alternating between high positive regard and great disappointment
First the stalker is obsessed by the person because the target is the most awesome person in the universe. Imagine a person who could give you infinitely many utilons, if they wanted to. Learning all about them and trying to befriend them would be the most important thing in the world. But at some moment, there is an inevitable disappointment.
Scenario A: The target decides to avoid the stalker. At the beginning the stalker believes it is merely a misunderstanding that can be explained, that perhaps they can prove their loyalty by persistence or something. But later they give up hope, or receive a sufficiently harsh refusal.
Scenario B: The stalker succeeds to befriend the the target. But they are still not getting the infinite utilons, which they believe they should be getting. So they try to increase the intensity of the relationship to impossible levels, as if trying to become literally one person. At some moment the target refuses to cooperate, or is simply unable to cooperate in the way the stalker wants them to, but to the stalker even this seems like a spiteful refusal.
In both scenarios, now the stalker feels hurt and cheated, and wants revenge. Projecting their false beliefs on the target, they believe the target has lied to them about the inifinite utilons; they blame the target for starting this whole process, and for destroying the stalker’s life. (In the next mood swing, the stalker may offer forgiveness to the target, if the target agrees to give them the inifinite utilons now. Then they become angry again, etc.)
But maybe there are more possible mechanisms than this one. Also, my model does not explain why the stalker is targetting one specific person instead of multiple people, or everyone.
To what extend is getting a stalker a risk worth thinking about before it’s too late?
I think it is worth thinking about, but I am not sure what specific advice to offer except for (a) avoiding everyone “weird”, which seems like an overkill, and (b) using a pseudonym and other methods of protecting your privacy if you want to become even a bit famous.
I would certainly recommend to everyone who wants to become famous (as a bloger, singer, actor, etc.) to choose a pseudonym, stick to it, and never reveal anything personal. (Probably not even the city you live in; I would imagine that the idea that you are geographically distant would discourage most possible stalkers.)
I would certainly recommend to everyone who wants to become famous (as a bloger, singer, actor, etc.) to choose a pseudonym, stick to it, and never reveal anything personal.
The only anonymous celebrity I can think of is Bansky.
Staying anonymous is not compatible with becoming famous.
I would guess most people become famous before they realize the advantage of anonymity, and then it’s too late to start with a fresh name.
But it’s also possible that it’s simply not worth the effort, because when you become famous enough, someone will dox you anyway.
Could be interesting to know how much advantage (trivial inconvenience for wannabe stalkers) provides a pseudonym when your real name can be easily found on wikipedia; e.g. “Madonna”. Or how big emotional difference for a potential stalker does it make whether a famous blogger displays their photo on their blog or not.
I’m at the moment quite unsure how to handle a girl who seems to have bipolar depression and wants to have a relationship with me.
Four years ago I think she was in a quite stable mental state (I’m more percetive today than I was back then(. At the time she turned me down. I haven’t seen her for a while and now she seems to be pretty broken as a result of mobbing in an enviroment that she now left.
One the one hand there the desire in me to try to fix her. Having a physical relationship with her also has it’s appeal.
On the other hand I can’t see myself being open personally with her as long as she is in that messed up mental state.
I’ve had a 3 year relationship with a woman I thought I could fix. She said she’d try hard to change, I said I’d help her, I tried to help her and was extremely supportive for a long time. It was emotionally draining because behind each new climbed mountain there was another problem, and another, and another. Every week a new thing that was bad or terrible about the world. I eventually grew tired of the constant stream of disasters, most stemming from normal situations interpreted weirdly then obsessed over until she broke down in tears. It became clear that things were not likely to ever get better so I left.
There were a great number of fantastic things about this woman; we were both breakdancers and rock climbers, we both enjoyed anime and films, we shared a love for spicy food and liked cuddling, we both had good bodies. We had similar mindsets about a lot of things.
I say all this so that you understand exactly how much of a downside an unstable mental state can be. So that you know that all of these great things about her were in the end not enough. Understand what I mean when I tell you it was not worth it for me and that I recommend against it. That I lost 3 years of time I could have spent making progress in a state with no energy. If you do plan to go for it anyway, set a time limit on how long you will try to fix her before letting go, some period of time less than half a year. I’ll answer any questions that might seem useful.
She said she’d try hard to change, I said I’d help her, I tried to help her and was extremely supportive for a long time.
Trying hard to change is not useful for changing. It keeps someone in place. Someone who has emotional issues because they obsess too much doesn’t get a benefit from trying harder.
Accepting such a frame is not the kind of mistake I would make.
That I lost 3 years of time I could have spent making progress in a state with no energy.
If a person breaks down crying I’m not disassociating and going into a low energy state. It rather draw me into a situation and makes me more present.
But I’m not sure whether it brings me into a position where I consider the other person an agent rather than a rubics cube having to be solved.
