(Seeing through the popular paradigms and the media fuelled paranoia)
An overview of the problem.
Fuelled by the popular media frenzies and high profile stories, we collectively carry a simple and dichotomised view of “stalking” and that is that the stalker is always the dysfunctional “bad” person and that the stalked person is always the victim. Subsequently we have a very “Black & White” perception of what stalking is and I want to challenge that paradigm. The popular media’s main commodity is fear. Stimulating public fear focuses people’s attention and increases their circulation which increases their advertising revenue. Therefore, to the media, fear is good. However to the public, fear is bad, at least the kind of constant state of apprehension that a relentless 24 hour media provides. These are things that will generally, for the vast majority of us, never touch our lives, yet are brought in to our homes via media news. From what we understand about a process called neuroplasticity, we know that experience and environment adapt our neural circuits to meet environmental demands. The consequences of an induced state of arousal are huge in terms of brain plasticity, neural wiring and our internal biological communication mechanisms. Changes in brain wiring to favour a more primitive fear oriented approach have a consequence on our reasoning and empathic qualities. They impact social interactions to be more guarded and more driven by self-interest. They change the way the brain focuses on certain tasks or subjects by introducing a more myopic and distorted outlook. 24 hour media has only been with us a couple of decades, now, so it is too early to predict how epigenetic changes are going to impact upon subsequent generations, but we may be heading down a path of emotional devolution. We may have kick started a process where our brains are being primed to favour primitive structures for more and more executive functions. We may be at risk of damaging, or even losing the reasoning capabilities that contribute to social cohesion. We fear stalkers because we have been taught to fear them, to fear the very idea of them. We have been taught not to look beyond the black and white image and not to investigate the deeper dynamics occurring within the stalker narrative. The media narrative of the stalker appeals to our phylogenetic need to know who or what, out there, is out to get us. To know when we are safe, we need to have an idea of what is not safe and it seems that this vigilance to danger is our brains default mode.
Dichotomising
Things we don’t understand resonate within structures of the brain associated with fear. We feel an implicit sense of safety and security when everything is in its place. We have a strong and very basic phylogenetic need for security. Because of this, we have a lamentable tendency to dichotomise and taxonomise everything around us, so that anything complex and difficult to understand is organised in a ways we feel safer with. This tendency has both benefits and failings; often the compartmentalisation leads to distortions, exaggerations and myopic attitudes that twist things away from their true and complex nature in to simplified form that lacks, or leads away from, precision rather than achieves precision. Our fear of what we don’t understand is appeased by forging an artificial and forced form of understanding.
What actually causes stalking?
Firstly; we need to understand that the underlying basis of so called stalking is that of the primary mechanism of attachment. I have spoken of the biology of attachment before, but to sum up, we are all generally born wired to make emotional attachments as a primary survival strategy of, not just our species, but throughout a wide variety of species. Generally speaking, although our modern society now provides a safety net, an infant that doesn’t form an emotional bond to a parent figure has little hope of survival. Many factors can lead to a breakdown of the primary attachment.
- Prior to conception; epigenetic factors passed down through changes in DNA in eggs and sperm that can lead to developmental problems in emotional processing and behaviours that may interfere with and sabotage the attachment process.
- In utero (during pregnancy); If the mother is experiencing repetitive stressful environments the foetus in the womb is bombarded by stress associated hormones. Repeated aggression, for instance, is associated with elevated levels of testosterone, and in turn, elevated levels of testosterone in the womb have recently been linked to the development of autism.
- At birth and during early years; a mother may suffer postpartum depression which interferes with emotional bonding. A combination of 1 & 2 may result in an infant that is difficult to bond with and triggers a mother to be emotionally unavailable. Many other external and internal factors can contribute to a failure to form an emotional bond after birth.
