‘Haters Gonna Hate’: But Why Do They Hate? The Psychology of Hatred

Victor Hugo said that “The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring.” Have you come across haters in your life? I certainly have. It’s impossible to be successful without being exposed to them. Marilyn Monroe said that “Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn't that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you.”

Haters can be truly toxic. But they are totally lost, both to themselves and to the world. They have no hope of getting what they want: To control you. This article explains why they hate from a psychological point of view.

Psychotherapists say that “If it’s hysterical, it’s historical.” But, according to the globally renowned spiritual Master Michael Singer, the author of ‘The Untethered Soul’ and ‘Living Untethered’, “It is the stupidest thing to take something that bothered you decades ago and let it affect how you think and how you live now. You have stored psychological garbage inside of you and you’re keeping it there. What do you dislike, you have kept at the forefront of your mind, which is bizarre, as that is what is making you unhappy: It’s not the outside world making you unhappy, or anyone else. It’s as though you have created a photo album of all the things that bothered you and you have decided not to let them go. It’s the fact that you stored everything that you disliked from your childhood. This is what is determining your life. You are stuck in a permanently low state of consciousness.”

Hatred often stems from unresolved childhood trauma or fear, amplifying internal struggles. Addressing these issues can transform negativity into evolution. There is a way out, a higher path, if haters are courageous enough to take it. Haters hold the key to the prison that they have constructed for themselves. If haters choose healing over resentment, they can set themselves free and join the path towards growth. In this way, haters can use self-awareness and compassion to allow emotional pain to transform their historical wounds into wisdom. It is only in this way that they will be able to turn their hatred into self-love.

‘Haters gonna hate’: But why do they hate? The psychology of hatred

Introduction

Hatred destroys the hater: Hate is a disintegrating force, it is a poison and destroys the hater, and although the one hated may feel uneasy or uncomfortable yet the action is mainly expended on the one who does the hating. George Washington Carver said that “Fear of something is at the root of hate for others and hate within will ultimately destroy the hater.” James Baldwin said that “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”

For real or imaginary causes, hate and envy spoil much of the beauty of the world and bring to many, to the one who hates more than all,—misery and unhappiness. Hate at last destroys the hater, who becomes ostracised and pitied as one who is suffering with a mania, obsession, and, to that degree, are insane. Milan Kundera wrote “Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.”Frederick C. Walcott said that “Let us complete the victory by eliminating hatred from our hearts. We must not hate, hatred destroys the hater not the hated.” Madeline L'Engle echoed, saying that “Hate hurts the hater more than the hated.”

Hate prevents the healing of the wounds that created the hate. Healing from past hurts from childhood involves learning how to accept and grow from painful experiences. The constant review of these hurts or threats causes a re-experiencing of the emotional pain, fear, and intimidation, which prevents healing from these experiences. Focusing on healing from past hurts, rather than reliving them, will bring a greater sense of well-being, mental health, and a cure for spiritual dis-ease. Harbouring hatred and bitterness activates the body's “fight or flight” response, releasing stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. This constant stress response can lead to chronic anxiety, and depression which impair cognitive function over time, and lead to coping mechanism in the hater such as behavioural addictions and substance addictions such as alcoholism.

Peter Witt said that “A man who hates is a fool. Hate can’t injure the person hated. But it destroys the hater.” The saying "Resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies" emphasises that harbouring resentment and hatred is detrimental to their own well-being, as it's like ingesting poison, while the person they resent might be completely unaware or unconcerned. I know this to be very true. Yandry Wilson Vance said that “Hatred does not unite; it eventually destroys the hater.” In 1957 civil rights champion Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a sermon titled 'Loving Your Enemies' which included the saying: “Hate at any point is a cancer that gnaws away at the very vital centre of your life and your existence. It is like eroding acid that eats away the best and the objective centre of your life. So Jesus says love, because hate destroys the hater.”

Is hatred an indication of an empty life? Eric Hoffer wrote that“Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.” Oscar Wilde wrote that “Hatred is blind.” James Baldwin wrote that “Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.”

With regards to abandonment by our parents, which is our deepest fear, and is often the cause of our childhood trauma because of a lack of unconditional love, as Dr. Wayne Dyer said “One of the greatest lessons of my own life was learning to turn the inner rampage of hatred and anger toward my own father for his reprehensible behaviour and abandonment of his family into an inner reaction more closely aligned with God and God-realised love.”

Anton Chekhov wrote that “The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.” This affects interpersonal relationships of all kinds and at every level. Francois de la Rochefoucault wrote that “If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.” As Michael Singer says, that when you are stuck in your frightened ego, you need life to be exactly as you want it in order for you to be ok.

Ellen DeGeneres said that “I think everybody should have the same anger towards the injustice that's happening and the hatred that's happening, and just fight it with love and compassion.” Hatred is omnipresent right now. Deepak Chopra wrote that “If you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.” After unrequited or ‘imitation’ love, Henry David Thoreau said that “Those whom we can love, we can hate; to others we are indifferent.”

Hosea Ballou wrote that “Hatred is self-punishment.” Why would anyone want to punish themselves? Love cures hatred. Buddha said that “Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.” Hating is nothing new. Jesus reminds us in John 15:18 “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you.”

Martin Luther King wrote that "Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." He continued that “I have decided to stick to love… Hate is too great a burden to bear.” He also said, insightfully, that “I am convinced that men hate each other because they fear each other. They fear each other because they don't know each other.” Hatred is poison to the hater. As Mahatma Gandhi said “Hate the sin and not the sinner is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practiced, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world.” The only sin is to not become who you truly are. Our Higher Power, or God, is forgiving, non-judgmental, compassionate, and gentle, and forgives all our sins, giving us infinite opportunities to get it right.. Oprah Winfrey reminds us that hatred comes from self-hatred, saying that “You cannot hate other people without hating yourself.” People hate when they cannot get another person to love them or when they lose them. This is the ego. It is not for us to carry another person's emotional baggage.

What is hate?

Hate is an intense aversion or hostility towards someone or something. It involves a strong negative emotional response and often includes a desire to harm, devalue, or exclude the target of hatred. From a psychological standpoint, hate is a secondary emotion, a learned response from personal childhood experiences, societal conditioning, and cognitive processes. Primary emotions4, like anger, fear, or disgust, are fundamental to evolution and adaptation. They are universal, shared across cultures, and present from infancy (more on that later). These basic emotions have distinct physiological and facial expression patterns. Hate, unlike other emotions such as anger, (which can be healthy if it is assertive rather than aggressive), or dislike, hate is a strong negative attachment that isn’t focused on any one specific target. It’s a destructive force that, at its worst, can perpetuate discrimination, violence, division, oppression, and even war, among individuals and communities.

Hate is often associated with feelings of fear, anger and discomfort in the hater. It often induces harmful behaviour and rift among the people and increases violence, discrimination, and oppression. The hate is change with the individual perspective and hence can be manifested in various forms. 

This article will cover the psychology of a person behind hate, what can be the factors and consequences of hate, and how to combat the hatred.

The psychology of hate

Psychologists tell us haters hate because of insecurity, low self-esteem, and deep envy. In response, they turn into bullies, persecutors (see my article on the "Drama Triangle), and character assassins and desperately try to recruit others to their way of thinking, using any means available to them. Wake Forest University law professor and psychologist Gregory S. Parks wrote that "These (recruited) groupies who enable greater hate are often referred to as “flying monkeys” — a term that comes from the classic film The Wizard of Oz, during which flying monkeys do the dirty work of the Wicked Witch of the West."

