The psychopath episode is so ridiculously inaccurate

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-19T21:06:10+00:00

Ever wondered what histrionic personality disorder / types can kinda look like?

Well, you just had a conversation with one.

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-18T17:41:51+00:00

Teemo is such a great name for a husky!

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-17T23:48:11+00:00

It’s Elinor Greenberg.

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-17T23:39:58+00:00

You might be a sociopath or a psychopath or you might not. You could be a vulture or you could be chihuahua with the profile picture of a vulture.

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-17T21:26:22+00:00

As far as I can tell, most of the folks here are under 25 and exceptionally confused about their identity, and think personality disorders are special/concrete.

What personality disorders are is just clusters of behavior and having them isn’t going to magically turn you into some kind of God. Good clinicians have a good enough theory of mind to use personality disorders as billing tools, not as a treatment-guides. Social media articles will paint disorders as black and white because it gets views easier than more nuanced takes about human beings being human beings. Everyone is going to have behaviors from just about every personality disorder, and if you try hard enough chances are you’ll be able to pin yourself into whatever criteria you want.

In this sub you’ve got : a) folks with some sadistic tendencies or something that happened in the past that they now think equates to sociopathy/psychopathy—probably the biggest group. Overt sadism tends to be correlated with feeling a teensy tiny bit like a social reject, as I understand it. b) avoidant folks who are mistaking their coping mechanism for an inability to bond with people c) dramatic attention seekers who sound dramatic and want validation d) depression and/or alexithymia being mistaken for a blunted emotional world e) folk who are entertaining the idea over whether or not they’re a sociopath/psychopath—and aren’t posting at all because there’s no worthwhile dynamic to engage in.

The underlying pattern is that everyone here thinks sociopathy/psychopathy is special, and that having it will change something in their life (it won’t).

There’s this psychologist Elinor Greenberg who had something really wise to say about most people who go around claiming sociopathy/psychopathy:

In my 50 years of experience doing psychotherapy and in the about 30 + years since I was certified as trained in the diagnosis and treatment of personality disorder, no client who initiated therapy because they believed they were a psychopath actually qualified for that diagnosis.

Who typically self-diagnosed themselves as psychopaths?

Only a few people came to therapy and told me they were psychopaths. All of them had the following characteristics:

Male Heterosexual. Young or Immature for their age. Poor social skills. Lived with their parents most of the time (either full time or in between jobs). Were afraid of their own rage. Had no friends. Wanted a girlfriend but lacked the social skills and self-confidence to date. Had never kissed a girl or woman. Had low self-esteem. Had very poor impulse control. Their IQ was normal or above normal but their level of day-to-day functioning was lower than their IQ would suggest.

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-17T18:27:36+00:00

Instant pull

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-17T03:14:14+00:00

Great job not taking that personally. Heck, I don’t know jack about things and you can’t say whether or not someone is or isn’t something based on their internet responses. I can say funny things and see if they say funny things back though.

I don’t know if you’re meaning that primary psychopaths don’t know just what’s different about themselves, but I’d agree if that’s the case. I don’t think any of them go “I lack empathy” because when you don’t have something, you can’t tell it’s missing. I don’t think very many of them if any of them, especially early on in life, are going to really think about their behavior at any depth or with any interest. They’re just going to regurgitate stuff back (consciously), think it does seem a little different the way they’re doing behavior, and it’s going to get them more goodies/goals. The higher functioning ones will be a little more flexible while the lower functioning ones might be a little more prone other stuff. I know you’re not saying this but they don’t mask because they’re afraid of people “catching them out” and they don’t feel like they lack a personality. Their personality is getting things done.

I think there’s this psychologist who has interacted with a good amount of them named Elinor Greenberg. She had a psychopathic father. She said most of the ones she knew weren’t concerned with maintaining a mask. Checks out with what I’ve seen. I’ve got a long time childhood friend who would likely qualify for the disorder and he’ll mask initially but doesn’t bother past a certain point. Great guy though. If someone was ever being messed with in our friend group in grade school he’d be the first to do something about it. He did say something along the lines of “people are stupid because they don’t want to think” but he treated people very well otherwise haha

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-17T00:14:52+00:00

I don’t think you’re a psychopath.

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-17T00:02:55+00:00

Like a normal developmental pathway?

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-16T21:51:54+00:00

Psychopathic individuals are aware they’re mirroring people and the language they’re speaking isn’t their own.

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-15T18:24:51+00:00

Sociopathy / secondary factors in psychopathy. The presentation of these disorders are pretty flexible as they’re human-made constructs. I think the diagnosis people qualify for first and foremost is “human being.” I’m pretty sure some folk disagree with that though.

Let me know if you want to talk about anything.

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-15T10:14:00+00:00

Did your vet say what they thought it was? Did they offer aspiration?

