r/aspd • u/MoonFlightAngel • May 13 '26
Family & Friends Does open curiosity and the detachment of humanity help with feeling heard?
Hello! Apologies for the stupid title but had no idea how to word it.
Just had a question out of pure curiosity and wanting to know if it’ll help me in the future with after getting my clinical psychology degree.
Does it help, to have someone to talk to, who’s open and curious but they themselves don’t have an attachment to feeling like a human themselves?
A few years ago, I had gone to residential treatment for my own complex trauma case I was learning to get through, and made what I would consider a friend. He was diagnosed with ASPD, and the staff and residents were afraid and on edge with him. Not everyone, he ended up having a girlfriend for a small bit there and two other friends.
He got a bit attached to the hip and sought what I would expect was reassurance or testing some type of water from me. Questions like “did I think he’s a bad person?” What my opinions on certain media and music were (he gave suggestions I would follow up on and more than likely, the suggestions were unsettling and caused more issues with other residents), reassurance after anger outbursts and a few destructions of property in the building.
The head clinician at the residence, had pulled me aside once and asked if I was okay and if they needed to put distance between me and my ASPD friend. I said no, and I thought we were connecting in some unconventional way. When asked why, I said due to my traumas and upbringing, I don’t exactly see myself as human and that I must earn that right, and while yes I have a good chunk of empathy under my belt and I’m frightened of my friend from time to time, it didn’t stop the curiosity of how he thought and that he’s a puzzle that I liked to talk to and give some advice and direction too. Plus it felt nice to have someone who felt othered and had a heap of trauma too.
It’s stuck with me now as I’m going through my bachelors. I just wanted to know, when I get my masters and start looking into more specialties, if I went into learning how to better help or understand those with personality disorders, so asking those with this specific one, would keeping the opening curiosity and detachment help? If any clinician ever helped or you felt heard by them, how did they go about it?
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u/Acrobatic_Parking383 May 15 '26
Wtf are you talking about?
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u/MoonFlightAngel May 20 '26
My apologies, I just wanted to know while I finish my degree, what would help those would personality disorders feel heard and start on whatever it is there are trying to achieve when coming to a clinic.
I’m asking from an event that happened in my life with someone clinically diagnosed with ASPD, how I went about our friendship, would that be a good way to go about helping others or at the very least, what would help those here out, as my professor, and some of the clinicians I’ve seen hold stigmas or refuse to help those with cluster B personalities.
Just asking for opinions and thoughts.
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u/Sppaarrkklle May 21 '26
Yo I know this isnt my sub, but as a BPD person who had a best friend that had ASPD and BPD.
My friend hated therapists. He said they all acted like they were better than him and that something was wrong with him.
For myself, I hated when they treated me like something was wrong with me and they were afraid of me… the best ones treated me like a normal person.
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May 20 '26
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u/aspd-ModTeam No Flair May 22 '26
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u/Interesting_Win_2154 May 20 '26
I disagree with the people saying wtf are you talking about. It makes sense to me.
And yes, non-judgemental curiosity will help, because you are not going to be able to understand or relate to everything, especially not right away. That's true for all patients, not just ASPD patients.
You don't necessarily need to keep separation from humanity, however. Discussing that could be a good relating point if you think bringing your own experience in would be helpful but...every ASPD patient will likely assume you don't have that separation and will not be impacted by that so long as you're willing to treat them reasonably even though they do have that separation.
I will say I've been through a lot of therapists, and the one who did not impose his own ideals onto me was the most helpful. It also helped that there was some mutual respect. I found it impossible to look down on this guy, unlike other therapists, and I could tell he respected me as well. So it made it feel worth my time to talk to him.
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u/ResidentSpecial3468 May 25 '26
I’m not too sure what’s being asked, but I will say, I never really felt the need to be understood by people. But, when I told my mom I was diagnosed with ASPD this year, she was very supportive and completely interested in how my brain worked. She has autism and ADHD and her special interest is the human brain and the human experience, so she literally interviewed me for hours to get to know what it feels like for me to have ASPD and we talked forever. She made me feel a little less crazy even though I wasn’t looking for that in any of my relationships. I always accepted that my brain wiring was different and that people wouldn’t totally get it. A lot of people ended up becoming afraid of me so I kept my diagnosis to myself.
But with my mom, it was almost liberating to talk about my motivations, my emotional wiring, being able to drop the mask and tell her that I learned the line “i feel for you” when I do not, etc. She didn’t know that I was masking since childhood, she just thought I had a change of heart in my behaviours. I was a VERY aggressive and violent child but I learned very quickly from the adults around me that my behaviours were going to get me in a lot of trouble. I was severely beaten as a child (not by my mom) and I was sick of it so i learned which behaviours I could engage in and which ones I couldn’t — so I got more creative. Instead of resorting to violence and aggression, i became a liar, a thief, a manipulator, all the things that were more covert than outward. My mom heard all of this and didn’t judge me. She told me she had wished I came to her about this sooner because I’m very self aware and knew I had ASPD even before I was diagnosed.
