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A diagnosed sociopath who works as a therapist has revealed what 'dark urges' actually feel like.
Patric Gagne, from Los Angeles, has written extensively about her diagnosis and life experiences in her memoir, Sociopath.
While it's a word we're all taught to fear or at the very least be wary of, it's more common than you might think.
An estimated 13.7 million Americans are thought to be diagnosed sociopaths.
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And a quick look at Patric's Instagram shows an American woman like any other - sharing photos of her children and documenting her day-to-day life.
In her memoir, she explained how it felt to be different to other children: "I didn't feel guilt when I lied. I didn't feel compassion when classmates got hurt on the playground. For the most part I felt nothing."
Her memoir also recounts things that she did in order to feel 'something'. This includes stabbing a classmate in the neck with a pencil.
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She wrote: "With that one violent act - all traces of pressure were eradicated. Not just gone but replaced by a deep sense of peace."
Sociopath includes Patric's take on what getting 'dark urges' would feel like when she was a child.
She wrote: "It would start with an impulse to make the nothingness stop, an unrelenting pressure that expanded to permeate my entire self.
"The longer I tried to ignore it, the worse it got. My muscles would tense, my stomach would knot. Tighter. Tighter. It was claustrophobic, like being trapped inside my brain. Trapped inside a void."
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Patric then went on to recall staying at a friend's house for a sleepover and being the only one still awake, and battling dark urges.
She wrote: "I sense my mounting tension in response to the emptiness and felt the urge to hit the girl next to me as hard as I could.
“That’s weird, I thought. I didn’t want to hurt her. At the same time, I knew it would make me relax. Shaking my head against the temptation, I inched out of my sleeping bag to get away from her.”
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Patric was eventually diagnosed in her 20s by a psychologist, and notes in her book that these urges are less frequent in adulthood.
Patric has since explained why she is so open about being a sociopath.
She said: "I’m not trying to minimise sociopathy. I’m saying there’s nothing immoral or inherently wrong about not feeling empathy.
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"People like me are just different - it’s our behaviour that’s wrong at times. Just because I don’t care about you doesn’t mean I want to cause you pain."
Topics: Mental Health, Books, Life, Real Life
Kya Buller