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All Of It with Alison Stewart
A Memoir About Living as a Sociopath (Mental Health Mondays)
00:27:03
Patric Gagne joins us to discuss her new book, Sociopath: A Memoir, as part of our series Mental Health Mondays.
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- [00:00]
Patrick Gagne
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Fidelity App Voice
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Patrick Gagne
I'.
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McDonald's Customer
MA put you on nephew.
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Kusha Navadar
All right unc. Welcome to McDonald's.
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Patrick Gagne
Can I take your order?
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McDonald's Customer
Miss? I've been hitting up McDonald's for years. Now it's back. We need snack wraps. What's a snack wrap? It's the return of something great. Snack Wrap is back.
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Patrick Gagne
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State Farm Agent Voice
If your small business is booming and ready to expand, you might say something like it's happening.
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Kusha Navadar
Crushed it.
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State Farm Agent Voice
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Kusha Navadar
There.
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McDonald's Customer
Listener Supported WNYC Studios.
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Kusha Navadar
This is all of it. I'm Kusha Navadar in for Alison Stewart. And now we'll turn our attention to a new book that sheds some light on a psychological condition that isn't all that well understood, even though a bunch of us might refer to it day to day. According to the memoir Sociopath by Patrick Gagne, the colloquial use of the word has muddled the way we think about this very real psychological condition. Yes, Patrick's story involves remorseless lying and destructive behaviors like breaking and entering people's homes and sometimes even violent urges. But her account takes behaviors like that which might seem incomprehensible to neurotypical folks, and really gets into the why of this condition. Her story starts with a sense of apathy that she learned to mask in childhood, making up feelings she didn't actually feel and leaving her to wonder why emotions like grief over her dead ferret came easy to her sister while they didn't come to Patrick at all. This book is the story of Patrick coming to understand her condition and also Coming to understand that her condition was too poorly understood for anyone to really explain what was going on inside her mind. And now, armed with a career in psychology and a memoir of her own experiences, please help me welcome Patrick Gagne to help explain what goes on inside a mind like that. Hi, Patrick. Welcome.
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Patrick Gagne
Thank you so much for having me.
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Kusha Navadar
Absolutely. You know, let's dive right into it. One of the core conflicts you run into early on in the book is trying to understand yourself and, and the fact that sociopathy wasn't really well defined. Can you tell us what was going through your mind the first time you recognized that the word might apply to you?
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Patrick Gagne
Well, I know that it wasn't. What was going through my mind was certainly not what would go through a neurotypical's mind. And that relief when I first heard the word described and I recognized myself in its description, I finally felt some peace in that there was a name for the type of person that I was, and that there were at least enough other people included in that description to encompass an entire category. I wasn't alone, and there were steps I could take to understand my condition.
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Kusha Navadar
You described your experience as having a, quote, emotional learning disability. Why does framing it like that, as an emotional learning disability feel more true to your experience than a word like disorder or like condition?
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Patrick Gagne
Well, when I first sort of put that together, I was just a kid. I was sitting in class, and I had seen a classmate of mine get pulled out to work with a tutor. And the reason was because he had a learning disability. And I remember thinking, I wish there was somebody that could teach me how to feel the way they were teaching this child how to read. And that stuck with me for my life in that I understood so many emotions cognitively, but I didn't have that inherent connection that so many of the other kids around me did.
- [05:18]
Kusha Navadar
And tell me more about the framing that made you feel good. Do words like disorder or condition sit right with you? And what's the difference between that and.
- [05:28]
Patrick Gagne
Emotional learning disability disorder, personality type, all of them are applicable. But emotional learning disability, again, it was something that resonated with me as a child and as I grew up and I started to understand more about psychopathy and sociopathy, I understood that there is nothing inherently immoral about having limited access to emotion. It's not how we feel, it's what we do. And that understanding really allowed me to get a better, better handle on my behavior.
- [06:01]
Kusha Navadar
Yeah, and it sounds like there's a sense of empowerment too. Maybe the sense of, like, being able to. To move forward and that there's other people in the cohort. Is that. I mean, that's what I heard you say.
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Patrick Gagne
Is that fair?
