Reflections on an 18 year lesson at the hands of a white collar psychopath

[nothingman]

Coming back to the Law of Three. As I mentioned, with normal people one can act normally — like a human being. However, with psychopaths, I realized that a different inner attitude is required. It’s an emotional “tone” called “No Sympathy”. I can best describe it as a solid rock wall. This includes even my eyes and looking into the eyes of the psychopath. It’s a “neutral” zone — no energy exchange is occurring — neither negative nor positive. I decide and very firmly make up my mind to refuse to allow any of their words or attitudes or glances to penetrate into my psychic world. I feel absolutely “NO” sympathy towards their plight or their condition or their complaints or positioning themselves as a victim of others. They will attempt to gain my “sympathy”. I refuse to grant them any sympathy. I allow their verbal and attitude arrows to drop on the ground before me. I refuse to pick them up or hurl them back — which only gives them more ammunition. This way I deprive them of food. Our sympathy is food for them. Refuse to feed them.

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This is an incredible statement (and forum thread in general)...Generally, It's when people are looking for sympathy that you should suspect that they are about to manipulate... right? And its this pull of energy where you want to feel sorry for them, where you want to help, but you know they will just want more and somehow your help or good intention is going to be used to control you or harm you.... I feel this conflict... I get overwhelmed with paranoia sometimes when I am dealing with this one person in particular. It's when they don't behave in a way you would expect someone you trust to behave. And then they don't appear to care or feel remorse. You hope or want to believe they are doing it with your best interest being taken in account because that is what you are being 'feed'.

 

[Fester]

Hi Michael BC. I think I know exactly how you feel. So, first off let me congratulate you. Well done! You not only survived being mauled by the tiger, you learned from it at the same time! That's no mean feat, don't knock it. Allow Castenada to elaborate:

Attributes of the Warrior

Control, discipline, forbearance, timing.

Nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to stand the pressure of the unknowable.

The perfect ingredient for the making of a superb seer is a petty tyrant with unlimited prerogatives. Seers have to go to extremes to find a worthy one. If you haven't trained to deal with such by dealing with your own, personal petty tyrant, i.e. your own programs and emotions, you have no business going out and trying to walk amongst them elsewhere - they will devour you.

Warriors develop a strategy using the four attributes of warriorship: control, discipline, forbearance, and timing.

Don Juan said that what the new seers had in mind was a deadly manoeuvre in which the petty tyrant is like a mountain peak and the attributes of warriorship are like climbers who meet at the summit.

Control and discipline refer to an inner state. A warrior is self-oriented, not in a selfish way but in the sense of a total examination of the self.

Forbearance and timing are not quite an inner state. They are in the domain of the man of knowledge.

The idea of using a petty tyrant is not only for perfecting the warrior's spirit, but also for enjoyment and happiness. Even the worst tyrants can bring delight, provided, of course, that one is a warrior.

The mistake average men make in confronting petty tyrants is not to have a strategy to fall back on; the fatal flaw is that average men take themselves too seriously; their actions and feelings, as well as those of the petty tyrants, are all-important. Warriors, on the other hand, not only have a well-thought-out strategy, but are free from self-importance. What restrains their self-importance is that they have understood that reality is an interpretation we make.

Petty tyrants take themselves with deadly seriousness while warriors do not. What usually exhausts us is the wear and tear on our self-importance. Any man who has an iota of pride is ripped apart by being made to feel worthless.

To tune the spirit when someone is trampling on you is called control. Instead of feeling sorry for himself a warrior immediately goes to work mapping the petty tyrant's strong points, his weaknesses, his quirks of behaviour.
To gather all this information while they are beating you up is called discipline.

A perfect petty tyrant has no redeeming feature.

Forbearance is to wait patiently--no rush, no anxiety--a simple, joyful holding back of what is due.


A warrior knows that he is waiting and what he is waiting for. Right there is the great joy of warriorship.

Timing is the quality that governs the release of all that is held back.

Control, discipline, and forbearance are like a dam behind which everything is pooled. Timing is the gate in the dam.

