Tomb's Psych Blog

My name is Tomb, I'm 19, male (he/him), I love my fiancee. Some interests include psych (obviously), classic literature, films, philosophy. I'm currently taking a psychology class and it's been a very big interest of mine for years. I love to learn new things, and theres a lot of cool things to learn in the field.

I'm diagnosed with ADHD, Bipolar, and ASPD, I'll be posting mostly about those to spread awareness, information and positivity on things I'm particularly familiar with. But my posts and support wont necessarily stop at my own conditions. I am also AMAB so I'm a very big advocate for mens mental health, because it hits close to home.

I started this account cuz Im bored and I have a lot to say about things. If I tag my post with #opinion, then its just my hot takes/rants that may be, but aren't necessarily, based on real statistics and facts. If I tag it as #info, Ill link sources in my posts to accurate, researched information. We listen to professionals here.

Holy fuck I completely forgot I had this blog LMAOO My bad. Anyways.

First off, as a writer, I always try to avoid giving my characters any labels of a disorder especially a personality disorder, cuz it feels cheap. Its easy to just throw a label on them and call it a day, but its harder to write them in a way where they would be diagnosed with ASPD yknow?

Like for example, you can say a character has anxiety, and boom, theres a new trait. But are you able to show this in your character without using the word "anxiety"? With ASPD, or any personality disorder, you need to be able to show this characters habits and mindsets and behaviours without having to use the label "ASPD".

I think the best representation of a character with ASPD I have seen in Dr. House from House MD. I was absolutely amazed by how much I could relate and how accurate it was to how I experience, and have seen others act, with ASPD. And the best part is that they don't even say he has ASPD until way later in the show, but that doesn't change a single thing about how he has acted up until that point.

The main thing about cluster B personality disorders is that there is a maladaptive and dysfunctional way of thinking and acting ingrained into this person. And the way they view things and behave actively causes them issues in their relationships, social settings, work, etc. It differs wildly for everyone though, but the one thing that is pretty much the same for everyone with ASPD is that their core fear is being controlled, and they value self-preservation above everything else. It's them against the world, and they are constantly grasping for power, control, and social dominance in order to protect themselves.

So some questions you can ask about your character is:

1. How do they experience empathy and remorse? ASPD is known to be a disregard for others and rules that actively causes issues in their life. In what ways do they disregard others feelings/rights, and do they feel bad about this? If they do feel remorse, what overrides this to make them keep acting in anti-social ways?

2. ASPD is a disorder. It causes a lot of issues in a persons life, especially with the law, authority, and hurting peoples feelings. In what ways does your character suffer from their behaviour and ways they think/view the world?

3. How do they view the world? What do they value the most? What are they willing to do to protect themselves, and how do they respond to perceived threats? ASPD is known for reactive aggression, where they will respond with hostility at a perceived threat (even if there wasn't actually one, they often take ambiguous remarks as hostility)

4. ASPD symptoms must have also been present in childhood (symptoms of conduct disorder shown before the age of 15). What was your character like as a kid? What caused them to act out? Who were the primary influences in their development, and how did that influence who they are today/how they think?

Remember that people with ASPD are often rude, harsh, callous, insensitive, and lack a proper moral code. They may act hostile towards anything that feels like control, especially being told what to do, or having rules to follow, including social norms like morality, political correctness, manners, and empathy. They often look out for themselves before they even think about looking out for others, and they are willing to do anything and put anyone down or manipulate a situation to protect themselves.

People with ASPD are often good at making excuses for themselves and avoid punishment for their actions, or completely disregard consequences and repeat their mistakes over and over again. This is partially due to a mindset of "you can't tell me what to do/you can't control me/fuck you". There is a lot of defiance.

And of course please remember that ASPD is a spectrum, and there are mild to extreme cases, and it presents differently in everyone. The main thing is that it causes distress and dysfunction in the persons relationships and life because of their disregard for rules and others. And that they fear being controlled, and value self-preservation.

And while people with ASPD are usually insensitive assholes (love ya), we also are people. We are human beings, not problems. We are human beings, not pricks. So make sure to write your character with hobbies and interests and redeemable traits and with positive qualities as well. Dont have their entire character written revolving around the idea of ASPD. People are complex, and there is much more to someone than their disordered behaviour/mindsets.

Also what you said about your character being very apathetic, you could tie that in to a lack of care/disregard for others which Im sure you were already planning on doing. But also remember that ASPD isn't just a quiet, apathetic, emotionless robot disorder. In reality, ASPD is pretty loud. Its angry, and destructive, and aggressive. Cluster B PDs are classified as emotionally unstable and erratic, and ASPD is no different. So make sure you remember that while he may not care about others, apathy/lacking empathy isn't a criteria for ASPD (though its heavily correlated). Check out the DSM-5 criteria and make sure your character qualifies. Also, you don't get diagnosed with ASPD just cuz you think antisocial thoughts. You get diagnosed cuz of the way you behave and interact with others/the world, and the problems that causes you. Most people with ASPD will be diagnosed through the legal system. So make sure you show the antisocial tendencies of your character, as I mentioned before with separating them from the label.

