Today I want to talk with you about something very important that some of us tend to forget at times. We get all caught up in fighting and the clinical aspect of combat that we can sometimes forget about the human aspect. Now we all teach avoidance and things of that nature but that isn't where i'm going with this. Sometimes when we are out there and maybe we had a bad day in our line of work we can take things personally that we shouldn't. Maybe we let revenge or wanting to sock it to someone that has it coming get the best of us but in reality that is self centered. When your out in the field or training a bunch of guys you have to remember this isn't about you or me this is about us helping someone else. Ego is a big killer in our field in can alienate people and keep us from doing our jobs as well as we should when it gets the best of us. Now it's just as bad to be too empathetic because that can cloud your judgement as well.
As in the last article Beware of the Fallout I'm going to tell you a true story from my own experience. Now basically what happens here is there is story that involves empathy and the lack of it and the perils that involve both. It's a very interesting case study that i think is worth a look. Now these are real people and this was a real event so I'm not gonna use anyone's real name. This whole thing almost tore a family apart and we must respect their privacy. In the end this ended up working out and the family was saved and as far as i know doing really well now. The reason I go more into detail is because i feel this story has value for more than just empathy and it's a good example of alot of things. In the years i worked as a personal protection agent and private security I've seen alot of things. I generally don't like to tell stories about my past because i hate it when people write things for self-glorification, however in this example i feel that others can be helped by this story for alot of reasons so I'm telling it. So first let's talk about the situation so you will understand the people.
This story starts with me. I'm sure everyone has been through this situation where they have an old friend from school that calls them out of the blue every now and then and wants to hang out. You don't really have anything in common anymore and don't want to hang out with the guy but you do out of some sense of duty. I'd stopped hanging with this guy because frankly i thought he was a jacked up guy he'd been in jail for drugs,assault,etc and I just didn't want to hang out. Well one night he called and I was bored out of my mind I'd been working on some things for awhile and hadn't been out of my house in awhile. I figured we'd go grab a couple beers and talk about crap that happened 15 years ago and I'd go home and be done with it for another year.
Well we met up at a local bar and everything was going pretty much how i thought it would go. Talking about the same old crap we always talked about but at least i was out of the house. The more i listened to this guy talk the worse he got. He was bad before but he was even worse i now honestly felt like i was talking to a psychopath. We got up from the outside area to go in and get a beer when i noticed my best friend walked in with his brother. So they came over and sat down and we all talked then i made some excuse for why i had to leave and went home. I'd just heard enough of the guy I'd call my friend the next day or something.
Instead he called me the next morning said he and his wife was having a BarBQ and I should come over. I'd never met his wife but heard alot about her plus i like to eat so i said cool I'll be there. When I walked in i thought to myself..Oh Shit!
That guy was there! What the hell was he doing there? I called my friend to the side and asked him what the guy was doing there. He was like what do you mean? He's your friend after you left last night we hung out for awhile at his apartment he seems like a cool dude. I told him no man he isn't he's just one of those friends you see once a year that ain't a good guy you got three kids you don't want him around your kids. He asked why but it was really hard to explain it was just a feeling. Now i know people make mistakes and people can change. Just because he was in jail when he was younger doesn't necessarily mean he can't become a better person. I just felt like this guy was a bad guy. Well because of my security background my friend like alot of people think we're overly paranoid about that stuff so he blew it off. Did i mention my friend's wife was very pretty? I didn't want to say anything but it was the first thing I thought about. Check out my article entitled Personal Empowerment and You to read more about how the quest for validation by someone with low self esteem can have bad results. I saw it right off the bat no doubt in my mind. This guy couldn't keep a woman of his own and i knew he'd been suicidal in the past so his self esteem was low. He would become jealous then right off would turn to well if i can nail his wife then I'm as good as that guy. I just couldn't make him believe me. Well as things progressed over time this guy had a tendency to whine about women alot. My friend got tired of hearing it and pawned him off on his wife to listen to him. Her parents were going through a divorce and she was having a hard time with it and my friend never got along with the father so he wasn't listening like he should have been.
