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>The only people that should be using the word sociopath to describe the behavior of others are people in the field of mental health care. Why diagnose people?
by xor1 8y ago
>The only people that should be using the word sociopath to describe the behavior of others are people in the field of mental health care. Why diagnose people? Call them out on behavior that pisses you off, deal with it in an assertive manner. Calling a sociopath a sociopath in a non clinical context would only give them more power.
This is a good rule of thumb, calling out a high-functioning Cluster B will almost always just make you look crazy unless you have completely damning evidence. Even then you're probably running afoul of laws or policies, coupled with the general stigma of discussing mental health in any way.
The real issue is dealing with the barrage of lies and manipulation that they'll use to defend themselves. There's that saying that disproving bullshit requires an order of magnitude more effort than the bullshit itself. You will never win against one of them unless you go down to their level, and most people aren't capable of doing that. It takes a wolf to catch a wolf.
I think that more and more people are becoming aware of Cluster B personality disorders, and how high-functioning narcissists, sociopaths, and borderlines act in a professional setting. In many cases, this involves the realization that one's self and/or one's loved ones display significant traits, perhaps even enough for a diagnosis.
If you recognize it in others and you don't have the power or means to stop them, the best thing to do is to just leave if you think they're going to ruin things or individually place you at risk.
- mjfl 8y agoreplace "narcissists, sociopaths, and borderlines" with "Leos, Tauruses, and Pisces" and you'll realize you're assigning arbitrary labels to people you don't like without actually knowing anything about them.
- dreamcompiler 8y agoNo. These people exploit loopholes in social trust contracts to gain personal power. It's not about liking them or disliking them. Recognizing their techniques is a learnable skill. Such people really are quite different from the norm, but without training you won't spot them because they're very good at blending in. Sociopaths, narcissists, and borderlines are real, they are of a particular kind, and their differentness is not bullshit like astrological star signs.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- s-shellfish 8y agoHow can you know what a sociopath is without being one?
- dreamcompiler 8y agoHow can you know what an alcoholic is without being one?
- s-shellfish 8y agoEmpathy?
- xor1 8y agoHow can you recognize evil if you are not evil?
- s-shellfish 8y agoI don't think I'd be able to, honestly. Evil is a loaded word, millennia of oversimplification to explain a process that's much more complicated. Is a lion evil when it tears apart an antelope and eats it alive, or is that just it's instinct, it's nature, without higher cognition? Again, evil, loaded term. People do terrible things, but I'm not a psychologist, and honestly, I'm not a sociopath, so why would I decide to act like a sociopath to sociopaths (lack empathy), and allow myself to be convinced that that somehow fixes the problem? That's like believing killing is going to get rid of war. Clearly I'm privileged to never have experienced such things directly, but I can understand why some Buddhist monks self immolate as a form of protest.
- s-shellfish 8y agoThank you for your comment. I like Zen Buddhism because the meaning of 'the inherent emptiness of all things' means to me 'stop thinking about how other people think, and let them think on their own'. Accept things at face value and be responsible for your own direction, if you don't like the people you are surrounded with, surround yourself with different people. Too often I think we become complacent, trying to change what we can't change. Haters gonna hate? Hate just leads to self hate, whether it stays internalized, or leaks out, comes back to the self through another self. I wish there was less of it. Trying to fix the problem independently... How? Finding like minded people, and so the wheel turns...
- xor1 8y agoYou can call them whatever you want to. Judge them based on their actions and behavior. It's not about liking or disliking anyone.
- s-shellfish 8y agoStop diagnosing people. Sometimes people do careless things. You don't have to affix a label to them in your mind in order to deal with the problem, because what do you think is going to happen to that person's mind if everyone affixes a label to that person's mind without having the education to actually diagnose the problem, nor the intent to medically heal? Culture has gotten idiotic when it decided sociopathy and psychopathy equate to some form of superpower.