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Kusha Navadar
Yeah. And you've also been asked before about your relationship with the truth and the fact that you don't necessarily feel bad, quote unquote, about lying, that that inherent feeling that some other, you know, neurotypical folks might feel. But you say you don't lie. The reason why you don't lie is for the same reason that you don't commit acts of violence, because it could lead to bad outcomes for you. So can you talk about your relationship with the idea of a moral compass? Because I heard you just say that before in your last response. Where do your behavioral guardrails come from? How do you think through those living with sociopathy?
- [06:48]
Patrick Gagne
Well, I think you just answered the question. I think through them, I don't have those inherent constructs like guilt and shame keeping me in check. So I have to rely on an external philosophy. And for me, so much of the destructive behavior in which I used to engage in the lying came from a place of survival. When I was a child, I understood very quickly that I was different from the other kids and that I wasn't experiencing emotion the way that they were. And pretty much at the exact same time, I also understood that acknowledging those differences was not met favorably. Parents and kids typically didn't warm to. Don't warm to children who say they don't experience remorse or empathy. So I learned very quickly to hide and I learned to use lying as a way to hide. Now that I am an adult and I understand my personality type, I don't feel the need to hide. This coping mechanism that turned into a lifestyle is no longer suitable for the life I want to lead. I enjoy the perks of pro social society. I enjoy the perks of relationships. And I understand that there, that truth is the price that you pay for a healthy relationship and healthy society.
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Kusha Navadar
Folks, if you're just joining us, we're talking to Patrick Gagney, who is an author, a former psychotherapist. The book Sociopath just came out. We are talking about what it is like to live with sociopathy, a condition that often is misconstrued, misunderstood in colloquial terms. And, you know, the memoir of Patrick Gagne and Patrick, an element of the book that I feel really stood out to me was the sense of understanding the why behind the behaviors that you were talking about. Actually, I feel like a lot of folks could resonate with in some form, made me feel like when we talk about sociopathy. We often think of it as like a binary, like sociopath or not a sociopath.
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Patrick Gagne
Right.
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Kusha Navadar
Seemed like what you were talking about in the book is, is resoundingly like. No, that, that, that's the wrong framing. Is that a fair thing to say?
- [09:09]
Patrick Gagne
That's my experience. And you know, listen, it's, it's, it's a really complicated and layered topic. Especially the number one question that I get asked is what is the difference between sociopathy and psychopathy? And it's tricky because reclassified sociopathy as secondary psychopathy. But if you're looking at it through that lens, my interpretation of the research is that the true primary psychopath has certain brain abnormalities that make it impossible for them to move through complex emotional development. So while they're able to feel those inherent primary emotions, such as happiness, sadness, surprise, et cetera, they're not able to experience the so called learned social emotions, love, empathy, empathy, compassion, remorse. But sociopaths are different. Sociopathy does not appear to be the result of any biological abnormality. Sociopaths can progress through emotional development, they can learn the social emotions, they just learn it a bit differently. In the book I refer to this as an emotional learning disability and that's what it feels like for me. But the biggest difference between psychopathy and sociopathy is that sociopathy is treatable. And to your question about spectrum and binary, I truly believe that not all sociopaths are created equal. And I think that's a really important point because so much of the public understanding of sociopathy is spent on these extreme examples. But the reality is that most of those who sit on the sociopathic spectrum are sitting on the mild to moderate side.
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Kusha Navadar
You had mentioned primary and secondary emotions in that. Can you break that down a little bit? What do you mean by primary versus secondary?
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Patrick Gagne
Everyone is born with these primary emotions. They're inherent. So happiness, sadness, those come naturally. But there is another set of emotions, social emotions, and these are learned. So when you have a child, you and that child does someone to hurt someone else's feelings, the parent or caregiver will explain to the child, we don't want to do that because it makes other people feel sad. And we don't want other people to feel sad, do we? In this way they start to internalize things like empathy and shame and guilt. But those lessons never worked for me and they don't seem to work for those like me. We can learn those social emotions, we just don't seem to learn them as easily as neurotypical children do. Which Is why, if left unchecked, sociopathy can become destructive. Because as we grow up and as we struggle to interact and engage and connect with others, what we. What we'll do is we'll just learn to mask and mimic and mirror as opposed to understand and learn the social emotions.
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Kusha Navadar
If you think about your relationship with those secondary emotions now, how has it evolved from when you were a kid?
