UPDATED FOR 2024. If you’re in the process of leaving behind a sociopath, or even just contemplating leaving a sociopath, here are New Year’s resolutions to help you accomplish your goal and get on the path to healing in 2024.
Resolution #1: NO CONTACT!!!!
Do not have any contact with the sociopath. Nothing! Nada! Zilch! Zero! This is the most important first step you can take.
No Contact is how you escape the sociopath’s magnetic pull. It enables the fog in your head to dissipate, so you can clearly see this person for what he or she is — a predator, parasite, or both. No Contact enables you to find your strength and take back your power.
When you implement No Contact, you do not see or talk to the sociopath. You do not send emails or text messages. You do not even snoop on their Facebook page or other social media.
If No Contact is impossible — perhaps you share children — then go for Emotional No Contact. That means you do not let the person under your skin. Your goal is to get to the emotional place where the sociopath feels like nothing more than an annoyance.
Resolution #2: Have compassion for yourself
No matter what the sociopath or anyone else has told you, know this: It’s not your fault.
You are a normal human being, with normal desires and normal emotions, and the sociopath took advantage of that. You were targeted. Or, if the sociopath is a parent or family member, you were a very convenient target.
In any event, you didn’t know that predators live among us, because our society doesn’t talk about this inconvenient truth. You thought the sociopath was a normal person with normal caring instincts. The sociopath used your misperception — and your normal caring instincts — against you.
So be gentle with yourself. Wrap your own loving arms around your broken heart, and brush the tears from your own eyes. Allow yourself to rest in your own compassion, so you can move forward in your life’s journey.
Resolution #3: Find the gift in the experience
As strange as it may sound, often in the wreckage of a run-in with a sociopath there is a hidden gift, and finding it can help you turn around your entire life.
Sociopaths target vulnerabilities, and everyone has vulnerabilities. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you are weak or deficient; if you want something — anything — you are vulnerable.
Typically, however, the vulnerability is a deep, even hidden pain, something you’ve been carrying for a long time. And typically, the vulnerability has been locked away inside you, while you carried on with your life.
But tangling with the sociopath is so awful, and the pain so overwhelming, that you cannot lock it away any longer. Your only option is to deal with it — which provides you with an opportunity to deal with the pain that made you vulnerable to the sociopath in the first place.
This is where the real healing takes place. When you allow yourself to process the painful emotions caused by the sociopath, and also the related painful emotions that have been frozen within you, then you have the opportunity for true, deep healing. And that’s what turns your life around.
Happy New Year to all Lovefraud readers! May 2024 be a year of great healing.
Learn more: With help in overcoming your pain, check out my Deep Emotional Release service.
Lovefraud originally posted this story on January 2, 2017.
Why I wrote ‘Defying Silence’
Wise words and so accurate thank you Donna x
Wise words and I hope those who are going No Contact have a good support system. Dr. Ault says that is important to stay No Contact.
I am still learning how ‘to take care of myself’. Things I am learning to do, are what most people do normally. No Contact with a psychopath ex is becoming second nature; but keeping Limited Contact with 3 grown sons is still an ongoing learning experience. They all are psychopathic one way or another, but I keep them at a ‘safe’ distance. That means almost NO contact with their children. My mental/physical health is MUCH better, than the years of abuse I put up with. I’m just getting better as I go, and that’s what MY life is about.