Xenophobia

Another Answer

Xenophobia is the fear of unfamiliar or different people, usually from another country or culture. So there's a learned judgement factor involved with a person who authentically demonstrates xenophobia.

Xenophobia is usually caused by an intense negative experience from your past. But your mind can also create that fear seemingly without basis. The key is digging down to the source and replacing negative associations with positive ones. Those at greatest risk include:

• People with a general tendency towards fear and anxiety
• People characterized as 'high strung'
• People suffering from adrenal insufficiency

Narcissists are addicted to narcissistic supply (attention, admiration, adulation, being feared, etc.). They don't take well to criticism and disagreement. They are easily slighted and develop narcissistic injuries.

No, once abusers are exposed they tend to avoid and blame the victim.

Best Wishes...

Stalkers and the Borderline Personality

The Borderline Personality

In recent years psychologists have learned about and done case studies on a new personality disorder which the DSM-III-R classifies as an Axis II disorder- the Borderline Personality . This classification includes such personality disorders as the Anti-social Personality, the Histrionic Personality and the Narcissistic Personality. Several psychologists (including myself) diagonosed my stalker as afflicted with the Borderline Personality. Characteristic of the Borderline (derived from research done by Kreisman & Straus, 1989) are:

a shaky sense of identity

sudden, violent outbursts

oversensitivity to real or imagined rejection

brief, turbulent love affairs

frequent periods of intense depression

eating disorders, drug abuse, and other self-destructive tendencies

an irrational fear of abandonment and an inability to be alone

Not much research has been done on the Borderline Personality, and for many years it was difficult to diagnose- and to treat. A Borderline often feels as though his/her life is marked with a distinctive emptiness; a void in which a relationship often acts to fill. Many times the Borderline is a victim of an early dysfunctional family situation and/or emotional/physical abuse by those he/she trusted early on in childhood.

The Borderline is psychotic , in the original, psychological meaning of the term: he/she is not in control and not in touch with reality. To the Borderline, a softly spoken word of advice can be construed as a threat on his/her emotional stability. An outsider's viewpoint that the Borderline is not in touch with reality often ends in a bitter and irrational dissassociation from the outsider on the part of the Borderline. Often, the Borderline ends up very much alone and victim to his/her disillusions.

The Borderline stalker is very apt to see his/her actions as perfectly justified; he/she has paranoid disillusions which support these-often with disturbing frequency. The Borderline often has brief love affairs which end abruptly, turbulently and leave the Borderline with enhanced feelings of self-hatred, self-doubt and a fear that is not often experienced by rational people. When the Borderline's relationships turn sour, the Borderline often begins to, at first, harass the estranged partner with unnecessary apologies and/or apologetic behavior (i.e. letters of apology 'from the heart', flowers delivered at one's place of employment, early morning weeping phonecalls, etc.). However, the Borderline does not construe his/her behavior as harassment- to the Borderline he/she is being 'responsible' for his/her past behaviors.

The next phase of the Borderline Personality develops relatively quickly and soon he/she feels suddenly betrayed, hurt, etc. and seeks to victimize the estranged partner in any way he/she can Strangely enough, this deleterious behavior is always coupled with a need to be near or in constant contact with the estranged partner . While sending threats to the estranged partner, it is very common for the Borderline to begin to stalk his/her estranged partner in an effort to maintain contact. This effort is motivated by the excruciating fear that the Borderline will end up alone and anger that [the estranged partner] has put him/her in this position. We are finding, in many cases, that a great deal of stalking behavior is associated with Borderline or related personality disorders. Earlier research did not incorporate the Borderline Personality in stalking profiles; research now is beginning to focus on the Borderline in such disorders as Erotomania, etc.

Homophobia is an irrational fear and hatred for homosexuality and gay and lesbian people in general. It occasionally disappears when they discover that a close family relative is gay, but not always. ---- This has been a growing question in my mind, after spending much time trying to understand homophobia in order to try to help end it. One of the problems is that a 'phobia' is a fear, but 'homophobia' is generally understood as a hate. So supposing we do define it as a fear, then what do we have? * People who are afraid of gay people (consequential questions: afraid of becoming gay or being gay? afraid of gay people? afraid of associating with gay people or being associated with gay people?...); and

* Gay people who are afraid of being gay (or ashamed of it), or afraid of the consequences (real or imagined) of admitting to being gay, or afraid of the real or perceived implications of being gay, fear of disappointing loved ones (in my experience, this is a really big part -- and on one level you could say it's self-inflicted) Don't you think both parts of this 'fear' definition are really important? Then, if we think about the 'gay hate' definition, I also find some difficult questions there. I mean there are very obvious parts - being beaten-up because of being gay or being perceived as gay (heterosexuals can also suffer homophobic bullying), or being ostracised (often by people in the name of their religion). But there are also things that are said, that to one person may be classed as 'homophobia' and to another one (I offer myself as an example) could be taken as a compliment. Some illustrations: * "You're gay!" - My reaction is sincere happiness - "I'm glad you noticed". Some people's reaction is that it's homophobia. * "It's so gay!" - My honest reaction "hum, is it? Then I'll try to live up to the stereotype :)" But it's certainly stereotyping (which is not unique to any state of being at all). Some people would call it a form of homophobia. It's certainly often a non-malicious remark said as playground banter: perhaps ill-considered and even wrong, but anyway said with no hate-intent.

* "You're a queer!" - My genuine feeling is pride: "I am queer, queer I am, lucky boy am I." I would feel so even if it was said with malice. So we have words which are sent with homophobic intent that may or may not be received as homophobic bullying; and we have words which could be logically statements of fact which may be received as homophobic bullying; and we have ill-considered statements of no homophobic intent whatsoever that may be received as homophobic bullying. Of course, we can say things like "intention is important" and "how they are received may depend on whether someone is comfortable with their sexuality", but I've seen that people are being disciplined in schools as homophobic bullies for saying "That's so gay!". (I think that is as bad as allowing homophobic bullying.) OK, do you see where I'm coming from? Whatever point of view you personally have about what constitutes homophobia and what doesn't, I guess you can see that it's quite difficult to arrive at a consensus. Without understanding (maybe reaching a consensus about) what is homophobia, it's quite difficult deal with it in the right way.

It really should be called xenophobic (not xenophobia) discrimination.

Xenophobia means "fear of strangers" (= foreigners), so xenophobic discrimination would be discrimination against foreigners/strangers.