It’s been quite a while since I posted anything in the blog here. Over the holidays something came up that I know only those who have lived with covert harassment might appreciate. Though I’ve cooled down about it since, I thought sharing would be appropriate since I’m sure there are others who have dealt with similar issues, who may get something out of hearing about mine.

First a little backtracking to frame the recent experience having generally to do with unintentional gaslighting by family members. For those who may not know, gaslighting is a form of intimidation or psychological abuse in which false information is presented to the victim, making them doubt their own memory and perception.

So over the last 2 years harassment has really died down for me. I have still seen isolated incidents here and there, particularly if it is an event I’m really looking forward to /plan for months in advance, but such is nothing compared to the extremes of the 3 preceding years.

Over the holidays we were staying with my parents. During the time there it occurred to me that I felt remarkably like my old self, enjoying time with family and such, as I hadn’t since 5 years ago. As many targeted folks experience, there was a period of discomfort and misunderstanding with family and closer friends, such that it became clear no one really wanted to know about the harassment I was experiencing. Over the years I’d come to an acceptance of this: people just don’t want to believe it’s possible. As a target, I know what it’s like to fight that realization, until it’s no longer avoidable, and that feat of accepting the only logical conclusion is with the impetus of wanting to understand what is happening to oneself. I imagine for someone who has not experienced such things, the only motivation is to understand what a loved one (or for the more compassionate, to understand what a fellow being) is going through. What I’ve discovered though, in the latter case, to the minds of people who are concerned about someone claiming to be targeted is that a simpler solution presents itself (than to open one’s mind to the possibility that orchestrated and covert harassment does happen): to decide that the person claiming such harassment is delusional –or some variation of psychological illness.

This conclusion jumping by family members is an aspect of covert harassment that tends to make family members more of a liability than a comfort or support system. Certainly, the ways in which covert harassment cultivate likely reactions like suspicion and wariness, have been quite effective in cutting targets off from their social support networks. The simple fact that no one else sees the harassment the target reports is most of the oomph with this side effect. In short, the last thing a target needs to deal with on top of harassment like break-ins, mobbing, et al psychological warfare tactics, is the gaslighting -however unintentional- by family members. The disbelief of family members plays right along with the intentional confusion-inducing angle of covert harassment. Even without such unconscious gaslighting assistance of family members, the task of making order and discerning truth from untruth is already a large undertaking for most targets. Add the disbelief and non-support of family members to the mix, and quickly a target is caught between two worlds: the darker one where previously unknown degrees of maliciousness have unfolded around the target, and the lighter one, where everything is explainable by PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder)… the draw to return to ‘normal life’ is reinforced over and over again by family members (if they’ve stuck around that long).

For myself, the initial explosion of covert harassment occurred as an episode of drugging where the perpetrators generally messed around with my head, my memory, emotions, associations, all experiment with the only clear intention beyond open ended experimentation was to break me. That became clear early on. After this first episode I wound up in a hospital emergency room. After jumping through various ER and police hoops my mother and aunt picked me up and drove me to Houston. I suppose *because* this episode was so official in that I sought medical and police assistance..is why my family actually responded in a reasonable way -that is, they did not disbelieve my account and showed concern and asked questions, etc.

Two weeks after the first incident when I returned to Austin to try and find answers for the missing time and surfacing memories, during which similar drugging/experimenting happened again. It’s funny having to piece all this together since everyone -family and friends just shut down and didn’t want to talk about any of this. But, long story short, during all this I lived in North Texas -away from my family of origin. After spending a week or so in Houston, I headed back to my own home and got on about my life, or so I thought. I suppose around this second episode is when the theories / rumors of my having a drug problem arose. I remember even thinking how i could see how they’d come to such a conclusion, and talked with my parents to assure them that it wasn’t true.