According to Washington, D.C. clinical psychologist Dana Harron, the things people hate about others are the things that they fear within themselves. She suggests thinking about the targeted group or person as a movie screen onto which we project unwanted parts of the self. The idea is, “I'm not terrible; you are.” This phenomenon is known as 'projection' (which we will dive deeper into below), a term to describe our tendency to reject what we don’t like about ourselves. Psychologist Brad Reedy further describes projection as our need to be good, which causes us to project 'badness' outward and attack it: We developed this method to survive, for any 'badness' in us put us at risk for being rejected and alone. So we repressed the things that we thought were bad (what others told us or suggested to us that was unlovable and morally reprehensible) — and we employ hate and judgement towards others. We think that is how one rids oneself of undesirable traits, but this method only perpetuates repression which leads to many mental health issues in the hater. The antidote to hate is compassion — for others as well as ourselves. Self-compassion means that we accept the whole Self. “If we find part of ourselves unacceptable, we tend to attack others in order to defend against the threat,” says Reedy. “If we are okay with ourselves, we see others’ behaviours as ‘about them’ and can respond with compassion. If I kept hate in my heart for [another], I would have to hate myself as well. It is only when we learn to hold ourselves with compassion that we may be able to demonstrate it toward others.”

Psychologist Bernard Golden, author of 'Overcoming Destructive Anger: Strategies That Work', believes that when hate involves participation in a group, it may help foster a sense of connection and camaraderie that fills a void in one’s identity. He describes hatred of individuals or groups as a way of distracting oneself from the more challenging and anxiety-provoking task of creating one’s own identity: But healing can only happen when one returns to the wholeness of one's true Self.

Golden said that "Acts of hate are attempts to distract oneself from feelings such as helplessness, powerlessness, injustice, inadequacy and shame. Hate is grounded in some sense of perceived threat. It is an attitude that can give rise to hostility and aggression toward individuals or groups. Like much of anger, it is a reaction to and distraction from some form of inner pain. The individual consumed by hate may believe that the only way to regain some sense of power over his or her pain is to pre-emptively strike out at others. In this context, each moment of hate is a temporary reprieve from (the hater's) inner suffering."

Hate is motivated by dehumanisation—the tendency to see other people as less than human. This act of making a person or group of people inferior has been a key motivating factor in prejudice, discrimination, and oppression. Dehumanisation is a term that refers to the process of making other people less than human. By making the other person 'less than' we strip them of the qualities that make them relatable.This process can lead to overt aggressive forms of attempted harm. Importantly, we all risk engaging in behaviours that put down or push away other people who stir up our own uncomfortable feelings. We can all react by making someone wrong because we feel afraid.

“Hate stems from personal perceptions of powerlessness or experience in which we feel injured or mistreated by others,” says Stephanie Carnes, PhD, LCSW, a therapist in New York City. “Sometimes hatred can even be rooted in a perceived threat to our survival as individuals, which naturally triggers a strong emotional response.” “Hate is a profoundly intense and enduring dislike for someone or something. Hate can be tenacious, and often has roots in mistrust, fear, or (lack of) individual power, and vulnerability,” says Dr. Carnes.

“Perception is not always reality. If an individual hates a group of people based on stories told by their peers, it’s important to challenge these stories with exposure and education,” says Gideon Javna, a therapist in Richmond, Virginia. 

Anxiety is an emotion that can come from fear, and research indicates hate is often rooted in fear. People who experience high levels of hate may also be more likely to experience anxiety.

Self-hating feelings like worthlessness are one of the symptoms doctors use to diagnose depression, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. When hate is directed outward, the emotion often arises when a person feels helpless, which is another symptom of depression.

When hatred comes from a traumatic event or experience, it’s quite possible that the person also has post-traumatic stress disorder. arising from their childhoods. Dr. Pter Levine, a foremost expert on trauma, says that all trauma is preverbal.

Victims of childhood trauma tend to hate themselves

They provoke others to hate them as well, as they feel more comfortable when despised and rejected. They also hate others, and this becomes their ‘raison d’être.’ This self-destructive behaviour is influenced by the reactions of adults in their environment, shaping their self-states and molding their brains into becoming ‘hate-machines’. 

We were almost all traumatised by our childhoods, but we don’t all becomes haters. In fact, many of us are filled with compassion and love. So, why do haters hate? Narcissists, in particular, love to hate, be hated, and hate to be loved, fearing intimacy and seeking punishment through provoking negative reactions from others. They want people to hate them: And they achieve this by hating others. This makes them feel comfortable and relieved. They feel much less anxious when they are despised, disdained, held in contempt, rejected, humiliated, degraded. These are the opinions of the doyens of child psychology, Donald Winnicott, a paediatrician turned psychoanalyst and one of the forefathers of child psychology, together with Piaget and Unafrad. Winnicott suggested that abused and traumatised children don't dare to hope for love. They dare not hope for love. They anticipate rejection. They predict with absolute certainty, disappointment. They know what's coming. And to protect themselves against this, against hurt, against loss, against disappointment, they hate other people ostentatiously, visibly. They hate as a form of spectacle, as a performance. They act out their hatred or as Winnicott called it, antisocial tendencies. They desire to be hated in return. It is their way of testing the waters. It's a lifelong test. It's a masochistic test. It's destructive. It's self-defeating. It is our reaction to events which constitute the trauma. Epictetus, one of the greatest philosophers of all time, who preceded Winnicott by a few millennia, said, men are disturbed not by events, but by the views which they take of these events. Albert Ellis, the founder of rational emotive therapy (REBT), the forerunner of cognitive behavioural therapy, said that experiences cause no specific emotional reactions. The individual's belief system produces the reaction. Indeed, this insight is integrated into rational emotive behavioural therapy. Boris Sarannik studied trauma in depth. And he reached the conclusion after decades that trauma consists of the injury, but also, or mainly, of the representation of the injury in one's mind. Adult interpretations of events, that is the most damaging post-traumatic experience for children, means that children go through life, or at least through the formative years, pretty oblivious to the meanings, the meaning of what's happening around them. They sail through life, absent-mindedly, so to speak. They pay attention to highly specific things. Even Sigmund Freud, 130 years ago,  suggested that the young mind, the brain, is molded by experiences of trauma and abuse, and generations of scholars after Freud fully agreed, including the latest discoveries in neuroscience, trauma, and abuse shape the brain.

The brain is neuroplastic to a large extent. If trauma and abuse shape the brain, and if trauma is a subjective experience and reactive to the environment, one could safely say that traumatised children, abused children, are shaped by the reactions of their environment to the objective events that are happening. Georg Hegel, who was a German philosopher, said that consciousness of Self depends on the presence of the other. Jean-Paul Sartre decades later said that the perception of the world, including the perception of other people, changes when another person appears. We absorb that other person's concept of the other and assimilate it into our own concept. In other words, we are totally shaped. We shape-shift as people enter our immediate presence.

We are heavily influenced by other people, their reactions, their beliefs, their opinions, their views, their speech, and of course, their actions. In summary, children who are abused and traumatised in childhood develop trauma and post-traumatic conditions because of the reactions of the adults in their immediate environment. The self-states of such a child develop in accordance with input from the outside. The child shapes itself, forms itself, molds itself to reflect the other. Other people around the child come to define the child, and if they react to the trauma in a way that in itself is traumatising, the trauma is actually multiplied. The French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan agreed with these concepts. Charles Horton Cooley called it the looking glass self. He said that we view ourselves based on how we imagine that other people view us. Heinz Kohut, another said that “When a child's needs are not met, a fragmented self emerges, consisting of the narcissistic self and the grandiose self. Eric Byrne said that we harbour, we contain lifelong throughout the lifespan, child, adult and parental ego states.

