Escape from Cruel People

At the risk of sounding dramatic, this little article may save your life

Supergirl, Action Comics # 253, 1959, by Otto Binder and Jim Mooney.

One night many years ago, I was having dinner alone at a restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Without intending to eavesdrop, I overheard two women at an adjacent table. They were clearly longtime friends, sharing what seemed a familiar, comfortable meal. But suddenly one of them said through tears: “You are so mean to me.” Her companion replied, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

This exchange, I later realized, reflects an unspoken crisis that touches nearly all human relations: cruelty.

If you are in proximity to people who dimnish you, make you feel inferior, make subtle jokes at your expense, devalue your efforts or aims, deliver backhanded compliments, pretend to forget your job, or what you said five minutes earlier—whatever it is such people do to reduce you—I can say assuredly: you are not imagining things. Although your antagonists will assert that you are. Plausible denial is the chief tool of bullies or purveyors of cruelty.

Our culture is staggering under stress—and a good deal of it, I believe, emerges from the silently abided agony of relationships, random or close, family or professional, intimate or distant, longtime or new, steeped in cruelty. This crisis endures because it is unidentified—or when it is identified, its nature is watered down and effectively denied.

Nor are workable solutions presented. I believe that far too much is made of forgiveness, acceptance, or methods of verbal jujitsu within our spiritual and therapeutic cultures. Even as therapeutic language and concepts abound, cruelty ranks among the least-discussed aspects of human relations, albeit we sometimes categorize it (with fairness) under narcissism. Nonetheless, the problem of cruelty is often explained away or layered over with discursive and indirect approaches that burden the subject with fixing things. All is discussed except the one solution that actually and perennially works: getting away from cruelty without compromise.

We are taught to consider this solution last, if at all, and even then to over-­ponder its consequences. And there are consequences. But usually of a far-lesser pitch than imagined. Think of it: escape is as close and as real as the words you are now reading. Act on this and your life, happiness, and sense of self will improve dramatically. You may rediscover yourself as a person of conviviality and relaxedness. This works when nothing else does. I vow from experience.

Read the following words carefully. When you identify cruel people, never confront them or tell them you see through them. They will only twist your claims against you, as did the interlocutor in my story above (“what do you mean?. . .you’re too sensitive . . . I’m only joking . . . logically, what I said was. . .I have every right. . .”). The point is not to engage and get wounded again—it is to separate.

Cruelty and hostility run riot in social circles because antagonists enjoy it—and victims accept it. But this is not a requirement of life. Indeed, I believe we sustain too many relationships. If you factor in social media (itself a rampant source of cruelty, which I will address in a future article), we probably encouter more people a day than our ancient ancestors did in a lifetime.

It is vital, first and foremost, to physically separate from cruel, bullying, or depleting people. No amount of self-­acceptance, acceptance of others, or verbal skill will build immunity to a relative, parent, boss, coworker, or “friend” who makes sport of running you down or who chronically directs subtle barbs at you.

It is all the more difficult when “stealth missiles” are fired at you in settings of ostensive relaxation, like dinners, outings, or parties. Subtle insults take you off guard and leave you nursing “woulda-shoulda” regrets of what might have been said. This is a waste of energy. Emotion is faster than intellect and more powerful. You are overwhelmed and stymied when insulted unexpectedly or subtly. This is a universal problem. More important than analyzing or understanding cruelty or hostility, or your response to it, is separating from it.

You cannot survive sustained hostility nor should you be expected to. This is true inasmuch as a houseplant cannot survive absence of sunlight or water. Such conditions are unnatural and unnecessary. Questions of forgiveness, understanding, and acceptance, whether of self or another, can be explored after you have gotten to safe ground.

The name of success writer Napoleon Hill is controversial today, and for valid reason. I continue to abide Hill’s work, which I will soon write about in this space. Until then, I ask that you take this words seriously. He was a shrewd observer of human nature. In 1945, Hill wrote:

One must remove himself from the range of influence of every person and every circumstance which has even a slight tendency to cause him to feel inferior or incapable of attaining the object of his purpose. Positive egos do not grow in negative environments. On this point there can be no excuse for a compromise, and failure to observe it will prove fatal to the chance of success.