Around this time (2005) it became evident that my mother had been calling around to my friends and acquaintances, investigating the drug suspicion on her own (creating much of it herself with other people I knew, thus cutting off much support from them as well). When I would ask a couple of people she’d called, they wouldn’t tell me anything, or get angry if I pushed for information. I bring this up to show one major vein of character assassination, and how such things mushroom…

Shortly after the second bout of covert drugging, it was time for Christmas gathering with family. During those holidays one night I was sitting in the garage with my mother and neighbor lady who was talking about the divorce she was just going through. As it seemed we were each sort of sharing a bit about the trials of the past year, I joined in and said something about my experiences having been drugged and assaulted. Suddenly my mother launches into this running rant about ‘why had I ever purchased ephedrine? she knows because friends of mine had seen me buy bottles of ephedrine.’  etc. She went on and on, ignoring the emotional content of what I was expressing, to jump to accusations. Could you get any closer to saying ‘whatever happened to you was your own fault. somehow drugs are connected, and that’s your fault’ ? Not much. In front of the neighbor and everything, it’s made clear that we are not to discuss what happened because somehow it’s sordid drug stuff. She and my dad had been very caring after the first episode, asking me what had happened and talking for hours. But at that time I was in complete shock. It seems that all the odd things I reported having happened were also seen as evidence that drugs had been involved. Wherever the train jumped from ‘drugs were involved’ to ’so she has no valid complaints’.. I’m really not too clear on.

So after the first two drugging/assault experiences… I was having a bit of a bumpy ride what with the resurfacing memories, and dealing with the accompanying emotions. But I stuck it out, and had faith that with time the pieces would settle –at least *some* order would become apparent, I just had to have patience with myself and take care of myself. -it’s funny the smaller, but telling changes that harassment can bring about. During this time one day I realized I hadn’t brushed my teeth in a couple of weeks –how is it that bit of habit just dropped after 27 years of 1-3 times daily teeth brushing? -such things I would notice.

Going on with my life and this plan for regaining some semblance of balance in my life, one issue that I struggled with for a period of months just after those events was trouble going to sleep. I naturally have longer days than some people, and a tendency to handle stress from tiredness by going into overdrive -in these cases I would stay up until I was nearly exhausted. Quickly I realized I had to come up with some solutions or I would go crazy from lack of sleep. Because of the nature of mental hacking and manipulation, along with manipulation of my memories and sense of time during the drugging incidents, I felt insecure that I could even know for sure that *I* hadn’t left my apartment during the time I’d thought I’d been asleep. I mean these are some serious problems that have to be dealt with, reasonable reaction or not, temporary or not. So I got int the habit of taping hairs across doorway thresholds… little things that made me feel safe in going to sleep and knowing I hadn’t left nor had someone entered while I was sleeping.

This kind of hyper-vigilance eventually passed; point being that sleep was a major difficulty for some time, but to concerned family members, no matter how open and expressive I was about my difficulties, took such occurrences as signs supporting the theories of my having a drug problem. So, where support may have been forthcoming otherwise, it was withheld, or given reluctantly with odd statements of suspicion/accusation revolving around my alleged drug problem. For example, once when I was having a particularly difficult time of calming down enough to go to sleep when I was tired, I brought it up to my brother, hoping to maybe get some helpful advice. I did not expect the response I got. His response to my indicating that the trouble sleeping had happened since the drugging assaults, was that my story didn’t make sense because he remembered talking to me months before that had even happened and I’d said then how I’d been up for a couple of days. In one fell swoop it was made clear that he and probably other family members basically thought that any trouble I was having sleeping was not a pretty reasonable reaction to what I’d experienced, but just another symptom of my supposed drug use, which seemed to indicate to him that my problems were not real, were not worth conversation or further consideration. At the time it was a lonely feeling when he’s been very supportive and loving in generally throughout our lives together, yet I had bigger problems and things on my mind, so I just kept chugging along. I mean what else are you going to do?

A year after the first two events, when another ‘reveal’ kind of trap was laid and I walked into it, more of the drug theory BS unfolded. Again, it was a very strange sensation to have to piece all this together myself more from what reluctant family members’ and friends’ did *not* say than the little they *would*. Long story short with this event, a neighbor had befriended me and started with the now well known mirroring tactics and such, but kept it light not to trigger my alarm bells, until one night when they sprung their trap which was a small group of people suddenly repeating things said to and by me during the drugging events the year earlier. That date pretty much marks the beginning of the proper gang stalking era of my experiences with covert harassment, and things went on to get all the more strange. That night, as I fled back to my apartment I hear the neighbor lady cackle, “where you gonna go now?” –as my first experience of more overt mind fuck operations involving neighbors / strangers.

