Let me be your God

High Stimulation Threshold

My baseline threshold for engagement seems unusually high. Activities that are typically rewarding for others; routine tasks, light hobbies, predictable social interaction, often fail to produce any noticeable sense of satisfaction.

The consequence is that the environment begins to feel low resolution. Conversations feel repetitive. Tasks feel mechanical. Even achievements can feel strangely empty once the novelty disappears.

This isn’t always experienced as sadness. It is usually experienced as flatness.

Intensity as a Proxy for Aliveness

Because ordinary stimuli often fail to produce engagement, intensity becomes a reliable signal that something is “real.” Risk, novelty, competition, taboo subjects, power dynamics, or intellectually complex problems tend to cut through the flatness.

The important distinction is that intensity does not necessarily equal fulfillment. It functions more like an energy spike. It produces activation, not necessarily meaning.

In other words, intensity can wake the system up without actually feeding it.

Contempt as a Defensive Interpretation

When large portions of the environment feel unstimulating, it becomes easy to interpret the situation as evidence that the environment itself is inadequate.

This is where contempt can emerge. Thoughts like “this is beneath me” or “people are predictable” function as protective explanations for the persistent lack of engagement.

Sometimes these observations may be partially accurate. However, contempt also acts as a psychological shield. If the world is boring because it is inferior, then I do not have to confront the possibility that my own reward system is unusually difficult to satisfy.

Control as a Source of Stimulation

In environments where emotional reward is limited, influence itself can become engaging.

Reading people, testing boundaries, steering interactions, or provoking reactions creates immediate feedback. Reaction demonstrates impact, and impact demonstrates agency.

In other words, control can become stimulating because it proves that something in the environment is responding.

This is not necessarily driven by cruelty; often it is driven by the simple need to break through the feeling of psychological silence.

Nervous System Calibration

Another factor may be developmental conditioning. If someone grows up in environments characterized by instability, unpredictability, or chronic activation, their nervous system may become calibrated to expect a higher level of stimulation.

In that context, calm environments may not register as peaceful. They may register as empty.

This creates a paradox where stability; something typically considered healthy, can feel subjectively similar to deprivation.

The Pursuit–Possession Split

One pattern I frequently notice is that anticipation carries more psychological charge than possession.

The pursuit of something; an idea, a project, a relationship, a goal, contains novelty and uncertainty. Once the outcome becomes predictable or secured, the stimulation drops sharply.

This can create a cycle in which engagement collapses immediately after achieving the thing that originally generated interest.

The pursuit remains exciting; maintenance does not.

The Escalation Problem

The most concerning aspect of this pattern is reinforcement. If stimulation is consistently sought through extreme or highly intense experiences, the nervous system gradually adapts.

Each escalation raises the threshold for future stimulation.

Over time, ordinary experiences become even less engaging than they were initially. The “solution” unintentionally worsens the original problem.

Reframing the Problem

When I step back and analyze the pattern clinically, the core issue seems to be a mismatch between stimulation requirements and environmental input.

The question is not simply “how do I avoid boredom.”

The more accurate questions are:

• What form of stimulation is actually missing?

• Is the urge I’m feeling a desire for aliveness or merely a desire for interruption?

• Which activities produce sustainable engagement instead of brief spikes of activation?

This reframing shifts the focus away from distraction and toward meaningful load: activities that provide complexity, challenge, and sustained cognitive or emotional engagement.

Conclusion

What I call the “ASPD boredom curse” is likely a combination of high stimulation thresholds, reduced reward response to ordinary stimuli, reliance on intensity for engagement, and learned interpretations of flatness as environmental inadequacy.

The experience can feel like constantly consuming the world faster than the world can feed you.

The long-term challenge is learning to differentiate between stimulation that merely shocks the system awake and stimulation that actually sustains engagement.

The Awkward Start

When I first started therapy, talking about emotions felt like describing a language I never learned. My emotions are fleeting; they spike for a few minutes and vanish. By the time a session rolls around, whatever I felt seems irrelevant.

