Transcript
M.E. Thomas: For those of you that are just joining in, Blake is not on yet. I texted him, called him, so he hopefully he'll see the text and kind of get on halfway through. But we have Victoria, and Victoria had a couple pieces of feedback, maybe just start talking about some of the things you've been thinking about?
Victoria: So last week I mentioned that my upbringing is pretty mediocre, and apparently my friends disagreed. So my father is for sure a narcissist, and my mother exhibits some Borderline PD traits, and both of them were so mentally unstable and explosively emotional. They were always fighting. I think more than 50% of the 17 years I lived with them, they were fighting.
M.E. Thomas: This is a kind of a common trope, is that borderline personality disorder people and psychopaths are attracted to each other, because for borderline they kind of— I think they idolize the psychopath, and they're also like... A borderline person I think, you know, has a difficulty in maintaining relationships with a neurotypical person, because they're so kind of emotionally explosive, you know, like if you had normal level of emotions and empathy, you'd be kind of like a little bit, uh, taken through the ringer, because they would just be kind of constantly taxing your emotional capacity to respond to them, you know, in a meaningful healthy way, but psychopaths, they don't care, right, you know the borderline can explode and it's basically like the next day it's like nothing happened, right, so that's kind of perfect for them, and it's kind of perfect for the psychopath people, because the borderline is so unpredictable and can be explosive that it's like entertaining for the psychopath, it's engaging for the psychopath. Do you think that's kind of like what was going on with your parents?
Victoria: I think my father is not self-aware, he's more a narcissist than a psychopath, so he's all about maintaining his image, or ideal self-image I guess.
M.E. Thomas: I see, right, that's true, okay, so he just kind of thinks that she's crazy and that he's correct?
Victoria: Yes, he lives in— I call it "alternate reality". And I think children who grew up in a household with unstable adults learn to notice every little detail, as a defense mechanism, because we are so used to small nuances just quickly and suddenly turning into breaking points, so we had to learn to like read the room, analyze the choice of word, the tone of speech, and perceive danger in the shift of facial expressions and body languages...
M.E. Thomas: I just read a tweet the other day, that was something like, strict parents think that they're teaching you like what they think they're teaching you, colon, and it was how to act, right, and then it's like what they're actually teaching you is to listen for the sound of footsteps, and to be able to lie on the at the drop of a hat, and you know, all these things just— because you know, when you're kind of strict, or care like— this is my experience at least too, is that with a narcissistic parent it's just so inconsistent, right, like you could get away with murder one day as long as you're not on his radar, you know, but if you are on his radar then who knows what would set him off? It's almost like you couldn't predict what would possibly make him angry in that way, and so you're just like— one thing that in adulthood— you know, because my parents are still together, are your parents still together?
Victoria: No, my father moved out five years ago, I've told my mom to get a divorce, but she said "what's the point? I'm not seeing other people, and I don't want the whatever neighborhood to find out", so they're still legally married but not living together, and my father hasn't gotten past the point that there's no turning back, he would still like stalk her, show up drunk and break all the flower pots, and stuff like that.
M.E. Thomas: I've heard it described that when you're in a relationship with somebody with a personality disorder, and I wonder if this is actually true of psychopaths too, that when you kind of like misbehave let's say, then the the person with the personality disorder comes down on you hard, you know, so I've heard it described like personality disorder you have some issue with your sense of self, right, your personality, your sense of identity, and to a large extent the boundaries between you and other people, right, like that's the thing that's allowing people with personality disorders to behave so poorly to other people is that they see other people as an extension of themselves, right, so in a relationship you're basically like the left foot or something of a person with a personality disorder, and it would be as if their left foot started just like walking in a different direction, you know, they can't stand for it, you know, they don't like it, because it makes them feel weird, you know, it makes them feel weird inside, to have something that's this extension of themselves be asserting themselves in these particular ways and just acting with an independence of thought that you wouldn't expect, so it's this very kind of existential conflict that occurs for them, and so that's what makes them freak out, that's the thing that really makes them angry, it's like if your ankle started just kind of like rotating or something by itself you'd be like hitting it, "STOP!"
