I'm trying but it is an uphill battle and things fight against me. I legit have an extremely hard time even thinking of others. Recognizing the needs of others is just well... hard for me. I don't know why. No matter how hard I try it always is forcing myself. I understand why you have to think of others and I expect people to do it for me, but I have an extremely hard time reciprocating. Hell, I forget about the EXISTENCE of others until they are useful to me. I get angry that nobody calls me but now I realize that I never put any effort in my life to get to know them outside or stay in contact with.
I have a hard time with conversation ironically. Yeah I can be charming, but with how much I love to focus on myself it turns some people away. Between having to try to read emotions and imagine them and pretending to care about their life it feels like every day when I go out that I'm just pretending to be human. I'm good at socialization, but it is so forced for me. I slipped by a long time without realizing how much I talk about myself but a friend (ironically he is a sociopath) pointed out how much I do it and ever since I've been trying to force myself to do the opposite.
Furthermore, a lot of people talk about amorality here and then talk about choosing to do bad things... I don't really. I dont' always realize what I'm doing is wrong. I certainly know what is legal, but sometimes I don't know how awful my behavior is until others point it out. I try to be a good person but I don't always know how to be one. It is much easier with legal boundaries because I can be aware of the laws and have to choose to break them, but with moral boundaries in interpersonal relationships I just don't understand them. And then I only understand I've hurt someone if I've taken the time to imagine their perspective. Sometimes I don't realize the harm I do to other people until they start showing more extreme signs of displeasure.
That inability to always see what I'm doing is what gets me. In my mind I'm always a wonderful, kind, loving, selfless, friendly, smart and upstanding person. There is this disconnect with my actions and how I see myself. I guess part of it is that I don't feel guilty about what I do so it doesn't drag down my viewpoint of being a good person.
A lot of things really aligned for me to have an honest self-appraisal and it is still difficult for me. It took a major scam that I've been doing to start to unravel, a discussion with a friend on empathy and some complaints from friends and family to make me realize... I need to take a look at my behavior. When I actually type it out and see with my own eyes what I've done I don't feel remorse but it kinda hurts my ego and makes me realize that hey, something isn't right here. Realizing that hey, maybe other people don't do this. IT doesn't make me feel bad and I'm sorta amused and the narcissistic side of me pushes for improvement.
The problem I have is that I don't go out of my way to be an exploitative asshole. In my mind I'm just doing what I can to get by and I always feel justified. In fact, often times I feel like I'm the victim. Like take for example I groomed a woman into cheating with me and used a wine bottle to escape responsibility and ruin her life ( I got myself "drunk" so that way none of it would be my fault) and when she accused me of manipulating her I hated her and never saw that she was truly a victim. In fact I had convinced myself that she was a horrible awful person and that I was amazing. I've never felt a single shred of guilt for anything I've ever done really. The closest thing I've felt is upset about how my actions reflect on me as a person in a narcissistic way.
I've always thought of myself as the victim and held this hatred towards the people I've been the aggressor against. I don't purposely be a bad girl. I've tried all my life to be a good person and to treat people the best I can, but my behavior just doesn't match.
I don't get why my family is so messed up as well.
What I don't understand is why I'm so much like my dad in many ways. I'm just as disconnected and distant and have the same low emotional range. There are differences and he is less willing to hurt someone's feelings as well as better executive functioning and is more of a pushover while maintaining a career and organizing a farm. Maybe I've been unaware of it but ever since he had kids he stopped criminal behavior outside of marijuana usage. His distance and then sudden explosive temper has bothered a lot of people.
Even my sister has problems. At a young age she squeezed fish to death so that way she could get a puppy. She was extremely neglectful of her horse as a teen and has had problems with getting in trouble in school, vandalizing stuff and now is going through narcotics anonymous. She has a lot more emotions and a lot less control over then than me and gets into a lot of trouble. Her behavior has been a lot more visibly wild and her emotions are not only present but not well controlled. She has my fearlessness though and I'm not sure if she really feels bad for what she does either, but she has a harder time hiding the stuff she does. Then again, she still is pretty good as most people think of her as a good kid and she even set up fake jobs while living away to hide her lifestyle.
Oh well. I'm frustrated because I can't seek any help for any of this because i've been engaging in fraud with the mental health community in order to get by. Trying to get help would mean revealing as such and not only put me in prison probably but also would screw over my chances at getting financial aid and facing all sorts of problems in life that I don't want to face. I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place.