Did you ever have that feeling that somebody, nay, everybody is out to get you? Do find yourself looking at the majority of your fellow human beings with some sort of deep dark suspicion just because they happen to disagree with you? Does your cat or dog look at you funny when you come home at night from a hard day at work where you’ve spent countless hours bleating like a wounded sheep trying to get your point across while all the while nobody will listen?
Do you feel the need to shout other people down or drive them off because they refuse to heed your wisdom? Do you feel as if you are the lone voice in the wilderness just crying to be heard and then bemoaning the fact that you’re just smarter than the rest of the herd and when the day comes you will be proven right and you’ll take a certain joy in their suffering? Does danger lurk behind every door? Last but not least, do you feel the need to reinvent yourself under many guises in the hopes that one day the same choir you’ve been preaching to for years will finally rise up and see the light and all will be right with the world?
Does this sound familiar to some of you? Do you know somebody who might exhibit some of these symptoms? Maybe, after some soul searching you might, just might, recognize some of these signs in yourself and get yourself some much needed professional help.
But if you don’t you can take some solace for you are not alone. There are countless others out there just like you waiting to be preached to for you will be their new age messiah. You and your new found followers will finally throw off the chains of oppression and censorship that have shackled you for so long and trample the non-believers so that their voice will never again be heard. You and you alone will be proven right and your place in history will be assured.
I think the best summation of what constitutes a persecution complex comes from a piece of a blog I read here.
"one of the great secrets of human nature is that the one thing people want more than love, security, sex, chocolate or big-screen TV's is to feel hard done by."
"Why? Because being hard done by is the shit. Feeling hard done by is the sweetest of drugs. If you're being persecuted -- it must mean you're doing the right thing, right? You get the mellow buzz of the moral high ground, but without arrogantly claiming it as your own. You get an instant, supportive community in a big dark scary world of such scope it may well literally be beyond rational human processing. When you are hard done by, you get purpose in a life where otherwise, you'd have to find your own. And when you ride that high, then no amount of logic, no pointing out that in actuality you and your beliefs are at a high point of popularity and influence for the last hundred years -- is going to pry that sweet crack-pipe of moral indignation from your hands."
Amen brother, amen.
Disclaimer: This is purely a work of fiction and any inference that certain individuals might make exists only in their head thereby reinforcing the whole premise of a persecution complex.