation, consciously, because I didn’t cast them in the role in which I had previously cast people that I had helped, which was like a friendship kind of role, very equal, and they had been in this boss role. Like, it just seemed extremely separate to me, and so… now you know.

Tiffany: Now you know why I’m trying to make my idea of roles more fluid and nuanced. For me, it’s to have something deeper than the inward going, the teleological understanding, and the transactional way of thinking. But for you, there is some level of transactionalism.

Dawn: That is healthy, too. Like, a boss…

Tiffany: You know, the bosses should not expect you to do things that aren’t your job, but when we get stuck in roles, we also limit the role. Not that that role is bad, but just what our idea of that role is. We’ll still be doing that idea if we can’t see outside of roles.

Dawn: Yeah, exactly, and I would just be doing the teleological thing again, where if the boss seems grumpy, then I’d be like, “Oh, I must have not delivered on some expectation, or I must have disappointed, or I don’t know.”

Tiffany: When they could just be being grumpy and happen to also be your boss.

Dawn: Yeah, exactly.

Tiffany: They’re also a person, yeah.

Dawn: Makes this less intuitive for me. I would probably not immediately think of it, because the power differential or something? Or these roles, yeah. You also mentioned, like, you just used the term “operate” to describe how you operated your body or something when you were in that state. Was that a deliberate choice of a word? Because a lot of folks that she’s interviewed have described themselves as operating themselves.

Tiffany: Yeah. Like, let’s say a situation just like that, right? And I think my boss is upset with me, and I’m like, “Okay. Whoops, I made a mistake. So what degree and what kind of guilt or shame do I want to project? Okay, that kind. Now I know that kind. Let’s act that out. Act out those actions and those feelings that I think that they’re going to expect from me, from what’s going on.” So if I can make up a scenario in my head, I can do it. Like, if I imagine that you think I’m stuck in the Mirrorverse… And I’m having trouble handling the self-doubt that that’s giving. To just go, “Oh, really?” And it’s like unraveling my thoughts, and not letting me wrestle control back on myself. Like, I’m getting insecure from it. And I’d be like, “Okay… Don’t show the insecurity, but continue to show interest, and continue to show curiosity.” Mirror mode? You mean the thing we talked about when I get stuck in being the person I think someone needs to be, right? That thing? And I have this cheery, like, inviting. I want to be inviting. And that’ll be as much for my emotions as you, maybe, if I’m trying to manage my insecurity, right?

But let’s say my boss… let’s say I fucked up another expensive part, and I’m like, “I don’t know how I did that. You know, I’m sorry. I just… Yeah, you know what? I don’t do these big things that often, and I think I read the wrong part of these calipers, again, look, it’s not gonna happen again. I know it’s happened more than once, but, you know, I didn’t really understand why I was doing that before.” And so in the middle of that, I’m thinking of shifting from showing care and shame, and then go into, “How am I being accountable?” And then transitioning that to confidence, and I don’t know if that came across, but I am playing back through my head something I had to do before.

Dawn: Yes, I didn’t see the confidence.

Tiffany: You didn’t?

Dawn: Where was it?

Tiffany: It was at the end, it’s just like, “Yeah, no, I know what the problem is, so I’m gonna, you know, I’m just gonna triple check it in that way, I’ll keep it in mind. It’s not gonna happen again.” Because I’m expecting him to still be upset, too. And like, you still gotta… the impulse is to still also react to that.

Dawn: It’s annoying.

Tiffany: Or, let’s say something bad happens at work, and yeah… That’s more complicated, but then I could shift completely from that mode and maybe be on a call with somebody and be like, “What do you mean, no? I’ve got everything handled at work, please don’t bother me with that right now. Stop it. I have enough going on, alright? And so do you.”

Dawn: Yeah, I sometimes notice that my psychopathic friends kind of over-apologize for some things, and why? Why is this happening?

Tiffany: Cuz we’re totally unsure of how the trust is broken, and what the fuck to do to restore it. So we’re unsure of how honest we need to be. Cause sometimes it has been kind of negligence, and sometimes it’s just showing weakness of just like, in that scenario, I was just stressed out, and not sleeping right, etc.

Tiffany: And nowadays, it could be like, “I’m sorry, I guess I need another Monster. I don’t want to fall asleep at the wheel, but don’t worry, it won’t happen again.” Or something like that. You know, because it doesn’t feel like that person is gonna care about any of my fucking adult reasons for getting into that. It feels like all I’m gonna be there for them is the machine that runs the machine.

Dawn: Mmm… I actually care, of course, about my friends when I chat with them, and if some minor thing happens, then I know that they don’t experience shame, guilt, remorse, any of that. They know that I know, and they also know that I probably wouldn’t feel shame or guilt ever.

Tiffany: Yeah, but there’s also that’s wanting to project that, though, you know, like the projecting the toughness deliberately. Because a lot of psychopathic projection is maintenance. You had a question in there I’m gonna touch on, of what’s the difference between the trait narcissism of, let’s say, a Factor I psychopath, and NPD. And I think I have some of both, because like I said, I’m really accustomed to making myself do things I’m uncomfortable with, but it’s just like if I don’t have to put myself into a less strong position, why would I? Like, I know that generally, the confidence, the self-assuredness, projecting that works. It helps. And I’m just gonna do it. And it can just be fun, too. So there’s other parts of projecting that that is maintenance. It’s like, “I don’t want you thinking that I feel bad about that.” And of course, I can be insecure, I can feel bad about that. Maybe I don’t think I was a bad person for it, but I just think, like, “Shit! I’m not doing… I fucked up to what I think I’m supposed to do. I’m not living up to my own standards.” And I’ll feel insecure. I don’t like showing my insecurity at all.

Dawn: Hmm. Yeah, like, I think when the over-apologizing… when I see the over-apologizing, I kind of… it sort of works. There is this disconnect between I know what my friends are actually feeling in that situation, and the usual model that I have in mind that’s probably based on me or something, how I would be feeling if I were saying those things. And they are sort of there, like one of them has more of an emotional pull, the other one has more of an intellectual pull, so it’s not like it’s doing nothing, it’s still having a bit of an effect.

Tiffany: I guess it’s just like, you can tell I care, and this is the way I know to express it. Simple as, but imagining that in your mind, I can imagine is hard, because… That’s why you would ask that reactive grandiose narcissism and trait narcissism question, because the human brain is wired up to defy that sort of thing.

Dawn: That is still super unintuitive for me. Like, for most of my life, I thought that if I display any kind of confidence, people are going to knock me down for it, are going to attack me, humiliate me, because they don’t want me to usurp that status from them or something. And yeah, this doesn’t seem to be what’s actually happening in the world? I don’t know where I got that from.

Tiffany: No, no, well, you’re probably over-worried about their insecurity, and that can really depend, right? Like, if you acted confident about something on a car to me that I knew was wrong, I would both be like disappointed in you, and insulted at the same time, and get kinda insecure and angry out of, like, “How dare you!” And I do mean you in particular, somebody who isn’t a gearhead, or isn’t a mechanic. And I might, and there’s totally people who will react like that. People with a more pathological form of narcissism. And so that happens, but that’s certainly not the default, either.

Dawn: Hmm? Yeah, like, gradually warming up to that, experiment with some grandiosity, and see what happens, and somehow I don’t get knocked down. Surprising every time?

Tiffany: No, people think it’s hot! They admire it, they wish they could be that. I was always confused, I’m just like, “Why don’t you just do it then?”

Dawn: Yeah? Yeah, I mean, like, I had the same conversation. I’m also in one of the avoidant personality disorder groups, and basically, my take was, in order to be self-confident, you just have to allow yourself to be self-confident, and then dare to be self-confident. And the other person was like, “No, like, I would allow myself to be… I would dare to be self… but I’m not!” And I was like, what does that mean?

Tiffany: I actually have had to learn a more nuanced version of confidence, because I didn’t realize I was projecting it in a teleological and a utilitarian way. I did, but I didn’t know why that was so narrow. Why that was so myopic. And I’ve learned that confidence is uncomfortable, and confidence is a form of courage, your willingness to do something you’re uncomfortable with. So people do still perceive that you’re confident if you seem unsure, but you do seem like you’re determined to do it. This one YouTuber, NileRed, a famous trope of how he does his chemistry experiments is he’ll be like, “You know, I didn’t think this was a good idea, but I did it anyway. Oh, so it was a bad idea!” And that projects as pretty effortless confidence on his part pretty irrespective of what’s going on with him, because ultimately, it is the action of confidence that he’s doing. He is confident in doing it, in what he’s doing, and confident following through and going, “If that doesn’t work, I will figure out something else.” So it’s a less shallow form of confidence.

Dawn: Yeah, like, I just watched a video where there were a few physics majors, and they were asked a question, and one of them said, “Well, that’s embarrassing, like, we’re this and that semester physics majors, we should know that.” And that displayed simultaneously a kind of insecurity, but also confidence, because she had no problem talking about that on camera.

Tiffany: I would say that’s the confidence to be vulnerable, right? The confidence of knowing your own limitations. And knowing what’s probably expected of you. They’re telling you what you might already be thinking, and going, “But I’m okay with that uncomfortable thought, and this is how I am handling it.” They’re taking that ownership of it.

Dawn: Yeah, exactly. Really admired that.

Tiffany: Yeah, when I see that stuff, I try to really learn from it more deeply than just emulate it.

Dawn: Hmm… Yeah, I think for me, confidence has also meant… well, I suppose if someone’s just naturally fearless, then being courageous and facing fears and whatnot that come with confidence is just a lot easier. But for me, it’s also been about noticing that when things go wrong, they can’t hurt me, or not that much. It’s kind of okay, I can recover from it. And then the fear is lesser after that, and then it becomes easier to be confident.

Tiffany: I get that in a… I really have to imagine my 4-year-old self to get that. Because that’s not something my mother tolerated. I’m not factor one, I’m not fearless, but I’m not exactly afraid of humiliation. But I’m confident in dealing with what’ll happen if that happens, or I know it won’t hurt me that bad if that does cost me a friendship. I know I can move on, I know I can find another person. And some of that’s also the lesser or lack of attachment. Like, “That person goes away, and I will find another person.” And yeah, I’m not fearless, I can totally be afraid of things. Wow! I… Yes, I, like my fellow humans, experience the emotion of fear in certain situations.

Dawn: Congrats!

Tiffany: Oh, man! That was mask off in not a disturbing way, just to like… Well, this is my closest approach to what you experience.

Dawn: Yeah, like, I know, not being afraid of humiliation is rather foreign to me.

Tiffany: To me, it’s like, “Why would I let somebody… I could maybe feel really bad that that happened, or feel very afraid I’m gonna lose them, but why would I allow that person to have that power over me?” And I imagine that not allowing them to have that power over me is the only thing that’s going to allow me to navigate it if it goes wrong. And that is a little too rigid, but it is also a helpful alternative way to think of things, so that like I said, that’s the healthier version again of me telling myself, “No, I have to do it.”

Dawn: Yeah, as a little child, that’s a boundary that could have helped me a lot. Even if this person wants to humiliate me, or wants to punish me, or wants me to feel guilty or something, it’s still my choice whether I want to actually feel that.

Tiffany: Yeah, whether you internalize that that makes you a bad person, or makes that a mistake. A lot of my rationalizations are around that. Sometimes it’s as simple as, “I don’t respect you, I don’t care what you fucking think. Make me feel bad. I’m not feeling bad for you. Don’t do that, don’t try that! Don’t waste your time and my time.”

Dawn: Phew. Yeah, but also with friends, I know they don’t want me to feel bad, they just want to fix the relationship or something, and so I’m just like, “Okay, I’ll just not feel bad about this.”

Tiffany: Yeah, it doesn’t help you. Or just being upset that it happened, maybe, but not punishing yourself for it, you know?

Dawn: Hmm, just making sure it doesn’t happen again, like fixing the relationship, caring for the other person. This is also one of those things, I used to be so wracked with guilt over all sorts of things, and hypothetical things, and instead I’ve been like, “Okay, shame, I don’t need that anymore, guilt, I don’t need that anymore. Instead, I still focus on what has been the impact on the other person, and how can I make it better for them? And not any bad feelings for myself.”

Tiffany: And that’s another thing, I have doubts of somebody valuing me trying to make it better for them. Doubts that they’ll believe the authenticity, doubts that they will value it at all. Either from they’ve concealed their true intentions, and that’s not what they were looking for. Or that they’re just being malicious, etc.

Dawn: Yeah, I think I trust people on that by default, but of course, that trust can be broken, and then I don’t anymore.

Tiffany: I guess it depends on the person, yeah. I guess maybe I think more… I don’t even want to just say positive, because this takes in negative things, but a more additive mindset would be is I can realize I’m not offering it to that person. I’m not offering this person that trust, and I’m not offering them the opportunity to show me that they are a good person. And I just had a little revelation of a more active way to try to work on the trust things, that there’s things that I’m internally not doing to suppress the connection. And instead of it feeling like a risk, it’s just like, “Well, that’s not gonna be there if I don’t do it, too.” You know? The trust and connection. It’s not gonna be there unless I’m doing it, too. And it’s just not super tangible to me, so I have to think of it like that, to teach myself the tangibility. And kind of combine that with a reason to do it, even when I don’t feel the tangibility.

Dawn: Yeah, it’s like the exact opposite for me, where the trust’s always there, and you just need to be extra careful consciously now, that that’s not exploited. I’ve somehow gotten lucky with my partner so far. But for a long time, I wasn’t aware of that risk.

Tiffany: I mean, like, you’re not somebody that in either a devoid or a malicious way I would look at in either, let’s say… I think a cruel reality of life is that certain kinds of brokenness within us seek out certain kinds of brokenness within other people, right?

Dawn: Yeah.

Tiffany: You know, the whole people with NPD, NPDorks, and BPDweebs like each other, and feed off each other, and it can actually be good if both people are aware enough. But you’re not somebody I could see that I could take advantage of. You’re not somebody also that… I guess the other one’s more reactive. Like, for the narcissistic holes in my heart, since you’re relatively secure, it’s like you’re not reacting to my attempts to elicit the praise in that way, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, in a less healthy way of saying, like, “Oh, I’m not gonna get that… I know I wouldn’t get that kind of thing out of you.” And being a healthier person definitely attracts healthy people. If there’s nothing else more than that healthy people would prefer to be more deeply involved with other healthy people. Duh!

Dawn: Yeah, maybe there’s also an attraction between healing people, that healing people want to be…

Tiffany: I think so, too. It’s a unique experience. There’s a song, I Wanna Get Better by The Bleachers. And I remember being younger and just thinking, like, “Well, this is just pasty, happy horseshit.” And then there’s a line in it like, “I didn’t know I was broken until I wanted it to change,” because that comes together. You know, like I said, I was happy causing Athena problems that then came to be my problems, too. And being an asshole to her housemates. And that didn’t change until I also wanted that part of myself to be better. And that transition is something that most people do not experience.

Dawn: You had this discussion recently with a friend of mine about how often people change beliefs, like, some important beliefs in their lives. And I’m in this rationalist community where everything is about fluidly exchanging beliefs to fit the reality, and always being truth-seeking and well-calibrated. And so in my bubble, there’s definitely a lot of belief changing going on, and it’s an important value and everything, but the average person, how often do they change important beliefs?

Tiffany: They don’t need to, right? Like, you know the saying goes that it’s not abnormal to not know who you are, but it is atypical, abnormal, to be worried about not knowing who you are. Like, a lot of people never go through that self-reflection, and either they’re miserable and just accept it, or they’re happy and there’s nothing major they need to change like that that prompts that sort of introspection, and so it just doesn’t happen.

Dawn: Yeah, exactly. I have a friend who seems to be totally happy and emotionally regulated, secure in his attachments and everything, and I try to have conversations with him, but his reaction is mostly, “Huh, I’ve never thought about that.”

Tiffany: And it’s endearing, it’s kind of cute, I’m precious, and it’s kind of fun and enjoyable, but it can get boring if that’s what you’re after with that friend, because it’s not really inquisitive. When I talk about people with philosophy and stuff, I want to know their ideas. I want to be prompted myself to think about it differently as well. Sometimes just for the act of thinking about it, just because it’s fun, but also maybe we can find a new kernel of truth between us.

Dawn: Yeah, exactly. Like, I’m always super happy to change my mind on things, and just a few days ago, I messaged someone, “Oh, by the way, in case it wasn’t clear, I’ve completely changed my mind!” Like, it’s a certain pride in being able to do that effortlessly.

Tiffany: Yeah, you know, I think I’m gonna have to steal that from you, because when I get manic, I can just be like, “Oh my god, I’ve discovered the next revelation, and this and that.” And that’s part of an old pattern, that’s not as prevalent.

Dawn: I thought every next thing was the magical solution.

Tiffany: And that’s what I was seeking. That’s also what I was seeking, right? So I had to change my mind what I was looking for. But that was embarrassing to me. That’s like… anybody’s paying attention longer than 5 minutes can tell I’m just a big fucking chaotic jumble. Oh, boy.

Dawn: Yeah, like, I think I know that I will change my mind, and so I preemptively state my probabilities, at least internally. I’m like, “Okay, he’s probably leaning toward this, feels like 60-70% or so.” And then afterwards, I’m like, “Oh, okay, it was totally wrong. Apparently, the 30-40% option was current.” So that helps a bit to make it less embarrassing?

Tiffany: I guess the way I could internalize it is maybe like, “Well, I don’t want it to be true like this. I really need to think about that, I don’t know how to integrate that.” Because like, I don’t know how to integrate that yet, but like I’ve said of my fears of difficulty with changing, I get really focused on the bullshit I’ll have to go through, the grueling slog it feels like it might be. And I have to at least start off telling myself that maybe things will just be fine, but this part will be difficult. But all among that, I missed the plot of, “Do I have the opportunity to be proud of how much I’ve changed?” I have… people tell me all the time that I have a lot of empathy, and I have a lot of cognitive empathy, but you know, I can process empathy with myself distanced from it, too. And since I’ve had to learn empathy from such a ground-up way, I’ve grown a really strong capacity to understand people, to look into people, and to generate insight. A mutual friend of ours, she told me she liked how I made some of my venting palatable, she said. But the real thing is I was doing more than one thing at once, and part of it is working through the negativity in me, too. And I’ll try to turn it into a new insight, or if I’m just pissed off at everybody. Like, the recent post I made about that it’s a big turn-off for me when…

Dawn: You’re made to feel as if you intimidated someone?

Tiffany: Yeah, that that’s actually a turn-off. And then I gave reasons why, and then it made myself vulnerable a little, and it allows somebody else to do that synthesis as well. But I’m trying to do all of those things. I’m trying to not just fucking look down on people that are like that. Even if I don’t vibe with them, just like get it out of my head. And also not take it as personally, so personally that they do that. But also, that gives other people an opportunity to see it from my perspective, and I feel like I actually expressed that gripe. But again, at the same time as turning it into this insight, I find that when I look towards turning it into an insight that somebody else can use, it tends to do all of those things at once, and present it in a way that other people can do synthesis with it as well.

Dawn: Yeah, that’s definitely something that resonated with me a lot. Like, I used to be downright afraid of intimidating someone. And I think my transition has also been a reaction to that, to some extent, that I wanted to feel safer in a position where it felt less likely to me that I might intimidate someone.

Tiffany: Well, being, most people, fortunately, see me as a woman now, so like when people are intimidated to meet me… because I’ve gone through that too, right? Like, I had a Van Dyke, and I was brash and loud and confident. And that puts some people off, but now it just sounds like a big pain in my ass. Just like, “Oh, you’re intimidated? You won’t talk to me? Why? Don’t do that! That’s annoying!” I don’t want someone to feel like they’re just a big, annoying piece of shit, either.

Dawn: Yeah, the authenticity and communication is a really interesting topic. Like, a bunch of friends of mine have the ego-syntonic sadism, so like they do something cringey, and then they are really proud of that, and they want to tell me about it. But of course they know that I will probably find it really cringey.

Tiffany: Just wanting the reaction, yeah. No, no, my impulse is to tell somebody, “Do you know that that is like one of the most annoying fucking things you should do? Don’t do that.” And trying to pressure them into not doing it. And also feeling stronger that I’m not counter-pressured.

Dawn: Amazing. Would you react like that?

Tiffany: What?

Dawn: In which position would you react like that?

Tiffany: Like, let’s say you said that I intimidated you, I’m like, “Do you know how fucking annoying that is? Do you even think about that?” And definitely taking some sick joy out of it at the same time is trying to push the person to not do that, but not really feeling like their feelings are my problem, so it’s just like also showing, “Stop being a pain in my ass!”

Dawn: Yeah, like, if that’s about intimidation in particular, it could be liberating for the person, I suppose. It’s like, they probably don’t want to be intimidated. Like, I think I was not usually intimidated by people. But I thought that they wanted me to be intimidated or something, and so I was sort of people-pleasingly trying to cater to their expectations. And if they then tell me they don’t actually want that, I’m like, “Oh, great, that’s a relief.”

