...to a mostly-unconscious, unintegrated part of our psyche with which we're not consciously identified. We respond from our own unconscious. It's our own unconscious participation that actually causes the effect.
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From this place of having our sense of self, other, or world shifted, we are much more vulnerable to influence by this other person. Our critical thinking is often compromised and even our emotional responses can become suspect.
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This can be terrifying if you don't want to be impacted in this way & can tell its happening anyway! You feel, and are, out of control. Given my model of the cause, I've often felt betrayed by my own mind, like it was giving itself to someone else against my conscious will.
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(Some people impact ppl more than others…maybe I should start putting them on like an earthquake scale when I encounter them?
"This one is only a 1.5-- good practice. That guy is a 6-- steer fucking clear, Luke, you're not ready yet…")
(am I mixing my metaphors? Moving on.)
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Smtmes, we notice & walk away. But sometimes, even if that's obvsly best, we just...don't. Before we knew it, we'd lost our ability to choose. We'd been seduced.
Our conscious mind usually thinks that's absurd (“I can stop anytime I want to!”) but our actions reveal otherwise.
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Strong but unintegrated internal protectors *can* be a saving grace (that is if we've been burned badly enough before that they exist already).
They’re like big warning bells in our minds-- "GET THE FUCK AWAY.
NO MATTER WHAT YOU THINK HE'S OFFERING, YOU'LL GET IT ELSEWHERE."
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This has mostly been my response to whenever I felt swallowed by someone else’s charisma over the last 2 years; reactive anger/terror, paranoia, & an animal panic to get as far as humanly possible from the bad actor.
Mostly, I did just this. I got the fuck away. (Good on me.)
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so i sort of object to the claim that anyone doing this is automatically a bad actor. i was on the other side of this dynamic a bit and when it became clearer what was going on i felt so guilty about hurting her i wanted to die
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you could say that an unintegrated shadow part in me was behaving in a seductive way to an unintegrated shadow part in her, *and vice versa*. this was extremely confusing for both of us and when we understood it neither of us wanted it
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it all felt like the sort of thing that could happen in an ordinary romantic relationship, where two people go crazy about each other and it makes them do crazy things they don't normally do, just magnified a bit and confusingly with no romantic love on her side
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happy to describe this in more detail via DM also if it might help. in any case hope you are doing well 🙏
Replying to
Yeah I 100% agree with all of this.
I don't think degree of consciousness of one's behavior determines if someone is a "bad actor", though, as my model is that in all or most cases, the person himself is unaware or only half-aware of the effect they're having.
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Intuitively, I think a combo of
a) surface area for feedback/change and
b) consequences
makes it feel more or less nefarious.
But that's kind of my gut read, lots of gray area.
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