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Patrick Gagne
Certainly at first it was cognitive. I understood them intellectually, and that was really the first step. But I remember when I was starting my research and I was thinking about my own struggle with my urges and my destructive behavior, I found myself thinking, the statistics say that there are 5% of the population are believed to be sociopathic. And I couldn't help but think, what are all these other people doing to keep themselves in check? And in that moment, I found myself feeling compassion for these others like me. And that was really the first time, I think, that I internalized empathy. And I used that initial internalization to sort of branch out and widen the net, so to speak, so that I could empathize with not just those like me, but with other people, neurotypical people, other neurodivergent people. So it's a. It's definitely a process, but it's one. It's almost like riding a bike. Once you figure out one, it's easy to keep going.
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Kusha Navadar
Oh, interesting. So you mentioned compassion. That was the emotion that you felt. Once you felt that organically, it kind of opened up the aperture a little bit. Is that fair?
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Patrick Gagne
Exactly right. Exactly right.
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Kusha Navadar
You know, in your book, you use the phrase, quote, unquote, stuck stress to describe this very central element of your experience. Can you explain what that is? How does stuck stress work in your psyche? What are some strategies for how you've managed or tried to manage it?
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Patrick Gagne
I remember being a kid and feeling this pressure. And what I've come to understand is that the pressure that I experience seems to be similar to that of those who struggle with obsessive compulsive disorder. I couldn't really put my finger on what it was. I just knew that I had the urge to act out destructively. And once I did, that pressure diminished as I got older. And certainly now in retrospect, what I've come to understand is the pressure that I felt was a reaction to apathy. I wasn't feeling the things I knew I was, quote, unquote, supposed to be feeling. And the. The pressure came from knowing that if I didn't either learn how to fake it or learn how to force myself to have these emotions that I would be outed. And once I was outed because the term sociopath was so stigmatized, I would not be allowed access to the things in life that I knew I wanted. And so much of the pressure in my life and the destructive behavior that I used to neutralize, it was a result of that, you know, concern of being outed. Now that I am upfront about who I am and I have more understanding of my personality type, that pressure has largely fallen by the wayside. At first it was only destructive behavior that seemed to be effective at neutralizing it. But once I got older tools such as cognitive journaling, cognitive behavioral therapy, these things were really, really instrumental in helping me sort of navigate the pressure once I stopped using destructive behaviors.
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Kusha Navadar
It's so interesting to me that you talk about that similarity with obsessive compulsive disorder because that OCD is another term co opted to describe some things that may or may not actually be ocd.
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Patrick Gagne
That's such a good point. I never thought about that. Yeah.
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Kusha Navadar
And I think that's. Thank you. And it just resonated with me because we think about how the word sociopath is used today. And you know, while I was reading the book, I just kept wondering for you, you hear the words or for anyone, you hear the word sociopath, there's a gut reaction to that word. It's like almost a punchline, you know, but you live with it. Do you care that people react to that term, use that term in that way, or does not make a difference to you?
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Patrick Gagne
It doesn't make a difference to me. What does make a difference is that the fact that the term has been co opted to the extent that it's deemed untreatable, that's a problem. And it's less of a problem for me. But for others like me, you know, that's why I wrote the book. Because I know that there are other people who don't have a diagnosis who are struggling. And you know, in order to be able to treat something, you must first be able to identify it. And my hope is that sociopath helps with that definition. Beyond what, how it's been identified in pulp by pop culture folks.
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Kusha Navadar
If you're joining us, we're talking with Patrick Gagne, the author, former psychotherapist, author of the book Sociopath, which is out right now. We're talking about her experience both as a psychotherapist and also as somebody who lives with sociopathy. We're going to take a quick break, come back. We're going to Dive more into it. Talk a little bit more about the book. This is all of it. We'll be right back. Stay with us. This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Kusha Navadar and we're talking about the book Sociopath. It's written by Patrick Gagne, the author, the former psychotherapist and an individual who lives with sociopathy. We're going to dive more into the book, Patrick, if that's okay, because I think there's, there's a lot that is interesting about your own journey to understand and to live with and to educate around this emotional learning disability as you refer to it. So you talk about having looked up the definition of sociopath in different dictionaries and finding nothing useful when you went to college. You see that this problem of defining sociopathy isn't just a dictionary problem, it's also a clinical problem. If I remember right, the only test available to see if you were actually a psychopath was designed signed for criminals and it didn't even appear in the dsm. Right. What was that experience like for you?
