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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.
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An estimated 13.7 million Americans are thought to be diagnosed sociopaths.
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."
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Her memoir also recounts things that she did in order to feel 'something'. This includes stabbing a classmate in the neck with a pencil.
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.
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"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."
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.
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“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.”
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.
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She said: "I’m not trying to minimise sociopathy. I’m saying there’s nothing immoral or inherently wrong about not feeling empathy.
"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