How to Beat a Sociopath at Their Own Game

I was raised as the scapegoat child in a family afflicted with NPD/ASPD. Consequently, I went on to trauma bond to sociopaths as friends and lovers for decades, and I have the gnarly scars and PTSD to prove it.

Anyone who has had the unfortunate experience of being targeted by a sociopath knows that it feels akin to surviving a shark attack, reaching for a phantom limb you lost in a monster’s jaws.

But I’m alive, so I know a thing about survival.

Can you beat a sociopath at their own game?

Kind of.

The sociopath’s game is not winnable.

It is rigged.

The problem is they are not playing a game.

THEY ARE SURVIVING.

It feels like a game to us, because we end up with so many wounds and scars, but….

…they weren’t ever playing the game with us.

They’re playing it with their parents.

Which, to them, feels like they are playing alone.

Because that’s how they’ve survived their whole lives: alone, without any emotional attachment.

IN DENIAL.

First, to ask yourself if you’ve beat a sociopath’s game, you must understand how they think and feel.

A narcissist antisocial only has the emotional intelligence of a baby.

So, for one thing, they have no emotional memory.

It doesn’t matter how many toys you bought them, how often you’ve made them laugh, how many collapses and crying fits you’ve nursed, how unconditionally or deeply you loved them in the past.

ALL THAT MATTERS IS THEIR EMOTION IN THE PRESENT MOMENT.

AND THEY ARE EXTREMELY SENSITIVE.

If the baby is having a crying fit for hours on end, there is no stopping that. THEY ARE GOING TO MAKE IT THEIR PARENTS’ PROBLEM.

In adulthood, supply is just the surrogate parent: the way to get their needs met.

The tantrum is narcissistic rage.

Are you going to get that baby to stop its fit by hurling it against a wall?

Nope.

Feeding it? Comforting it?

Nope. That’s not what it needs.

You can’t figure out what it needs.

It seems to just need you to suffer.

So, you let it cry and cry until it tires itself out. That eventually works.

To ask yourself if you’ve “beat” a sociopath, ask yourself:

• ARE YOU ALIVE?

All that matters to them is the present moment, so you can only assess your “winning” through your own present moments.

Are you still living? Great!

Are you a bit sleep deprived? YEP! That is what happens when you’re a parent.

Is the baby being quiet or resting at the moment? For now! Nobody move or say a word!

If you got a nap in today, you’re doing pretty good. 👍

The other thing that motivates babies emotionally is ATTENTION.

They need to be THE BESTEST BABY.

THE CUTEST BABY.

THE SMARTEST BABY.

THE MOST IMPORTANT BABY IN THE WORLD!

That’s likely what got them to attach to you like a parasite to begin with.

For a moment, you made them feel like the most special baby again.

You made their fantasy feel real.

Babies receive the adoration they seek through mirroring their parents, and then mirroring other authority figures.

All children do this: it’s survival. It allows them to receive the burst of feel good chemicals in the brain that will later be associated with love and empathy.

BUT THAT IS WHERE IT ALL WENT WRONG.

Because that baby was born to a narcissist — an adult who is also a baby inside — and they were born the golden child.

They mirrored the narcissist parent: this was not only necessary for survival, it was demanded of them, as if from God.

They did so, and it did not work.

THEY GOT ABUSED, NEGLECTED, BETRAYED, ABANDONED.

When that happened, they had their first mental collapses.

They became suicidal.

When my mother would abuse her golden child, my sister, she’d headbang for hours and peel the skin off her hands.

When I was allowed to go to her, she’d be shivering like a terrified animal.

And then she’d come back to the world, begin mirroring my mother again, begin believing she was the bestest and most perfect baby…

…but she was more sensitive, more paranoid, more scared, more easily offended.

…and then she’d get collapsed again.

Eventually, she began to mirror others to get her needs met: her big sister, her friends.

Throughout her life, she has had a variety of different fashion styles and even personalities: they were always exactly like her partner or current best friend.

When I found the social media profile of my maintenance man who stalked me for 8 months, drugged me, and raped me for three weeks, it was astonishing.