Fritz Perrins, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, said that a sense of reality is created through perception, the ways we view our experiences and not the events themselves. Donald Winnicot said that the child of a broken home or without parents spends his time unconsciously looking for his parents, and so feelings from past relationships are displaced onto other adults. The child has internalised the hate and sees it even when it is no longer present. And so in this new situation or in new situations, the child needs to see what happens when hatred is in the air. So, they create hatred. There are many ways for the child to express hatred and prove that he or she is indeed not worthy of being loved. This worthlessness is the message that was imparted by earlier negative parental experiences. From the child's point of view, he is attempting to protect himself from the risk of ever having to feel love or to be loved because of the potential disappointment that accompanies that state of being. So, some children who are victims of childhood trauma love to be hated. They are used to be hated. They expect hate. They make everyone around them hate them. That's their comfort zone. They provoke people. They misbehave. They become antisocial. They test everyone constantly. And this is the case with children who later become mentally unhealthy, mentally unwell, for example, narcissists. So, why do some traumatised children go on to try to manifest hate when in others it makes them compassionate? A rare Narcissist came out of the closet and admitted to be diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. They might say that “I love to be hated and I hate to be loved. Hate is the complement of fear. And I like being feared. It imbues me with an intoxicating sensation of omnipotence. I am veritably inebriated by the looks of horror or repulsion on people's faces. I'm devoid of struggles. I'm capricious. I'm unfathomable. I'm emotionless and asexual. I'm omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. I'm a plague, a devastation, an inescapable verdict, a monster. I nurture my ill-repute, stoking it and fanning the flames of (malicious) gossip. It is an enduring asset as far as I'm concerned.” Of course, he who loves to be hated and hates to be loved also loves to hate and hates to love. He fears intimacy. The narcissist's emotional complexity, ambivalence towards significant others, is notorious. His so-called love often comes laced with bouts of vitriolic or even violent abuse and aggression. Rampel and Burris suggested in 2005 that hate is a stable experiential state, that it is an emotion and that it involves a goal-driven motivation to attempt to diminish or utterly eradicate the well-being of the target of hate. The narcissist does not care about his victim's well-being. He just wishes to remove the fount of frustration altogether and expediently. The narcissist's hatred is not stable: It is a transformation of resentment and therefore an aggressive reaction to frustration. The narcissist does hate, abundantly so. The narcissist resents his abject dependence on his sources of narcissistic supply. And by ridding himself of the constant presence of these sources, he seeks to ameliorate and mitigate the irritation and the anxiety that they cause him. Of course, even as he hatefully acts against his sources of supply, his fans, his followers, his subscribers, his lovers, he is terrified of losing them. And he attempts to placate and to bribe them into staying and fulfilling their function. Just go online on social media and you will see how much attention you can reap by being viciously aggressive and overtly violent. It is all about narcissistic supply, of course, the drug which narcissists consume and with which they try to consume us in return. So, narcissists want people, even those who start out by loving them, to end up hating them. They do it because they are sadists. They love to see the discomfort and pain that it causes. The blind rage that this induces in the targets of their vitriolic diatribes, this blind rage provokes in them a surge of gratification, satisfaction, inner tranquillity, not obtainable by any other means. They think less about their pain, but that is the lesser part of the equation: It is their own horrid future and inescapable punishment that carries the irresistible appeal to them. They reject friendships all in order to make people angry at them and hate them because then they know that their punishment is guaranteed. Their own self-destruction is all but done. 

Fostering public revolt and the inevitable ensuing social sanctions fulfill two other psychodynamic goals. The first one I alluded to. It is the burning desire, the need, the drive to be punished, to be hated, to be rejected. In the grotesque mind of the narcissist, his or her punishment is equally his vindication. By being permanently on trial, the narcissist claims the high moral ground and the position of a martyr or a victim: Misunderstood, discriminated against, unjustly roughed, outcast by his very towering ‘genius’ or other ‘outstanding qualities’. To conform to the cultural stereotype of the tormented artist or the mad genius, the narcissist provokes his own suffering. He is thus validated. The persecution of the narcissist is his uniqueness. He must be different for better or for worse. The streak of paranoia embedded in the narcissist makes the outcome inevitable. His persecutive delusions are translated into actions that guarantee their own validity. To be hated is to be real. To be hated is to be true. To be hated is to be right. To be hated is to be just. To be hated is to be virtuous. And above all, to be hated is to be noticed. To be hated is to validate the narcissist's view of the world as a hostile, jungle, malicious, full of malevolence and greed and envy. To be hated is a badge of honour. Deeper still, the narcissist has an image of himself as a worthless, bad, dysfunctional extension of others, a bad object, internal bad object. And so narcissism is compensatory. In constant need of narcissistic supply, the narcissist feels humiliated by this need. The contrast between his cosmic fantasies and the reality of his addiction, dependency, his clinging and neediness, and his typical failure, the grandiosity gap between reality and fantastic self-image, that's an emotionally wrenching and harrowing experience. It is a constant background noise of devilish, demeaning laughter, harsh, unforgiving, unremitting, unrelenting inner critics sadistically in pursuit of the narcissist's sitting in judgment of him, in a tribunal that never adjures and is never satisfied, who presents no evidence. The voices say, you're a fraud and an imposter, you're a zero, you deserve nothing, you're a failure and a loser, if they only knew how worthless you are. Unconsciously, sometimes consciously, the narcissist says to these voices, "I do agree with you, I am bad, I am worthless, I'm deserving of the most severe punishment for my rotten characters and bad habits, addictions and the constant fraud that I've become. I will go out, I will seek my doom, I will make everyone hate me and destroy me."

The science behind why some people love to hate

According to ‘Psychology Today’ The answer to why we hate, according to Silvia Dutchevici, LCSW, president and founder of the Critical Therapy Centre, lies not only in our psychological makeup or family history, but also in our cultural and political history. “We live in a war culture that promotes violence, in which competition is a way of life,” she says. “We fear connecting because it requires us to reveal something about ourselves. We are taught to hate the enemy — meaning anyone different than us — which leaves little room for vulnerability and an exploration of hate through empathic discourse and understanding. In our current society, one is more ready to fight than to resolve conflict. Peace is seldom the option.”

Hatred has to be learned, Bernard Golden says: “We are all born with the capacity for aggression as well as compassion. Which tendencies we embrace requires mindful choice by individuals, families, communities and our culture in general.”

Shakespeare’s 'Midsummer Night's Dream' recounts the tale of two couples who, due to some fairy mischief, spend an enchanted night falling in and out of love before all is righted in the end. At the height of the confusion, Hermia is flabbergasted when her lover, in trying to prove he no longer cares for her, says ”What, should I hurt her, strike her, kill her dead? Although I hate her, I’ll not harm her so.” To which the devastated Hermia responds, “What, can you do me greater harm than hate?”

Through the ages, music, art, and performance have grappled with how to portray hate, its devastating impact, and the relief of giving it up. We’re a society that loves to hate things.

It’s fascinating to think that, as humans, we aren’t born with the ability to hate. Young children can exhibit negative emotions like anger, frustration, or dislike towards certain people or situations. It’s not until they are older and can understand and articulate complex feelings that they begin to hate. 

Many people join hate groups because it fills their need for friendship and belonging. You don’t need to do or be anything special; all you have to do is be negative toward other people. It feels easy. Likewise, some people find it easier to make connections by putting others down and seeing who agrees than to prove to people that they are interesting and valuable companions.

Some people want a scapegoat. When you struggle with problems at work, low self-esteem, conflicts in your relationships, etc., it feels much better to funnel your negative energy into blaming someone else than to confront your role in your problems.

Hatred also surfaces when people are highly insecure. Often, they’ll compare themselves to other people. When they conclude that the other person may be better than them or possess undesirable traits that they don’t want to acknowledge having themselves, people may speak out against that person to project their anxiety onto them.

One thing that I discovered as I studied the psychology behind hate is that it says everything about the hater and nothing about the hated. When you hate someone, what you do is that you take all your weaknesses and project them onto someone else and then hate that person.

When you are hating on someone, what you usually do is that you tell yourself the following, but refuse to listen: “I am insecure in myself, in my identification with my culture and everything. So here is what I am going to do. I am going to take all that and project it onto someone else because if I don’t do it, I am not sure I won’t hate myself to death.

Projecting all that hate onto someone else means that you have got a lot of work to do on yourself to become a whole person but you simply don’t want to have to face yourself and do it.

Those who hate fear themselves: In many cases, what we hate about others are the things that we fear in ourselves. The person you hate in this case can be compared to screen that you project the parts of you that you don’t want. The major idea here is: “I am not that bad, you are!” According to psychology, this phenomenon is known as projection. The idea in this projection is that we always tend to reject what we don’t like in ourselves. We have the need to be awesome, this causes us to project 'badness' outward on to someone else and attack it. This is a thing that our ancestors developed during the early days when people lived in caves. Those days when being accepted into a village was very crucial. If you were rejected and got thrown out of the village, you would get yourself eaten by a strolling hyena in a second. So, what happened, our ancestors developed this technique of repressing things which they thought were bad or what others told them were bad and used them to hate and judge others.