About two weeks after this happened I’d pieced together some of the mechanics of getting people to participate in something like what i was experiencing, but I had no terms like ‘gang stalking’ for it yet. I did not know that others had experienced it, etc. Around this time I called my mother. I had to tell *someone* what had happened to me. The response I got was that she was very busy preparing the Christmas turkey meal and she really didn’t have time to talk. What an odd response to hearing from your child that neighbors had threatened their life and they (me) were now still shaken up and not knowing what to do. I suppose I can see a general avoidance from the oddness of that previous year, but to outright dismiss a whole event like that could only mean that she didn’t believe it, or had found a way to dismiss it through the very handy drug problem theory. (which had started, btw, because drugs were found in my system at the hospital, and because during my mother’s investigations uncovered evidence that I’d experimented. Hardly reason to discount accounts of ongoing harassment, but I can’t judge, I can only tell how it has felt from my perspective).

This kind of ill timed/placed support was tolerable because I didn’t even live in the same city. I’d been living in other parts of Texas for several years. After the third attack, when many things started getting weird in my life (harassment), I decided to try moving back to Houston to be closer to family and friends. About 2.5 years after the original drugging event, an entirely new chapter of closer friends participating in harassment unfolded. This was the heaviest chapter of harassment with multiple layers of suggestion and psy warfare, over 100 players, more break-ins, you name it. Anyway, this time I was in the same city as my family so I reached out to them. During one period when things were very intense and my son was staying with me I asked to stay at my parents house. We stayed there for several weeks.

During this period I finally discovered some useful terms for learning more about covert harassment by entering all the weird occurrences and symptoms I was experiencing as one big list of words into Google. Wow, it had a name and others were experiencing the same things. This was a major breakthrough. Though I was experiencing various types of themed/covert death threats and all kinds of crazy stuff was happening to me, I felt I had some common ground, some evidence from others so that I could at least talk about these things with my family. I told them everything I knew, each bit of research that I turned up that shed some light on my experiences, etc. For a while they listened. Then they started avoiding the topics. There I was trying to figure out how to stay alive and safe, and my mother would abruptly change the topic or my dad would humor me, and a few times this became just as demoralizing as I realized it was more like testing how delusional I might be.

A few months go by and I deal with the crises. We, my boyfriend and I, come up with a game plan and patch up the friction and wounds that had happened as a result of all the stress. As I’m, once again, doing my best to go on with life, working, tending to personal relationships, the family rumor mill is still running behind the scenes. Before my bf and I had patched things up, during a fight, he let me know that my dad had called him concerned about my delusions, etc. At that point i’d had it with family. Over a period of a couple months we sent emails back and forth, mainly me telling them more and more things that had happened to me, and accounts of other TIs, and they would avoid, ignore. Finally, I had to put a stop to the cognitive dissonance, the living in two worlds: I told them either they could believe me and be supportive in at least not acting like these things had not happened to me, or I would have to remove myself from regular interaction with them.

There was one meeting where I talked with them after this. My mother didn’t want to be there talking about it. My dad had finally gone online in search of other TI sites, rather than just the ‘myth debunking’ kinds of sites that say we’re all crazy. And so a tentative understanding was reached. There were a couple of times that I brought up that I thought they were just humoring me, but my mother made efforts to be more supportive and generally as I’ve gotten stronger and gained understanding, so too has my acceptance of others’ lack of understanding increased. So, since then, when the stuff related to covert harassment comes up everyone gets a little quiet, or someone uncomfortably token acknowledges what I’ve said, then the subject is changed. So be it.

Now we’re up to date. So, this holiday season I was noticing how much more enjoyable the season and time with family was this year. I mean I was so far away from the horror and challenges of the previous 5 years, and had regained a center calmness some time ago, but something about this year’s holiday gatherings had me noticing just how much further I’d come and how much like myself I felt again. Since we’d reached the sort of mostly unspoken understanding to at least humor my delusions or however they might see these things, and I was feeling grateful for the current developments of enjoying time with family, I decided to bring this up to my mother. I meant it in the most positive way, and I’m sure she meant her response in the most positive way, yet…  Her response was that she was so glad I was happy again, and that ‘everyone has been very worried about you’. I ask, Who? Who are been worried about me? She responds that my grandmother and uncle, for example had commented on how unhappy I’d seemed. News to me. The last thing I remember regarding my grandmother was that we were not to tell her about what I’d experienced –she was not to know. period. So that meant just not really feeling motivated to stay connected with her, because how do you connect and not also share the whole huge chapter of life where people are harassing you for years on end? It’s not possible really.  So, I ask, ‘well I don’t even know what grandma and [my uncle] know about what happened to me. What do they know?’   she says, ‘well they know they those people in Austin really traumatized you and that it’s been very difficult for you’. Suddenly I’m overcome with many thoughts and feelings… So, you’re telling me that all those months when i was asking, practically begging, for help from family, and no one could give me the time of day or treat me like a reasonable adult– during this same period of time supposedly there were people concerned about me? hunh. because to my way of thinking and acting in the world, concern means bothering to empathize and find out more, or at least to not jump to conclusions and judgments about the person.