HE LOOKED LIKE ENTIRELY DIFFERENT PEOPLE.

He was always dressed just like the person in the photo.

In one pic, he’s dressed like a cowboy with his grandfather.

In another, he has the exact same style as his homosexual little brother.

In a picture with his wife, they have the same shirt on, different colors.

When I knew him, he dressed just like his best friend and secret closeted lover, another maintenance man who he was the boss of.

Oh, I realized, he’s just a baby.

They mirror for attention and affection to get their needs met. It’s all they’ve ever done and all they can do to survive.

They do not attach. THAT HAS ALREADY PROVEN TOO DANGEROUS.

THEY TRUST NO ONE.

But they’ve gotta live. And their true identity is not one that people will accept into adulthood because they are selfish and lack remorse for their actions and behave immorally.

This is only a socially acceptable identity when you’re a child.

Therefore, they do what they did as children to get by: mirror and play pretend.

My first love was a sociopath who killed himself in a collapse. His brother has two kids with another narcissist sociopath. They each have one golden child named after them, so both children will be narcissist antisocials.

The kids are 5 and 7. They’ve been abandoned by both parents.

Both parents in and out of prison, but now that they are both out, neither of them gives one single fuck about the kids. They live with their grandmother, just as they both did.

The youngest had a birthday the other day: his grandmother posted him sitting alone at the table looking sad in front of a pizza.

No one came to his party.

Most importantly, his parents did not come.

This is how sociopathy is birthed: this shame, this pain, this wound.

Upon a child.

They are more sensitive than us, because they are emotionally stunted, so these betrayals at these ages are BRUTAL.

The next day, his grandmother posted a video of him at church. The pastor had called him up on stage.

He was so stinking cute.

First, he looked so happy to be up there, like he’d burst with joy, everyone looking at him and loving him.

Then, I watched as he mirrored.

The pastor said, “Are presents the best part of Christmas?”

He rolled his eyes in an exaggerated way and adamantly shook his and said, NO!

I have watched this child tear into both his and his brother’s presents like he was in the desert and this 🎁 was the only drop of water for miles…

Kids do Christmas for the presents. Especially narcissist kids. Let’s keep it 💯

But he swore, No! Not that! I’d give up all the presents!

Then the pastor said, “What about Santa?!”

The boy chuckled good heartedly, just as the pastor had. “No, that’s silly!”

“Spending time with your family who loves you?”

“It is nice, but not most important.”

That child is lying. His dad went to prison for a second time when he was two and his mom has been in and out of jail for meth his whole life: he’s never had a nice Christmas with family.

“What is most important?”

JESUS!!!!! He smiled and clutched his heart.

Everyone cheered. He positively glowed.

HE DID IT. HE WAS ADORED. PERFECT. JUST LIKE GOD.

And that is how he will get his needs met for the rest of his life.

He will LIVE FOR THE MOMENTS IN WHICH THE FANTASY FEELS REAL.

In which they’ve convinced the surrogate parental figure of their innocence, goodness, and perfection by manipulating to get their needs met.

So, to know if you’ve beat their game, ask yourself:

• ARE THEY STILL MIRRORING YOU?
• HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO IDENTIFY THE WAYS THEY DID IT?
• ARE YOU GIVING THAT MOFO COAL THIS YEAR OR ARE THERE STILL PRESENTS COMING FROM YOU?
• IF YOU HAVE TAKEN ALL THEIR PRESENTS AND ATTENTION AWAY, ARE YOU STILL ALIVE?

If alive, then…

Because nothing appeases babies more than TOYS.

And that was all you ever were to the sociopath.

Since they are emotionally children, they get bored AF fast.

They need another shiny new toy, and they need it immediately.

That’s why it truly doesn’t matter if you treat a sociopath like a KING.

They got sick of you after the first few shags — which were so amazing to you that you fell head over heels into the abyss of the fantasy with them, and then you could easily self blame and internalize their gradual lack of desire, admiration, or respect of you.

It’s the same thing that happened with their parent.