Hate fills a void: Usually, acts of hate are attempts to distract oneself from feelings such as helplessness, powerlessness, inadequacy, shame, and injustice. Similar to anger, hate usually helps us distract ourselves from some form of inner emotional pain inside of us. This internal pain is what I am referring to as a void. People who are usually consumed by hate believe that the only way in which they have the ability to regain some power is to lash out at others and hate them. Those are psychological reasons why people hate.

What about non-psychological reasons why people hate? Haters think life is a competition and they don’t want to lose you. They always want to be ahead of you. They want to have the better car, they want to have the partner who is more loving, they want to own that apartment down the street. So, what happens when they don’t have all that but you have all of it instead? They will hate you. They have nothing better to do with their lives. Imagine the life of someone who has to wake up in the morning without something that they can do except watch TV, upload a photo on Facebook, close Facebook, open Instagram, upload a photo on Instagram, share the link to that photo on Whatsapp groups asking for likes, open Facebook again and check how many likes they have gotten on their latest photo, get angry because no one has liked their photo, close Facebook, open Instagram to check how many likes their photo has, get angry again because Jane or John has 200 likes but their photo only has two likes. You will agree with me that such a life is awful. This person has nothing better to do than to look for some way to prove to himself or herself that their life is actually awesome. So what do they do? You guessed it.. They start hating.

People who hate crave attention: If you haven’t noticed it yet, haters are afraid of silence. They want people to know that they exist. So what they will do is start hating on people and latching out to people. Screaming at the top of their voices: “Look, I am still here don’t you forget! I am not dead yet!” What they are actually looking is some validation. You talking back is enough for them to feel on top of the world. But you don't owe them anything. Cut them out of your life and lead the dead leaves drop: They will rot.

Self-esteem issues causes hatred: You can spot someone who hates because of his or her self-esteem issues from a mile away. These are the people who feel the need to put other people down in order for them to feel good about themselves.

In life, we all want the goodies. The problem is that no one wants to work hard to achieve it. What happens when you finally decide to quit slacking and start going after whatever you have wanted and your friends who didn’t have the guts to do it start noticing that you are flying high? Believe me, they will turn to their number one solution… Which is… hating!

The better part of the humanity occupying planet earth are zombies who have not done the inner work to awaken. So what do you think will happen when these people meet someone who thinks for himself. Someone who questions and critically analyses everything instead of just following the rules mindlessly? They will hate you.

Projection and hating: How to remain calm in the face of projection

This section will describe how to maintain equanimity and victory in the face of projection, toxicity, and conflict. What is projection? How do we remain at peace in a world of toxic drama? What do you do when you meet the 'devil'?

As Jesus said in 'The Passion of Christ' "Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword." Bertrand Russell said "Whenever one finds oneself inclined to bitterness, it is a sign of emotional failure." Be an actor not a re-actor. Silence is a better response than re-acting.

People who blame others are consumed with themselves and by themselves. They self-combust, burn-out, self-sabotage, and self-destruct. Hermann Hesse wrote “If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.” 

Honoré de Balzac wrote "If we all said to people's faces what we say behind one another's backs, society would be impossible."

All conflict is the result of egoic reaction: One toxic ego trying to get a rise out of another person's ego. Epictetus wrote "Difficulties are things that show a person what they are... It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters." Plato said that "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something... Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance." Albert Camus wrote “People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.”

Epictetus said "Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them." The way out of drama is to be equanimous, lean away, to respond, with action if necessary, and never to react. Not responding is a response. Epictetus wrote "First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak." One can choose to respond from a place of peace, from our Higher Self, our Soul, not our ego (the ego is the unconscious frightened inner child), and the options include not responding at all.

Have you ever noticed that those that want a fight with you, because they claim to hate you, are actually pursuing you, either because they love you, or because they hate themselves? It's time to smash the ball out of the match. No-one wins in a blame game.

Your only real opponent is your own Self - who do you choose to play for your side - your frightened ego, or your Higher Self? Once you decide that it will be your Higher Self, you have already won. "The lady does protest too much" said the most famous author in the world, who was also a spiritual Master, William Shakespeare. This phrase could equally apply to men. What 'the Bard' was referring to is the psychological concept of projection. Once you understand it, you will win every battle that comes your way. Our emotional and psychological discomfort is proportional to our denial of our own mental health issues: Carl Gustav Jung embraced his inner chaos and many writers embraced their shadows as a 'nuclear-powered' resource.

As Katherine Anne Porter wrote "Love must be learned, and learned again and again, there is no end to it. Hate needs no instruction, but only wait to be provoked." Those beings who respond to life with hate are 'grievances waiting for a cause'. They either don't know that the problem lies with them, or they are not prepared to face themselves, out of self-hatred.

In a very early version of the 12-step 'Serenity Prayer' the masterful philosopher Plato said "There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot." He continued "Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil... The empty vessel makes the loudest sound." You cannot talk butterfly language with caterpillar people.

Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychologist, philosopher and spiritual Master, said that "Projection is one of the commonest psychic phenomena... Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly." Of the many metaphors used to describe a life in process, the metaphor of a battle is one of the more appropriate. In this battle our own self is both our greatest ally (our Higher Self) and our greatest opponent (our own ego), with a dynamic tension existing between those elements of our personality moving us forward into personal growth and those holding us back. Every person has the potential for good and evil that lies within, and which of these wins is a battle waged within your self. Far too many people set themselves up for defeat as they are unwilling to acknowledge the destructive part of their own BEing. Utilising various psychological defence mechanisms such people do their best to stay ignorant to their faults and weaknesses. In so doing these elements of their personality are relegated to their unconscious and make up the realm of the psyche that Jung called the shadow. The shadow exerts an active influence on our personality and affects our behaviour in a myriad of unforeseen ways. When we behave in a manner which is a product of our shadow,, we treat someone poorly or take part in a self-destructive behaviour, rather than taking responsibility for such actions, most people make use of the psychological phenomenon known as projection in order to avoid facing up to their own shadow. Check out my article on this. 

Projection occurs when we attribute an element of our personality, which resides in our unconscious, to another person. It accounts for most interpersonal conflict. Sigmund Freud believed projection to be a defence mechanism used to avoid the anxiety that is provoked when one is forced to face up to one's faults, desires, passions, transgressions, weaknesses, and destructive tendencies.

Jung, however, stressed that projection was both an inevitable and necessary component in our psychological development as it is one of the primary means by which we can gain an awareness of elements residing in our unconscious. After projecting an element of our unconscious, the healthy thing to do is to recognise the subjective origin of the projection, to withdraw it from the external world, and to integrate this element of our personality into conscious awareness. Toxic people are unconscious and asleep, have not undergone any personal or spiritual growth, and so lack the insight to be able do this. Only by withdrawing our projections and becoming aware of the faults we previously projected onto others, can we ever hope to take corrective measures. This process of withdrawal and integration is a difficult task for it takes courage to face up to one’s weaknesses and dark qualities. But while difficult, this task is crucial in the battle of life, for failure to confront one’s shadow leaves these elements free to grow in scope and influence. In other words, toxic people are hiding themselves from themselves. Their lack of insight makes them increasingly toxic over time. There is no winner in the blame game. Toxic people are joyless, and are never at peace. Jung explains that by trying to appear moralistic, toxic people descend into their own self-created 'Hell' and become the devil: “When one tries desperately to be good and wonderful and perfect, then all the more the shadow develops a definite will to be black and evil and destructive. People cannot see that; they are always striving to be marvellous, and then they discover that terrible destructive things happen which they cannot understand, and they either deny that such facts have anything to do with them, or if they admit them, they take them for natural afflictions, or they try to minimise them and to shift the responsibility elsewhere. The fact is that if one tries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect, the shadow descends into Hell and becomes the devil.” Of course, the devil does not exist, neither does Hell, but the shadow that is uncontrolled is a personal Hell for the person who invokes it.

Through projection, toxic people have a shadow that takes control of them, descends them into their own personally created into 'Hell' and become the devil: They self-sabotage their own joy and peace. They never make it to 'Heaven.'