So the night went on and what had been intended from both sides to be a positive sharing, kept bubbling up in my mind and heart the rest of the evening. That night I talked with Chad and sort of got to the bottom of the emotions and shit surrounding the upheaval of the interaction. If I’d gotten accustomed to the idea of their not understanding, or not being able to believe all those things happened the way I said, then why was the interaction so upsetting to me? I mean it was certainly not the first time that my mother’s careful choosing of words showed that she was humoring me, she was tactically *not-challenging* my beliefs as a show of support. Perhaps my upset was from a fresh instance/impression of her not believing me, I thought. But as I talked with Chad I realized a few more angles of insight.

What really upset me -just got under my skin and got all those feelings of isolation and accusation churning again– was that in their minds, all the harassment reports over the last 3 years, to them, have been psychological symptoms (delusion) originating in the traumatic drugging experiences 5 years ago. To them, that first drugging episode (or 2?) were real, but nothing that has happened since is real -except in my mind, apparently. The thing that gets me is that what is also dismissed is how strong and stoic, how SUCCESSFUL I’ve been during and after every harassment event, the ‘real’ and allegedly ‘imagined’ instances alike. I was the one who pulled myself up and dealt with the psychological effects of the drugging. Yes, it was difficult, and yes it took some time during which my reality filters were certainly skewed a bit out of true from consensus reality anyway. BUT, I got through it. I sorted out fact from suggestion, sorted through all the memories and stupid clues, figured out the mechanics intended to break a person, and successfully avoided being broken. I did that.

Part of getting over that / healing, was to test myself and my associations, to be bold about looking internally and healing the mental/emotional associations as well as the more obvious things one does after being assaulted in order to regain some composure and sense of security. This meant purposely confronting negative associations/prejudices that tried to creep into my decision making after those drugging events. Put more succinctly, I know quite well how being tormented can change a person’s outlook on life. And I have learned a lot about how to re attune to positive things in life, how to recalibrate my reality filters –how we discern truth from fiction or lie, how we ‘test’ our reality and theories about reality– to a neutral setting. how to sense signs that my perception is leaning toward fear-based reasoning, etc., and to readjust / recenter myself and keep going on about living and learning. I know how to trust my perception and intuition. I know when these are skewed and how to alleviate the situation. I know what I know is real; I know why it happens even, I’ve learned a lot of things about myself and the world, one of which is: I’m not delusional. but to someone who has no reference point for something, hearing about something outside just *is* crazy. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks because I’ve done all the work, I know which things are real and which are distraction, or experiment, or slander.And so what got to me about the interaction, is that along with all the times I could’ve used some moral support, there is zero recognition of all the work I’ve done. I mean the Austin stuff had nearly zero impact on how I judged the ongoing harassment that popped up later. I did the ‘healthy, normal’ thing for a long time and kept ignoring all the different angles of harassment. To think of allll the various chapters and associated places and events that have laid out before me, showing a very different view of the world and how to live in/through it… and to these people who are supposed to be, and are, the closest people to me, it’s all some fucked up delusions and pathetic sorting of a sic individual, all revolving around one or two unfortunate incidences. As if I’m so fragile! There it is. At first I didn’t feel angry, just that familiar but forgotten deep ache of.. what? the distance between my experience and theirs so effectively blocking out mine completely. Later that night when I came to anger about it I looked at the ego angle of it all. I felt like if I were my mother I would bring it up.. i would qualify if with something like ‘i know this is not a pleasant topic, and I’m don’t say this to make you feel bad, but I want you to know some of my feelings…’  and I considered doing this a few times. But I just don’t think there’s room for it. For her or someone else attempting such a conversation might not come from ego in a non-progressive way, but for me, I decided, it would be. Yes, I just want to be understood, but no one can know exactly what it felt like all those times and places harassment has happened, so all I would be asking for, all that is likely to come of the interaction, is it will sound like blame for not having been more supportive. Or maybe I just couldn’t stand to revert to that horrible interaction where I bring up something important in my life only to see eyes glaze over, and the smooth shift to avoidance tactics. Fuck that. So here I am making notes of it for someone who might have a place where it’s useful perspective.