Victoria: Yes. So I barely even talked to my father since I came to the US, and then his reaction to— you know, he has access to my social media, so he would like send me angry texts when he saw me heavily tattooed, like when he just found out that I got so many tattoos, I got belly button piercing, he would send me angry texts and I was thinking like, why do you think— like, how dare you? You didn't even act like a father for the past few years, you think you have control over my body? And also like when i got married, he got very angry, he's like, you never asked for my permission. Why do I have to? I'm not a property.
M.E. Thomas: That's super interesting, oh man, I just thought of something with my my own dad, keep going and then I'll remember it again.
Victoria: I read about a quote that i think is quite true, so it says, "Fortunate people have their whole life being healed by their childhood, but unfortunate people have to spend their whole life healing from their childhood."
M.E. Thomas: Yeah, interesting. So in this particular situation then, what is your take, you know, even as a scientist on the whole nature versus nurture divide?
Victoria: I think you have to have a genetic predisposition to be psychopathic, because I have known many people who had a traumatic childhood or like a hard life early on, and not all of them turn out to be psychopaths.
M.E. Thomas: Yeah, it is kind of true, so even— take my own dad, right, I think I mentioned this before, his childhood was like three times as bad as mine, maybe five times as bad as mine, right, but he didn't turn into a psychopath; he turned into a narcissist. In fact, do you know your dad's childhood? Was it pretty good or pretty bad?
Victoria: Uh, pretty good? I mean, they're quite poor and he has like seven other siblings, so probably not a lot of attention on him, but other than that I never heard anything.
M.E. Thomas: How did he become narcissist then? Is he like the oldest child or the youngest child?
Victoria: Youngest. (Mistake - he's actually the third youngest child, second youngest son, but the youngest son already passed. I'm not close with his side of the family and haven't talked to him much in a decade so these pieces of information are not readily accessible in my brain)
M.E. Thomas: It's funny, I had a law professor who was obsessed with birth order, he would be like, you must be a third child, you know, when you would make a comment or something, he was always like, kind of like, these people with astrology, you know... Oh, we never talked about astrology from before too, so let's get into that as soon as we finish up talking about nature versus nurture. But then I've also mentioned in my book that I have a brother, he's basically like an Irish twin, you know, we're so close in age and we just like were inseparable, so we had almost identical upbringings, but he turned out to be so kind of sweet and vulnerable, right, and then I turned out to be who I turned out to be, right, and so I think that's like a really good illustration for me about like how these things happen, but do you think it's possible— I think this is a kind of interesting question, do you think it's possible for people to become psychopathic without any sort of childhood trauma at all? And what are the circumstances?
Victoria: Yes, I think so. I think the second of... part two of our interview, we were running out of time but I mentioned that there is like a twins experiment, a documentary called the Three Identical Strangers, it's a documentary film released like two years ago, 2018. It's about a set of identical triplets adopted as infants by separate families...
M.E. Thomas: And this is a true story?
Victoria: It's a true story, they were part of a study by Peter Neubauer and at least five other sets of twins were included in his study but he did not publish the findings because he feared the backlash. So anyway, the triplets, they were separately adopted as infants in a middle-class family, blue-collar family, and affluent family, and then I don't know if they were psychopaths or not, but after they got reunited in college, they started like going on shows and interviews, they said they found out that despite growing up in different families, they all smoked Marlboros, they all had been wrestlers in college, they shared similar tastes in women, and their adoptive parents reported how all the babies regularly banged their heads against the bars of their cribs in distress, and they all grew up to have mental health issues and went in and out of psychiatric hospital, and one of them pleaded guilty to charges connected to the murder of a woman in a robbery, like later on in their life.
M.E. Thomas: Was that— who was that one? Like, which? Blue collar? Affluent or..? Which— who was the robber?
Victoria: Affluent.
M.E. Thomas: Really? Interesting. Because I think people would be like, oh, you know, it's got to be the poor one?
Victoria: I think the blue collar one turns out the best.
