Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People

by Jackson MacKenzie

You will become stronger than you could ever imagine. You will understand who you are truly meant to be. And in the end, you will be glad it happened.

Remember, these are people who prey on forgiveness. They thrive on your need for closure. They manipulate compassion and exploit sympathy.

Your strengthened intuition is the greatest defense against a manipulative person. It is a skill that can never be exploited—and once learned, it will serve you a lifetime.

Psychopaths are parasitic, emotionally stunted, and incapable of change. Once this individual is gone from your life, you will find that everything begins to make sense again. The chaos dissipates and your sanity returns. Things will be normal once again.

Avoid those who tell you how nice they are, how generous they are, how successful they are, how honest they are, and how important they are. Instead, search for the quiet ones who show these qualities every day through their actions.

Toxic people condition us to ignore our intuition, and we must learn to trust it again. Instead of judging outwardly, we need to perceive inwardly. When we start focusing on our own feelings, this is where the healing begins. And if you are anything like me, we can agree on this simple truth: good people make you feel good and bad people make you feel bad.

With time, you will begin to filter out the people who make you feel bad. You realize that you do not need to put up with negativity when there is a Constant who brings out the best in you. Once you become more comfortable with the idea, you’ll be ready to ask the most important question of all: Shouldn’t I feel this same kind of peace with everyone in my life? Absolutely.

Perhaps most insidious of all the psychopath’s evils: their relationship cycle, during which they gleefully and systematically wipe out the identity of an unsuspecting victim. Cold and calculated emotional rape.

Emotional abusers condition their victims to feel ashamed, inadequate, and unstable. This is because they are cowards, incapable of healthy relationships with strong and self-respecting individuals.

abusers cannot control someone with such qualities, and so they break down the target’s self-esteem through belittling, teasing, and manufactured jealousy. The target may have perfectionist tendencies, striving to meet the abuser’s impossible standards. This results in a strange dynamic where the abuser is idealized, despite being lazy, dishonest, and unfaithful, while the victim is devalued, despite putting more effort into this relationship than ever before.

Like sandpaper, the psychopath will wear away at your self-esteem through a calculated “mean and sweet” cycle. Slowly, your standards will fall so low that you become grateful for utterly mediocre treatment.

Your friends and family will wonder what happened to the man or woman who used to be so strong and energetic. You will frantically excuse your partner’s behavior, unable to acknowledge the painful truth behind your relationship: something has changed.

You spend hours waiting by the phone, hoping for that morning text message or a promised phone call. You cancel your plans for the day just to make sure you’ll be available for them. You begin to initiate contact more often, brushing aside the nagging sensation that they don’t want to talk with you—that they’re simply “putting up” with you.

You invent romantic stories and exaggerate their positive aspects to anyone who will listen. By convincing others that they are a wonderful person, you can continue to live the lie yourself.

While you’re struggling with all of this unexpected anxiety, the psychopath is able to push your boundaries even further. You’re in a vulnerable place now, because you’re willing to put up with mostly anything—so long as they’re paying attention to you.

Since your self-worth is invested entirely in their oscillating opinions, your moods will become unstable and volatile.

They will also begin to humiliate you in front of friends—no longer limited to belittling you behind closed doors. But it will always be done under a guise of humorous intention.

You will be hurt to see that others seem to take your partner’s side and laugh, despite the w...

A psychopath doesn’t care when they take a joke too far, and they will dismiss any concerns you might have, accusing you of being hypersensitive. You begin to go along with it, playing the role of a crazy, unintelligent partner whose only purpose is to en...

If you reach a breaking point, they will always be ready to swoop back in with promises of unlimited love and affection.

During a relationship with a psychopath, you are likely to experience a range of emotions that you’ve never felt before: extreme jealousy, neediness, rage, anxiety, and paranoia. After every outburst, you constantly think to yourself, “If only I hadn’t behaved that way, then maybe they’d be happier with me.”

Those were not your emotions. I repeat: those were not your emotions. They were carefully manufactured by the psychopath in order to make you question your own good nature.

they checkmate themselves by constantly trying to rationalize the abuser’s completely irrational behavior.

the serial provoker will continue to aggravate the target until they finally snap. Once this occurs, the provoker will sit back, feign surprise, and marvel at how passive-aggressive, angry, and volatile the target is. The target will immediately feel bad, apologize, and absorb the blame.

For example, you probably didn’t consider yourself to be a jealous person before you met the psychopath. You might have even taken pride in being remarkably relaxed and open-minded. The psychopath recognizes this and seeks to exploit it. During the grooming phase, they draw you in by flattering you about those traits—they just can’t believe how perfect you are. The two of you never fight. There’s never any drama. You’re so easygoing compared to their crazy, evil ex.