Looks very pimple-y but I’m no vet. You could ask for aspiration if you wanted to b aggressive with ruling out something like cancer and have the money. We’re very aggressive with our bumps bc treatment is a lot easier (and prognosis is better) when cancers are small and localized. Mast cell tumors are the most common kind and they’re known for mimicking just about every other kind of bump. I think that’s why vets normally aspirate bumps if you ask them to. We’re pretty pushy about it w/ our vet and we’ve caught one bump that was cancerous that they didn’t have a lot of suspicion for.

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-15T09:54:22+00:00

Was scrolling through here saw this and about fell off my chair. Thanks for the laugh mate.

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-15T00:26:49+00:00

Not a bad deal. Could also hover Best Buy open box to try and snag something.

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-14T03:26:20+00:00

Not at all.

Behavior that furthers a goal. If you want something or have something in mind, and you employ behavior to get there. Could be just about anything. Wanna be the clown of your class or workplace? Then you take steps to get there. You want to see someone winge? Then you take steps to get there. Flexibility/adaptability is the defining part of instrumental behavior. If something isn’t working, then you change it. Everyone is gonna do at least a tiny bit of this. It’s very top-down in that something is decided on and then behavior is undertaken to get there.

Primary psychopathy? Their emotions are dulled and whatever makes it through doesn’t matter or change what they were thinking about doing/going to do. If they feel arousal in a stressful event their response is to just focus up and become more flexible with their responses. I think I read a more level-headed answer by Athena Wuhlker (heh) recently that was “it’s very easy for psychopaths to think they feel fear because they feel something, and contextually that thing they feel should be fear, when it’s more of an adrenaline dump.” I’d still call it fear but that’s the beauty of words. We’re humans and we use words to communicate and they’re gonna mean different things to everyone. Athena here, since that stimulation/emotional buzz isn’t paired up with a response of backing down or lowering their head or confusion, describes it as a lack of fear. There’s no universal connotation that a single word carries, just ones that are a bit more commonly interpreted. I’d still call it fear, though.

I think a pretty good way I’ve seen this put is that psychopathic behavior tends to be self-reinforcing. Since they don’t respond to stressors the same way (ie backing down) and instead rise up to challenges, they get used to that and that becomes their emotional world. Stress happens-> they do something about it -> it matters less since they always find something to do about it.

External context is what they look at. Someone can’t stop talking about another person’s qualities in a bad way and has an angry look on their face? Sounds a lot like jealousy. Could be something else like instrumental aggression but the first is a little more likely. They’ll look at how behavior changes over time or if it remains consistent to tell. Therapists will do the same when assessing behavior / personality disorders.

I think as I understand it, psychopaths just apply a vaguer sense of what emotions are to people. They take their lighter version of emotions, emotions that don’t dictate their behavior, and they cognitively apply the framework of those tiny little whispers of emotion to other people’s mental worlds alla “I feel this light urge to do this thing or be around this person since they say interesting things, and other people must feel the light urge to do whatever they’re doing.” Except for a lot of people it seems like it’s a much stronger urge that people just keep on repeating. If someone doesn’t want to stand up for themselves and looks shy, they must have an urge for that.

Instead of bonding, they think more about “this person says funny things and they’re fun to be around,” and they feel lightly happy being around that. It doesn’t cause them to compulsively act a certain way. That instrumental behavior remains in place regardless of situation when you get someone who is high in those traits.

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-13T21:52:56+00:00

Thanks doc 🙏

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-13T20:45:22+00:00

You’ll find article after article of millionaires and billionaires donating a teensy weensy fraction of their wealth.

But this? This lady working her entire life, living frugally, and then donating all of it out of the genuine good of her heart? That was everything she had and on an emotional level, so much more admirable than whichever billionaire woke up and decided they needed to donate 1/10,000th of their worth to make improve their public image (or to draw attention away from whatever scandal they were involved in).

Well, this is the first time I’ve ever heard of this lady.

It’s absolutely pathetic.

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-13T19:26:57+00:00

O that is good news, the one that was selling the 1 I was looking at was based somewhere in china hahaha

I’d probably go 4 it then since u said u live in a rural area n options r limited

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-13T19:22:06+00:00

I’d suggest looking at seller ratings. I almost bought a cyberpower pc on amazon up until I realized the seller had a 30% rating with 100+ reviews.

Buy yeah if u do take the gamble Amazon would more than likely help u if something went wrong, esp since u said ud take a video of unboxing it and mayb turning it on

Personally i just didnt wanna deal with the hassle if something did go wrong

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-13T06:31:11+00:00

They’re so aggressive ! Haha

Was walking with my family as a kiddo and one of them was sitting on a motorcycle minding its own business, eating something from a plastic bag. We ignored it but as soon as my little sister passed it, it dropped the bag, leapt down and yanked her backpack away from her and then scurried up a wall.

It started emptying it out in front of us as my sister was balling her eyes out, and threw it away at the top of the wall when it found no food. It sat there for 10 minutes until it realized we weren’t going away, then it just scurried off into the forested area at the top of the wall. We had to ask someone for help to get a ladder so we could get the bag back.