Those who rely too heavily on projection to shield them from their shadow, who never strive to question whether the image they hold of themselves is perhaps too perfect, go through life forever in need of scapegoats or people on whom to blame all their problems. After driving one’s scapegoat away, it is usually discovered that one’s problems persist nonetheless. This spurs some to look within and to face up to the elements of their personality they have for so long tried to deny. But rather than partaking in this internal reflection, most people merely look for another scapegoat. And then another... Their life becomes a repeated pattern of hate, never loving themselves, and a descent into a personal Hell, forever chasing satisfaction, which is forever out of reach, and losing their mental health, minds and their Soul in the process.

This tendency of scapegoating to occur on a collective level can have dangerous consequences for a society. Those unwilling, or unable, to face up to their shadows, are easy prey for internet troll obsessives and also collectivist movements which have ready-made scapegoats in the form of political opponents, members of different ethnic groups or socioeconomic classes. Scapegoating at the level of collectives, or in other words projecting our problems on to groups of people who differ from us, proves attractive to those who are totally lost. But as Jung recognised there is a tendency within collectivist movements to take this small hook offered by one’s opponents and to hang on it virtually all that is wrong with oneself and the world. When we cast a group of people in this negative light, seeing them as the primary source of all that ails a society, it becomes possible to justify persecution, violence, and perhaps even extermination of the group in question. Projection at the level of collectives becomes even more dangerous as those in positions of power can divert attention away from their own activities, and the harm they are causing, by using propaganda, false flags, and other manipulation techniques, in order to cast blame onto ready-made scapegoats. Such people collectively account for all the atrocities committed in the world and every war that has ever occurred.

The fact is that we are at times so separated from the pure love of our lightness. We are traumatised at such a deep level we don’t even know that we are traumatised. Hence the world is full of traumatised people traumatising other traumatised people. And no-one appears to see that. Jung would have a field-day!

Imagine a hula hoop around you. Everything inside the hula hoop is your business. Everything outside the hula hoop is everyone else's business. Let it go. Surrender it to the Universe.

The Bible seems to have prophesied the concept of projection: In Proverbs (17:20) it states that "A person of crooked heart does not discover good, and one with a dishonest tongue falls into calamity"; in Titus (1:15) it says "To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled."

We are separated from ourselves: And separated from ourselves, we are insane. As Mahatma Gandhi said “The problem with the world is that humanity is not in its right mind.” There is a place that we go into both individually and collectively that is the absence of who and what we are and what we are here to do. It is an inversion of our power. A perversion of our identity. And a subversion of our mission on Earth. The problem is it’s not so obvious when we are not actually there, unconscious in our shadow. That our attacking someone is righteous self-defence even when it is not. At times a person can be so sucked into the black hole of nothingness. That is Hell, not a real Hell, but the darkness within each of us. We must turn to our light. 

Due to the terrible consequences that can emerge at both the level of the individual and of society when we fail to recognise, in the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, that “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being”

It is of the utmost importance that we strive to recognise our shadow qualities and to integrate them into our conscious awareness. Only then will we be in an adequate position to evaluate the true sources of evil in this world. On the other hand, if we fail to recognise the subjective origin of our projections, not only will our own wellbeing suffer, but we will contribute on a global scale to much unnecessary conflict. Jung believed that the greatest danger to human civilisation lay not in the weapons we have at our disposal, but in the inability to understand our own selves. For it is this ignorance, and the failure to face-up to our own weaknesses and destructiveness, that causes what should be an internal battle to manifest itself in the external world. Jung said "Modern people are ignorant of what they really are. We have simply forgotten what a human being really is, so we have men like Nietzsche and Freud and Adler, who tell us what we are, quite mercilessly. We have to discover our shadow. Otherwise we are driven into a world war in order to see what beasts we are." That all sounds very familiar.

Do you know anyone in your life like this? There is nothing you can do to wake up someone who doesn't want to awaken or even realises that what they are accusing you of actually resides inside them. What you can do is choose how to respond.

As Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher, reminded us in 'The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness' “Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realise that your mind is complicit in the provocation. Which is why it is essential that we not respond impulsively to impressions; take a moment before reacting (if you react at all), and you will find it easier to maintain control... I laugh at those who think they can damage me. They do not know who I am, they do not know what I think, they cannot even touch the things which are really mine and with which I live.” If you don't even know who you are, how can you begin to know who others truly are?

Plato reminds us "When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them." He also said "Justice means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns." Plato concludes that "No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death."

Mark Twain reminds us of the nature of thought and confabulation "Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts or happenings. It consist mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever flowing through one's head." The best advice comes from the brilliant Stoic philosopher Epictetus "When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger." When people blame you through projection, it's never about you. It's always about them. Let them go, including any thoughts or feelings about them. 

It is not uncommon to hear in a group, "Why do these things always happen to me?" If these things are always happening to us, the obvious answer is that we somehow bring them on ourselves. We are largely unconscious of what we're doing (wrong) until, slowly, eventually, we manage to dig ourselves out from the results. (It seems incredible that we actually seek to be hurt, but in a way, many of us do so, with regularity.) Blaming others for what are our own problems and indulging in self-pity don’t move us along in spiritual path.

As Epictetus wrote “The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best... Other people's views and troubles can be contagious. Don't sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes through your associations with others... Only the educated are free.” Epictetus continued "To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete." One can only hope that those that try to torment you have read Epictetus "From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress." And that is the Truth. Epictetus has the final word “Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you.”

Those who want to try to destroy you are inauthentic liars hiding behind a mask and smoke-screen who don't mind putting their own lives at risk in trying to attack you out of projection and hatred masquerading as self-love. Does this sound familiar? Their 'house of cards' will come tumbling down in the slightest wind.

As Jesus said in Matthew (7:3-5) "How can you say to your brother, `Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."

Mahatma Gandhi wrote "You must not lose Faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty." Thank God for the ocean...

No one heals themselves by wounding another. Choose your responses carefully...

Imagine a world in which everyone understands that you can't stamp out violence with violence. Imagine if everyone understood that their  wrongdoing can't undo the wrongdoing of someone else. If you retaliate with hate, the hate in the world increases. If you find love in your heart, there's a little less hate in the world. If everyone  understood this and understood that where there's hate, there will  always be sorrow, would they cease to hate? If everyone understood that every hateful thought is a seed that grows into a crop of hate, a crop that feeds all around them, would they choose to plant different seeds? Not everyone understands, but you do. The seeds you sow will become the crop you harvest in your world and the crop that feeds all around you.If only we could understand that being wronged can never be resolved by doing wrong to others...

'How to keep your heart open in Hell' by Ram Dass with After Skool

Haters and negativity

William Shakespeare wrote in Macbeth "Life is but a walking shadow... A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." The world class coach Robin Sharma, also the brilliant author of the wonderful introduction to spirituality and how it leads to success 'The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari', which is on my recommended reading list, wrote “My encouragement: Delete the energy vampires from your life, clean out all complexity, build a team around you that frees you to fly, remove anything toxic, and cherish simplicity. Because that’s where genius lives.”

Until you let go of all the toxic people in your life who don't want to evolve, you will never be able to grow into your fullest potential. Let them go so that you can grow. Don't join them in their de-evolutionary sess-pit. Don't hesitate: Fumigate.

Negative people may be your greatest teachers as they show you how not to be. The greatest success is to not become like them. Forgive them and forget them. As the poet and philosopher Khalil Gibran wrote "I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers." And it's ok to have the feeling of not being grateful: You don't when you love your Self. "The Dalai Lama wrote "This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness." Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the writer and philosopher who helped bring about the Age of Enlightenment,.wrote "What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?"

As Maya Angelou, the writer, scholar, and civil rights activist, wrote "Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean... You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I'll rise... Most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That's the truth of it. They honour their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don't grow up... Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable." By the term 'growing up', Maya Angelou means awakening from the ego.

It's ok to be angry: It really is. It's a positive emotion when expressed authentically and communicated assertively. Suppressing it is often the result of childhood trauma. There are healthy ways of expressing anger. Bitterness, like the taste, is a sign of poison.