We are familiar with the classical stalking as a dysfunctional attachment from which Mr Paul Mullen has derived his (rather forced) taxonomy. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/talking-about-trauma/201306/in-the-mind-stalker The attachment here is unwanted and unsolicited. But there is another and more complex side to what we think of as stalking that needs to be addressed and is often overlooked in our lamentable tendency to dichotomise the subject; that some cases of stalking are actually solicited and caused by a dysfunction in the stalked rather than the stalker. These are ones that often begin as a relationship but that follow a break up. Early relational environments that are inconsistent, fearful and unpredictable can cause an implicit inability to form a genuine attachment because the early life attachment experience caused an intense fear response. This is combined and in competition with an innate biological drive to form an attachment. A healthy and genuine attachment is, or should be in an ideal relational world, one mutually made for life, but some people that have had early unhealthy or traumatic experiences of attachment form implicit danger, or “fight or flight”, reactions to making an attachment to someone. The need to attach is still there as it is a primary action tendency, but the reaction to attachment is one of survival and that the attachment itself is the source of the threat. The need to attach may, in fact, become ramped up and more desperate in the psyche due to the constant internal bash ups, but that it always gets to a stage where the attachment is perceived as a threat. The attachment is solicited, sometimes in an almost manic fashion. When you have someone with a healthy attachment mechanism attach to someone with an unhealthy attachment mechanism due to a history of attachment trauma you have a powerful source of dissonance. We all carry the drive to form attachments, but as soon as the person with an unhealthy attachment mechanism feels exposed and vulnerable to an attachment an alternative mechanism of detachment takes over and the person goes in to fight or flight mode. The genuinely attached is left confused and disorientated by the sudden and unexpected disconnection. That one person can disconnect so easily (because they have a history of relational stresses that have cemented in place the implicit lesson that attachment = danger), when another person with a far healthier attachment mechanism finds that disconnection, once made, is almost impossible, they become labelled as the dysfunctional stalker because they cannot emotionally disconnect when the true dysfunction is in the person who has a genuine inability to form meaningful bonds and is subsequently stalked. On the one hand you have someone with a somewhat unhealthy attachment pattern where they have an unrequited need to form an attachment, but that object of attachment is subsequently and inevitably rejected once the attachment begins becoming significant because it triggers dissonance and innate “fight or flight” behaviours. And on the other hand you have someone with a somewhat dependent form of attachment that is suddenly thrown emotionally overboard without a lifeline and who then seeks to hold on in some way to the emotional commitment that they have made to the other. On the surface you have the popular image of the stalker and the stalked, but look deeper in to the dynamics and you have an interaction between someone that has some serious emotional problems forming and maintaining relationships, leaving casualties in their frantic attempts to overcome an implicitly learned program; that an emotional attachment is a source of potential catastrophe, so the innate processes of survival reject and sabotage an attachment that threatens to cross the threshold of safety. The object of attachment is thus seen as a source of danger that needs to be avoided, evaded, or otherwise discouraged. The object of attachment, unable to break their attachment because the attachment process is an innate part of our biology, continues to try to maintain a form of attachment. There may even be occasions where, despite the rejection, the continued attention can be maintained through implicitly encouraging the attention. The attention may feed a certain unconscious need and may even provide a perverse gratification and validation. People that fit in to the borderline category of relational dynamics, or the “I hate you, don’t leave me” mould often flick back and forth between rejection and attachment, and rejection, in this case, is often an attempt to seek validation and an affirmation of value.
To Summarise
Although, in many cases, it is indeed the stalker that is the problem, the stalked, under some circumstances, can be active in soliciting the problem. The stalked (especially if they meet some of the borderline criteria) may be actively yet implicitly encouraging and desiring the attention. We need to see beyond the myopic dichotomy of stalking and allow a greater public understanding of the relational dynamics so often involved. An unexpected and unexplainable detachment is highly traumatic to a person that has formed an emotional bond. Such trauma can throw the psyche right out of balance and cause some rather unpredictable and irrational behaviours in attempting to restore or fix that bond. Behaviours that only exacerbate the underlying irrational conditioned fears that led to the detachment of that bond because the bond itself is the underlying cause of the fear. Stalking, therefore is a more complex dynamic than the good/bad dichotomy that popular paradigms and media inform us of. Stalking can not only be caused by a dysfunctional attachment in the stalker, but also by dysfunctional attachment patterns in the stalked.
How do we distinguish “stalking” from “following” in the context of social networks?
If someone, for example, silently follows my blogs, tweets, or social network posts, is there some objective criterion for classifying them as a sociopathic “stalker”?
Conversely, if I bother to take notice of strangers (or perhaps “groupies”) who are quietly following me, does that transform me into a “stalker” in their view?
Color me confused, perplexed, and intrigued on this one.
