A diagnosed psychopath who doesn’t feel guilt or empathy reveals a ‘toxic’ trait that led him to seek help.

Jamie is a diagnosed psychopath. This is his story in his own words:

For psychopathy, you are like computer code that only processes information. You get this information that says ‘here’s a potential opportunity’, and it goes through the flow chart and just comes up with the answer.

There is no one in the driver’s seat. There is no car. No one can be driven at all.

My feeling of being different from other people was often seen as a feeling of superiority. I used to look at other people and see that this person is caught up in their insecurities, this person is caught up in how they look at other people and it hurts.

I thought, “Oh, why do they choose to care what other people think?” It seemed that they chose to suffer.

“What is compassion?”

When I was maybe nine years old, [my dad and I] they were watching business. I grew up in the 1980s and there was a famine in Ethiopia. There were many advertisements showing malnourished African children with flies in their eyes. And I said, “Why doesn’t this kid get the fly out of his eye?”

I said something about how stupid this kid was. Then the father said, “Don’t you have compassion?” And I said, “What is compassion?”

I think you tried to explain it. And I said, “I guess I don’t know.”

That was like when I first realized that there was something that other people felt, that I didn’t.

“Am I sick of being choked by opossums?”

I think most people have a hard time killing a baby opossum.

My publisher [of memoir Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight] he said something about killing animals, burning – like pyro, whatever – and stabbing, which are said to be three signs of psychopathy in children. [called the MacDonald triad].

I thought, I have never killed animals. And then I thought, “Oh, I did that once.”

I was in my early 20s, teaching summer swimming lessons during college using my parents’ pool.

I saw this baby opossum in the pond, and I thought that maybe the only thing that had to happen in this situation was to kill it. That is the easiest solution. I will not be able to catch it in the net. I have this phobia. Opossums scare me.

So I tried to drown it. I was reading it. A baby opossum has difficulty breathing. I always remember it. I drag it for five minutes, and I say, “Am I going to get choked by opossums?” I guess so.

I got on the phone with the people who were going to do private lessons, and I said, “I’m sorry I have to cancel. There is a problem with the pool today. ”

People always forget that I didn’t kill an opossum. I tried.

“I probably stole $2,000 worth of small stuff”

I’ve done a lot of things that would have gotten me caught and locked up – not like probation or anything.

One of my favorites was this big shoplifting project that I had at BYU – the Mormon University in Utah, Brigham Young University. I studied music.

I may have stolen $2,000 worth of small property. I had both respect and disrespect for BYU students, because they are very nice and always look for the best in other people.

I just had every steal I could find. I used to steal bikes all the time at BYU, they left them unlocked. I thought of it like renting a bike.

I went to the lost and found, mostly for books that I knew I could explain. I’ll be like, “Oh, I miss my music book or something.” They will say, “Is that it?” Then I go upstairs, two levels to the bookstore from lost and found, and I just sell it to them again.

“You might want to consider the possibility that you are a human expert?”

After I failed in music – because I couldn’t get into master’s programs and I didn’t qualify to be a professional musician – I thought, “What can I turn to? Oh, the law is simple.”

I loved law school. It was a logical, logical thing. I learned that I love truth and honesty.

After my first year, I clerked at the federal prosecutor’s office. I was sharing an office with this other law student from a different school. I was very honest with him about the different things I experienced compared to other people.

After a few weeks of talking freely with people, he said, “You might want to think about the possibility that you’re a social worker.”

So I looked it up in the search engine, and found this website that has [the] criteria for being a psychopath. And I just went through the list, and I thought, go, check, check, check, there I am.

I didn’t hear anything about it. It was like learning that your 18th great grandfather was the king of Spain.

In fact, I felt it gave me a big advantage. Well, some people like sympathy, and maybe it’s good for them, but it seems better for me not to be sympathetic.

I still don’t feel fear. I never had the feeling of imposter syndrome. I see these inspirational words as the same, everything we want is on the other side of fear. And I think, what should it be like to live such a life, where that fear interferes with the things you want, often.

Especially as a lawyer – and honestly, even as a musician – it was just good. I was like a robot doing things.

“As if you were a god”

One of the things I went to therapy for was that I realized I couldn’t stop controlling my relationships.

I read my friend’s newspaper in college. He probably would, that was like a serious invasion of privacy. And I would say, yes, that was a huge invasion of privacy. But at the same time, I need more information to trick you.

You don’t like the job your friend has. I could pretend to be my friend and send a CV to another law firm where he could work.

You see that someone has replied from work about something, and you move it to the archive where you know it will cause them problems. That would be something I would totally do. You see it’s a quick message, like you’re calling me right away, and you turn off the notifications so they don’t see it.

You don’t see it as a bad thing, just because you make them have problems at work, then they end up quitting.

You don’t like the guy your friend is dating. You arrive late on purpose, so he has to wait for you. So he shows up late for his day.

Sometimes it would be a strange thing, where it would say, “It’s him or me.” But you can say that I am doing you a favor because I, as a friend, do not see you suffering like this.

One of the stupid things about being a psychopath is that you have this sense of superiority. You feel like you are Cassandra where you see the future and know better. He is like a god.

“I had to feel alone”

I didn’t understand personal boundaries for others because I didn’t have any at all.

I had no sense of personal boundaries for. I had to support several steps and feel alone, then learn to protect that sense of self with personal boundaries.

I would say, “Okay, I got really angry about that. This must be important to me. ” That’s how I’ve learned over the years.

Then I realized what it’s like for everyone to have a sense of self, and have these personal boundaries. And they are not violated? It hurts a lot.

I realized how dangerous it is to not respect a person’s personality and their independence. You know, if she wants to date a bad guy, then that’s her choice.

I think post therapy, there are still things I don’t know, like empathy, and I don’t have the feelings people expect. I still don’t feel ashamed or guilty.

“Can you imagine a life without pretense?”

You can see why [psychopaths] make good predators because there is no ‘them’ to stop them. There is no explaining yourself or trying to stay ‘true to yourself’, because there is no one to stay true to. And when that is not there, they have just learned to try to live a very comfortable and enjoyable life.

Why is it fun? Because you can imagine a life without pretense? It feels empty and meaningless, and that’s the same reaction I get from all the psychopaths I meet. They feel a lack of meaning, and gratification is so meaningless that they seek new things.

They want fun. They are willing to destroy a good thing, they are willing to destroy a relationship, they are willing to lose everything because they do not have a real relationship with the things they have.

I think for psychopaths, the root of most of your issues is that you don’t find normal ways to express yourself, to express yourself every day, because you are not connected enough to your identity to be able to recognize the possibilities that of self-expression. to express myself.

My advice to everyone is that nothing should be sacrificed – I think in the old fashioned way, let’s say your soul. There is no point in selling your soul for anything.

Jamie runs a blog sociopathworld.com examining his psychopathic traits. He is also the author, under the pen name ME Thomas, of Confessions of a Sociopath: A Used Life Hiding in Plain Sight.