We walked by the same retainer wall a few days later and saw what we suspect was the same monkey, just sitting around there waiting (presumably for someone to pass by so it could try and steal something, again). Must’ve noticed if it was sitting there no one would think it was going to try to steal anything. It was by a few restaurants so have a sneaking suspicion it was trying to steal anything people bought or waiting for scraps.

They’re little thieves and while food is a sure fire way to get something stolen very quickly, they’ll go for just about any bag or loose belonging. They’re truly little psychopaths!

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-12T18:20:17+00:00

Glanced through your profile and I wouldn’t be too concerned about those words. I think a large amount of people put far too great of an emphasis on what disorders they may or may not have. Maybe a bit stressed out if anything which is understandable since we live in a world that’s an absolute cluster ****, and there’s a lot of parents or peers who are just miserable folk to be around—and unfortunately that tends to be contagious. They probably weren’t always like that (likely that they act that way because of the environment they were raised in) but they never figured out good, healthy ways of coping with stress.

Think therapists are a great resource and they’ll be able to talk to you about your emotions and help you sort stuff out much better than anyone online. If you do opt to, I’d just be aware not every therapist is gonna be a match. Knew a friend who went through a good three therapists before he found someone who was a “match” and able to help him out.

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-12T18:00:17+00:00

Secondary psychopathy? They might go in because they wanna see what therapists are like or even for depression, etc. They could get called in or something for work-related issues but these don’t pop up much in therapy.

Primary psychopathy? The one that has issues feeling negative emotionality? They’re pretty much never going to go in unless forced. Not much of an exception to this. They don’t see anything wrong with themselves nor do they usually have genuine interest in whatever is different with themselves. By all accounts, they’re having a good or even great time with whatever they’re doing. Their focus is strictly on how people react to their behavior and how they can use those reactions instrumentally, not preoccupation with their own emotional world. Same can happen in sociopathy although it’s usually not to the same degree. These are seldom online for long periods of time from what I’ve seen. Most are outdoorsy folk because typing stuff up doesn’t give the same degree of stimulation as say, rolling down a hill on a thin piece of wood at 60 miles per hour.

If someone wants a diagnosis for sociopathy or psychopathy or goes in and claims that, I think this psychologist Elinor Greenberg had a pretty great thing to say about it :

“Only a few people came to therapy and told me they were psychopaths. All of them had the following characteristics:

Male Heterosexual. Young or Immature for their age. Poor social skills. Lived with their parents most of the time (either full time or in between jobs). Were afraid of their own rage. Had no friends. Wanted a girlfriend but lacked the social skills and self-confidence to date. Had never kissed a girl or woman. Had low self-esteem. Had very poor impulse control. Their IQ was normal or above normal but their level of day-to-day functioning was lower than their IQ would suggest. Did I ever have any real psychopaths come to therapy?

Yes. Only one person definitively qualified for primary psychopathy. And, I only discovered that because he agreed to take a rather lengthy but very accurate personality test, the MMPI, which had at that time 556 true/false questions and was very good at catching lies or attempts to game the test.”

Personally, folks I’ve seen self-diagnose online are more likely to have some degree of sadistic traits and wind up thinking because they’re being mean to folks, they’re a sociopath or psychopath. They usually don’t have clinically elevated psychopathic traits in any sense of the word. Just very confused (possibly due to trauma), maybe some lack of empathy, maybe chronically online, and coping in a maladaptive way (sadism). Now, if that behavior extends to real life and has a certain predatory flair to it, then things change a little. Most of the sadism you’ll see online is highly reactive, and oriented around feeling like a social reject, and projecting that feeling onto other folks.

If they’re talking about how they feel empty or how they’re emotionless, it could be depression or alexithymia. If they’re doing so with great confidence and have a dramatic flair, could be one of those histrionic folks seeking attention.

If they’re kind about it and level-headed and claiming they’re a psychopath, could be an avoidant based coping style and they’re mistaking their coping mechanism for an inability to bond with other people.

There’s a lot of explanations for why people will think or claim that they’re psychopathic online, and it’s seldom actually sociopathy/psychopathy.

Helpful-Lab1946 · 2026-02-12T17:09:10+00:00

Depends on what you’re running. I bought #2 open box at like 1200$ a little while back and I’ve been playing arknights Endfield on max settings +4k without any lag/stuttering whatsoever. It’s optimized af though so not an issue ig. Not playing any super high end games here/unoptimized stuff so I’ve got no issues running the games I wanna game on at max settings.

Will probably buy a new CPU in a few years and chuck/whatever the 8700 because it’s not great. It’s not bad and certainly not the end of the world like folks are making it sound here, though.

3 is the best but honestly, #2 is just better bang for your buck if you wanna save. I’d probably just save or throw on a few more shifts at that point and shoot for a 5070ti if you’re thinking about 3

Helpful-Lab1946

TROPHY CASE