I try to avoid distinguishing if I can help it. I find that distinguishing can often provide obstacles to genuine understandings. Life is synergistic and rarely does a true distinguishing stand up under scrutiny.
What is following to one person is stalking to another so it’s often all in the perspective, really.
The purpose was to challenge the media fuelled polarity of the dynamic of the “evil stalker”. I’m not totally happy with it, but I do think I am, as Payson says, “on to something”.
I could go on and on and tell you howI I think you’re right, from my personal and professional experience as a therapist. I won’t right now, but I believe you’re opening up a necessary discussion. Many will say that your theory re-victimizes the victim. No! I get the difference. Often the apparent ‘victim’ is receiving some need fulfillment and perpetuating the situation subtly. The shock of the fight of flight of someone who can’t attach is huge…. Sorry for my disorganised comment, I’m just pleasantly surprised by your article and somewhat preoccupied. Thank you!
Thanks for the encouraging words, Payson. 🙂
OMG, yes!!
I dont normally act clingy in friendships, until I met an emotionally unavailable woman who strung me along. Now, after all is said and done, I believe I have a preoccupied anxious attachment style while she is avoidant.
I’ve never had such a sense of attachment/connection like I’ve felt for this woman.
The only time she makes an effort in our friendship is when I am leaving the friendship, convinced she really doesn’t wanna be involved in it. We then go into the avoidant/addict of pursuer/distancer dance.
I become emotionally exhausted in this intense, dramatic friendship. Many times, I am questioned- and question myself- why am I acting this way? I don’t NORMALLY act this way.
After this friend lies to me and distances herself again, I feel drained. I’m keeping this friendship afloat, making all the effort. I contact her, canceling an upcoming hang-out we have scheduled, and ask her to just hit me up when she’s ready for a traditional friendship. Not 20 minutes later, she unfriends me on Facebook and doesn’t say a word. I am devastated. I am cut out in her life, in a matter of minutes…all for asking for a reciprocal friendship.
Two weeks later, I’m back again- like I’ve always done- asking for another chance. I ask her to reconsider her decision and to hit me up on Oct. 1st to resume the plans we made (I just cannot let this “connection” go- and the lack of it manifests itself in panic, terror, and physical pain).
She doesn’t acknowledge me and doesn’t say one word. My husband and best-friend tell me to leave the situation, as she’s practically being cruel, and I do and block her on Facebook.
Two weeks later, I feel like im going through- would I could only equate to- a drug withdrawal…but I’m trudging along, heartbroken, but getting by.
On October 1st, the day I gave this former friend to reconsider by, I receive an email that someone reset my facebook password. It was not me who did this. Oddly enough, this former friend is the only other person besides me who knows this email addy that my facebook is linked to. In 6 years on FB, I’ve never had my password reset. It had to have been her. I
Tell my husband and he agrees it’s her trying to get my attention, but since she was blocked, she would have never stuck her neck out on the line for me and this is her way of garnering my attention.
Less than a month goes by and I have to know why she reset my password. I unblock her, email her and apologize for the things I did wrong and again, ask for another chance.
She doesn’t say one word to me. Again. She doesn’t reply to my email or block me on facebook. She doesn’t acknowledge my existence and again, I begin to feel panic, terror, and pain.
A week after I email her, she accidentally sends my husband a facebook friend request (she withdraws it immediately) and I’m further confused. So, you read my email, you hopped on both me and my husband’s respective profiles…but you don’t say a word? All less than a month after you did something as drastic as reset my password?
Over the next two or three weeks, I email her and practically beg for another chance.
Not one word. And the silence is the worst. At this point, I’d rather her tell me to screw off than leave me in this torturous limbo.
I stop emailing her cold turkey about a month ago. Not one day goes by when I don’t think about it. I had begged her before. Maybe she didn’t get my email? Maybe I didn’t beg enough? Maybe I didn’t say I’m sorry enough?
And on and on with the excuses, I go.
Each occasion in which I feel that wave of panic rise in my core and I think it can only be extinguished by reaching out to her, I have to have my husband or best-friend reason with me. And after that, I finally feel normal. Without those conversations with my loved ones, I would have kept emailing her. And knowing that, I feel awful. It’s such a spiraling out of control feeling. And I still feel like I’m going through withdrawal.
