Inspiration Always Involves Blowing Things out of Proportion
Paranoids fall into two subtypes: Visionaries and Green-Eyed Monsters. Again, the strategies for dealing with these subtypes are similar enough for them to be included in the same chapter. Although the things they say and do may be very different, Paranoids themselves are remarkably similar. For you, they can create two very distinct sorts of problems. The first arises if you pay too much attention to them; the second, if you don’t pay enough. Either way, Paranoids can be very draining.
To protect yourself, you need to know which ideas arise from Paranoids’ unique way of looking at the world and which are just characteristic representations of their own internal conflicts, or yours. The discrimination is difficult; it will require all the wisdom you’ve gained studying the other emotional vampire types, and more. To be safe from Paranoids, you must know them well, but you must know yourself even better.
Paranoids are always searching for their Holy Grail, the one simple idea that explains everything. These vampires hate ambiguity so much that they refuse to believe it exists. Whether they’re confused about the movements of the stars, the fluctuations of the stock market, or why other people just aren’t as caring as they would like them to be, Paranoids believe that the answers are out there, and they’re willing to do what it takes to find them.
Paranoids are always looking for clues. They’ll peer into microscopes, sift through volumes of forgotten lore, or cross-examine their loved ones as to exactly where they went, when, and with whom.
Paranoids’ greatest weakness is that they are much more willing to believe in conspiracy than ambiguity. They can draw you in with elegant theories that are often more convincing than mere facts. Paranoids can drain you by demanding that if you care about them, you must believe in their dubious hidden truths. That, however, is nothing compared with what they’ll do to you if they suspect that you’re the one who’s hiding the truth from them.
Paranoids have delusions, but they can also delude. They can hypnotize you with their dogged determination to make you believe in the hidden realities they’ve discovered. They get to you by relentlessly hammering away at your resistances. Sometimes, however, Paranoids’ craziest ideas sound eerily sane, as if they had cut through all the garbage to a shining nugget of truth that somehow you’ve known was there all along. Those are the ideas to watch out for. People who tell us what we want to hear always have more power than people who tell us the truth. Use your own feelings to guide you. The more you want to believe, the more skeptical you should be.
One of the most reliable warning signs of Paranoid hypnosis is that the vampire will discourage you from getting outside opinions. In Paranoids’ simple world, the very idea that another person’s opinion might carry more weight than theirs is tantamount to treason. Don’t let their hurt feelings prevent you from checking out their ideas with someone you trust. Always remember the rule about not letting a vampire be your only source of information.
Unlike Used Car Salesmen, Paranoids actually believe what they tell you. Don’t let the force of their conviction persuade you to ignore the facts. As we’ve seen many times, the most effective hypnotists are those who have hypnotized themselves.
At this point, you might be wondering why you should have to worry about Paranoids at all. Maybe you should just stay away from them.
It’s not that simple. You may try to stay away from Paranoids, but they won’t stay away from you. Maybe the Paranoids themselves will keep away, but not their ideas. You’ll hear them everywhere—by the watercooler, over the back fence, and, most of all, on the Internet. A good portion of the new ideas you hear every day are products of Paranoid thinking. Some of them are crazy—just old Paranoid standbys dressed up in different outfits. Some Paranoid ideas are really novel, useful, and profitable. The trick is knowing the difference.
Vampire Waylon takes a pull on his second beer and laughs, snorting a bit through his nose. “Whoa,” he says. “I can’t remember the last time I had two in a row. It’s been a great week.”
Gary raises his own beer in a toast. “It’s about time somebody had a good week,” he says. “What happened?”
Waylon looks around to see if anyone is eavesdropping. “Well, for years I’ve been working on this formula to predict changes in the stock market. And, I can’t believe it, the damn thing finally seems to be paying off.”
“Really?” Gary says, taking a sip of beer.
