One thing victims of psychopaths often really want to want to know is whether evil carries within itself the seeds of it’s own destruction. Does the evil a psychopath commits against others ultimately come back to haunt them? Is it true that what goes around comes around?

There is ample evidence that the evil that psychopaths and other toxic characters commit often does come back to them at some point. Evil people are often cunning and clever, but only in a narrow, manipulative sense. They do not see the bigger picture of how lying and mistreating people in the present can set the stage for events down the line to expose them for who they are.

Evil people are by definition not emotionally intelligent, or they would not behave the way they do towards others. They understand how to manipulate or trample over someone to make their life easier today or tomorrow but they are incapable of seeing the bigger schemes of things and understanding concepts like justice and karma.

In any event once a psychopath’s psyche and existence are picked apart, we can see they are living in a kind of constant hell anyway, chronically disconnected from others emotionally and living in a constant state of fear of being exposed for who they really are.

They need to extend an enormous amount of energy every day of their lives to keep up the mask of sanity or the pretense they are a normal, decent person. This in itself revels the frightful and exhausting life they lead and makes us realize we would not want to trade places with the psychopath, no matter what material comforts or power they seem to have.

A Public Example – Lance Armstrong

To illustrate the point that evil does tend to destroy itself, we will look at the downfall of Lance Armstrong as a perfect example. At the peak of his power, the former seven time Tour de France winner seemed unstoppable and invulnerable, despite building his entire run of success on the back of illegal doping and constant lying to cover it up.

The lengths he went to to cover up his cheating and discredit and suppress anyone who sought to question or expose him was undoubtedly evil. He showed a psychopathic callousness and coldness in the way he treated anyone who spoke the truth about what was going on with doping in the sport.

He acted completely ruthlessly and had no problem destroying the careers and livelihoods of anyone he saw as a threat or an obstacle. His behaviour caused suffering for a great many people, including Emma O’Reilly, David Walsh, Betsy and Frankie Andreu, Christoph Bassons and anyone else who opposed him.

David Walsh: “If you want to look at what brought down Lance Armstrong you need to look at Lance Armstrong, not David Walsh”

However, as David Walsh mentions in the above video, this is the very type of behaviour that sowed the seeds of his own downfall. Psychopathic bullies like Armstrong could relate to shutting someone up to make their life easier now but they cannot grasp that they may do something which will come back to them months or even years down the line.

This is what Walsh means when he says that Armstrong had a cold, calculating kind of intelligence, but not an emotional kind of intelligence that can see the bigger picture of “what goes around comes around”.

As an example of this, Floyd Landis, Armstrong’s former friend and teammate, reaches out to him after returning from a doping ban himself. Trying to rebuild his cycling career, he asks Lance for a ride with his team. Armstrong tells him to get lost.

Walsh details how this arrogant rejection by Armstrong basically sowed the seeds for his own downfall. He pissed off someone who would later turn into a very powerful enemy and according to Walsh, the testimonies Landis later gave against Armstrong and his doping are what really set the ball rolling in terms of the official WADA and USADA investigations and his eventual public disgrace and life ban from cycling.

Put simply, evil people may think they can trample over whoever they like to get where they need to go, but sooner or later they will trample on someone who will later have the power to bring them down or expose them. They will pick a fight with the wrong person or make an enemy out of someone they shouldn’t.

Another way in which Armstrong brought himself down is through his return to cycling in 2009 after retiring in 2005. Again this was motivated largely by money but also possibly an arrogant egotistical belief that he was untouchable and his lies would be believed forever more.

Even Armstrong himself now admits that if he had not come back he would never have been caught and exposed. But he couldn’t help himself and this is what brought him down.

So the case of Lance Armstrong is a perfect example of how the evil that psychopaths commit, and arguably even the very nature of their personality and egoism, sets in a motion a series of events which eventually comes back to bite them. They may happen a long time down the line but it does appear to happen.

The Recovery Movement

Another example of this principle in action is the entire psychopathic abuse recovery movement which has sprung up online in response to the experiences of so many people who have had toxic, evil people in their lives. See our blogroll on the sidebar for just some of the resources that are available.

The movement is widespread, including books, blogs, and videos on toxic relationships, and is designed to disperse information on the subject of psychopathy and evil in general to help people better spot, avoid and escape these people whenever they show up in their lives and also recover from the damage they have done. See our Resources section for some of the best books on this.

Much of this work is being done by survivors of psychopathic abuse and evil in general. They are putting their painful experience to use by providing resources to help others in the same position understand and escape toxic relationships more quickly and effectively.

In others words, by committing the evil they do, psychopaths are bringing into existence an entire movement which is helping to expose them. The information and insight this movement is spreading will eventually become mainstream knowledge and psychopaths will find it far more difficult to stay hidden, since there are a set of easily identifiable traits which will always give them away to the informed observer.

