No matter how much a psychopath loves you, no matter how much they wish you well, no matter what else they might be—your first duty is to remove yourself from their presence. The moment you sense, in any way, that someone is of psychopathic nature, you must act. Whatever they say, however they say it, you must ignore every word. However they behave, your obligation is to avoid them, to maintain complete silence about them—better still if you can strategically keep them occupied or entangled with someone else (or multiple people). You must escape, by any means necessary. Psychopaths thrive when they get replies; denied one, they gradually lose interest. But how will you recognize a psychopath? In my life, I have now encountered six psychopaths—lived alongside them, or rather, been forced to. Whether I managed to extricate myself entirely or not, I have been able to ignore them, and I continue to do so quite effectively. Those who are psychopaths share certain characteristics that remain remarkably consistent. I am attempting to detail them in this essay. They will never see their own faults; instead, they will dismiss all blame while repeatedly dragging your faults before you. In their mind, they are the purest beings in this world. Again and again they will call you bad, again and again they will hold up (in their eyes) your shortcomings before your very face, and no matter what you say, they will speak of your failings over and over. They speak only of themselves; they make no effort to listen to what you say or even to consider it. They will persist in such relentless fabrication that eventually you yourself will begin to believe you are truly a bad person; that you genuinely cannot do anything right, and everything you do is wrong. In their endless repetition of such things, they show no fatigue; they will go on tirelessly, relentlessly. They will circle back again and again to positive words about themselves and negative words about you. The more you listen to them, the more worthless you will feel, the more wicked. No matter what you say, no matter what logic you present—they will not engage with any of it, instead keeping themselves always in a place of safety. Even if you point out their faults, they will dismiss them and bring your failings before you again; point out a flaw and they will grow angry instead. They will call you bad, yet you will find yourself unable to call them bad in return. You once apologized for something and they accepted it in this way: "Alright, you made a mistake this time; don't make it again." Yet they will retain that mistake, and every time you speak or quarrel thereafter, they will raise it again and again. Such people never forget anything, and they do not know how to forgive. They bring the mistake back up, speak of it over and over. They slaughter the same bird again and again, at every moment, every day if they can. And they never tire of it, never once do they grow weary.
They repeat the same things over and over again; there is little variety in their speech. If you spend two hours in conversation with a psychopath, you will notice that throughout those two hours they are essentially saying the same things repeatedly. And in those words will emerge: you are a bad person, they could harm you greatly if they wished, they could grind you to dust. You are such a bad person that no worse human being has ever been born into this world; and they are so, so good! They have no faults, because they are incapable of fault! They are good, their family is good, they possess great power, they could ruin you if they chose; their brother is so-and-so, their uncle is so-and-so, their brother-in-law is so-and-so! Their family is the finest family in this world. They will say thousands of such things and say them relentlessly, without pause.
These psychopaths, people with these kinds of traits—only those who have mingled with them or fallen into their grasp can truly understand how deeply negative a role they play in our lives. I say “grasp” deliberately, because if you observe them from the outside or from a distance, you understand nothing. Psychopaths will love you intensely, they will give their lives for you, they will do whatever you ask them to do. They are capable of deeds that ordinary people cannot perform. They will stay awake night after night doing your work, doing whatever you ask with the dedication of a ghost, with an almost supernatural intensity of effort. Witnessing such apparent sincerity, you will fall in love with them. Yet alongside this, they will destroy every shred of your confidence. They can give their lives for you; yes, people like this can truly give their lives, because they genuinely love you with the madness of the insane. But to live life, one cannot survive on love alone—peace and tranquility are desperately necessary. If a person from whom you cannot obtain peace and tranquility loves you more than their own life, still, I believe, you ought to distance yourself from them. The reason is this: people do not live in love; they live in peace.