Yes well I wasn’t a rationalist at the time, nor did I know enough about psychology to say what the right thing to do to help a person whose father… Well I cannot say the exact thing but suffice to say that If I ever meet the man at least one of us is going to the hospital. I’m rather non-violent at all other times. There wasn’t exactly a how-to guide I could read on the subject.
I am also the kind of person that would be drawn out and try to help a person who breaks down crying. You use your energy to help their problems, and have less left for yourself. It starts to wear on you when you get into the third year of it happening every second week like clockwork over such charming subjects as a thoughtless word by a professional acquaintance or having taken the wrong bins out. Bonus points for taking the wrong bins out being a personal insult that means I hate her.
Anyway, that really isn’t the point.Telling me how to solve my rubics cube which I am no longer in contact with is not very helpful. The point is, I’ve been there and I want to help you make the right decision, whatever that may be for you.
The point is, I’ve been there and I want to help you make the right decision
As far as I see it, you basically were faced with a situation without having any tools to deal with it. That makes your situation quite different.
When sitting in front of the hospital bed of my father speaking confused stuff because of morphium, my instinctual response was to do a nonverbal trance induction to have him in a silent state in half a minute.
Not because I read some how-to guide of how to deal with the situation but because NLP tools like that are instinctual behavior for me.
I’m very far from normal and so a lot of lessons that might be drawn from your experience for people that might be similar as you are, aren’t applicable to me.
There wasn’t exactly a how-to guide I could read on the subject.
While reading a how-to guide doesn’t give you any skills, there’s is psychological literature on how to help people with most problems.
You may be right about my lack of tools, and I can’t honestly say I used the try harder in the proper manner seeing as I hadn’t been introduced to it at the time. I played the role of the supportive boyfriend and tried (unsuccessfully) to convince her to go to a therapist who was actually qualified at that sort of thing. I am suspicious, however that you took pains to separate yourself into a new reference class before actually knowing that one way or the other. Unless of course you have a track record of taking massive psychological issues and successfully fixing them in other people and are we really doing this? I mean come on. A person offers to help and you immediately go for the throat, picking apart mistakes made in an attempt to help a person, then using rather personal things in a subtly judgemental manner. Do you foresee that kind of approach ending well? Is that really the way you want this sort of conversation to play out? I like to think we can do better.
No research, just my personal opinion: borderline personality disorder.
First the stalker is obsessed by the person because the target is the most awesome person in the universe. Imagine a person who could give you infinitely many utilons, if they wanted to. Learning all about them and trying to befriend them would be the most important thing in the world. But at some moment, there is an inevitable disappointment.
Scenario A: The target decides to avoid the stalker. At the beginning the stalker believes it is merely a misunderstanding that can be explained, that perhaps they can prove their loyalty by persistence or something. But later they give up hope, or receive a sufficiently harsh refusal.
Scenario B: The stalker succeeds to befriend the the target. But they are still not getting the infinite utilons, which they believe they should be getting. So they try to increase the intensity of the relationship to impossible levels, as if trying to become literally one person. At some moment the target refuses to cooperate, or is simply unable to cooperate in the way the stalker wants them to, but to the stalker even this seems like a spiteful refusal.
In both scenarios, now the stalker feels hurt and cheated, and wants revenge. Projecting their false beliefs on the target, they believe the target has lied to them about the inifinite utilons; they blame the target for starting this whole process, and for destroying the stalker’s life. (In the next mood swing, the stalker may offer forgiveness to the target, if the target agrees to give them the inifinite utilons now. Then they become angry again, etc.)
But maybe there are more possible mechanisms than this one. Also, my model does not explain why the stalker is targetting one specific person instead of multiple people, or everyone.
I think it is worth thinking about, but I am not sure what specific advice to offer except for (a) avoiding everyone “weird”, which seems like an overkill, and (b) using a pseudonym and other methods of protecting your privacy if you want to become even a bit famous.
I would certainly recommend to everyone who wants to become famous (as a bloger, singer, actor, etc.) to choose a pseudonym, stick to it, and never reveal anything personal. (Probably not even the city you live in; I would imagine that the idea that you are geographically distant would discourage most possible stalkers.)
This sounds eerily close to the mystical varieties of theistic religions.
The only anonymous celebrity I can think of is Bansky.
Staying anonymous is not compatible with becoming famous.
Satoshi Nakamoto is also famous and pseudonymous, but this conjunction is very rare IMO.
Aha, thank you, a second example. Though I don’t know if he’s known by name in the general population.
I would guess most people become famous before they realize the advantage of anonymity, and then it’s too late to start with a fresh name.
But it’s also possible that it’s simply not worth the effort, because when you become famous enough, someone will dox you anyway.