You described unconventional senses of remorse as driven by shame from, or occasionally fear of, getting caught, or fear of it causing you to lose something valuable. I thought that was prosocial? How would a prosocial feel remorse vs. an antisocial? Isn’t the whole point of feeling bad for hurting someone “oh no, I might hurt my relationship with them!!” Like, nobody genuinely feels bad when they hurt a stranger, right? It’s just “oh no, people will see me as bad!” and people get mad when you admit you didn’t really feel bad because people don’t actually value honesty.

And you mentioned keeping friendships purely for your entertainment value. Again, what’s the difference between that and a “prosocial” friendship? I’m asking since that describes most of my friendships. I don’t really bother to keep a friend if they aren’t entertaining somehow.

I’m probably going to be bombarding you with questions. Please take your time with them. I like how you link studies, it makes me more willing to trust what you say.

No worries at all, I love discussing these types of things

For further reading on ASPD and remorse and empathy, you can check out these studies; [1], [2]

To understand how remorse differs from those who are prosocial vs antisocial, we'll have to properly define the word.

Cambridge Dictionary defines the word "remorse" as "a strong feeling of guilt and regret about something you have done". Merriam-Webster defines it as "a deep regret coming from a sense of guilt for past wrongs". The description for remorse on Wikipedia is "remorse is a distressing emotion experienced by an individual who regrets actions which they have done in the past that they deem to be shameful, hurtful, or wrong."

They all describe remorse as feeling bad about what you have done, rather than what will be done to you. While a lot of prosocials do experience remorse out of a fear of consequences, they may also experience remorse simply due to empathy for the other person. If they only feared consequences, why would they feel bad about situations where there was no threat of punishment? Why do they feel bad after forgiveness was given? Why do they feel bad for hurting strangers they wont ever see again?

Humans are social creatures, which is why we have a label designed to categorize those who act against our natural social instincts. Back in hunter-gatherer times, we functioned in tribes. If we were shunned by the tribe, or left behind, our changes of survival would plummet exponentially, so our brains began to associate being left alone with high risks of death. This is why people typically get uncomfortable at rejection or at being left out, because it triggers this primal tribal urge in our brain.

This is also why we have remorse. Because if we fucked up, we needed to have some sort of safeguard in our brain to push us to fix the situation, or learn from it. Our brain uses good-feeling chemicals to tell us that we're doing something right, and bad-feeling chemicals to tell us that something is wrong.

Now, people with ASPD are still people. They aren't a different subset of person just because of this label. They are perfectly capable of experiencing prosocial things in prosocial ways (if they still meet the ASPD criteria in other ways).

So while it's true that remorse simply out of a fear of consequences is true for some prosocials, its not always the case, some people genuinely do feel bad simply for hurting another person. Meanwhile that fearing-consequence remorse is much more prominent with people with ASPD.

Yes, a lot of prosocials do keep people around simply because they're fun. The difference is that it's to a disordered extent with ASPD. Antisocial behaviours and mindsets are actually very common in regular people. Everyone lacks empathy and remorse sometimes, everyone thinks cruel or mean thoughts, everyone lies and manipulates others. The difference is that it is taken to an extreme and causes dysfunction is many areas of life in ASPD, and it is deeply ingrained into how they think and act.

So the difference between a prosocial friendship and an ASPD one, is that the prosocial would know more on how to make a friendship only based on entertainment work. Meanwhile someone with ASPD would go against the social rules of etiquette and just be a complete dick.

For me personally, I was always very open to my old friends on what I wanted from them. I always made it clear that the moment they stopped being entertaining to me, I would drop them, no matter what they had done for me, or how close we became. I have a history of dropping people who have given me tons of money, or have spent a lot of time and effort on our relationship, just because I didn't see them as worth my time anymore. It's a very dysfunctional way of doing things that causes issues in my interpersonal relationships. My disregard for their feelings and my callous selfishness in regards to my friendships back then was the difference between me being prosocial and antisocial.

I've noticed a lot of prosocial behaviour comes from people-pleasing and wanting to follow the social norms set in place, so while they might just use their friends for entertainment, they'd never admit it to them, or themselves.

Also, some prosocials are capable of forming relationships just on the basis of empathy, shared interests, admiration, or caring for the other person. My best friend gets absolutely no benefit from me, we rarely even talk, but he is always happy to help me out and hangout with me when I feel like it. He forms relationships based on simply liking a person and valuing the traits they have as a person, instead of if they give him entertainment, or money, or a rush.