“Yeah,” Waylon says. “You know how they talk about expansion and contraction cycles that correspond to Fibonacci numbers? Well, everybody knows they’re great for estimating overall market trends, but, until now, nobody’s been able to apply the number to the movements of a single stock. At least not well enough to make solid predictions, anyway. The thing they haven’t gotten is this.” Waylon grabs a cocktail napkin and writes down a long equation, then turns it around so Gary can read it.
Gary has no idea what a Fibonacci number is. He taps at the scribblings on the napkin with his finger. “Are you telling me you can predict the stock market with this?”
“No, this is just the algorithm. I’ve used it to generate a mathematical model and then written a program to crunch the numbers and make the actual predictions.”
“And it works?”
“Let’s put it this way,” Waylon says. “A month ago I invested $1,000. I put it in three stocks that the model predicted were going to go up, and every one of them did. In two weeks I had just about tripled my initial investment. Then, I put it all into a stock that the model said was just about to go through the roof, and this afternoon it started taking off.”
Gary wonders if Waylon should be showing his equation to Scully and Mulder on The X-Files, but he decides to keep his mouth shut. Instead, he asks if Waylon will tell him the name of the stock.
Waylon thinks about it for a minute or so while he takes another pull on his beer, then he writes a name on the napkin, cupping his hand around it so that no one else can sneak a peek. FibreCom.
Two days later, Gary sees a headline in the business section:
COMMUNICATIONS STOCKS SOAR
FibreCom leads the pack with 15-point gain.
“Mulder, I think you should see this,” he thinks to himself.
Before you laugh and say Gary should just go home and forget about Waylon’s crazy ideas, remember that people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs probably had a few weird barroom conversations when their radical visions were little more than crackpot schemes. What if you had been there and they’d offered you the chance to buy in? How would you feel today if you’d laughed?
On the other hand, how would you feel if you’d decided to invest your life savings in something that later turned out to be a delusion?
With the advent of the Internet, Paranoid ideas travel almost as fast as off-color jokes. Every day, chat rooms and inboxes overflow with health fads, investment schemes, rumors about people, and warnings of impending doom. Some are the insights of true Visionaries, and some are just the rantings of fools. The good news is that crazy ideas, whether dangerous or merely silly, tend to follow predictable patterns. To know what’s sane, you must first disregard what is definitely crazy. This isn’t easy, because sometimes your own needs can get in the way. Here are some ways of sifting through the daily pile of new ideas.
From time immemorial, the same attractive but incorrect ideas have resurfaced from the depths of the Paranoid unconscious and reached out to grasp the unwary. Some well-known delusions include perpetual motion, turning base metals into gold, astrology and other psychic phenomena, ancient predictions of current events, secret drugs that cure cancer, effortless ways to lose weight, and “evidence” that particular people are planning to take over the world using subterfuge. These ideas have a great deal of power because people would like to believe them. Unfortunately, they are seldom true. It’s not that these ideas can never be true; it’s just that in the past, they’ve been proved false on many occasions. If they are to be true now, there has to be some very convincing new reasoning that gets around the ancient fallacies.
Be especially wary of ideas presented as secret or forbidden knowledge, or of any theory that explains everything.
Just because an idea is complex and difficult to understand doesn’t mean it’s good. Remember that confusion is one of the warning signs of hypnosis. The first step in evaluating an idea is to understand it. In order to test Waylon’s theory about using Fibonacci numbers to predict the stock market, Gary needs to know what the numbers are. This task will take time and effort, but it is essential. A good rule of thumb is never to throw money at something you don’t fully comprehend. The important part to understand about any idea is the mechanism, how it’s supposed to work. Most crazy ideas are weakest at this point.
Fibonacci numbers are sequences in which each term is the sum of the two terms immediately preceding it. Many natural processes seem to correspond to this progression, which is quite interesting, but not definitive. To evaluate Waylon’s idea, Gary needs to know how the relationship between Fibonacci numbers and the stock market operates, not just that there seems to be a connection.
