For Those Talked About like They are Not Even There

by Patricia Lefave, Monophrenic

Most of you have experienced people you do not even know talking about you from a few feet away like you are not really there:

How do you know the difference between the ones who are doing it on purpose and the ones deluding themselves that you cannot really 'see them' or understand them? Well, you can't always as you will find that the amused eye-glow emanating from  their limbic brains is a pretty common denominator with all of them; but there are a couple of things that will give you some clues. One is if they are with another person who is engaged in observing you like a specimen with them and they refer to you as “she” or “her”, 'him” or “he,” because that is the objective tense of the personal pronouns and these people see THEMSELVES as “objective observers” or observers of an OBJECT. So that is actually about them and their delusions about both you AND them. This goes together. I used to ask if it was that they thought they were invisible to me when they behaved this way OR was I invisible to them as a human being. It is BOTH. Not one or the other. Their own beliefs about both me and themselves go together. That makes a big difference in how you understand being on the receiving end of the group phenomenon.   The whole group of course will deny that there IS anything happening at all because of their own delusional premise of belief; they are blind to the reality of both their own perfectly obvious behaviour and our awareness of of it and logical reactions to it.

But you see, to them there is no logic in our reactions since THEY have removed themselves from the equation in order to support their own grandiose beliefs about themselves.

Another hint as to when it is intended to hurt or harm is when the third person talker is engaged with emotional attitude as if they are teaching that 'defective' a lesson and giving us just what we 'deserve.'

Now I admit this often looks and sounds so much the same that it gets almost  impossible to tell but one thing you could do is give THEM a little test and just kind of announce it. Something like this by saying, “And now the guy who is talking about me like I am not there will sit with his amused little eyeballs glowing  and watch to see what kind of a reaction he can get.” It will work better if you do this in pairs and stay focused on the deluded nuts who do it to you. If you try it alone, the “superior” people will assume you are just talking to yourself or to “invisible people” since they do not see themselves as a part of the psychological transaction. So remember that you are really not dealing with the brightest bulbs on the block though they often come across in their delusional state of grandiosity  as though they have they have the world by the ass and everyone else is their inferior. That is all part of the dysfunctional relating and its usually unspoken 'code”: life is a “contest” against others which they must “win” by deluding themselves that they are 'superior' specimens of humanity. Equal worth is not part of their game plan and you must know that if you are to understand them. If you do not see or understand life in terms of being in a contest, you will not be able to make any sense of what they are doing because there IS no 'sense” or logic in what they are doing. What they are doing is EMOTION based and unhealthy psychologically to both them and you. Yet if you understand that this is emotion based and they are in a contest that you are not in, what they do and how they behave will begin to make another kind of sense to you. That is because understanding the premise or basis of seemingly incomprehensible actions makes all the difference in sorting it out or making any sense of the whole experience.

On another part of this topic:

I have found that the hardest thing to do in this is to find a simpler way to say something to the self deluded “normal” that is already in the most simple form it could possibly be.  I think this is why most of us think it is impossible for people to be this stupid and NOT be “pretending” to be stupid.  It is not their I.Q.'s that are the problem though. It is always the premise of belief to which their thinking and behaviour is attached that makes all the difference in 'interpretation”  of what is going on in reality. We are going to have to demonstrate  their own errors to them by repeating them all back to them in excruciatingly pedantic (like talking to little children) detail. The anti bullying websites offer some ideas on this and so does Barbara Colorosso in her talks and books. Explaining ourselves to them will not work nor will trying to get them to see what they are doing by using logic. As one of my own therapists pointed out to me, without understanding how I heard it in relation to my own case, logic will not penetrate illogic.  

What we on the receiving end of this are dealing with is illogical groupthink and behaviour.

I also can't use metaphors when I am talking to reality “splitters.” If THEY use a metaphor to try to explain experiences of their own they see it as intelligence but if I use them it is seen by them as a sign of psychosis. What I CAN do though is point out the differences used by them in their 'splitting' as their means of continuing the 'them and us” game. 

So to break this impasse we are going to have to operate on a higher level than them and then point it all out  to them as if we were talking to children or perhaps those 'aliens' so many of us perceive to be the case in the symbolism of psychosis.  If we relate as equals, which most of us are inclined to do, we are not understanding them and from where they are coming as 'splitters” and they will not be able to hear a word we say to them as “real.”  That is because they have already defined us in their own way as 'defectives' before we even open our mouths to speak.

The double bind is a constant feature of the relating in dysfunction, in cultist groups, and with psychiatry itself. It is used by people who need to believe they are always right. The position opposite that if those who need to be always right is “always wrong.” in such situations, it really does not matter WHAT I say or don't say, do or don't do because no matter what it is, it WILL be invalidated by those who need to 'win' the contest they see themselves as in. No words or evidence penetrates that kind of neurotic need. The only thing that will ever change that is to make the domination game useless through total exposure of the 'game' itself.