This former friend controlled our friendship. She called the shots. She even scolded me for apologizing. I apologize for unfriending her on social media (this was early on in the friendship) at one point while we are walking around a mall w/people around us and she lowered her voice, so people won’t hear, and she says through practically gnashed teeth:
You. Need. To. Stop. Apologizing! Ugh!
And she shakes her head like she is shaking it off and her voice returns to normal and says “so how was your weekend?”
That freaked me out. After, I feel like I’m walking on eggshells around her. She held all the control and so, when I’m begging for another chance at connection, in my mind, I’d do anything it takes to get it back and convince myself she may even want the begging (I had begged her back before).
I’m working on myself now. I am reading up on Pia Melody’s books and working on my self-esteem. As the days go by, whatever that friendship was, still confuses me. Had it been anyone else, I wouldn’t have gone back, let alone begged and emailed multiple times, Al desperate for a chance to get that feeling of connection/attachment back.
I don’t know how many times I said to my family, “what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I let this go? I don’t NORMALLY act this way.”
It was such an awful, out-of-control feeling that I can’t even put into words and when she severs our connection, all because I ask for a reciprocal friendship, I am floored.
Yet, after all that (and much I didnt write) I still can’t be mad or angry at the woman. As my husband pointed out, “You would never allow me to treat you this way. If this were a guy, even a male family member, you would have walked away. But you can’t be at this woman for some reason. Just like your mom. No matter how bad your mom has treated you while we have been married, you can never get mad or upset at her. Same thing.” And he’s right. I could never get mad at my mom for the worse treatment. This woman is the same: I just can’t be mad or upset. Hurt, heartbroken, devastated…but never angry or upset.
That’s quite a story, Sonia 🙂
What’s intriguing is that you made such deep biological connection to this woman that goes way beyond the connection you have been able to achieve with your husband.
Yes, it confuses me as well.
Your story resonated with me because this former friend, after I had blocked her on social media, had went to people at her work and spoke badly of me. Of course, she didn’t tell them that I had walked away and blocked her.
Oddly enough, when I come back this final time and email her multiple times over the course of 2-3 weeks, she doesn’t say anything to her co-workers about it.
You think that would have been the time she woulda said something, but it was when I wasn’t paying attention to her that it seemed to piss her off the most.
I don’t think this woman will ever respond to me, but I do believe she checks to make sure that I am still around and haven’t blocked her again.
Now, knowing that blocking her would spark an arousal in her enough to may even talk to me (during the friendship, I was always pursuing, until I couldn’t do it anymore- then I’d leave- and she’d reel me back in), I can’t block on Facebook, as that would be very manipulative on my part.
I’ve learned quite a few things from this experience. While my level of attempted contact never went into texting her, calling her, or driving by her work…I’ve certainly thought about it at times when that out of control panic set in, but those are the moments I would run to my husband or best-friend.
While driving, if I think I see her car, a wave of nausea rises and I feel adrenalin surge.
This has never happened to me before. It’s quite an uphill battle to fight and for me, I didn’t even recognize I was doing it. I felt like I was always reacting and how I was programmed to react.
So even though I never even text messaged or called her, even the multiple emails over a few weeks time was too much and could have easily spilled over into texting and calling, had I not had a support system to fall back on.
And she could have easily said, “she’s practically stalking me. She keeps emailing me, begging for another chance, saying she’s sorry and won’t leave me alone. Why can’t she get a hint?”
But of course, would she tell them any of her actions? Or that I had begged her back before (at the time, she wanted nothing to do with my feelings or emotions, something I took personally. Now I know she can’t deal with any feelings/emotions, as that is just how she is). Or that she reset my facebook password to get my attention and less than a month later, when I come back, you continue giving me the silent treatment…
She had alluded to getting rid of a toxic group of friends at age 40. She would never say what they did to deserve that, but as a punishment, they all got unfriended on Facebook and both she and her husband stop posting publicly on facebook, so these toxic friends can’t see what they’re doing. She and her husband won’t even change their prodlike pictures that are over 4 years old, so these toxic former friends of hers can’t see how they’re doing. Is that why she brought me back? For me to be standing on the outside looking in, banned from her like, like the rest of the toxic group? But what about me? What had I done to deserve this? I just ask for a reciprocal friendship.