Their parent was so excited to have a golden child! They basked in the attention and congrats. They set out to spoil it and be the perfect parent to their perfect mini me.

And then that baby had needs.

And came with responsibility.

So they got BORED AF.

They started abusing to offload their feelings of agitation and guilt onto the child.

The parent sought new toys elsewhere.

They instilled their CORE FEAR into the child: ABANDONMENT.

So, the sociopath is destined to treat all supply the same way:

AS A TOY THAT GETS REAL BORING REAL FAST.

However, kids do not like to share their toys.

THEY DO NOT WANT TO GET RID OF THEM OR HAVE ANYONE ELSE PLAYING WITH THEM.

Because, what makes a child most vulnerable is the sense of not having power or control.

And if you swipe their pacifier from them, they’re going to throw a gotdamn fit.

Same goes if you remove yourself from their life, even if they’ve already proven you are no longer a toy that gives them joy.

They will get even.

It’s not a game to them: they don’t feel empathy for you over the pain they cause you and they don’t feel remorse.

They are just babies. Babies do not feel that. They haven’t developed it.

This is just survival.

They relieve their negative feelings this way. Through narcissistic rage.

And they feel, wholeheartedly, that you deserve it.

Because you are THE MEAN MOMMY WHO HAS TAKEN THEIR TOY!

But, they won’t cry and rage for the toy forever. A new, shiny toy will come along, and soon, they won’t remember that old toy from long ago.

That’s why all the expert advice on dealing with sociopaths say the same thing: become inaccessible AND BORING.

Delete social media, move, and if you are being stalked, become as boring as a dead mouse is to a cat.

But also…the hardest part:

DO NOT RESPOND.

Negative supply regulates their emotions as well as positive supply. So, what they seek in their rage and revenge is your response.

They want your fear and anguish.

If they don’t get that, you are as boring as a broken toy.

BOREDOM IS EXCRUCIATING TO THEM AND THEY ARE BORED ALL THE DAMN TIME, just like a baby.

But….you’re always their toy, and they’ll check up on you. If they see you are happy, they may try to sabotage that. It’s like Tom and Jerry: if they see that gotdamn mouse, they’re gonna attack it.

So, you’ve got to be a crafty mouse.

Therefore, to know if you’re beating them, ask yourself:

• Are the attacks becoming less frequent?
• Do I have any moments of peace?
• Do they have access to me in any way?
• Have they seen my fear or grief?

Over time, even the most malicious sociopath gets bored and moves on. This is about getting their needs met, and a broken toy is worthless.

What has really helped me with sociopaths is my secondary psychopathy. I’ve gone through so much trauma that my fear response is dead.

Even when he was raping me, my lack of a fear response made him incredibly anxious and erratic, and he kept upping the ante on the abuse.

He only became happy or calm when I was in pain.

Just like my parents….

So, as much as possible, you must withhold that.

The other thing about babies is they have no boundaries.

In order to keep both them and you safe, you need to baby proof your house.

Because if they can access something, they will.

If they can put it in their mouth, they will.

If they can burn the house down, they will.

They feel entitled to anything they have access to.

And even when you baby proof your house, you still can’t trust them, because they’re gonna try ANYTHING.

They want to tumble down that staircase, if it’s the last thing they do!

And don’t mistake lacking emotional intelligence with lacking cognitive intelligence. Some are very smart and crafty.

So, you’ve got to really baby proof your space.

Ask yourself:

• Do you have cameras inside and outside?
• Do you have weapons?
• Do you have multiple locks?
• Have you filed police reports so there is record of a pattern of their boundary violations?
• Do you have a file of every incident that trusted friends and/or a lawyer have in case you go missing or die?
• Is your social media private or deleted?
• Is security at your job aware?
• Have they hacked your phone or computer? Have you changed all your passwords?

After I was drugged and attacked, all the research I read said that the number one place a rape victim is attacked by a sociopath is…

THEIR HOME.

And the number one factor to that attack is…

ACCESS.

Not age, gender, attractiveness, past relationships…just access.

