Is there some reasonable amount of proof that can be offered to a logical person as evidence that something did* not* happen?
The entire story is likely TL;DR, and probably TMI, but that’s it, in a nutshell. If you woke up from a nightmare, and felt strongly that it wasn’t a dream, what sort of proof should be sufficient to prove it was a figment of your imagination?
For the record, I’m not the one with the nightmare, I’m the one who can’t convince the delusional, obsessive, definitively not-logical “dreamer” in this piece. Two years worth of harassment, and harassment-by-proxy, such that me and mine are thoroughly exhausted, and disgusted with this nonsense.
Thought so, but in the legal system here, you’re innocent until proven guilty. My antagonist insists that the legal system is ignoring her outing of “the truth” regardless of how many times she is told her story is unsubstantiated. Any ideas?
Contact a lawyer to look into to suing her for harassment? Get some kind of cease and desist order? Document the harassment and have her arrested?
I’m not a lawyer so you’d have to contact one to see if that’s plausible.
I stopped answering her phone calls, and eventually changed my phone number. She calls DCF, she calls the kids’ school, she calls the kids’ doctor, she calls city police, county sheriff, every elected official in the state, the KBI, and claims that she’s even talked to the POTUS himself.
I’m on a first-name basis with the local county Sheriff’s Detective whose job is ordinarily dealing with child abuse cases. Said Detective is likewise being harassed by phone. Has been reported to her bosses for “not doing her job.”
I went to Legal Aid early in this odyssey only to be told “you don’t really want to sue your mother.” (Hint: there’s no money in it, but if it would make her stop, yes, I very much do wish to sue her.) I have attempted to get a Protection From Stalking/Harassment order, but was told by the judge’s secretary that he would not sign because I didn’t meet the criteria. Tried to get it online through Legal Aid and was told that since there was no history of physical abuse from her, I don’t fit the criteria.
Thanks, and yes, it is very stressful. Somewhat… abrasive to family cohesion, in the larger sense. I’m not certain if I have given my new number (new as in had it less than four months) to my aunts, though I have carefully kept in touch with my brother, and father, and kept the sheriff in the loop. (How twisted is it, that the sheriff was perhaps the third person I gave my new phone number to?)
Oh, and she voluntarily went to a hospital (bigger city, two hours away) for a week this summer. This was before I got the new number, but nobody saw fit to tell me. The day before they released her, they called local law enforcement, who in turn called my husband, to tell him to be aware: She told her therapist there, that she’s been fantasizing about ways and means of killing him, or paying someone to do it for her. :eek:
Granted, she’s not much of a physical threat, and she’s on Social Security, so she’s not likely to have the sort of disposable income to pay a hit man, but I can’t quite understand why it’s enough of a worry to warrant a call, but not enough to hold her. :dubious:
I’m not sure I understand why you asked this question, given that it’s pretty clear that - and you understand that - your mother is nuts and that there is absolutely positively no way that any rational argument or proof would make the tiniest bit of difference.
Wondering if there are any ideas none of us have thought of. “Us” being the ones being harassed. The kids’ school recently floated the idea that if I allowed a supervised visit between her and the kids, (they offered to supervise, on school grounds) that it would help her realize that her delusion isn’t true. Sheriff’s Detective was strongly against the idea, as there has been a kidnap threat some time ago. I asked the kids, and got one negative, and one very emphatic negative, so I denied the school’s suggestion.
This is a board full of intelligent, imaginative, creative people. (I know, you don’t know me, but I’ve been lurking for years.) Call it an extension of two years of brainstorming, since the concerned minds are stormed out.
I think the answer to your question is far more likely to lie in methods of coping with mentally ill family members than in asking about ways of proving a negative. Your thread title is going to attract those interested in logic and debate, rather than those who may be able to help.
I suspect anyone could tell that it’s not a simple situation, nor do I expect there to be a simple answer. I didn’t expect that a thread title like “send in the Waaaambulance! I need a ride!” would help, either.
The fact of the matter is, I don’t know how to prove that something didn’t happen. I don’t really think it’s possible. But I’d be happy to be wrong.
In scientific confirmation theory, you can prove a negative, in such circumstances as permit an exhaustive exploration of the universe of discourse. I can’t prove that there are no red-colored mice…but I can prove that there are no red-colored mice in my living room, as my living room is small enough to be searched completely at the necessary scale of observation.
If you could get her to say “this happened at this time” and then could prove to her it could not have happened, that might convince a semi-rational person. I’m betting it would not work for you.
I’m told that there are certain whistles that hurt the ears of callers. Maybe that would help if you tell her you don’t want to talk to her and hang up, and then use the whistle if she calls back.
You cannot prove a negative as a general matter, and you cannot prove that all this is real, and a dream is not real, yadda yadda.
But in terms of your specific question, there are some answers.
I think what people get wrong here is imagining that “real” and “illusion” are labels applied to experiences themselves, and so what we must do is work out which label is correct for a given experience.
A better way of looking at it, is that you cannot doubt your subjective experience, and that real and illusion are actually labels for interpretations. Where multiple interpretations exist, the one that best fits the totality of phenomena is the one we call “real”, and those that don’t fit, or are Occam-vulnerable, we call “illusion”.
If I play a video game, one hypothesis is that the game is a physical environment and my life as a human is a dream. But this hypothesis has many problems such as why the game world is confined to a TV screen within the “dream”. And why my dreams are so lengthy, vivid and consistent compared to the game world.
So the hypothesis that it’s just a game wins.
First of all, you can’t use logic against someone who’s delusional. But if she’s at all semi-rational, she may respond if you point out something in her dream that contradicts reality. Or how about telling her that you had a dream that contradicted hers.
It occurred to me that I did prove one negative, to the satisfaction of law enforcement, and as mentioned, it was because that one detail was defined narrowly enough that I could provide evidence.
She announced that hubby had confessed to her, over the phone, on Christmas Eve (or Christmas Day, depending on when and to whom she told the story.) I was surprised to discover how difficult it is to get phone records, but with sufficient begging, I got my own records, showing who we had called, and the time spent on inbound calls. It was my minor-league luck that at that time her phone was paid for by my aunt and uncle, and they were able to get her records of same. Lucky for me, none of the times meshed. (Somewhat irritating, that while my phone will hold the last thirty or so inbound calls, by number if nothing else, my phone company was prohibited by privacy laws from giving me that list on paper without a police warrant. Which the LEO’s in question didn’t want to waste their time getting. :smack: )