Psychopaths Cannot Hide Forever

In a very broad sense this is also an example of how evil sows the seeds of it’s own destruction. Of course this process will take many years to play out but the moment a psychopath is exposed, they lose. They currently depend on knowledge of psychopathy not being mainstream or widespread, and move on to pastures new if they are found out.

What will they do though if everyone knows about the basic traits of psychopathy and knows how to spot them? They currently flourish because only a small number of people truly know about them and they can easily manipulate the rest. The growing literature on psychopathy is spreading awareness of them and sowing the seeds of there being no place for them to hide anymore.

They can be very clever and manipulative, and some of them also read up on the literature on psychopathy so they can camouflage themselves and deceive others more effectively. However, certain indelible traits will always give them away, no matter how much marsipan or superficial charm and charisma they lay on top of what is essentially and completely toxic and disordered psyche.

It is getting people to focus on these fundamental traits which will help to expose psychopaths even among the general population, instead of getting caught up the psychopath’s constant deception, blame shifting and denial which they are well known for. See our Checklist guide for some our our key traits to look out for.

Evil people are emotionally and spiritually arrested people, or else they wouldn’t be doing what they are doing. Hence, it is always possible to “back them into a corner” metaphorically and see them for who they are, no matter how much they try to conceal their true nature and how good their so called “mask of sanity” is.

A psychopath committing psychological and spiritual evil on another is sealing not just their own fate but the fate of all similar predators in that they are drawing out a counter response of literature and resources on the subject which are exposing their crimes and methods for all to see.

This is why we encourage all victims of evil to get their experiences out in whichever form they feel comfortable doing so. Everyone who has been in this position can add something unique and helpful to the resources on this which can help a similar person going through a similar experience somewhere in the world.

In this sense, we argue there is a natural order and cycle to things where evil brings about it’s opposite and ultimately generates a reaction which will lead to it’s eventual downfall.

Evil does tend to consume or destroy itself eventually as the Ouroboros symbol depicts, but annoyingly many victims never get to see this justice

A Frustration For Victims of Evil

However, we should mention one glaring annoyance for many survivors of evil, mainly that many of us don’t get to see justice done to the people who abused us. It is all very well us saying that we believe what goes around comes around, but where is the actual proof in our own lives, one could ask.

We can’t argue with this point. Not seeing some kind of justice done can be immensely frustrating for survivors of evil. Some people manage to let go of their grievance of how psychopaths and other evil people treated them more easily than others. Some people suffer psychological after-affects for months or years. They want to see justice done and many don’t.

The picture is further complicated by the fact that the standard (correct) advice when unplugging from any toxic relationship is escape and evade, and no contact after you get away, cut off all ties and don’t look back. This is totally correct advice but if you follow it you never get to see if they got what they had coming to them. You don’t get the see any justice or comeuppance for the evil person and this grates with a lot of us.

It is difficult after psychopathic abuse. The smirking pleasure many of them get in controlling, dominating and undermining others is difficult to deal with afterwards. Psychopaths know they are controlling you and want you to know that they know. It is about power and ego and dominance for them.

No matter how much you know on some level they are evil pathetic people, you still want to see them pay for what they have done; to see justice done to them, not just be convinced it will happen sometime down the line.

We don’t have a magic pill or easy answer to this. Some people get this kind of justice but many don’t. It doesn’t seem fair. All victims of evil should get some kind of recompense for what they suffered. The only option for the good person is to focus on oneself as much as possible and do whatever you can to help others in a similar position to you.

In the meantime there are some home truths about psychopaths and evil people in general which emphasize the fact you would not want to trade places with them. Here are some of them:

• Evil people live in a constant state of fear and dread they they will be exposed for who they really are.
• To prevent this exposure, they must expend an enormous amount of energy every day of their lives to keep a pretense or “mask of sanity” up to the world. Imagine having to do this every day?
• Psychopaths often do have to move around a lot as they get “found out” and exposed in a certain area and so have to move on to new environments and seek out new targets who are not “on to them”.
• Whatever appearance or persona they try to project, psychopaths are miserable, empty people inside, able to do superficial chit-chat but unable to connect emotionally with others.
• They often take pleasure out of the sadness or misery of good people. This though is just a personal confession of their own internal misery. They are not happy in their own lives and so delight in the unhappiness of others. The mindset is pathetic and childish.
• This leads back to the chronic envy many evil people have of others. Envy is only ever directed above, never below. Again, you would not want to trade places with an envious person.
• Psychopaths initially gravitate towards high quality people because they can see in them traits they don’t have. But their psychological makeup means they can never have these traits. Remember that.

See our Resources guide page for more books and videos on the subject or evil, psychopathy and recovery from toxic abuse.