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feb2020user
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Member Since Feb 2020
Location: USA
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Default Feb 09, 2020 at 06:12 AM
 
I find the similarities and differences between bipolar and AsPD/HPD fascinating. I knew somebody that had been diagnosed with AsPD in a psych ward, who eventually became re-diagnosed with bipolar and put on lithium. In the spirit of that, I'm willing to give my answers for comparative study.

I don't really know what you mean when you say you felt evil. I'm not saying that I haven't felt this, but I don't know what this refers to. It sounds like you're dealing with a lot of repressed guilt.

I was definitely born less emotional than other people. I was also born almost entirely unable to feel affective empathy. I used to think that I was really born with the same low emotional baseline that I have now, but after a lot of therapy and self-exploration I no longer believe that's the case. I think I repressed a lot of emotion as a coping mechanism when I was younger to deal with my abuse. And that repression has become so habitual that I no longer really feel, or register that I feel, a lot more than I think I do. I think my reaction to everything eventually became "it doesn't matter, stop thinking about it." Again, I really thought this was just how I am until I started revisiting my childhood in therapy, and while I don't remember being emotional everyone who knew me has stories of me displaying more emotion more naturally than I can now.

My advice? Decide whether you actually want to get back in touch with those emotions, and how much you want them to affect you. You've been gifted with the ability to choose how much you want to feel, and that's not something a lot of people have.

You mentioned that you're religious. Well, I recommend mysticism. I don't believe in the supernatural, but mystical practices like dream interpretation and introspective meditation have been more effective at helping me understand myself than any form of treatment given to me by my psychologist. I'm not sure which religion you're getting into, so I have some books to recommend depending on who you are:
"The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford" by Lon Milo Dilettante. This works for Abrahamic religions.
"Daemonic Shamanism" by William Briar. This works for paganism and the Left-Hand Path.
"The Bhagavad Gita" by Eknath Easwaran. This works for Hinduism.

The reason that mysticism works so well for me is that I already naturally externalize a lot of my feelings. And mysticism works with "internal" or "psychological" aspects of gods and religion, inspiring psychologists like Carl Jung when he developed Archetypal Psychology. Each of these works is merely introductory, though.

Nobody is really born feeling nothing. Research into both people with Schizoid Personality Disorder and criminal psychopaths shows that they're most like merely pre-disposed to learning unhealthy coping mechanisms that repress their emotions and prevent them from having insight into what they feel. Both disorders are still poorly understood, but the research is humanizing them.

There's a reason so many tests for psychopathy ask whether the subject views emotions as a weakness, because if they view emotions as a weakness then they're less likely to seek out and feel their own; it's a sign of repression. This is seen the best, I think, in the studies surrounding Jeffrey Dahmer.
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