Dr Gabor Maté, the foremost authority, speaker, and writer on addiction and compassion, wrote “Depending on circumstances, I may choose to manifest the anger in some way or to let go of it. The key is that I have not suppressed the experience of it. When we flee our vulnerability, we lose our full capacity for feeling emotion. Resentment is soul suicide." Shame can also rule our lives. Dr Gabor Maté wrote "Shame is the deepest of the “negative emotions,” a feeling we will do almost anything to avoid. Unfortunately, our abiding fear of shame impairs our ability to see reality." Negative people live in an ugly world of illusion, subterfuge, fear, shame, lies, and hate. That is not what their souls desire.

As Maya Angelou said "The most boring and the most dangerous people are those self-righteous people who would have you believe they have no skeletons in their closets. In fact, they have no closets. They’re full of baloney. I think that before you judge anybody, you should look at yourself and have enough courage to admit what you see."

Maya Angelou on skeletons in people's closets

Dr Gabor Maté wrote "We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world... Your worst enemy cannot hurt you as much as your own thoughts, when you haven’t mastered them.`` You can only work on your Self, never on anyone else. That's their job. It's not a 'me issue', it's a 'you issue.'

Success involves removing all thoughts, emotions, people and situations that don't bring you peace, love and joy. Negativity does not come from the Universe: It comes from ego: The ego is a liar. Shame is a liar. Trauma is a liar. The problem is that negative, devious, ugly people start to begin their own lies. As Maya Angelou wrote "Don't bring negative to my door." Fortunately, nothing that is of real value can be lost, only the false dissolves on your journey to transformation..

Surrender all thoughts that are not of 'God' (the Universe). Charles F. Glassman wrote in 'The Brain Drain' that "Believing in negative thoughts is the single greatest obstruction to success." The human condition is one where people love, then seek to destroy, then love again. It's always this sequence. Get off this yo-yoing 'not-so-merry-go-round'. Jesus said "Forgive them, for they know not what they are doing." Forgive and forget. 

T.D. Jakes wrote "You must realise that if you are going to reach the heights you have been called to reach, you may elicit some criticism from those who are jealous, petty or angry because they were left behind." Sylvester Stallone said "There's a natural law of Karma that vindictive people, who go out of their way to hurt others, will end up broke and alone." You can bend the laws of physics, but never the laws of Nature. Karma is real.

Joseph Campbell said "Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself." Stay away from bitter fruit and bitter people. As Zig Ziglar wrote "Don't be distracted by criticism. Remember ~ the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you." It's not your job to be a fruit! Tolle says that “The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.” The only true sin is choosing not to wake up to who you could be. It is your choice.

Negativity results from you believing that the world is hostile, because of your experiences as a child. As psychologists say "If it's hysterical, it's historical." Dr Gabor Maté wrote "What seems like a reaction to some present circumstance is, in fact, a reliving of past emotional experience." This is always the case. The world is a playground full of egoic angry people reacting from their unresolved childhood shame and fear. Tolle wrote “When you no longer perceive the world as hostile, there is no more fear, and when there is no more fear, you think, speak and act differently. Love and compassion arise, and they affect the world.” Laurence J Peter wrote "An optimist expects his dreams to come true; a pessimist expects his nightmares to."

Dan Millman wrote "Saints were saints because they acted with loving kindness whether they felt like it or not." As Jesus (who was pure love) said "Cast not pearls before swine." Turn fear into gold; transmute the pain into all that you ever wished.

Nathaniel Branden wrote "There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self-esteem, the more likely one will be to treat others with respect, kindness, and generosity." The converse is also true.

As Tolle wrote to those who are negative "Do not pollute your beautiful, radiant being nor the Earth with negativity. Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let it go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry or hard-done-by person. You will then ignore, deny or self-sabotage anything that is positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon. It is also insane. Pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indigestible.” That’s why those who love a self-pity-party stick together and then race to the bottom of the snake pit. So to the trolls and stalker out there, bon appétit! Try not to choke on our joy.

As Tolle says “Life wants to support you. But first you need to be open to life”

Trolls, the tabloid press, ‘cancel culture’ (a misnomer as no one may judge anyone else and social media has become irrelevant and just a hiding place for people who are inherently inauthentic), and misguided 'institutions' are the cause of mental illness, not the solution to it. They represent impossibility, sickness, limitation, judgement, self-destruction, and death, in themselves; never their 'target'. Gregory S. Parks explains that the “mask” that social media can provide — and the possible anonymity — with trolls creating fake names and fake identities so that they can hide the shame of who they really are, “Reinforces the emotional divide” between a person and the troll (on-line hater), making it easier for the troll to push out hate to their followers.

Not everyone has a soul: There are soulless zombies out there. Not everyone can be present. Not everyone feels emotion. When those people cannot, and will not, have your love; that is unbearable to them as they want to control you, and they are unlovable. Your mistake was to give them temporary relief of their preexisting pain. When you removed your Self from the situation as you realised how toxic they were, they blamed all the pain that they have decided to carry on you. Those people are incapable of giving or receiving real love or compassion, even to themselves and those that are unlucky enough to be close to them, which is why they crave you. So they seek imitation love in the form of vain attempts at it through changing their unacceptable appearance, masks, pretending to be other than who they actually are, cosmetic surgery, inauthenticity, judgement, attempts at financial gain, and mock righteousness; from an ugly place of utter desperation, confusion and being deeply asleep: The irony is that the only thing that is actually ‘broken’ in their lives is their psyche. These people are restless, irritable, discontent and devious persecuting manipulators who cannot find peace. They seek drama incessantly as they cannot bear that people don't want anything to do with them. They are persecutors masquerading as victims. Trolls play games in order to manipulate you into their con as they can't show their true face in public and can't bear being without you. Trolling is online abuse. The intention of trolls is to stir up misinformation and hate through deliberate tactics. The internet has made some people think that they are too perfect and that they can judge others, because no-one knows them, their sins, mistakes and all the shameful things they did without being seen. In the Bible in 1 John 3:15 it states that "Everyone who hates their brother or sister is a murderer."

The Karpman Drama Triangle and Transactional Analysis: Don't believe the con and say no to the Drama Triangle. The psychological explanation for how persecutors attempt to manipulate you by playing games based on lies in order to con you

John Mark Green wrote about such dysfunctional individuals that "Toxic people attach themselves like cinder blocks tied to your ankles, and then invite you for a swim in their poisoned waters." Anne Lamott wrote “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” Tell your Truth, loud and clear.

Yvonne Pierre reminds us most importantly “Don’t let toxic people infect you with the fear of giving and receiving one of the most powerful forces in this world… LOVE!”

Dr Gabor Maté wrote "When I am sharply judgemental of any other person, it’s because I sense or see reflected in them some aspect of myself that I don’t want to acknowledge... We have seen in study after study that compulsive thinkers are more likely to develop disease and less likely to survive. Genuine positive thinking - or, more deeply, positive BEing - empowers us to know that we have nothing to fear from Truth... Strong convictions do not necessarily signal a powerful sense of self: Very often quite the opposite. Intensely held beliefs may be no more than a person’s unconscious effort to build a sense of self to fill what, underneath, is experienced as a vacuum. Compassionate curiosity directed toward the self leads to the Truth of things. Boredom, rooted in a fundamental discomfort with the self, is one of the least tolerable mental states. Work pressures, multitasking, social media, news updates, multiplicities of entertainment sources - these all induce us to become lost in thoughts, frantic activities, gadgets, and meaningless conversations. We are caught up in pursuits of all kinds that draw us on not because they are necessary or inspiring or uplifting, or because they enrich or add meaning to our lives, but simply because they obliterate the present. We must all accept responsibility for our actions, else the world becomes unliveable. Yet it would be a tremendous social advance if we made some effort to understand what experiences turn people into flawed or irresponsible or even antisocial beings."

Steve Maraboli wrote “It's rare for a toxic person to change their behaviour. More often, the only thing that varies is their target and the blame they place. Because some toxic people are difficult to identify, keep in mind that a victim mindset is sometimes a red flag. So, listen when someone talks about their life and circumstances. If the list of people they blame is long… It's probably only a matter of time before you're on that list.”

