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Exposing a Sociopath: Should You Warn a Sociopath's Next Victim?

We've all been there. Through a lucky Google search, you come across your first few articles about psychopathy and everything starts to fall into place.

  1. Peace
    We've all been there. Through a lucky Google search, you come across your first few articles about psychopathy and everything starts to fall into place. It's uncanny, overwhelming, infuriating, horrifying, and a lot of other awful emotions.

    For many of us, our first reactions are:

    1. Expose the psychopath
    2. Warn the next target


    It's so tempting to take some triggering words from an article you just discovered and send it along in an impulsive email, proving that you know exactly what they are.

    Please don't do this.

    Here is the assumption: The psychopath will be scared that you know what they are, finally wiping that superior smirk off their face. The next target will read your letter and recognize all of the red flags and dump the psychopath immediately. You'll become best of friends and have coffee together everyday.

    Here is the reality: The psychopath will use your words to prove to the world how obsessed, bitter, and crazy you are. You have to keep in mind that very few people know or care about psychopathy. So instead, they'll see someone who's still in love and can't handle rejection. Your frantic messages will be used to triangulate the target, making them feel even more special & desired, using your "craziness" as a bonding mechanism.

    Absolutely nothing good will come from doing this. When you were being love-bombed and idealized, would you have been swayed by a message calling your soul mate a psychopath?

    If you had a great experience exposing people and now you're good friends with the next target, yay! But your experience is the minority, and we ask that you not encourage others to do the same thing, especially those in the early months of recovery. Additionally, sharing content from PF puts the content's author and the entire community in danger. We've received death threats, hurtful insults, and demands to stop sharing their "secrets". This forum is intended for survivors, not for psychopaths and their carefully groomed fan clubs.

    If, like me, you've already done these things, don't worry about it. Life goes on, and in some cases it actually does work out great (I'm sure in retrospect, all of us would have loved a warning). Plus, no matter what, it's an opportunity to learn. There is no shame in feeling that overwhelming need for justice, especially after what happened to you. But you deserve to be happy, and happiness starts with No Contact. Your heart needs a lot of time & love to start healing, but that can't happen when your energy is focused on influencing an extremely toxic dynamic.

    Stick around here, vent all you need, write out unsent letters—these are all essential parts of the process. As thousands of members will tell you, it gets so much better, and there will come a time when you just could not care less about the new relationship. As days become weeks, and weeks become months, you'll completely forget about how long it's been and start living life for you. That is what PF is about. Cultivating self-respect, gentleness, and happiness.

    If you've ever felt frustrated by an abuser who always seems to escape justice & karma: Imagine waking up every morning with an overwhelming boredom that plagues your every waking thought. Imagine never being able to enjoy any form of consistency or happiness because of that nagging boredom. Imagine looking at your "friends" and "loved ones" and seeing nothing more than objects to use at your disposal—jesters for your daily entertainment. Imagine feeling no connection whatsoever to those people, beyond what they can offer you in this particular moment. Imagine being unable to feel love, vulnerability, trust, and compassion. Imagine the only highs in your life coming from sex, drugs, and conning people. Imagine every one of your relationships following an identical pattern, leaving behind a trail of destruction and confusion that you carefully planned. Never, not for one second, feeling or experiencing the beautiful things all around us that make this life worth living.

    It's hard to see when they're waving their "happy" life around for everyone to see, but the very core of a sociopath's existence is justice enough.

    Closing with a thought from the book:

    I wish @HealingJourney's amazing article was written before I said there's no closure, because there is:
    https://www.psychopathfree.com/content.php?305-Closure-Without-Contact



    Some more resources on the topic:

    Claudia Moscovici:
    http://psychopathyawareness.wordpre...you-warn-the-other-victims-of-the-psychopath/

    @Smitten Kitten:
    https://www.psychopathfree.com/showthread.php?1784-Should-You-Warn-the-Other-Woman

    A Letter to the Other Woman:
    https://www.psychopathfree.com/cont...o-the-Other-Woman-A-Letter-to-the-Other-Woman

    Why Do Psychopaths Put Us On The Defense?
    https://www.psychopathfree.com/content.php?146-Why-do-psychopaths-put-us-on-the-defense

    "All of My Exes are Bipolar / Crazy / Hysterical / Bitter / Jealous / In Love With Me":
    https://www.psychopathfree.com/cont...azy-Hysterical-Bitter-Jealous-In-Love-With-Me

    I've written a new book about long-term healing. Whole Again is now published! If you would like to be notified about future books, you can enter your email address below. This is not a mailing list. Just a one-time notification:

Article Author: Peace