* * *

Some people feel unable to separate from a cruel antagonist due to family ties or financial needs. I sympathize with that—and offer this three-part approach:

1. Be certain that the bonds you feel are actual and not artificial. Fear of disapproval is not a valid excuse for remaining in proximity to a cruel person. Just because someone will disapprove of your decision is not a real bind. Every decision carries consequences; the positive consequences of distancing from cruelty almost invariably outweigh the negative. Another person’s judgment must not deter you. If it does, that is self-­created.

2. If you have determined that you authentically wish to separate but are financially or otherwise bound, vow first to separate from the person internally. Acknowledge to yourself their cruelty and admit its grotesque and destructive nature. Never tell the other person what you are doing or thinking. Silently abide your insight. Remember: cruel people always have plausible denial. It is part of how they maintain their hold on you. Just knowing this makes you more powerful.

3. Vow to separate from the offender as a physical fact at the soonest possible opportunity. This opportunity will come, and probably sooner than you think. This is because effort sustains and fortifies growth. When you place yourself within the schema of effort, which these three steps are designed to do, opportunities for expansion and movement reach you. But the first and crucial step is determining that escape is what you really want.

   * * *

I consider abolitionist hero Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) a voice of universal moral relevance. I want to recount a story from his life, which holds a critical lesson for people of every era and situation, even as it must also be understood within its historical context.

Born a slave in Maryland around 1818, Douglass was separated as a young child from his mother—a woman who walked miles from another plantation for the rare occasion of rocking him to sleep or giving him a handmade ginger cake. Douglass grew into a self-­educated teen determined to escape north and never accept the role of complacency to a cruel overseer.

But, as Douglass recounted across all three of his memoirs*, in January 1834, on the eve of his sixteenth birthday, he found himself delivered into the hands of the worst of them, Edward Covey—known locally as “the breaker of Negroes.”

A few years earlier, Douglass had been a domestic servant in Baltimore. There the burdens of slavery—the hunger, beatings, daily humiliations—were tempered by the surface civility of city life. The wife of his Baltimore household briefly taught him to read, until her husband abruptly ended the lessons. But Douglass discovered ways to keep building his literacy through whatever books or newspaper scraps could be found.

The Baltimore family soon rearranged its household, and Douglass was returned to plantation life. His new master in St. Michaels, Maryland, was suspicious: Could a teen who had tasted city life still work the fields? To be brutally certain, at the start of 1834 he “loaned out” Douglass for a year to Covey, a petty, cruel farmer who used every opportunity to beat his new charge on trumped-­up offenses.

The beatings grew so severe that by August, Douglass snuck back to his old St. Michaels household to beg for protection. The youth, still bruised and caked with blood, was turned back to Covey’s farm. Once there, Douglass hid all day and into the night in the woods outside Covey’s fields, not knowing what to do.

To Covey’s shock, Douglass did return to the farm. But when the beatings resumed, the youth stood up and fought back. For two hours one morning the two struggled, and Covey could not get the better of him. (I recount the full episode in my 2009 Occult America, where I focus on role played by the Black magickal tradition of hoodoo.)

Embarrassed by his inability to control a teenager who finally said enough, the slave master backed down. For Douglass, it was a moment of inner revolution from which he would never retreat. His act of self-­defense, he wrote, freed him in mind and spirit, leaving him to await the opportunity to finally be free in body.

Even though Douglass repeatedly identified his resistance to Covey as the turning point of his life, it is important to note that he actually did not escape for more than four years. He made plans and was caught in 1836 and finally succeeded in September 1838 in fleeing from Baltimore to New York City.

But Douglass wrote that he was free in spirit the morning he asserted his own sense of personhood. I would never over-­extrapolate the narrative of a brutalized and enslaved person to the experience of most of us reading these words today in physical comfort and safety. That would be a grotesque misapplication. At the same time, however, a universal moral arc appears in Douglass’s account, and I see him, in addition to being an abolitionist and memoirist, as an ethicist and philosopher.

If you have read carefully, you will detect my effort to encapsulate something of his narrative’s lessons in the three points noted earlier. Again: in Douglass’s life, escape required four years to emerge as physical fact.

