BY DR. LAUREL CASEY

MY EXISTENCE disturbs a great many people. This causes me much distress because the backlash from their envy is severe.Your mother told you that sticks and stones can break your bones but words can never hurt you. She was wrong. A word whispered in resentment behind your back can unravel a dream and send you to the poor house. A lie can possibly destroy you.

There aren’t many fact checkers out there. Most of us believe what we hear, no matter how lowly the source or how obvious the intent to hurt.

Even if we take the information with a grain of salt, it sticks with us and taints our opinion. It is frightening to think that we accept our gullibility, that it comes so naturally as to be comforting. We don’t have to think; someone else is doing it for us.

When a person has it in for you, you have a big problem and two choices: You can crawl into a hole and rot – making their dream come true, or you can stay as far away from them as possible. That is the advice of Dr. M. Scott Peck in “People of the Lie,” a frightening book about the existence of evil. The creeps who are out to get you don’t have red horns or carry guns. They are often “friends”, often friendly and completely oblivious of their motive. In their minds, they are not trying to hurt you. They’re just telling it like it is, for example, warning a third party about you in a gesture of concern.

There is a third choice, supporting the creed: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” presumably so that you can keep an eye on them. Since most of our enemies are also our “friends”, even family, this makes sense, but I don’t support the premise. If you start thinking in this way, you will become paranoid, and since you cannot prevent these people from raining on your parade anyway, it isn’t worth the sacrifice of your mental health.

Sycophants surround us. You already know it because they’re so transparent. What keeps you from dealing with it is the horror. You just don’t want to believe it, and I don’t blame you. But you must. My conclusion: there are two ways to diffuse the venom. One is to practice the Buddhist principal of Compassion. If you take a close look at these poor souls, you will see that they are not as beautiful, witty, talented, smart, or modest as you are. If they are God’s Gift to the Universe, and more, they are still starving. They hunger for you. Put yourself in their insatiable shoes. They must endure their self-imposed inferiority, their envy, and, worst of all, their undignified manner of living. They are also stupid. If they could find it in their brain to be truly selfish, they would realize that the people they envy could and would happily help them attain what they covet.

A second offense is love; it’s about people who love you and the people you love. The people who love you can’t protect you from the creeps, but they will console you. The people you love, on the other hand, are your salvation because your focus is naturally on their welfare instead of your own. When you get kicked down, you may hardly notice it. Someone you love needs you. You get up, for them.

If you are one of the hungry ghosts, I salute you for not killing yourself. I know your poison. Schadenfreude variations are universal and inherent in the human condition. I, for one, envy your shamelessness and the fact that, in this world, you will not only survive, but thrive.