Next thing you know she's out with her friend and the psychopath just happens to be there what a surprise. He was a real smooth talker really knew how to play somebody. I went to my friend and I'm like what the hell man? That is really inappropriate. He said they'd talked about it and it was a new millennium and it was the whole a woman should be able to be friends with a guy without someone thinking they are screwing or something. Which in theory that is true but not this guy and not this set up. I bitched and bitched and bitched but it didn't do any good. He knew it wasn't right but she'd already been suckered in by this guy even telling my friend that if he couldn't trust her enough to be friends with that guy that maybe their marriage wasn't very stable. Obviously this was a threat. It sounds pretty cut and dry from that what should happen but unfortunately situations like this are much more complicated. My friend loved his wife very much he couldn't deal with the thought of losing her and what about the three kids. He worked during the day if she's gone who's gonna take care of them. They aren't old enough for kindergarten. All his family is over 1000 miles away he's got nobody.
So he hoped for the best and I've never been married and don't have children. How am I qualified to tell him what to do in a situation I've never been in? These are were some hard questions so it wasn't a simple situation. Fortunately and unfortunately this situation would resolve itself soon enough in a major way.
I was sitting home one Sunday morning early probably around 8 am. I was actually looking at my Facebook account. Some people had told me about it and talked me into getting an account so i finally did. I'd gotten a notification so i clicked up top to check it out and it was a message from her...my friend's wife. The message read very panicked it basically said the psychopath done some bad things and she needed my help to please call them when i saw the message. I was worried when i called but i called immediately. Basically he got sick and was in the hospital. They had some confrontation when she went to see him. She'd decided that she shouldn't hang out with him anymore that it was hurting her marriage too much and she wanted to work on it. He then informed her that one of the night's he got her to do some salvia and she passed out on his couch that he took her clothes off and took nude photos of her. That if she didn't do everything that he told her then he would post them on the internet and tell everyone they had sex and that she was a whore. She was totally freaked out. She went back home and told my friend everything and they hatched a plan. He was still in the hospital but was getting out that day but no one knew what time. Apparently he'd imploded in there and cursed out his own mother and she disowned him and she was his ride home. As I said a real bastard. Now all of these photos if they existed would be on his laptop. This was his flaw that he missed. This laptop legally didn't belong to him. You see before they figured out this guy was a psychopath they'd bought him a laptop cheap from my friend's work. She still had the receipt as well as a key to his apartment. The police in her town had told her she could go get the laptop but she was scared to go over there. She called the city police where he lived to see if they would go in with her. She made the mistake of telling the dispatcher her life story and frankly a dispatcher doesn't have time to listen to all that. They have alot of calls coming in at all hours of the night and must respond. So basically the dispatcher just blew her off and told her to go to small claims court to get it. I personally thought that was pretty shitty because they could've just told her to hurry up and get to the point but that's another commentary. So basically she wanted me to go over there with her and protect her if he showed up.
This plan was almost good but it wasn't. You see I could maim this guy and frankly I'd enjoy it. I still get mad thinking of this psycho right now as i'm writing. Then of course I'd go to jail and get sued so many more problems would arise from this problem and all of this crap would continue. This needed to be over and it needed to end today and I decided I was gonna make it happen. Well I recognized what probably happened with the police dispatcher so i called the same city police myself after i got off the phone with her. I train police and I know what info matters and what doesn't. I won't tell you what i told them but it was quick and i got a cruiser to meet us over there.
You may be asking yourself why I was doing this? You may have decided that this woman was messing with this guy and she deserved what she got. If so you have fallen into the trap i mentioned in the very first paragraph. You let wanting to sock it to someone get the better of you and give you tunnel vision. You have to remember she isn't the only person in this equation there's a friend and three children. Now either one of two things happened. She was either messing around with this guy and wanted out to save her marriage and had a husband that was willing to work with her to save it, or she wasn't messing around and was just incredibly gullible and naive and got a huge dose of reality in that hospital. Now regardless of what we think there is no actual proof of either one of those one way or the other. So now let's get back to the story.
