Antisocial Personality Disorder

A personality disorder characterized by low empathy, difficulty submitting to authority and rules, emotional regulation issues, and trouble being honest.

A carrd geared towards clearing up misconceptions about this disorder and provide resources to those who suspect they are Antisocial.[Updated: 1/6/23]

Written by an antisocial system who's sick of people demonizing us.
-Ozymandias&

Diagnostic Criteria

• DSM Criteria for ASPD [Pages 2-4]

The original diagnostic criteria presented in the DSM-5 is formatted in a rather ableist and demonizing way, as there are much better ways to state the symptoms rather than assuming that all Antisocials are criminals or abusive or going to turn to crime and abuse.
These resources are a much better starting point for determining if you have ASPD or not.

• The ASPD Checklist by shit-borderlines-do
• The ASPD Checklist [Google Forms Version] by Rainii from Post-Manic Apology Tour
• ASPD DX Criteria Written by someone with ASPD [by carnivoroustomatoes]
• An introduction to ASPD Blanking

FAQ About ASPD

But doesn't low empathy mean you can't feel?
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No. Low empathy just means that you have a decreased ability to "put yourself in someone else's shoes". Empathy does not equal your ability to feel feelings.How can you truly love someone when you have ASPD?
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The same way people without it do. ASPD doesn't mean you can't love anybody. Our love may look different and be presented differently than someone without ASPD, but we can still feel and show love. It also depends the type of love you are talking about. We [the author& of this carrd] feel a lot of platonic love for our friends and system members, but we have trouble feeling romantic love since we are aromantic. Not all people with ASPD are aromantic or asexual, and to assume so is ableist. That being said, you don't even need to feel love to care about someone. There are people with ASPD who feel no love, but they still care and show kindness to people close to them. Feeling no love does not mean you are heartless.Nonetheless, it's important to acknowledge that sometimes, love and kindness is an active choice a pwASPD makes, not an emotion they feel. This is not inherently bad, but you need to realize that sometimes it gets tiring to do constantly, and sometimes pwASPD need a break. This does not mean that they're "turning evil" or "revealing their true intentions". It's just like a form of masking, and everyone deserves to un-mask, no matter what condition they have.How do you have healthy relationships when you can't feel regret or remorse?
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Just because we don't feel regret, doesn't mean we have no ability to tell when we have done something wrong. Sure, it may take us a bit longer to realize when something is wrong, and a bit longer to apologize for it, but we're not completely blind to our wrong-doings. For us, we're slow to realizing when our words or actions have hurt someone, and once we do, we take a bit to figure out a "proper" response or course of action to take towards the situation. But we still end up apologizing and trying to assure whom we have wronged that it was not intentional. For others, it may just be a small "oh shit, that might've been shitty" and nothing more. It's spectrum, as many things are.Aren't people with ASPD aggressive and hostile?
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Everyone has the ability to become aggressive and hostile. Antisocials aren't inherently these things. We may be much more easily irritated or angered, but just because we're upset doesn't mean we'll immediately become aggressive and hostile. It may affect our mood and words, or we may become withdrawn and isolated because of our issues with regulating emotions, or we may turn to self-destructive tendencies instead of destructive tendencies towards other. It differs from Antisocial to Antisocial. This isn't to say that we're not at all hostile or aggressive, because of course there will be some of us who are. But that logic can be applied to everyone, regardless of their disorder, neurodivergence or lack of one. The key is to not make assumptions.Why are people with ASPD such big liars?
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A big thing about compulsive lying is that sometimes we don't even realize we're doing it. It's not something easy to control or combat. It also can tie into our struggle with realizing how our words can have consequences or weight on others, meaning that we may lie or twist a story without thinking about how that lie will have to be maintained or will affect someone's view of us. We may lie because of our low self-esteem, and twisting someone's perception of us to think highly of us may help us feel better about ourselves. We may lie because of low impulse control. We may lie because we don't trust the person we're lying to with the truth. It depends on the Antisocial.Why don't you just call yourselves Psychopaths/Sociopaths?
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Pyschopath and Sociopath are slurs towards people with ASPD. Full stop. When you hear either word, you don't think of people with ASPD, you think of the serial killers and criminals on cop shows or crime shows. You think of abusive and hostile people who have no regard for others lives and wishes.
Do you see why that's harmful?
Calling people Antisocials psychopaths/sociopaths is ableist and rude, and if you disagree, please kindly keep it to yourself and educate yourself. Those stereotypes lead Antisocials to put themselves down for something they can't control, and withdrawal from others out of fear of hurting them. It leads doctors and therapists to give up on them because of how we're assumed to turn out.
Don't call us psychopaths/sociopaths.What words should I use instead of psychopath/sociopath?
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If you are referencing a person with ASPD, then use person with ASPD. If you are referencing a person who is manipulative, violent, cruel, and whatever else you associate those words with, then use those adjectives instead. It’s that simple.
If you’re in a situation where you see someone using that word (who does not have ASPD, as that is ours to reclaim), then kindly correct them and offer other words they could use. Even if they don’t listen the first time, change does not happen over night. Educate yourselves, others, and be patient but loud.