Tiffany: No, don’t give that to anybody, that’s disrespectful to yourself. I think that’s one of the times where empathy is less helpful, because we’ll get stuck in how the other person feels in something like that. But if somebody wants you to be intimidated and you’re not in a BDSM scene or something, like… What good reason could they have for that? Like, that possible thought of theirs doesn’t deserve the time of day, just because maybe they’ll feel hurt if you’re not intimidated.

Dawn: Yeah, about the communicating sadism thing. One friend of mine went for, “I have mixed feelings about this, because I know that I probably shouldn’t do this, and I know I’ve lost friends to this, but I also feel really proud of it,” and so kind of communicated just the whole range of feelings that she had about her behavior. And another friend rather pretended to feel ashamed of it or something? Like, not directly, but at least sort of was not explicitly bragging about it. And another friend more dressed it up as radical honesty or something, and then as if she had to force herself to be very direct and straightforward about her exploits, but again, she was bragging!

Tiffany: I used to do that. Sometimes with that consummate pride, sometimes with fear of being judged, but like the in-between of those is just like, “Well, if this doesn’t turn them off, then I’m good.” I used to… so, when I’ve had outbursts on people, and I’ve been really angry, and I just feel like they just don’t fucking get it. And someone would go, “Don’t you know how that hurt the person?” And I’ll be like, “Why am I supposed to care? Do you know what they did to me?” Etc. Or, “They’ll probably never talk to you again,” I’ll be like… “Good.”

Dawn: Yeah, but I can imagine in that case, it’s sort of for communication, right? Like, you were hurt, and you wanted to communicate to the other person how they had hurt you?

Tiffany: Yeah, there is technically a way to recover that, yeah. If they had acknowledged it, but like, what I was doing was definitely subduing them, or making them not feel like I would give a shit if they acknowledged it. But yeah, if they had acknowledged it, and said anything to the effect of how they’re gonna try to keep that from happening again, I’d go, “Oh, fuck.” And that would be like… That would actually be, in most situations, against my values to not try and take that for what it is. So it would be recoverable. There’s been times where it’s just some of the things that have happened to me, or some of the things I perceived that some of the people have done things that have fucked up my life so bad that I, at the minimum, need to scare them away from ever fucking doing it again. I’m either not gonna put up with that, or I can’t fucking survive that, or it’s just so egregious that like, “How could you let yourself do that sort of thing?” And it could definitely just be there to scream down their throat, because I thought their throat needed screaming down. For one reason or another. Normally, when I do that, I would only be proud of it, and like I didn’t take shit form of it afterwards. But normally, in that I’m not reveling in the sadism itself, because it just imminently is true to me that I didn’t want that to fucking happen in the first place. And you’ll hear people with more abusive tendencies, perhaps past me, say something like, “Why did you have to make me do that?” Like, that’s where that kind of thing comes from at a deeper level, because they don’t want to admit or explain all of that, for sure. I’m just realizing how many villains I can empathize with, with that. Like, I’ve heard that, and I’m like, “Yeah, I get it.” That was probably a fucking nightmare, and the person is just probably like, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and they don’t really get it. And this feeling of entitlement to being, not placated, but getting something back from it, from all you’ve gone through. Entitlement to some sort of recourse, and sort of dispensing justice yourself.

Dawn: How many different categories did you just mention? Like, there was the one where a person hurts you, you want to hurt the person back. I think there was the communicative aspect to it, but you were also not really seeking to be understood at the same time, if I see this correctly. Like, you wanted to cut the person out. But then I imagine there’s also the case where, I don’t know, it’s Riley or me, and you actually want to communicate the emotion that you’re experiencing with the interest of me understanding it, and once I express that I’ve understood how I’ve made you feel, then you’d be happy with that, and want to restore the connection. And, well, then there were the vengeance ones, but they were probably separate.

Tiffany: Yeah, so those first two can be on a border, can have a threshold. I remember a really nasty example of I was teaching a friend how to drive, and they froze up in the middle of it, and we had to switch driving places in the middle of traffic, it was frickin’ horrifying. And I think deep down, I would’ve accepted something, but I was not in the kind of state where I was gonna actually be receptive of it. And so there’s times like that where maybe the person’s more tenuous but I still like them, and I’ll mentally prepare for that what I’m about to do might write them off for me. And I would accept it if it turned the other way, but I’m not expecting or really in that mode at all. At least not until I would calm the hell down.

Dawn: Yeah, of course. Imagine there’s also the third version, where the sadistic person values the conflict positively. Like, “Oh yes, this person has hurt me now, because that gives me a reason to hurt them back, and that’s pleasurable.”

Tiffany: Yeah, I have a weird relationship with conflict, cause I’m more comfortable with somebody screaming at me than holding the stuff in. It feels like there’s resolution. I feel like I’m giving them a chance to get their shit out on me. I think that’s a fair trade, even. And I have totally so much as told people in the past, “Listen, if you wanna fucking lay into me or scream at me for that, that’s okay.” Thinking that they wanted that. That they felt like they really needed to, or felt like that might at least improve their mood. I’m gonna kinda get that aggression out. And this is all the same person I’m talking about, because I remember once on a long road trip with him, we had had a conflict he was handling with avoidance, and he was trying to placate me. This was before he knew he had BPD, and before I knew I had NPD. And so he was trying to placate me, and he was learning I had more depth than that. And when we finally got to talk about it, I’m like, “Dude, like… conflict can just be good and okay if we want to resolve it.” But, of course, the emotional half of that for me is just viewing the fucking yelling at each other as at least possibly a net directly positive. Like, either at least we got that out, or you know… “You’ve really wanted to do that for a long time, huh?” Just thinking back to when I, a narcissist, quote-unquote, gave a borderline person a pep talk of, “No, conflict is good.” And how there were very good aspects of it and less than ideal. I wouldn’t even say bad, just like, I didn’t have the awareness that other people wouldn’t either get something from it, or flat out get off from doing that.

Dawn: I’ve also wondered whether it would be useful for me, like, since I didn’t used to be in touch with anger at all, and then through therapy, I’ve discovered a little bit of mythness sometimes. That would be useful for me to be in the context of people who are a bit more externalizing or something, so that I have an environment in which it would at least be okay for me to experiment with different behaviors?

Tiffany: My suggestion, I guess, like, let’s say you wanted to vent about something that happened in your life. Right? I… even if we were in person, in the same room, I would be okay with you literally being screaming, stomping mad. Maybe somebody did something to you that’s that bad, and you want to not express it… You know, you’re not doing that to me. You want to get that out, and hope I understand and commiserate that, like, “Oh my fucking god, yeah, I can imagine how you feel going through that.” And not necessarily that extreme, but that’s my permission I’m giving you that if you need to just fucking gripe about something, fucking bitch about somebody or something that happened, I will very quickly empathize with that. That’s one of the things I do easily empathize with.

Dawn: Yeah, that happened last time. Last October, I think I mentioned it earlier. I had a bit of a situation like that. It’s been a while. I don’t know if it will happen again. I’m kind of a CPTSD type, overreaction, and so… I would hope that I’ve overcome that? We’ll see.

Tiffany: Wanna go through the other parts of sadism just to do it, since we’re here? The 6 types of sadism?

Dawn: Yeah.

Tiffany: So we… I’ve touched on control sadism a bunch during this conversation, that’s probably definitely my primary mode. Like the extreme examples of with my father. It’s like an antisocial punishment, your blog calls it. Because I view it as trying to push the person to not do something, or to do something better. And like with my father, it was maybe blatantly necessary. Like, one time, I came home with a customer’s car key in my jacket on accident, and I was a 5-minute walk away, okay? And he couldn’t find the key. And so he’s taking out all the aggravation of the wasted time, half hour, hour and a half of him trying to search for it on me. And but after that, even 2, 3, 4 years after no longer working for him, he would call me, and when my sleep schedule was really upside down, I’d fall asleep at like 7, 8 in the morning, and he’d call me at 10, 10:30 in the morning, and asking me. And there are other situations where I wouldn’t want him to really ask me about how my job is going in a certain way. Because I didn’t have the expectation that he would listen to the nuances there, right? Because I didn’t want it to go down a route where he felt the need to fucking tell me what to do, or judge it, etc. I was technically totally okay with talking about what was going on with my jobs with him, but not in the way he wanted to do it. And I would just make that experience for him as miserable as possible, to the point that he noted it. He’s just like, “I swear I can’t fucking talk to you about this!” I’m like, “Yeah. You’re right!”

Dawn: Yeah, I think I would also do that.

Tiffany: Yeah, in the situation where the person’s just not listening, right? And your only course is to turn them off. But it can be much smaller things, you know? Like I said, my impulse would be to tell the person who’s told me I’m intimidating to make them feel embarrassed over it. And maybe humiliate them into trying to push them to not do that. So that’s definitely my most common mode, and I think you can see how my mom set up the seeds for that, right? That phrase, “Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.” And having no patience for certain things and expecting me to just buck up and figure it out, or spanking me an extra time because I flinched, because I need to take the punishment well.

I wanna say I’ve done righteous sadism before, and it’s just been like feeling like my honor… Normally I’ve gotten like that when I feel like the sanctity of my life or my household or a friend has been violated. There’s healthier versions of like that. You know, if you’re with your friend at a bar and somebody literally copped a feel. It depends on how the person responds, but the response of putting a little fear in them of like, “Don’t even think about trying that. You shouldn’t do that with anybody. You should be legitimately scared of doing that to people,” may be acceptable. Or even prudent. But that big thing where I freaked out on that ex-friend, and I found a way to get the house out from under them, but I also smeared them on social media. That was that. That was like, “Don’t violate the sanctity of my livelihood and my household and my relationship. My pets, etc.” So, I’ve done that, but I’ve more like done it. I wouldn’t say that’s a big part of myself.

The resentful sadism. Because when I talked before about somebody tells me they dissociated, and they weren’t able to function, and I’m just like… “You had that opportunity? Wow, you lucky piece of shit!” Out of resentment and jealousy, to just feeling like they don’t appreciate what they’ve been given in life adequately enough.

Dawn: Hmm… For me, this feels like envy. Like, I’m happy that they have it, but I wanted to please, back in time.

Tiffany: Well, it’s resentful, because it would feel like I can’t have it, like I’m not allowed it.

Dawn: Yeah, the thing that I’m talking about is something that I have now, that I wish I had always had, and then when I talk to a friend who’s always had it, like the absence of core shame, sort of a basic feeling of lovability… Having had that 37 years ago would have been awesome.

Tiffany: We’ve touched on vindictive sadism, and sometimes that’s been like… I had that hotel double charge me, and I wanted to somehow get back at the hotel manager. That was also partly, really at the bottom inside of me, I was hoping that it changed the outcome, but that was just to make me feel better about really wanting to lay into her. It’s clear to me somehow how a lot of these can bleed between each other, and why sadism is so weird. But lashing out at somebody just to get that out of me, because I don’t feel like they adequately understand what they’ve done to me.

But the one we really haven’t touched on, and it’s… I wanted to go through them, because I think it helps set up the concept of it better. The contumacious pride. And the contumacious pride is a form of self-sadism, and NPD and ASPD and psychopathy intersecting is really the only reason it would happen from pathology. That my dad martyring himself so that he could keep to his 10 o’clock curfew, so I can’t drive. You know, he’s hurting himself so that he’s not above his rules, and I don’t have that power over him of having gained an exception. Or, there’s a small amount of that with my friend Athena, when I was mad at their roommates. And it’s like, “Well, they don’t like you then. Okay, good.” Or, and then knowing this is probably gonna end my friendship with Athena too at some point, and it just being like, “Yeah, but none of… I’m not gonna have any of you tell me no. I’m gonna tell you no. And it’ll be at cost to me, and you’re gonna learn what happens.” Oh, man. That’s some nasty words. I say that because I’m actually feeling something saying it, and it’s not something I really want to come out. It scares me a little that all I have to do is just sort of act it out, and I start to feel it.

Dawn: But, like, somehow all of these so far, I think, have been relatively reactive. Like, what I see usually in my more sadistic friends is that they are very proactive about it, that they kind of wish that they could act sadistically in every situation, but they have their various behavioral rules, and then they look for situations where they can sort of rationalize it to themselves to act out, semi-provoke the situations, perhaps, and then enjoy the sadism as a result. And some of them are quite aware that they are doing that, that they’re not actually reacting to something, but that they’re enjoying the acting out the sadism so much that they are looking for opportunities to do it.

Tiffany: I mean, I do that, but that’s like all the stuff where I’ve said, “Well, my impulse would be…” I guess I’m just aware of why I would do it. And I’m not talking much about why I enjoy it. Like, let’s say… I need to give myself a minute. I’ve made myself mentally dizzy, because I realized that connection with it. And I had a flashback, I relived something. Normally, when I’m like that, I want the person to feel powerless. Or I want to push them to act. I’m struggling to think of a specific example, but I’ve had times where it seems like the person really isn’t listening to me, so I try and force the issue to get the person to do something, and like, now, I try to deliberately pin them into an immediate action. And I do get off of feeling the power in that situation. And if they then just shrink away or run away, they’ll feel so pitiful. And I might even laugh. I’m certainly enjoying it. If I’m driving, sometimes I want to just let off the gas and frustrate the fuck out of them until they realize they have to do something different. And if I saw them screaming in the car as they pass in some other way, in another lane, be like, “You dumb bitch. Like, how did you not figure that out already? Like, how did you end up in life at this point, and this was so hard for you to figure out?”

Dawn: But are you waiting for people to tailgate you, and then are glad that they do?

Tiffany: I’ll just be enjoying that, if I were to do… I’ve only done that sort of thing when it felt worth the risk. Like, I was driving down a narrow one-way, and some spaces there were to go around me, but most of it there wasn’t. And he was coming down this really steep hill, and he just had to have misjudged it and almost came into the lane. And so this guy was tailgating me, because he obviously thought I did it. And so, I was in a stick shift car, and I eventually brought it down to first gear, and I was doing like 8 miles an hour. And eventually, he gets around me! And stops his car in front of mine to force the issue. What a tough motherfucker! And he gets out, and he’s like, “You wanna play that? It’s like, you did this,” and I’m like, “No, I didn’t.” Like, he claimed, “You almost hit me.” No, I didn’t. He leaves, and I’m viewing myself as the person in control, and the person capable of doing… he’s doing a mean thing, well, I’m doing the mean thing that actually matters. And I totally told that story to a ton of people out of, like, “Look at what jackass I made of this total idiot.” I don’t normally… I talk myself out of stuff like that normally out of the risk. But every single time someone tailgates me bad enough, I am thinking about doing something like that. And I do want to just frustrate them at least for the moment, and maybe they’ll change their mind. But at least I’ll have gotten something out of it, instead of I’m just sitting there, holding my anger back. And that’s the way I view it.

Dawn: Do you want to talk about sexual sadism as well?

Tiffany: Sure. My most recent experience was this masochist person. So she had requested a black eye, because she gets… she feels strong being beaten up. Cause she can take it. And she wanted the black eye so that it made people uncomfortable and made them question, and helps her be more comfortable being this person who likes this deviant thing, right? And that did happen, some store clerk asked her. And I’m just like, you know, the store clerk went like, “Oh, honey, do I need to talk to your boyfriend?” And I told her, you should have said, “Number one, she’s a girl, and I asked for it,” which is beautifully ambiguous. I would totally want that person to be left with an even bigger question of their head of, “Maybe she didn’t really ask for it, but she did.”

Dawn: That was fun. I might have done that by accident recently, it was funny!

Tiffany: It is funny when it’s on accident, right? But anyway, so I’m doing the stuff, and she’s laying down. And I’m talking about my plan. I’m waiting for when it feels and looks like the right moment to do it. And I’m talking about plotting that out. And I go to just caress her face, and she just shirks in fear. And… Oh, my… God, that was delicious. It was tasty. And she loved it. She told me she hadn’t felt fear in a very long time, and it helps wrestle emotions out of her like that. And little later in the scene, I grabbed her hair to pull her into the position I wanted, and then I held her down by her throat to really physically subdue her. And I just sat there and soaked in the beauty that I was about to assault for a second, and I punched her in the cheek. And I’m just like, “You know… I’m not 100% sure on that,” and I did it again, and I’m like, “Oh good, I changed… her cheek had swollen up so much, it changed shape.” And that was delightful to have that immediate feedback that I got exactly what I wanted. That I know it’s gonna last. I don’t have to go, “Oh, I don’t know if I hit her hard enough.” Yeah, I did.

So that’s some sort of just direct hurting the person. There’s a little more mental is when there’s toys involved. Every toy does a different kind of thing. Like, stinging, aching. And different body parts. And I get myself into this mode where I’m trying to walk their brain and their body through these waves of endorphins, and to get them through certain thresholds, so I can leave this person with as many marks, so I can dispense as much pain and damage as I possibly can. And I’ll play with that. I’ll play with getting them over, and then you have to sort of… once you get them near, once their brain is warmed up to it, you have to push them over a threshold so that it gets into endorphins, or you’ll smack something and then smack it a second time so it really stings, and then you’ll caress it, to give their brain that positive association, while the warm endorphins flow through them. And as you get further, if the person is a beautiful, big enough pain slut, you get to the point where sometimes you push over the boundary deliberately to get their brain to the next threshold, which is, like, “I’m the one doing things here, not you.”

And my favorite toy ever was both of these things at once. It was a leather flogger with sharp, pointy, 3D-printed pyramids on it that I called the Spikula. And I couldn’t think of anything better than something that was an impact instrument that also drew blood. It was brilliant. I’ve wanted to get into MedFet, medical fetishism stuff. I’ve thought about learning stuff. There’s a way you can do skin removal that will make a scarification, and you can draw beautiful patterns that way, and people like that. And that sounds so intimate. Being this pain surgeon.

And something I’m gonna be deliberately light on details is CNC, consensual non-consent. And I generally like SA, sexual assault play. And I’ve had the delight of being able to act out a pretty realistic experience with that, that just the surprise and suddenness and no perceived lead-up. It was… And so, that’s different. I do CNC for, like, I feel like this dangerous, loose cannon. And if this person is that comfortable with me doing something like this to them, then maybe I’m fine! You know, and the person who I did that with was the same way that they’re now more comfortable pushing their own boundaries. Because they know at the end of the day, there is a safe word. And “no” is not the safe word. And so they know that at the end of the day, they’re safe, and so they can play outside of the bounds of their comfort zone. And it be in an environment like that. And I don’t know, it’s really emotionally rewarding, and it just happens to let a lot of aggression out at the same time. I’m wistful, I miss that.

Dawn: If you’re in Europe at some point, and I need to introduce you to my CNC friend.

Tiffany: Yeah. No, a lot of… I tell people that as a sadist, my limit is yours plus one. And both as a way of communicating to somebody like that, the like, “If you ask me to do it, and I think it’s any sort of fun, I don’t have any qualms doing it, for sure.”

Dawn: Do you mean age, or BDSM experience?

Tiffany: BDSM experience, like the extremeness of it. Some people might be good with using toys, and doing impact play, maybe spanking, but my recent masochist friend? I was just frickin’ punching her? And some people that might… There are people that are sadists, but they aren’t necessarily comfortable with that, because they’re doing the thing in their head of, “Well, this person likes that, so I can do that for them.” And they can either suppress or rationalize away the tinge of pain of hurting somebody. But I have fantasies beyond the extremes of what I’ve been allowed to do to people. So, that’s normally what some extreme masochists, hard masochists, do look for, in the same way that somebody who’s sexually submissive would like somebody who’s unabashedly dominant. As opposed to a Service Dom. Which is a similar thing, like, “Okay, I’ll do this to you because you like it,” as opposed to someone who likes being dominant and like, “Hey, let’s… how do we make this fun?”

Dawn: So that advertises myself when I say that my limit is theirs plus one, but it’s also basically true.

Tiffany: So you can tell your friend that.

Dawn: Yeah, well… First, you’d have to be geographically close, I suppose. But yeah, like, I think they have extensive experience.

Tiffany: Good! No, I’d rather they not be fresh meat. It’ll be way more fun, we’ll get into so much…

Dawn: Yeah, we had a little CNC orgy at one event a year ago. But like 10 or 12 or so? Like Dom role, like, surface Doms, mostly.

Tiffany: Yeah, you could probably tell the difference, you know? And I don’t know, I pride myself in being authentically dominant, and it’s just… it’s incredibly sadistic, and it’s also fun in a scene or a sex sense.

Dawn: Yeah, I think when it’s one-on-one, the person probably makes a huge difference. In this case, there were so many that all the hands and other things and everything sort of blurred together, and they didn’t have any idea anymore what was going on where and who.

Tiffany: Oh, no, that sounds fun in a different way. I like the sound of that, too.

Dawn: I get why somebody would like that. That’s really great. How did you learn all of that without being masochistic?

