I love observing human beings and their behaviors. This kind of "people watching" has been one of my primary interests/hobbies since my teen years, and subsequently led to my taking lots of psychology courses in college... even though my major(s) were Finance and Marketing... with absolutely no required psychology.
One the the precepts that particularly fascinates me is the notion that we tend to find what we're looking for.
And "what we're looking for" most often is a bi-product of our formative years and subsequent experiences.
They're After Me!
One of the things that fascinates me is the seemingly enormous number of people in the world who operate based on the core belief that "someone/something is out to GET them."
Not criticizing anyone for exercising a healthy caution but where does it end?
I know so many people — some of them well — who very sincerely believe that criminals, the government, their exes, hairy liberals, aliens, the IRS, alt. right rednecks, rabid dogs, the CIA, abusive people, LIFE, scammers or someone else is out to GET them.
There's a default supposition there that when anyONE says or does anyTHING there is automatically "malignant intent" behind it. Call it "hypervigilant mistrust," if you want.
Life Strategies... Misfired?
Of course, we all have — and have had — our strategies to help us navigate this thing called life, and I'm not intending to be critical of anyone's approach... just puzzled by it.
What's interesting in all this is that I was raised by a father who repeatedly taught me "NEVER trust anyone!" and a mother who believed that ALL people were motivated by the desire to take advantage of all other people.
I experience a "variation" of it very close to home: My own dear wife tends to be hypervigilant with respect to the intent behind everyone's words, and her "default setting" is to interpret ALL things from the perspective that they might have been said with the intent to either hurt or abuse.
Again, we all tend to be the sum-total of a series of life experiences that lead us to where we find ourselves in this very moment.
Childhood Lessons?
I find myself often standing somewhat out in the proverbial "left field" in the sense that I almost completely lack the sense of... "bad faith?"... that seems to dominate so many lives.
For me, that's based in the core belief that I am simply not important enough that anyone or anything would be out to "get" me. You could say that my "default setting" is pretty close to "nobody CARES."
But I'm drifting a bit off-topic here... so I'll bring it back to what I wrote up near the top: "We tend to find what we're looking for."
Creating Our Experience...
I'll use a fairly "tame" example that's also quite close to home: Mrs. Denmarkguy "always" gets bitten by spiders.
Let us wrap a little context around that: We've lived here in this SAME house since 2006, and there's a pretty constant number of spiders inside and outside the house... that we are both exposed to. We don't have dangerous or seriously poisonous spiders here, but some can give you a somewhat stout nip and something that looks like a bee sting/mosquito bite.
In 15 years, I believe I have been bitten by a spider ONCE, possibly twice. Mrs. Denmarkguy — best guess — gets bitten by a spider about every couple of weeks or so. I know, because she shows me.
I never even think about spiders — and I pretty much I never get bitten. She is constantly on the lookout for spiders — she gets bitten "all the time."
Now, let's return to the aforementioned people who believe that "someone/something is out to get them."
Is that true?
Many would insist the answer is an emphatic "YES!" because they have the direct experience, just like Mrs. Denmarkguy has the direct experience of being bitten by spiders.
Being Mindful of Our Focus...
Getting all "Woo-woo" with it for a minute one of the popular New Age concepts is this notion that "We Create Our Own Reality."
There's actually some pretty simply logic behind that idea... whatever we give our attention to tends to move to the forefront of the active processing space in our brains.
But that alone is not enough to "create reality.". At the same time as we're directing our focus towards something (spiders, for example), our subconscious is working to support the "version" of reality we believe represents our existence (getting bitten) so we take action in support of that, regardless of whether we consciously think we're doing so.
That's why changing things in our lives can be so damned difficult! And why not even a massive amount of evidence tends to be enough to sway someone off the path of believing that "someone is out to GET them."
Oh, But WHY?
Most of these types of beliefs/phobias are pretty harmless, but sometimes they substantially disrupt a person's ability to effectively function and navigate life.
At such a point we have to face the unpleasant challenge of looking at WHY it serves us to create and re-create painful, abusive or otherwise troubling realities... It's not easy!
I've reached the "other side" of 60 and still regularly struggle with an ingrained belief that I am "pursued" by disproportionately many random incidents of bad luck and misfortune.
Well... what we're often reluctant to admit it that we are more likely to regularly get run down by buses... IF we're making a habit of standing/walking in the street near bus stops. That's a metaphor, of course. And we may have a perfectly legitimate reason... "No choice, there's no sidewalk there!"
Indeed. But had you considered walking a completely different way to the supermarket?
In the case of my "misfortunes," I tend to procrastinate and start too late on important stuff. Then I get rushed and overlook obvious things, or skip them because I am out of time... increasing my own chances of failure. There's no "they" actively monitoring me and dishing up failure to "pick on me."
Oh, But WHY? (Part Two)
But why would anyone DO or THINK the odd things they do?
Most likely, we are dealing with some variation of the psychological "repetition compulsion," which is often associated with trauma, and hence people can't seem to break out of very negative or toxic behaviors.
As a kid/youth, I was often told that I would "never succeed" and "never become anything" because I had ideas of my own rather than blindly toeing the line according to the version of reality my parents had lined up for me.
30-odd years later, I found myself trapped by taking action to support "never succeeding," and attributing those childhood ideas to "an unusual number of random misfortunes and bad luck — the universe wants me to fail."
The path forward was shaking off the idea — deeply buried in my subconscious — that doing things MY WAY would result in failure.
Whether we like it or not, most of us have buried roadblocks like these that are holding us back in some aspect of our lives. Boring relationships, abusive bosses, irresponsible actions, risky behaviors... they all come from somewhere.
Including the belief that "THEY" are out to get me!
Unless they really are... but then, why do you keep trying to build bombs in your basement???
Thanks for reading, and have a great week ahead!
How about YOU? Ever find yourself wondering about some of your dubious habits and life patterns? Or those of someone you care about? Ever wonder how they came to be? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20210912 23:08 PDT
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