Filmmaker Alexander Davidis has directed commercials for international advertising agencies and documentaries about historic race cars. Then he had an experience with a psychopath, and now wants to help tell the world that these predators live among us.
Davidis already started by interviewing some of the world’s leading researchers on psychopathy. To complete the project, he’s listed it on Kickstarter, which is the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects. He wants to raise at least $60,000.
Kickstarter is interesting. Anyone can be a backer, pledging as little as $1 on a credit card. In order for the money to be collected, the project must reach its entire goal by the deadline. If the project doesn’t reach the entire goal in pledges, none of the money is collected. In other words, the backers’ credit cards are only charged if enough money is raised for the project to go forward.
So, check out the trailer that Alexander Davidis has produced for the film. If you believe the project is important, you can become a backer.
Psychopathy—and why you need to know, on KickStarter.com.
slimone,
I do get the definition of the mask, that is HOW THEY MAKE US FEEL.
My spath would say something and while I could NOT put my finger on why, it FELT “off”. Some here call it being “slimed” and that’s close to the feeling I’d get. I KNEW I was being manipulated, that it was WRONG, but WHY did I feel that way? I used to have to take time to THINK about it. Like I said in last nights post, I can be a little slow in the uptake to understand I am being attacked by a dysfunctional jerk, never mind an spath!
I’d tell my X! husband, “That’s not right, but I have to think about why what you said is not moral.” I used to think it was b/c there was something WRONG WITH ME. Now I understand, my INTUITION told me when things were off, I was given a FEELING, but I had to analyse to discover the underlying manipulation.
So yes, I do get it’s how they make us FEEL is a valid definition but the problem with that is it’s too undefinable, and sometimes too… the feeling is delayed. Like I said, an “off” feeling but you don’t know why…
I like this man’s SUBJECT but…
I did not like this man’s form of solicitation. It felt exploitative. Was it Oral Roberts who said a 700 ft Jesus told him that people needed to donate a certain amount by a certain date or God was going to take him? Felt like extortion to me. That’s what this man’s solicitation felt like, extortion. FEELS off… ummm. Pay up or else.
o. o. O!.
I am also reading a book, “Predators” and in it, the prison inmates describe how they corrupt prison guards or prison employees. They get them to give them something. Does not have to be big, in fact, is most likely very small. But once a person gives them that first thing, they know they’ve “got them”.
That’s what this man’s solicitation felt like. Straight out of that book.
ps The book is full of eye opening spath manipulations. Makes ya sick when ya realize just how easily spaths can manipulate and how much they love the game. VERY hard to read the pedophile chapters. Like lambs to the slaughter and the lambs carry the blade.
Katydid,
I totally get how you describe your feeling responses to your husband. I went through the same.
I thought something was wrong with me as well. Because I was the one feeling awkward, and he was as cool and controlled as all get out. Totally unperturbed. Whereas I was stirred up inside.
It is them projecting their disowned internal disturbance that keeps them calm. It is our willingness to question our own motives that gets us stirred up.
The spaths would have us be continually caught up in their dramas so that we cannot listen to our still small voices.
Plus we are taught in this culture that being ’emotional’ and ‘intuitive’ is bad, and being and in our heads, and having a defensible narrative is good. I had to discard that belief in order to honor my own instincts and feelings.
My thinking doesn’t always give me the feedback I need to protect myself. But my feelings have been darn near 100% informative. For me that has meant I have needed to let go of having a narrative to back up my feelings, and instead ‘give in’ to trusting my feelings.
It is quite undefinable and subtle. Waking up to the reality of these creatures means I am waking up to my ‘quieter’ messages, that I am living more mindfully.
KatyDid, what is the full title and the author of the book you are reading?
I think I would like to read that book. I also read a book named “Predators” by Dr. Anna Salter a few years ago about pedophiles, but I sent it to a friend so don’t have a copy of it, I think I will order another copy for my permanent library on Psychopaths though. I’m getting a pretty good library on the subject. LOL
Yes Oxy. It is Dr Salters book that I am reading. I didn’t remember who recommended it. Someone from LF, thought it was you. EXCELLENT insights into how spaths manipulate. It’s so subtle, no wonder we get trapped. Scary how we give spaths clues about our vulnerability and gullibility.
And yes, I am gullible/vulnerable but only to a point, and my threshold is very low and strong. I’ve had a “friend” get me to pay when we went out by ordering food, eating, and THEN pulling a pity play that he didn’t realize HE had to pay or he wouldn’t have eaten.
I am also gullible b/c in a conflict, I assume I did something wrong and I try to reason and explain. I am catching on though, the other person just uses my explanation as further proof that I am defective, they pick out words that I used incorrectly. Yes, I am socially awkward so it’s EASY to pick wrong words. I have been told I need an editor! But decent people don’t pull that kind of carp either. Decent people ASK what you mean or think, they don’t TELL you what you think.
The book was hard for me to read. Lots of sickening realizations of how I’ve been “had” in life and how easy it was to trap me.