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Patrick Gagne
It was frustrating because listen, you know we're talking about a personality disorder that affects roughly 5% of the population. Considering that most of the diagnostic interviews to your point do take place in prisons, there's no way that number isn't most likely higher. But just sticking with 5%, that's roughly the same percentage is those suffering from depressive disorders, borderline personality disorders. And yet there's nothing in the bookstores about sociopathy, no support groups, no self help books, nothing. And as a young adult struggling with compulsive urges of destructive behavior, it was concerning that there wasn't more available to help.
- [19:13]
Kusha Navadar
You know, so many people are interested in you. And I appreciate you coming on here being willing to talk about this because I think it's something we don't talk about that often because we don't get a lot of windows into it. And they're interested in your ability to share insight into sociopathy. And you write in your book about how much other people like neurotypical people, how they fascinate you. What in particular fascinates you? Is there a specific emotion or something you see neurotypical people do that you get stuck on?
- [19:44]
Patrick Gagne
I have, I said this to a friend of mine not too long ago, but neurotypical people to me are like ice skaters. You guys are colorful and versatile. I don't know that I want to be an ice skater, but I love watching it. And that's very similar to How I feel about neurotypical individuals. Your emotional world is so colorful. You have so many more options from which to choose. I don't always agree, but I find neurotypical individuals to be so interesting in their ability to relate to one another, to connect to one another. And that's just not something I've ever really been able to do.
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Kusha Navadar
Ice skater is such a. I mean, beautiful, like, wonderful visual representation. Can you go into it a little bit? Is it the idea of fluidity, of being able to. Because part of what you also said was you have so many more options to you. And, and I'm trying to sort that with what it means to be an ice skater and have those options.
- [20:47]
Patrick Gagne
I just, I, I guess I feel that I'm very emotionally clumsy. I can usually get there, but I, I, it either takes me a while or I have to fake it. Whereas neurotypical people. Exactly what you said. There's a fluidity to it. There's so much color, there's so much rhythm, and I, I struggle to keep up, but I, I enjoy being a part of that world, you know, and that's, that is something that is very misunderstood about sociopathy. People make the assumption that just because sociopaths don't emote the way that neurotypical people do automatically means we seek to harm or, or are always coming from a place of malice. For me, nothing could be further from the truth. I don't emote in a way a neurotypical person does. But I don't wish to harm anyone. I like to coexist. I have friends. I am married. I have children. I love. I just love differently. And I don't think that that love should be discounted just because it's different.
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Kusha Navadar
You know what I'm listening to? I'm thinking about the ice skater analogy, I guess, or metaphor. I'm not sure listeners correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm thinking about being on the ice. And at first I thought you meant like you were watching the ice skaters, but it's actually, but it's like you are on the ice. You just maybe don't have the skates right. Like the skates are missing, maybe. And you're trying to walk with just sandals on or something.
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Patrick Gagne
That's right.
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Kusha Navadar
I think that's.
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Patrick Gagne
Well, you guys are doing circles around me and I'm just sort of sitting there on the ice looking around.
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Kusha Navadar
Yeah, neurotypical people do a lutz, and you're just a klutz, maybe, like that kind.
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Patrick Gagne
That's right. That's exactly right. Thank you for summing it up so perfectly.
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Kusha Navadar
No, I mean, I was just listening. At one point in the memoir, you wonder whether your psychological makeup would make it impossible to form meaningful relationships. And you had mentioned when you were describing what it feels like for you, that you still feel love. It's just your own way of loving. Not your words, but, you know, know, putting mine on top of that. You did find love in the form of your now husband, Dave. Can you just talk a little bit about how you experience love differently than other people?
