Antisocial behaviour comes in many forms and can apply as much to the individual who prefers to spend all night in with his computer rather than being out with friends or family, as to someone who is out all night causing trouble. It does not necessarily describe someone who is violent or likely to cause damage to public places, but there is an inherent loathing of society at the heart of all antisocial people. The root of this loathing can be quite deep and elusive. It may be something that happened so long ago that even the individual concerned cannot remember it without some therapeutic counselling, or it may be connected to a general discontent with the way one´s life has turned out. If a person has had a series of setbacks in life, say business failure or redundancy coupled with marriage breakup, it can produce serious and in some cases pathological antisocial attitudes.

The outcome of antisocial attitudes can range from the harmless to the downright dangerous. At the harmless end of the scale are shy people who just prefer not to mix with society at large. This type of person will feel awkward and even scared in situations which involve meeting new people or being in a big crowd. The cause of his behaviour may be an unfortunate experience in the past which has terrified him or humiliated him in public.

Another type will resort to alchohol or other drugs to raise confidence levels to the point where they can stop pretending and start voicing their real concerns. These people will be loud at parties and very often try and upset people. There are often unresolved issues at the heart of this type of behaviour, such as a betrayal by a loved one or injustice at work. On the surface it may seem as though the individual is being loutish and offensive with no regard for other people´s feelings, but in reality he or she could be frightened inside and feel they are misunderstood.

Low confidence levels as a result of poor self-esteem can sometimes be a cause of antisocial behaviour. Very often some kind of negative impact based on parental relations can be the motivator. Parents who have only high aspirations for their children don´t always realise that they are sending messages which demean their children and place conditions on their love. Failure to meet these conditions, the child thinks, will negate their right to be loved by society and in return they show hate back.

We too often assume that someone who is shy and passive or proactively aggressive is really just expressing a personality trait. But both these types of behaviour pattern can be reversed with good counselling. Once the deep-rooted cause of the suffering has been unearthed, such as abuse or neglect, the individual can be trained to deal with it in non-harming ways. Shy people miss out on life opportunities, and violent people tend to ruin any opportunities they get to be close to others. Both groups appear to society at large as being antisocial, but the reality is that there are factors at work which are beyond the understanding of the perpetrator and need time, patience and understanding by a third party to cure.