If you’ve been a victim of a psychopath’s exploitation and/or abuse, you are going to need some victims-of-psychopaths emotional support post haste. Start with establishing a new routine to make the sacred space to deal with the grief and find a way to release all that pent-up emotion.
Establish Routine
One of the best ways to get back on your feet is to establish healthy routines around the hours of your life. This type of rigid structure will make your actions predictable, which is easily defensible in court. You will be able to easily account for where you were at what time on any specific day of the week.
Defensible structure aside, routines are followed by someone who has suffered significantly enough to have experienced the loss of personal power, self-confidence, sense of contribution, and zest for life, and will find comfort in routine. This will help give the victim enough emotional relief and sacred space necessary to build personal characteristics that were lost during the psychopathic enmeshment.
Set daily and weekly schedules for yourself that are reasonable and easy for you to stick to. If everything spins out of control, you can help regain your personal power by taking control of the things that you can control. Establishing your schedule is something you can take complete charge of. Doing this can help put you back into the driver’s seat of your life’s journey from this point forward.
Second Thoughts, Rumination, and Feeling Bad
Even though your psychopath victimized you, on the one hand you despise this person, on the other, you cared deeply for this person. It is expected that you might feel remorseful, regretful, sentimental, or have sincere empathy toward this person. It’s as if you lost someone you trusted and loved, and you did.
Now that he or she is dying or dead to you, and certainly, the person who you thought you cared for did die or never existed in the first place, it makes sense that you would experience some grieving in the process of recovery.
Expect to visit the 7 stages of grief, which are,
- Shock
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Depression
- Acceptance and hope
- Processing grief
There is no wrong or right way to experience grief, and you are entitled to grieve in any way that you want to, any time, and for as long as necessary for you to establish your recovery. Just keep in mind that this is your sacred process and the fewer addictive process you engage in throughout the process, the better for you in the long run.
Try to avoid self-medication techniques that are not in your highest and best interests. The psychopath would be extremely pleased if you crumbled into a pool of addiction and self-destructive behaviors. Don’t give him or her the satisfaction of letting yourself deteriorate. As Frank Sinatra said, “The best revenge is massive success.”
So, get well, live a better life, your best life, and make the world a better place.
Let It Out
Let it out. Don’t harbor your feelings about what you have just had to go through. Bottling up negative emotional energy only allows the psychopath further abuse you, because emotional toxicity will fester like a wound. This wound will release a poison that will spread throughout your entire body, and it will literally make you sick and more susceptible to degeneration and disease.
You must find a way to dig up and release those hidden feelings. If you can, find a trusted professional and spew all that toxic venom onto them. It is advised that you not seek out a family member or friend to do this activity with, because it will put them at risk of being infected by your psychopath’s toxicity. Alternatively, professionals are equipped to handle such poison. That’s what they are there for.
You also may consider funneling these toxic energies into more creative therapeutic endeavors, such as engaging in the arts, learning to express yourself through music, or writing a book. Find an outlet that works for you.