Content warning: this concept contains sensitive and potentially disturbing material, including references to harassment, coercion, drug use, self-harm and euthanasia. If you need support, call or text 988.
This concept is the author's observation, drawn from his own experience and the statements recorded in the journal. The families in it are illustrations, not real people. It is not medical, legal or psychological advice, and nobody here can tell you what is happening to you or anyone you live with.
When communication like this reaches one person, it rarely stays with one person. It reaches the people they live with, through what they hear, what they're told, and what it does to the trust between them. This concept asks what a household can do together, before anything else.
What might the harassment of a household look like?
It often starts by singling out one person.
In the author's experience, and in the statements recorded in the journal, one person in a group may be picked out and targeted, while the people around them may or may not hear it. The aim, in the author's view, is to divide: to turn one person into the problem, and the others against them.
Imagine a family
A mother, a father, a 14-year-old son and his sister. The father goes out to buy dinner. While he's gone, the son is singled out: the communication accuses him of smoking fentanyl, and tells him his father is going to poison his food.
He calls his father right away. "Dad, they said you're going to poison my food."
"I understand. We're being harassed as a family, son. I love you. Would you like me to Cash App you some money so you can order your own food?"
"No, Dad, it's okay. I trust you. I love you too, Dad."
He told his father immediately. His father believed him and took the pressure off. And the trust held.
The author isn't a psychiatrist, but that's the kind of response he suggests: calm, believing, and practical.
Imagine what the parents might go through
The same communication could turn on them: accusations of cheating and infidelity, pressure about money and debts, each partner told something different about the other. A couple who can't trust what they hear about each other may stop trusting each other at all. That is why the household has to talk about it together.
Imagine a single mother
She works two jobs and cares for several children alone. There's no second adult to check in with, little time, no money to spare, and children who may hear things she can't explain. She may be the most vulnerable of all, and the least likely to be believed.
Imagine a shelter
The author stayed in a large shelter in Denver: three dormitories, each one open room with rows of beds under a 30-foot ceiling, about 300 people including staff. In the author's experience, in each dormitory someone was singled out. What he heard, which in his view may have been a , echoed through the building day and night, and people were asked to put their hands up for euthanization.
Just how bad could it be?
The more people share a space, a home, a shelter or a workplace, the more people may hear it, and the easier it may be to turn one person into the problem. Without a public explanation, everyone is left to make sense of it alone. Singling out a person to isolate and discredit them is a known tactic, with a name and a history (see ).
Talk about it together, privately
The first thing a household can do costs nothing: sit down together, at dinner if that's easiest, and talk about it. Not to decide what it is, but to agree how you'll handle it if it happens to any of you.
- Say plainly that it may happen, and that it may single one of you out.
- Agree that whoever it singles out will be believed, not blamed.
- Agree the house rules below, and come back to them often.
House rules
- Nobody speaks for another member's experience outside the home. Describing what someone else is going through can get them labelled with a diagnosis they never had a say in, and in the author's view it can put them in danger. Each of you can still call 911 or 988, and you decide together who you trust: a lawyer, a doctor you trust.
- Nobody opens the door or lets anyone in because of something they hear or are promised, whether money, drugs, intimacy or relief from suffering. Never, for any reason. Recorded statements describe offers like these as a .
- Nobody goes outside to meet someone because they were asked to.
- Tell each other immediately when something happens, the way the son called his father.
- Never reward the communication, and never break the law because someone suggests it or pressures you to.
Documenting it as a household
- One shared log: the date, the time, who heard what, and what was said, kept somewhere only the household controls.
- Each person records their own experience, labelled "From the distance". Nobody records for someone else.
- A camera at the door, since so much of what's described involves the door.
- A quick check-in each day: did anyone hear anything?
- Copies in more than one place.
The tools, from a handheld recorder to a doorbell camera, and what they cost, are in .
The hard reality
Without a public explanation, anyone in a household could stop taking part. Someone may come to believe it's spiritual, lose hope, and open the door at 3 a.m. to a stranger (see ). That's the hardest truth of all of this: the threat may come through the people you love, not just from outside.
That's why the conversation has to happen early, and keep happening.
How to keep a household together
- Check in often, even when nothing has happened.
- Never blame the person being singled out. Being singled out is not something they did.
- Remember that hope matters. You may not be the only household this is happening to.
- Look after each other, and if anyone is struggling, call or text 988.
Until the news media acknowledges it, or someone explains the neurotech bullhorn, households are largely on their own. Be careful, and look after each other. The author wishes you and your family the best that life has to offer.
References
Not independently verified
This concept is the author's observation and guidance. Its families are illustrations, not real people. It is not medical, legal or psychological advice, and it does not diagnose anyone.
Topics: Harassment · Proposed solutions · Euthanization