Now this whole this was time sensitive. The best thing that could happen was we get over there and he isn't there. We go in and get the laptop and get out. He can't say it was stolen because first of all, he can't prove he owned it. Second of all it was taken legally anyway under police supervison. He would just be screwed. I met her in a hotel parking lot and total I had an officer coming with us too thinking that would calm her down a bit. I told her the officer was meeting us at the store by the apartment. Her mind was still so frazzled she couldn't even remember the store she's drove by every time she went over there so i told her to just follow me it was close by. When we got to the store the officer was already there I got out quickly and told him who i was and where we were going. She got out of her truck and i kinda quickly waved her back in there. Not to be a dick but I was in the zone hoping to do this ninja style and get in and get out and end this once and for all. All you security and LEO reading this know what i'm talking about, the adrenaline is flowing but not too much. Your ready for action and your mind is still working good and your mind and body is in that sweet spot, that zone, and your ready to get it done. So we hit the road again and rode around the corner to the apartment. She was still feeling unsure about just going in there and taking the laptop so before we went in she quickly showed the cop the receipt and he said it was fine and off we went. Now this guy had a big pitbull but the dog was very familiar with her and comfortable so that wasn't going to be a problem she could just go in and put her up ahead of us. The apartment was up three flights of stairs and we walked up the officer went first I went behind him and she followed.He stood on one side of the door and I stood back more to the other side and she was by the stairs. He knocked once and called his name but no sound just the dog barking. As he knocked again I happened to look over at her and she started shaking violently. She was having an anxiety attack right there. Her hand slipped off the wall but I darted over and grabbed her by her arms before she fell down those stairs. The officer and I had to try to get her calm. We don't know what's on the other side of that door yet. Everyone has to have it together. Now the officer was trying to be calming telling her hey I got a gun, a taser, and a baton your safe nothing is gonna happen to you. the problem was he was visibly annoyed by it. He was ready for action like I was but this had broken for lack of a better term the rhythm of the moment. This like alot of the situations in this story called for empathy. She had these visuals of the guy hiding behind the door with a bat and other scary things. However I knew this guy. He was a punk and a coward if he was in there at all he was hiding. I only say this because I knew him. This isn't true of all psychopaths if I didn't know the guy then I would not be making that statement they can be extremely dangerous. In his example he used fear as a form of control. When it didn't work and he lost control and flipped out on his own mother thereby losing his ride home. After she calmed down I stood by her this time and the officer knocked a couple more times with no answer. We just really didn't think he was in there because the dog was still barking and most would've tried to quiet the dog. He told her to unlock the door but oddly enough it was open. She went in slow and got the dog put up and the officer went in and looked around while I looked out for the guy. Then the officer told me to come in she had found the laptop but with her being shaky he wanted me to carry it. He still hadn't showed up. We walked out and she let the dog back out so the guy wouldn't be suspicious and we took off downstairs and I loaded the stuff in the car. It went as good as it could've gone. Ninja style just like I wanted. I'll be damned if the officer didn't get mad on the way down and decide to bitch in the parking lot. All we had to do was leave and it'd be over the guy couldn't say shit. Now we are still stuck there. Apparently his ego got bruised because she was still scared even though he was there. Gee center of the universe it isn't really about you. Anyway the guy still hadn't shown up so I shook the officer's hand and kept it all nice and professional and thanked him then followed her home. They never saw the guy again and I haven't either. He lost and he knew it.
As I eluded to earlier empathy played a huge part in this situation and alot can be learned on many levels. This guy didn't deserve the empathy I'd shown him in the beginning. I had a right to not want him around. Usually when you stop hanging out with people there's good reasons for it and you need to remember that when they call back. So in that case showing empathy feeling sorry for a guy with no friends stuck by himself in an apartment all the time was a mistake. He's alone because he deserves to be he's a terrible person. My friend didn't show empathy for his wife when she wanted to talk about her parents divorce. He let his bad feelings towards the father get in the way he should have been there and listened. She didn't show him any empathy while she was out with this guy thinking of how he felt at home while his wife was hanging out with some dude. Thinking about all the whispers and how it looked. The officer failed to show empathy for a woman scared to death. If he had put himself in her position of being terrified it wouldn't have annoyed him so much. He didn't know the whole situation but that's the point that's why you have to use empathy. Of course psychopath shows no empathy and that's what makes them psychopaths. Before you judge or let your mind get clouded try showing a little empathy and look at the whole picture. Just make sure you look at the whole picture and make sure that empathy is deserved. In my line of work I have to show empathy. I use it in building programs. If i can do something it doesn't matter because others will be using my programs. I'm 6'0 maybe a tad over. I have to put myself in the mindset off a woman 5'2 or a guy that isn't very strong. I have to be able to do that to make sure what I do can work for everyone. Empathy is just as big a part of building a good combatives program as it is building good relationships with people. Don't forget the human aspect of these tactics. It's going to be humans using them so it could very well be the most important part.
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