Are You An Antisocial Rule-breaker?

The Antisocial Rule-breaker personality pattern (or personality disorder) relies on a set of unconscious assumptions that directly affect how you perceive, think, feel, and act.

Emotional Dynamics

The Antisocial Rule-breaker pattern requires you to deny and conceal your real emotions. Thick-skinned and self-contained, you treat people like pawns in the chess game of life. You avoid sincere communication because you don’t want to cultivate intimacy, which could give other people control over you. You suspect those who show you goodwill, believing it to be an attempt to exploit. 

The Rule-breaker pattern triggers emotions that stem from social resentment: hostility toward authority, anger when challenged, frustration in the face of delayed gratification, excitement when conning someone, and pleasure when outsmarting people. The price paid for these defensive tactics? Chronic inner emptiness and feelings of alienation from life and God.

Rule-breaker Body Language

It seems like you gaze directly, conveying a fearless nonchalance. You’re actually sizing up a person for any signs of trust you can exploit.

How about the soft, seductive look? It beguiles people to feel curious and intrigued. They sense your creative flair, but don’t know it will be used against them.

Then there’s the innocent smile. This look says, “You can trust me with your deepest secret. I’ve been around and I can help you out in life. You need someone like me to take care of things.”  

The apostle Paul understood this pattern: “By smooth talk and glowing words they deceive innocent people” (Rom 16:18 NLT).

Rule-breaker Self-Talk

The automatic self-talk of the Rule-breaker pattern focuses on self against the world, and sounds like this:

• I need to look out for myself.
• It’s all right for me to say one thing and do another.
• If I don’t take advantage of people, someone else will.
• Following rules is stupid. Take what you can get and run.
• I get a thrill from breaking rules and thumbing my nose at authority.

The Antisocial Rule-breaker Pattern in Action

I am relaying a true story, camouflaging the details, of an experience I had years ago. 

Dr. S. was an ambitious young psychiatrist with a thriving practice who wanted to share my office space with me. He seemed friendly and professional, so I agreed. I liked his gift of the gab and boisterous, off-the-wall humor.

I really enjoyed the first month of our association. Dr. S. would come bouncing into the clinic, brimming with energy and cracking jokes. But by the third month his happy-go-lucky smile had waned. He came to my office and said that the IRS was giving him problems. Could I pay his portion of the month’s rent? He said he’d pay me back the following month.

But he didn’t.

“You’re first on my list, Danny boy. I’m expecting some checks to arrive any day now from my patients’ insurance claims.”

But that day never came.

In our seventh month together, Dr. S. asked if he could try out one of the personality assessments that I used with my clients. “I’d like to borrow your computer’s scoring code so I can score one test,” he said. “I’ll pay you for it next week.”

Since I was used to trusting professional colleagues, I agreed. So I was shocked when I received a sizable bill from the testing company. Dr. S. had processed twenty of these pricey tests under my name.

I confronted him.

I would never do such a thing,” Dr. S. protested. “The company has obviously made a mistake. I’ll phone them right now and get it straightened out.”

He sounded so sincere that I questioned my judgment.

The worst was yet to come. The following week, Dr. S. entered my office, looking crestfallen. “Dan, buddy, I’m real sorry about this, but the insurance companies are hassling me big time. I’m going to have to declare bankruptcy. I’ll have to write off the money I owe you.” He smiled sorrowfully and walked out.

Finally acknowledging the reality of a Rule-breaker pattern in action, that week I dissolved our association and found a new office.

Dr. S. wrote me a scathing letter. “I’m appalled at your disloyalty. You are not a true friend!”

For more on the Antisocial Rule-breaker personality pattern, read:

THE SELF COMPASS: 

Charting Your Personality In Christ

How To Understand Antisocial Personality Rule-breakers

What thoughts go on inside the head of a person stuck in the Rule-breaker personality pattern, which in its severe form is known as the antisocial personality disorder?

Picture this young adolescent on a hot summer afternoon:

 

I aim the slingshot with precision and flick it. I watch the carefully selected stone arc perfectly, as if in slow motion, soaring through the air. Then the sound. Crash! The tinkling of glass from Mrs. Johnson’s garage window. I scurry away down the alley, chuckling and leaping. Oh, the ecstasy.

Later that afternoon Uncle Zack and I are on the sidewalk outside a convenience store. “Hey, Robbie,” he whispers. “Want to learn about the five-finger freebie?”

I nod, breathless.

“Okay. Here’s how it works. When we go into the store, go right to a display rack where there’s something you want. Pick up a different item and pretend you’re examining it carefully. While you’re doing that, grab the item you want with the other hand and slip it in your pocket. Replace the first item and find something real cheap to actually buy, and then take it to the counter.”

We enter the convenience store. I stroll over to the toy display. With one hand I pick up a miniature dinosaur and examine it carefully. With the other, I scoop up a yoyo and slip it into my pocket. I stroll over to the counter, select a package of gum, and hand it to the clerk. Buzzing with excitement, I smile appealingly as I pay for the gum.

It’s a snap.

Back in the car, Uncle Zack smiles triumphantly when I pull the yoyo out of my pocket. “Thatta boy, Robbie. That’s the five-finger freebie.”

Rule-breaker Self Compass

Rule-breakers are charming and sociable on the surface, but calculating underneath. Aggressively deceitful, you’re stuck on the Assertion compass point. You size up situations according to how you can personally profit by exploiting those around you. There is no sense of remorse.

 

You have learned to repress the Weakness compass point. You avoid empathy with other people’s pain and do not consider your own shortcomings. This lack of healthy weakness results in an undeveloped conscience. Likewise, you repress caring from the Love compass point. You mistrust others and shun feeling close to anyone, since loyalty and caring would inhibit your need to seduce and exploit.

The Rule-breaker pattern can be calculating, even cruel. This pattern shares with narcissists a sense of entitlement, but is more aggressive—streetwise, glib, and able to lie convincingly. 

The apostle Paul understood this pattern: “By smooth talk and glowing words they deceive innocent people” (Rom 16:18 NLT).

The Value of Healthy Guilt

To break the grip of the Rule-breaker pattern, it is vital that you learn to feel guilt as appropriate to the situation. Healthy guilt alerts you to the fact that you have exploited someone to your advantage. It tells you that you have used another person as a “thing” and dehumanized yourself in the process.

This helps you become aware when you are tempted to lie, shirk responsibility, or pull the wool over someone’s eyes. You stop and pray for God to help you see the situation from that person’s point of view. Empathize, letting yourself feel the discomfort of the potential consequences of your behavior.

Reversing roles with someone activates your social conscience. When you trade places with the dog you’re about to kick and anticipate the pain and fear you’ll inflict, you suddenly have the power not to kick the poor creature. There’s an inner shift—not to become a wimpy do-gooder, but to use your power constructively.

Buy a journal and write in it daily. Let your unconscious take you back in time. What are your memories of lying? Cheating? Do you recall feeling some remorse, tinged with excitement? How did the Rule-breaker pattern corrode your life, at the expense of healthy guilt? 

You can take comfort that many Biblical characters who came to be highly esteemed were originally Rule-breakers of some note. Jacob cheated his brother out of his birthright. Abraham lied to Pharoah about Sarah being his wife. Miriam hatched a plot against Moses, was struck with leprosy, but after she confessed wrongdoing, she was healed and restored.  

The spiritual grace Jesus Christ offers meets us all in our trespasses and empowers personality transformation. 

For more, read: 

The Self Compass: Charting Your Personality in Christ