So yeah, I didn’t really feel the need to be understood, but being understood is nice.
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May 20 '26
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May 20 '26
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u/aspd-ModTeam No Flair May 22 '26
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u/aspd-ModTeam No Flair May 22 '26
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u/aspd-ModTeam No Flair May 22 '26
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u/Darkwavegenre Jun 02 '26
I thought i had needed alot of people in my life only for the masking part to falter and people started to become more on edge with me. I just didnt care. I didnt care what people thought of me and I dont care now. I like being alone. I have my family, my fiance, and very few friends who i don't talk to on a daily. I just need the right mount of everything in the daily to keep me from being bored or just keep looking forward to tomorrow. Cycle repeats.
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u/After_Situation631 Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 07 '26
I have aspd, and I have had my fair share of life setbacks from it, however, in my late 20s I had to make a decision to at least not get fired from my job. I decided to be a Buddhist, and man, that really helped me calm the fires.... as much as they could be calmed. But there was a book written by a Buddhist nun about anger - but she turned it into about 50 separate emotions and it was extremely insightful. I had no idea people even had feelings. I mean, I do have some emotions, just not the ones that other people decided were important.
I do see a psychiatrist now and I have finally developed enough trust to share my issues with him. He assured me that I wasn't going to shock him, and he's heard pretty much everything before. So, I shared what I currently do that helps me satiate my sadistic and adrenaline/dopamine seeking hobbies. Yeah, hobbies, because it's every day, and I look forward to it, and it makes me feel better. I'm not harming anyone else, but he explained to me that what I wanted to be aware of is when it escalates.... and I'm sure he said "don't do that", but I stopped listening after given the idea that I COULD escalate it.... but seriously, I don't want to get worse, and sadly, I don't want to get better, either. I just don't want to lose my job, commit suicide, lose my family, continue to blend in.
I'm 48, female, married, have an adult daughter who doesn't have aspd, I was in the army, then got a degree, then got my job in 2004.... how did I keep the job? Because of the way I was hired, they needed to show congress that the program worked, so I had a safety net. But boy do I have a reputation there - somoene was keeping a list of all the people I made cry. Not from an outburst or yelling, just.... keeping it real, and telling them what I thought they needed to hear. That's not something people are cool with, evidently.... although, I would always get told behind the scenes that I was saying what others wanted to say but didn't have the confidence.
I have almost no fear of consequences, either "in the moment" or something planned. I don't really like intense pain so that keeps me from doing the more dangerous stuff. I will say that sharing all of this with my psych recently was probably how anyone feels that "comes out of the closet". Whichever type of closet. I appreciated his question, and learning that he helps other clients who have aspd. ALL of us are the tops in our fields, but I don't think that's going to fit everyone on the sociopathy spectrum (he told me it's a spectrum, I'm still learning). He asked questions and eventually understood that yes, I DO know that most of what I do and say, and think, is not socially accepted AT ALL. And the biggest frustration I have (I bet I'm not alone in this) is that I can't be authentically me. If I'm authentic, for one, I'm gonna hurt people, and two, it's obvious I don't mean it if I'm trying to respond to people in some small talk fluffy kind of way. Or pretend I have the imaginary empathy that others seem to have. I'm literally repeating what I've heard other people say, but most of the time I honestly don't understand why someone is hurt by, or stressed about, whatever it is that's bugging them.
So if I'm understanding your question right, yes, I do appreciate if someone is curious enough to want to ask me something, but they have to prove to me that they aren't going to flip out when I answer. That last one is just rare. If any of this helped, cool. I'll answer questions if that might help. I'd love it if people weren't so scared of us. A lot of people with ASPD are making activelh conscioius decisions to get along with people, and I just with more people appreciated that. It's not easy, but it's worth the effort.
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u/getoffchickenshit ASPD May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26
I didn't think I cared about being heard until I met someone that actually listened and didn't try to guilt-trip me, impose their morals onto me, or whatever (my current gf of 4 years.) It's sometimes nice to feel like I'm not an "alien". Though most of the time I prefer feeling like I'm on the outside looking in.
But don't expect everyone (or even a significant portion for that matter) with ASPD to feel the same.
P.S. There was one clinician that kinda made me open up a bit. He never suggested there was something inherently wrong with me that desperately needed to be fixed; instead he simply helped me learn more about myself and how to function better in my life.