Tiffany: Riley. You know, they’re not as masochistic, they’re into the CNC stuff. And I was able to probe some of those extremes, but and then I just talked to people about why they liked it. You know, I can remember even being 4 years old and hearing the song by the Eurythmics of going, “Some people want to abuse you, some people want to be abused by you,” and me going, “But why would you… I can get why someone would want to abuse somebody, but why would somebody want to be abused?” And just curiosity, and asking enough questions to finally understand. That’s another thing, a brief thing of with the high pain tolerance, some people might mistake that as masochism, but it’s like, if I don’t think I’m benefiting from what I’m going through, I don’t want to go through that pain. Like that time I ran up the steps I said before, with the painful calves. It feels like this good, painful hollowness. Like your arm is stuck underneath a rock, and a forest fire is coming to you, and you’re somehow strong enough to free yourself by removing that limb. And it feels like slicing off or stabbing that weakness into submission. And that’s something I wanted to touch on, just… not sorry about making this whole part of the conversation about sadism, but I think the human aspect of it isn’t talked about it enough, and this is my opportunity.

Dawn: Yeah, no, I’m very interested in sadisms. Like, things that I’ve read is that some sadists… well, they probably have all sorts of vindictive sadism and whatnot going on, but when it comes to sexual sadism, they only find it pleasurable to the extent that the other person also finds it pleasurable. And that would explain why you experience sadism in a proactive role, let’s say, in a sexual context, but are so reactive about it in non-sexual contexts?

Tiffany: I mean, I’m happy my masochist friend let me do that, but I’m not gonna say I don’t have fantasies of just doing totally torturous things to people, either from retribution, or just to get my grief out. It is more satisfying when the other person likes it. Because it feels like in this directly but indirectly, they’re connecting with my aggression. They’re getting something different out of it than I am, but they also… I know they also appreciate that I’m getting something out of it. And you know, I guess that’s why harder forms of sadism, because when it’s very light, it can make me feel very surface sadist, or service dom. Because then it’s like, “Okay, I’m just doing this all for you. What’s in it for me? Do you even care about that I’m doing this for you right now?” And it can be very hard for me to feel like they’re enjoying that I’m enjoying myself. And so even if it’s there and I am enjoying myself, it will lack depth.

Dawn: Yeah. Yeah, I can empathize with that. I think most of the pleasure in vanilla sex for me is also in pleasuring the partner, and empathizing with their pleasure. Perhaps vanilla sex is like, for me, so…

Tiffany: Yeah, like, it’s the mutuality. Like, you’re both in all these situations trying to enjoy the same thing, actually. Together. You couldn’t enjoy it this much unless your mindsets were linked up in some way. Right? Even with just vanilla sex. Even with if I go on some dating app and get a hookup just cause I need a sexual release, you know, it’s different than somebody that I maybe just friends with benefits or fuck buddies with where like, “We’re friends, but at least we have sex… but we also have sex sometimes.” Even that has more depth, but sometimes it doesn’t fill it. Like, sometimes I do just need to get off. And I don’t want to go through all the emotional rigmarole.

Dawn: Yeah, it could be that that’s why I find sensual pleasures, like cuddling, for example, more pleasurable than sexual pleasures, because these, for me, would be something very specific that the other person probably wouldn’t want to do, and then what the other person finds interesting is something that I only find interesting empathetically, and so there’s not this level of mutuality, whereas with cuddles, it’s much more frequent that I’m in sync with another person.

Tiffany: Yeah, I’m a big cuddle fiend, even if I can be hypersexual. I get very frustrated if I can only really express one or the other. Let me think, so… If I take, where does the sadism come from within me? So some of it’s the power and control. If I take it at its core. But it’s also an aggression release? So in non-sexual contexts, like vindictive sadism, just to get it out, even if the person never knows it was me, or never understands. And usually that’s from feeling controlled by them, or feeling powerless. And so, like, some of my extreme desires or fantasies of wanting to get someone run out of the kind of industry or job they’re in, it’s just like, I want that person to the core to feel powerless and helpless as their life falls apart around them. And that’s I guess when it’s more vindictive, when it’s almost basically sadism for the sake of sadism. And the other more reactive stuff is either pride, aggression, release. Like a show of force, to be like, don’t… Either to maintain the image of strength, or to impress it upon them that I can. Or, like I said, as a form of antisocial punishment, as an act of trying to change the behavior, or a deterrent. I guess those are where sadism comes for me, because that’s where I’ve needed it, that’s where I’ve found it useful. Just like we were discussing really early on in my childhood, I would act out, but it would normally not be here just to hurt somebody. But I would have sadistic fantasies. And I would try to keep them separate from each other. And it’s just at some point those were allowed to coexist close enough to want to do vindictive and prideful, you know, contumacious pride forms of sadism.

When I did martial arts for 10 years when I was younger, I had a lot easier time with my aggressive tendencies. If I have a place to get my aggression out, and I don’t also feel completely helpless, and it’s like one person’s fault, I have a much easier time with it. So a lot of it is aggression to me, and if it’s not, it’ll be like control. But they can be closely related, you know? Hope that makes sense.

Dawn: No, it makes total sense. So, like, when it comes to fantasies, where you have a lot more freedom, are there any particular… You mentioned vindictive sadism and fantasies, but you also mentioned letting grief, grievances, something like that…

Tiffany: Well, it’s just venting my aggression, trying to get it out.

Dawn: Yeah, like, when it comes to fantasies, are there any kinds of sadism that you engage in fantasies that are not so reactive? That are more proactive?

Tiffany: Yeah, think so. I’m learning I really repress these thoughts a lot, so I don’t act on them. I can probably think of a… There’s a person in my life, no longer in my life, and due to a service of theirs I still get access to their shared parts of their Google Calendar. And I’ve kind of wanted to send cryptic letters about when they’ve done this at this time, because I know it would just… It might even throw them into a paranoid spiral. I don’t really have anything to get out of that, because I most likely will never talk to that person again, it’s just entertaining that this person could be so sloppy and entertaining that it would probably take so little to unseat all of their mental stability. And I’ve only been able to talk myself out of it out of, “That’s gonna come back to bite me.”

Dawn: They’re gonna figure out who it is.

Tiffany: And it’s two people, and they’ve got plenty of mental issues, and so it would throw that household into complete disarray if it had the intended effect. Because they would both have different paranoid reactions to it, and not be able to calm the other person down.

Dawn: We are in control.

Tiffany: Yeah, I technically have power over them, but I’m not, like, it’s not gonna change anything. You know, it would just be entertaining. I would love to be the fly on the wall when that happens, and watch them run around like scared monkeys.

Dawn: Yeah, that’s something I sometimes find disappointing, that I could hypothetically do things, but I wouldn’t be able to see what the outcome is.

Tiffany: Yeah, and I admit I would probably do it. I would be hoping that they would figure that out, and cut the service off that we’re sharing still. So that they know who did it to them.

Dawn: And then it’s more likely to fall back on you.

Tiffany: Yeah, absolutely. It’s not a great idea. Pardon me, it’s a fun idea, but it’s not a good idea. That’s a recent one. Because… So to be really vulnerable about this, so I told that story to my housemate. And she told that story to her ex. And that apparently was not an insignificant part of why her ex broke up with her. Because my housemate would be friends with somebody who would want to do that to somebody. Like, a values judgment? Now, no, we’ve talked about this, that ex wasn’t really great for them. Of course, this person can be kind of passive, and let things go on. But they’re not upset with me over it, that’s what I’m saying.

Dawn: Yeah, there’s just this weird transitivity. I think in our groups, a lot of people experience some kind of transitivity. If person X has an attribute that I don’t like, and person Y is friends with person X, then I also cannot be friends with person Y. Even though I never have to meet person X.

Tiffany: Yeah, so I’ll just add to how much I know what you’re talking about, that the person I’m gonna hang out with this weekend, that spontaneous, ridiculous plan of his, he has also been a victim of that. Like, cause actually, in the same way you said it, I get how they came to those conclusions, and thought that that action might make sense, but you know, I told that as much to my housemate, I’m like, “In a way, she’s indirectly trying to control who you’re friends with.” You know, like, I’m smart enough and in control and have enough self-control enough to not do those sorts of things. When I’m feeling like that, sometimes the only thing I can do to talk myself out of it is reputation, but it works. That’s a weird feeling. I have a feeling of someone would expect me to be ashamed of that, and I’m not. That I’m the kind of person that sometimes I want to do bad things, and the only way I can talk myself out of it is the relatively shallow reason of reputation.

Dawn: The badness, the harm to the other person is not at all what talks me out of it.

Tiffany: Yeah, no, maybe somebody would be, like, normally someone would be ashamed of that. I get the feeling someone would expect me to be. If you didn’t know that that can be part of NPD masking, too, with having low empathy, and not understanding how you’ve hurt somebody, for sure, right?

Dawn: But that’s part of psychopathic masking.

Tiffany: Again, of how I get the sense of, “This is expected of me. So, I better do it if I want the relationship to continue.” And it’s a real weird twinge. It’s like feeling like the other person might not like me. But I like me, and I don’t care? It’s really weird, it’s really one-sided.

Dawn: But there are also values, behavioral codes, whatever you might call it, that would make someone feel disappointed if they act certain things out they at some point decided they didn’t want to act out.

Tiffany: Yeah, like, I have my values, even if I don’t… some of them just don’t have emotions backing them up. I don’t feel bad if I were to go back on them, but I still don’t want to, that’s still not the kind of person I want to be.

Dawn: Yeah, exactly. It’s how it works for me most of the time now. Like, I used to have all of these internal threats of guilt and shame and whatnot that I would experience, and now that I’ve let go of those, what remains is, like, I don’t want to do the thing. So it’s always the result of some complicated trade-off. Like, sure, it would have this pleasurable effect, and would have this other effect, but on net, I don’t want to do the thing anyway.

Tiffany: I feel bad that I kinda can’t talk myself out of wanting to do the things. And partly, again, like I’ve said before, it makes me afraid of not being able to recover sufficiently.

Dawn: But for how long has this calendar been shared with you now?

Tiffany: Several months.

Dawn: Well, so far you haven’t done anything, so… The evidence that you’re actually doing a pretty good job at not actually wanting to do the thing.

Tiffany: On net. Yeah. But I do genuinely feel bad when I lose that battle to people I care about. So, we talked about my recent fight with Riley. And you know, in my mind, if I just felt bad about wanting to end a friendship or cut them out like that, over that? It would be easier to not do that sort of thing. And sometimes I lose those battles with people who do matter to me. And I guess I can’t help but feel guilty over it a bit. I don’t feel a lot of guilt, but it’s just I guess I still haven’t changed my mind that I want to be better for Riley. They’ve done so much for me. Back when I started to be able to feel their love for me, the first way it hit me was just like, “You’ll put up with all this shit of mine, for real, you mean it?” And then it hitting me that they were interested in my actual personal growth. That’s because they wanted me to be happy, not just because they’re tolerant. And I’m like… “Oh…” And you know, I guess I’m proud of myself, that even in breaking up with them, I haven’t let that connection shrivel up. I still want to be better for them, because I am still close to them. Feel like I owe it to them. I feel like there should be a better way of internalizing it than owing him, like it’s an obligation, but I struggle to imagine a different way.

Dawn: But you also want to be better for yourself, right?

Tiffany: Yeah. But those are in two different whole worlds in my head. I don’t know what’s normal there at all.

Dawn: Yeah, like, I’ve been trying to search for some memories. I think there was this one time when I had an interview lined up, and I had my flight home, and I needed to do the interview at home, but I was also sick. So on the one hand, I would have liked to isolate in order not to infect people at the airport or on the flight. On the other hand, I wanted to get home, can’t rebook the flight, can’t get a refund or anything, wanted to take the flight, and I wanted to be home for the interview the next day. And so I decided to take the flight anyway, and then on the flight, I wore a mask. And yeah, so like, there were all these trade-offs, like the risk of infecting someone, the interview, the flight, the impossibility to get a refund, and all of that stuff, and all of that netted out to the decision to take the flight, but to wear a mask. And all along, I didn’t feel any kind of shame or guilt or anything over that. Was just a bunch of factors that I intuitively aggregated, and then derived a decision from it?

Tiffany: Makes sense. Hmm. I’m just wistful over finding that part of myself difficult to change, and not really sure about how much I do or don’t want it to change, how much maybe it even needs to change. Like, even if maybe I would benefit from not brooding the sadism out of myself, per se, but making it a much, much gentler fire. If it’s managed, you know, my energy is better spent elsewhere. I feel my younger self disappointed in myself. That I won’t just find a way. Whatever sense of impossibility imps upon me, just arrogance my way through it. Maybe I need to tell my younger self that that’s not how it always works.

Dawn: I mean, sadism also solves a problem for you. Like, it’s not so addictive like for other friends of mine. Fairly purely reactive, and so it seems to serve some kind of purpose, and maybe it just wants that purpose to be served, regardless of whether it’s the sadism itself that does it, or it’s something else. Usually, there are a bunch of different solutions to choose from.

Tiffany: Yeah. You know, I guess that’s a good point. It doesn’t feel addictive. It just feels great, or necessary, or even emotionally necessary sometimes. It’s making me feel really weird feelings, like again, like my younger self being disappointed in me. Like I’ve fallen from grace. I shouldn’t judge myself so harshly. Again, I should remind myself, my younger self had no idea what she was in for. Because some of my delusional levels of faith, or also faith in my parents, faith and institutions, maybe contributed to things. Because when that crashes out, it crashes out hard, you know? When your dad feels like you’re Superman, and you find out you can’t… you might have died if you weren’t conniving or as big of an asshole back. It hurts. It hurts worse. Like, if it had been more gradual. Yeah, I really shouldn’t underestimate how unprepared I was to go through some of those things.

Dawn: What is your younger self disappointed about?

Tiffany: That I used to think that people were generally worth it, and that the world was overall worth it. And so that positive things I do have some sort of value. And some sort of likelihood to make somebody’s life better. And with that reasoning, that’s not really compatible with seeking out ways to do harm to somebody. Just to giggle. That’s not… And those were important values for me that were beat out of me. Proverbially, and when I was younger, literally. Again, I need to remind myself I had no idea what I was in for. And I couldn’t.

Dawn: Hmm.

Tiffany: Alright, I think I’m good. Thanks for that. It’s, you know, we’ve talked, that’s one of the challenging things I’m working through.

Dawn: Hmm. You know, like, maybe the adaptations that you found were close to the optimal ones that you could have found given the knowledge and abilities that you had at the time.

Tiffany: Yeah.

Dawn: And you had to adapt or survive? And sad. That was the way that you found?

Tiffany: Survival can be cruel, yeah. So, I’m getting hungry. We’ve been on a long time.

Dawn: Yeah…

Tiffany: I’ve enjoyed it. There’s a lot we haven’t gone over yet, but we’ve got over a lot we didn’t plan to, so…

Dawn: I’ll tick off the questions we’ve already answered. For the next time.

Tiffany: Hey. Hmm, it was really, it’s been really pleasant. Get some of that stuff off of my back. It weighs on me, the… my recovery weighs on me. In a way I find hard to describe, but it does. So… it’s important. Thank you, Dawn!

Dawn: It was lovely learning a lot more about you. I didn’t know I would learn so much more.

Tiffany: I know, I already talk a lot, right?

Dawn: Yeah, we’ve already messaged a lot, but there was still so much nuance in there, and I thought you used to have 4 to 5 alters, no, apparently 7.

Tiffany: At the… yeah, way back. Way back when, yeah, now it’s technically two.

Dawn: Yeah, I know, but like… They’re both Tiffany now, so… Can you switch between them on command?

Tiffany: No, no, I’m pretty integrated. It’s just they’re just pretty distinct, and there’s normally not as much amnesia, it’s definitely the base personality split slowly healing. And if that makes sense. Cuz I’ve shown you, right, the spectrum that most Cluster B personalities are the same kind of dissociation as mild DID. But it’s in a certain structure. But there can be, like, it could be very hard for me to see somebody as capable of respecting me when I seem like a child, it could be hard, you know. My perspective is twisted a bit, but there’s not as much amnesia. So, it’s just that identity fragmentation slowly healing. And it’s still having some extremes that are enough that you… I can just tell. You know?

Dawn: Yeah, we usually call them self-states or mood states when they are not full alters or full parts.

Tiffany: These can, like I said, I can almost age-regress. Definitely. When I oscillate… when I’m not in doing better and I’m oscillating, I will be oscillating back and forth between, “Oh, well, I’ll just make myself do it,” and self-pity of, “Oh my god. How could I do this with all this happening?” And that’s not entirely my… I guess I’m splitting when that happens. And like I said, sometimes there’s smaller parts of it, like smaller contained chunks that aren’t integrated in fully yet.

Dawn: So… but they don’t have their own separate identities, they’re different.

Tiffany: Dissociation, you know, dissociation is a sliding scale, it’s a spectrum. It’s a really interesting part of psychology.

Dawn: Yeah, and like, it sounds like you have most of the time control over it, maybe sometimes not so much when you’re oscillating and whatnot, but…

Tiffany: Yeah, the self-pity’s really hard to get out of, I’ll admit. Because the cynicism wraps back on itself. If that makes sense.

Dawn: Oh, hmm. You can fully get out quickly?

Tiffany: I am now that I’ve noticed it. I didn’t realize I was just sitting there wallowing in despair. Like, I did, but I didn’t. It just felt like it was happening to me, not like something I could control. And it felt like my everything. It felt like that’s all there is? That’s very indicative of splitting. So…

Dawn: Yeah. I think two friends of mine have told me now that they can just sort of pick whatever state they want to be in at a given time, like, maybe for sharing purposes, this state is best. For getting stuff done, this other state is best, and then they switch.

Tiffany: I have sort of modes, like, I have “Get through it at quote-unquote All-costs, any means mode.” But I don’t know if that… I guess that’s a different self-state. But it feels more integrated than the other stuff. So, like, regardless of what I call it, what I name it, it just feels like one of the ways I can be.

Dawn: Hmm… Yeah, cool.

Tiffany: Let’s get some food. Yeah.

Dawn: Yeah, thank you so much! Absolutely, Dawn! Happy hug!

Tiffany: You know your curiosity is just endearing.

Dawn: I’ll be curious about a lot more things in the next part.

Tiffany: Yeah, I’m sure I’ve given you a lot to ask. I’ve been through a lot, and I’ve done a lot about being through a lot.

Dawn: Yes! And you can reflect on it extremely well. And you have the eloquence to also get it across.

Tiffany: That was also hard to learn.

Dawn: Mmm. Yeah, same here.

Tiffany: Alright, I’ll see you later.

Dawn: Yo!

Tiffany: Really hungry.

Dawn: Bon appetit!

Tiffany: Bye!

Key Background:

• April is a musician with the band Violent Melody who uses pop-punk music to process feelings and NPD-related struggles

• Diagnosed with NPD in January 2019, now considered in remission (has narcissistic traits but no longer meets full diagnostic criteria)

• Is a trans woman whose experiences with gender dysphoria and childhood rejection significantly contributed to developing NPD

Core NPD Experiences:

• Main struggles: Fear of vulnerability, extreme sensitivity to criticism and rejection, need for external validation and admiration

• Self-states: April identifies multiple distinct self-states including: the “punk” boundary-setter, the depressed/vulnerable state, the social/confident performer, the sensitive one seeking reassurance, the sarcastic cynic, and the therapist/helper

• Splitting: Tendency to see people in black-and-white terms; when hurt, would build resentment and eventually cut people off completely

Origin Story:

• At age 3, realized she was trans; at age 8, tried to come out to her father who lied about a Pegasus plate being unavailable at McDonald’s (it was there)

• That moment of betrayal led to the decision: “I don’t care anymore, I’ll just hide everything and lie if I have to”

• Growing up trans in the 90s/2000s created profound shame about authentic self

Progress & Coping Strategies:

• Music provided initial outlet for vulnerability without direct interpersonal risk

• Writes lists of people’s good qualities to reference during splits

• Takes breaks during criticism to avoid defensive reactions (STOP skill from DBT)

• Can now access self-validation without external reassurance (major progress)

• Therapeutic moment: bought the Pegasus plate for her younger self, visited the spot where she decided to hide her feelings

On Stigma:

• Biggest misconception: NPD = abuser (not in diagnostic criteria; most people with NPD have experienced abuse)

• Dilemma: telling people enables discussion of what’s happening internally, but risks being seen only as the label

• Recommendation: describe specific traits first, mention diagnosis later as “fun fact”

• Values having the diagnosis for finding community and having treatment roadmap

Current Sticky Traits:

• Still extremely sensitive to criticism (people sometimes feel they must tiptoe around her)

• Heavy dependence on social media validation (deletes posts without likes after an hour)

• Empathy challenges remain

Recovery Wisdom:

• Importance of forgiving younger self for developing these adaptations as survival mechanisms

• Value of specific coping tools: compliment requests from friends/AI, reminders of good qualities, taking breaks during conflicts

• Music and creative expression as bridge to interpersonal vulnerability

Time: ~2 hours of conversation covering diagnosis journey, relationships, self-states, trauma origins, and stigma reduction

Transcript

Dawn: Hello, flitterific listeners! I would like to dedicate this channel now to videos on mental health and raising awareness for all sorts of mental health problems and struggles, and in particular personality disorders. For this inaugural video, I have here April, and April can tell us more about narcissistic personality disorder. Hello, April!

April: Good to be here.

Dawn: One thing that I’d like to mention first about April is that April is in particular a musician and has a band called Violent Melody. Do you have some kind of Violent Melody pitch that you would like to give?

