The sociopath’s itch

I’m suffering from a very specific sociopathic malady just at the moment: boredom. You may think that doesn’t sound so bad, but to a sociopath it’s a huge problem, something we can’t shake off or ignore or alleviate except by extreme measures.

I’m forming a theory that this is a big part of the reason behind the nonsensical and downright destructive acts we are notorious for. At a time when any normal balanced person would be satisfied, even happy with everything they’ve achieved and the love of those around them, with the feeling that tomorrow will be a lot like today or perhaps even a little bit better … that seems to be when the scumbag sociopathic brain goes haywire and demands a crisis. If one isn’t conveniently available, one must be manufactured.

So divorce or a breakup followed by serial dating and a new seduction; being promoted or headhunted OR fired – all these provide excitement, chaos to be skillfully negotiated, new people to be charmed and controlled and moulded. You’ll notice that the negative experiences carry the same value as the positive. It shouldn’t make sense, but to us it does. Change is good, and because of our tendency to grandiosity we think we’re equal to anything. We can do anything, deal with anything, overcome anything. We’re not afraid.
Sadly when we charge off for our shiny new adventure we can forget that not everybody finds it quite so wonderful, and that it impacts on others in ways we hadn’t considered or felt responsible for.

So can this be controlled? I’m sure everybody has episodes in their lives where they would like to change something but can’t achieve it immediately for whatever reason. A normal, non-disordered individual will put up with it, I assume, make the best of it and it passes – or take steps to change things in a sensible away, like retraining or taking up a new hobby. That’s the adult response to this situation, right? Well, there’s where our faulty wiring discounts dealing with things like a responsible grown up.

It’s impossible. It’s intolerable. It’s the single most distracting, uncomfortable feeling in the world, and it can’t be ignored. It’s like waking up one day to find your skin is 2 sizes too small and itches all over. It’s like having a tiny spot of something revolting held near your face so that everything you see, taste and smell is contaminated by it. Everything is wrong. Everything is irritating, enraging, stupid, pointless, devalued. It can’t be reasoned away, and it builds and builds and builds until something explodes. It doesn’t help that we know damn well we don’t deserve any sympathy for being extremely affected by something so trivial, so we can’t share and discuss as we might if our feelings made more sense to our friends and family. Incidentally the last time I felt like this, before I knew about my disorder, I did visit my family doctor and was diagnosed with stress and depression. I was signed off work for months, prescribed anti-depressant medication and sent to counselling sessions. So although the cause is trivial, the effects clearly aren’t.

The interesting thing I’ve found, in discussing with other people like me, is that for all of us it happens on a regular cycle. The length of the cycle varies from one to another, but for me it appears roughly every three years. It hasn’t been obvious up until now because with that timescale, naturally-occurring events in my life have often provided change at just the right time. Job changes, pregnancy, college etc all synchronised with my cycle and I haven’t often found myself feeling this way. I’ve also been lucky that the changes I’ve made have fit with the needs of my partner and family, and we’ve never found ourselves materially or emotionally worse off.

A Twitter conversation the other night reminded me, though, of some of the small-scale stupid things I’ve done without really knowing why. This one in particular – I shaved my hair off on a whim (from shoulder-length) because I was fed up with growing out a particular colour. It never looked right, it was in terrible condition, but rather than wait to see a hairdresser I just took the clippers to it. It didn’t look anything like as sexy as I’d convinced myself it would, of course … Along the same lines, I spent quite a lot of money on a new working wardrobe in a total departure from my usual style. This time I had the sense to involve a professional shopper, so I’m pleased to say the result was everything I could have hoped for. I’ve changed specialism and industry and sector, and applied for new jobs I wasn’t strictly qualified for, without even considering how I would manage the travel, the childcare or the hours. At least twice I was successful too – and while that has been amazing for my career development it has meant a lot of retrospective common-sense planning was needed to make it viable.

Here’s a final point; when we do these dumb ill-considered things, we make the best of them and cope with the fallout as it affects us, which then confirms our belief that we are amazing and adaptable and capable and possibly invincible. We don’t fail nearly as often as we deserve to, in a ‘fair’ universe.