Sociopath Community

Daniella stated: source post

 

Turncoat stated: source post

I'd be more likely to believe it if multiple schizophrenics could witness the same things simultaneously without having to have one sell the idea to the other for it to happen. I'd also believe it if their visions didn't reflect their own minds so strongly. 
 

by this logic, nothing is real because everyone does have their own different take on everything. no one perceives anything the same, so how come different hallucinations mean one is wrong and the other isn't?

Everything is subjective, but there's more of a common line to be found between people as a whole when compared to just schizophrenics. In that sense it's easier to trust the larger average over the nearly non-existent crazy one, as at least the former has a stronger sense of consistency. 

I can point at something and have others confirm it's there. I can the following day ask what it was I pointed at and get a referential answer that closely matches. Between a large group of people hallucinating, the ability to call upon the same sights is highly improbable, coincidental most likely from similar visual cues being in their environment (like if the room had a stained glass installation that'd risk inspiring similar creative strains). Both carry bias that skews their vision, but it's easier to form the appearance of an objective average between "I saw a half empty vase" and "I saw a half full vase" when compared to "I saw a Venus Flytrap that wants to eat my soul whenever I have bad thoughts" and "I saw a phoenix made of water that, through touching me, I saw God". 

Of course this opens up room for "are those people you're asking even real, or are they contributing further to your own delusion", but that's the sort of thinking that, through solipsist self-religious zeal, can lead to the more dangerous forms of magical thinking that can serve to cripple a potentially delusional person's psyche even further. Even beyond the minds eye solely, functioning successfully in your environment is an important aspect of living. Fearing that every person around you are actually murderous monsters in human suits who haven't recognized that you're the last human left... is going to lead to more problems than seeing them as your peers for instance. 

While I could argue the logistics of how "reality" makes more sense than one's hallucinatory perceptions, it opens the doorway for "But what is real? How do you know?" trains of thought that, while I enjoy them, are unprovable beyond the need for it. As such, I'll settle with "I function better within what I believe is a collective reality as opposed to sticking to my own solely". 

Turncoat stated: source post

 

Buttered Toast stated: source post

What once was deemed "childlike wonder" has turned into chronic dissociative analysis. Almost a constant third-person view

I don't know if I ever had much along the lines of childlike wonder. Third person's what I remember being pretty far back (around age four). The only times I've really felt like I was within myself is, typically, when I'm in an episode. 
 

Well, what I mean here is that all that felt like innocent curiosity, figuring things out has now turned in on itself, in a way.  I can't help thinking of things in terms of particles, interactions, points on a field, etc.  In a reflexive way that can be hard to explain, there's some urge to lay over the topography of everything going on around me in terms of all this stuff.  It plucks me right out of whatever previous state of mind I was in.  There's huge in-rush of this weird hypersensitivity to the moment in time and it feels too real.  What may have been seen as imaginative child activity has metastasized into this. 

I've learned to veer from certain thoughts, but it's changed nature and become a little more intrusive, compulsive and exhausting arguing with myself.

That "changed nature" has always been me. Until I was a sophomore in college, the inner dialogue of my mind felt like eight voices at once yelling with me trying to decipher my own thoughts from the remains. None of them could ever agree on anything to the point where I didn't even know which ones were me and which ones were devils advocate until a post-debrief. Some dreams required a similar debrief to separate which was real and which was strangely convincing fiction. 

My "nothing is truth" conclusion likely stems from this. Even with my mind being more centered however I still seem unsure about any sense of self beyond data. With others at least their sense of self can interact with my data, while by myself there's some sort of divide present beyond past revelations that... now feel like just more data.

Well, this has come in different waves and forms.  These voices have changed their own personality, in a way.  The one I've found fairly recently is almost an embodiment of the thoughts I have given up trying to think of myself as myself.  It's almost like a Siri or Cortana in my own head that doles out things I know I should know but need to take in proper pieces.  I know this sounds a little out there, and it's the hardest thing to explain and keep from landing me in some sort of intervention or whatever.  ...The Knowing Voice.  It's just thoughts.  I know this, or at least this is what I do to keep a buffer between thought, conclusion and action.