What do psychopaths do? They repeat the same things over and over. They will not deviate from or return from whatever they have said. It matters little whether you are accepting those words or not; what matters is the repetition itself. They will say you are bad, your family is bad, your father is bad, your mother is bad, your siblings are bad, every member of your family is bad; that you should all be destroyed—if they could, they would murder you all. And listening to this again and again, in time you yourself will begin to feel the urge to believe you are bad. This is why it is best not to speak with them at all. They will say the same things over and over again—whether on the phone or through messages. They never tire of this work.
# On Managing the Psychopath
A simple wisdom applies here: don’t block them in your messages; instead, consign them to an ignore list. And what happens if you do block? They can’t message you anymore. Then they become even more enraged, far more reckless and menacing. This is why you ought to keep them on your ignore list—so they can unburden themselves of all that’s in their mind. If you don’t let them speak, the consequences won’t be good. Let them say what they will; you won’t reply to any of it. Many psychopaths are terribly religious; whether you like it or not, they’ll bombard you with thousands of texts on countless religious topics—every single day, if they have no other avenue to reach you! Religious psychopaths (not violent or aggressive, perhaps, but religious nonetheless) are profoundly irritating, and in certain cases, downright dangerous! A confused religious psychopath may kill their own mother in the name of faith.
Psychopaths have another peculiar trait: they will announce their intent to harm you before they do it; they rarely ever hurt anyone without giving notice. Yes, they will tell you before they hurt you. Even if they were to kill you, they would tell you about it first. It’s an odd characteristic of theirs! And they won’t tell you just once—they’ll repeat it again and again. They’ll say they’ll murder your mother, they’ll murder your father; they wish death upon your brother, death upon you. Don’t be distressed by this. Because it’s simply their nature. The scorpion stings not to cause harm—the scorpion stings because stinging is what it does, what else could it possibly do? Stinging is its nature, not an attempt at injury.
Let me tell you an interesting experience. Suppose a psychopath calls you. If you hold your mobile phone to your ear, you’ll notice that whatever they’re saying now, they’ll say the exact same thing again one, two, or three hours from now. There’s little variety in their speech—the same record plays over and over. After dealing with six psychopaths, I’m still alive…ha ha ha! You might even offer me congratulations; for people can barely handle one psychopath, and I’ve managed six!
When psychopaths call or send messages, they repeat the same things endlessly. You can conduct an experiment yourself. When a psychopath calls you, if you hang up, they become absolutely enraged…absolutely, I mean absolutely! Then they’ll just keep calling back, so there’s no need to disconnect. Say they decide they won’t let you sleep at night; then they call at one, two, three in the morning, over and over. Leave your phone by your pillow. An hour later, when you check, you’ll find them still circling back to the same words, the same refrain—how you’re bad and they’re good, how they’ll finish you off, how they’ll settle accounts with you, how they have connections in all sorts of important places, how if they wanted they could do so much, how destroying you would be nothing to them, and so on and so forth.
# On the Persistence of the Psychopath
And so they’ll keep on, more or less in the same key (if ever they slip and strike a wrong note, don’t you dare slip with them! It won’t take them long to find their way back to that original tune)… whether through messages or by calling you directly, they’ll keep talking about themselves! Even if you block them on the phone, it makes no difference. They’ll call you again on WhatsApp, knock on Messenger, send you texts. They have no shame, no self-respect. No inconvenience stops them—they’ll say what they want to say, and nothing will silence them. There’s no point trying to stop them. So keep such people on your ignore list.
What the psychopath says today, they’ll say again tomorrow and the day after. They don’t tire. They won’t hang up the phone, won’t stop sending messages (at most, they might take breaks now and then)… they’ll just keep talking endlessly. You’ll see—they won’t sleep at night; they’ll keep harassing you, again and again! And if you don’t pick up, they’ll find someone you both know and call them instead. They’ll ring that person up and tell them this about you and that about you, feed them all manner of distorted information, unleash a flood of accusations (sometimes a tsunami), and so on and so forth. This is what they do. They’ll shower you with continuous threats. They’ll say what harm they’ll do to you, how they’ll destroy you. They’ll go to your office and tell your boss everything, end your life, ruin your entire career. They’ll say all these things and more. The patience of psychopaths is epic in scale.