April: Yeah, well, okay. Violent Melody is the name of my band. You can check us out on Instagram or Spotify or whatever. I just kind of write about my feelings and it’s kind of pop punk music. If you guys enjoy this interview, you’ll probably like my music because I sing about a lot of this stuff, a lot of things I go through. So you’ll probably enjoy it.

Dawn: Yeah, cool. You mentioned punk. Is there some link there already to NPD? Because I have this impression that punk is sort of not very perfectionistic, so perhaps there is some aspect there where it helps you overcome some struggles of yours?

April: That might be why I got into it, because it looked so freeing to just not worry about making music that sounded so perfect and stuff. The whole idea with punk is that anyone can do it. Anyone can get their feelings out there. That’s probably what made it so appealing to me, I would say.

Dawn: Yeah, that’s empowering. I love it! Can you think of some other NPD-related struggles or problems or anything that comes to mind that you’ve processed in your music?

April: Yeah, I mean, the main thing is that I’ve always been somebody that struggled to express how I’m feeling, especially any really negative emotions like anger or sadness or fears or whatever. My music really helped me get all those things out there. It helped me be vulnerable. One of my biggest struggles is having a fear of really being vulnerable and expressing my emotions. And I think that my music gave me a place to get my emotions out there, to sing about what I’m feeling. And I think by putting that stuff out there through my music, I ended up feeling more comfortable sharing it in person with people. I remember putting out my first album and feeling so nervous because people were going to hear it and hear all my feelings and stuff. And then the feedback I got was a lot of people just feeling like, “I relate to your song so much and it made me feel better.”

Dawn: Yeah, exactly. Does it make a big difference whether you’re singing in a studio or singing towards an audience or talking to an individual person for you when it comes to relating your feelings?

April: So when I’m talking to a person, it feels a lot more, it just makes me a lot more nervous. Because with my music, it’s very personal. It’s just me. When I write the songs, I’m just making them for myself. When I write the lyrics, it’s almost like writing in a diary or journal or something. So then it’s not scary because I’m just getting them out for myself. And then I’ll record them. I don’t go to a recording studio or anything. I’ve learned how to record stuff on my own, so I just do it in my house. And then all that part is all personal. And then I go and I share it with the world and then it’s out there. I’ll just post it online and say my album’s out. And then people go and listen. At that point, up until I put an album out, I’m feeling very like, “Yeah, let’s do this.” But I know that once I put an album out, there’s always that moment of, “People are listening to it now.”

Dawn: There is this trick that some friends of mine use to first chat with an AI about very vulnerable topics, and then take screenshots of that and share that with the therapist, because that’s easier than talking with the therapist directly. Can you empathize with that?

April: That’s not a bad idea actually. I think that could help, but at the same time I would still be scared that my therapist is reading it. I think that is a step towards becoming more open, for sure.

Dawn: You probably started your music before you got your diagnosis?

April: No, actually. It was right after. I got diagnosed with it in the beginning of 2019, literally January 2019. I started my music in 2021, so there’s a gap there. But that was still the time where when I first got diagnosed, I didn’t tell anyone about it. I only talked about it with my therapist, and I remember being very afraid to tell anyone that I had it. It was a very lonely period before I did my music. And I do think that my music was one of the things that helped me actually start sharing that with other people.

Dawn: Yeah, cool. I’m also curious. A lot of personality disorders in general are sort of based on self-deceptions to a large extent and projections and all sorts of what’s called borderline-level defenses. In my experience, when I was in states like that, I was really good at deceiving myself even when I was completely alone. So even if I were writing a diary entry or something of the sort, I would not have had introspective access to anything besides those same self-deceptions that I also upheld toward other people. And there were those brief moments for a few seconds here and there every other month or so where certain things became conscious that weren’t meant to become conscious. But for the most part, this was basically the same for me. Was there always a difference for you between private diary entries and Google searches versus the social interpersonal deceptions or personas?

April: Oh, 100%, yeah. I think that in my journals and Google searches—because sometimes I’ll be struggling with something and I’ll Google it—I have this, very... I think especially before I was diagnosed and stuff, before I was very self-aware, I was a different person when I was alone than I was when I was with friends. When I was alone, I was struggling with a lot of things, a lot of feelings and depression and all that stuff. And I never wanted to share that with other people. So when I was with my friends, I was just having fun. And then I remember a couple of times situations where my friends would be like, “We talk every day and you’re very funny and stuff, but I feel I don’t know you,” even though I talked to them every day. And it’s because I never was really vulnerable with them. I never let them in and they never knew about the stuff I was struggling with back then. I never let them know about it.

Dawn: So did you already have such things, diary entries and such, that you would have never shared with them because they would not have fit the social persona?

April: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And also, when I first told people that I had my diagnosis of NPD, I think it even still happens today. I’ll tell people that I have it and they won’t believe me. And they won’t believe me until they’re affected by it, until I do something that, if I start splitting on them and devaluing them and treating them mean because I’m so hurt by something. There’s such resentment built up. Sometimes I’ll be passive aggressive or certain behaviors will come out of me. And they’ll be like, “Oh, maybe you do have NPD.” Until that point, they don’t want to believe it. They don’t believe it. They’re like, “You’re just such a nice person, April. You’d never have that.”

Dawn: With a friend, the first time it happened, I was like, “I know what that is.” I didn’t quite know as much as I do now, but I was like, “Okay, this is interesting. A new facet. A new facet to this wonderful character of my friend.”

Dawn: I was also wondering to what extent performing – and maybe you can also distinguish between performing sort of in private when you’re recording versus performing when you’re on stage (I don’t know how often you have that opportunity) – how that influences your mood in the moment?

April: You mean the difference between how I act when I’m on stage versus how I act when I’m alone? Or do you even mean when I’m with people performing? Because there’s that aspect.

Dawn: Yeah, you could explore all three of those. They’re perhaps all interesting.

April: Yeah, because when I’m alone there’s no performance. When I’m with people, I think another thing that’s been hard for me in conversations with other people is… and I’m getting better at it. I’m getting better with listening skills and stuff. But growing up, I’ve always been told that I’m not a good listener. I mean, that’s tied to struggles with empathy too. But so people would say I’m not a good listener. But I think that for me, conversations weren’t about that. They were more about how I can make people laugh and how I can entertain them. So that was a performance because I would… there would be funny celebrities and I would copy traits from them and try to perform them with people, which is an interesting thing. And it was all about a way to put out this performing, entertaining persona that would get a bunch of admiration from people.

Dawn: Yeah, I think the celebrities that we copied were probably different ones. In my case it was Noam Chomsky.

April: Cool, I like him. Yeah, well because I always… My friend Becky used to call me April even before I came out, because I had a lot of the characteristics of this girl April from the show Parks and Recreation, because I would take some traits from her.

Dawn: I don’t know the show or the character. What’s she like?

April: So it’s kind of like, if you know the show The Office, it’s similar. But she’s this character that’s in the office. She’s sort of weird, but in a funny way. And she also has sort of this really dry sense of humor and sarcastic humor. And I kind of... I think part of it is that that’s kind of a part of me, but I also would regurgitate things that she’s said before and stuff when I’m with people.

Dawn: So that reminds me a bit of Daria?

April: Yeah, exactly. Same kind of character, yeah. Oh, I love it. Yeah, I love Daria. I guess when I’m with people, even if part of that is a little bit of how I already am, it’s like when I’m with people, I never think about it in terms of having a conversation with listening and sharing my feelings or whatever. It’s like when I’m in a conversation with people, I’m thinking, “How do I make them laugh? How do I make them like me, admire me?” And that’s it. So I guess the struggle for me has been that it is good to be able to entertain people, but at the same time, then I’m never connecting with them. So the struggle has been, how do I remind myself to use good listening skills and stuff too?

Dawn: Yeah, I also know the other side, people for whom conversations are all about asking all the questions to get the other person to talk about all the things that they want to talk about. And then if the other person is me, for example, and I’m not good enough at asking questions, then after half an hour of conversation, I suddenly notice, “Wait, why did I not get to know anything about this other person? They didn’t share anything. I just asked questions the whole time.” So I think the balance between those two is good to maintain.

April: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have trouble asking questions because my brain with NPD wants... I don’t want to look like I don’t know something. Oh yeah. One of my struggles is I won’t ask people questions about themselves because I tell myself that I’m supposed to just know already.

Dawn: Yeah, I have this friend whose name I forgot and it’s a bit awkward. Maybe I’ll find out somehow.

April: Like when you forget someone’s name and then it’s like, “I’ve already known this person for three months. I can’t ask now.”

Dawn: Yeah, it’s kind of like that. I was just wondering… I don’t know, maybe this is actually related in some fashion. Rejection sensitivity is such a big topic… What do you think about the term “NPDorks”? A friend of mine likes to use that as an endearing term for people with NPD.

April: So are you asking about being sensitive to rejection?

Dawn: Oh, I’m getting sidetracked. What’s your opinion on the term “NPDorks”?

April: I don’t know. Well, I don’t know. I don’t know if I would like it if someone called me an NPDork, unless I knew that they were doing it in a funny way. But if I knew they were doing it in a fun, teasing way, then yeah, fine, that’s cool.

Dawn: If the other person also has NPD, then maybe…

April: If I felt like they were insulting me, I’d be like, “Hey.”

Dawn: Yeah, cool. I was wondering about rejection sensitivity, because for my “NPDork” friends, it’s kind of an important topic usually, and over time they sort of react to it differently. I don’t know, have you also gone through some kind of transition where the way in which you coped with rejection sensitivity evolved over time?

April: Okay, so yeah, well, I know that I’m very sensitive to rejection and criticism and stuff. But I used to not at all be self-aware. So I mean, I got very defensive. I used to, when I was a teenager, I used to think that it meant that they don’t like me when someone is criticizing me. And I used to think that I had to get back at them or... It was tied to this thing about being really punk and I’m going to rebel against you or something. I don’t know, it’s kind of cringe to bring it up. But so I would sometimes, I would get really mad at them. I guess over time, I guess I’ve just gotten less defensive and been able to manage my anger a lot more. But I definitely, I don’t know, I still struggle with it. I get very defensive a lot when people are critical of me and I have to remind myself. One thing that me and my best friend Sophie started doing was when she’s being critical of me and I’m getting overwhelmed, I say, “I need to take a breath for a minute and pause.” Because that’s the only way that I can bring myself back to reality. Because in the moment when I’m getting criticized and I get in defensive mode, I start, I definitely start splitting. I’m like, “You’re the enemy.” But then if I can get out of that mindset and I can think with clarity, I think, “Okay, she’s just expressing something, I’m expressing something, and we can talk about it without the anger and all that.”

Dawn: Yeah, this is a good moment for this intermission that I will probably not actually edit in where we explain dialectical behavioral therapy and the STOP skill, which apparently you’re using intuitively.

April: Oh wow, okay, yeah. I used to… the worst example of this was that when someone was being very critical of me or when I got into fights with people a lot, one of the things that happened to me a lot in my friendships that I’m trying my best to get over now and never have this happen again, but I’d have this thing where this resentment would build up more and more and more. And I wouldn’t talk it out with them, and eventually just the criticism and the fights and the resentment, it all builds up to a point where I just cut them off completely. So that was probably one of the worst symptoms I’ve had with NPD, where I would just… the resentment builds higher and higher and I cut them off and I block them and discard them, you know.

Dawn: Yeah, I think this can also happen with borderline. Do you know how it’s different between a borderline split and what you’re experiencing?

April: For me, one thing I’ve noticed between me and people that have BPD that’s different is people that I’ve known with BPD have been able to, they might get mad at someone and be super mad like that for a month and then they come back the next month or whatever. With NPD, it seems I just hold a grudge and that’s… I just hate them forever. Or if I ever will talk to them again, it’d be years down the road or something. Like I just… It’s like once I fully split on someone and then discard them, they’re just done.

Dawn: Is that a fully conscious sort of feeling that feels completely real to you? Or is it more that there is this feeling of, I don’t know, hating them, disgust or something, but you don’t really… does it feel ego-syntonic or ego-dystonic is basically what I’m asking. Like when it usually starts out in a state which is called ego-syntonic, it’s probably also good to explain that for the listeners. It feels just completely logical to the person that someone has hurt me and so I’m now angry at this person, or I hate this person, or I feel some kind of disgust toward the person because the person is so evil and I want to distance myself from that evil or something of the sort. And then usually as the person becomes more self-aware and transitions from this borderline level of personality organization to what’s called the neurotic level of personality organization, which is basically a healthy level despite the term, then that feeling becomes more ego-dystonic or ego-alien. The feeling is still there, but the person is like, “What the fuck? Why do I have this feeling? Doesn’t make sense.” It’s more like social anxiety. Usually people who have social anxiety or agoraphobia or something, they’re like, “Why am I afraid of this crowd of people? Why am I afraid of going outside? It doesn’t make sense.” But they’re still afraid. So there’s sort of this ego-dystonic or ego-alien framing, whereas when the person thinks that it makes total sense, then that’s the ego-syntonic one. Yeah, so I’m wondering, did it feel like it makes total sense to you? Or was there this anxiety or disgust or something or hate or anger that you just couldn’t overcome?

April: I think, especially when I wasn’t self-aware, it felt like it made sense. I think it’s still, to some extent, I feel like, “Oh, it’s real. This person’s just evil. I hate them and all that.” But if I can, when I can make myself aware of what’s going on, it’s like, especially if I can wake myself up to, “God, I’m splitting or something,” then I can recognize that it’s not a real thing, that it’s a symptom of flooding or whatever. And then I can also recognize... I guess talking to a therapist has in a lot of moments helped me wake up to what’s really going on. But I guess automatically it’s the first one, ego-syntonic, I think. And then occasionally my therapist would be like, “Oh, you realize what’s going on here, right?” And then it’s like, “Whoa, okay.”

Dawn: Yeah, that’s very helpful. Have you also tried using AI for that?

April: No. I think I still got some work...

Dawn: I mean, there is Google’s Gemini, for example, which I’m using. I want to develop this therapy AI, artificial intelligence that can do mentalization-based treatment. And so I’m hoping that an AI could also provide the service to a person that it’s like, “Dude, I don’t know, have you considered that you might be splitting?”

April: I do like to talk to ChatGPT for advice. You know, some people say I shouldn’t do that, but I don’t know. It’s been helpful for me at times. I think when I’m talking to it, I guess sometimes it can help me recognize what’s going on. And the only issue is that sometimes ChatGPT will just agree with you about your altered reality.

Dawn: Have you tried it recently, though? Like, I think there’s a huge jump between GPT-4 and GPT-4o when it comes to that.

April: They are trying to change it more. And yeah, I think as it gets better, I definitely believe it’ll get even better and better at recognizing that. And I think it probably will, especially in the future. It will be even better at recognizing when I’m splitting and helping me be more aware of it. What might help though is... so I’m kind of going off topic, but one thing that’s helped me with splitting is writing down a list of people’s good qualities. And this is really especially easy to do when I’m in the white part of the black and white thinking, when I’m idealizing someone. I can write hundreds of good things. But then when I’m devaluing them and I’m thinking of them in a really negative light because they’ve hurt me or something, if I look at the list of the good things that I wrote about them, it can remind me and it can get me out of it. So maybe if I told ChatGPT to remind me of the good qualities of people, then it can help me get out of splitting, which might help a lot, which would be kind of cool.

Dawn: That’s also something I’m trying to do with friends of mine. My hope was that when they are in a negative self-split, that I ask them to remember all sorts of things that they’ve enjoyed just in the previous week or so in order to, I don’t know, connect these self-states a bit more. I don’t know whether they’re actually able to remember those things without having written them down.

April: Actually, that’s a good thing to mention too, the self-splitting, because I have… I made and I wrote down and I made a painting of pictures of all my good qualities. And I wrote down what they were on there. And I can always look at it whenever I want to remind myself. Because when I’m splitting on myself, thinking of myself in a really negative light, it helps. That helps too, to remember my good qualities. Like, “April, you’re so creative. And you’re funny. And you’re cool. And you’re resilient and stuff.” So I remind myself of those things. And then I feel good again.

Dawn: Yeah, cool. Do you have systematic ways of tapping into that? I was wondering, it could be just really useful if you want to do a job interview or you want to be creative or want to be productive and put out a ton of something, music probably, that you could intentionally tap into that positive or grandiose self-state in order to make that happen. Sort of like some people are really productive in their mania or hypomania states. Can you do that intentionally?

April: I’m definitely more productive when I’m in the grandiose state versus the really sad, vulnerable state. Yeah, I have used it to energize myself to get things done. I could have ChatGPT remind me… If I have ChatGPT just praise me a bunch, that helps a lot. Or friends. I’ll just reach out to friends sometimes and be like, “Hey, just need a little boost.”

Dawn: Yeah, like, “Compliment, please!”

April: It makes a world of difference. So yeah, that definitely helps.

Dawn: Yeah, cool. It’s interesting that you can control it so much. I would have thought that you’re relatively helplessly exposed to these changes in mood states, but that’s much better.

April: Yeah, I do try to manage it to the best of my ability. But yeah, it’s crazy how much my entire personality changes based on the grandiose or the vulnerable state. Like I guess I’ll share some illustration I made or something, and people… I’m studying art, so I’ll share some design I made or whatever. And if the class is just totally dragging it down, they’re like, “Oh, it’s so bad,” I’ll feel so bad about myself. But then if they’re all complimenting it, they’re like, “It’s amazing,” and I’m like, “Yes, I’m so amazing.” It’s like I’m a whole different person.

Dawn: Yeah, cool. Do you have these two self-states or do you have even more of those?

April: Yeah, I’ve tried to identify them all. I don’t know, did you see this? I made this picture one time of all of them. I don’t know if I showed you it.

Dawn: No, I don’t think so, but please share it.

April: Yeah, maybe I’ll send it to you or something. I can’t really show it on the screen, but I made a list of all the different states I’ve noticed about myself. So the first one is the really punk one, which is if I feel like I’m being controlled in some way. I have a need for independence, so if I feel like somebody is just nagging me too much, just all over me, then that side of me comes out that’s like, “Okay, listen, I need a little bit of space here. I need to have some autonomy here.” That side helps me set boundaries with people and stuff. There’s a side of me that’s more just super social and confident. It’s also sort of a flirty kind of side to me, which is just when I’m meeting people. There’s another side that’s… that’s the depressed side that I specifically drew a picture of. It’s just… yeah, when I’m… that’s very much the vulnerable narcissist state. When I’m just totally out of it. There’s one side of me that’s just very sensitive but more also really sweet. I think a little bit different from... The depressed side just has no energy. This other side of me is just very sensitive and wants to get reassurance from people and stuff. Then there was one that’s the more sarcastic, cynical one that I was talking about before, the Daria kind of. And I think there was one more. The last one on there was... there’s this side of me that just wants to give people advice and help them. There’s this definite therapist kind of side to me.

Dawn: That’s cool. Which side is this one right now?

April: This one… I feel like I’m a little bit of the therapist side, but then there’s a little bit of the kind of sensitive kind of side to me as well.

Dawn: Yeah, sweet. That’s interesting. There is this scale, the Pathological Narcissism Inventory, and it has stuff that you would expect, like grandiose fantasy, for example, but it also has this self-sacrificing self-enhancement. And those are some that I score really high on. And I would imagine that’s this side of wanting to find purpose in helping people, which is something that’s also quite central for a lot of people with NPD.

April: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it definitely… well because then I feel like if I’ve helped people then I, I guess it makes me feel worth in some way, maybe.

Dawn: Yeah, exactly. I can empathize with you.

April: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Dawn: Yeah, we were talking about the rejection sensitivity earlier. I was also thinking, there were these situations where I wanted to do something with a friend and then I heard after an hour or so that this friend had already gone ahead to do this thing without me and without asking me to join or anything. And so I felt, first of all, of course, rejected by that. But then my reaction wasn’t that I… I’m just really not defended against these things. They hurt like hell, but I don’t have any… at this point I have trained a bit of anger in order to defend myself. I guess I’m really bad at this. But I don’t have the kind of dismissiveness of “I don’t need this friend anyway. I can listen to my podcast. It’s so much better.” Instead I just sort of feel humiliated by that. And yeah. It sucks as well.

April: For me, that situation would mostly just make me feel sad and make me feel like they don’t like me or something. That’s the more sensitive kind of side of me versus... I think that there’s a difference between that reaction and the more... when I was talking about the different states of me, I think about the more punk one. That’s the one that would be like, “Well screw them anyway, I don’t need them.” I think my mind also goes to, “What things can I do right now in order so that I can create a narrative for myself that I had been meaning to do these things anyway, and meeting the friend was just sort of an extra that’s unimportant?”

Dawn: Come up with the reasons in your head kind of.

April: Yeah, it’s not really fooling me. I can’t really fool myself anymore. But I don’t know. Sometimes I remember there’s this girl in my college and I wanted to… and I liked her. I wanted to sit next to her, but the next day she sat on the other side of the room. I was like, “So you have to tell yourself something.”

Dawn: What did you come up with?

April: Yeah, I was like, “Well, she has a friend over there. That’s why she didn’t want to sit next to me.”