My maintenance man had keys to my apartment when I wasn’t home, access to my journals and food. He’d shared my computer and iPhone with his device, so he had access to everything in my phone PLUS my GPS. And he had a crow bar to break into my screen door when I was passed out on GHB and my dead bolt was on the door.

I wasn’t baby proofed.

But then again, I had no idea I’d had a baby…

What babies really, really fear is GOD.

Someone with ultimate authority over them, supernatural powers, and the ability to cast them into Hell for any reason.

The ability to judge them as ALL BAD.

AN UNMASKING.

GETTING CAUGHT.

What they really, really, truly feared was their narcissistic parent having some kind of supernatural power.

The more they got away with, the more their fantasy of grandiosity was reinforced.

Therefore, to scare them, you must find their shames.

It’s not hard. Once you know you are with a sociopath, you realize they wear their shames like a kid who swore they didn’t steal a cookie with chocolate smeared all over their face.

It’s really about: do you have the strength to face their secrets? Because they’re gnarly and you’ll grieve.

First, some common shames:

• Deeply insecure about appearance
• Deeply afraid of being dumb
• Deeply insecure about sexuality

Most of them have blurry sexualities that they are denying. This is also due to their emotional immaturity. (This is NOT to say all lgbtq people are emotionally immature: a sociopath’s sexuality is really its own category that includes rape and pedophilia).

Babies are sexually attracted to both parents and other kids their age. Sociopaths tend to be attracted to both genders and both much older or much younger partners.

They may or may not act on this, but likely did when younger. They were molested by an adult and they molested siblings or kids their age as a result.

They projected their shame by projecting the abuse onto other kids.

If they are vocally homophobic then you know for sure they are denying their homosexual behavior and it’s a shame for them.

Many pedophiles report that they were attracted to children because it is the age they’ve always felt.

My dad, my stalker/rapist, my first love’s brother, and one of my favorite people friendships: all molested as kids, all golden children named after a parent, all pedophiles and/or rapists.

To get to their specific shames and secrets, YOU HAVE TO ANALYZE TWO THINGS:

• What were their trigger words?

At a trigger word, their head will snap. They look at you in a moment of fear. Their face says, Does she know? And they abruptly change the subject.

My stalker behaved this way at the words incest, bisexual, mentally ill, rape, and child molester.

I often throw out trigger words innocently to test this if I suspect someone. “My job is like one big incestuous family! Everyone is sleeping together!”

• What did they accuse people of or profess about themselves too much?

The brother of my first love who committed suicide in a collapse was someone I tried hard to support. We suffered such severe trauma so young.

I supported him emotionally and even financially during and after his prison sentence as a teenager. I co-signed for a car for him. I paid the down payment.

Eventually, when I finally realized his brother was a sociopath, I woke up to the very obvious fact that he was too. And he’d not been paying his car payments….

One thing about him: he professed to love his brother very much. He had four tattoos of him. Whenever I was upset with something he did, he visited his brother’s grave and would send me pics.

He denied adamantly his brother committed suicide. He believed it was an accident.

This was not a lie. He was in DEEP DENIAL OF THIS.

Because it is a core shame.

He was genuinely confused when I’d question the details of his death.

“Our dad always said a little of that methadone would kill us, so why did he take all of it? Why did he tell us all he was never coming back and give away his belongings?”

He confessed to me once that the last thing he said to his brother was that he was a f****g f**got.

And something that he always got spooked by: I had many dreams of his brother in which I knew things about their childhood I could not possibly know.

I’d be so excited to communicate a dream, and he would change the subject, tell me I’m just dreaming, or freak tf out: HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT?

I’d be so thrilled, “It is him! It is really him! He loves us!”

“Why doesn’t he come to my dreams? Because he hates me?”

“Because you’re not working on your healing,” I’d reply.

So, when I was finally fed tf up with him, the car, and ready to go no contact, I pulled out the big guns.

I found the shame.

I texted him, “Your brother doesn’t come to you because you killed him.”

“WHAT?” he replied.

