 Practice extreme self care: Make time to do what you love - take in a movie, go to a museum, curl up with a book or take a long hot bubble bath. Pamper yourself! This is your life - enjoy it! Don't worry - dishes aren't going to pack up and leave town. Get plenty of sleep - exhaustion is a main factor in stress - and don't over indulge. Enjoy all holiday goodies, but do so in moderation. Add some moderate exercise and you'll be healthier and have more energy.

 Be thankful for little things: Practice loving simple things in life; playing games with your children, taking a walk on a snowy winter morning, or cuddling with your honey after everyone's in bed. When we open our hearts to happiness, we often find that it's all around us.

 Make peace with flexibility: Celebrate you successes and let rest slide. Learn to go with flow. Take a breath, relax. Don't sweat small stuff.

 Embrace spirit of holidays: Greet each day with holiday spirit and fill your life with kindness, compassion, gratefulness and love.

Yes, there will still be hectic moments and stressful events, but you control extent to which you respond to them. Open yourself to possibility that holidays can be joyous, and you might just find yourself whistling along with some of those Christmas carols.

Be prepared: alert your local law enforcement officers, check out your neighbourhood domestic violence shelter, consider owning a gun for self-defence (or, at very least, a stun gun or mustard spray). Carry these with you at all times. Keep them close by and accessible even when you are asleep or in bathroom.

Erotomanic stalking can last many years. Do not let down your guard even if you haven't heard from him. Stalkers leave traces. They tend, for instance, to "scout" territory before they make their move. A typical stalker invades his or her victim's privacy a few times long before crucial and injurious encounter.

Is your computer being tampered with? Is someone downloading your e-mail? Has anyone been to your house while you were away? Any signs of breaking and entering, missing things, atypical disorder (or too much order)? Is your post being delivered erratically, some of envelopes opened and then sealed? Mysterious phone calls abruptly disconnected when you pick up? Your stalker must have dropped by and is monitoring you.

Notice any unusual pattern, any strange event, any weird occurrence. Someone is driving by your house morning and evening? A new "gardener" or maintenance man came by in your absence? Someone is making enquiries about you and your family? Maybe it's time to move on.

Teach your children to avoid your paranoid ex and to report to you immediately any contact he has made with them. Abusive bullies often strike where it hurts most - at one's kids. Explain danger without being unduly alarming. Make a distinction between adults they can trust - and your abusive former spouse, whom they should avoid.

Ignore your gut reactions and impulses. Sometimes, stress is so onerous and so infuriating that you feel like striking back at stalker. Don't do it. Don't play his game. He is better at it than you are and is likely to defeat you. Instead, unleash full force of law whenever you get chance to do so: restraining orders, spells in jail, and frequent visits from police tend to check abuser's violent and intrusive conduct.

The other behavioural extreme is equally futile and counterproductive. Do not try to buy peace by appeasing your abuser. Submissiveness and attempts to reason with him only whet stalker's appetite. He regards both as contemptible weaknesses, vulnerabilities he can exploit. You cannot communicate with a paranoid because he is likely to distort everything you say to support his persecutory delusions, sense of entitlement, and grandiose fantasies. You cannot appeal to his emotions - he has none, at least not positive ones.

Remember: your abusive and paranoid former partner blames it all on you. As far as he is concerned, you recklessly and unscrupulously wrecked a wonderful thing you both had going. He is vengeful, seething, and prone to bouts of uncontrolled and extreme aggression. Don't listen to those who tell you to "take it easy". Hundreds of thousands of women paid with their lives for heeding this advice. Your paranoid stalker is inordinately dangerous - and, more likely than not, he is with you for a long time to come."

(4) The Antisocial (Psychopath)

Though ruthless and, typically, violent, psychopath is a calculating machine, out to maximize his gratification and personal profit. Psychopaths lack empathy and may even be sadistic - but understand well and instantly language of carrots and sticks.

Best coping strategy

Convince your psychopath that messing with your life or with your nearest is going to cost him dearly. Do not threaten him. Simply, be unequivocal about your desire to be left in peace and your intentions to involve Law should he stalk, harass, or threaten you. Give him a choice between being left alone and becoming target of multiple arrests, restraining orders, and worse. Take extreme precautions at all times and meet him only in public places.