My Patient, My Stalker Empathy as a Dual-Edged Sword: A Cautionary Tale

Success in psychotherapy is correlated with the "fit" between patient and therapist, a factor related to attachment. For psychotherapists of any orientation, empathy and building the bond of attachment is our stock-in-trade. When empathy builds the bond of attachment with someone starved for connection, a therapist may inadvertently set him- or herself up to become a victim of a stalker. Because individuals who stalk others suffer from severe attachment disorders, their hunger for attachment motivates them to shadow psychotherapists, which makes being stalked a very real occupational hazard for psychotherapists. This was a painful discovery for me. I was stalked for 11 months, leaving me with post-traumatic stress disorder. After recovering, I deconstructed the experience to understand how and why it happened, and discovered that it was my empathy and compassion that contributed to and maintained the stalking. What I learned from the forensic literature provided the knowledge and confidence needed to end the stalking. In this paper recommendations are made about how to prevent stalking and to halt it if it does happens.