First let me explain what I mean by "emotional terrorism." When you have a relationship, at home or at work, with a person who's constantly humiliating you, harassing you, pressuring on you, taking pleasure in your pain, saying negative things about you or making you feel worthless, then you are caught in a situation of emotional terrorism.

By staying in a relationship with someone who feels the need to put you down and beat you up (physically or psychologically), you actually keep on feeding his destructive attitude. It's hard to conceive why so many people stay together with such a partner, but they do. This is because of a belief that they don't deserve any better, that they are not worthy of real love. They lack self-respect and don't really consider getting out of the relationship. They are stuck because the vibrational energy of the dysfunctional relationship matches the low level of their own self-esteem.

People without self-respect attract, by their vibration, abusive individuals who then "confirm" that they don't deserve any respect. The outside world mirrors to you what's going on inside yourself. If you have a partner who is beating you up, then that's because somehow you are already beating yourself up from inside. Does your partner constantly harass you? Does your partner drown you with negative remarks, no matter what you do? Then start by looking to how you are harassing yourself, and how many negative remarks you are aiming at yourself. Being surrounded with negative people is caused by your relationship with yourself being very degrading as well.

Your partner doesn't love you? This first thing to look at is whether you really love yourself. Because if you love yourself, so will your partner. If you love yourself, then it is impossible for an unloving partner to remain in your life. If you maintain a positive inner dialogue with yourself, then you are simply not aligned with a person that is trashing you with negativity. When you find yourself in a long-term relationship with such a person, then this is testimony to how bad your relationship with yourself really is.

Step 1 - First you have to honestly examine the quality of your external relationships. If the quality of the relationship is very low, then break up and leave. It's only fair to take some time to fully make up your mind, but remember that leaving someone doesn't have to take ages. However, your own security is always the first priority. If you are in danger then leave immediately. Later on, when you get back on your feet again, you can still take time to analyze the situation to see how you got involved in such a relationship.

If you notice that your relationship is bad, but there is no immediate threat to your life or well being, then step out of the grasp the emotional terrorist has on you by doing the following. First, understand that someone who has to hurt other people to feel good himself, is a vampire. He sucks your energy up to stay alive himself. These people are sick, both in their head and in their heart.

Probably they had a troublesome childhood and never learned how to love, but this is no excuse for their behavior and surely not a reason for you to stay with them. Don't play therapist in your relationship! Any adult who commits himself to positive change can do it, but it is not your role to bring your partner to a healthy behavior. You will lose time, energy and self esteem. Your efforts will be in vain. Why would this energy vampire make an effort to better himself if he can easily feed off the energy of his victim? Ask yourself this question: "Do I want to be the victim of an energy vampire?"

Everybody who has lived through a vampire-victim relationship knows how difficult it is to withdraw from the grip of such a person. Their tactics are so subtle and covert that it is indeed difficult for the mentally sane person to understand the strategies of the emotional terrorist. Everything they do is set up to make you doubt.

Behold the infernal vampire-victim combination: the vampire pretends to "know everything" while the victim "doubts herself." This combination is fatal, because whenever you see clearly and realize you're targeted by emotional terrorism, the vampire will promptly start acting very friendly just to make you second-guess your conclusion. Whenever you see him like he really is and decide to leave, his strategy is to go back to some kind of honeymoon feeling to make you doubt your opinion. You will say to yourself, "How could I have thought so bad about him? See how friendly he is! Nobody else has ever said such kind words to me." Beware! Don't forget that the vampire will lull you to sleep before attacking! You become less awake, less alert, and when you have been fooled again into thinking he's a friendly person, things go back to "normal" and he attacks again.

His attacks get worse and worse while your defense gets weaker and weaker. He wants to empty you completely, until there is nothing left of you. What he wants (unconsciously perhaps, but that doesn't matter) is to depersonalize you, to cut your ego into little pieces, until you no longer exist as your own person; that's when he has complete power over you.

Step 2 - After examining the quality of your relationship, the second thing to do is to carefully listen to yourself! Instead of listening to that energy vampire, listen to your feelings! Whenever you are experiencing fear in your relationship, you are not in a loving relationship! Love and fear do not go together. Where there is fear, love cannot exist. Take your feelings seriously! Fear doesn't come falling out of nowhere; it is an important signal that something is wrong.

Step 3 - Here's a trick to quickly escape somebody's grip. Make a list of everything the other says just to make you feel bad. Assign a number to each phrase, and learn this list by heart. Now every time he gives you a negative remark, don't react to it but instead go to your list and mark the corresponding phrase. Every night, review your list and keep statistics: make an overview to check daily how many times he used the first phrase, the second phrase, and so on. This will help you to stop reacting to the negativity and to stop feeding it. So don't answer, but just check your list. It will only take a few days to know the list by heart!

Step 4 - Be aware of the fact that an emotional terrorist will not just let his victim slip through his hands without a fight! He will double his efforts to keep you down. Don't stay with someone like that. If it is your partner, leave him. If it is your boss, find yourself another job. If it is your mother or father, keep some distance for a while and go visit them in little doses. Talk to a lawyer if you must. In any case, a person behaving like that cannot be cured in a matter of weeks. If you ask me, he may never be cured at all in his lifetime.

Staying in this kind of fearful relationship is a ticket to hell! So don't stick around waiting for the impossible, but start living your own life. You are worthy of living a life of love, happiness and freedom! NOBODY deserves to undergo such destructive behavior!

Step 5 - Now that you have left that person, you can start to have a look at the relationship with yourself. Do you love yourself? Learn how to love yourself! Make a commitment to yourself never to get involved in such kind of relationships again. Be kind to yourself. If you want to do something for these people, pray for them, visualize how they get healed inside, but don't stay with them. It is not your responsibility to cure them. To destroy yourself is not an option and won't help them out either! You were meant to be loved, never forget that! Take care of yourself!