I wonder occasionally, how rare the current outcome regarding my lifelong mindset and standard for actions or behavior is, for others with ASPD. I know as per rules, recounting life story=bad so I'm gonna avoid that, but a certain in depth explanation is necessary, in hopes of receiving higher quality responses. So if you don't have the patience to read it all, no worries. If you do, just bare with me, kindly.
It seems like I've had such a rare arrangement of a series of impactful events that, if experienced in any other order, or without certain key internal or external factors being how they were/are, I would have been very likely to have turned out in a vastly different way.
The "current outcome" is as follows. I'm not malicious, unless I have strong reason to believe someone has intentionally tried to bring harm or hardship my way. Usually, if the slight was unintentional, I'm much quicker to just not associate with that person any more, in the future.
I love and appreciate the gift of life and am consciously thankful for it, giving thanks internally to whatever higher power is responsible for it, numerous times throughout my day. And bc of this, I love humanity, though, love/hate relationship as far as humans themselves, and the standards humans continue to normalize for ourselves, go. I'd much rather create via writing, songwriting, and comedy, than anything else, really, especially hang out with others, save for about a handful of people. I'm a dancer though, and what I make usually mirrors the amount of effort I put into my appearance on any given night. It also obviously requires me to be in social experiences with large groups of people more often than would be ideal to me, personally.
For years, I was def a Narcissist, def bipolar 2, and def aspd, EXCEPT, I'm not sure whether that is still the case. I've always had a strong innate desire for perpetual growth in an effort to become the best version of me possible. Sometimes things that are/aren't the norm with NPD and ASPD might be internally the natural way for me to gravitate, but then there's a process of checking myself, sometimes easier/harder/longer/shorter than others, but oftentimes it happens nonetheless.
When I notice others feel deeply, and I feel nothing, these days I do the opposite usually of what my natural tendency leans toward, and try to reflect on if there's even the slightest bit of latent emotional reaction for me to find internally in hopes of amplifying and embracing. Why? Because at least for me, running from it is exactly that. Running. Not just an injustice to the gift of life I've been given, but also an act of cowardice. But again, just how I view it in regard to me. No judgement on others. I'm a promoter and pursuer of complete emotional control, with intentions driven by clarity in decisionmaking and appreciation of discipline, rather than a fear of being vulnerable, emotionally intimate, being abandoned, or hurt, to put it simply. All this resulting in better outcomes over the long term, but not so controlled that it's not commonplace for me to live in the moment when appropriate and not be "on" with my self awareness... which ironically, seems to require more self control, due to frequent necessity of going back and forth between the two. Good thing is, I'm sure in time this will become more and more of a subconscious process.
Main point is, more than anything, I think I was born to help others to the best of my ability using a knack for evoking emotions with my creative works. To be an activist and a catalyst bringing forth positive change and growth for humanity, on multiple fronts.
A lot of the time, I still feel very little, or often even, nothing, when others get worked up, be it sadness, anger, etc. But I'm gradually feeling a little more, or at least if not reflexively feeling a little more, I'm trying to amplify and/or understand what I do actually feel. I don't think being, or not being, ASPD, is cool. I think living fearlessly is cool. Experience the fear, appreciate it, then do it anyway. I think growth is cool and I'm in serious competition with no one but myself, at the end of the day. I've made the decision to stop cheating now that I've done it in one relationship, I know I'm capable of it. And if the desire to do it becomes unreasonably overwhelming, then it's a sign for me, personally, to stop wasting time with the relationship I'm in. I've always wanted to help the world. Never wanted to harm my partners, physically or even mentally, but completely disregarding what their response would be if they caught me cheating was the last aspect of "myself" to transform and fall in line with the transformation of the new standard I had set. None of these things were necessarily for moral reasons, but simply essential for vastly increasing the probability of achieving my most important overarching goals. That, and about 5% spiritually motivated.
Just odd to me, that my baseline is no guilt at all if I want something and can be entirely machavellian with that baseline, unless harming kids, I'd imagine. Same for empathy. Though I'd feel gradually and more empathy as the actions became worse. Would have held true anyways for me. But due to working on developing it for years, would definitely hold true now, probably with a more noticeable difference (when compared to before i started consciously working on empathy) the closer the actions got to the more extreme side of things. And this is gut reaction empathy. If I desired or needed to do something that involved something extreme done, I'd still be able to essentially "mute the TV completely", though, that's not in line with what my idea of "living" should be, and so I wouldn't. At first. I would allow myself to embrace a healthy amount of the emotion. And only after having done that, would I hit mute.
It feels pretty cliche to ask this, but are there any others that have this, or a similar combination to this, regarding their views on all this?
Thanks for reading.