While it seems the "noise in the head" would do well to have peace and quiet and solitude, that's when it raises its volume.

More noise always seems like the way to try to tune out an episode. If not for that, it gets too loud on it's own. I used to turn on every television and raise the volume while streaming music loudly on my computers to try to make it all shut up. 
 

Yep.  Sleep is also an exercise in basically getting to the point of exhaustion and physically have to sleep, pretty much.

Having people around and others to bump against, certainly has a stabilizing effect without which all concept of ground beneath the feet vanishes.

They become the new focus, a grounding resource of study. As long as I am obsessing over their lives I can tune out the chaotic aspects of my own. Through others I find a sense of order and structure, while alone the mind will invent things to worry about. 

I was briefly agoraphobic and almost germophobic once I left college and my OCDs began to return in full swing. Once I was around people for long enough, once I recognized that those behaviors were maladaptive for socializing and felt challenged to not respond to it, that started to disappear, but when alone there's no one to passively correct the problems as I lose a sense of perspective, a skewed and nonsensical mental landscape in lieu of a reference point of where I once was. When it's not that, the Nihilism and retard-angst goes full throttle and I feel like I just want everything to stop. 
 

Predictability is often what defeats interest in people.  Instead of worrying about things going on in the skull, it turns into just not getting enough out of people to be able to pull thoughts away from themselves.  The mundane and vapid situations are essentially just another form silence to be filled in, since there's little to engage away from it.

Being an admitted schizoid, I recognize my impulse for solitude isn't necessarily a good idea.

An old friend of mine (with the same disorder) was fairly similar. Having someone that challenged him to socialize without pushing him too hard when he needed his reading/game time made for a good balance. 
 

There are some people in my life that actually do help with that, so I can sympathize with that friend of yours.

Anyway, the satori I have had was complete and total connectedness and a thorough assurance that all that is happening or will happen or can happen will be fine, no matter what.  I forgot the day after that initial dip into that soothing, warm ocean of being...  People tell me I was uncharacteristically cheerful, affable, and so on.  I remember times I tried thinking of what I used to imagine as bad, just to see if this feeling could retain its integrity, which it did...then the waves washed my sense of self away and I was just "in it."

That to me honestly sounds frightening. It sounds like it borders on cultish descent if not some frightening form of delusional madness. 

Then again, what few times I've been close to happy I've shut down out of reflexive fear. I don't feel comfortable with most forms of it beyond stimulation. 
 

Well, in the moment, it was heavenly, it really was.  In retrospect it's worrisome, because it just has me wonder if something broke in my brain, like some euphoria valve being busted open.  It really was a lot like taking ecstasy, but far earlier than when I would later actually try the real thing.  However, I was much more (seemingly) lucid during the episode.  It frightens me how a mind can feel one way at a certain and situation, then totally different elsewhere and elsewhen.  Always in the moment "it just is" but that's little comfort in retrospect.  Being at the mercy of one's own vicissitudes is disconcerting to me.  It still bothers me that every night we undergo a period of time, apparently alive, with little to no memory of the experiences (and really, those are only a fraction of activity taking place).  A thought I try to veer from before it has me chasing my own tail again.

The aftermath of these things really brings you back to a very hard crash.

A crash? Is your euphoria a sort of mania? 
 

Yes, and no.  Just a stark contrast of mood.  The mood during the episode was great, easy, natural, real.  In so many ways, it seems like coming out of that was like waking from a dream.  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, sort of.  It wasn't quite mania and it wasn't like a consequent depression was to follow, just a bit confused and concerned.  Just more of the feedback-loop kind of fodder my mind loves to chew on, even if it's not good for me.

When I come to those feedback loops and racing thoughts and rapid causal thinking (that seems to jump to conclusions)

I'm not sure that I understand what you specifically are meaning with this one. 

Well, I can identify with the "laughter" portion of a satori experience.  Those "crazy thoughts" usually evoke a strange sort of inner laughter and amusement, teetering on that edge again.  I can sort of foresee upcoming loops or circular thinking and racing thoughts, and the completely impossible positions I find myself going to mentally just kinda...leads to that sort of exasperated type of humor...  I dunno very hard to explain.  I just picture it as the laughter of madness, which is the completely inarticulate way to explain it that I can muster right now.  Instead of any anxiety over it now, it usually kinda gets laughed off.  A joke to be shared with myself.