The angrier a Paranoid becomes when you suggest a second opinion, the more you need one. A good rule of thumb for evaluating a new idea is: if you can get two Obsessive-Compulsives to accept it, you probably should also.
Always ask yourself who would gain what if you were to buy into the idea. Look at financial considerations, of course, but remember that, more than money, Paranoids want disciples to validate their theories.
The most important motivation to understand is your own. The world is full of tempting Paranoid ideas that we wish were true, but aren’t. Miracle diets, mysterious cures, and offers of salvation through belief alone prey on our fervent hope that health and happiness can be achieved without effort.
If an idea taps into your own secret fantasies, you’re more likely to believe it without question. Paranoid Visionaries know this, because they have the same fantasies. They’ll be happy to confirm that anybody who has more than you do got it by unfair means, or that only a select few people really know what’s going on in the world, and you’re one of them.
Visionaries can also come up with ideas we wish weren’t true, but are. Doomsaying economists try to persuade us to save more. Annoying doctors tell us that our bad habits can kill us. Futurists have been saying for years that we need to become technology-literate more quickly. Environmentalists keep hammering away at the simple, though much disputed, truth that we all need to make personal sacrifices to protect the planet. Many of us are inclined to doubt these Paranoid ideas, not because they lack supporting evidence, but because belief would require us to make unpleasant changes in our lives.
The best way to evaluate an idea is to make predictions based upon it and see whether the predictions come true on a regular basis. This is the principle behind the scientific method. Waylon’s Fibonacci number theory is unusual among Paranoid ideas in that it actually generates predictions that can be checked. If Gary wants to know how valid the idea is, he needs to know some of Waylon’s predictions in advance and keep a box score on his hit rate. One prediction doesn’t mean anything. A list of accurate picks from the past isn’t enough to prove the theory, either, because Gary won’t be able to tell how many bad picks were in with the good. If Waylon should want to charge for his predictions, Gary should regard the transaction like any other form of gambling and not spend any more than he can afford to lose.
Before you buy into ideas, check them out to see how well they work. This is what scientific studies are all about. You don’t have to do the research yourself, but you do have to know it. Scientists are as slow as anybody else in accepting ideas that make them change the way they think, but they are persuaded by evidence. Even though we’ve all heard of ideas that were rejected by science but later turned out to be true, the fact is, there aren’t that many.
The craziest Paranoid ideas are usually untestable. They’re better at explaining the past than at predicting the future, and their acceptance depends more on the needs of the believers than on the objective merits of the belief. Just because an idea sounds good doesn’t mean that it is good.
If creativity means looking at things differently, Paranoid Visionaries are certainly the most creative of the emotional vampires. Some of what they create exists only in their own minds, but sometimes their ideas can let you in on the ground floor of a new way of looking at the universe. You have to decide.
It would take a whole book to examine the relationship between Paranoids and religion. Religion is their greatest invention, the shining triumph at the end of the Paranoid quest. Without Paranoids’ faith in hidden truth, none of us would know God. Religion is also the black hole that sucks the Paranoid soul into cruelty unimaginable to the rest of humanity. With Paranoids in the world, there’s no need for Satan.
Next to religious fanaticism, jealousy is the most dangerous Paranoid idea. It’s also the most universal. Who among us has never suspected that people don’t love us as much as we love them? Most of us tolerate the ambiguity, but Green-Eyed Monsters cannot. Loyalty is everything to them, so important that they can’t simply accept it on faith. They poke it, prod it, and all too often question it to death.
The last stragglers from rush hour make for slow going downtown. Still, there’s plenty of time for a leisurely dinner and a movie. Lisa leans against the door and relaxes, grateful that Vampire Joseph is doing the driving. He always drives when they go out. When they first started dating, Lisa wondered whether she should offer to drive half the time, to be politically correct and all. Now she’s glad she didn’t. It’s such a luxury being driven around. It makes her feel taken care of. Joseph is such a nice man. A little stiff, maybe, but always kind and considerate.