They typically never stop. Their fixation is truly astounding. Whatever they’ve done for you, whatever favors they’ve supposedly done—whether real or imagined, they’ll keep bringing it up. And they’ll tell you more: that you’re running around with this person and that person; that those people are terrible, that they themselves are so much better than them. That those others have done nothing for you, while they have done so much. And everything you think about them is wrong. They are the best person, they have no flaws—they’ll say things like this. They can never see their own faults. Whatever mistakes they make, whatever wrongs they commit, they’ll simply ignore them. And they’ll keep insisting that they are a perfect human being.
Again and again, the psychopath will throw your past mistakes in your face, parade them before your eyes, and belittle you—in front of others too. They’ll speak only negatively about you, trying to convince you that you are a bad person. That you’ve wronged them in this way and that, that you’ve committed such and such sins in your life. They’ll fight tooth and nail to make you believe this. They might even show up at your workplace. Once there, they’ll tell everyone you’re bad; they’ll tell you that you have to give them your time right now, that you have to do as they say, and so on and so forth. They’ll tell your colleagues, your acquaintances—that you are a terrible person, that you’ve cheated them, that they’ve done so much for you, and so on and so forth. They’ll never say anything good about you. They believe you’re running with the wrong crowd. Whoever you spend time with besides them is the wrong person—everyone else is wrong, only they are right for you.
# On Psychopaths
Yet psychopaths are often brilliantly intelligent; and they can accomplish far more in far less time than ordinary people. If you told one, *Give your life for me*, they could do it! There is no task they couldn’t perform for you. And yet, I believe you must free yourself from psychopaths, you must escape them. No matter how much a psychopath loves you, no matter how much time they give you, you will be better off only when you are free of them—because ultimately, psychopaths will destroy your mental peace and wellbeing, they will cripple you psychologically, they will paralyze your mind. Always keep your distance from them. Whatever a psychopath tells you, never reply. The more you reply, the more they feel a certain victory. They will think they have won, that they have triumphed from their position. So replying to them should never be your course. Don’t reply to them; instead, ignore them. They may send you thousands, millions, billions of messages, they may call countless times! You ignore them, stay silent; you will see, the psychopath will gradually cool down. The moment you give them even a little attention, they will think you are genuinely invested in them!
Whatever they say about you outside, wherever, however—you must never say anything about them. Speaking about them is the same as handing them victory, boosting their morale. Remember, the best way to manage a psychopath is to give them no attention whatsoever, to ignore them completely. Whether you reply negatively, whether you hurl the vilest insults at them, even if you treat them abominably and speak the most absurd things about them, even if you try to stop them—they will never stop. Even if they do stop, it’s only for a day or two, and then they return exactly as before. Remember, psychopaths follow no rules; psychopaths have no rules at all. They do not behave as other people do. And every single method you might find on Google for managing them will fail. Psychopaths have only one rule: they have no rules. (Perhaps even this essay of mine will be of no use to you; I am only sharing my experience.)
Ignore them, delete them from your life. Even if they attempt to cause you grievous harm, still you will listen to these threats and remain silent. There is nothing to be done. To satisfy their own stubbornness, they can even murder a friend or a beloved. To them, their own obstinacy is worth more than another’s life. Whether the beloved is exhausted, worn out, ill, depressed—none of it matters to them; to satisfy their stubbornness, they will continue their cruelty. They only want to win. Even if you let them win, they do not stop; they raise another issue and begin their psychological torment anew. This psychopath is a thoroughly vile thing!