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Patrick Gagne
I, I feel as though my experience of love is more aligned with homeostasis. I, I. All I have is my experience and my interpretation of the neurotypical experience, but that interpretation seems to be one of the big feelings and emotions and sweeping gestures. And my version of love doesn't feel that way. It feels more in line with a relationship that's mutually beneficial to both people involved. And I understand that doesn't sound very romantic or, or exciting, but to me it is because the lines are so clear. There's no power at struggle, at, at play in, in. In my relationship with my husband. We're very honest with each other and, and we, we are very different people, but we seek to meet each other in the middle, which is something that I have come to understand is really relatable. Certainly, I'm neurodivergent. My husband's neurotypical. But what I just described, I have heard from other people is something that takes place in lots of relationships between neurotypical people, between neurodivergent people. It seems to be quite relatable.
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Kusha Navadar
Were there, you know, we talked about love. Were there other things you were afraid wouldn't be accessible to people who take in the world as you do?
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Patrick Gagne
Of course. Listen, I don't connect to people as naturally as neurotypical people do. And certainly where my husband's concerned, he is a people person. He is an extrovert, and connection come very easily to him. They didn't to me. So at first I was concerned that I would never be able to make those connections or that if I did, it wouldn't be enough for my husband. And nothing could be further from the truth. Again, these concepts were not impossible for me to understand. They just took a little bit longer. And it's really, really important that other people, like me, I think, see themselves in loving, healthy relationships as opposed to being written off as monsters whose only option is to die alone, which is pretty consistent with what the general population perceives is possible for a sociopathic person.
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Kusha Navadar
Would you say that that idea of how helpful it is to see people that. That are maybe like you, but them being able to see you in healthy, productive, loving relationships is a big part of the reason why you kind of wrote the book? Like, is that something that you're hoping people walk away from? Is there another theme that's super important for you that people would walk away from with this book?
- [25:56]
Patrick Gagne
Listen, representation matters. And, and I wrote this book because I knew that there were others out there like me, and I wanted them to. To feel seen, you know, I also want to be very clear. My goal here is not to minimize sociopathy, but to understand it more completely. Sociopaths are known for being singularly evil. And I get it to a large extent. We've earned that reputation. The people who sit on the extreme side of the sociopathic spectrum have earned us that reputation. But that's only one part of the equation. Research says that these extremes make up a small fraction of the millions of people believed to suffer from this disorder. The majority of people who fall under the sociopathic diagnosis fall on the moderate side. These are people from whom. For whom treatment is possible. And that is why I wrote the book, because I wanted to let them know that they are not a lost cause, that there's hope.
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Kusha Navadar
You know, you've been doing more interviews ever since your Modern Love article, which came out in 2020 and. And book. And as I was looking at this, this segment and kind of going through the interviews you've done, a question that I thought would be interesting to wrap on was just has doing all of these interviews, which is maybe a new element in your life, has it changed the way you think about sociopathy at all, or has it helped you discover something new about yourself?
- [27:24]
Patrick Gagne
It's definitely helped me with the language to describe it, which is something that I think took a lot longer before I wasn't. I wasn't always able to on the word that I wanted to use. But it's not what it's. The experience hasn't helped me learn more about myself so much as it's enabled me to learn so much about others. The response that I've gotten to these interviews has been vast, and it has been really validating in terms of my decision to write the book. It. It was a decision that I did not take lightly. But hearing from others who resonate with my experience, hearing from others who see themselves in this personality type, hearing from parents who feel that there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel in terms of the relationship that they have with their children. Nothing could have prepared me for that. And I am so, so grateful for it.
- [28:26]
Kusha Navadar
We've been talking to Patrick Gagne, the author, former psychotherapist, and the author of the new book Sociopath. It's out now. Patrick, let me just say thank you so much for your work and coming on and willing to open up and talk about this. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
- [28:44]
Patrick Gagne
Thanks so much for having me.
- [28:45]
McDonald's Customer
I'mma put you on, nephew.
- [28:47]
Kusha Navadar
All right. Welcome to McDonald's.
- [28:49]
Patrick Gagne
Can I take your order, miss?
- [28:50]
McDonald's Customer
I've been hitting up McDonald's for years. Now it's back. We need snack wraps. What's a snack wrap? It's the return of something great. Snack wrap is back.
- [29:02]
State Farm Agent Voice
If your small business has a problem.
- [29:05]
Patrick Gagne
You could say, just my luck.
- [29:07]
State Farm Agent Voice
But you should say, like a good.
- [29:09]
Patrick Gagne
Neighbor, State Farm is there, and we'll.
- [29:11]
State Farm Agent Voice
Help get you back in business. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.