Jesus said according to Romans 12:10 "Be devoted to one another in love. Honour one another above yourselves." In Mark 12:30-31, Jesus says “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. Love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.’" In Corinthians 13:4-7 Jesus gave a quote that is often quoted in churches and weddings "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the Truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

Compassion, love, kindness, and humility are key to any success. As it says in Colossians 3:12-13 "Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you." In Peter 3:8-9 Jesus says "Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing." In John 3:18 Jesus says "Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in Truth." Be a blessing, Anything else is ego and fear.

Brené Brown wrote "First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see." William Shakespeare wrote "Your gentleness shall force more than your force moves us to gentleness.” He reminded us to smile at negativity "The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief... I must be cruel, only to be kind... How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world... Beauty lives with kindness... Kindness nobler ever than revenge."

Have you ever noticed that those that want a fight with you, because they claim to hate you, are actually pursuing you, which must be either because they love you, or they hate themselves? Ernie J. Zelinski wrote "Misery doesn't only love company. It demands it. For this reason, don't walk away from negative people. RUN!" Judith Orloff wrote "Certain people give off positive energy, others negative. It's the quality of someone's being, a measure of the love with which they've led their lives. It also reflects the inner work they've done, their efforts to heal anger, hatred, or self-loathing, which poison us like toxic fumes." As Mahatma Gandhi said "I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet." Rita Mae Brown wrote that "The price of dishonesty is self-destruction." The choice is yours: Do the inner work or not.

Carl Jung, the most eminent psychologist of all time, believed that the greatest danger to human civilisation lay not in the weapons we have at our disposal, but in the inability to understand our own selves. For it is this ignorance, and the failure to face-up to our own weaknesses and destructiveness, that causes what should be an internal battle to manifest itself in the external world."

Toxic people literally make themselves ill. Dr Gabor Maté explains "What we want and demand from the world needs to conform to our present needs, not to unconscious, unsatisfied needs from childhood. If distinctions between past and present blur, we will perceive loss or the threat of loss where none exists." Resentment is soul suicide. Dr Gabor Maté continues "Strong convictions do not necessarily signal a powerful sense of self: Very often quite the opposite. Intensely held beliefs may be no more than a person’s unconscious effort to build a sense of self to fill what, underneath, is experienced as a vacuum. Shame is the deepest of the 'negative emotions,' a feeling we will do almost anything to avoid. Unfortunately, our abiding fear of shame impairs our ability to see reality."

Tolle says that “The mind is essentially a survival machine. Attack and defence against other minds, gathering, storing, and analysing information – this is what it is good at, but it is not at all creative. All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.” Be a creator, not a zombie.

Sadly, for negative people, as Eckhart Tolle writes about their vain attempts “Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power is within, and it is available to you now. The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, personal and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you... The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality.”

Tolle continues of these individuals and 'institutions' “Fear arises through identification with form, whether it be a material possession, a physical body, a social role, a self-image, a thought, or an emotion. It arises through unawareness of the formless inner dimension of consciousness or Spirit, which is the essence of who you are. You are trapped in object consciousness, unaware of the dimension of inner space which alone is true freedom. Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, and so on, but ultimately all fear is the ego's fear of death, of annihilation. To the ego, death is always just around the corner. In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life. If the thought of lack – whether it be money, recognition, or love – has become part of who you think you are, you will always experience lack. Rather than acknowledge the good that is already in your life, all you see is lack. No matter what you have or get, you won’t be happy. You will always be looking for something else that promises greater fulfilment, that promises to make your incomplete sense of self complete and fill that sense of lack you feel within.” Ignore and forget these toxic people: They are irremediable. Let the outdated institutions crumble: They always do. There is nothing that you need to do.

Negativity breeds contempt. Lewis Carroll wrote “If everybody minded their own business, the world would go around a great deal faster than it does... One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others... If you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison' it is certain to disagree with you sooner or later."

Negative people represent hatred, originating in their childhood fears, masquerading as self love. The self-obsessed 'pity party' that they throw for anyone asleep and foolish enough to take the poisonous bait that is all that they have to offer: Their world represents the basest mechanisms of human dysfunctionality and personality disorders. Like hyenas, buzzards, zombies, leeches and parasites they are actually soul-less repeat offenders and persecutors, not victims, and they scavenge for morsels, hiding behind masks as inauthentic fakes, denying all self-responsibility as adults who are ashamed of their decisions; moving from one 'prey' to another as they ultimately realise that their methods don't work, that they are incapable of loving thoughts and therefore unable to have relationships, but can't admit it to even themselves. It's tragic really. Some people actually live like that. And some people live for that. That's so very sad, and so very true.

Eckhart Tolle wrote “Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of ‘I know.’ Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas... Discontent, blaming, complaining, self-pity cannot serve as a foundation for a good future, no matter how much effort you make.” The tragic story of human history is that those who are asleep judge those who are awake and feel righteous in doing so, yet are full of shame and projection themselves, making relentless yet futile efforts that are a total waste of their own time. Leave them to it.

As Tolle says “If I find here and Now unacceptable, I have three choices:

1. Totally accept it.

2. Change it.

3. Remove myself from the situation.

That is taking responsibility for your life... When you complain, you make yourself a victim.” You can not make an unhappy life acceptable by trying to change someone or something else. You are your problem, your own worst enemy, but you are also your solution, if you choose to be. It’s your choice. The self-pity-party is over. No more hide and seek. No more masks When you judge, then you are simply showing the world that you have no compassion. When you judge, or play the victim, you cannot grow, so you can only make your small self feel better through projection.

If you are poison on the inside, you will never be beautiful, and you will drink your own poison. Atticus wrote "We drink the poison our own minds pour for us and wonder why we feel so sick." Nelson Mandela concluded on negativity that "Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies." Never a good idea. Life just doesn't work like that.

Characteristics of a hater

A hater will look for every chance that he or she can get in order to badmouth you. This is usually done in order to try and recruit new members into his hating team. This they usually do by comparing their pathetic selves with you and then then trying to prove to anyone how you are the one who needs fixing.

Keeping tabs on someone else's life is a full time job for a hater. They have this behaviour of monitoring your affairs. These haters can’t help themselves but ask a close friend or relative details about your life. When they hear your woes… the best day ever. They stalk you online and in the real world.

Haters have no life. Why would someone who has a life waste all their time trying to figure out what is happening in your life? They also don’t have time to create one. Where will he or she get the time needed to do this while all their time is dedicated to investigating yours?

Why do some people hate?

When people become this consumed with destroying someone, it’s because they see something in that person that terrifies them. This is about control, projection, and the fear of seeing their own reflection. The fragility factor: “He’s not playing his role.” For people who see themselves as gatekeepers, that’s unacceptable. So what do they do? They escalate. If they can’t force me into submission, they’ll try to erase me instead. The group mentality: “If we all agree he’s a problem, he must be one.” Most people don’t think independently — they follow the herd. If everyone around them starts treating me like a villain, they’ll believe I must be one. If enough people whisper about how I’m a “problem,” they’ll assume it’s true. They are so deluded that they even come to believe it. If they see a collective effort to isolate me, they’ll assume there must be a good reason for it. This is how hate spreads. It doesn’t need evidence, logic, truth, or even personal experience. It just needs momentum. And once the group has made up its mind, individuals stop questioning whether they’re right or wrong. They’ll dehumanise me because it’s easier than thinking for themselves. They’ll convince themselves I deserve it because it absolves them of guilt. They’ll go along with the hostility because fitting in is more important than being right. Herd mentality removes personal responsibility. No one feels guilty because they all believe the group is doing the right thing. This is why some of these people might not even fully understand why they hate me — they’re just following the script they were given.

The highly regarded thinkers among us: Their levels of regard are so high that they have misregarded everything I have ever said. It’s a rare skill — to regard something so deeply while simultaneously failing to comprehend it. Their dedication to misregardification is unmatched. They don’t simply read — they extract, they twist, they contort my words into the worst possible interpretation, applying their highly regarded critical thinking skills to entirely imagined arguments that exist only in their own heads. They will claim I said things I never said.  They will debate ideas I never wrote. They will react with outrage to arguments they invented themselves. And for that, I must say — thank you for your service. It takes true intellectual commitment to hold this much regard while simultaneously understanding absolutely nothing.

