5 Years of Stalking Hell After an Interaction With a Neighbor

What happens when a simple, healthy boundary triggers five years of stalking, dismantling your life? 

A viewer declined an odd social interaction with a neighbor that then sparked a stalking campaign that has followed her and her 15-year-old daughter across state lines. Learn what’s called "street theater” and how these repeated tactics were ussd to make this victim sound crazy. 

In this episode, Dr. Kerry explains: 

• Why the public tends to dismiss extreme gang stalking stories

• How stalking can be carried out across states and social circles 

• How to protect yourself and your sanity if you’re being stalking.

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If you'd like Dr. Kerry to answer your question on air, email it to clients@kerrymcavoyphd.com or use this link.

Resources

• ReclaimYou: Dr. Kerry's AI-powered coaching app
• The Complete Recovery Collection: Narcissistic abuse resources
• First Steps to Leaving: Online self-paced digital course
• Toxic-Free Relationship Club: Live coaching & community support

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Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D, a retired psychologist & author, is an expert on cultivating healthy relationships and deconstructing narcissism. 

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This podcast/video is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute therapy, counseling, or professional mental health advice. If you are in crisis, please call 911 or your local emergency number.

Transcript

How a Boundary Sparked a Stalking Nightmare

Dr. Kerry 0:00

Imagine an incident, something that you considered innocent. Something as simple, maybe, as walking off the trash in a neighborhood and suddenly having your whole life dismantled to where you're systematically being stalked and your careers being dismantled. What seemed like a simple moment ended up turning into a five-year-long nightmare. Sophisticated harassers use subtle repetitive tactics that are designed to sound crazy when reported. So if you were to hear someone say, Well, they followed me to the grocery store in three different states, you're gonna say, Who would do that? Who would travel across three different states and follow this person into grocery stores across that distance? But that's exactly why some predators choose to do that, because it makes you doubt the story. I felt crazy telling people that I thought I was being poisoned over time. Today I'm going to be taking a listener's issue who it starts out as what seemed like a simple moment ended up turning into a five-year-long nightmare. It started her setting a simple, healthy boundary when she declined an odd social interaction with a neighbor, and that then sparked off a campaign of persistent stalking, coordinated harassment that has followed her across state lines. So I recently heard from a listener, and she writes, this one moment of boundary setting set off repeated break-ins into her house, a systematic sabotage of her employment, and a level of surveillance that has shattered her finances and affected even her family's sense of safety. This is an example of how an innocent moment can set off what feels like a situation in which we are under siege just simply because we said no. Now, I want to pause here because I have shared stories like this before, in which then people will push back and say, How do you know that this story is true? How do you know that this isn't something she's either manufactured, or maybe that what she did was way, way more significant than just simply a boundary? It feels too difficult, too impossible that someone would take a boundary setting and then take it in this direction to where it's this kind of unrelenting level of harassment. What I've noticed is that when we end up in these situations in which there is extreme levels of abuse or attack, we tend to feel like that it's just not possible, that that type of situation has to be manufactured or exaggerated. It causes us to jump reflexively to skepticism. I felt it personally myself when I first came out with my story in Love You More, sharing how I felt that my ex was possibly feeding me poison in order to be able to injure me so that he could inherit the property. I felt crazy telling people that I thought I was being poisoned over time. In fact, I felt so crazy that I didn't even believe it could happen myself, even though I had all the symptoms. I even was researching what was causing white lines across my fingernails and causing my toenails to fall off, why I was experiencing such elevated heart rates and having all sorts of other types of odd physical symptoms. And so much so that I denied it much of the time when I was writing the book. And it took my friend, my writing buddy, saying, I think you're being poisoned. And only until I actually interviewed my ex's other wives and had her validate that story, that she too believed that he had been poisoning her as well, that it helped me to realize that, yeah, it really did happen. And in fact, I talked to two poison control specialists who also agreed, yeah, it's probably you were being systematically affected by ingesting some foreign substance. It feels difficult when we experience these really extreme experiences of abuse. When this is something that doesn't fit the norm, we end up thinking it has to be made up, it can't be real. But here's the thing when it comes to trying to make sense of somebody's story, when they're the narrator, we're faced with several possibilities. Either what they're telling is truthful, and there is that level of danger out in the world which makes us just feel uneasy, or maybe there is a level of mild exaggeration for whatever reason. It could be for a myriad of complex reasons, or maybe this is this person's delusion. But when somebody writes to me with their story, it isn't my job to be the private investigator or the judge. My role, what I'm being asked to do is to be the psychologist or the retired psychologist who's looking at the architecture of their psychological experience and to try to make it make sense about how that has been traumatizing and how that impact has been affecting them. And when it comes to stalking, what we're really describing is a phenomenon called Kafka S trap, which the harasser ends up isolating and gaslighting the victim, so much so that the harasser ends up isolating and gaslighting the victim into the place that the victim story begins to sound unbelievable to the public. So that the public then ends up sitting in judgment and ignoring the plea of the one asking for