pretense

If stalking and learning is the ultimate prison then a person's blind spots about themselves and their unconsciousness is the bars, and lock. Awareness and consciousness through self reflection and self seeing is the key to freedom. Well only figuratively, you may still be very literally dealing with a potentially harmful stalker who might just kill you if they could. "Just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you." Perspective and Perceptions in Relationships So, how does stalking become the ultimate emotional prison? And who is actually prisoner? Of whom or by what? Any time you have more than one person in a relationship (which is everyone) of any kind you have at least 2 people having their own experience at the same time as a shared experience is happening. "There is always the overlapped dynamic as we personally learn and contribute simultaneously to the learning of others. This ebbs and flows with the dynamic of the people involved over time." Stalking, in some cases, can be distilled to: is essentially someone who feels a connection to someone else yet, that other person may not know it, or they may not want to have a relationship with the person who does. This seems to be the case with our experience. We have all been there to a greater or lesser degree in our relationships. For people who obsess over others, their feelings may be stimulated by something in the other person even if the accuracy of the perceived connection ends up being proven false or not reciprocated. At some point factual truth in stalking becomes irrelevant. The fact that the person who is the target is a stimulus seems to be much more important. The Role of Attention in Shaping Perceptions Assuming you grew up in a stable happy family you have genuine connection with parents and family members where you receive as well as give attention alongside the process of growing up and learning everything you learn about how to live, speak, dress, act etc. This dynamic of direct connections in relationships that are in the open, builds the ability to have, share and extend attention to others into the various ways we share different aspects of ourselves in relationships through out our lives. You are both seen and you see in this type of a dynamic, in this type of a household. To show a contrasting scenario; in my father's case of growing up in a very alcoholic family you are never truly seen as a child. The parent/s are always looking at the next drink... first. So, they see life through a bottle. The constant insatiable desire for a drink over shadows the people, relationships with those who have direct relationships with the alcoholic. As a kid in that household, you continue to develop and learn anyhow (because learning happens whether we want it to or not) even though you are never really genuinely seen by your parents. For the child growing up in this scenario, your connections are more in the background of life or confirmed to the to the 'negative spaces' in relationships. Emotionally this creates a heightened sensitivity to the negative spaces or what is unspoken, left out or the more unconscious side of behavior in relationships. As a result, what is omitted in a conversation, what is implied rather than explicit, what people leave out and body language becomes more important than direct communication. Learning, Happens Regardless Whether We Want it to or not The involuntary aspect of learning explains a great deal more of the negative as well as the positive habits we have. You know the ones where you wake up after 5, 6 or 10 years and wonder how you got where you are. As a result, all kinds of mediocre and bad habits can get cultivated while we may be looking the other way. Of course many habits will vary depending on the flavor of weird for the given situation. We have had the pleasure of dealing with the following to name a few; Suspicions and sneaking aroundGoing through someone's belongings because they suspect something and want to confirm it but when it's when to be wrong no responsibility is taken for the trespassJudgementalness to the point of crueltyPossesiveness to the point of abuse In my father's case, his father was the alcoholic and instead of being the stereotypical abusive drunk he was the self destructive sneaky alcoholic. My father had an amazing drive to not end up the same way. Instead he was articulate and highly, highly observant and he was amazingly accurate as a judge of character and could see a great deal more about people than I could. But he also struggled with bouts of depression from time to time and probably a great deal more bad feelings than he ever let on to. So, I share this to offer a contrasting perspective because when it comes to the stalker, we may never know their perspective or if there is some kind of pain driving them. I firmly believe that there are some people who come from good families who just do rotten things... Consciousness Built Around The Negative Space in Relationships So, what does this mean? How can we even tell what is in the mind of a stalker? I have actually no idea... What I am sharing is the process of self reflection I went through resulting from our circumstances, of learning about our stalker, as I left different types of notes for them in various places I knew they would show up to. Taking the perspective of looking what I am missing, I feel I am reasonably accurate in my assessment. However, I am leaving the possibility open that I may be way off. But, like I said earlier, I may never know. What I do know about people who have these types of issues is a strange type of passive aggressive which produces the illusion of intuition but is built with more information. Information gleaned from second hand information and gossipInformation from the process of watching every move someone makes for yearsInformation from the process of poking at someone (without them necessarily knowing they are being poked at) and watching their responses over and over and over.Information largely formed from observation and gleaning from others and their contact with the target When it comes to relationships, with the dynamic of extra-curricular information gathering.... anything that is directly expressed and communicated may be negated in someone's mind who relies on indirect information as their 'truth'. This means that any conscious, expressed efforts made by others (in our case as the targets of a stalker) has less value than the indirect or unconscious. This process serves a duel purpose on the part of the person collecting and relying on indirect methods to acquire information. Someone relying on indirect methods of information gathering can easily use them as a way to protect attitudes, perceptions, ideas without sharing and thus exposing yourself. People who discreetly (or sneakily) rely on information this way can easily turn on someone, including you (and if this happens, you may never know why or what triggered the switch). As a result, they may forever end up playing the "I know that you know that I know but no one else knows, that you know game." So Who is the Prisoner? So we started with relationships and this is where we come back around to. You can have this degree of misunderstanding in any relationship but, you may see this even more, especially if you are dealing with a stalker. "In this way, you essentially have the circumstance of someone insisting and forcing their will via perceptions on you and your circumstance (the more passive aggressive the better) regardless of any other possible reality or truth to those circumstances." Misunderstandings and emotional manipulations put everyone in the position of being a prisoner via articulated perceptions. The target/s become a prisoner to misunderstandings and so does everyone else who is passively involved and not questioning. In the case of dealing with a stalker, it is so much more so. Just because they are insisting on their way, without leaving any space for any possible reality outside their own chosen perspective on a person, circumstance or both.