* * *

I want to describe how I advised a former neighbor in dealing with issues of cruelty. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy rocked New York City and many people lost power for days or weeks. (Curiously, the hoodoo practitioner who aided Frederick Douglass was also named Sandy.) A friend, whom I will call Carol, was stuck in a high-­rise building with a young son who was suffering from a fever. She had no power, no elevator service, and could not leave the boy alone. Her husband was out of town.

She made arrangements to take the boy and stay with her mother-in-­law and father-­ in-­law, who lived in a luxury high-­rise in a nearby suburb. They had full power. It seemed like a perfect and necessary solution. But as Carol told it—she is a mature person whose account I take seriously—her mother-­in-law, with whom she’d had problems previously, was cruelly unwelcoming.

At every turn, the woman made Carol and her recuperating son feel unwelcome and intruding, even though Carol did her best to be a thoughtful guest. At one point Carol told her mother-­in-­law to please try and understand how difficult this situation was and how she needed a pinch of tolerance. “Well, this is no picnic for me either,” was the woman’s abrupt response.

Carol was deeply hurt by the experience. She recalled other times when her in-law had acted slighting or hostile. She was understandably upset. No stranger to therapy, spirituality, or self-­help, she had tried for years to navigate and leaven the situation, but without success.

I told her: “Carol, have you considered that you could simply separate from this person? If her behavior is perpetually hostile, you could simply say no to holidays and other contacts. There may be consequences, but there are already consequences—you’re in pain. Why be around her?”

She explained that she wanted her son to be raised within a family circle, and to have adults who could serve as role models and sources of dependability. I noted that her mother-­in-­law was neither of those things, and her son already had positive adults in his life.

I could see that she was energized by the prospect of an option. I did not feel it my business to push the point further. I do not think the separation ever occurred. But I wanted my friend to at least glimpse a broadened possibility. It is powerful simply to know that the choice exists and can always be renewed or revisited, however you go. The point is: you do not have to be around cruel people. There are consequences. In Carol’s case, her husband presumably would have objected. But everything carries consequences. They are usually milder than imagined.

And benefits abound. Once you actually separate from cruelty, you will be amazed at how many other facets of your life improve. In many cases, you will rediscover yourself as a person of humor, even-­temper, approachability, and steadiness. In that vein, I have been astonished to observe how many problems attributed to character, trauma, dysfunction, or over-sensitivity (a charge that cruel people almost always use to control you) suddenly lift once you are in the right company.

I believe that our therapeutic culture—positive as it has been in many ways—has inculcated many of us with the myth that our problems perpetually follow us unless we resolve psychological root causes or embrace correct “strategies.” That is true in some cases. But in many cases I believe that children and adults are simply and egregiously misplaced. They are in the wrong kinds of company where they may feel bullied, misunderstood, or disdained. An altered setting can work dramatic changes, both personally and professionally.

I have been in settings where I had neighbors who were inconsiderate or hostile. Where my every effort at rapprochement ended disappointingly. I used to own a lake house in Upstate New York. When I drove up and saw my neighbor’s car in his driveway my stomach would tighten—and this was a place for relaxation!—because he perpetually encroached on my property with noise, errant fireworks, twenty-four-hour spotlights, crowds, a garish floating dock anchored in the middle of the lake, and a not-infrequent wisecrack. He was, in short, an asshole. No effort, from spiritual affirmations to personal appeals to a high fence made much difference.

There was one solution. Moving. When I finally moved I felt great. I had been in the wrong setting. I am mindful that moving or breaking ties is not always possible. I owned that house for fifteen years. I walked away at a loss. But I want you to understand that sometimes the only solution is using your feet.

If you absolutely cannot separate from someone at present, for reasons of economics, domesticity, or livelihood, revisit the story about Frederick Douglass. Swear silently that you will first separate from this person as a fact within—tell neither them nor anyone else of your vow—and you will free yourself as a physical fact at the soonest possible opportunity.

In the face of cruelty, most of us behave like sheep. But have you ever really observed sheep? One kick from a sheep can break a grown-­man’s ribs. Your kick is your escape. _______

*Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845); My Bondage and My Freedom (1855); and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1893).