Forbearance means holding back with the spirit something that the warrior knows is rightfully due. It doesn't mean that a warrior goes around plotting to do anybody mischief, or planning to settle past scores. Forbearance is something independent. As long as the warrior has control, discipline, and timing, forbearance assures giving whatever is due to whoever deserves it.

To be defeated by a small-fry petty tyrant is not deadly, but devastating. Warriors who succumb to a small-fry petty tyrant are obliterated by their own sense of failure and unworthiness.

Anyone who joins the petty tyrant is defeated. To act in anger, without control and discipline, to have no forbearance, is to be defeated.

After warriors are defeated they either regroup themselves or they abandon the quest for knowledge and join the ranks of the petty tyrants for life.

I'm sorry, I don't know which book this quote is from. I'm sure there's plenty here who do though.

Let me demonstrate why I'm sharing this and why I think you will find it helpful:

Apparently he saw me as a threat from the very beginning. He knew I was good at what I do so reluctantly he took me in under the pressure of his number two...

Yes. From the very beginning all you represented was someone else's victory over him. Therefore, you must be destroyed. For this reason, "Acting as a Grey Rock" would not have worked in this case. Neither would 13TT's similar method of "No Sympathy".

his narcissism is public and acute, his total lack of care and interest in anyone but himself, his disregard for loyalty, for talent, for anything other than his own world view and agenda, his viciousness when crossed or critiqued, his lack of moral code, his dog-eat-dog-and-I-am-the-king-dog philosophy, his promiscuity and sexual abuse of the opposite sex, his obsession with power at all costs... his temper, his rudeness, his impatience, his ability to delight in abusing others, his unwillingness to listen to any other point of view once it conflicts with his is implacable. Everything, I mean everything, is about him. But rather than producing disgust these traits only seem to add to his mystic.

...a perfect feeding ground for predators as the emotional energy is by definition high and exposing. He is expert at exuding the superficial traits of being one of us – being an ostentatious supporter of cutting edge artists, possessing a highly disciplined memory and an ability to imitate the language of the creative individual – but he meerly specialises in feeding and absorbing influences and energies that are not his own (he admits to having no feel or interest for the creative process). He blows hot and cold with individuals purely on a need to use basis ... On the whole he affects a bombastic comradery with those he engages whose talents he drains to create the work only to move on to the next feeding park once he’s got what he wants from them.

The one position of engagement that reveals his true nature and inherent fault line is that of director. Actors, designers, administrators, etc come and go with the odd scar but on the whole they pose little threat to his dominant authority. Directors however, are the front line where power is shared and disputed. He sees them as an necessary evil, a craft and skill he knows he cannot do without (possessing none of the ability himself which he will readily admit – putting it down to a lack of patience and a low boredom threshold), and he has evolved ways and means of dealing with them. But when they actually bring the finished work into his domain – his building, his stage – to be paraded before the public, his personal mirror, then the battle commences. He transforms into a confrontational, bullying advocate for his sole opinion as arbiter of taste, likes and dislikes. If a director fails to bend to his whims they are rapidly assaulted with an intense level of psychological pressure and if they do not give way they are isolated and eventually expelled from further work, most often for good. This power of professional life and death is something he clearly relishes and always emerges victorious, at least in his world view.

It took me a long time to work this strange dance out, both sides of which being highly uncomfortable to acknowledge. I finally came to know my own weakness over the many blows and turmoils of my career, not only in relationship to him but to other experiences beyond his reach which confirmed my own sorry state. I finally recognised him for what he was ... Out of the psychopaths mouth; for I knew what he meant. That empathy was a weakness and there to be ridiculed.

To gather all this information while they are beating you up is called discipline.

but...

To be defeated by a small-fry petty tyrant is not deadly, but devastating. Warriors who succumb to a small-fry petty tyrant are obliterated by their own sense of failure and unworthiness.

I think this is what you are dealing with, as you seem to believe that you have been defeated by your petty tyrant. I beg to differ:

Anyone who joins the petty tyrant is defeated. To act in anger, without control and discipline, to have no forbearance, is to be defeated.