“Did you know he was a sociopath? Did you know he tried to rape his friend? The last thing you called him was gay. Did you want him to die? Did you push him to kill himself?”

“FUCK YOU.” He replied.

I noticed that he didn’t deny it.

I blocked him on everything.

The next day, he paid his car payment.

Why? BECAUSE I TERRIFIED HIM.

BECAUSE THAT TERROR TAKES HIM TO THE DARKEST PLACE.

SHAME.

The emotion their brains cannot process.

The very secrets they justify and deny, even to themselves….

to survive.

When you unmask their deepest shames, they go back to those childhood collapses.

It is AN EXTINCTION BURST EVENT.

It is an implosion of the fantasy of their goodness, their power, their control, their grandiosity.

And they survive it…by killing the threat or killing themselves.

One way I knew this was his deep shame was because of the reason he went to prison at 17.

Someone at a party said he didn’t ever visit his brother’s grave.

He took a tire iron to their head until he felt it go to mush.

He never felt bad for it. That man was permanently mentally handicapped.

He was surviving.

The rage they are offloading, however, is for their parent. They have regressed.

So, be aware: this is an Ace in the pocket.

AND IT IS ONE THEY WILL KILL YOU FOR.

So baby proof your shit.

The truth is that if you have evoked the relentless rage of a sociopath, IT IS BECAUSE YOU ALREADY SCARED THEM.

They are offloading their own fear onto you.

The level of their rage is the level of their terror.

You did this by threatening their grandiosity in some way, be it by leaving them, exposing them, or simply being genuinely smarter, kinder, prettier, more successful than them.

It is confusing, because we often collapse them without realizing we are collapsing them, so we don’t recognize that the trauma they bring is their revenge for the trauma you already brought them first.

If they discard you and act like you never existed, YOU HAVE WON THE LOTTERY.

They’ve projected their fear of abandonment into you by abandoning you because you scared them THAT BAD.

You’re the toy that woke up and started talking….

Most people think of beating a sociopath as making them feel the pain you feel and getting revenge.

BUT THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE.

They are babies. They can’t feel the emotions we feel. They can’t process shame. And they will never feel regret or remorse.

If they are alive, they’ll always be in the fantasy: they are perfect and superior and everything they did was deserved.

And without emotional memory, they are much more resilient to trauma than anyone else.

They do not grieve.

They do not emotionally attach.

They do not self reflect on their actions.

They don’t even remember what their collapse felt like.

They will not suffer like anyone without stunted emotions does no matter what: they see this as strong.

In many ways, it is. They survive due to it.

They survive by denial.

Denial of what their parents did, and that they deserved it…

No punishment, not even prison, will have the effect we desire. They just find innocent people to abuse in prison and they carry on. They learn even more about the most cutthroat survival there to get their needs met.

So, to beat them at their game, the real trick is to wake up from their delusion….

Let the kiss of the sociopath be your liberation.

When my maintenance man was raping me for three weeks, there came a time where I had to accept, wholeheartedly, that I could die.

I had to ask myself: what is my life worth?

I came to the conclusion that DEATH IS AN ILLUSION.

He may feel relief if I’m dead.

But the things I have done will live on in others.

My poetry is published: it will live beyond me. It will continue to do its work for the readers who it is meant to resonate with.

I have students and friends who will carry me in their heart.

If I’ve taught anything as a teacher, I will live on because those ideas live on.

And the whole time I was assaulted, I was dreaming about my dead borderline grandmother and my dead sociopath ex. They told me where the microphone was.

So I have a strong suspicion that my spirit lives on regardless. We all do.

When I realized this, I LET DEATH GO ENTIRELY.

I ACCEPTED THAT EVEN IF I DIED, HE DID NOT WIN.

Because this is an impossible game, and he doesn’t even know the rules of life to understand it.

He’s just a baby, terrified, trying to kill his parents through me.

Trying to give me all the shame, fear, worthlessness, and abuse he got in his childhood.

He’s stuck in a vortex of pain.

Plus, I could just as easily die in a car accident as from him, so it doesn’t make him special or make any other moment in my life more safe.