Could be interesting to know how much advantage (trivial inconvenience for wannabe stalkers) provides a pseudonym when your real name can be easily found on wikipedia; e.g. “Madonna”. Or how big emotional difference for a potential stalker does it make whether a famous blogger displays their photo on their blog or not.
My favorite anonymous person is B. Traven.
*Banksy
He’s so anonymous I don’t even know how to spell his (or maybe her) name! :-)
I’m at the moment quite unsure how to handle a girl who seems to have bipolar depression and wants to have a relationship with me.
Four years ago I think she was in a quite stable mental state (I’m more percetive today than I was back then(. At the time she turned me down. I haven’t seen her for a while and now she seems to be pretty broken as a result of mobbing in an enviroment that she now left.
One the one hand there the desire in me to try to fix her. Having a physical relationship with her also has it’s appeal. On the other hand I can’t see myself being open personally with her as long as she is in that messed up mental state.
That is a difficult situation, but the last sentence suggests that the correct answer is “no”. :(
I’ve had a 3 year relationship with a woman I thought I could fix. She said she’d try hard to change, I said I’d help her, I tried to help her and was extremely supportive for a long time. It was emotionally draining because behind each new climbed mountain there was another problem, and another, and another. Every week a new thing that was bad or terrible about the world. I eventually grew tired of the constant stream of disasters, most stemming from normal situations interpreted weirdly then obsessed over until she broke down in tears. It became clear that things were not likely to ever get better so I left.
There were a great number of fantastic things about this woman; we were both breakdancers and rock climbers, we both enjoyed anime and films, we shared a love for spicy food and liked cuddling, we both had good bodies. We had similar mindsets about a lot of things.
I say all this so that you understand exactly how much of a downside an unstable mental state can be. So that you know that all of these great things about her were in the end not enough. Understand what I mean when I tell you it was not worth it for me and that I recommend against it. That I lost 3 years of time I could have spent making progress in a state with no energy. If you do plan to go for it anyway, set a time limit on how long you will try to fix her before letting go, some period of time less than half a year. I’ll answer any questions that might seem useful.
Trying hard to change is not useful for changing. It keeps someone in place. Someone who has emotional issues because they obsess too much doesn’t get a benefit from trying harder. Accepting such a frame is not the kind of mistake I would make.
If a person breaks down crying I’m not disassociating and going into a low energy state. It rather draw me into a situation and makes me more present. But I’m not sure whether it brings me into a position where I consider the other person an agent rather than a rubics cube having to be solved.
Yes well I wasn’t a rationalist at the time, nor did I know enough about psychology to say what the right thing to do to help a person whose father… Well I cannot say the exact thing but suffice to say that If I ever meet the man at least one of us is going to the hospital. I’m rather non-violent at all other times. There wasn’t exactly a how-to guide I could read on the subject.
I am also the kind of person that would be drawn out and try to help a person who breaks down crying. You use your energy to help their problems, and have less left for yourself. It starts to wear on you when you get into the third year of it happening every second week like clockwork over such charming subjects as a thoughtless word by a professional acquaintance or having taken the wrong bins out. Bonus points for taking the wrong bins out being a personal insult that means I hate her.
Anyway, that really isn’t the point.Telling me how to solve my rubics cube which I am no longer in contact with is not very helpful. The point is, I’ve been there and I want to help you make the right decision, whatever that may be for you.
As far as I see it, you basically were faced with a situation without having any tools to deal with it. That makes your situation quite different.
When sitting in front of the hospital bed of my father speaking confused stuff because of morphium, my instinctual response was to do a nonverbal trance induction to have him in a silent state in half a minute.
Not because I read some how-to guide of how to deal with the situation but because NLP tools like that are instinctual behavior for me.
I’m very far from normal and so a lot of lessons that might be drawn from your experience for people that might be similar as you are, aren’t applicable to me.
While reading a how-to guide doesn’t give you any skills, there’s is psychological literature on how to help people with most problems.
You may be right about my lack of tools, and I can’t honestly say I used the try harder in the proper manner seeing as I hadn’t been introduced to it at the time. I played the role of the supportive boyfriend and tried (unsuccessfully) to convince her to go to a therapist who was actually qualified at that sort of thing. I am suspicious, however that you took pains to separate yourself into a new reference class before actually knowing that one way or the other. Unless of course you have a track record of taking massive psychological issues and successfully fixing them in other people and are we really doing this? I mean come on. A person offers to help and you immediately go for the throat, picking apart mistakes made in an attempt to help a person, then using rather personal things in a subtly judgemental manner. Do you foresee that kind of approach ending well? Is that really the way you want this sort of conversation to play out? I like to think we can do better.
I have information. Do you want it or not?
Are you sharing your feelings or asking for advice?
It’s context for the question I asked earlier.
There’s a lot of information that goes into decision making that I won’t be open about publically, so I’m not really asking on specific advice.