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There's an excellent book on this called 'The Gift of Fear'.

I would be interested to read a reconciliation between this book and The Gift Of Fear.

Edit: also, CBT doesn't work for everyone. I found it infuriating.

The actress you're thinking of is probably Rebecca Schaeffer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Schaeffer

I read about her in Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear, which incidentally is a pretty good book about such things. (de Becker is apparently the guy you call if you're a Hollywood star who gets a death threat -- protecting famous people is his company's business. And his published opinion is pretty much the same as yours: All famous people will get threats once they become famous enough, and the most famous people you can name have probably got dozens of stalkers of one sort or another.)

When your mind wanders, it is dealing with necessary sub-thoght trails, don't abort unless necessary: http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jul-aug/15-brain-stop-payin...

Learn to have an open mind, but not too open: http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-10192149/What-open-m...

Learn about cognitive fallacies and cognitive biases. The little thinking shortcuts minds take which lead to wrong conclusions.

Learn how to learn: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1276882

Start asking smart questions: http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Read "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell, discover that most of your thinking goes on without you trying at all.

Read "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin DeBecker, our emotional responses to our world can be sources of surprisingly accurate insight.

Develop the ability to create complete silence in your mind, no chit-chatter. Creativity is greater in people with this ability. *scientific american

Learn how to estimate and do it right: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/programming/97805968095...

Becoming a functional perfectionist: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-you-be-...

Some of these links are behind pay-walls, sorry, but they are amazing articles, some google searching can get around them.

Sane, Pretty, Smart. So hard to find all three in a woman these days. People who do crap like this have to be handled with care, engage them and it can lead to murder.

Gavin De Becker spent his entire career (30 years ) dealing with this kind of thing, protecting clients/celebrities from all kinds of psychos.
"The Gift of Fear".
https://www.gavindebecker.com/resources/books_by_gavin_de_be...

A security professional once recommended Gavin de Becker's "The Gift of Fear" [1] to me as a source of excellent information to always have in mind.

One of de Becker's insight is exactly what you say here -- that most potential attackers are motivated by a personal connection, and that animus is also what makes it possible to identify and uncover them. He also has extensive thoughts about identifying if/when the harassment will cross over into physical attacks. I would recommend anyone read it, especially if you have loved ones who have lived in fear of stalkers.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Other-Survival-Signals-Protect-Violenc...

Unfortunately, most of the training that's available is worse than useless. It's fantastical, unrealistic and informed by neither research nor practical experience. It teaches physical techniques that are demonstrably ineffective, it fails to teach the core mental skills of self defence and it gives a completely false sense of confidence. Bay Area Model Mugging seems to be far more serious than most, but their website copy does seem a little concerning in places.

de Becker's The Gift of Fear is such an important work because it emphasises everything that happens before a violent confrontation. By the time most people realise that they might get hurt, they've already missed a dozen opportunities to recognise the situation and act to protect themselves. It applies not merely to the random acts of violence by strangers that many people fear, but the far more prevalent and insidious forms of violence that develop within relationships of all kinds.

Any meaningful self-defence training must include real fear, real violence and real pain. It must start with the essential skills of situational awareness, threat perception and decision-making under acute stress. It must be rooted in the understanding that skill and technique are nearly always trumped by size and strength, and that most violent confrontations have the possibility of suddenly and unpredictably becoming catastrophic.

> Use common sense

Read "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin de Becker. Highly recommend it for anyone who wants to know more about how to protect yourself.

tldr: Trust your instincts. They have been honed by many, many iterations.

http://tgace.wordpress.com/2008/11/07/the-gift-of-fear/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_of_Fear

It appears to me that, like many others, there is an issue with the quality of your interactions, and you are unable to control when/where/how they happen.

I sometimes hear the phrase "People are social animals" to express the sentiment that living in densely-populated environments has a good/neutral influence on the human psyche.

The disclaimer should be that socialising with people we know well and trust is what's "natural" and yields benefits; being constantly surrounded by strangers has to be stressful for us.

Wether consciously or intuitively (See the excellent book "The Gift of Fear" for more), we are constantly scanning our surroundings for potential threats.

That, and a lack of accountability for how one treats their "neighbours", presents problems that can place a tremendous load on your mental health.

One of the many interesting tidbits in The Gift of Fear (an interesting book, simultaneously a sensational true-crime bestseller and the words of a domain expert):

When you need help, approach someone in a crowd and ask. Don't wait for someone to approach you. The odds that the person you choose to approach is dangerous are pretty low. Whereas the odds are higher that a person who chooses you -- notices a confused person in a crowd, walks right up to them, and offers to help -- is potentially dangerous. That's the stalker strategy.

Corollary: Expect people to be very nervous when you walk up to them in public and ask if they need help. They are going to assume, with justification, that you are more likely to be stalking them than the average passerby.

What's unfair about that reaction?

edit: I'm legitimately asking. One of the things which stuck with me after reading "The Gift of Fear" is that people rarely get 'weird feelings' for no reason. If you're not interacting with somebody and they're still creeping you out, that's a sign that something is wrong. Pay attention to that feeling and get out of that situation, even if it means being rude.

Once you're out of that situation, you can certainly take time to think about "wait, why did that guy creep me out so much?". Maybe once you reflect on it, you'll say "He was way too fixated on that one woman struggling to put her groceries in the trunk of her car" or "He came up behind me on the stairs, but I never heard the door of the apartment building open after I came in, and that means he was probably waiting inside for me to pass him". Maybe you'll realize "oh, I was just being silly and there wasn't anything weird going on at all".

But think about it. What's the worst case scenario of paying attention to that feeling? You rudely brushed off somebody you don't know, didn't interact with, and will never see again. It's a bummer for them, and maybe they'll go home and tell their significant other a story about this one jerk they bumped into in the stairway today.

What's the worst case of ignoring that feeling because you don't want to be rude, or you think you're being unfair? The worst case is that you will get killed. The calculus on that is pretty easy for me.

If anyone here is concerned that someone in their life might be a danger to them, I would encourage them to read 'The Gift of Fear' by Gavin de Becker: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0440226198

His rationale is highly self-serving, bordering on disingenuous:

"I was just amazed that Hendrix was, like, so opposed to this idea of even engaging in a conversation two years later,” he added."

Pulling condescending word games about what he's doing as "a conversation." "Hey man, I just want to talk." Well no, and this tack is practically straight out of the book, "The Gift of Fear."

"It got me thinking that this had nothing all to do with Hendrix and everything to do with the way the entire system is designed."

Ah, see? It's not just Hendrix, but the entire system. Nothing personal, you see.

If this is how people learn to act under the Thiel umbrella...

The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker

The Gift of Fear (Gavin Debecker) - how to deal with bad people

The War against Women (Marilyn French) - the underlying premise is wrong, but reading it is a good way to learn how to deal with semi-rational, but insane theses. And yes, I can defend this position with quotes / paraphrases from the book, with rational explanations as to why it's insane

How the Police generate false confessions (James Trainum) - former cop explains why harsh interrogation techniques are counter-productive, and how to defend yourself

Get the Truth (Philip Houston et all) - how to tell when people are lying, via simple techniques you can remember

I read a book once - I think it was the Gift of Fear (but I might be wrong) - that said that plane crashes often occur in clusters, same with other tragedies like mass shootings at schools etc. The author suggested this was because people who might do those things - or in the case of pilots, pilots who might want to commit suicide and take the plane down with them - get prompted to act when they see other incidents have occurred. So according to that author, these events are not random.

Obviously a civilian plane being shot down would lie outside this theory (he suggested more plane crashes were due to pilot depression than mechanical fault/other factors).