Matthew Jones16 said:Two girls were online at the exact same time. This guy was just going back and forth, pushing toward one girl first, and then suddenly he started pushing me toward the other one. I suppose his take actually carries some weight for me because:
1. If he’s trying to set me up with one of them, it might imply she’s still interested in me—otherwise, why would he even be bothering to play matchmaker unless someone specifically told him to check things out?
2. I tend to value certain people's perspectives when it comes to choosing between women, mostly because I feel like I lack sufficient experience in that particular department.
The less I know about a subject, the more I find myself listening to someone who actually understands it... isn't that just basic logic??? Unless, of course, I get the feeling he's just trying to screw me over because he knows I'm out of my depth.
Personally, I don't think that's logical—because most people (I mean actual flesh-and-blood people you run into every day) think they're the smartest person in the room... There's a reason they say:
Everyone's got an opinion, and so does every idiot out there...
So, it would actually be more logical to act like you know everything, and when you're dealing with someone smarter or better informed, you don't give them the satisfaction of knowing that—you just take their knowledge or info (which you judge based on how much more advanced they are than you) and stack it onto what you already have..
Basically, other people's knowledge or information only gains value to you if it's actually useful to you.
Matthew Jones16 said:I suppose I’ve had two truly sincere friends in my entire life. However, having spent the last year basically in total isolation playing video games, that sense of connection has weakened quite a bit. Naturally, those friendships aren't what they were on day one. This whole situation hit me right during a period of crisis—when I stopped playing Dota 2, when I stopped talking to this girl I’d been in love with for six months (which was the longest I've ever felt that way, and the second most intense), and when I started experimenting with how I interact with others and trying to socialize with all sorts of different people.
The thing is, both of these two supposedly sincere friends are making me doubt them. It seems fairly obvious to me that they are involved in the manipulation. One keeps trying to trigger my guilt by constantly asking me how I feel about her. The other just keeps flooding me with every possible association related to her.
I have to admit, even though this whole mess started seven months ago, I didn't really begin doubting these two until recently, mostly because I saw them more frequently. But for the last two months now, I've been suspicious of both of them.
And the reason I suspect them is that it became a global issue once I noticed that they, too, began acting differently—and they share the exact same circle of friends that I do.
Honestly, if this is Gaslighting, it was far too obvious from the very beginning to actually work. I mean, first off, people I trust the least started acting as if they were operating on me, then four people suddenly changed their entire behavioral patterns, and some others were just messing around with the whole situation, which made it all much too apparent.
But these past two months have been the worst two months of my life. I have never experienced fears like this before—the terrifying thought that someone might kill me, or kill my father, or throw me out onto the streets, or have an innocent person thrown into prison or a mental asylum.
Though, looking back at the timeline, I realize my father actually started bringing people around to talk to me long before any of this happened, all to try and convince me to enroll in art school. So, I guess the roots of all this go back even further than when that girl appeared. In my mind, she was supposed to be the one to persuade me to go to art school, but instead, she fell for me and wanted to help solve my social struggles. That just added two more layers to the whole narrative. Meanwhile, I completely spiraled over some fourth, entirely different issue, which caused me to retreat from everyone, shut myself away, and just binge eat for two months. I was so overwhelmed that I couldn't even speak, eventually realizing there was no actual reason to be afraid and that everyone just wants what's best for me.
How could people you trust the least start targeting you if you barely even saw them? Because logically, the less you see someone, the less influence they can have on you—they're basically irrelevant...
Matthew Jones16 said:I suppose I’ve had two truly sincere friends in my entire life. However, having spent the last year basically in total isolation playing video games, that sense of connection has weakened quite a bit. Naturally, those friendships aren't what they were on day one. This whole situation hit me right during a period of crisis—when I stopped playing Dota 2, when I stopped talking to this girl I’d been in love with for six months (which was the longest I've ever felt that way, and the second most intense), and when I started experimenting with how I interact with others and trying to socialize with all sorts of different people.
The thing is, both of these two supposedly sincere friends are making me doubt them. It seems fairly obvious to me that they are involved in the manipulation. One keeps trying to trigger my guilt by constantly asking me how I feel about her. The other just keeps flooding me with every possible association related to her.
I have to admit, even though this whole mess started seven months ago, I didn't really begin doubting these two until recently, mostly because I saw them more frequently. But for the last two months now, I've been suspicious of both of them.