# Psychopaths and the Architecture of Harm
Psychopaths are not ordinary people—they are extraordinarily abnormal. Save your life from their hands. Move away from them before it is too late. Even if they consider you their closest, love you most intensely, still you must distance yourself. Life is short enough; you must live well, with laughter and joy. There is no sense in destroying your life in pursuit of such a psychopath. Their love is deeply poisoned. Never be convinced by the words of such toxic people, no matter the temptation. Once convinced, your life is finished. Leave them while there is still time. Even if a psychopath treats you well for a week, a month, do not trust them. Because they will return to their old place, resume their old patterns, and they will never be anyone’s friend. A psychopath can never truly be a friend to a healthy person. No matter how deeply they claim to love you, there is no place for them in your life. They alone are sufficient to destroy all your happiness, comfort, and peace—to consume you, bit by bit. Whatever you have received from them, whatever you hoped to receive, ignore it all.
If you do not follow their way and their path, they show little empathy. They want what they want immediately, and will use any means—even violence. To exploit, to defy, to hold hostage. In their dictionary, there is no word for forgiveness. They threaten suicide, they shriek, they raise their hands in violence, they humiliate you in front of others, they do whatever pleases them for their own peace. They want to emerge victorious, even if it means diminishing others. After their own mistakes, they carry themselves as though they have done nothing. When they grow angry—with cause or without—they have no awareness of what they are saying or to whom. They do not know how to apologize. Given a chance, they speak grandiose words to showcase themselves. Most of what they say is lies; they are practiced at presenting falsehood as truth. They say one thing and do another; they are always striving to prove themselves special to society, by force if necessary. They wish to control others’ lives exactly as they think their own should be lived. They neither understand nor can understand another’s pain or circumstance. Even when they help someone, they later hold it over their head. They take pride in things that do not exist. They generally do not respect people; they view them with contempt and dismantle everyone’s morale. Real disaster strikes when such a person is bound to you by blood, because then leaving becomes difficult. Gradually, you feel yourself sinking deeper into darkness, losing yourself—until one day your entire life seems to simply end.
# On Silence and the Unreachable
Hold your tongue before their words—listen only, but grant them no weight, no harbor in your mind, and do not let them sense that you are turning away. Let them win through your silent assent, yet go on doing what your conscience deems right—do this without their knowing. They are terrible people, frightfully so, beyond what imagination can conjure. No sound mind can endure living beneath the same roof as them. Their dreadful deeds, their conduct—there is no end to telling it. They are impossibly faithless, ungrateful, and selfish. To remain with such a person is to become, day by day, a patient in an asylum. So if you can flee from these cold-blooded killers, no matter what price you pay, it is worth the escape.
The psychopath will sometimes treat you well, will ask forgiveness for their actions with surprising gentleness. You stood by them in their hour of crisis, did them countless kindnesses—they will remind you of this. Then they will say that what happened, happened; they had no hand in it. The next moment, they will hint at their own misfortune or ailment. They will claim that because there is no peace in their life, they cannot give you peace either—though you bear no responsibility for their turmoil. Healthy people engage in dialogue; sick people lodge complaints. In the name of love, they will think it their right to make your life a hell. Because they are not well, they do not know how to keep anyone else well; they wish to scatter everywhere the sting of their own cruel fate, the burning ache of their own ruin. Unbearable memories of the past make some into saints, and others into psychopaths. They do not consciously wound and bloodied those near them, but when restlessness settles in their mind, they do so unconsciously. They do not even try to understand that the person beside them suffers for it. They live by whatever enters their head and arrange all their thoughts around it. They will follow your every word to the letter, do anything to keep you happy, endure countless hardships without food or rest to reshape themselves, even destroy themselves for you—and yet every other day they will treat you badly all the same. In truth, they treat everyone this way; they justify it by saying they themselves are mentally in very bad shape. Those who live as they dream of living, those fortunate ones, they cannot bear—not knowingly, but without knowing it either. Their greatest mistake is this: they waste the golden years of their life pursuing the wrong person, day after day after day. Had they not done this, perhaps they too might have fared better, might not have cursed their fate so constantly.
