Stockholm Empathy

During the current lockdown for bastard covid-19 I have had even more time than usual to reflect. Staying in most of the week and being alone for years has meant I have special forces-esque training in how to live alone for ages at a time, going out only to go shopping or to drop the garbage off at the wheely bins round the corner. It’s also given me an insight into what my life might be like in about 30 years.

Watching a lot of TV (Ozark has proved to be a gem) and with an internet telly I’ve indulged in a lot of YouTube videos. Last night I saw “Everything Great About The Bourne Identity” which is a counterpoint to the channel “Everything Wrong With…”

In this offering, the host shows what he believes to be the awesome bits of the film, highlighting Bourne’s humanity and how he becomes more efficient under stress. He also waxes lyrical about how good Damon is in the role. All of which I agree with as this is one of my favourite movies and part of a franchise that I love (hey, I even liked Legacy). Then he mentioned one thing that caught my attention. When the formerly borderline catatonic Marie begins kissing Jason after he has chopped her hair off to give her a new identity after some chaos in Paris, the subtitle flashes up “Stockholm Syndrome”.

I had never thought of this scene in that context before. After all, Jason Bourne is Marie’s protector and has done everything to save her. However, realistically she is a vulnerable person who has seen extremes of violence and had her whole world turned over in the space of a few hours. I initially thought the kiss (and later it is implied they had sex) was simply gratitude and the need to “feel the heat” now that she finally felt safe again. But the psychology was more complex. After closing down mentally from witnessing a brutal fight that resulted in one man deliberately walking through a window and plummeting to his death and THEN seeing an old lady with a bullet hole in her skull, Marie was not at her best.

And this applies to my life in general…

I was brought up to believe that other people almost certainly had reasons to behave like cunts. The myth I was told was that if anyone had a go at me or hurt me or made me feel small, then it was probably brought on either by my own behaviour towards them or something awful going on in their life before they interacted with me, or both. This attitude was prevalent at home but also persisted when I was at Secondary school from the staff. Conversely, anyone who had a go at other people around me could be doing it for the above reasons OR could be doing it just to be a cunt. This flip flopping of polarity meant that only special people got attacked for no reason while others were victims solely due to their own bad attitude.

As I moved through life the sub conscious belief I had was that other people had REASONS to treat other people badly. After all, they wouldn’t lash out for nothing, right? The Stockholm syndrome that I carried with me, like a hastily drawn tattoo at Portsmouth docks by some backstreet artist, was that I should empathise with those who hurt me and others.

If you are watching a movie like Star Wars (especially the most recent instalments) then this attitude works. Genocidal Sith lords who murder innocent people and take great delight in being evil can be redeemed by one selfless act and you will be given backstory to flesh out just why they are angry/ psychopathic/ insane. Fine on a fantasy level but then if you drag this back into “normal” life then it will kick your anxiety through roof.

I have always envied people who see things in black and white and are able to shut down their empathy in order to deal with unfair treatment or having their own lives compromised. The conclusion I came to yesterday (joys of meditation during quarantine) was that my anxiety is mainly caused by constantly trying to find excuses for other people’s behaviour. The belief, on a fundamental level, that those who did things that made me feel sad, hurt or worse were doing it because of “reasons”.

End of the day, people always have reasons but when they conflict with your own life it is something that will drive you insane if you try to analyse their motivation rather than act to protect yourself. I have made some FUCKING lousy choices in my life over jobs, friends and lovers and afterwards, even if I was emotionally or physically hurt by these people I’d always try to think not ‘why did they do it?’ but ‘what did I do to make them do it?’

Stockholm syndrome in daily life is dangerous because it will give you anxiety and refuse to let you simply move forward. Every argument I’ve ever got into in my adult life until today, even if I’ve perceived the other person as being at fault, I’ve always wondered what I could or should have done or NOT done in order to have had a different outcome.

Last week I finally found out that the rotten pong in the bathroom if I left the window shut for more than about 15 minutes was caused not by the toilet but by a huge, rank glob of old hair, trapped in the shower drain. I fished it out and flushed it down the bog and now the bathroom smells a lot cleaner.

By identifying this misplaced attempt at constant empathy and the Stockholm syndrome that it produced, my anxiety appears to have also been flushed away.

Time will tell.