Life Experiences With ASPD

We only realized we had ASPD recently, however our symptoms have been persistent since childhood. We were hesitant to take on this label, as the assumptions associated with it and the stereotypes around it made us fear alienation. We still are afraid, but less then we were initially. Being cluster B and living in America will do that to you /hj
We've come to realize that our environment had a huge play in how it developed, though traumatic events that occurred also furthered its development.The label of ASPD gives us something that can help explain our low empathy and muted emotions, along with our disregard for authority and social norms. Specifically, our emotions feel like they are under some sort of itchy blanket, and trying to remove it just irritates and frustrates us. The only emotions that aren't affected by the blanket are anger and irritability. And since those emotions are the clearest ones we can feel, those emotions are often the ones we default to. Some clarity is better then none, even if the clarity isn't conventional. Yet, despite this blanket being over our emotions, our brain still knows when we should feel a certain emotion. And knows how we are generally expected to act in association to that emotion. Thus, we "feel" it, but it doesn't physically look like it unless we are around others. It's an act.We have always been ones to disregard social norms, ever since we were a child it had been natural to us. Our disregard of authority, however, did not exactly show itself until after a betrayal from an authority figure we had trusted. Since that event, authority figures are organized in a sort of hierarchy in our brain. Those at the top of this hierarchy are figures we will listen to without a fight or issue. Those at the bottom, we will actively make them aware of how much we will not listen to them. There is only one figure at the very top, and they have earned that position and our trust, but we are prepared to remove them and reorder them at any time. Those at the bottom we will never trust. Regardless of changes they make in their behaviour.When we discovered that low empathy was not a common thing, we realized that we would need to actively look into what people saw as proper response to loved ones needing support or advice from us. Thus, we are able to provide help to our loved ones when needed, but we need to look around and really think about our response beforehand. It doesn't come naturally to us, and it never has. We do not understand empathy, or how we could express empathy. However, upon meeting us, this is not very obvious.Being able to influence a relationship or hold some sort of power in it makes us feel comfortable and safe. In a place of power, we have control over what happens, and we know what will happen as we are the ones deciding it. That, and personal gain and power helps our low self-esteem rise. This doesn't mean that we don't take into account others' feelings and opinions in a relationship. In fact, others being comfortable and feeling safe helps us feel comfortable and safe. It just means that we like to have some form of elevated influence over decisions and activities. We will never completely ignore or set aside others' comfort and opinions for this desire, though.- The Revenant

Our experiences w low empathy+aspd-difficulties relating to other ppls experiences
-finding it hard to tell when others are hurt/uncomfortable when they dont expressly say so
-unable to / find it difficult to “feel their emotions w them”, generally go thru a more logical subconscious process in our head (“i can see Why theyd feel that way but i cant feel it w them”)
-generally able to be neutral on most things (“i get ur point n i can also see their point” type of deal depending on the situation)
-if not the above it tends to be “yeah i can see why thatd be an issue”
-often too blunt for our own goodmore aspd experiences-we have self oriented goals n tend to base self worth on how others tend to perceive us (partially bc of comorbid npd)
-impulsivity and perpetual boredom when not doing anything my beloved /s
-irritability my hated
-remorse more comes in the form of “oh wait that was probably shitty” rather than anything else
-plans for the future? whats that?
-responsibility is v hard. we rlly only keep up w things when we are required or want to and even then theres a part of us that wants to Not out of spite
-being completely honest with people? whats that?
-opinionated in very specific areas, outside of that we cannot care (brain tends to clash n say “GRRRR” n also say “yo but why do u care” /lh)
-experiencing and processing emotion are not things we do well
relationships are . not an easy thing for us to maintainother low empathy things+talking abt general stereotypes-low empathy is v common in ppl w npd, sometimes in bpd, autism, adhd, and a few other things. its not strictly an aspd thing but is very associated
-having low empathy does not mean ur an unfeeling robot
-having low empathy doesnt inherently make u aro/ace
-ppl w npd/aspd r not how pop culture portrays us. we r not serial killers, abusers, or anything of the like
-ppl w npd/aspd/low empathy in general can be some of the most loving n caring ppl on the planet. having low empathy doesnt make u unable to, for example, have a family-Written by Jamie of the Shinigami No Ryouiki

DM us on Discord if you have questions, concerns, would like your experience added, or something else you would like added to this carrd -!! VILBUR ¡¡#0666