Psychopaths become bored very easily, and the idealization is only fun until they have you hooked.

They begin to inject as much drama into the relationship as they possibly can, throwing you into impossible situations and th...

psychopaths want you to believe you’re crazy because it makes you seem more unstable to the rest of the world. But you’ll find that once they’re gone from your life, everything starts to make sense again. If you went from normal to “crazy” to normal again, that’s not crazy. That’s someone provoking you.

You must understand that in loving, healthy relationships, no one would ever put you in these situations in the first place. Your boundaries were put to the test, and you did the absolute best you could, given the circumstances.

“The devil itself was unleashed in a desperate fit of fury after being recognized: twisting, turning, writhing, spewing, flattering, sparkling, vomiting.”

7. You Begin Explaining Basic Human Emotions You find yourself explaining things like “empathy” and “feelings” and “being nice.”

You think to yourself, “If they can just understand why I’m hurt, then they’ll stop doing it.” But they won’t. They wouldn’t have hurt you in the first place if they were a decent human being.

You are disappointed so frequently that you feel relieved when they do something halfway decent—they condition you to become grateful for mediocre treatment.

Gaslighting is when the psychopath intentionally distorts reality—often with trivial lies and wrongdoings—to bring about a reaction and then deny that it ever took place.

Instead of admitting fault and deceit, the psychopath will attempt to drive the target insane. Through mind games, triangulation, gaslighting, and silence, they innocently encourage the target to self-destruct. Most targets don’t even know they’re dealing with a pathological personality at the time.

They might only have gently observed that “something feels different between us.”

if you present evidence of the truth—like a text message or an email—the psychopath will punish you with the silent treatment and turn the entire conversation around on you for being paranoid and crazy.

Psychopaths always see themselves as victims, no matter how horribly they’ve treated someone else. Nothing is ever their fault—they’ve always been wronged in one way or another. To them, the problem is not their lying, cheating, stealing, and abuse. The problem is that you started to notice all of those things. Why couldn’t you just remain happy with the idealization phase? How dare you betray them by standing up for yourself? Encounters with these people are like drowning in a black hole, because no matter how much they hurt you, it’ll still be your fault.

“Psychopaths project and blame you for their own behavior. They accuse you of being negative when they are the most negative people in the world. They gaslight you into believing that your normal reactions to their abuse are the problem—not the abuse itself. When you feel angry and hurt because of their silent treatment, broken promises, lying, or cheating, there is something wrong with you. When you call them out on their dishonest behavior, you’re the abnormal one who is too sensitive, too critical, and always focusing on the negative.

“This is all part of the brainwashing process. Acting inappropriately, unacceptably, downright abusively—and then trying to turn it around to make it your fault. They intentionally cause pain you don’t deserve, all the while denying they’ve done anything to begin with. And on top of that, they try to make it your fault—so that you blame yourself for something that supposedly didn’t even happen.

No matter what you do, it’s always a lose-lose situation with a psychopath. They want you to believe you’re the loser when really, it’s them.”

You unknowingly formed a bond with a con artist. Your consent was based on a lie. So many survivors blame themselves because they couldn’t get past the sexual addiction, keeping them bonded to their abuser. But it’s not your fault. You were tricked into feeling an overwhelmingly strong attachment during the grooming phase. And then they manipulated that—toying with the toxic addiction firing through your body.

So the psychopath says all sorts of ridiculous things, and you’re suddenly defending yourself from accusations you’ve never even dreamed of.

So you get caught up in trying to prove them wrong, and that’s where the calculated self-destruction begins.

They attack the things you value most, because those are the things in life you will defend most passionately. And make no mistake—it’s intentional.

The easiest way for them to suck you in is to accuse you of doing things that they themselves did. It’s almost too easy for you to point out the hypocrisy.

Do not fall for it. They want you on the defensive, trying to prove yourself to everyone. Once you’ve taken the bait, their job is done.

Healthy human beings learn to enjoy quiet time and introspection—this is how we discover some of the most important things about ourselves.

Watching you scurry around like a rat in a maze provides them with an entertaining distraction from their otherwise insufferably boring life. The idealization phase is merely a by-product of this boredom—a necessary step in grooming you so that they can abuse you for as long as possible.

Psychopaths also have a tendency to behave like innocent children, surrounding themselves with maternal and paternal types who constantly want to be there for them, offering support and providing for them at every turn.