Dawn: I’ve come up with really elaborate schemes where if I wanted to do something but I was afraid of making mistakes, then I would get someone to persuade me to do the thing so that I could at least mentally, internally sort of blame my mistakes on this person, because this person convinced me to do this thing and they convinced me that I wouldn’t have made the mistake.

April: Funny story. When I was in school, there was this... So my friend Todd that I was in school with, he’s like, “We could get sodas from the vending machine right now.” There’s a vending machine out in the hallway. And I was like, “Oh, but we’re not allowed,” because we were in gym class. And I was like, “We’re not allowed to leave class, right?” And he’s like, “No, it’s totally fine. Nothing’s gonna happen.” And I was like, “Well, I guess I could use a soda or whatever. So I’ll come with you.” Even though I knew we’re going to probably get in trouble if we get caught or something. But so we get out there. We got sodas. And we came walking back in. And then the teacher’s like, “Where were you guys?” And I go, “Oh, it was all Todd’s fault. Oh, my God. It was all Todd. He’s the one that did this.” So I just totally threw him under the bus.

Dawn: Oh, no. What was Todd’s reaction to that?

April: He’s like, “Really?”

Dawn: Ouch.

Dawn: Yeah, I tried to do these… my stuff was always things like no one cared about. I didn’t know that no one cared about these things, whether I make some random mistake or whatever. And so I never ended up in a situation like that. I always did the stuff internally. Very kind of convenient, but it still happens sometimes automatically. And I’m like, “Brain, seriously, no one cares about that.”

April: Most people always thought of me as the good kid, but I was the good kid because I never would get in trouble. But then I would do things sneakily. So when I would be at my first job that I had, when you’re on your break you can only take one break and it’s 15 minutes. So I took a 15-minute break and then later on one of my managers would be like, “Hey, did you go on your break yet? You can take one right now if you want.” I’m like, “Oh sweet, yeah.”

Dawn: I mean, 15-minute break is pretty short. I’d take at least four per day because an hour break is normal, right?

April: And then a different manager comes in. I’m like, “Yeah, I didn’t go on my break yet today. I’ll take one now.”

Dawn: It’s just like with cats when several people are in a shared apartment and they have one cat. And the cat goes up to one person, meows very heart-wrenchingly to get food, gets fed. And then it’s the next person, meows again. The person is like, “Oh, my God, the cat hasn’t been fed.” And then the cat gets fed four times in the day and they don’t know that of each other.

Recognition and Diagnosis

Dawn: Yeah, so the next section is on recognition and diagnosis. And the first question that I’ve prepared here is what traits you initially discovered that led to the insight and the diagnosis, or first the realization that you have NPD?

April: Oh, I know exactly what it was too. At the time I had a crush on this friend of mine and I didn’t know how to tell her. So I was kind of… but it would come out through these things that I was saying that were kind of passive-aggressive and stuff. And just hinting a lot all the time. But then it was me basically trying to admit it, but not being able to admit it. So eventually my therapist was like, “Do you realize what you’re doing is kind of passive-aggressive though? Because you’re not really giving her a chance to say yes or no to it. You’re just saying it…” It was kind of shocking to me to recognize that. And also, there had been a couple of other moments. My therapist was like, “If you want, what you really should do is have a conversation with her and let her know that you like her, because dancing around it, making jokes about it and stuff without saying it, is not really helping you move past it and have a good real conversation with her about it.” So but then I came into the session the next week saying that I did it, that I talked to her. And my therapist was like, “Oh, I’m so happy for you. You did it.” And then I drove home that day and was like, “I just lied to my therapist.” And then I came in the next week and I apologized for it. And I was like, “Well…” She’s like, “Why did you do that?” And I was like, “Well, I wanted you to be happy for me and I wanted you to admire me.” And at that point was when she said that I had that diagnosis. And at that point I was pretty aware that I had it. I was kind of upset when I found out that I had that, but I was definitely, I understood it.

Dawn: How do you hint at having a crush on someone in a way that can come off as passive-aggressive? Do you have an example?

April: Trying to remember what I would do back then. Like I would act in... I don’t know, we went to a concert together and she must have known that in my mind it was kind of, if you want it to be a date, then it can be a date or whatever. I never directly said that to her. And then during it, she goes, “We’re not on a date right now, right?” And I was like, “You know, I don’t know. I’d be like, oh, you know, whatever you want or something.” I don’t know. I guess it’s hard to explain it. There’s a moment where we were standing together at the concert and I was kind of holding her hand and then not because then she didn’t want to and then… I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain it, I think. Sometimes I would just joke about things. But… Oh, so one thing… Here’s an example. One time I made a joke that was like… Imagine if someone had a crush on you and they couldn’t tell you, so they just made jokes. So I just… I made it a completely meta thing. I was talking about what was happening.

Dawn: Now that’s all very relatable already.

April: I was trying to make it very obvious that I liked her, but I couldn’t tell her. So I just tried to make it as obvious as possible.

Dawn: Yeah, I’m trying the same. I think my solution at the moment is to just get to know the person for long enough that I feel safe enough with them to talk about it directly. Just sort of off the bat it’s too scary for me.

April: At some point, you have to tell them. Otherwise, I guess what the problem was is that because I wasn’t telling her, it just created this atmosphere or this energy that something’s going on. In her mind, she’s like, “Something’s going on with April, but I can’t really quite tell because she’s not saying it or something.” I guess that’s what the therapist was kind of commenting on, that it was a little bit passive-aggressive.

Dawn: How did this turn out between the two of you?

April: It was… That was a big moment for me too, because that was when I kind of… I mean, I kind of realized that that was what my struggle was, was being emotionally vulnerable. And when I finally did it, we went to a breakfast place together, and I just told her, “There’s something I needed to tell you about.” And I finally told her, and it went really well. She was so nice about it. She’s like, “Well, I’m not gonna be with you because, you know, I was out as a trans woman and stuff at the time too, so she’s like, ‘No, I’m just… I’m straight. I’m not into women. It’s just not gonna work out because of that.’” And then I was like, “That’s fine.” And also I think because of that I was totally fine with it. I’m like, “It’s fine. You’re just straight. That’s fine. It’s all good.” And we were able to move on. And I remember afterwards I texted her and I was like, “I’m so glad you were so nice about that too. You didn’t... it didn’t get awkward, you didn’t feel weird, there wasn’t any weirdness.” And she’s like, “Yeah, no, I’m glad your first time being vulnerable about something like that was with somebody that was safe.” And so that… yeah, I loved that.

Dawn: Yeah. When I hear that, it also feels so gender-affirming.

April: Yeah, totally.

Dawn: To balance that out, I had my own struggles with rejection sensitivity, so my solution to that was to come up with a cipher that allowed me to encrypt a suitably written message in a way that was sort of possible for someone else to decipher, but definitely not easy. Then write a message in that cipher on a piece of paper and fold this piece of paper really small, sort of a couple of millimeters times a couple of millimeters, then to wrap a lot of tape around it and finally hide it somewhere in the school building where it was very difficult for anyone to find it. It was also probably, I think it was kind of off-limits. I kind of threw it into an area where you’re not allowed to go as a student usually. And so yeah, so this was my attempt at flirting. It did not work.

April: Like the most private way possible. I like that.

Dawn: Yeah, life hacks!

April: I guess the bottom line was just that because I was repeatedly joking about it, obviously something was going on, but I wasn’t being direct about it. And so once I was, it cleared up a lot of things. And then it also showed me that I don’t have to be indirect like that, because then the friendship was... it went so well, it went so smoothly that then the friendship was good after that. So we didn’t have any of that going on in the background.

Dawn: Sweet. How long did you know each other beforehand?

April: I knew her… I actually met her in college years before that, my friend Becky. But then the summer that we got close, that was when I first… we started hanging out every day starting in that summer in 2018, and I started to have a crush on her then. I think I was… oh, I actually remember what was happening too. I was in a relationship with this girl Erin at the time, and I broke up with her because I can’t be in a relationship with somebody and then I’m having crushes on everybody else, because I was not happy in that relationship. I felt I was settling. That could be a whole other conversation. But basically, I started having a crush on my friend Becky then in that summer, and then it was not until that winter that we finally talked about it and addressed it, at the beginning of the year in January of 2019. And then we figured it all out and I felt a lot better after that.

Dawn: Yeah, wonderful. Would you like to go down this tangent that you mentioned about the other relationship?

April: I guess so. It’s just I was with this girl Erin, and I think that I... I think it might have been a bit of a self-esteem struggle that I was having at the time. I don’t know if this is totally related to NPD or whatever, but I just felt I wasn’t meeting anyone, and then I just dated the first person that liked me back. And I was with Erin for a while, and I think what I realized during the relationship was just that I was not being true to myself about my feelings. I just started to get very annoyed with her and not wanting to be around her. And I just started realizing I was with her just because I wanted a girlfriend, not because I was happy. And then it just caused a lot of problems like that, that I wasn’t invested in it. I would be late for dates and stuff, and I would just... my whole heart wasn’t in it. So then it just made the relationship bad. And that’s when I realized that you have to really love the person you’re with, I guess, and not to settle. Because that was one of the things… I was 28 at the time, and I remember at that point in time I was like, “Well, I’m gonna be 30 soon. I gotta get somebody going on, meeting someone and then marrying them and whatever.”

Dawn: Did it feel like a hierarchical thing or did it feel like a mismatch thing between the two of you?

April: I guess, I mean, maybe there was a bit of a hierarchy. I did feel I was better than her to some extent because I was the only… I guess she only had one ex in the past. She’d only dated this guy. And then, meanwhile, I’ve had a lot of people that I’ve been with in the past. So I think there was some hierarchy in that sense that I’m like, “I’ve been in more relationships. I know what I’m doing more, I guess.” But I think the main thing was just the mismatch and the thing of feeling like I just really wanted a girlfriend, and then I just picked the first person that liked me back because I was having trouble finding somebody. And I thought at first I could just make it work. I’m just… I’ll just… I don’t have to be fully attracted to this person or whatever. I can just make it work anyway. I could just pretend to be happy. And then at first it worked, because I was like, “Well, I have a girlfriend, I’m happy now.” But then as time went on, I’m like, “I’m not happy.” It also started getting really serious, because then she wanted to have us move in together. We were planning to live together after... I think it was we’d only been together three months, but we were… she’s like, “We should both live here.” And I was… and at first I was kind of excited about it, but then it dawned on me how real it was that we’re… And then I was talking to my therapist about it. My therapist was like, “Okay, so if you actually move in with her, you realize it’s going to be way harder to end the relationship too.” And I was like, “That’s true.” Because yeah, because then you get… you’re living with somebody, you’ve moved in with them, your stuff is all at their house and stuff. And I think that’s when it became more real for me. And at first I was like, “Maybe I’m just afraid of commitment or something. Maybe that’s what the problem is.” But then I was like, “No, this is... if you would live with somebody, you’re really choosing to be with them.” And it’s… I don’t know. I think there’s a difference between a fear of commitment and you’re just not happy with somebody.

Dawn: Yeah, I think I’ve been on the other side of that. My ex and I were already living together, but we wanted to move somewhere else together with a bunch of friends, and I would have had to give up my apartment for that. The breakup came rather suddenly for me because she didn’t want me to give up my apartment if I didn’t want to move in with them, even though we weren’t together anymore. And it was good that she precipitated that decision, that breakup, because I was actually kind of happy that I didn’t give up my apartment after that. Like, I like my apartment. It was a really cool apartment, yeah. Not this one. I stayed there for another year or so after that.

Core Shame and Self-States

Dawn: So there is this notion that I find very relatable personally that at the core of NPD in particular, and probably also a bunch of other personality disorders, there is what is called core shame, thus shame that always masquerades as something else that personality disorders are designed to defend against so that you don’t perceive it so directly. Yes, I was wondering, for one, how well defended were you against feeling that shame? And two, what did it even feel like for you? How would you describe it when you encounter that?

April: I think the shame comes… I think the defense against it is when I’m in the more grandiose kind of state and I’m able to think I’m the best or whatever. But then as soon as it cracks, something really bad happens to me, like someone breaks up with me or even just someone being very, very mean or critical or judgmental of me or whatever, something like that happens, and then the shame opens up again. And then I think it’s a lot of where I’ve just beat up myself a lot, and it feels really… I don’t know, it’s the worst feeling. I hate it. I’ll just be very, very down on myself.

Dawn: I have two sentences here. I was wondering which of them you would describe, which of them you think matches that feeling more closely. One of them is, “I’m not good enough, I’m flawed, I’m evil.” And the second one is, “I’m empty, I’m hungry, I’m lonely, I need a connection.”

April: I think it’s the first one. I think I’ll say to myself, one thing I’ll say is, “I’m a monster.” A lot of times when I’m in that state, I’ll say, “I’m not good enough. Everyone else can handle life, but I can’t.” I’ll compare myself to other people that are doing well a lot.

Dawn: Do you feel like that’s the difference between you and Jacob Skidmore? I get the impression that he’s much more likely to feel some kind of emptiness.

April: I think he’s more of… Because I think it’s true that everybody kind of moves between the two states of the grandiose and vulnerable, but I think some people are more toward one than the other on a regular basis. I think I tend to be towards… I tend to be more of a vulnerable one, and I think Jacob’s more of a grandiose narcissist, you know. There’s also this distinction between thick-skinned and thin-skinned. I’m definitely more of a thin-skinned person.

Dawn: Yeah, that’s fine. I kind of get the impression that thick-skinned and thin-skinned refers to actually different people, whereas grandiose versus vulnerable refers to different states that virtually everyone cycles through.

April: Yeah. Thin-skinned is, I’m extremely sensitive, and people my whole life have told me that, that I’m a very sensitive person.

Dawn: Yeah, that’s a very relatable trait.

Dawn: What do you think caused, sort of etiologically, in your childhood or whatever you can identify, maybe also therapy has helped you identify, whatever might have caused this shame in the first place, this core shame to be implanted in you in some fashion, and what might have caused these particular adaptations that you’ve found to defend against it?

April: Yeah, well, so there’s… I think growing up as a trans person, you just naturally feel a lot of shame. Because the whole culture is making fun of trans people, especially growing up in the 90s and the 2000s. They were not very kind. You know, there’s all the movies where trans people were the butt of the joke. And so you just kind of know that if you tell anyone, you’re gonna get made fun of and stuff. And I think that I had a very private second life where I would sort of dress the way I want or play with makeup or whatever in private, but I would never feel comfortable doing that out in the world. So in those moments where I’m alone, I’m feeling good because I’m feeling like myself, but I’m feeling shame about it. So it taught me, I think, that who I am is painful in general. And there were specific experiences too. There was a time when I was eight years old where I tried to come out to my parents, and basically I got really badly rejected for it. And so I guess it just taught me, “Okay, I need to hide who I am. It’s not safe to share that.” The fact that I’m trans, it’s also in my mind, the way I saw it was it’s just not safe to share my feelings in general with people. And I think that was the big thing. I was like, “I don’t care anymore.” I remember an actual moment where I said to myself, “I don’t care anymore. I’m going to… even if I have to lie to people or if I just have to hide everything, I don’t care. I’m just going to do that. I’ll be happier that way.” And to me, that’s when the NPD began, you know.

Dawn: I think I was never brave enough to try it in the first place, or else I didn’t have the skill to share emotions. I never learned how to do that. I was experiencing these emotions, but then I was like, “Okay, this is potentially evil. Maybe I’ll get rejected for this. Let’s pretend I’m not experiencing this.” Build this internal dissociation to try to pretend I’m not experiencing it in the first place so that no one will notice and I will not accidentally expose myself in some fashion. And also I’m not… I can sort of pretend to myself I’m not lying when I’m pretending not to have these emotions if I fool myself into thinking I don’t have them. And yeah, that’s how it formed for me.

Dawn: At what age just did you realize that you were trans?

April: My earliest memory of it was I was maybe three years old. I was at my friend Katie’s… I had this friend Katie at the time and I was at her birthday party. And I remember I went to the bathroom and then I was alone. It was just me in the bathroom. And then I left the bathroom. And everybody was outside because there was some party in the summertime. And I found some of her clothes. And I was feeling jealous that I couldn’t wear those clothes and dress like that. And I looked in her room and I was jealous I couldn’t have a room like that that had, I don’t know, My Little Ponies and stuff in it, Barbies and whatever.

Dawn: Oh yeah. So you think that really the transness, the gender dysphoria, all of those things came together and they were really the origin, the cause for the adaptations and for the shame?

April: There was a specific moment. I could say it exactly. So it’s at eight years old, I tried to come out to my dad and he... I told him that I wanted to get this plate that had Pegasus on it from Hercules. And he said that they didn’t have it and he got me the Hercules one instead. And then I looked at the counter and I saw that they did have it in the McDonald’s. And he lied to me, and that was when I realized that I had to hide things. I think it was the betrayal in that moment that made me develop it.

Dawn: Big hug. I’m a bit hugging you remotely. Here are some hearts. I’m a bit of a mind reader, though. Want to tell the positive, the happy ending, as it were, years later?

April: Wait, wait. You want me to tell you a happy ending?

Dawn: The happy ending when you probably started therapy at some point and actually got this plate?

April: Yeah, you knew that… Yeah, yeah, I did end up eventually buying it for myself online on eBay, and that definitely was a moment of “I did that for my younger self,” and I felt really a lot better after that. Yeah, I even... So that moment that I was talking about when I was standing there and I was saying to myself that I’m not gonna ever share anything anymore, I remember where that was, where it happened. And it was at my old school. And this one day – I’ve never told anyone about this – but there was a day where I just drove to the school and was standing in the same spot. Because it was outside. And I was standing in the same spot as where I said that to myself. And that felt cathartic in a way too. It was a similar thing to buying the plate for myself. I wanted to do something where I was telling my younger self that I forgive you, that it’s okay that you had to do that at the time. And that made me feel better after I did that. And that was, I think, pretty therapeutic too.

Dawn: A friend of mine who also has recovered from NPD also says that it’s super important, or was for her certainly, to feel gratitude for the adaptations that your younger self with lesser means came up with in order to cope with the environment.

April: That’s kind of what I was trying to do there. Yeah, I was trying to tell my younger self that you did what you had to do at the time, you know. And even though developing that adaptation caused problems later down the line, I forgive you for doing it. You did what you had to do at the time, and it’s totally understandable. And I guess something about that helped me come to peace with it. Because when I first got diagnosed, it was just... there was just a lot of shame in getting that diagnosis. So I did feel I needed to do that for myself to heal my inner child and also to make myself feel less bad about it. And it worked, it definitely worked. So I’m glad I did that.

Dawn: Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, I did a few of these things. There’s not this one event of the sort that sticks in my mind, but I’ve certainly visited my school again. And there was this one restroom stall that I always locked myself in during the breaks to not be exposed to all the other students. And I visited that bathroom, that restroom stall again. It doesn’t exist anymore, but the bathroom doesn’t exist and the window is still in the same area. It’s a really nice window and you can sit inside the window. It’s a really old building with thick walls. And yeah, so I visited that again, took some photos together with my partners, and so that was cool. And oh, and there was this one person, a friend of my parents, to whom I must have said something sort of mildly self-congratulatory like, “I’m good at writing these letters. Would you also like one, to receive one?” And I wanted to write a cute letter for her. And then she totally shamed me for the self-praise, and I was super ashamed and super embarrassed in front of the whole family. And yeah, and so now some 30 years later – she’s still alive luckily – I sort of took revenge by, in a conversation with her, saying a couple of self-congratulatory things.

April: Nice.

Dawn: Yeah, this memory sticks in my mind…

April: Because now you’re not feeling so bad about it anymore like that, yeah?

Dawn: Yeah. So a turning point where I started to be absolutely self-deprecatory all the time externally. You’ve got some grandiose fantasies, of course, but oh no, super self-effacing. Yeah, but luckily I’m out of that.

April: Yeah, interesting.

Cynic or Idealist

Dawn: I’ll see what the… I went through the questions a bit out of order, so I need to sort this out. Okay, yeah. Oh, this is actually the question that you suggested. Like, whether you see yourself more as a cynic or an idealist, and why in particular?

April: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I’ve been thinking about that a lot. Well, yeah, I definitely see myself as more a cynic, and I think it’s probably just because of having a lot of situations where I felt disappointed in life or people have let me down or something like that. I guess one thing I was thinking about was I’ve had a lot… I was bullied a lot growing up and stuff like that. I had to deal with a lot more than other people because of being a minority versus other people don’t have to deal with certain stuff. I guess bad luck too, just from… I don’t know, things affect me more than they might for other people because of being poor. Or if something bad happens to me, it’s hard to deal with that versus other people. I don’t know. Like having extra struggles in life, I think, made me more that way, I think.

Dawn: Like, what does it mean for you to be a cynic as opposed to an idealist? What do the terms mean for you?

April: It’s hard for me to trust as much as other people, I think, just because I’ve been hurt by a lot of people. So I think that’s a big part of it for me. I don’t know if I have anything else to say really about that.

Dawn: I feel like it’s much easier for me now to open up and trust other people now that they can’t hurt me so much anymore. People say random stuff, then I’m just hearing words and sounds, and sometimes they tell me something about the other person, but they don’t affect me so much anymore. And that makes it much easier for me to be open.