M.E. Thomas: Really? Blue collar one turns out the best? That's interesting. It is so interesting I think, especially when you think about identity too, it's interesting because people are like... identity is not a thing, it's just like an illusion, right, the Bruce Hood's The Self Illusion book that we've been discussing in kind of like another series, right, but on the other flip side you have these things like where it's like, they honestly do behave in a particular way, and my own family has a little bit of a similar story in that my dad was, you know, his dad was his birth father was out of the picture when he was about like one years old, you know, and then he was kind of like raised in all sorts of different circumstances, some of these circumstances were bad, right, you know, not with his mother and like with abusive caretakers until he was about five or six, and then his mom got remarried and then his new dad adopted him, which was kind of a kind of a weird thing, so he never saw his dad, you know, he was never involved with his dad. But in the Mormon religion, there is this emphasis on family history on knowing who your family is and on doing like, you know, like uh kind of ordinances, religious ordinances on behalf of like your deceased ancestors. So when my brother was in college, he was looking up— he was actually taking a family history class, and he was like looking up this information about my dad's birth father and found out who it was, and so they kind of got reunited, his birth father was dead by this time but he had like four other siblings, right, and so he was talking to them and they were like shocked at how similar my dad is to their dad, right, to his birth father, they were just such weird kind of like coincidences, right, I think I mentioned this in the book, you know, like this is probably where like the personality disorder kind of got like kind of put in, but it is interesting to kind of think about it for... you know, I guess we we understand this in a lot of different ways, we understand that a lot of people struggle with obesity, because genetics, you know, there's basically nothing that they can do and whenever I watch The Biggest Loser I'm always like, oh man, these poor people, they have to do like five times the amount of stuff in order to lose weight that I would have to do, you know, it's just like such a terrible kind of genetic deck to be dealt in these particular situations. But for you, do you— I mean, knowing this, that you have the genetic propensity, that it's the fact that your dad is this way that probably pushed you to become psychopathic, you know, do you have any feelings at all about that?
Victoria: I mean, it is what it is, it's the cards I've been dealt with, I just have to, you know, make the best use of it.
M.E. Thomas: So do you ever think about like, oh, what could have been if this or that or something, or you kind of... is a part of you glad that you're psychopathic? Or you know, glad mostly, but also like not, a little bit not glad in these other circumstances?
Victoria: I think I've been lucky, I still is— quite lucky, I mean, I consider myself quite successful, so I don't think I feel like bad about myself or my childhood or my family. I mean, a lot of friends have asked me like, do you think you'll be this way if you grew up in a more normal family? And I was like, I wouldn't know what "normal" family is because I've only been in my own family, so I don't know how different it would be or what differences a normal upbringing would be (making)... so I don't know.
M.E. Thomas: You know, it's kind of interesting that you said, you know, you think your childhood is completely— pretty normal, fine, whatever, it's your friends who are like, your childhood was abusive, you know, and that actually I think like, famously a little bit, you know, if you look at the the kind of issues that people took with my first book, one of the things is I said, you know, I grew up in a loving household or like non-abusive household, and they're like, why did you spend two chapters or whatever talking about all these things you suffered in your childhood, and then like, you know, at the very end of the book conclude that it was not abusive, you know, and honestly I didn't mean to be kind of lying or whatever, I was like, well, it just seems kind of weird to call that "abusive" when people are like, honestly, being like hit every day for no reason, you know, malnutrition, you know, like sexual abuse, rampant sexual abuse, to kind of call my situation abusive seems a little bit like, you know, a little bit kind of "wa wa wa". Now I think about it differently, now I'm like, okay, there's different levels of abuse and just because one person suffers more abuse doesn't mean that your abuse is any kind of less whatever, but it is kind of interesting— do you know Elizabeth Smart?
Victoria: No.
M.E. Thomas: So she was uh she's actually a mormon girl, she was like kidnapped by some guy, kind of classic like mormon nightmare, you know, mormons are always like trying to be nice or you know, most mormons are like, like a trend with mormons, just to be nice so some like kind of vagrant guy came up and was like, hey can I do some work for you for money? I think this is the story, maybe some of these details I don't remember correctly, and so they said, yes go ahead, you know, like, do some yard work and we'll pay you some money, so because he has no job, he's homeless, right, and then he comes back in the middle of the night into her bedroom, he like was able to figure out where her bedroom is, he just like opens the window and then he forces her to come with him, you know, on threat of death or like killing her family, and so she's abducted by this guy and she spends like years and years and years with him and I think a woman that he was kind of seeing at the time or something. And she's like, you know, like one of these classic abduction situations, sexually abused, all these different things and eventually she's able to escape and go back to her family, I think that was maybe in her late teens? The middle teens? That she was able to escape, and then it's like, well, how do you live the rest of your life after you've had these sorts of experiences for however many years? But I think she went to college and now she is a like a spokesman, and I think maybe has her own non-profit kind of dealing with this issue, you know, is married and stuff, and I just think it's like, it's an interesting kind of issue of identity about how much do these types of things shape us, you know, and do they shape us for good or for evil and like if we embrace the outcome and say hey, you know, even though these things happen to me, I'm a better person because of it, are we somehow denying the self that we would have been if those traumatic experiences had not happened to us? Are you like kind of betraying the you that you could have been if you hadn't had those particular experiences? Like it's really interesting thinking about self in that sort of way I think, often— have you seen the movie Sliding Doors?