At a long intersection he turns toward her and smiles. “So, how was your day off?”
Lisa thinks back on her hectic day—getting her hair done, grocery shopping, dropping off the dry cleaning, and grabbing a quick lunch with her sister. “Oh, the usual,” she says, trying in vain to find something interesting enough to talk about. “You know, errands. Stuff like that. Nothing special.”
“I figured you had a really busy day.”
“I guess I did. But how did you know that?”
“Well, I called a couple of times, and your phone went right to voicemail.”
“Oh, the battery keeps losing its charge. I have to get it fixed.”
“I called your landline too.”
“You did? There weren’t any messages on the answering machine.”
Joseph shrugs. “I didn’t leave any. It wasn’t anything important. I just thought I’d call you back later.”
“Oh.”
“You were gone quite a while.”
“Yeah, first one place, then another. You know how it is. I always seem to be busier on my days off than when I’m at work. It’s nice to finally have a chance to sit down.”
“So, where did you go?”
“Let’s see,” Lisa says, surprised that Joseph would have any interest in the dumb details of her day. “Haircut. Grocery store. Cleaners. Lunch. Cash machine. And I bought some new panty hose.” She pulls her skirt up an inch or so above her knee. “Like them?”
“Yeah, they’re great,” Joseph says. “Where did you go for lunch?”
“The Bagel Shop over on Forty-fifth. It’s right next to Annie’s office, and she only gets a half hour break, and—”
“So you had lunch with your sister?”
“Yes.” Lisa’s voice comes out as a nervous giggle. “Joseph.” She laughs again, this time at the preposterousness of the idea that just popped into her head. “It sounds like you’re checking up on me.”
Joseph laughs too. “No,” he says. “Nothing like that. I’m just interested, that’s all.”
This is how Paranoid jealousy begins, with small, almost innocent questions. At first, the prospective victims might even be flattered that someone cares enough about them to worry that they might be seeing someone else. The feeling of being flattered disappears quickly when the innocent little questions become a regular part of the relationship, and the victim realizes that there will never be enough answers.
Many Green-Eyed Monsters, like Joseph, play to their victims’ fantasies of being swept off their feet and taken care of. In relationships, Paranoids endear themselves by protecting people, giving them gifts, and doing little things for them without being asked. All they expect in return for these services is absolute loyalty and complete devotion that must be proved and reproved forever. Often, people like Lisa accept the care without knowing its terrible price.
Paranoids are always on the lookout for the tiniest hint of perfidy in word, deed, or thought. Inevitably, they find what they’re looking for, not because it’s actually there in any objective sense, but because they continually focus on smaller and smaller details. No regular human can live up to a Paranoid’s standards for purity of mind.
One reason Paranoid jealousy is such a problem is that people usually handle it in exactly the wrong way: by trying to appease and reassure. Think of the contingency here. This approach teaches the Green-Eyed Monster that jealous questions are appropriate in the relationship, and will be rewarded with answers. The Lisas of the world would do better to respond to the first jealous questions with something like this:
“Joseph, I may be overreacting here, but it sounds like you’re checking up on me, and that’s kind of frightening. Let me tell you this once and forever: I’m a one-man woman. As long as we’re dating, you can be sure that I’m not seeing anybody else. You don’t need to check up, and I won’t allow it. Either you trust me to be faithful or we need to end things right here.”
Unfortunately, people like Lisa who have fantasies about being taken care of are seldom willing to risk a whole relationship by making such an assertive demand at the beginning. A time will come when she’ll wish she had.
Here are some ideas for dealing with the Green-Eyed Monsters in your own life. Like many of the approaches for protecting yourself from emotional vampires, these strategies rely on doing the opposite of what you feel. Think carefully before deciding that they won’t work in your life. Jealous Paranoids can be very dangerous.