Buttered Toast stated: source post

I know this sounds a little out there, and it's the hardest thing to explain and keep from landing me in some sort of intervention or whatever.     

Nah, this sounds kind of relatable. I can't imagine really feeling like I'm a part of the human suit beyond feeling trapped inside of it, like being unable to unlock the doors of a car from the inside. What sounds different is that you don't see a sense of you, just voices, while I saw those voices, all of them at once, as different aspects of me. It's not coming from anything external, so it must be me even when it doesn't feel native.

When parts of myself are written off as not myself, that's another portal towards magical thinking risks, one that could potentially lead to command hallucinations. At least seeing it as yourself can grant a little more of an ability to correct it.

What's scaring me more now is that I'm having trouble hearing myself.
 

Predictability is often what defeats interest in people.  Instead of worrying about things going on in the skull, it turns into just not getting enough out of people to be able to pull thoughts away from themselves.  The mundane and vapid situations are essentially just another form silence to be filled in, since there's little to engage away from it.    

Predictability gets rid of much of the novelty (hence why I tend to find disordered people more interesting), but it also can become a craft of it's own overtime. Mapping probabilities through your own system and watching/measuring how people's schematics will likely combine and clash when introduced to one another can replace the original fledgling form of human interest. It takes the single individual and applies them to a large map that everyone falls onto somewhere, like if ripples in a pond were induced by food dye and measured through a map with coordinates that can translate into something more tangible after the fact.
 

However, I was much more (seemingly) lucid during the episode.

The "seemingly" is the scariest part. Impression's a damn liar more often than not, which is why it helps to try to get yourself to write things down when in the throes of strange behaviors. "Normal" can be quite shocking when you look at it later and realize that you'd been blind spotting the "Ab-" without any referential means of noting it. 

With enough notes, you can create mental bookmarks that will help you realize what's going on beyond your own feelings.

Schizophrenia is not a real disease. It's all in your imagination, mate.

Turncoat stated: source post

I'd be more likely to believe it if multiple schizophrenics could witness the same things simultaneously without having to have one sell the idea to the other for it to happen. I'd also believe it if their visions didn't reflect their own minds so strongly. 

This reminds me of a story I read about three schizophrenics at a psych ward. All three thought they were God. Someone hatched the idea to put them in a room together for an hour. When they were released, they proclaimed they were the Holy Trinity.

Turncoat stated: source post

I'd be more likely to believe it if multiple schizophrenics could witness the same things simultaneously without having to have one sell the idea to the other for it to happen. I'd also believe it if their visions didn't reflect their own minds so strongly. 
 

by this logic, nothing is real because everyone does have their own different take on everything. no one perceives anything the same, so how come different hallucinations mean one is wrong and the other isn't?

The thread appears to have evolved from the original intent but good attempt to get it back on track. 

The original intent failed. Ed doesn't see the point in it and I prefer commenting on those that wanted to see it happen. 

This cyber war should be settled with Ed possessing and conquering turncoat's round boipucci tbh

Buttered Toast stated: source post

Oh, and by those racing thoughts and "rapid causal thinking" I mean the kind that seems like unconnected thinking when considered from an outside perspective -- like trying to explain sudden correlations you make to someone, or not showing your work in math (but still correct), like it's too fast to "language" the thoughts.

I have that problem, mainly because i make categories in my mind and label these categories for faster reference, but people usually do not know what i mean when i say something that involves the names of these categories, because people can't read my mind. And i say it like that, because it would take me forever to explain otherwise as i have to think up the definition of each category and it may even contain sub categories. Now some people can understand me, like one of my friends, i think he has a similar thought pattern.

When i write i have time to figure this out and its much easier to explain what i am thinking.

This is why i say things are always simple. Because a category always is simple, but it may consist of many sub categories. The total collection of categories might be a complex object, but why look at it as a complex object, that will only lead to confusion. Best to look at the part that concerns the topic of your thoughts at the current time.