Victoria: No.
M.E. Thomas: Sliding Doors is like, it's with Gwyneth Paltrow, I actually think it's pretty good because I 100% would watch movies that have alternate realities, body swapping— which I know is not a common one, zombie movies, apocalypse movies, those are the four that no matter what the movie is I will definitely watch it and enjoy it.
Victoria: Doctor Who.
M.E. Thomas: Oh is Doctor Who also about alternate— oh, body swapping right?
Victoria: And also parallel universes.
M.E. Thomas: Oh really? Okay, wow, I need to get into Doctor Who. So in Sliding Doors, in one of the scenes she like— either she gets fired from her job and then one of them she's going home and she misses the train, just misses it barely, that's the sliding door, and then the other she makes the train, right, so when she makes the train she's like, oh, this is good luck, you know, and so then she goes home and then she catches her boyfriend cheating on her, right, and so then she's like, you know, breaks up with them, all these different things, right, she gets a new haircut, so that's how you can tell who they are in the future, as she gets a new haircut in the one in which she doesn't catch the train, she doesn't catch her boyfriend cheating on her, right, and so she just keeps living like this kind of normal life and so it's like this expiration of like what happens when like a particular thing happens to you and then you'd like make these whatever changes, I just find it like interesting to think about and I'm one of these believers actually, that like, all these alternate realities are happening at the same time kind of, and some sense of truthfulness, you know, that like reality that we perceive is like there are parallel universes kind of, at least conceptually, you know, and I think it's interesting to kind of think about. What do you think about parallel universes? Like what do you think about events that happen in this way, you know, like events that shape the way that your life unfolds?
Victoria: It's not so much parallel universe, I would say like, perceived reality? I think, trauma or whatever impact on someone's identities only happen when you look back and you realize that your perceived reality is all wrong. Like, for example, 20 years happy in a marriage and then you found out that you've been cheated on this whole time and then your whole world came crashing down, because you're like, oh, this whole time I was wrong? I did not catch anything? I thought I knew who I was, who my partner was, how our relationship was like, and all these were wrong and I've lived in this lack of control situation the whole time, and I just came to know about it, and it is the same like childhood rape or childhood abuse, it's the same thing. Like you live thinking that you're normal and it doesn't have any impact and then you look back and you're like, oh I've lived in such a dangerous way or whatever, and I did not perceive all these threats, all these dangers, I could have died, I could have come out as a worse person, and I think this is when people start to freak out, and this is how perceived reality has an impact on you.
M.E. Thomas: So you're saying that this is how you experience trauma, or you think this is how everybody kind of, or generally how trauma is experienced by people?
Victoria: I think generally.