She knew how deeply I felt, was very aware of the connection/attachment I felt, and although wanted no part of that, engaged in the friendship anyway. She called herself a bad friend, multiple times, like that excused her from having to make any effort or her confusing behavior. She dictated everything we did, down to the method of interaction. She didn’t want to maintain connection via texting. She would see me when she could, she said. She doled out her attention to me, and there I was like a gambling addict attached to a slot machine, betting away, hoping for the small payoff to make my efforts worth it.
And a million other little things.
It never felt right, though. This never dampened that feeling of attachment/connection. Rather, it increased it.
It never made sense to me.
This woman is a professional with over 1000 facebook friends, she is nice, funny, very pretty, sweet and has a very bubbly personality. Why on Earth, when she has friends that live closer to her (she lives 45 minutes away) who are telling her on Facebook that they miss her and love her, is she driving all the way to hang out with me? Someone she barely wants to get to know. Someone she lies to, to get out of texting conversations. When she wanted to text, we would text back and forth like BFF’s, but when I wanted to, she’d lie to excuse herself from them. Like she was dissuading me from texting her.
My husband said to look at it like this: take away the genders, and it’s like a man (her) and a woman (me). The man is married and visits his mistress once a month, coming to see her in her town (45 minutes away). He makes no effort in between, doesn’t want contact her and only texts when he wants (she doesn’t want to talk on the phone, either). Only, the woman isn’t aware that she’s a side-chick (or, more accurately, doesn’t want to admit to it) and that he’s an unavailable married man.
It’s really tough. Some days are better than others. When I see her as that typically emotionally unavailable MAN, I feel better. When I think of her as the woman I felt such an attachment to, I feel downright horrendous.
I am stuck in limbo, while she goes on with her life. I’m sure the silence is her answer, but the sliver of hope continues to hurt me. Does the punishment (of her torturous silence) fit the crime of me asking for a reciprocal friendship? I ask myself that everyday.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s a pseudo-connection/attachment. After researching and coming across many blogs discussing the emotionally unavailable, many women admit to being stuck, not wanted to leave, due to that “connection they’ve never experienced before.” Ive come across blogs for men, instructing them to act aloof and dole out their attention, to get a woman to like him.
I felt the same with her, like she was a celebrity gracing me with her presence. She’d give me a day and time a month ahead, just to walk around the mall and have lunch, and the wait would be agonizing. I’d count the days until the day of our hang-out and all would ne forgotten when I got to see her. There was that payoff. That connection.
Then a week or two would go by and she’d give me another day/time, usually 4-5 weeks away and I’d repeat the entire process all over again.
I’ve noticed Im not alone in that ritual. And what I have in common with all of these Internet strangers, is that what all dealt with emotionally unavailable people, we all felt programmed to feel lucky to be in their presence, we all felt a level of attachment that we’ve never felt before, and we all can’t let go.
Then we confront them and they leave, without a word. And that’s the hardest part. Sometimes they come back, sometimes they don’t. Just like how I feel now, it makes no sense.
I admit to being sexually attracted to this woman, but only after the feeling of connection was established. I’m not sure if she felt the same for me, although there were things she did that make me think there was something there. The least of which was stare at my breasts during dinners. She was more obvious than a man. She’s not a lesbian, she’s married with a kid, and we are both very feminine and attractive. Who knows. I know she’ll never tell me and since she probably got what she wanted- to fence me back into the “toxic friend” zone, then I wont hear from her again.
It’s all so strange, my behavior included.
It’s been 3 days since I quit looking at her facebook profile. I’m not even sure why I felt the need to look at it, since she hasn’t updated it in over two years and since she has a new member that is standing on the outside looking in, I won’t hold my breath for an update, or even changing her profile picture.
Again, it feels like withdrawal. I promise myself I can look at her profile again, when I’ve forgotten all about her.
Sometimes I wonder what she’s feeling, as I’m sure she has a completely different take on this than I do. Then I remind myself she’s not thinking of me at all, and I have to come to grips with reality.
I’m sure its an odd story. I certainly think it is. During times where I get glimpses of how ridiculous this all was, I think “why the hell did I stay in that? Why does it even bother me now?”
And then I go back to the reactive frame of mind.
I’ll get over it, someday. It’s certainly been a learning experience and made me aware of my own behavior.