The Narcissist as Cyberstalker.
Gaye D
This is happening here and now:
http://www.suite101.com/discussions.cfm/npd
Suite101 abuse ignore any complaint I make because I once (last YEAR)
challenged the young man concerned for being guillable enough to
collude in this by ignoring my requests that named defamation
(contrary to their TOS) be removed for three weeks, and for
misrepresenting his position. He deleted the defamation within 30
seconds of me bluffing him into believing I had placed my complaint
before a large writer's group containing several Suite101 editors.
Nobody has to "take my side" to see that the site is being abused.
In one sense I feel fine, I am used to it now, but in another I think
that may be a dangerous level of complacency. I should not have to get
used to two years of this level of constant abuse with no end in
sight.
"Trust me.....Hannibal Lecter is one man you do NOT want inside your
head"
Chilling lines from "The Silence of the Lambs".
They also sum up, as succinctly as possible, the Complex Cyber stalker
I have had to live more than two years or my life around and in spite
of. I realize my life has become dominated, a great deal of the time
by the need to "appease" him, or try to "psyche him out", for a little
peace, a little freedom, a little privacy.
There is a LOT more to being Cyber Stalked these days than receiving a
few threatening emails, they can either be blocked or deleted so
easily that if anyone had ever stalked me that way I doubt if I would
notice among the huge quantity of mail that comes through my PC. Yet
the reality is that e-mail, sent from an unmasked ISP addy, without
the use of proxy servers, IS the only part of Cyber Stalking for which
there is any form of redress.
In truth, every time I try to appease, or "psyche out" this Stalker,
in private, I lay myself open to a serious risk of being scapegoated
for the psychological nightmare he has turned my life into for so
long. That is the heart of the predicament, and the reason
increasingly complex stalking is an almost risk free form of ongoing,
destructive assault.
I do not intend to rant about that. I honestly DO NOT see what any
authority could be expected to do, but the does not lessen the
personal devastation.
Why does he do it?
I honestly don't know.
I am very vulnerable to this kind of attack because I am so
housebound, and my access to the world is pretty much restricted to
the internet. However, that doesn't make it "my fault" or in any way
lessen the degree of violation and imposition.
If I were being physically stalked I would be ill advised to continue
to live alone, in a remote place, that, apart from being my home for
more than a decade, is the only lifestyle I feel comfortable with.
Having to change that because of a physical stalker would be a
devastating blow to me that I would be unlikely to recover from fully.
Thus it would be if I had to log off the internet for good. My social
life would be over. My chances of earning my own living would be
finished. Any opportunity there might be to have my music heard and
perhaps, in time, sold, would exist only in the past tense.
It is not necessary to physically stalk me to hold the destruction of
my whole life, and every chance I have as a threat.
That IS the true horror of stalking, they cannot lose, it is only
necessary to BEGIN to stalk to impose irreversible change on the
victims life.
Mine is a very complex Stalker, who has cultivated and delegated
others, sick, abusive people, to "do his direct dirty work". I have
done everything I can to try to find a way to make this, more blatant,
person leave me alone for two years, including contacting the Police
and the FBI (this last in the hope that there was an underlying
criminal motivation behind this person's other, more extensive
activities).
This would be at least the third blatantly abusive person my Stalker
has cultivated and used as a weapon against me over time. It should be
becoming obvious. But only to people who have been aware of the
situation all along. In real terms, ISPs etc do not keep the necessary
records going back for years. There is no proof.
This person uses multiple IDs in online support groups to hound me
with vicious and false accusations, often of pretty much the things
she is doing to me. To be stalked that way for two years by a woman
who barely knows me is terrifying, but it pales into insignificance
besides the ongoing damage she does to others in the support
communities, enabled and endorsed by the man that stalks me, while
showing clean hands, Pontius Pilate style. This woman has terrorised
several people off the web. Others live in fear of her. There does not
seem to be a way to stop her.
It is like the blind men and the elephant, all I can show any
authority is a small recent part of the picture. I should have saved
all evidence all along, but how was I to know that this would go on so
long and become so devastating?
People tell you "The best thing to do is to ignore it", or "No one can
do you any real harm by email, just delete".
But you can be harmed, innuendo, rumor that you are the last to hear,
veiled threats, cunningly devised public attacks, "set ups" you don't
see till the last minute. Constantly, day after day, it has worn me
down, broken my health, both mentally and physically.
There are worse injuries. If someone can get inside your head they can
use what they find there to impose a regime of personalized
psychological and emotional torture towards which your reactions are
going to occur on a deep, involuntary level. That reaction can take
the form of flashbacks to previous abuse, ongoing distress and severe
trauma. The kind of reaction you cannot hope to just "snap out of".
They can even do this quite publicly, the agenda would be invisible to
anyone unaware of the intent.
The accumulated stress can easily cause physical illness.
I have tried to negotiate this, appease the whole agenda, and got
nowhere.
The more openly you try to fight it, the worse you can be made to
look.
To have saved all data, all along I would have had to become as
obsessed as the one who Stalks me, and made being his victim the
epicenter of my life. In short, I would have had to have played right
into his hands and surrendered my life to his abuse.
I find myself recalling another movie "Boxing Helena" where a demented
surgeon slowly dismembers a woman until he has her, limbless and
totally dependent on him, living in box. I realize that, over time I
came to be very like her in a way. For years I have been dependent on
nothing but my own mind to tolerate, and survive in spite of, the
whims of a madman who has imposed himself on my life. Simply because,
against all reason, he has trapped me into a position where there is
not much else I can do.
There were a few times when I succumbed to the "Stockholm Syndrome"
out of a kind of unconscious desperation. My mind protected me by
convincing me that the monster who was holding my life to ransom,
actually meant something to me. I have to say that, with no escape in
sight, it was the kindest thing my mind could do. At least those were
periods of a kind of respite. Times when he had every reason to
believe he had the complete control he craves.
In truth, he stalked his way into my life with no acquiescence or even
the most unconscious consent from me. Since the day that began I have
been living trapped in his madness and only seeking to survive and
endure it.
Recently I had finally thought he was letting go, getting bored, AT
LAST.
But it was only a new game of "Cat and Mouse", he came back with a
vengeance.
What do I feel for him?
What did I feel for the snow drifts that imprisoned my car? Or the
earthquake that threatened my friends? What do I feel for the leak in
my roof no one can find or stop?
I feel nothing, he is not even human to me, just a catastrophic blight
I cannot prevent or protect myself from.
But in the past few days a switch flipped somewhere inside me. No more
appeasement, let him do his worst. Nothing could be worse than the
wreckage he has made of my day to day life.