M.E. Thomas: Really? I think this is kind of interesting, and I would be interested to hear from people in the chats or whatever else or you know, comments on Youtube, if this is true. Too bad we don't have an empath to check in here, because I think that this might be... not true, I think that like normal people like, that does sound traumatic right, but you know, what you have described, actually like I've heard a couple other psychopaths describe this to be particularly traumatic for them, like most of the things that they experience not traumatic, unless it is something like they thought that this is the world that they're in that they're experiencing, and that it actually is like slightly differently true, and I'd like love to get your feedback on this, but this is like something I've heard other psychopaths say, you know, like it's just— man, what are the words that they use to describe it? They say it's bad because it's like in a relationship it's particularly toxic, because it suggests that you're experiencing parallel experiences, you know, have you heard the phrase "parallel play", like when especially autistic children are playing together and they're not really playing together? You know, they're playing, they're parallel playing, you know, they're both playing, not really interacting, and I think that's kind of the fear is, let's say, you think you had a parallel experience, you know, let's say like you thought, you're dating somebody you went on this great date, you know, like you were so in tune and then the next day the other person that you were dating ghosts you, you know, that might be particularly traumatic, traumatic not because anything terrible happened to you, particularly kind of traumatic to the psychopath, if you cared about the person, because you thought that you were like being vulnerable to the person, you were like connecting with the person, and then obviously not, you know? I think every once in a while I run into a psychopath who is like that, the thing that they hate most is that to kind of be played in this way of like deception, and it's interesting because I think this is the issue that most people who date psychopaths have an issue with, is that I thought I was in a relationship that was loving, supportive etc, and it turns out that my feelings were never reciprocated,
and this is the thing that is so traumatic for them. What do you think about this?
Victoria: I think what's traumatic for me in this situation will be my perception of reality is faulty. That is most concerning. I wouldn't think that, oh I put myself in a vulnerable position blah blah blah, I would be more angry that oh, so he or she didn't feel the same way I thought that they're feeling, and that's what traumatized me I guess.
M.E. Thomas: That's interesting. And can you think now like why is that the traumatic thing, you know? Why is that the thing that is like— you know, because you sound like you're very like, robust, kind of hearty person, like most things would not bother you, not affect you, at least that you're aware of, but then you do seem to have a little bit of an awareness about this, why do you think that this is like one of the things that bothers you when you can like, go through cancer treatment for instance, and not care at all?
Victoria: Misinformation would affect survival or optimal performance in getting what you want. So when your perceived reality is not the truth, then all your according actions are not fine tuned, and you go through this whole time thinking that you're in control but you don't even know what reality you're in, it's just not effective.
M.E. Thomas: You know, it's interesting to me, lthis I think is a very... uh, not super common like 90% of psychopaths experienced this, but is like a very— at least I have seen it multiple times where this is kind of like a concern and the sort of traumatic things, you know, but I think probably normal people listening to this would be like, no, that's not what I would think is traumatic, you know, I think it's like a unique to psychopaths, kind of like this would be something that would be kind of traumatic experience, I think it's kind of interesting but I think it illustrates that there are just differences, so many differences in the way that like psychopaths perceive reality or what bothers them versus what would bother somebody else, and I could imagine, you know, like because normal people invented ghosting, like have you ever ghosted somebody?
Victoria: Yes.
M.E. Thomas: Oh you have? I don't even ghost people, I just tell them like, I'm not interested in you, I would like don't even bother with the ghosting because I'm not— for me at least, I'm not embarrassed to say, you know, I don't find it to be an emotionally fraught thing, like maybe you ghost people strategically, you know, but you wouldn't ghost somebody because you're just like, oh, you know, I don't want to have that conversation. Or maybe you would, maybe you're like, you know, that's five minutes I don't want to spend on that?
Victoria: Five minutes I'm fine with, but some people just wouldn't let go.
M.E. Thomas: I see, yeah, so you have to eventually ghost them? But if they kept asking you would say, look, I'm just not interested in you, please leave me alone, like you would say something like that?
Victoria: Yes.
M.E. Thomas: Yeah because you're not afraid of the confrontation or whatever, right. So I think, you know, like for normal people, you know, that's kind of an acceptable way to be, right, you know, for whatever reason is to ghost people? Like, otherwise why does it happen so frequently, you know? Like maybe they're not proud of it, but they're like, well, you know, it's not terrible or something, so it's just like normal people — psychopath relationship, you know, like you just have different expectations about what would be the really truly traumatic, like most terrible thing you could do to the other person, and you come up with the wrong thing, you know, like uh, what do we say? The golden rule or something you just wouldn't be able to guess correctly, because the psychopath is like worried about one thing and normal people are worried about other things. But we're kind of running out of time, I did get a text from Blake who said that he overslept and he just got up, and he's turning his computer on, so we might get him for the last little bit. But did you have any comments? Uh other comments from last time, or about nature versus nurture, feel free to say no because we also have a comment, a question from Paula who is on— oh you had a comment for Paula too— (internet glitched and recording got cut off)