The loss of control: “Why can’t we shut him up?” The ultimate frustration isn’t that I exist. It’s that I exist outside their control. They’ve tried exclusion. They’ve tried public humiliation. They’ve tried turning people against me. And yet — I’m still here an unaffected by the evil of their attempts. That loss of control enrages them. Their usual tactics don’t work on me. They aren’t as powerful as they thought. It says they might be losing their grip on the narrative. So, they escalate again. If they can’t get me to stop with intimidation, then the next tool that they try to attempt is fear. What they really want is erasure. At its core, this isn’t about debate. It isn’t even about punishment. It’s about erasure. They want me to disappear. They want me to stop writing. They want me to break under the weight of their hatred. Because if I do — if I vanish — then they win. Not because they proved me wrong. Not because they had a better argument. But because they think that they have exhausted me into silence. Because that’s how they think that power works. Here’s the irony: The thing they fear most isn’t me — it’s their own weakness. They fear the moment people realise they aren’t as powerful as they pretend to be. They fear the moment their tactics don’t work anymore. They fear the possibility that others will follow my lead and refuse to shrink. This was about sending a message to others: “Don’t be like him. Don’t step out of line. Or you’ll get the same treatment.” But here’s the part they don’t understand: I don’t scare easily. At the end of the day, their actions say more about them than they ever could about me. So let them plot. Let them whisper. Let them rage. I’ll keep doing what I do best — living, writing, and refusing to break. Because that will always be the thing they fear most.

How hatred only hurts the hater

The effects of feeling hatred as a hater over a long period of time can have devastating effects on the mind and body of the hater. Feelings of rage and hatred build up in the mind, body and soul, affecting the body’s organs and natural processes and breeding further negative emotions. Hatred is a form of neurosis, fixation and judgement that is harmful to you. If continued, it leads to conflicts in relationships and to bodily, psychological, and spiritual dis-ease. Research shows that hatred changes the chemistry in the brain. This prepares us to act aggressively when feeling hateful, either to defend or as an attack. This activation also triggers the autonomic nervous system, creating “fight or flight” responses, increasing cortisol and adrenalin. Both these hormones deplete the adrenal glands and contribute to weight gain, insomnia, anxiety, depression, chronic illness, and addiction such as alcoholism. And so the cycle of bodily, mental, and spiritual dis-ease continues. Hatred also triggers the mind to try to predict what the actions of the person being hated may do, as a way to protect you, but this leads to further anxiety, restlessness, obsessive thinking and paranoia, which also then impacts negatively in the way you engage in relationships. Your actions may terminate all your relationships.

It’s important to note that all these reactions affect only the hater, and not the hated, breaking down your nervous – immune – and endocrine system, and your mental well-being. The opposite of hatred is not love. It is mental and emotional detachment. Hatred attaches you to the thing or person you hate. Hatred is an intense repulsion that creates a mirror effect in that it attracts the person back to the thing hated in order to be repulsed by it over and over. Hatred is bitter-sweet as it inflates the ego and makes you feel very superior and self-righteous against the thing or one that is hated, only breeding further pain.

How to get rid of hating: A guide for the haters out there

Before you let someone live rent-free in your head and heart, remember – only YOU, as a hater, will be paying the painful price.

• Acknowledge that you are full of hatred. If you can admit that you are feeling hateful, then you can begin to deal with this emotion and find a solution to the problem.

• Understand why you are feeling hate. Look within yourself and ask why you are upset. Hatred usually comes from a place of fear, insecurity or mistrust as a result of your childhood trauma. 

• Try to catch yourself in your hatred. The mind in its ego state, will perpetuate it by saying confirming labelling statements such as “He’s really such a @*&?*.” 

• When you catch yourself in these phrases, words or actions, stop yourself, recognise that it just feeds your hatred and builds up more anger.

• Take a step back. In the heat of the moment it can be hard to make wise decisions. Take a break, go for a walk or practice meditation until you have calmed down. Take deep breaths and allow yourself to relax. Once your mind is calm, you can will be able to control your emotions in a more efficient manner bringing perspective to your thoughts and feelings. Perform daily spiritual practices.

• Deal with it. Instead of ignoring the issue, try to find a solution to the problem. If the situation is beyond your control, try to resolve it in your head by shifting your mindset. You may not be able to change a particular person or situation, but you can change how you think about them. Or, do what needs to be done, preferably in an even-handed and open-minded way.

• Talk to someone you trust as talking to a close friend, family member or a psychologist about something painful, can help to alleviate the negative feelings you are having. They can often offer valuable advice or guidance.

• Taking full responsibility for our own fear-based reactions involves becoming non-judgemental and curious about ourselves and the people around us. This process generally ask that we slow down and engage in mindful observation of our negative limiting beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and body sensations.. Now we have an opportunity to notice any tension or gripping that arises when we think about someone. We shine the light of awareness onto our own blind spots by doing the inner work of the spiritual path.

• Compassion towards others is the true context that heals.

• Neuroscience offers some insight. Engagement of the prefrontal cortex (the most evolved portion of the brain) allows us to mediate fear-based activity in the amygdala. Mindfulness, meditation, and embodiment practices such as yoga strengthen the functioning of the prefrontal cortex. As we reflect upon our present moment experiences we can choose how to respond rather than default reactivity. Of course, this process requires an openness on the part of the individual to recognise their own beliefs and behaviours that are harmful and a willingness to change.

• Carnes emphasises that coping methods like expressive writing, talk therapy, or spiritual practice are effective options. Hate can cause negative consequences for each of us and for society as a whole. Carnes wrotes that “Unlike some emotions that can become catalysts for motivation or empowerment, hate is a heavy, burdensome emotion that can become toxic.” “Even if the roots of hatred feel justified, the negative net effects on physical and mental health impede our ability to experience fulfilment, connection, and well-being,” Carnes says.

• We can try to ignore haters. We can walk away from volatile situations, and not react or respond to their negative comments.

• We can try to be kind and respectful and not let them get under our skin, hard as that may sound.

• Don’t get sucked into their endless cycle of anger, hate, and self-loathing.

• Social media today is a place for them to hide, a screen masking their true identities while they act out their troll fantasies and insecurities. Block online haters from your devices: Report them to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat. Almost all social media haters are living in a dystopian fantasy world where they believe that everyone is trying to get them, to hurt them: They are frightened people. True haters are sick people. Adolf Hitler was a true hater. 

Conclusions

At their core, haters hate due to childhood trauma, insecurities, low self-esteem, self-loathing, purposelessness, jealousy, deep envy, unrequited 'love', projection, and fears that their own truth will get out.

Love and hate are more closely connected than we think, there just different sides of the same coin. When someone hates you they still deeply love you.

There's a direct correlation between the amount of success you enjoy and the number of haters you have. In the film 'Limitless' Bradley Cooper as Eddie Morra says "Obviously, I miscalculated a few things. Why is it that the moment your life exceeds your wildest dreams, the knife appears at your back? Well, I'll tell you one thing: I will never let them touch me."

In the Bible in Proverbs 10:7 it states that "Hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers over all wrongs.' In Proverbs 10:12 it says that "The memory of the righteous will be a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot." In Proverbs 10:18 it states "Whoever conceals hatred with lying lips and spreads slander is a fool."

Hatred ultimately destroys the hater. Don't get tricked into thinking that you have to carry the burden of hate. You are not responsible for their unprocessed emotional baggage. Hating is not as much about you as it is about the hater. 

If you have haters, then the solution is simple: Ignore them completely as if they don't exist and keep doing what you do. I don’t recommend wasting a single second of your time or energy on haters.

I am reminded of a meme of Leonardo DiCaprio— a picture of him from the 2013 movie The Great Gatsby — where he offers a toast. The meme says, ‘Cheers to all my haters — Be patient. So much more is coming.’ In short, be you, and do not let others diminish your achievements or drive.” Watch this space.

Namaste.

Sending you love, light, and blessings brothers.

Olly

Dr Olly Alexander Branford MD, MBBS, MA(Cantab), PhD.

Fully qualified and certified coach

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