Being seen is often scarier than being invisible. Once perceived, you open yourself up to the possibility of falling into the vortex of invisibility, never to be seen again.
And those who struggle to trust, better yet disdain it as a weakness, cultivate invisibility in myriad ways. Sometimes, their armor resembles a hermit’s den. Others, it’s the boisterous certainty of a declaration. Many of us hide in the world as one would in the shadows. The internet is full of these individuals.
I’ve written on advice-giving in psychotherapy on multiple occasions, highlighting the fact that therapists often don’t provide it because 1. Doing so infantilizes the client 2. They’re often in therapy because they struggle taking advice from anyone, particularly as it relates to their vulnerabilities. Even while in treatment, these individuals trust their therapists as much as anyone they know, which is little to none. They begin therapy at someone else’s insistence or because they sense the possibility of the therapist saying or doing something magical to finally unburden them of their generalized hatred of mankind, like Belle in Beauty and the Beast.
And, at least anecdotally it seems, trust is a mediating factor between the ability and unwillingness to reason with others and merely trusting one’s gut. The more you trust others, the more you collaborate; the less you do, the more intuitive decisions you choose to make. A client who’s grown up in a broken home, with neglectful and/or abusive caregivers will tell you, “Anytime I tried to trust others, I felt like an idiot.” For them, trust was met with some form of punishment, even if it was merely internal. The environments that many conspiracy theorists grow up in are that. Forget about fostering critical thinking; they often don’t even nurture the child. Hope is therefore turned inward. Paranoia, rudimentary reasoning, and cynicism combine to weave elegant worlds of meaning, delight, and horror. Resembling, in part, the world of one’s youth. They begin to envision themselves as conquering heroes, fighting off the dragons of folklore, who, in reality, are their oppressors.
Political Scientist Dannagal Young, in her book Wrong, notes, “The things that we “know” are the result of a complex interaction between our values, needs, beliefs, and observations of the world, which operate in service of our social identity – our sense of what team we identify with. These social identities inform what we value and believe and what we see.” And so even the lone-wolfs are shaped by a social identity, seeking some form of affiliation and status, although via a less conventional in-group. (Some completely trust other conspiracy theorists while others trust none.) Arguably, starved for love, they seek out an immense form of affection and a perversion of it, signaling to their group that they’re the keepers of the great wisdom, thus reinforcing their distrust of the general public. The incentive is to continue to hate, for hate carries clout. And clout increases power.
Thus, the work of the therapist is two-fold. She has to accept the patient as he is (without agreeing with his actions), vitriol and all, and has to foster an environment that cultivates a life-changing realization: Without his performance, he would still be loved. I noted elsewhere how my mentor, Tim, provided me with that understanding when I realized that I could be accepted by mainstream society. From my friendship with him and therapy, I learned that I was allowed to fail. (As an aside, this is why therapists don’t give advice: the purpose of therapy is to help the patient build a tolerance to failure and mistake-making, rather than to continue avoiding them.) Of narcissistic personalty types, Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “Their need for others is deep, but their love for them is shallow.” She goes on to note, “A therapist who is able to help a narcissistic person find self-acceptance without either inflating the self or disparaging others has truly done a good deed and a difficult one.”
So, as we battle misinformation, we ought to focus most on the interpersonal patterns of those purveying it. Their lack of trust in mainstream remedies and advice is understandable when placed in a distant context. At bottom, they hate what they love the most, seeking the affirmation from those whose love felt so far away. But they’ve replaced one innate need with another, obsessed with power. The great, existential fork in the road for all of us is between the two. Power and love compel us in different ways. Those who chronically choose the former often believe the latter isn’t for them, even when they refuse to admit it.
Check out our episode with Danna:
Leon's Existential Cafe 