I know that I have a relatively well developed ability to be open minded, but also to remain grounded -these qualities go hand in hand (though the former lept ahead for a while as I had to sort through all the suggestion mind game materia). These qualities tend to make for collecting many fringe experiences that most people just don’t have room for in their view of reality. Which brings me to my main conclusion about the holiday positive interaction gone astray… yet another level of realization that these people (my family) simply do not have a reference point from which to begin to comprehend what I’ve experienced. They’re heroic feats (to my eye it seemed to take much effort rather than accepting my retelling of events) of lumping it all under post traumatic stress delusions is not meant to be closed minded/hearted, but really just the only reference point available to them.

Again, besides wanting to be supportive of someone else claiming to be experiencing covert harassment perhaps, it seems only the targets themselves have motivation to seek knowledge and understanding about such things. Sounds simple enough, this explanation of people like family members just not being capable of acknowledging these kinds of things happen, but I really could not see it as the rather simple avoidance mechanism that it is. My nature is to try and understand, to seek to understand other people’s perspectives and that which is unknown. Not everyone is like that.

Chad and I examined some traits of these seemingly two types of people, or where the threshold might lie. What rose to the surface is something I’ve considered before, but sunk in in a new deeper way: how stalkers and people who want to be helpful but still find it necessary to block out unpleasant bits of the world -how these two groups of people are quite similar in that they make knee-jerk judgments and decisions and so are more easily manipulated into adhering to popular theory or generally, such as being relatively easier to intimidate and manipulate. These people are more reactionary and less introspective. With greater introspection there is more capacity for confronting and assimilating unknown or uncomfortable information, there is also a more solid base from which to judge hearsay and intentions of others. When a person is relatively more emotionally and morally developed they are able to rely on what emotions indicate and generally have greater access to intuition and creative thinking. When a person is relatively more intellectually developed they are able to process more data without losing sight of the trees for the forest, or vice versa, there is a more solid base for comparing new input. One can see how being more developed in these aspects would make one less likely to fall for intimidation or luring to participate in the harassment of someone else, and also how such traits as creative thinking and advanced problem solving could make such people attractive/entertaining research and experimentation subjects. One can see how being less developed would lend to being more easily confused or intimidated if coerced into participation, or more willing if lured, as well as how some others might be unable to really take in the intellectual and emotional content and meaning underlying phenomena like covert harassment.

For the most reactionary people (this is a spectrum, we all have reactions) it’s seemingly all about entertainment. Must keep feeding that beast ego. There’s got to be something to watch, to listen to, to be fed. Honestly, for most stalkers, I think this says all there is to say about the motivation fueling their participation. Lives of consumption because who knows what will happen if they just stop and think for a minute. The sky might fall!

It’s not an us-and-them scenario. The kinds of trials that targeted folks go through are largely internal in that once you’ve won that war, the rest is follow through. Once you win back your own sense of identity and realize that what you make of life is entirely up to you, you can get back to doing just that, living life. This sounds trite, I know, and there is a lot of inner discovery and  work that is unique for each person, but perseverance and trust in yourself will see you through. For me part of this means sharing some of what I’ve learned. Just like the real challenge for TIs is an internal or psychological one, so too must we understand that we are not fighting them -the stalkers. We are all -stalkers and targets alike- fighting the same struggle. Some of us who are winning this personal though common struggle have become targets of harassment. Some of us who are not yet there, not up to the challenge, some of these people become stalkers. I know it’s tempting to see these great good versus evil forces and sides to things, but I have learned that real understanding includes moves like not hating or judging others too harshly for their transgressions because, after all, if they knew any better, their actions would show it.

Until these casualties of hive mind and exploits of groupthink become common knowledge and more light continues to be shed into these dark corners of the human condition, there is this period of tension between seeming extremes: the stalked and the stalkers. lol. Hang on, this too shall pass, and is