I think you feel defeated because you have not yet realised what victory you can take from this. Not so much the knowledge of psychopaths, but your knowledge of yourself. You have learned you are a warrior. It has cost you, as well, but that is the way with a warrior's lessons- you pay the price regardless of what you learn.

the desire - the cold, calm desire – arose in me to go for his throat and take him down!

a completely natural warrior's response to a psychopath. You simply did not know how to go about it, as you say here:

...a need not to give him what he feeds on – real reciprocated conflict. Should I have? Should I have called him out – would anyone have understood? I doubt it. He is surrounded by those who are enthral, whose livelihoods also depend on his largess. He is untouchable. We are the expendable. I feel great shame for not having the courage though. I think I feared my own breakdown – my own pain being exposed as ‘weakness’. That he would see he had me.

But what you have learned!

he is still incapable of knowing anything of me because he is a psychopath and I am a human being.

Yes! A true psychopath is not human!
And this!

Psychopaths rule our world at all levels. They do not need to command armies to do great harm. They rot everything they touch, everything sacred to the human condition. Intimacy, companionship, understanding, creativity, friendship, community, our ability to be in empathy, our ability to see ourselves enslaved. They isolate us by setting the narrative by which our world is understood, leaving the humans they prey on at odds with each other, unable to give voice to the menace within, believing that the narrative they set is the way of the world, the way things are meant to be. They create nothing; they feed on everything that vibrates. They are our destiny on this planet at this time, our Trojan horse – they are well inside the walls of the city and crow their victory over us from the wall tops. They care not what trail of destruction they leave behind delighting instead in the empty pleasure of victory over the rest of us.

You've learned the nature of the beast, in the same way it knows us.

 

[Mr.Cyan]

Dear Michael BC, thank you for sharing, and i am glad and relieved that you are on the path to healing. My warm wishes and thoughts are with you

You clearly understand what you have been through, and know the nature of the psychopath well. As i read your experience - i saw this post as a kind of recapitulation of your experience; where you clearly understood what you went through, the dynamics at play, and are now in the process of healing and forming a newer more resilient self from the experience. Rest assured, you will definitely be much stronger after this.

Thanks for sharing again and

 

[Michael B-C]

It's been a while since I posted on this thread and I was surprised to see it resurface with Mr Cyan's kind addition. Thank you for your words of comfort - I really appreciate them and thought I would respond in kind.

The whole sordid affair seems so small fry and immaterial now especially when one looks at what the psychopaths who rule our world are doing to the downtrodden all around us - real, life altering destruction of limb and livelihood. My personal demons are but a scratch compared to the damage they inflict. My heart breaks when I read daily on SOTT of the terrible destructivity they are bringing to our benighted planet. I suppose, as some of you have suggested, this is the great 'gift' of coming up close and personal to one myself. I knew it intellectually through a close following of Laura's writing on the subject, and I thought I 'got it'. Even then I knew this man and experienced his actions first hand but it never really switched on my lights for some reason until this last experience. Now I see with different eyes and I feel for those more deeply than I did before, although I seem blighted not to be able to do anything constructive with this knowledge. But may be that day will come.

I also wanted to belatedly thank Fester and Obyvatel for their posts which I have found very useful. Yes Obyvatel, I have struggled with the 'life is a test', 'life is a lesson' dilemma. I have to confess to have swung violently between the two - in fact I still do. For some reason for a while I couldn’t quite grasp the difference but now I do. I know I tend towards preferring the first version because it fits my well versed self-loathing and sense of having failed some secret test that explains the mess I find myself in. I do hold strongly to the idea that I am responsible and that it is from my choices and my actions that I have carved my experiences. But I know that the 'test' issue is really just pure hubris - there is no test, just many, many possibilities out of which experience is gained and - yes - lessons are there to be learned, if we have the will and self discipline to see them and grasp them as such. Only in the crucible of suffering is true knowledge and wisdom forged.

I am grateful to you Fester for the time you took to carefully outline some of the key pointers that Obyvatel was also alluding to. I have found it very hard not to blame myself (even though I know I am not at real fault) and to see him as the victor. I do feel real anger and have momentary violent thoughts (axe hacking him to death is my favoured response!) but they are merely the outpourings of a badly bruised – or hopefully reforming – ego and the suppressed feelings from not having had any other outlet but this. But as I said above, its small fry and I know that – and I can see the potential the personal knowledge now gives me.

