Lack of remorse
This is a common behavioral trait for people who are on the personality disorder spectrum (PDs). This is partly why they don't, can't or won't adapt to social norms.
There is a lack of empathy, or emotion blindness towards other people. Some have very good cognitive (cold) empathy skills, so they mentally know how someone else is feeling, but lack the ability or capacity to feel what other's are feeling like it was their own.
A theory I've been playing with is that this is due to hyper-mentalization. Their brains simply think a lot faster than most, but to the point that they over-think things. They have a tendency to look at one minor detail and then over-generalize with their rapid thought/racing brain, and then with their impulsiveness they react and run-over other people's boundaries. Afterwards they end up clueless as to why they continue to fail at connecting socially, even more so shocked as to why other people are hurt. And PDs often take it too personal when other's try to defend their boundaries, when they reflect back observations of the PDs distorted thoughts or abusive behavior.
They usually never get out of this default pattern of relationships. They end up having some variation of 'hit & run' type social communication style. They dig in hard, hit fast and are hyper aggressive with their stance and criticisms. Trying to create connection through other person submitting and countering to their aggression. Sometimes this looks like it works on the surface, because many people will pacify their aggressive approach. However, it rarely ever brings connection or any sort of 'meeting of minds', so then they often 'run' away or 'leave' the conversation. Never admitting fault, never seeking understanding, never giving other people an opportunity to defend their ideology or feelings.
Being on the receiving end of this consistent pattern is exhausting. And trying to make sense of it with the assumption that everyone is normal, makes social interactions always have an underlying unease. Because some of us can recognize these patterns of behavior, but still haven't figured out how to practically interact with these types of PD type brains. And for those of us with family history of psychological distortion abuse by PD spectrum people, we have been brainwashed to take PD's behavior personally. We have a childhood full of being the common dumping ground of blame for everything that's wrong in their world, rarely ever able to successfully depersonalize these attacks. And because of that, there's always an underlying sense of powerlessness and isolation, because we lose touch with our own needs and feelings, codependent brainwashing from being in a relationship with a PD..
I've learned to stop automatically defaulting to diplomacy and explanation in response to people showing PD behavior. Once there's signs of over-aggressiveness and lack of remorse. I recognize that they don't really care or can't care about understanding or wanting to know what I'm communicating. Because I'm likely very slow on impulse, and on the opposite end of the mentalization speed, hypo-mentalization. I recognize my limitations, and simply work on getting better at identifying and calling out patterns of behavior.
It's no longer about communicating, it's more about recognizing excessive aggression, unfair communication behaviors and the active use of logical fallacies.
People on the PD spectrum seem to get a thrill out of controlling other people. Getting other's to jump or panic in response to them. Maybe it's like part of their 'care/panic' addiction? They feed off other's panic, or they get to feel connection when other people feel urgency and panic, because this mirrors their inner world of panic and chaos from hyper-active thinking. One big problem is that we unknowingly mis-read their behavior as a genuine attempt to communicate, connect, and meet minds. So we end up feeding their addiction, get exhausted dealing with them and we're left feeling lack after encounters with them. But since we leave disoriented and confused, unconsciously our nervous system seeks out 'do-over' opportunities with future social relationships, and the pattern continues. We can't avoid getting caught up in relationships with PD spectrum people, until we can see through their distortion FOG, and find a personally empowering and fair way to interact with them.
Simply doing the No-Contact strategy is only a short term measure, our nervous systems likely will always be drawn towards new social relationships with new PD's, because of the need for 'Do-Over' and end of story. So to ease our anxiety and confusion requires Education and Exposure. Education is learning to recognize common behavior patterns along with underlying motivations. Exposure is raw experience, calling out these behavior patterns, taking a stand against unfair aggression, and developing confidence with our own aggression so that we can defend our own boundaries.
