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I am feeling very scared, last night I had trouble sleeping and kept running through things in my mind. He is so dangerous but the worse thing is, he is not physically violent. It is the psychological tactics, it is craziness in the extreme. Quiet, dark, subtle but deadly. I am scared of him getting access to my head again, i have maintained NC since we split and have removed him mainly from my life. I think that he has signed up for one of my social groups. I think that it is him but he is pretending to be someone else by using their photo. I know this sounds crazy what I am saying but I am dealing with someone who is not mentally normal or rational. I wonder if he has been following me on here for months logging on and reading my posts, just reading all of the posts for a while, a lot of which are quite specific I believe he could find out it is me. I am trying to put my calm and rational hat on in how to deal with this as at the moment I am a nervous wreck like a rabbit caught in headlights. Calmly and rationally if it is him who has registered and at some point I do bump into him i can be short and friendly and leave it at that, not worry too much, even ignore him. But the thought of him using psychological tactics to subtly stalk me is really scaring me. My story reminds me of the film Sleeping with the Enemy, Julia Roberts was terrified of her husband. Subtle actions like moving the towels or the tins in the cupboard were enough to break her. That is what I am dealing with, I think he might be starting to ingratiate himself in the groups I am a member of but disguising himself, I just know his tactics.
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It’s only really natural you feel anxious but you are not the same person you were when you were with him. You know his game now. Have confidence in yourself. Try not to worry until you actually know it’s him. You can always speak to the police for advice. There are new laws regarding stalking so don’t be afraid to speak to the police. I was very very paranoid, and still am. My ex was “not physically violent” until he started to lose control but the mental cruelty nearly killed me X
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Calm down hun explain to the police!!! Iam scared myself in case my ex stalks me ive told the police this! Let us know how you get on x hugs
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Yes I saw that, I really felt for her. I know exactly what she meant when she said she gets all wobbly when she gets the mail in case there’s a letter from him. I get sick and shaky every time my email pings and I collect the post and when the doorbell rings. It’s horrible
For her though, she doesn’t even know who the person is, no face to recognise. He could be anywhere watching her, sitting next to her in a coffee shop or even her postman. Scary
I can relate to you HA about the ex stalking you. Mine has done that too. I get scared in case he joins this forum to find out what I’m saying, the police even queried if he had bugged the house as he knew too much. I keep getting fb requests from big, burly marines and soldiers, the sort of guys I go for. It’s got to be him. One was high up in the American military, I thought yeah right this major woke up one morning and thought I know, I’ll make friends with a disabled single mum in the uk today ?!
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It makes us wary & suspicious. I thought (& still worry about it) for ages whether my ex was following me on here. I have no hard evidence of that. Its just that I’m on here so often, every day sometimes for hours sharing my thoughts, the characteristics of an abuser are to monitor and stay in touch. He knew me and knew I am a chaser and would have pursued him post split so I have surprised him by maintaining NC. My ex has 100% discarded me from his life. i’m almost certain he has been focussing all of his time and attention on another woman who is giving him his shot of Fuel (Fuel by HG Tudor). The fuel is the ego boost, attention, adoration and filling a gap he has inside. The love bombing which always happens at first. But then the cracks start to show and ok you are having amazing sex but you then see that actually this person doesn’t listen, is selfish, is mean with money or is possessive. The amazing sex and love bombing period eases, thats when the mind games start. X*X Dear Malaya i have no evidence that he monitors me on here reading my posts and following me, i only thought that as his actions didn’t match that of an abuser. I thought that he might have put a bug on my PC to monitor my internet usage but again I don’t know. I can have an over active imagination sometimes. x*X
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Hi Healthy Archive,
I do empathise with you a lot. The things that these people do are so subtle and only by linking them in a chain do they compile a very nasty picture. Only one person out of my family and close friends has put my abusers’ subtle behaviour down to coincidence. (I think it because he had a lovebombing stalker who was very vocal and dramatic, so he isn’t used to subtle forms of stalking.) Everyone else has advised me to trust my gut, so I would say do the same. If it feels wrong, it probably is wrong.
On forums, I vary the details of my experiences and my surroundings from reality, so that if my abusers look at my posts, they (hopefully) won’t be able to pick me out of the crowd. But who knows, if my computer has spyware installed they can probably see everything. One day I even had a foreign icon appear overnight on my desktop screen. I contacted an IT helpline and they said that there was no spyware, but there is no way I could I could have been interested in the shortcut on my computer. Hmmm. Dodgy?