One final observation. One incident in the whole affair brought to mind that great fable of the Scorpion and the Frog or Tortoise that is so often wrong attributed to Aesop (instead most likely of Arabic origins – so perhaps was once Greek – but actually made its way into mainstream consciousness via an Orson Wells film of all things!)

I’m sure you all know it but basically it goes as follows.

A scorpion wished to cross a river but could not see how. He suddenly spied a frog by the side of the river who was preparing to cross himself. "Hello Mr. Frog!" called the scorpion, "Would you kindly give me a ride on your back across the river?"

The frog eyed him with grave concern. "Dear Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you won’t kill me in return for my efforts?"

The scorpion grinned. "It’s obvious isn’t it? If I was so foolish as to try to kill you, then I would die too, for as you see I cannot swim!"
Satisfied by the sense and logical balance of this reply, the frog was about to comply when another deadly thought struck him. "What about when I get close to the other side? You might wait until we are almost on dry land before striking out, for you could reach the safety of the far bank without my help?”

The scorpion smiled a gracious smile. “My dear Mr Frog, once you've taken me safely across the deep waters I will be so in your debt that it would be shameful for me to reward you with death, now would it?!"

So the frog was satisfied and the scorpion crawled onto the frog's back, where upon he slid into the river. The swell grew ever stronger but the frog strived with all his might to keep the Scorpion clear of the licking waves so the scorpion would not drown.
They were in sight of dry land when suddenly the frog felt a sharp stinging pain in his back and, from the corner of his eye, he spied the scorpion removing his stinger from the frog's neck. A sickening numbness began to creep throughout his limbs and slowly he began to sink. "Monster!" he gasped with his dying breath “We shall now die! The both of us! I cannot save you and you cannot save me. Why? Why did you do it?”

The scorpion laughed and then appeared to do a dance of death upon the sinking frame of the frog. Finally, just as the waves were to draw them both under, he lent forward and whispered in the frog’s ear "I couldn’t help myself; it’s my nature you see." With that, they both sank to the muddy bottom.


I think the ‘lesson’ is clear. A psychopath only has one nature and will only act accordingly. It is up to us to truly grasp this and act accordingly; when we don’t the psychopath will do what nature has designed it to do – and strike. I share this ditty only because it so accurately describes what took place between me and this person. He needed me to get him across the river – to grasp at the million or so in revenues that the show I directed would produce and the status it would give him. I foolishly ignored the pre-knowledge I had of his need to sting even if it meant his loss (of potential revenue and control of the ship that he himself could not control). I lasted most of the way across the water but when land was in sight, even when the waters got choppy, instead of allowing me to reach the other shore and deposit him and his show safe and sound, he could not stop himself from preferring to take his pound of flesh. He did not need to – it threatened to capsize the ship and it lost him forever the services of a very capable director who could have continued to give him the success he craves. But he preferred to take that positive, life affirming reality down to the bottom of the waves rather than miss out on the chaos he longed to feat on. I can still hear his madness in my ear as he struck out just as land was sighted. After all it was his nature!

Thanks for listening and being there.

 

[Bluefyre]

Michael BC thanks so much for your post, so well articulated. I too have found the Scorpion and Frog story helpful in gaining some objectivity in reviewing and coming to terms with relationships with psychopaths. Finding compassion for my ignorance and hypnotic reengagement is helping me learn the lessons. These predators cover us in their filth and then we take it on and in, as well as being drained of our lifeforce, kind of like a turnstile. Knowledge of what that filth feels like is powerful, Self-compassion cuts through the filth like a knife through butter, or so I am finding. FWIW. Can also relate to minimizing our experiences at the hands of psychopaths in light of the huge worldwide horror show they are currently running. Big hugs and inner peace to you!

 

[Michael B-C]

I've unexpectedly come back to this thread for the first time in five years. How much water under so many bridges since!