April: Yeah. It just feels like the world’s gonna… people will let me down and the world will let me down just because the world itself lets me down a lot as well.

Dawn: It’s also one of these things that I kind of appreciate about some of my personality disordered friends. They need to use the defense of projection, where they sort of fool themselves into thinking that something is true of someone else that they need to be true in order to cope with something. Like one standard way of doing that is to think that another person is angry at you in order to feel legitimized in your reactive anger, whereas the anger is originally yours really. And what friends of mine sometimes do instead is that they project on the world as it were, and just “the world is so unjust and that is why X and Y.” And on the one hand, it’s kind of true.

April: Maybe it’s just me, but I think I do project onto the world a lot. I blame capitalism.

Dawn: On the other hand, it’s really kind because they are not projecting that on me, so you’re not hurting other people at least.

April: Yeah, that’s the good thing about that.

Dawn: Like, if you have to use primitive defenses, then there’s an altruistic way to do it.

Misconceptions and Stigma

Dawn: My next question would be a bit of a standard question. What misconceptions about narcissistic personality disorder are there that make you feel most misunderstood?

April: Oh, I feel like there’s a lot. I feel I have trouble telling people that I have it because I feel like they’re… I feel like it’s gonna make them misunderstand me. People assume that if you have it then you’re an abuser. And in my experience with certain people that I’ve told, they start misinterpreting my actions as abuse tactics and stuff. Like if you tell someone you have NPD and then you do something nice for them, they’re like, “You’re love bombing me,” or that you’re... sharing your feelings is some sort of abuse tactic or something. And so then people just become worried that everything you do is some sort of a scheme. That’s why sometimes it’s easier for me to just not tell people. But then the problem is if I don’t tell them that I have it, then I can’t talk about a lot of what’s going on with me. I can’t tell them when I’m having black and white thinking. There’s a lot of nuances I can’t tell people about. It affects my ability to tell people what’s going on in my life. So that is a tough, a double-edged sword, really.

Dawn: Friends of mine also often have this problem when dating that, of course, there are tons of misconceptions about NPD, ASPD, HPD, and if they have some of those and they just… At some point they want to tell their partner, of course, but if they tell them just some label, then the person is just going to project a bunch of misconceptions on them.

April: Yeah, people start seeing you as just the label after that.

Dawn: My advice is usually to tell the person about the specific traits that they need to know about when they’re getting married. Like, describe the traits, don’t label them in any way, and then the person is prepared. They know what to expect, as it were.

April: Maybe what would help is tell people the specific traits. Yeah, tell people the specific problems. Because I’ve kind of had success doing that myself, where I’d be like, “I struggle with vulnerability.” I tell people things as they come up. “I struggle with criticism and stuff.” And then maybe down the road, after you’ve explained yourself enough without the label, then you can tell someone that you’ve had that diagnosis. And then just be like... At that point, you’ve already explained yourself enough, so it won’t feel like as much of a shock. They’ve gotten to know you without that. Maybe that would help more.

Dawn: It’s just sort of a fun fact at that point. Or you just only date psychologists.

April: That was one of the things that was really hard for me too. There’s a period of time where I had this almost resentment towards… because I felt a lot of people would be very progressive and I would think that they would be accepting of me. But they wouldn’t fully accept me. So they would accept me for being trans, which was great and I needed support for that. But then I would tell them about having NPD and they wouldn’t support me for that. And I remember there was a good year or two where I was just feeling very lost because I felt like no matter where I went, I wouldn’t get full support from people until I guess I eventually met enough people that did fully support me for everything about me.

Dawn: I was wondering whether you think that having a diagnosis, or specifically that diagnosis, whether that is sufficiently useful for finding your community and for the therapist to find the right treatment guidelines and so on, that it’s sort of worth it despite stigma, or whether it would be better to just use schemas like from schema therapy and then have this list of your five or so dominant maladaptive schemas and treat those instead, which are really widely unknown and also describe NPD to some extent.

April: I like having the diagnosis because it did help me meet other people that are similar to me. So it helped me find community in that way. And I think it also helped me at the time recognize what my problems were and not feel like such a weird person for having them. Because I was like, “This is a thing that exists. This is a mental illness.” And then that helped me have a roadmap for what I needed to work on in my life, which I’ve gotten a lot better at everything. But that especially at the time definitely helped me identify what I needed to work on.

Dawn: Yeah, I think there’s two big benefits that I also see in that.

April: Yeah, yeah. Because I remember I also had a friend – well, this was actually that friend I was talking about before, Becky – she’s like, “Maybe you just want to call yourself, instead of calling yourself something negative like your diagnosis, maybe you want to just say that you’re neurodivergent or whatever.” And I see your point, but I need the… Neurodivergent can mean a million things, and I like having the community of people that have the exact same problems that will fully understand me. So I think the diagnosis is a good thing to have, and I think it’s good to attach it. Not… I don’t want this to sound like I’m saying that’s all I am. But yeah, I mean that it’s important to recognize that I have it and it’s important to acknowledge it and meet other people that can relate to me with it.

Dawn: We can actually change the stigma. Autism used to be stigmatized, and now for me it’s very helpful. “Oh yeah, autism, that seems to fit. Let’s look for some communities nearby, meet some people with autism or some autistic people.”

April: I think it’s getting to the point where eventually people are going to start to recognize that. Because that happened with borderline. I mean, there’s still a lot of stigma around it, but to me it’s become a lot less stigmatized than the time that I’ve been aware of it. So I think it just naturally, eventually, NPD will too, once people can start to see it as it’s just a mental illness. It doesn’t mean you’re an abuser or whatever. That’s the problem right now, is that everyone associates that word with abuser. It’s just the diagnosis. There’s literally nothing actually in the criteria for getting diagnosed with NPD. The word “abuser” is not part of the diagnosis.

Dawn: There are so many folks with relatively internalizing presentations and lots of avoidance and very thin-skinned, and I don’t know…

April: Yeah, it’s just about the traits, the needing admiration and all that stuff. That’s all NPD is. It’s not being a gaslighting, mean, evil monster person.

Dawn: Yeah, and the fraction of people among actual abusers that have NPD is also super small. It’s, what, 10% of those?

April: Yeah, there’s a lot... First of all, people with NPD are more likely to have experienced abuse rather than be abusers. Like, I mean, I’ve dealt with a lot of it, how I developed it and stuff. And then also, abusers could be anything. People with addictions can be abusers. That’s a really big thing. Or people… even you could just be somebody with depression, but you just act in abusive ways because it’s just… abuse is just, the main thing is just your actions, not your diagnosis that makes you an abuser.

Dawn: Yeah, exactly. I’ve tried to research how many, what the fraction is of people who have committed some kind of domestic abuse who have any personality disorder. It’s kind of hard to find out, but I think a large part of them... there is this thing that I have the thesis that lots of people are personality disordered, but they don’t have a specific personality disorder that has been identified. For example, that probably if a lot of people were actually going through some kind of diagnosis for that, they would probably get a label like traits from here and there and whatnot. But it’s… I think that fraction is probably pretty large, but ignoring that, I think even the fraction of people who have any personality disorder among abusers is also pretty small. Like, I don’t know exactly what it is, but I would guess it’s less than half. And most of them are probably… I don’t know, ASPD or something.

April: Or maybe somebody’s just a freaking misogynist and then that’s why they’re abusive to their wife or something.

Dawn: Yeah, exactly. I don’t want to push ASPD under the bus. I have lots of lovely friends with ASPD who are not like that at all. Maybe I can get someone on for an interview at some point to reduce the ASPD stigma.

April: That would be cool to watch. Because I don’t know enough about that disorder and I would want to know more. I want to be more understanding of how that works and stuff.

Dawn: I have a couple of friends who have the diagnosis.

April: From what I’ve heard, there’s an aspect of it, of boredom or something. They’re just trying to relieve boredom in some way.

Dawn: Yeah, they’re not that type. I mean, I could potentially get in touch with someone who has that type. I think somehow I tend to befriend people who have this combination of NPD and ASPD. I call it sovereignism, but that’s sort of my term for that. It’s not malignant narcissism necessarily because they don’t have the paranoia. It’s sort of close, but without the paranoia. I don’t like the term malignant narcissism. They are pretty kind. Maybe I just want to make this whole channel about just combating stigma.

April: Yeah, that’d be cool. I would be a big supporter of that.

Dawn: I suppose by the time this video airs, I’ll have come up with a cool name for it. Maybe I’ll just call it Impartial Priorities, my blog.

Traits and Remission

Dawn: I was wondering… I think you told me in another call at some point that your therapist considers you to be in remission so that you don’t meet the full criteria for NPD anymore. And I was wondering, what traits of NPD you found to be the most sticky ones and which ones are not so sticky?

April: Yeah, yeah. Just like one of… my old therapist was the one that diagnosed me with it, diagnosed me as NPD. And my newest one that I have said, “Oh, you have traits of NPD,” but wouldn’t… she would just say, “You have narcissistic traits,” that’s it. So I guess that’s… to me that was such a… I don’t know, it was validating. It made a difference in myself that I’ve gone from a full thing to just traits. To me, I’ve made a ton of progress on being more vulnerable. To be able to have this conversation I’m having right now, I wouldn’t have been able to do that at all when I first got diagnosed. But then also, I think I’m a much better listener. I don’t really have people too much complaining about my listening skills compared to they used to do it all the time. They used to struggle with me all the time. I still have people complaining that I’m not being empathetic enough. I still am extremely sensitive to criticism to the point where people either… Either they know how to handle it like Sophie does. Sophie’s like, “Okay, you need a break.” And that helps me. But other people, I think because they don’t know what I need, I think that they sometimes feel like they need to tiptoe around me sometimes because they know that I can be very sensitive. So... I think needing external validation has been something that I still very much need. I get very sad with social media. That’s a big one for me. Like when I’m posting something or even if someone’s not liking my messages, I’ll be in a group chat and I talk and no one likes my message or acknowledges it, then I’ll get upset. Or if my post doesn’t get likes online. Like if I make a post on Instagram and it gets no likes, after an hour I just delete it. Because I feel like it affects my worth. You know, I feel like a loser because my post didn’t get likes and stuff. Which is why I hope some people give me compliments and stuff, because it does make me feel better.

Dawn: Yeah, share your post. If I’m awake and I see your message, then I’ll give you the like.

April: Sounds good. Yeah, if you give my post likes, that’ll make me feel good. Oh my gosh, I’ve lost the message. I lost the question. So even if Sophie hasn’t been online a while, she’ll have not been on for a week and then she’ll come back at the end of the week and she’ll literally go through my profile and all my old posts, and my day is made.

Dawn: Does it help when someone does want to criticize something, does it help to sort of embed that in, “Hey, April, totally love you, you’re a really good friend of mine”?

April: Yes, a million percent. A million percent. Then I can hear them if they remind me that they love me or they... or if they’re very validating or reassuring like that, that’s what people need to do. Because then I’ll hear their criticism and then I won’t take it as a personal attack, you know.

Dawn: I imagine the preamble can’t be too long because you already know that something’s coming and it probably builds a lot of tension.

April: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well it’s gonna be like, “Yeah, just like, ‘April, I love you. I care about you very much, so that’s why I’m gonna just tell you this little thing. You’ve been doing this, April, it’s really freaking annoying, but it’s all good.’” You know, that’s fine. If it’s a long… I guess if it’s like a… if they’re giving a five-minute monologue before they give me the criticism, then I… I guess that would be kind of weird.

Dawn: Let’s keep it to five to ten seconds.

April: Yeah, yeah, quick thing is good. Just need that reassurance. Yeah, I guess a five-minute preamble… Some people do that thing of “we need to talk.”

Dawn: Aww.

April: It’s horrifying.

Dawn: Oh God… Even my super mentally healthy, super stable and extremely self-confident, self-loving ex had this from her mom at one point that on Friday the mom was like, “We need to talk, but I only have time on Monday.” She had such a horrible weekend. So yeah, this is not just a rejection sensitivity thing apparently.

April: Yeah, the “we need to talk” thing being scary is pretty universal.

Core Fears: Narcissism, Echoism, and Sovereignism

Dawn: So one thing that I was wondering about… In my article, the latest article I think on echoism and narcissism and sovereignism, I have these core fears that I distinguish. And while the article is about these things overlap, they’re potentially positively correlated, kind of contradicting Craig Malkin there. Craig Malkin sort of sees echoism on one side of the spectrum and narcissism on the other side, and probably something like sovereignism there as well. But for me, these are just three completely independent dimensions. Well, let’s say independent dimensions. I think they’re actually positively correlated. But yeah, so just sort of not opposites at all, probably the opposite, very similar things. I sort of think that narcissism sort of at its core could be summarized, though that always loses some information, as sort of a fear of worthlessness or a defense against a fear of worthlessness. Echoism as a fear of uselessness or purposelessness, and sovereignism as a fear of helplessness, of being controlled by someone. And then these feel kind of similar to me already, though I feel kind of close, much closer to this fear of worthlessness and uselessness. So the last one doesn’t connect that much, but I would still sort of resonate with it to some extent. And yeah, so I was wondering whether you think that these terms are well chosen, whether they resonate with you on some level, or whether you would choose different terms?

April: I guess, hold on, can you describe some examples of the sovereignism and the echoism ones?

Dawn: So echoism would be a fear of uselessness, and this I think is sort of what you described with the therapist persona, that you derive a feeling of... you could probably describe it as a feeling of worthiness, but probably my theory more closely describes it as a feeling of usefulness and purposefulness, that you can derive that from helping another person. And then with NPD, it would be having some kind of external proof, like admiration, for example, or some physical provable successes, material successes that show you that you’re worthy. And with sovereignism, it’s controlling other people, exerting power in order to prove that you’re powerful and you’re not helpless.

April: I think out of the three, I mean, I think probably the main one is the obvious one, the narcissism that I relate to. I think for me, helping people, it’s more that I want to be seen to other people. It’s because I want them to see me as a smart person who knows about a lot of things, that knows really psychology well. So then when they have a problem and then I’ve helped them, then I feel like I’ve validated in my ability to be this wise person. It’s different than… I don’t know, because for me it’s different than people that go out of their way to do helpful things. I feel like I have to remind myself to do helpful things more. I don’t know.

Dawn: But if you were to do it in some indirect way, like you’re just at home alone and you write some blog posts that can’t even get any likes on whatever platform, and you’re hoping to reach some people with that, help with that, and maybe you have some view count that goes up so that you have some reassurance that you’re actually helping people, would that also give you a self-esteem boost?

April: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So when I used to… well, when I was… when I posted about how long I’ve been sober from… I don’t know if I mentioned that, but I’ve been… I haven’t drank in a while, and it’s been two years since the last time I’ve drank. But I’ve had people tell me that I’ve been an inspiration for them or a motivation, and that’s made me feel a sense of worth, you know.

Dawn: But can you give that to yourself that you do something great and you know that you’ve had some impact and you feel the positive effect on your self-esteem without anyone having to tell you?

April: I can now, yeah. I don’t know if that was something that I initially was able to do, but I definitely nowadays can. Because now I… I mean, it also just feels good in terms of being two years without drinking. That makes me feel good about myself on my own. Reminding myself of my good traits is another way that I make myself feel good without the validation of others or whatever.

Dawn: Yeah, that’s cool that that works. Yeah, congrats!

Closing

Dawn: I’d just like to go through some more questions. Like, are you getting tired? Because we have only started the question list at this point.

April: Yeah, I am getting a little bit. I know, yeah. Of course I gotta eat and stuff.

Dawn: Yeah, we can do a part two at some point. Do you wanna do this again and then we can do the other questions then?

April: Yeah, another day.

Dawn: Yeah, sweet. Do you wanna say some final words, pitch your band, or whatever comes to mind?

April: Um… I guess. I don’t know. I had a fun time. Check out Violent Melody. Thanks for watching this. I hope I was a good guest.

Dawn: Yes, you were. Thank you so much for your openness and vulnerability and for coming on with your time.

April: Absolutely. All right. Well, yeah, we’ll do another one soon.

Dawn: Yeah, let’s schedule something. Thank you.

April: Yeah, we’ll schedule something for that. Cool.

Dawn: Yeah, bon appetit, and then good night at some point.

April: Yeah, you have a good night too.

Dawn: Yeah, bye.

April: Bye.

Introduction

Three terrors are key to understanding my model: People with pathological echoism have a fundamental fear of uselessness or purposelessness, people with pathological narcissism have a fundamental fear of worthlessness or unlovability, and people with sovereignism have a fundamental fear of being helplessly exposed to control and dominated.

Some of the italicized terms may be unclear.

The term echoism is somewhat established at this point (even though it is not yet a diagnostic label) for someone who forms a false self of being without personal preferences in an effort to continually prove their usefulness and thereby purpose in life in self-sacrificial service to another, a group, or all of society.

Narcissism, here, describes a defense against worthlessness through real (compensation) or collapsed (externalization) grandiosity.

Sovereignism is a term that I’m introducing as a less judgmental-sounding alternative to Otto Kernberg’s malignant narcissism but also with a somewhat more inclusive meaning.

My article on the narcissistic spectrum describes tiers 0–5 of different example presentations of pathological narcissism ordered by the robustness of the false self. Sovereignism greatly fortifies the false self and so comes in at tiers 4–5. It is the range between and including these tiers that I call sovereignism – the tiers where the central preoccupation of the person shifts from achievement to control.

Crucial for this shift is the ego-syntonic sadism (or Machiavellianism) but not the paranoia of what Otto Kernberg calls malignant narcissism. As such, it’s a wider category of presentations.

Impartial Priorities

The Narcissistic Spectrum

Pathological narcissism can take countless shapes depending on the relative strengths of all the stabilizing and destabilizing factors: My previous article lists these factors. I will reference it frequently in this one…

Read more

7 months ago · Dawn Drescher

Critique of Dr. Malkin’s Model

In his excellent book Rethinking Narcissism, Dr. Craig Malkin presents a linear 11-point narcissism spectrum and augments it with a validated scale that maps to the spectrum, the Narcissism Spectrum Scale (NSS).

The range 0–3 he calls narcissism deficit or echoism; the range 4–6 is healthy narcissism; and the range 7–10 is extreme narcissism. The scale leaves the most extreme points to professional diagnoses.

I find the concept of echoism to be very interesting. There is also a third concept – my sovereignism – that I find similarly interesting. But my own mental model differs from Malkin’s.

First, note that the authors’ own validation of the NSS revealed some problems.

The interpretation of the scale is really the interpretation of three independent scales: echoism (“narcissism deficit”), healthy narcissism, and extreme narcissism. They interact in nonlinear ways, so, for example, if you score high on healthy narcissism, the result is invalid if you also score high on extreme narcissism. Complicated, but helpful.

But what is most remarkable is that they observed respondents who score high on echoism and extreme narcissism:

In rare instances, people score high on narcissism deficits and high on extreme narcissism. If your scores reflect that pattern, it likely means that you vacillate between extremes of feeling worthless and feeling superior. Even if you don’t say it, you might have impossibly grandiose dreams, usually about being in charge or showing people you’re better than they are.

…

That’s the hallmark of introverted narcissism. If you show that pattern, you’re highly narcissistic, but either introverted by nature or beaten down by a series of failures.

You’re at least around a 7 on the spectrum; higher if you scored 42 or above on EN. This pattern isn’t unusual if you feel superior to everyone in your mind, but the world refuses to confirm your opinion. You look like someone who lacks narcissism, but in reality, you probably cling to feeling special – and you’re not getting enough attention to feed your habit. People close to you will see the entitlement and arrogance, but your work colleagues probably see someone riddled with anxiety and self-doubt.

They say that this only happens in rare instances, but consider the items they used to measure extreme narcissism:

1. I find it easy to manipulate people.

2. I insist on getting the respect that’s due me.

3. I expect a great deal from other people.

4. I’ll never be satisfied until I get all that I deserve.

5. I secretly believe I’m better than most people.

6. I get extremely angry when criticized.

7. I get upset when people don’t notice how I look in public.

8. I’m apt to show off if I get the chance.

9. I have a strong will to power.

10. I’m great at a lot of things compared to most people.

Items 1–3 and 7–10 are straightforward grandiose/exploitative features. Items 4–6 make a haphazard attempt at capturing vulnerability, but don’t sound like self-report questions at all.

Item 4 might not be meant to capture vulnerability, but if it is, it should rather say something like, “I work so hard, and then people let me down and favor others.”

Item 5 uses “secretly,” but that’s not how self-deception works. Someone has to build a lot of insight before they become aware of the things that they “secretly” believe. Maybe, “I’m surrounded by people who keep slowing me down”?

Item 6 again presupposes incredible insight. How about, “It makes me livid when people give me feedback that I didn’t ask for,” or “People keep picking on me for no reason”?

Item 7 is just confusing for me. Do they mean “… when people, out in public, don’t notice how I look,” or “… when people don’t notice my public face”? In any case, it’s probably even anticorrelated with the vulnerable presentation.

Perhaps it would’ve been better to borrow items from the PNI, FFNI-SF, or MCNS instead. (Or the PNI or FFNI at least, since the FFNI-SF and MCNS also only came out in 2015, the same year they published the NSS.)