And the reason I suspect them is that it became a global issue once I noticed that they, too, began acting differently—and they share the exact same circle of friends that I do.
Honestly, if this is Gaslighting, it was far too obvious from the very beginning to actually work. I mean, first off, people I trust the least started acting as if they were operating on me, then four people suddenly changed their entire behavioral patterns, and some others were just messing around with the whole situation, which made it all much too apparent.
But these past two months have been the worst two months of my life. I have never experienced fears like this before—the terrifying thought that someone might kill me, or kill my father, or throw me out onto the streets, or have an innocent person thrown into prison or a mental asylum.
Though, looking back at the timeline, I realize my father actually started bringing people around to talk to me long before any of this happened, all to try and convince me to enroll in art school. So, I guess the roots of all this go back even further than when that girl appeared. In my mind, she was supposed to be the one to persuade me to go to art school, but instead, she fell for me and wanted to help solve my social struggles. That just added two more layers to the whole narrative. Meanwhile, I completely spiraled over some fourth, entirely different issue, which caused me to retreat from everyone, shut myself away, and just binge eat for two months. I was so overwhelmed that I couldn't even speak, eventually realizing there was no actual reason to be afraid and that everyone just wants what's best for me.
Is there any chance you were open with them to the point of vulnerability, and then they took that and presented it to everyone in your social circle? Maybe without even bad intentions, and then you got spooked by seeing how others reacted to your vulnerability?
Matthew Jones16 said:I suppose I’ve had two truly sincere friends in my entire life. However, having spent the last year basically in total isolation playing video games, that sense of connection has weakened quite a bit. Naturally, those friendships aren't what they were on day one. This whole situation hit me right during a period of crisis—when I stopped playing Dota 2, when I stopped talking to this girl I’d been in love with for six months (which was the longest I've ever felt that way, and the second most intense), and when I started experimenting with how I interact with others and trying to socialize with all sorts of different people.
The thing is, both of these two supposedly sincere friends are making me doubt them. It seems fairly obvious to me that they are involved in the manipulation. One keeps trying to trigger my guilt by constantly asking me how I feel about her. The other just keeps flooding me with every possible association related to her.
I have to admit, even though this whole mess started seven months ago, I didn't really begin doubting these two until recently, mostly because I saw them more frequently. But for the last two months now, I've been suspicious of both of them.
And the reason I suspect them is that it became a global issue once I noticed that they, too, began acting differently—and they share the exact same circle of friends that I do.
Honestly, if this is Gaslighting, it was far too obvious from the very beginning to actually work. I mean, first off, people I trust the least started acting as if they were operating on me, then four people suddenly changed their entire behavioral patterns, and some others were just messing around with the whole situation, which made it all much too apparent.
But these past two months have been the worst two months of my life. I have never experienced fears like this before—the terrifying thought that someone might kill me, or kill my father, or throw me out onto the streets, or have an innocent person thrown into prison or a mental asylum.
Though, looking back at the timeline, I realize my father actually started bringing people around to talk to me long before any of this happened, all to try and convince me to enroll in art school. So, I guess the roots of all this go back even further than when that girl appeared. In my mind, she was supposed to be the one to persuade me to go to art school, but instead, she fell for me and wanted to help solve my social struggles. That just added two more layers to the whole narrative. Meanwhile, I completely spiraled over some fourth, entirely different issue, which caused me to retreat from everyone, shut myself away, and just binge eat for two months. I was so overwhelmed that I couldn't even speak, eventually realizing there was no actual reason to be afraid and that everyone just wants what's best for me.
How on earth did you jump from being heartbroken over some lost love straight to thinking someone’s going to murder you, throw you in prison, or lock you up in a psych ward?
Walk me through that logic...
Because, from what I understand, paranoia—as a clinical condition—usually stems from projection. It’s a way for the ego to protect itself from certain feelings or desires that actually fuel the id, while the superego feels ashamed of them and tries to purge them from the system. We're talking about intense emotions like deep-seated hatred, contempt, or even a type of "forbidden" love—infatuation, lust, and all that.
In these cases, the ego proves to be unstable and ineffective as a defense mechanism, so those emotions and desires get shifted away from the self and onto an outside object. Then, the ego just wipes the slate clean, leaving you under the impression that someone else hates or is persecuting you—when really, it's *you* who harbors that hate. Or that someone loves you when it's actually *your* own desire (like this little fantasy of yours where some program > ex-girlfriend is somehow monitoring your entire internet history 😁 )