Going under the radar is hard. You might have to make subtle changes but consider ones that are not going to impact you too seriously on practical and psychological fronts. I have had to use the highest levels of security on social media, use nicknames, avoid being tagged in photocalls (really hard in the business world) and wear dark clothing in order to blend into the crowd when commuting and travelling. I especially hate the last of these, as I love to express myself through my clothes and I have had to go round looking very boring, indeed, which feels oppressive (although when I fly back to my home country or visit other places far away, the normal wardrobe springs back to life). I am also conscious to vary my travel routes and the times I am on the internet. This seemed like a lot of hard work at first, it is tiring as it takes thought, but I am getting used to it.
Thinking of you and wishing you freedom
Lilycat x*x
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Thanks Lilycat, I don’t know my ex as he was a chameleon always altering himself to fit whoever he was with but I got subtle glimpses. He was definetely a big power & control freak. I know if you take your PC into a PC shop like PC world they can tell easily and quickly if your PC has been tampered with, i could do that but I can be bothered to be honest with you. At the moment my ‘chain of fears’ around the stalking amount to little: 1. a personal worry that he may have been monitoring me on here for months 2. possibly registering at a social group that I am a member of 3. ignoring a friendly message I sent him a few months ago 4. Giving me the silent treatment. That is it. Thinking logically I dont think there is enough there for me to clearly say he is stalking & harrassing me at the moment. I will see if anything else happens. I’ve changed my contact details now, if he desperately wanted to Pee me off there are ways and means. I will see if anything else gets added to my chain of concerns. I know covert mentally abusive stalkers are crazy with unhinged minds, I wonder if they would really think about support groups for women and start to look out for these. Then come across Womens Aid, then casually view the forum, then become interested in what is said on the forum, then think, hang on a minute that sounds familiar. I know i have a HUGELY overactive imagination. In one the abuse books that i was reading by HG Tudor one of the men did this. Also this forum is confidential with information quickly being removed if it is considered identifying. The amount of time that I have been on here now, what I am posting and what I say, if my ex was monitoring me on here, he would have done something else by now, definitely. There is a possibility we are just scared, and when we are scared our minds race quite a lot. X*X
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Hi HealthyArchive,
You sound like a very reasonable and logical woman. And it is right that you pull back and reflect, because sometimes natural hyper-vigilance aroused by years of abuse can have us looking over our shoulder constantly at a list of ‘what ifs’? With this said, it is not unreasonable to keep a little bit of a roving eye and watch out for blips on the normality graph.
There might have been times when you were with your ex when he seemed happy and calm and then out of nowhere would come a sudden change of mood, strange turns of phrase and anger, and then things would return to normal for a few weeks, followed by an about-face of silent treatment, etc etc, etc. These people like to appear calm and uninterested, then they press that ‘button’ in our psyches, we react and then they calmly say: ‘What’s up, then?’ or ‘There she goes, again’. Both of my abusers did this to me with escalating regularity.
I have been ‘no contact’ with my stepchild for several years and then all of a sudden they are playing geographical copycat, working interest copycat and now skin pigmentation copy cat. The dots are joining to form a picture.
With everything that I have said, above, I’d like to mention something that my therapist told me. She advised that hyper-vigilance is a natural conditioning created from being exposed to very unnatural and disturbing situations. We sometimes feel hyper-arousal, but we can moderate and temper it by asking ourselves if our abusers are just playing games or if, alternatively, there is real danger. Sometimes abusers just like to play around because it gives them kicks. If that’s the case, we have to remind ourselves that they live in an alternative universe and we are not part of their fantasy; if there is real risk, the police are only minutes away.
Take good care and keep up with the reflection.
Wishing you peace and happiness
Lilycat x*x
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Thanks Lilycat, I’m reasonably sure it was him who registered (detail removed by moderator). I have been reading one of my HG Tudor books today, Fuel. It talks about Power Plays, which are types of contact they make when they are hoovering you and trying to make their presence known. The Power Play that most resembles him at the moment is the Spectre Power Play which is basically subtly showing himself without directly contacting me but enough to unnerve me. Also this is designed to throw confusion into the mix as he could legitimately have been interested in the group for his own social interests. I always have in the back of my mind is he reading on here every day what I write and following me on here, it is constantly in the back of my mind. If he does do that, I don’t think he is the type to be phsyically violent, the worse that can happen is that he would have accessed all of my thoughts and I would have been exposed since we split. That is not the end of the world. I am now basically sure that for some of the time that we were a couple he were online dating at the same time.
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