I'm now very much at peace with the whole experience and in truth utterly grateful to the universe for it. An invaluable lesson with most of the learning silently processed in the ensuing time since. But I was again struck whilst reading the above by all the support, understanding and guidance from unknown brothers and sisters here who came to my aid at my greatest time of need. Again my deepest gratitude - it really helped me get through a very dark time and without which, who knows what would have happened to my mind.

A final epilogue that might bring a smile to some faces.

In 2016/17 - and in the wake of the MeTo movement - his depravity and inevitable slow decline into just having to publicly reveal his true nature (why won't they all just acknowledge I'm a god and inviolable!?) finally brought his demise. To cut a long story short, in a drunken state and in a public environment with witnesses, he insulted a certain female 'artist' who instead of taking it lying down outed him through social media - which then spread and a tidal wave of complaints ensued. The culture in Ireland was 'looking' for its Harvey Weinstein moment - meant the time was right and the whole community of SJW's fell upon him with fully enraged harpy fury. As a result he was publicly shamed and forced from his job. He lost all his power, all his status, and most importantly his means to do any more harm other than to those who remain in his close circle. To all intent and purposes he has been vanished!



Michael Colgan ran Gate Theatre as personal fiefdom for decades

I alone, however, knew the ultimate irony.

If my reading of matters is correct, from personal knowledge the person who took him down was a fellow alien reaction machine! Most tellingly when this person made contact with me to use my own experiences as part of the campaign, upon grasping that my take on his true nature was slightly more nuanced and precise than the one they wanted to promote (sexual predator) - and so capable of widening the public conversation around his type's underlying nature (as opposed to simply his perceived actions and means), this person quickly withdrew interest in using my material, with a brusque 'this is way too much for people to take on'. I smiled. I believe it was more because it might have led to the danger of others thinking more about who this 'person' really was who was so brilliantly playing the victim to such overwhelming public acclaim!

Even small scale narcissists/psychopaths can find ways to take down big monster psychopaths - for they are all nothing but feeders. And a big feeder makes a tasty lunch, especially if you get unending publicity and thus personal opportunities out of it!

I've attached the draft of the blog I was fully prepared to post in support of the 2016 campaign - I think it still holds true even though this person refused to publish it. Even more so today.

Here endeth the lesson!

God be with you and go in peace!

 

[Cristal]

Thank you for this thread... I work in an orchestra and this world is full with narcissistic people and psychopaths. I had to learn the hard way how damaging these people can be. And they enjoy crushing you, especially when you are most vulnerable. To me it happened while I was pregnant and it lasted for almost 3 years. What hurt a lot was the attitude of my colleagues that went all with the mobbing. Even the ones I considered my close friends. Thanks to this forum I could understand the "why" of it and how to stay low. I am not completely healed yet, but I tried not to sink into a deep depression for the sake of my small child.
One week before the lockdown in my country, it looked like the new bosses were going to go after these people and I was hopeful, but it looks like they can take advantage of this time to reflect and find a way to stab them in the back... They are better adapted to this world than us. Greetings

 

[Persephone]

Thank you for this thread... I work in an orchestra and this world is full with narcissistic people and psychopaths. I had to learn the hard way how damaging these people can be. And they enjoy crushing you, especially when you are most vulnerable. To me it happened while I was pregnant and it lasted for almost 3 years. What hurt a lot was the attitude of my colleagues that went all with the mobbing. Even the ones I considered my close friends. Thanks to this forum I could understand the "why" of it and how to stay low. I am not completely healed yet, but I tried not to sink into a deep depression for the sake of my small child.
One week before the lockdown in my country, it looked like the new bosses were going to go after these people and I was hopeful, but it looks like they can take advantage of this time to reflect and find a way to stab them in the back... They are better adapted to this world than us. Greetings

Hi Cristal I know what is like to "not sink into a deep depression for the sake of my small child" as I underwent this too, and what's more my child's father was the psychopath. I sank into deep drepession and death wishes once my son grew older, but I was alone and had not found Laura's writings yet, at that time. Now I realize how invaluable have been the lessons I learned from this experience, especially these days. Believe me, really unvaluable ! So I warmly wish you hold steady and confident even if the healing can take a little time