When I let go of my fear of death then, it never returned.

It is a much better way to live life.

It is the best gift he gave me.

This is how you really win:

REDEFINE THE WHOLE GAME.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not some miraculously healed leper touched by Jesus.

I still have BPD, I have severe PTSD, and I have so much trauma from this man and from my family that my health history looks like I’m 90, and honestly I feel that way every day.

It is not healthy to have compassion for people who hate you. It eats you alive inside out.

I am agoraphobic, celibate, lonely, and highly paranoid.

I’m also really annoyed and salty to have lifelong trauma and think about people daily who only viewed me as a toy, who will forget me entirely and have zero trauma from me, and who have already long forgotten the emotions they had which caused them to traumatize me so badly.

BUT….

I have learned to understand this game differently.

I examine it for what it has taught me or revealed to me.

• It showed me truth of this world and what people are capable of.
• It gave me a deeply intimate understanding of sociopathy in general and my parents specifically.
• After the assaults, I did a full unmasking of toxic people in my past and present and became much more sensitive and skilled at spotting them.
• When I find beauty or peace in my life, I take the time to really appreciate it, because I know how fragile it is.
• It revealed my worth by showing me how much I threaten those with no authentic self worth.
• I finished my memoir and I feel it is the best writing of my life.
• I’m writing a book of poems to him that I am proud of.
• I realized how strong I am and how much I can survive.
• I realized how intelligent I am and he’s given me an even deeper wisdom.
• I lost my fear of death and life became more pleasant.
• I live in the now and my life feels abundant, even when things are not ideal.
• He forced me into a deep dive reckoning of the dark secrets of my father.
• I learned how to protect myself better and have more security.
• He made narcissists so unappealing that I’m sure I’ll never be attracted to one sexually ever again.
• He has given me a nuanced and deep understanding of evil and why it exists, and I’ve found compassion in things I couldn’t even find comprehension of before.
• I even understand history and politics better by understanding sociopaths, since they are often world leaders.
• He forced me to deeply understand the BPD/NPD dynamics, which helped me understand the pain of my sister.
• He woke me up to my dulled fear response and made me see it as a strength that gives me courage.
• He took suicide off the table as an option because I live solely to spite him.
• He deepened my faith and spirituality.
• I found self love: I stopped crying for my abusers, and finally cried and grieved for myself.
• I finally began to heal the little girl inside me who’d been abandoned at birth by both parents: scapegoat to one, invisible to the other.

• Finally, an adult came to rescue her, AND IT WAS ME.

So, to beat a sociopath at their own game, the real cheat trick is to

• Realize the game is an illusion
• Play the game of life by your own rules

Treat them as a challenge in your game only. One that could kill you, but one that can be dodged with enough skill.

So keep your eyes on those f***ers.

Even if they kill you, press NEW GAME.

For your character this time around, choose to be a ghost that haunts them. 👻 Their karma.

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How To Be a Narcissist’s Karma

The one thing they never see coming….

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I Survived: Sometimes I Don’t Know Why

A stalker, survivor’s guilt, and the question of meaning and mercy

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For individual coaching to recover from narcissistic abuse, BPD, or sexual assault, visit https://am-champion.com

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Anne M. Champion is the author of This is a Story About Ghosts: A Memoir of Borderline Personality Disorder (KDP, 2024), Hunted Carrion: Sonnets to a Stalker (KDP, 2024), She Saints & Holy Profanities (Quarterly West, 2019), The Good Girl is Always a Ghost (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), Book of Levitations (Trembling Pillow Press, 2019), Reluctant Mistress (Gold Wake Press, 2013), and The Dark Length Home (Noctuary Press, 2017). Her work appears in Verse Daily, diode, Tupelo Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Salamander, New South, Redivider, PANK Magazine, and elsewhere. She was a 2009 Academy of American Poets Prize recipient, a 2016 Best of the Net winner, a Douglas Preston Travel Grant recipient, and a Barbara Deming Memorial Grant recipient. She has degrees in Behavioral Psychology and Creative Writing.