Case 16 — Those Who Are With Someone To Help Them Feel Protected
Abstract
Those that are with someone to protect them from becoming emotional over those who they feel have rejected them.
Those that are with someone to prevent them from feeling vulnerable.
Those that are with someone to stop them feeling alone — but those people they are with have a negative affect on them.
Certain people come together to destroy themselves and to destroy those who appear to have rejected them. This could explain where certain duo serial killers only do the things they do when together — they are out to destroy something, and themselves, which appeared to have rejected them.
People will do whatever they can to block emotions if they believe that showing those emotions will get them rejected.
Those that need someone to keep them safe — or feel that person will keep them safe.
However, those that they feel keep them safe are not always healthy for them hence why they bring out the worst in them. We look at Alan’s story for an example of this.
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Alan’s Story
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I was in high school and didn’t have many friends. I felt alone and vulnerable. I hung around with two friends Mike and John.
Mike was funny. He seemed intelligent and on my wavelength. I wanted to be best friends.
John was a bit of an idiot. He tried to fight me but I didn’t want to fight. Mike was able to stop him. I really wanted to be better friends with Mike but he didn’t seem interested. I tried being fun with him but he seemed to withdraw. It felt like there was something missing in him. I didn’t want to feel alone and Mike seemed like the one that closely matched me. But I could not seem to get him to be friends.
So I found myself drawn to John instead. And then I changed. I felt this urge to make fun of Mike. When I was with John I openly compared Mike to some daft politician. We both had a good laugh about it and it felt good doing this to Mike. John sometimes would hint the name aloud at Mike but Mike didn’t seem to know what it was about. I never said it out loud to Mike’s face but it felt fun to say it with John. We’d often let Mike walk on ahead and then poke fun at him behind his back. It felt sort of good to do this. “Look at Mike, what an idiot he is.” I might say.
I wouldn’t say John was a close friend nor would I say I felt safe with him. I wouldn’t have confided anything to him. It was better for me to be with John than to be with no one at all. But when I was around him it felt good to poke fun at Mike. I didn’t want to be alone so I continued to hang around with John with Mike occasionally just being around us.
I tried having fun with John the same way as with Mike but John really didn’t understand it. John could get a bit moody at times.
Mike would often be friends with teachers. I would get so jealous of this because I wanted to do this too. I wanted Mike to be able to help me be friends with some them as well. But for some reason Mike didn’t want to be friends with me. Even though we had similar ideas about life he just seemed to pull away from me. It felt like I was being pushed away by someone who was like myself.
He seemed to do all the things that I wanted to do and it made me so mad that my hate grew for him. I just wanted him to suffer. I wanted to poke fun at him. I wanted him to feel the loneliness that I had felt from him pulling away from me. I wanted to hurt him. So I continued poking fun at him with John. It felt good. I stayed close to John because it gave me the power to get back at Mike. I felt getting at Mike was what John wanted so by poking fun at Mike it was actually pleasing John and making us both happy.
I wanted to destroy Mike and myself with him. I wanted to hurt and destroy all the things he was involved in. Even though I wanted those things too I still wanted to attack them because I’d been prevented from having them myself.
Ideally I would have wanted Mike and I to be friends and we could have enjoyed doing the same things. But he didn’t want to be friends.
If I ever got bullied I wanted someone to tell. I told John but he just went quiet on me. I felt so alone. So I continued being friends with John because at least then I wouldn’t be alone and vulnerable.
I wanted to be with someone who was like me. I know if I am around someone who is like me I will not feel alone; because then I can connect and interact with someone with the same interests. If I am around others who are not like me, I know I’m the only one like me and I cannot connect or interact because we all think totally differently.
I know now that I had no connection with John. But later on I did have a connection with him because I wanted to destroy the things I thought had rejected me. John didn’t like those things either so through John I connected through hate of those things and used that hate to destroy them.
I was also with John because I felt he protected me from the things I believe had rejected me. He protected me from Mike. I didn’t want to feel emotionally upset with Mike as that would have made me look weak. I used John to protect me from feeling emotionally upset with Mike. I felt protected because I could now hate Mike in order to push him away and could avoid looking emotionally upset with Mike and appearing weak.
Alan’s story end
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Analysis
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Alan was closer to Mike in terms of personality and interests.
Alan couldn’t understand why he couldn’t connect with Mike.
Alan felt alone as a result.
Alan saw Mike doing the things he also wanted to do and felt he couldn’t do them himself.
Alan rejected the things he wanted to do because he believed he couldn’t do them.
Alan also rejected the things he wanted to do because Mike was doing them and Mike had rejected Alan. Therefore in Alan’s mind, because Mike had rejected him, the things Alan wanted to do had ‘also’ rejected Alan. Alan therefore believed that those things caused him pain and wanted to destroy them. So he hooked up with John to do that.
Alan saw in John that John disliked those things too including Mike. Therefore Alan connected with John to destroy himself and Mike. The connection with John was that John didn’t like the things that Alan felt rejected by. There was no genuine healthy connection there. Alan connected with John to destroy and punish himself.
Alan felt becoming emotional would make him look weak. By being friends with John he could avoid that emotion and instead throw hate at Mike to push away the emotion.
Alan didn’t see that hate is also an emotion — or rather a resistance to feeling emotion.
Hate is the resistance to feeling emotion.
People use hate in an attempt to push back from feeling painful emotions and to prevent themselves from looking weak.
Resistance to Crying and Blocking Emotions
People use hate to push back painful emotions so they don’t start crying.
Many believe crying makes them look weak and will throw everything they can to stop themselves from crying or being seen crying.
People believe that if they are seen crying they will be seen as weak.
People believe that if they are seen crying people will laugh at them and reject them.
People fear being rejected the most.
People will do whatever they can to prevent themselves being rejected.
If people believe blocking their emotions will prevent them from being rejected then they will block those emotions with whatever it takes.
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Conclusion
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People want to connect with others who are similar or the same as them.
People therefore connect with others who are not the same so they are at least not alone.
People connect with others who dislike the person who rejected them. This allows them to reject themselves and the person who they couldn’t connect with. Self punishment — They blame themselves for not being able to connect. In their minds it was the things that were similar to them that pushed each other away. So they want to punish those aspects of themselves for doing that.
People with similar or the same interests are not connecting. As a result they become jealous of each other; especially if one of them is doing all the things that the other is not.
Therefore they try to destroy the very things they enjoy and the other people who enjoy them.
Self Rejection — The other person did not connect properly so they reject that person and they reject themselves and any interests they might share; even going as far as trying to destroy those interests and themselves with it.
See Case 8 — An Anatomy of Self Hate for insight into this
https://icucss.wordpress.com/2021/05/27/case-8-an-anatomy-of-self-hate/
Some as individuals come together because they feel vulnerable. But when they come together they actually turn on others.
People will do whatever they can to block emotions if they believe that showing those emotions will get them rejected.
Certain people come together to destroy themselves and to destroy those who appear to have rejected them. This could explain where certain duo serial killers only do the things they do when together — they are out to destroy something, and themselves, which appeared to have rejected them.