Slimone,
yes, how they make us feel is part of the mask.
When you first encounter someone who creates an emotional response in you, that should be a red flag because your emotions are yours and normal people will respect that boundary. Spaths have no respect for that boundary and their entire stalking method is to stalk your emotions.
They can stalk you by love bombing. Or they can do a pity ploy. They can even approach you with a story that makes you feel outrage because someone else has been unfairly treated. All of these are a direct attack on your emotions. That doesn’t necessarily mean its a spath, but the red flags should go up. If you find that the person continually affects you this way or if the emotions are a roller coaster ride of ups and downs, I think that is further evidence of an emotional vampire.
Various forms of art, including film, will do this. But in that situation, we are walking in with our eyes open and knowing that art is supposed to affect our emotions. So I guess, when a person feels like they’ve walked into the scene of a soap opera drama but it’s real life, then we might ask ourselves if this isn’t a performance or a “mask” being presented for our benefit.
slimone
The trap with my spath husband was that he was SO cool, so unemotional, he didn’t have drama. My husband did NOT lovebomb me. That would have been drama.
Everyone around him did have drama, seemed like a lot of it. So overwhelming that I avoided them (another trick he used to socially isolate me.) I found out eventually, he LOVED to stir the pot. he’d gossip all in the name of “watching out for their best interests.”
He’d say OUTRAGEOUS terrible things to me right before someone would walk in the door and I’d be trying to catch my breath and they’d ask what was wrong with me (prolly had a weird look on my face too), and he’d say, that’s just how she is. give her a minute and she’ll change (kinda like the weather). (This was also him laying the foundation to shred my rep.)
An author that writes along this vein is George Simon. Wolf in sheep’s clothing, and his newer book, character disordered, have many examples of manipulation tactics used by the character disordered (psychopaths or the plain nasty). He also has a limited blog. We should all give at least one example that we have experienced. My daughter and I found the x’s profile on e harmony recently. It was interesting to see how he manipulates people’s perceptions of things before he even meets them. He wrote that he has a daughter that he loves so much even though she can be very difficult. She is not the least bit what anyone would consider difficult! He is setting up his next victim’s perception of our daughter to be negative before they ever meet her, all the better to explain why he doesn’t have much of a relationship with his only child.So smooth….
Katy,, the one thing I have a “problem” with in Dr. Salter’s book is that she does not call them sociopaths or psychopaths and she focuses mostly on pedophiles and their manipulation….there are psychopaths that focus mainly on luring women or conning, but her book is primarily focused on the pedophiles like Sandusky.
KatyDid, GREAT BOOK though, otherwise.
Well they fixed my central heat unit, had to replace the fan, but it is an older model, 1997 so won’t be long before I have to replace the whole thing. I tend to think that it isn’t that old because the days go slow and the years go FAST around here. LOL In the meantime, when I go to town to the doc tomorrow we will leave early and replace the “emergency” stove (for when the central heat goes out in an ice storm or when ever) that my ex “frenemy” stole when she was living out here in her RV….Oh, well –she at least replaced it with an old one that was missing a few parts and didn’t work and looked kind of like mine, so she figured I wouldn’t notice until an emergency happened and I needed it! LOL What a “frenemy” huh? Takes your fire extinguisher cause you won’t know it is gone til there is a fire! LOL Well, she is OUT of my life and I’m proud to say that she taught me to SET BOUNDARIES when I caught her in the ACT of stealing from me in the winter after the summer of chaos. I cried for 3 days over “upsetting HER” by catching her stealing. I have, I will say it again I HAVE COME A LONG WAY SINCE THEN. She was a great part of my education in psychopathy that hides under a mask of FRIENDSHIP as well as “entitlement” because of that friendship.
So I can’t say that the loss of several thousand dollars worth of stuff, and I probably don’t know the wide extent of all the losses just yet, it will take me $500 at least to replace the stove….wasn’t worth the price of the knowledge I gained. She did rip me off for a lot of stuff, both of monetary and emotional value to me, but I still think in the end, I came out ahead. She is broke, working pick up work, 55 years old, seeking a room to rent in someone’s house that will allow her to keep her pit bull—and has NOTHING except what she can haul on her back.
So in the end, psychopaths do “shoot themselves in the foot” many many times. Some live high on the hog and then crash, like Bernie madoff, and others like my P sperm donor live high on the hog and die with a pot full of money and no friends or loved ones except the ones that hang on for the sake of the money they might get.
My egg donor seemed to think she could lure me back in with the promise of money–but I’m not for sale then or now. I know the PRICE IS WAY TOO HIGH.
Madhanna, I have that book and it is a GREAT ONE!! It is part of my permanent collection of P-books. The nice thing about it is that it is jwritten where ANYONE can understand it. That is important when writing about psychopaths is that the information needs to be avialble in a format where anyone over 10 years old can know what they are talking about, yet not talkk “down” to anyone..