(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.)
Conversation
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.
1
1
47
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."
1
1
53
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.)
2
4
53
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
1
1
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
1
2
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
2
2
happy to describe this in more detail via DM also if it might help. in any case hope you are doing well 🙏
1
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.
1
2
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.
2
2
Replying to
yeah a) seems super important to me. i think if a person seemed open to making good-faith efforts to change in response to feedback about harm they’re causing (modulo caveats about how difficult real change can be) i wouldn’t want to apply the “bad actor” label to them
Replying to
Yes. (And, the only thing that makes me uneasy here is I've seen people game this, because actual bad actors, the intelligent ones, know we all wanna give somebody a chance and are willing to use that, too)
I have a few more thoughts here I might add on the 'morrow ha
1
2
for sure re: the gaming, complicated complicated stuff 🙏
1
Show replies