How could you free yourself from that psychopath, just to let it loose to find other victims and victimize them? How could you do that? You should have done something to stop the psychopath from victimizing anyone else. Especially if you knew that is exactly what this psycho would do. How could you?
This is a refrain that you might as well settle yourself with. It will happen. Someone you know, or someone you don’t know at all but has some knowledge of your previous involvement with the psychopath, may approach you, claiming that in some way it is you who is responsible for their being exploited by the very psychopath you were involved with previously.
You need to find a solid form of resolve inside you, and hopefully, you have time to work this out enough to be ready when it happens. You must confidently know and be okay with your first responsibility to your safety, sanctity, and peace of mind.
You know that when you were with this person, it was extremely toxic for you. Regardless of this person’s psychopathy, you were forced to put yourself first. You had to find a way, any way, to get yourself free from the abusiveness that emulated from this person.
Finally, you were able to rid yourself of the psychopath. That is all you know. That is all you could do. As hard as it may be to reinforce the separation between you and the psychopath, plus all your energy is focused on your self-care and healing, this is all you can possibly manage at this time.
It is not your responsibility to try to protect the rest of the world from this predator. You must tend to your own wounds and maintain separation.
I Would Make Sure No One Else is Victimized
A self-indignant person may assert, “If it were me, I would make sure that no one else is victimized by this person ever again.” That is so easy to say, and it feels good to say it. It makes you sound powerful and victorious. But it is said by someone who only imagines his or her superiority in dealing with psychopaths.
This is likely the same person who might seek to blame you for exercising your self-care and protecting yourself from a psychopath, while you released him or her to seek out and exploit new victims.
Know this was not your problem. Even though this is a common statement flung around by narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths, some form of,
“That’s not my problem.”
This is important that you know this is not your problem, and do not apologize for stating such to anyone who might challenge you.
Any of the tools found in the Psychopath Victims Tool Kit are not a one size fits all solution.
Stopping the Psychopath Once and For All
Some psychopath victims do respond self-righteously and seek to avenge or exert revenge on the psychopath. They want to see this person pay for his or her sins and would like to be the one who lights the fire at the psychopath’s witch-like-burning ceremony.
It takes an extremely strong individual who may be teetering somewhere inside the Antisocial Personality Disorder spectrum with an enormous skillset and access to near-unlimited resources to enact such a confrontation.
Keep in mind that psychopathy is a spectrum and if you are standing up against a lesser skilled psychopath, a confrontation and reveal might be effective and give you a sense of victory or courageous vengeance.
Engaging in a battle with a highly proficient psychopath is an all-consuming battle. It will take focusing all your energy and efforts just to engage and keep pace with such a psycho.
I have worked with detectives who assure me of this. Even they, who are highly skilled and trained to investigate and bring to justice these psychos, admit that it is a painstakingly long and hard road to come to a place where they have enough to arrest him or her.
Though the psychopath knows that being handcuffed and booked is nothing to them. The most proficient of them know how to work the system and they know they won’t be held long. Pretty soon they will be back out on the street, only this time, they will know they are being watched, and they will know who the players are.
This makes it even harder for the detective and their team. It is extremely expensive and can take years of gathering information in the shadows to get enough data to make sure that when they are arrested, there is little or no chance that they will be released.
Even so, in the best of circumstances, the psychopath is arrested, booked, retained, has a trial, is convicted, and sentenced for some of his or her misdeeds, he or she will be released once the sentence is served. The exception, of course, might be if the psychopath committed murder or is found guilty of multiple homicides. That is why most psychopaths are not murderers, only the worst of them are.
When a Psychopath is Released
When a psychopath is released from prison, the legal system is satisfied that he or she has paid the price for his or her misdeeds. What do you think the psychopath’s first orders of business are? They are,
- To set up a support system for new victims
- To seek revenge on those responsible for their imprisonment
Most psychopaths can do time easily. Being an offender in jail or a convict in prison is no big deal for them. They just go on about their business conning and victimizing other offenders and convicts. It is business as usual for a psychopath.
All the while, they have three hots and a cot, and maybe 54 channels and Internet access, and all the free time in the world to figure out how they are going to make those responsible for this stay behind bars pay for betraying them.
So when the investigative staff, the prosecutor, the judge, and the jury have taken the psychopath out of play for some time,
Do you blame them for letting them go?
Do you blame them for letting them go and continue to victimize others? No. But you might be tempted to face the prosecutor and as, “How could you do that?”
The psychopath is a psychopath. He or she knows no other way to be.
Since there is no death sentence for psychopaths, except for those extreme cases involving multiple deaths imposed on others, they will always be reoffending. It’s their intrinsic nature.
Even you. You might be disappointed in the fact that the prosecutor was only able to get the psychopath locked up for seven years. You might think that’s not enough. The prosecutor should have sought to protect society better than that.
So, you might blame the prosecutor for letting the psychopath out after serving his or her sentence.
But that is not his or her problem. They, the investigative staff, the prosecutor, the judge and jury, the jailers and corrections officers, all played their part. When the psychopath is released that is not their problem.
And so it is, when you have been entangled with a psychopath and you find a way to get yourself free from the said psychopath, it is not your problem what happens after that. You have played your part, now it is time to focus on you.