help because they can't believe that it could possibly happen. So that they end up being further isolated because it sounds too crazy. Sophisticated harassers use what's often thought of as street theater, subtle repetitive tactics that are designed to sound crazy when reported. So if you were to hear someone say, Well, they followed me to the grocery store in three different states, you're gonna say, Who would do that? Who would travel across three different states and follow this person into grocery stores across that type of span of distance? But that's exactly why some predators choose to do that, because it becomes a credibility shield that makes you doubt the story. And also when you've been under that type of level of scrutiny and harassment, especially for a length of time like five years, you move into a state of nearly permanent hypervigilance, which you start to interpret coincidences as threats. So it's not so much that the person is lying, but rather that their biological survival mechanism now struggles to interpret signal from noise. So when we're in these situations, especially when someone writes to share these types of stories with me, it's not my job to decide if this is credible or could happen. What they're asking me to do is to make it make sense as a clinical psychologist. So that's what I'm doing. I'm trying to make it make sense. So unfortunately, in these types of situations, when we are faced with this type of boundary retaliation trigger in which this person, the writer, the listener simply asserted a simple boundary like declining an odd social interaction. And instead, the perpetrator is so fragile, has such a vulnerable ego that that was perceived as a rejection, which then triggered a disproportionate narcissistic injury that then resulted because of their power and charm and maybe charisma in that culture or that group, that neighborhood, where there was a coordinated attack against this family, creating this person to feel like there was no exit for them, that this kind of abuse transcended physical locations and social circles. And then they took it even further because of the narcissistic injury where they started targeting this listener's jobs and finances in order to restrict their ability to fight back and protect themselves. So they essentially felt like they couldn't escape, so that they felt they were imprisoned by the state of crisis. And it's terrible that what happened also not only involved the listener, but also then extended to involve their 15-year-old child as well. So often abusers are so sophisticated at not just abusing them themselves, they're very good at listening proxy stalking or using so-called flying monkeys to implement their end goals. And this is a common thing to where we experience this type of piling on that happens in these situations, which makes it really hard for a person who's experiencing this to pinpoint a single moment or to find just a single culprit for legal action. So I want to provide some key takeaways in this. I think it's really important if this is something that's happening for you, to document the pattern, not just the people. When there's a coordinated pattern of stalking, notice the pattern of events, even the seemingly coincidences, as your evidence. Keep a stocking log that includes dates, times, specific descriptions of vehicles and people, even if it seems minor. Make sure that you secure a digital perimeter. Coordinated groups often use cyber stalking as a way to track movements. Make sure that your devices are swept regularly for tracking software and that make sure you use nonlinear random travel patterns when you move about, if at all possible. And make sure that you prioritize you learning how to regulate yourself and your daughter so that you can ground your nervous system despite all the chaos that you're experiencing. In a way, you learn to survive and soothe yourself and show compassion for yourself is really giving the middle finger to somebody who's attempting to psychologically break you down. And be sure to seek out specialized legal counsel who understands how this type of abuse occurs, how to be able to deal with a multi-person harassment situation. So you want to make sure you look for attorneys who are trained in civil harassment or advocates who specialize in stalking and privacy torts. So thank you so much for the trust with me on this situation. It sounds awful. I'm so sorry that you're going through it. I know that you're really looking for specialized help. I hope that me addressing this in this way publicly is helpful to you. I appreciate your reaching out. And if you would like me to address your situation on air, please send it to me at client C L I E N T S at CarryMakAboy PhD.com. Or use the link that I've put below in the show notes, which is a little form that you can fill out. Thank you so much for the trust that you guys have in sharing these situations with me. I deeply appreciate it. It's 2 a.m. again, and you're replaying that whole conversation over, and you're wondering to yourself, was it really that bad, or maybe I'm just being dramatic? So you start to draft that I'm sorry text again because the guilt that you're feeling or the confusion you're experiencing is just unbearable. And you know this loop because you've been there before, but I want you to know that you're not alone. I'm Dr. Carrie McAvoy, I'm a retired psychologist, and for 25 years I've been helping people untangle exactly what toxic relationships do to your mind, how they create the confusion, the self-doubt, and that trauma bond that keeps pulling you back in. Here's the truth: recovery isn't about getting more information, it's about having the right support in the exact moment you need it. That's why I've created Reclaim You. It's a private, always available coaching app built from my work and my content, organized into an extensive library that you can actually use when you're triggered. Inside it, you'll get five-minute lessons when your brain can't handle a deep dive, check-ins that meet you exactly where you are, whether you're feeling strong, shattered, or numb. Boundary scripts that help you say no without overexplaining. Rounding tools that work fast when you're activated, and progress tracking so you can see proof you're healing even on days when it feels like you're not. There's no appointments, no waiting, no judgment, just practical support right when you need it. Reclaim you, real hope, in real time, right in your pocket. And it's a coaching support, not therapy or emergency care. Learn more at studio.com forward slash Dr. Carrie. So start your healing today and reclaim you.