I can explain irritation, anger, or boredom perfectly, but happiness? Excitement? Those don’t really register. The only time I feel alive is during high-stakes moments, when adrenaline kicks in and everything sharpens.

Most therapists misread that as either “doing fine” or “hiding something.” They expect affect; facial expression, tone, tears, and when those aren’t there, they assume dishonesty. But for some of us, flatness isn’t avoidance. It’s our resting state.

The Professional Distance

Therapy, to me, is a business arrangement. I don’t trust therapists; I’ve had one betray confidentiality to my abusers before. So I walk in with that memory sitting between us.

When therapists try to validate my emotions with soft tones or “I can see how painful that must’ve been,” I usually feel awkward or mildly irritated. I don’t need comfort; I need clarity.

Research backs up how this disconnect forms. Studies on schizoid and narcissistic presentations show that clients high in cognitive empathy (intellectually aware of emotions but detached from feeling them) can find emotional validation meaningless or even intrusive (Gabbard, 2014; McWilliams, 2011). The therapist’s warmth feels like static; unnecessary noise on a channel meant for data.

Talking About Pain Without Feeling It

I can talk about my trauma without flinching. I’ve watched therapists cry when I’ve stayed completely neutral. That’s when the awkwardness sets in: they’re feeling something for me, and I’m just watching the reaction.

This isn’t ASPD; it’s emotional blunting, a common trauma adaptation linked to overactivation of prefrontal control regions that suppress limbic response (Etkin & Wager, American Journal of Psychiatry, 2007). The brain literally learns to mute itself.

I usually analyze sessions more than I experience them. Once they’re over, I switch off. Unless something specifically hits me, the emotional residue evaporates.

The “You’re Not Trying” Misunderstanding

I’ve had therapists tell me I “don’t want to get better” because I wasn’t expressive. They mistook detachment for defiance. That’s a common clinical error. Research on alexithymia ; difficulty identifying and describing emotions, shows that emotionally detached clients are often highly aware of their issues, just not physiologically engaged with them (Taylor et al., Comprehensive Psychiatry, 1997).

It’s not denial; it’s a regulation strategy. The system suppresses emotion to prevent overload. Forcing expression doesn’t fix it; it just pushes someone like me into irritation or shutdown.

DBT has worked better than CBT for me, because it’s pragmatic and structured. CBT’s constant emotional reframing feels pointless when emotions themselves are fleeting.

What Detachment Really Means

For me, detachment is both defense and adaptation. I learned indifference to survive instability. It’s not something to “heal from”; it’s something to manage.

Therapy culture tends to romanticize crying as progress, but not everyone’s progress looks like tears. Some of us measure growth by how logically we can handle things that once made us spiral.

Research supports this too: emotional suppression doesn’t always predict dysfunction; in some contexts, it’s adaptive and stabilizing (Gross, Psychological Bulletin, 2015). Pathologizing detachment misses its survival value.

Redefining Progress

Progress, for me, means my therapist meets me where I am. She doesn’t push me to cry; she gives me tools. She challenges me logically, notices when I’m unsure what I feel, and helps me name it without demanding a reaction. That’s what works.

It’s also what most therapy training skips. The therapeutic alliance; the strongest predictor of success in therapy (Horvath et al., Psychotherapy, 2011), depends on trust and attunement, not emotional display. You can build that alliance with logic, respect, and precision.

The Core Problem with “Feel More” Culture

The therapy world tends to equate emotional expressiveness with honesty. But for emotionally detached clients; those with trauma, personality disorders, or certain neurotypes, that expectation is alienating.

Detachment doesn’t mean apathy. It means the wiring is different. Our emotions don’t leak out the same way, and forcing them doesn’t make them real.

I don’t need to feel more to heal. I need to be understood as someone whose feelings exist in brief flashes, not floods. Therapy isn’t about melting the ice; it’s about learning to skate on it without falling through.