The big question is: “Are you faithful to me?” Answer that one truthfully, then refuse to submit to further cross-examination.
The most dangerous thing about jealousy is that the more you do to make it better, the worse it gets. Answers about little details will only lead to more suspicion and questions. The only way to win the jealousy game is not to play. Jealousy has to be the Green-Eyed Monster’s problem, or there will never be an end to it.
There is no way to prove affection. Only a vampire would suggest that giving up your autonomy has anything to do with love. If someone you care for suggests that you can prove your love by taking a certain action, ask that person to prove his or her love by trusting you. This may help you explain that trust lives in the other person’s mind, not in your behavior.
Being Paranoid means having problems with trust. Your actions cannot fix those problems. Paranoids will offer up the painful betrayals in their past as reasons for you to reassure them now by doing their will and answering their questions. Take their pain seriously, but don’t believe for a minute that anything you can do will heal it.
If a Paranoid catches you in even the tiniest of white lies, it will provide justification for all further questions. Don’t think that concealing anything will spare anyone’s feelings or get you out of an argument. Paranoids have no compunctions about going through your drawers or checking your cell phone bill or the odometer of your car. Whatever evidence they find, however slight, will convince them that they were correct in making the search.
Green-Eyed Monsters will also search through your words and actions to find out exactly what you think of them. If your interest in them has begun to wane, there’s no point in trying to hide it. They’ll know. It may be less painful for all concerned if you end the relationship at that point or find a really good couples therapist. If you ever doubt that you’ll be able to answer the big question correctly, it’s definitely time to leave. Paranoids believe in eternal punishment, even for fantasies of infidelity.
When you leave, or even when they throw you out, Paranoids will usually want you back. Typically this has more to do with vengeance than love. They will scrutinize your words and actions for the slightest sign that you’ve changed your mind. Don’t be polite! Hopeful Paranoids will always mistake civility for rekindled love. If you’re ending a relationship with a Paranoid, don’t discuss it. Just go. Once you’ve gone, don’t accept phone calls or visits. If you’re divorcing one, let your lawyer do the talking.
Don’t lecture, transcend.
To Paranoids, nothing other than their own virtue is ever as it seems. They try to make the world fit the narrow bed of their beliefs, chopping and stretching reality to conform to their procrustean standards. Sometimes this process cuts away illusion and reveals the underlying structure of the universe. More often, it creates monstrous distortions. Your goal with Paranoids is to know which is which.
Paranoid ideas fester in darkness. They have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the light of day and verified according to consensual standards of reality. Paranoids will regard this as the ultimate betrayal. To them, loyalty means keeping their secrets.
If you are involved with a Paranoid, don’t accept this vow of silence. Affirm your right to discuss anything with the people you trust. There may be some slight validity in asking you to avoid discussing the relationship with your cousin. There is absolutely no validity in demanding that you don’t talk about certain things with your doctor, your lawyer, or your accountant.
Look for complexity in everything that Paranoids say is simple. Real morality has to factor in human nature as something more than a miscalculation by God. It can never be as absolute as Paranoids would have you believe.
Look for simplicity in everything that Paranoids hold to be complex, like the reasons why they’re so cruel and unforgiving. They’re just mad because everybody doesn’t do everything their way.
Also, trust others until there’s a reason not to, and always be open to second opinions.
One of the things Paranoids want is to be understood. You can give them that without giving in to their pressure. Always listen, but never confuse listening with obedience.
Paranoids always see their own actions as completely virtuous. They often justify rage, rancor, and emotional abuse as conforming to a higher morality, applicable only to gods and Paranoids. Don’t bother to ask them why they do anything. The answer will always be the same: because it was the right thing to do. Once Paranoids start rationalizing, anything is possible except their admitting that their motives were less than pure.