Given that even this greatly grandiosity-focused version of the narcissism subscale is not fully anticorrelated with the echoism scale, I wouldn’t be surprised if the echoism scale is positively correlated with the MCNS, which measures narcissistic vulnerability.

Note also that the PNI – a narcissism scale that also captures the vulnerable presentation well – contains a subscale “self-sacrificing self-enhancement” (SSSE), which is basically echoism.

SSSE has a decent positive correlation with all other subscales, though that with exploitativeness is a bit lackluster. But that is to be expected since those are almost opposite attitudes. The people I know who score close to the maximum on both dimensions take different attitudes toward different people or indulge their exploitativeness in harmless or even prosocial, playful ways.

Conservatively, my model assumes that the correlation between echoism and narcissism is roughly nil, though deep down I expect a positive correlation, maybe in the range of r = 0.2–0.5. I hope future research with test this prediction.

The correlation between narcissism and sovereignism is probably also positive. My friends with that presentation score extremely high on “exploitativeness” (EXP) and many other dimensions (though notably not on “contingent self-esteem”). The subform of “malignant narcissism” even has “narcissism” in its name.

Considering that even SSSE and EXP have a slight positive correlation, I think that even echoism and sovereignism are not strongly anticorrelated.

On that note, please bear in mind how messy even an r = 0.5 correlation can look!

My Model

The Axes Echoism, Narcissism, and Sovereignism

My model assumes that we’re dealing with separate, uncorrelated dimensions. I’ll call them echoism, narcissism, and sovereignism, the terms I introduced above. Each diagram only shows one pairing to simplify the visualization.

Here is my attempt to compress these meanings of echoism, narcissism, and sovereignism in terms of perfectionism of certain values.

By perfectionism, I mean either actual perfectionism or, failing that, at least being less flawed than others or flawed, but it’s someone else’s or the world’s fault. In either case, this can be achieved though real perfection, avoidance, or self-deception.

Echoism:

• General values: modesty, service, piety, purity, loyalty

• Grandiose values: moral excellence, altruism

• Vulnerable values: selflessness, sacrifice, invisibility, martyrdom

Narcissism:

• General values: dignity, self-sufficiency, selectivity

• Grandiose values: success, achievement, admiration, status, wealth, beauty, enlightenment, intelligence, excellence, prestige, sophistication, legacy, uniqueness, exceptionalism

• Vulnerable values: insight, reserve, sanctuary, integrity, boundaries, solitude, nonconformity

Sovereignism:

• General values: self-control, self-sufficiency

• Grandiose values: power, control, domination

• Vulnerable values: invulnerability (defense against hurt), impregnability (defense against intrusion), sanctuary, stoicism

The Axis Healthy vs. Pathological

My distinction into healthy and pathological is mostly a simplification (for ease of visualization) of Otto Kernberg’s model of the psychotic, borderline, and neurotic (healthy) levels of personality organization. But more intense core shame – the painful experience of being unworthy of love or belonging, a weight, fear, blame, or disconnection – also contributes to the pathology, even on the neurotic level.

Features of lower levels of personality organization are identity diffusion, primitive defenses, and impaired reality-testing. The core shame drives the need for perfectionism and related pathological strivings. The borderline/psychotic distortions of reality and selfhood are, in part, how it is achieved. Instead of actual perfection, flaws are repressed (split off), get blamed on others, or are denied.

That’s the only place where the personality pathology comes in! In particular, I disagree with the characterization that there are quantities like echoism or narcissism or sovereignism that are okay at certain quantities but represent a personality pathology/disorder when they get more extreme.

When a perfectly healthy person becomes extremely obsessed with becoming special in some fashion, they may burn out (a different kind of pathology), give up and be bummed out (a different kind of pathology), but they won’t develop a personality disorder.

When a borderline-level person wants to become special in some fashion, they may develop a rigid false self organized around grandiosity, split off failures, and lose touch with authentic experience – it becomes a personality disorder.1

For comparison, there is such a thing as a healthy amount of salt that we can consume per day and there is an excessive amount. There is no such thing as a healthy amount of income vs. an excessive amount of income but its use makes it so. If you donate it to the Animal Charity Evaluators top charities, that’s healthy; if you hire assassins with it, that’s pathological.

Arguably, there’s the exception that if you don’t have any income, you can’t hire assassins (or donate), so the orthogonality of the dimensions is not completely clean, but thinking of them as orthogonal still strikes me as the best approximation.

Etiological Parallels

In my article on The Narcissistic Spectrum, I describe some possible childhood and adolescent traumas that can produce different forms of NPD (and mixed presentations that include NPD). I would argue that it is very similar traumas that cause echoism.

So does Dr. Malkin:

The key childhood experience that pushes children too high or too low on the spectrum is always the same: insecure love.

To settle at the center of the spectrum, children need to feel that no matter what they do – or don’t do – they can still count on the people who raise them to listen and offer comfort when they feel sad or lonely or scared. That’s the hallmark of secure love, and when children don’t receive it, they’ll shape their behavior to try to earn love in unhealthy ways, such as chasing after attention (narcissists) or keeping to the shadows (echoists).

Narcissists can be bred in several ways. Parents who seem to notice or celebrate their children only when they’re standing out – by becoming valedictorians or varsity league players or beauty queens – set them up to scramble after accolades and approval for the rest of their lives. Extroverts with this upbringing are likely to join the group of narcissists who initially seem charming but turn nasty upon closer acquaintance; introverts, on the other hand, may become brittle adults, seething or withdrawing when people don’t pay rapt attention to everything they say.

…

In contrast, parents who seem chronically emotionally fragile – anxious or angry or depressed – may cause their children to slip a few notches to the left on the spectrum. The children learn that the only way to earn love is to make as little impact as possible on the people around them. I can’t possibly ask my parents for any more – they might cry or scream – but maybe if I ask for very little, they’ll love me. Left-leaning, temperamentally sensitive children, naturally attuned to others, may be at the greatest risk here. A similar result occurs when parents seem happy or fulfilled only when their children praise, flatter, or comfort them. An example might be a mother who needs her child to tell her she is pretty or a good parent. Such “parentified children” learn to echo and mirror their parents’ every need or desire, burying their own needs completely.

Those just seem like two different kinds of persecutory introjects at work forcing children to develop different kinds of false selves. (I’d love to see a collection of the grandiose fantasies of echoists!)

Compound Personality Styles/Disorders

Am I proposing two completely new personality styles here? Maybe, maybe not!

One way I like to think of it is how you can combine a reactive metal called sodium with a toxic gas called chlorine and you get yummy salt!

I imagine that’s how pathological narcissism, sadism, and antisocial traits react to form sovereignism – something very different from all of them.

Here are a few possibilities for what the reactants of echoism might be:

Narcissistic + Dependent Personality

“I defend against unworthiness of love by becoming indispensable instead.” (Focus on attachment.)

1. The narcissistic personality provides the aspects of social comparison, superiority, self-sufficiency, dignity, striving for excellence, and defense against feeling unworthy of love.

2. The dependent personality provides the attachment preoccupation, but the NPD turns the helplessness on its head: instead of acting helpless to bind oneself to a helper, the person tries to become the helper to bind someone else to them. Being needed as a surrogate for love. A motherly kind of superiority combined with a butler-like servitude.

Narcissistic Personality + Preoccupied Attachment

“I defend against unworthiness of love by becoming indispensable instead.” (Focus on attachment.)

1. The narcissistic personality again provides the aspects of social comparison, superiority, self-sufficiency, dignity, striving for excellence, and defense against feeling unworthy of love.

2. But avoidant attachment (be it pure avoidant attachment or disorganized attachment) is unavailable and preoccupied attachment is high. Hence the person tries to bind the other to them. Being needed as a surrogate for love. A motherly kind of superiority hidden behind a butler-like servitude.

Narcissistic + Masochistic + Depressive Personality

“I defend against unworthiness of love by becoming indispensable by submitting and denying myself.” (Focus on guilt.)

1. The narcissistic personality again provides the aspects of social comparison, superiority, self-sufficiency, dignity, striving for excellence, and defense against feeling unworthy of love.

2. The masochistic personality proactively (“self-defeatingly”) submits and assumes the butler-like stance of servitude to bind the other person to them (being needed as surrogate for love) but also brands the person’s own needs as illegitimate.

3. The depressive personality provides the internalization of anger (elimination of self-assertion) and guilt/indebtedness as driver.

Obsessive-Compulsive Personality + Anna Freud’s Defense of Altruistic Surrender

“Selfishness is wrong and I renounce it in favor of a life of service.” (Focus on rules and ethics.)

1. The obsessive-compulsive personality provides the rigid moral perfectionism, preoccupation around rules of correct behavior, splitting, renunciation of any selfishness.

2. The altruistic surrender provides the renunciation of personal goals or needs, living vicariously through others, and finding meaning through others’ achievements.

Avoidant + Dependent Personality2

“I feel obviously rotten but I need you, so I make myself indispensable.” (Focus on shame.)

1. The avoidant personality provides the feelings of being inadequate and unworthy of love (much like NPD but defended against with avoidance only).

2. The dependent personality provides the attachment preoccupation that is achieved through making the other depend on you.

Borderline + Dependent Personality

“I have no self except insofar as your needs shape one.” (Focus on identity diffusion.)

1. The borderline personality provides the absence of a stable identity.

2. The dependent personality provides the attachment preoccupation that induces an identity based on the expectations of the other.

My guess is that there may be several variations on the theme of echoism. I mostly resonate with NPD + DPD, NPD + preoccupied attachment, and OCPD + altruistic surrender, but I’d be curious what other echoists resonate with!

All in all, I prefer to think of echoism as such a compound PD: It’s more parsimonious to explain new concepts in terms of existing ones, it fits well into how the PDM-2 diagnostic system defines personalities in what it calls the p-axis, and since there seem to be several plausible forms of echoism, using only one term for all of them would hide important distinctions.

Pathological Forms

Echoism

Another question readers may ask themselves is what pathological echoism looks like. I can think of a few possibilities:

1. The counterproductive savior (the video above), whose reality testing is so bad that they don’t realize that they’re not helping or are doing harm.

2. The person who chases ever new people who they can help, because they feel worthless within hours if they don’t.

3. The person who stays in an exploitative relationship for years, because they almost die of shame whenever they even think of breaking their undying loyalty.

4. The person who feels safe in a relationship only when they’ve done so much for the partner that the partner is clearly indebted to them, because that debt has to offset the imagined debt of their partner deigning to love someone as wretched as them.

5. The person who proudly works themselves to death at a charity, because they value their own life as much as someone else’s and someone else is dying.

6. The person who can never feel out a personal preference when asked, because they’ve repressed them as perfectly as others repress their remorse.

7. The person who will dedicate their life to some religion or cult, because they’ve been told by an authority that its doctrine is right, and it never even crosses their mind that the authority might’ve been wrong or lying.

8. The person who’s suicidal but would rather die than to book a therapy appointment, because they can’t bear risking that it might be immodest of them to think that they deserve better than to suffer.

9. The person who has an identity crisis when they find out about moral antirealism, because it implies that the moral excellence that they pinned all their hopes for salvation on is in the eye of the beholder.

Narcissism

Similar examples for our good-old narcissism:

1. The person who keeps firing good employees because the person has to externalize the blame for bad decisions onto those employees because it feels like making a mistake would expose an infernal wretchedness worse than death.

2. The person who becomes suicidal when passed over for promotion, because they thought they were wretched but at least better than their colleagues, but without that safety net there’s no end to how far into wretchedness they fall.

3. The person who can’t show up for a job on time, because it would feel like admitting that they depend on the job, that it’s not beneath them, and then their feelings of disgust for the job would become feelings of disgust for themselves.

4. The person who rage-quits relationships when not consistently admired, because it feels like the partner masqueraded as perfect for them and tricked them when really that was the idealization of the partner.

5. The person whose self-worth collapses entirely when their looks fade, because what had kept them alive is that they could become a famous fashion model any day and were just waiting for the right time.

Sovereignism

And finally examples for sovereignism:

1. The person who plays games on people that land them in prison, ruin their marriages, lose them their jobs, etc., because it’s fun to control their lives so fully.

2. The person who humiliates people publicly in regular intervals to deter any attacks.

3. The person who continues being successful at venture capital fundraising only because all the VC who got burned don’t warn their competitors, and because the court cases can be drawn out many years.

4. The person who builds a bunker under their house, builds walls and barbed-wire fences all around, hoards food, guns, and emergency supplies, and waits for the self-destruction of society.

5. The person who retreats into a post-apocalyptic fantasy world where they are the last surviving human until eventually they die of a drug overdose in the real world.

6. Those friends of mine who are a fricking menace in traffic!

Combinations

Finally, combinations of echoism, narcissism, and sovereignism may be interesting to investigate.

Someone who is high in narcissism and sovereignism might behave in sadistic, antisocial ways, but might, in other contexts, also be driven by competition for regular success and admiration.

Someone who is high in echoism and narcissism might resemble the compound presentations above that contain traits of NPD and might find safety in relationships in creating an indebtedness to offset their own imagined indebtedness.

Someone high in echoism and sovereignism might find pleasure in manipulating others towards what they think is for the targets own good, like an overbearing but well-intentioned mother. Or they’ll be consistently kind to people but do it with the mindset of tricking their targets into liking them.

Conclusion

In short, I argue that echoism, narcissism, and sovereignism (as defined above) are personality styles that are not mutually exclusive or opposites but can co-occur. Perhaps they are even positively correlated.

Echoism and sovereignism are most conveniently thought of as compound personality styles that combine some (not all) features of other more fundamental personality styles.

Finally, all of them can be healthy or pathological (in the sense of a personality disorder) based on the intensity of the core shame they defend against and the level of personality organization but by and large not the extremity of the personality style.

Recognizing this shared structure – or, for some compound formulations, the differences in structure – suggests treatment approaches that would be nonobvious if the presentation is simply considered idiosyncratic or an “other specified personality disorder” without further modifiers.

Someone with echoism might not need exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy or SSRIs for OCD because they self-punish for failing to predict an expectation, but might benefit more from mentalization-based treatment to discover their own preferences.

The move away from the assumption of strongly anticorrelated echoism and narcissism can help diagnosticians not overlook narcissistic traits in patients who present mostly as suffering from echoism.

It used to be thought that autism and ADHD are mutually exclusive, which led to many missed diagnoses and messy studies, because they actually co-occur at high rates. We can still stop that trend for echoism and narcissism.

Further research is needed to establish whether there are different types of echoism and to develop scales to distinguish them.

Scales that discriminate between (what I call) no-self psychopathy and sovereignism would be useful too.

Previous Installments on Narcissism

Pathological narcissism can take countless shapes depending on the relative strengths of all the stabilizing and destabilizing factors: My previous article lists these factors. I will reference it frequently in this one.

Impartial Priorities

The Architecture of the Narcissistic False Self

Protecting the Squishy Core…

Read more

7 months ago · Dawn Drescher

My chosen metaphor is that of a fortress, which represents the protective purpose of the false self. Other metaphors that I considered were that of hermit crabs who find shells of different materials (some smooth, some spiky) to protect themselves, or that of a diving suit that is vital for a diver underwater but needlessly restricts them on land. I’ve chosen the crab for the illustrations because cute.

A single person with narcissistic personality disorder – I’ll call them a castellan – usually finds themselves somewhere on this spectrum from delicate to robust – from glass fortress to fortified barbican – but they will likely move up and down slightly in different phases of their life.

These fortresses defend against persecutory introjects, which I’ve described in more detail in my article on the sadism spectrum. Introjects can be friendly, but the ones relevant here are persecutory ones that form an “alien self.” You can also think of them as a form of complex PTSD, where traumatic conditioning systematically shapes the kinds of trauma responses that the parent (or bully or school system etc.) wants to see.

Healing works differently for everyone, and a sudden drop from higher to lower tiers should be avoided if at all possible. Healing should feel like an exciting journey to discover more effective ways to get things done and to become more resilient. It should feel empowering. It should prevent collapse, not precipitate it. It will involve grief though.

Note that the following six points on the continuum are fairly arbitrary. One can imagine many other combinations of stabilizing and destabilizing factors (see my previous article) leading to many other presentations. The lower tiers have little control over themselves while the higher tiers are increasingly restricted in their thinking and acting by their own draconian rules. The lower tiers easily collapse into vulnerable states due to difficulties but recover quickly, while the higher tiers collapse into vulnerable states rarely and then often permanently, e.g., due to aging.

Let’s walk through this progression, from the unstable foundations of BPD, where there is no fortress (no NPD) yet, over the invisible glass fortress, to the barbican with embrasures in all directions.

Tier 0: Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) – The Raft in the Storm

• Core dynamic. “My self shatters from one moment to the next. I’m everything and nothing.”

• Fictional example. Clementine Kruczynski in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Upbringing. Here a parent fell short in particular on the marked side of the contingent marked mirroring: Psychodynamic theory has it that a child learns the self when it experiences things, and the parent mirrors them back to the child (contingent mirroring) in a way that clarifies that these are to be considered the child’s experiences and not the parent’s experiences (marked mirroring).

If a child cries, a regular parent reacts in a way that recognizes the crying, and then reacts to it with reassurances or by removing whatever is causing the discomfort. A less capable parent might get triggered by the crying because it reactivates traumas around despair, and might start screaming and smashing doors in a symbolic attempt to escape. That’s terrifying for the child and completely unhelpful for the development of the self. (By the way, many of these insights are based on the work of Heinz Kohut.)

I have the pet theory that neurodevelopmental issues like autism can disrupt the formation of the self even when the parent is good enough. All the sensory input may be overwhelming for such a child. They might have trouble reading their parent’s facial expressions and tone of voice. Perhaps holding them is the only way to signal to them that the parent is there for them, but then tactile sensory issues might make that painful too. Other genetic factors surely also play a role.

Permanent changes in who the caregiver is – say, different nannies or grandparents or none at all at an orphanage – feel like devastating losses of a parent to the child, which can also be disruptive, especially when it happens after the child is already six weeks old.

The presence of even one emotionally attuned adult in the household can make a huge difference even if they’re not the primary caregiver. If the duty to raise the child is shared among more people, the chances are higher that the child will have a person like that among them. Sadly, that is not how families work in WEIRD cultures.

Finally, the factor of collective effervescence can potentially forestall the development of personality disorders as they present in adulthood.

Presentation. The result is, for example, an adult who is constantly in the throes of emotional chaos, feelings of emptiness, and a desperate, often self-destructive search for an identity to absorb. Relationships are intense, unstable, and marked by a frantic oscillation between idealizing a person as a savior and devaluing them as a tormentor. Narcissistic traits may appear in fleeting moments – a flash of entitlement, a brief fantasy of greatness – but they are quickly washed away by the next tidal wave of emotional dysregulation. There are no lasting narcissistic traits present.

Imagine your livelihood depends on a job, but it a really dysfunctional company where you have five managers who never let you work on any one task for more than a few hours before another manager interrupts you with another super urgent but completely contradictory task, and the managers never talk to each other. Sometimes there’s a task you’re so good at that you can almost complete it, but you get interrupted anyway.

Functional recovery. Many of the problems of BPD are self-perpetuating. Behavioral interventions like dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) can break these cycles (one year can make a huge difference), and psychodynamic interventions like mentalization-based treatment (MBT) can provide some of the reparenting that makes up for the deficits from childhood (usually more than two years).

Tier 1: BPD with narcissistic traits – The Ruins of the Fortress

• Core dynamic. “My self shatters from one moment to the next. Maybe I deserve it. But how can I deserve this if these idiots over there are even worse and don’t even know it?”

• Common stabilizing factors. Primitive defenses, impaired reality-testing, impaired empathy and mentalizing when triggered, substance use.

• Common destabilizing factors. Failure/rejection, emotional attachments, emotional upset, societal attachment, moments of self-awareness, empathy, often depressive temperament, often values like honesty.

• Fictional example. Benji in A Real Pain. He’s the loser in his adulting competition with David but manages to dominate David with specific social skills that David lacks and by attacking David’s fragile false self. He can find a temporary refuge in these skills. He tries the same with the tour guide when he feels threatened by him, but the guide is less reactive than David.

Upbringing. These castellans have had an emotionally chaotic parent or some other disruption in the formation of their self – see above. But they’ve also incorporated some systematic expectations on their performance from a parent, peers, the school system, or society in general. Persecutory introjects, as mentioned in the introduction.

So not only were they rarely understood by anyone, they were also systematically misunderstood to the point where they’ve started to hate and try to disown parts of themselves. This can be exacerbated by genetic temperamental factors and their wider social environment, as for tier 0.

Presentation. They were never able to achieve the success in life that could’ve sustained a false self; neither are they psychotic enough to fool themselves into thinking that they did. One of Benji’s claims to fame is his ability to influence groups and crowds and make things happen. He’d thrive as a famous motivational speaker or as a politician. But, alas, he’s neither, so he cannot find shelter in this chronically collapsing false self, this ruin of a fortress, for more than a few days at a time.