# On Psychopathic Personalities
When they love someone, they love with their whole being; but when you grow weary of them and wish to leave, and they keep repeating the same refrain—that you’re bad, that they don’t need you in their life, and all the rest—when you finally do go, they’ll cling to you so you don’t become someone else’s. They will neither hold you nor release you; they won’t let you be happy with them, nor will they allow you happiness with another. You will find no peace, only a grinding sense of unease. These people are typically base in nature; they covet what belongs to others, and this hunger can become so extreme that they come to regard others’ possessions and wealth almost as their own rightful claim. A single psychopath of this sort is enough to poison your relationships with everyone around you. They are paranoid to a frightening degree, credulous of gossip and hearsay—never mind the opposite sex, they won’t let you associate with anyone of the same sex either; if your views diverge from theirs, they’ll attempt blackmail. In time you’ll realize you’ve been cut off from the world, that you have no friends, that your career lies in ruins. They refuse to let go. Even after years of silence, when you speak with them again, they’ll feed you the same tired words; they’ll say how wonderful they are, why are you ignoring them, and countless other variations of the theme.
The psychopath will say nothing of your good deeds, will pretend not to see them, will certainly never praise them—instead will make cutting, mood-souring remarks; but the moment you do or say something they dislike, they’ll attack with such ferocity, such scathing criticism and condemnation, as if no one in the world has ever done anything worse. Such people are intensely intrusive and judgmental, the clinging type. They try to monitor your every move, want to steer your life according to their design. Their way is right, their path is right—everyone else is wrong, everything else is wrong. They are terribly hard to read—one moment good, the next moment bad. Yet from the outside, their monstrous nature is virtually undetectable; unless you live with them or are intimately involved with them, their true face remains hidden.
Psychopathic types cannot actually tolerate failure. They want to achieve their targets by any means necessary. And when they cannot, they become reckless and desperate. Then they begin blaming those close to them, tormenting them mentally. Since they are not normal human beings, ignoring them is the only solution. If you cannot ignore them, life becomes hell, for they possess neither gratitude nor conscience. No matter how much you do for them, the moment they have no further use for you, they revert to their true nature. They’ll hold you accountable for their own misfortunes—things you know nothing about—blaming you for all the wretchedness in their lives. Such a person can slowly destroy an entire family; they show no hesitation whatsoever in raising a hand to anyone, not merely through words but through deeds. I will conclude this account by noting a few more of their characteristics.
They dismiss all reasoning from others as mere excuses; yet when it comes to themselves, they’re quick to produce their own logic, and if anyone dares call it an excuse, they flare up in fury. They have no desire to accept truth or reality; whatever they say, whatever they think, must be right, must be established as such. They refuse to acknowledge their own mistakes under any circumstance. When their views don’t align with someone else’s, they speak—and sometimes spread—all the negative aspects of that person and everyone in their circle. Psychopaths cannot easily free themselves from anger, resentment, and hatred until they’ve won. Even when they themselves have wronged someone, they expect that person to come and ask for forgiveness, to apologize to them—this is what they want. They lack flexibility altogether; their willingness to give others a break is minimal. They want to convince everyone that they, above all others, understand reality best. They can abandon not just those outside their blood relations, but even a spouse or any beloved person with ease. They slander others, humiliate and dishonor them, yet claim they themselves have been wronged and disrespected. In all matters, no matter what befalls another, they know perfectly well how to keep themselves safe. They parade themselves and their relatives as grand and magnificent, boasting in such a way that anyone else seems to be nothing much at all. They harbor ambitious attitudes while affecting the appearance of ordinary sensibilities. Without acknowledging their own faults, they claim transparency to themselves, and they find joy whenever they manage in some way to diminish another person. Psychopaths are often adept at deception and at using others for their own gain; for all the harm they inflict on others, not the slightest remorse or guilt operates within them. Psychopaths are accustomed to overthinking. About things that no one else would ever dwell upon, they can ruminate for hours upon hours, even day after day. A psychopath will torment your mind over the most trivial of matters.