The fact is that Paranoids, like most emotional vampires, behave like infants. They want the few people they trust to meet their needs immediately, and they punish those people severely for not coming through. Paranoids’ reasons for doing so are elaborate, twisted, tortuous, intricately contrived, and ultimately irrelevant. Focus on what they actually do, not why they say they do it.
The battle you can never win with Paranoids is proving that you are trustworthy. You could die for them, I suppose, but even then they’d probably still have their doubts. There will always be tiny scraps of conflicting information that Paranoids want you to explain. Don’t start down this path, because it has no end. Paranoids have trouble tolerating the normal ambiguity of human relationships. This is not a handicap to be accommodated, but a deficiency that the Paranoids themselves must correct. Demand that they do so. Fight for the idea that trust is in their mind, not in your behavior. It’s a difficult battle, but it’s one you can win.
With Paranoid Visionaries, the important contingency for any idea is: does it work or not? It is not disloyal to ask.
With Green-Eyed Monsters, use your attention as a reward for trust, not for jealousy.
The kinds of “If you do this, I’ll do that” contingencies that work with other infantile vampires also work with unruly Paranoids. For example, you might say, “If you ask me any more questions about where I was and what I was doing, I’m going into the other room so we can both cool down.” Often, the most effective argument against Paranoid thinking is silence from behind a closed door. As I’ve said before in describing this sort of time-out technique, its value is completely negated if you take a parting shot before leaving.
The important contingency with Paranoids is to disrupt their tirades rather than reward the behavior by listening or fighting back. Paranoids love to argue; they can do it for hours without tiring or learning anything. The best way to stop them is not to let them start.
By the way, if you try the time-out strategy, even with full agreement, you’ll probably still need to leave the premises, or at least lock the door. Paranoids consider it your duty and privilege to hear every bit of what they have to say. They’ll try to convince you that not wanting to be yelled at is a kind of betrayal. Don’t stay to argue the point. If they won’t let you leave, recognize that as a form of violence—one that will most likely escalate over time.
First and foremost, never ask why. Paranoids can explain anything, and they will persist until you accept what they say out of sheer exhaustion.
Paranoids are sensitive to criticism, but unlike many other vampires, they will listen to it, and sometimes learn. They would really like to be admirable people in your eyes and in their own. To criticize a Paranoid effectively, take your cue from the very best of sermons. Ignore the hellfire-and-brimstone kind beloved by Obsessive-Compulsives, and pay attention to the kind that remind humans of the divinity within their own souls.
Most Paranoids have a small number of very important concepts by which they try to live their lives. Honor, loyalty, honesty, and love are real enough for Paranoids to kill or die for. In the darkness of the Paranoid mind, however, these grand concepts can quickly shrivel into vindictive pettiness. The most effective criticisms redefine the Paranoid’s core concepts to include trust, mercy, and open-mindedness. Needless to say, this task requires tapping into your own Buddha nature. It can’t be done when you’re angry.
For the less saintly, it is also effective to ask Paranoids how their core concepts relate to the present situation. A question like, “What is the honorable thing to do here?” or, “Doesn’t love require you to forgive?” or, “Does loyalty mean never disagreeing?” can open doors in the Paranoid mind. If this sort of question doesn’t work, you may be dealing with a different kind of vampire.
Tears, lectures, sermons, rambling rationalizations, jealous questions, displaying anguish as if it were a work of art—once Paranoid tantrums begin, they usually go on all night. If you give in, they’ll go on for the rest of your life. As we have seen throughout this chapter, the best time to stop Paranoid tantrums is before they start.
Paranoids are in many ways the most difficult and dangerous of the emotional vampires. They will protect you, cherish you, and possibly illuminate your life. All they ask in return is absolute loyalty. No discounts; with Paranoids, it’s all or nothing. For some people, it’s the most wonderful deal of their lives. For others, it leads to nothing but exhaustion and endless suffering. Only you can decide whether you have what it takes to be close to a Paranoid emotional vampire. One thing is certain, however: before you attempt to understand Paranoids, you must first know yourself.