Imagine you work for the same chaotic company, but sometimes you get a task that is fun and that you’re good at, and you feel defiant and ignore all the other managers for a while until you manage to complete it. It doesn’t happen often, and it doesn’t last long, but what a reprieve it is anyway!

Functional recovery. These false selves are probably no obstacle in therapy, so treatments for BPD like DBT and MBT should work just as well.

If it’s any consolation, I’ve run a Facebook poll asking which type of NPD is hottest, and 40% voted for “BPD with narcissistic traits,” followed by “A healing Cluster B taking their fucking life back” (17%) and “NPD with overt vulnerability and grandiosity” (10%). So vulnerability and healing are hot! (Though arguably many of them simply picked their own presentation.)

Tier 2: Double-Covert NPD – The Glass Fortress

• Core dynamic. “If I work hard, never make mistakes, and never misbehave, maybe I will become worthy of love?”

• Common stabilizing factors. Success, avoidance, the enabling system of capitalism that rewards diligent productivity with mid-range stable salaries, “quiet” defenses (e.g., silent resentfulness and passive-aggression rather than outward blame-shifting), substance use (stimulants, anxiolytics, antidepressants), alexithymia.

• Common destabilizing factors. Safety (downstream of financial safety), rejection (resentment because they think no one would dare to reject them if they didn’t always act so perfectly virtuous), failure (to be perfectly virtuous), illness and aging, depressive temperament, Light Triad traits, honesty, moments of self-awareness.

• Fictional examples.

  • Sam Lowry in Brazil. This one is particularly impressive because you experience the movie from his perspective. His false self falls to ruins (tier 1) as he descends more and more into psychosis over the course of the movie.

  • David in A Real Pain. Dr. Mark Ettensohn argues that he’s on the neurotic level, so we’re seeing a personality style here, not a disorder.

Upbringing. As kids these castellans might’ve displayed anger but were steamrolled with disrespect; they might’ve displayed vivaciousness but were told to behave; they might’ve suppressed any self-expression and were praised for being perfect. Or they were praised for not being like their sibling. Or they watched movies where the villain showed these character traits.

Presentation. They were taught hard standards that they must never fall short of – often standards of propriety, decorum, modesty, obsequiousness, or diligence. When they observe someone’s boisterousness, vivaciousness, anger, spontaneity, or irreverence, it fills them with envy or disgust but also makes them feel more virtuous. They would love to be that person, but they cannot be close to them for fear third parties might make an association between them and these character traits. Both their anger (vulnerability) and their irreverence (“whimsical grandiosity”) are covert – hence the metaphor of the glass fortress which is fragile but also hard to see. They tend to score low on exploitativeness and high on self-sacrificing self-enhancement on the PNI. They’ll probably get diagnosed with social anxiety, OCD, AvPD, or OCPD before NPD.

Imagine you work for the same chaotic company, but as it happens, no one else wants to do the accounting. You also don’t like accounting, but you realize that it’s an opportunity to wrest back some control, because either they leave you in peace doing your accounting and nothing else, or they’ll have to do the accounting some of the time. You make it known that you’re the accounting person, and your plan works. No one fights you for the job, the managers stop trying to give you unrelated tasks, and you can lock yourself in your office and hope that no one notices that you kind of suck at accounting and are bored out of your mind.

Self-deceptions. If someone has managed to erect a fortress like this, they must be somewhat successful in life, extremely avoidant, or excellent at self-deception. Usually a combination. It takes great perfectionism, rigid self-control, and a careful avoidance of countless everyday situations (parties, karaoke, clubs, etc.) to maintain it.

Unmet needs have to either be denied or devalued, which can be reframed as a virtuous sacrifice, or they have to be framed as an injustice committed against them. These castellans have to be downright paranoid to avoid being drawn into conversations that touch on personal topics that would put them in the unpleasant double bind that they’d either have to unvirtuously lie or indecorously storm out so not to have to even think about how they think.

A minor mistake or an accidental rule-break is not a simple error; it’s a catastrophic event that threatens to shatter the entire glass fortress, triggering panic and elaborate internal blame-shifting. Their vulnerability is much more likely to become overt in such cases than their delicate grandiosity as they retreat more deeply into avoidance or displays of self-flagellation.

The irony of considering oneself among the most modest people who’ve ever lived is not lost on them, so self-contradictory values like that make it hard for these castellans to ever fully inhabit their grandiose states. If they do, and especially if others catch them in the act, they may feel exposed and subsequently shun these others and hope they’ll forget it ever happened.

Functional recovery. This presentation is probably not considered to be NPD by many diagnosticians, because it’s not associated with many of the clichéd behaviors of grandiose NPD. Hence it’s difficult for these patients to receive targeted support and guidance. They might be treated for social anxiety or OCD instead.

If they are more on the vulnerable side, they’ll seek and enjoy therapy without having to first suffer any kind of collapse. That’ll make the therapy process a continually rewarding experience and keep them engaged. However, if they were conditioned to be modest, they might think that seeking therapy is immodest because it implies that they think they deserve to feel better, and hence refuse it. Or they may be afraid to “fail” therapy and avoid it for that reason.

If they are more on the grandiose side, it may be just as hard for them to seek therapy as it is for tier 3 castellans, because neither of them can see themselves as flawed. If it does happen, the therapist will have a harder time noticing the devaluation – e.g., the castellan may ask questions about the private or professional life of the therapist in an effort to help the therapist and flip the script.

Most likely, they’ll flip between the states. Perhaps financial straits force them to work a job that they consider to be humiliating. They’re afraid to be seen at it, and try to be late and tardy a lot to signal that the job is beneath them. When that leads to negative feedback and threats that they might lose the job, the vulnerability becomes more apparent and they might feel targeted and seek to uncover who is secretly conspiring against them.

These castellans will probably enjoy the recovery process almost as much as those who are in predominantly vulnerable states, since even the grandiose states are driven by fairly conscious anxiety that can be reduced over the course of the treatment.

Tier 3: Grandiose NPD – The Stone Fortress

• Core Dynamic. “If I make Forbes’ 30 Under 30, I can’t be unworthy, right?”

• Common stabilizing features. Unsafe environment, success through superiority, primitive defenses, impaired reality-testing, hypomanic temperament, substance use, impaired empathy and mentalizing when triggered, alexithymia, interpersonal avoidant attachment.

• Common destabilizing features. Illness, aging, humanism, rationality, emotional attachments, emotional upset, moments of self-awareness.

• Fictional examples.

  • Metaphorically: Ender Wiggin in Ender’s Game has good reality-testing but is tricked into doing great harm. Waking up from self-deceptions feels similar to waking up to such an external deception.

  • Marvel: Tony Stark and Dr. Strange before their collapses. You can mine the Vicariously Ambitious, Stage Mom, and My Beloved Smother pages on TV Tropes for more examples.

  • Rumi in Demon Hunters.

Upbringing. These castellans were taught to achieve. When they felt weak, their parents misunderstood them by seeing only greatness in them, or they punished them by withdrawing their affection. When they won and achieved, they could earn brief affection. Perhaps they had as many siblings as their parents claimed to have cars (but they were all rentals), so they could earn affection only if they out-competed them all. Their parents probably paraded them around at age 5–8 or so to brag with how smart they already are: “Now show your auntie that new chess opening you developed! … Outstanding! So much smarter than your scapegoat sister!”

Presentation. Imagine you’ve worked for a less chaotic company for a while, and now the forces that be have put you in charge of a whole department. They selected you for the job because you already have a few months of experience in the particular subfield, but no one else in your department does.

You hold a bunch of meetings to impart your wisdom, and everyone listens to your every word. It feels amazing to be heard for once!

Sadly, after a few days, you’re done transmitting your experience from the previous months. You cobble together a few more dozen slides to enjoy the state for just a bit longer. This goes beyond what you actually have experience with, but at least your design and presentation are impeccable.

Someone raises their hand: “But wouldn’t lemurs have trouble with regular-sized toilet seats because their butts are so tiny?” “Of course not,” you say and shake your head in bewilderment. You move on quickly and try not to notice any raised hands to avoid more stupid questions. Neither did you notice that for a second you were afraid that oversights like that might cost you the respect that you enjoy so much.

Self-deceptions. Achievement is usually antithetical to avoidance, so without this invaluable shield at their disposal, these castellans have to double down on many other defenses instead. Often they are actually gifted, so they can work their way up until they’re among equals or aging takes its toll on their cognitive abilities. Then the going gets tough.

But there are many others tricks. Not tracking the performance of investments or not benchmarking them against broad low-risk market indices helps to obscure losses. So does making deals only with the sorts of sharks who’ll screw you over while making it look like you won.

If you piss people off and they request to be transferred to a different department, you can pretend that they just did want to constantly feel so envious of you. If your personal rival beats you in the professional sphere, you can focus on your better health or greater romantic success like a proper data dredger.

If you get triggered and the fight response kicks in, it’s your partners fault for causing you to freak out, or if your business fails, it’s the IRS’s fault for being so greedy. Finding all of these excuses in real time is stressful, so in these vulnerable moments, paranoia can sneak in again to try to avoid having to face them in the first place.

Some manage to split on themselves so effectively that memories of all sorts of failures are fully irretrievable so long as they’re in a grandiose state. Others even manage to overwrite their bad memories with fabricated ones.

This self-splitting is an interesting feature when viewed in the context of a competition against a rival where it can be a bit like a seesaw: If the rival does better, the walls against self-devaluation weaken and vulnerability peeks through. If the rival does worse, the grandiose split is easier to maintain.

Depending on another person is kryptonite too. We all have needs, sometimes unfulfilled needs, but our castellans can’t bear the feeling of dependency that comes with that because they never had a parent who taught them that it was safe to trust. Needing means requesting, but requesting exposes their intense rejection sensitivity. Hiding needs in the sturdy safe of entitlement gives them an excuse to disguise their rejection sensitivity behind righteous anger. Or they get rich so they can get almost anything they need for money without having to ask.

Relationships. Romantic relationships are hazardous for our castellans. They have to believe that they’re right and have a right to everything that they do and want, but all the rightness in the world doesn’t protect them from hurting their partners. That is doubly upsetting, (1) because they hypothetically can feel for their partners and have to constantly find creative solutions to excuse their behavior and blame-shift to not actually feel ashamed of hurting them, and (2) because these frictions ruin the fantasy that they’ve found their ideal partner: If they aren’t flawed, their partner must be flawed, and they cannot tolerate being (and being seen) with a flawed partner.

Chances are they’ll prefer to bite the fictional bullet that they’ve been betrayed by a partner who pretended to be perfect and whose mask eventually slipped than to acknowledge that they brought out all-too-human behaviors in them with their own frustrating behavior and just chose to label them as flaws as a false self defense.

Their upset over the imagined betrayal fuels enough rage that they can swiftly break up with the partner. Whenever doubts crop up whether the betrayal had actually been real, they assuage them by convincing mutual friends of their self-deceptions. If they can convince a mutual friend, they must be right. It’s not intended as a smear campaign, but has exactly that effect.

A different kind of seesaw can show up in romantic contexts too where it’s easy for them to relatively debase themselves toward an idealized partner because being lesser than such a perfect angelic being is irrelevant, and the approval of that being elevates them over the rest of the world. But when cracks start to show in the idealization, not only is that elevation by association no longer possible, but it even becomes necessary to gain superiority over the fallen angel to not be dragged down with them.

It’s like Icarus and Daedalus, except like a tandem skydive where only one of them has (and then loses) the wings.

Functional recovery. Dr. Ettensohn confirmed in an interview that in his experience the general impression is sadly true that these castellans usually tend to seek therapy only during or after their collapse. That is sad, because with MBT, the collapse might’ve been prevented.

These castellans are most readily diagnosed with NPD and NPD only, so studies like Vater et al. (2014) shed light on their rate of recovery (53% remission after 2 years). The handbook Mentalization-Based Treatment for Pathological Narcissism contains vignettes of treatment successes over the course of 4 years.

Tier 4: NPD with Antisocial Traits – The Sovereign’s Fortress

• Core dynamic. “I enjoy nothing more than to snipe all the NPCs!”

• Common stabilizing features. Sadism, Machiavellianism, unsafe environment, success through control, primitive defenses, impaired reality-testing, hypomanic temperament, substance use, alexithymia, pervasive impaired empathy, pervasive avoidant attachment.

• Common destabilizing features. Illness, aging, incomplete interpersonal attachment avoidance, mentalization, depressive temperament, rationality.

• Fictional examples.

  • Zuko in Avatar goes in this direction.

  • Metaphorically: Neo in The Matrix Reloaded has no reason anymore to take antagonists or even agents in the matrix seriously because they are bound by rules and he is not. Neither are they real to him. Less metaphorically, he even sacrifices probably hundreds of civilians to save Trinity from falling to her death, which most viewers probably missed just as he did.

Upbringing. The etiology is similar to that of tier 3, but sadism or Machiavellianism enter the picture to supersede empathy. Perhaps an interruption in the development of object relations prevents the castellan from forming an intuitive distinction between objects and beings, and the result is a lack of empathy. Perhaps an antagonistic, zero-sum environment in childhood forces these children into a fundamentally chess-like mindset. Any harm you can do to your opponents is inherently a point for you. Sadistic pleasure focuses more on the harm to the other; Machiavellian duper’s delight more on the stolen point for yourself. Both are about enjoying control and domination. That’s why I call tiers 4–5 sovereignism – they are not about being better than others but about domination (but dominism sounds like hominess).

The addition of sadism or Machiavellianism fundamentally changes how they play the narcissism game: Where the tier 1–3 castellans try to be better and better – more successful, more virtuous, more flawless, etc. – to compensate for feelings of worthlessness that lurk right under the surface, one failure away, tier 4 castellans don’t care much about being better. Being better is at most a means to an end: They care about winning.

Presentation. Imagine you’re in your 30s and you retire early after a stellar career in bike racing, mountain biking, and bike parkour. You have a house and savings and passive income from sponsorships. But after a while you grow tired of vacationing all year (i.e. biking up and down picturesque mountains) and answering fan mail, so you decide to go undercover as a bike courier for a bigger company. None of the other bike couriers are anywhere near your level, and you don’t talk to them lest they find out who you are, so your new hobby is to see for how many months in a row you can make employee of the month. What’s even better is that you know your city well, and the police are usually on foot or in cars, so whenever they try to stop your for your countless traffic violations, you can easily lose them by going down narrow stairs and vanishing in the traffic.

Game metaphors. To put it even more metaphorically, the first group play Tetris, the second group play chess. It’s not about chasing perfection to beat the high scores set by competitors but fundamentally about destroying them in direct zero-sum battle. The best way to empathize with that state of mind is perhaps to imagine you’re playing chess (or a similar game, like Othello) on a computer against an unfeeling game AI. That should eliminate any kind of concern over what moves are fair and empathy with the opponent from the picture.

Sabotaging the competitor in Tetris (by giving them repetitive strain injury or unplugging their keyboard) is outside the rules of the game and hence something that a tier 1–3 castellan has to self-deceive about if they’re forced into a situation where it’s that or falling behind. They’d like to win fair and square, and failing that, they want to at least fool themselves into believing that they did.

Sabotaging the opponent in chess by threatening the king is not outside the rules at all, so these castellans don’t have to self-deceive about their antisocial behaviors at all. There are no unfair moves in this game. The only rules are the rules of physics. Winning is all that counts.

No world outside the game. As such, societal norms (against lying, theft, betrayal, violence, …) are also just made by people for people – to smooth out our interactions, reduce our transaction costs, and maximize our gains from trade. Since almost all people are antagonists, societal norms become mere pitiable handicaps of the antagonists. They have no special meaning; they’re just important in proportion to the power of those who enforce them.

For tier 1–3 castellans there is something outside the game, a real world of social norms and laws that wields the power of shame over them. For tier 4 castellans there is no world outside the game. The game is all-encompassing. Any kind of antisocial behavior becomes ego-syntonic. No self-deception is needed.

That also means that it’s harder for them to get out. They are trapped in their particular game, the rules of which are set down by the persecutory introjects that make up their false self. Their disregard for social norms may make it seem like these castellans are close to people with what I call no-self psychopathy, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The first are bound by the draconian rules of their introjects, whereas the second are bound by no rules that are not of their choosing, from moment to moment, because they don’t have any kind of self in the first place, certainly not one that rules them with an iron fist.

It’s really remarkable that (ipso facto) these castellans don’t experience higher levels of paranoia. They’re always somewhat secretive, but nothing compared to tier 1–3 castellans. Perhaps they keep to fairly safe environments that they can easily dominate, or perhaps it’s because of the very limited ability that we NPCs have to hurt them. Either way, they realize that most people are not out to harm them, which makes it easier for them to find some kind of connection.

Self-deceptions. All their defenses being part of the game, they have no need to self-deceive about them. They do have to self-deceive about the laws that do apply to them, the laws of their introjects. Almost losing can be reframed as losing interest in a particular game. Actually losing (e.g., prison) can be reframed as a pitiful attempt of their opponents to try to break them.

If the introjects mandate perfect control, and the control fails, there is usually a way to reframe the situation and repress what actually happened. If someone catches you in a lie, i.e. a failure to control their reality, gaslighting them has the triple purpose that it’s fun, to override the failure with something fun and powerful, and to defer the failure until some future date.

Where our tier 1–3 castellans tend to measure themselves in competition with other individuals, these castellans don’t respect any individuals enough for that. They are unlikely to enter into any individual seesaw games. They’re playing one grand game against all of society, so there is no losing against another person, there is at most some kind of ultimate defeat against society as a whole.

One common form of this defeat is the schizoid retreat where instead of declaring defeat, they declare the whole game to not be stupid and worth playing, retreat into themselves, into isolation, or hide behind many layers of fake personas, and hate the world. It’s a peaceful place, and probably no more lonely than their fortress. It’s a good place to start healing.

Functional recovery. Winning comes in three steps: First the opening book of how to charm the opponents, then the midgame of how to control them, and finally the endgame of how to exploit them.

That might sound sinister, but often it isn’t. All people have attachment needs – friendships, relationships, perhaps a wish to have children. “Charming an opponent” can just mean to be nice to someone in an attempt to befriend them. “Controlling them” can just mean giving them the attention and care that they desire in exchange for their friendship, freely given. “Exploiting them” can just mean staying friends with them for as long as possible.

This false self is kept in place by some bad environments or by being self-reinforcing because the sadistic or Machiavellian pleasures are so much fun or because someone has done enough crap that it’s difficult to fully open up or otherwise get out of it anymore. Some have fewer constraints than others, have an easier time recognizing all their cognitive distortions, finding replacements for their antisocial pleasures, forming new habits, and much more. For others, it’s more difficult. But that doesn’t mean that perfectly prosocial behaviors can’t be reframed within the confines of the false self to allow the castellan to live a peaceful albeit lonely life.

They can use constant harmless lies control the realities of other people without any risk of detection or negative consequences. Occasional lucky coincidental effects of these lies they can interpret as mind control. If they’ve been lovely to someone, the person will show them goodwill, and they can privately reframe that as having manipulated them. They may even become aware that others are playing a cooperative game, much unlike the antagonistic one that they’re playing, but it’ll be in their interest to act as if they were playing the same cooperative game to maintain the trust of the “opponent,” except that they’re thereby effectively playing a cooperative game too. There doesn’t have to be a final “treacherous turn” either if what they want most is friendship. Naturally, you can never know that.

But the world is highly uncertain in countless ways, and the future is even more unknowable, so having a friend who lies to you all the time and perhaps has made up a wholly new persona for you is perhaps just good practice for making robustly positive decisions under uncertainty. If they control your reality but you outsmart them strategically, both of you get to feel superior to each other: win-win!

Finally, there is the real recovery, when they set aside the game reality and look at the world how it really is, learn to mentalize well, open up to trusted friends for no reason but to set themselves free.

Tier 5: Malignant Narcissism – The Besieged Fortress

• Core dynamic. “Leeroy Jenkins!!!” (I.e. you’re alone, running into a room full of enemies to kill them all or be killed.)

• Common stabilizing features. Sadism, Machiavellianism, paranoia, unsafe environment, success through attack, primitive defenses, impaired reality-testing, hypomanic temperament, substance use, alexithymia, pervasive impaired empathy, pervasive avoidant attachment.

• Common destabilizing features. Illness, aging, depressive temperament, rationality.

• Fictional example. Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible during any of their impossible missions: There are deadly enemies to all sides, and the only way to survive is to outsneak them or to eliminate them before they can eliminate him. They’re probably all thetans anyway.

Upbringing. This is another form of sovereignism, and as such much can be transferred from tier 4. It’s not so much the addition of heightened paranoia compared to the tier 4 presentation that requires an explanation but the relative lack of it in tier 4. After all, paranoia (or “hiding the self” as the Pathological Narcissism Inventory calls it) is also part of the presentation of tiers 1–3.

Perhaps tier 4 castellans have higher levels of avoidant attachment and tier 5 castellans higher levels of disorganized attachment, so those at tier 4 feel good about themselves, admire themselves, feel powerful, and feel that others are merely lesser, unreliable, interchangeable, but not a threat to them. Meanwhile those at tier 5 feel permanently embattled, like all these others can and actually want to harm them.