Sociopath Community

Turncoat said: 

Slay said: 

Turncoat said: 

user22212 said: 

How do you deal with impulses?

Fight fire with fire!

Reinforce impulses to oppose those impulses. 

 Impulse doesn't work like that. 

With enough time and effort it actually can change the patterns. People have been snapping rubber bands on their wrists to remind themselves not to do things for decades, and rat experiments have had many shocked rodents learn to not follow their impulses of hunger. 

For addiction, there's actually drugs they can prescribe you to oppose former impulses by bombarding you with awful symptoms. It's essentially the idea behind substances like Naltrexone. 

Impulses are like reminders, and all that stops us from following them are the walls we build in it's way. Having triggered responses trigger other responses can adjust the end resulting behavior, as you can commonly see out of things like Anger Management strategies and the conditioning that follows models like "The Swear Jar". 

 You said "Reinforce impulses to oppose those impulses" then went on to describe impulse control and discipline. 

How is any of that reinforcing impulse? 

user22212 said: 

Slay said: 

You just do it. Whatever you don't just wasn't rewarding enough. 

Chapo said: 

Just do it!

That's how you end up in jail tho.

 You asked how "we" deal with it and you got your answer 🤷‍♂️

Slay said: 

Turncoat said: 

Slay said: 

Turncoat said: 

user22212 said: 

How do you deal with impulses?

Fight fire with fire!

Reinforce impulses to oppose those impulses. 

 Impulse doesn't work like that. 

With enough time and effort it actually can change the patterns. People have been snapping rubber bands on their wrists to remind themselves not to do things for decades, and rat experiments have had many shocked rodents learn to not follow their impulses of hunger. 

For addiction, there's actually drugs they can prescribe you to oppose former impulses by bombarding you with awful symptoms. It's essentially the idea behind substances like Naltrexone. 

Impulses are like reminders, and all that stops us from following them are the walls we build in it's way. Having triggered responses trigger other responses can adjust the end resulting behavior, as you can commonly see out of things like Anger Management strategies and the conditioning that follows models like "The Swear Jar". 

 You said "Reinforce impulses to oppose those impulses" then went on to describe impulse control and discipline. 

How is any of that reinforcing impulse? 

Other impulses, like having a nervous feeling follow wanting a drink from conditioning the response. You need a counteractive impulse to reduce how autopilot following the desires would otherwise be. 

Even with Naltrexone, the desire to drink will persist, but an association similar to if some food at a restaurant gave you an aversion to eating there again is applied on top of their former desire to drink. That is literally fighting impulses by forming new ones to fight them back. 

By creating two aspects to it that oppose each other, it forces the person to at least think about it more. Even someone who has to barter with themselves before going through reckless behavior is less of an at risk case than someone who just runs head first towards them. In AA terms, even the chip is basically a mindhack of sunken cost, giving them yet one more reason not to fall back into alcohol by targeting their sense of investment and a sense of shame. 

Turncoat said: 

user22212 said: 

Turncoat said: 

Slay said: 

Turncoat said: 

user22212 said: 

How do you deal with impulses?

Fight fire with fire!

Reinforce impulses to oppose those impulses. 

 Impulse doesn't work like that. 

With enough time and effort it actually can change the patterns. People have been snapping rubber bands on their wrists to remind themselves not to do things for decades, and rat experiments have had many shocked rodents learn to not follow their impulses of hunger. 

For addiction, there's actually drugs they can prescribe you to oppose former impulses by bombarding you with awful symptoms. It's essentially the idea behind substances like Naltrexone. 

Impulses are like reminders, and all that stops us from following them are the walls we build in it's way. Having triggered responses trigger other responses can adjust the end resulting behavior, as you can commonly see out of things like Anger Management strategies and the conditioning that follows models like "The Swear Jar". 

 I don't know how well those negative reinforcement tactics work in this case.  Positive reinforcement for successfully fighting the undesirable impulse is a way better alternative.

Only Naltrexone is technically the negative one over how it takes away your ability to enjoy the alcohol at all. The rest introduce something instead of taking something away from the scenario. 

The field uses the words more like math. 

I still think what you're describing is more negative reinforcement. In a way that "bad behaviour is punished". For both the swearing jar thing and the rubber band thing, you're still getting punished for engaging in the patterns you want changed. Was thinking of some guidline that showed treatment of ASPD patients works better if they do stuff like https://www.recovery.org/treatment-therapy/contingency-management/ without any negative reinforcement.

I'd imagine the methods you describe would be ineffective for stopping impulses for a sociopath. Perhaps with 100% rigorous application of the punishment it may work. There's also stuff showing ASPDs can stop doing action A if action A always causes negative consequence B, like normal people. However if B only happens sometimes, and sometimes they get away with it, it becomes extremely difficult for them to stop it.

user22212 said:

I still think what you're describing is more negative reinforcement. In a way that "bad behaviour is punished".

"Bad behavior is punished" stems into both positive and negative punishments though. 

Negative punishment is taking things away, like ridding them of friends privileges by grounding them, while Positive punishment is introducing something to the mix, like a spanking. 

user22212 said:

I'd imagine the methods you describe would be ineffective for stopping impulses for a sociopath.

Relying on ASPD to manage itself is mostly why it wouldn't work, but if it was put into some sort of program where others managed it for them? Maybe.