Expose @ MindSay 
A man that passed himself off as ten years younger than he was.
The phone calls became horrible as I was told things I had no business hearing at the age I was. Why didn't I speak up? Why didn't I tell someone? I still ask myself this. Probably because I didn't know any better.
I will let you do the math. When my parents were out for a evening one night my nightmare began. There was no way I was going to let anyone know this.
I made myself believe it never happened. I remember it as if I was watching it happen to someone else. I did try to fight. But couldn't break free.
I lived with the memory for years and talked with counselors. Eventually I just put it away in my mind and figured I would never to revisit it again.
Twenty years later from that traumatic experience I became friends with a man a lot older than me. Because of my prior experience, what I didn't realize was that I WAS STILL VULNERABLE. I had the kind of vulnerability men like him smell like sharks smell blood. I was wounded. I was naive. I'd hit a breaking point in my life. This person knew. Predators always HUNT THE WOUNDED
This person I thought was my friend and a sympathetic ear ended up being a predator. A wolf in sheep's clothing.
This person created what he made me believe was a "relationship" with me. He made me think he was my sympathizer in the midst of my pain.
There were red flags in the beginning. But his false sincerity and plausible explanations struck my compassionate nature and I did not walk away. This grew into a deep intense emotionally intimate relationship for me. The red flags were flying at me from all directions but I was blinded by him. For him - it was all false. All a game.
He used my own pain and my own mind against me. He followed all the seduction tactics.
Not only that but he blame shifted everything on to me and devalued me as a person with his condemnations.
The brainwashing and mental manipulation he used on me while knowing full well my personal situation was in trouble. Like all predators, played on my trust in him and caused me to go into a whirlwind of confusion. As abused and used women do, I tried to get answers from him and he treated me like a child. Talked down to me.
HELP OTHER VICTIMS SPEAK OUT - THEY ARE NOT ALONE!
All sociopaths wear a mask. The mask of kindness. The mask of generosity. The mask of romance. The mask of attraction. The mask of intimacy. The mask of seduction. And so on.
This is what reels us in. The pretense. The acting. The mask. The mask of perfection. And we, in our infinite loving goodness, reflect that mask back to them. The perfect mirrored reflection of beauty and adoration.
And then one day, that mask cracks. You remember the moment.. The moment when you look in their eyes and you KNOW the truth about them. The moment you recognize the pathological lies, the deception, the manipulation, the con. The game is up.
And from that moment on, your relationship with the sociopath is forever changed. This moment happened for me when…after middle of the night phone calls to his house and cell phone…I looked into his eyes and I KNEW. I knew he was having an affair, and that he was a liar. A year’s worth of investigation (yes, obsessing) has confirmed that nearly everything he told me was a lie.
From that point forward, the cruelty begins. Name-calling. Shouting. Out-of-control rage. Accusations of what you have…and have not done for them. Assaults on your character. Disparaging remarks. Outright slander. Saying horrible things about you to everyone who will listen. The smear campaign begins in full force.
Once the mask slips, you have a full view of who the sociopath actually is. Nothing is hidden from you anymore. They are the most hateful person you have ever encountered.
I equate the mask with a coin…beautiful, golden, intricately detailed and engraved on one side, and the cheapest, molten metal, with indistinguishable or hideous features on the other.
I thought my sociopath had a brain tumor. I couldn’t comprehend how someone who had seemingly been so kind, generous, and thoughtful…seemingly a “knight in shining armor”, turned into such a dark knight—instantaneously. Heartless. Cold. Unfeeling. Unsympathetic. Lying. Cheating. Berating. Chillingly frightening. Brrr.
After the mask cracks and you see their naked hatred, they become vengeful. It is as if they become your mortal enemy; even though you still love them and may try to salvage the relationship.
And then they usually become cowardly. If you try to expose them, they will use every amount of charm and conning in their power to figuratively and verbally disarm you. (They are very good at this; they have a lifetime of practice).
They will attempt to dissemble your character piece-by-piece. They will not allow you to confront them with the truth; it is almost as if they become fearful of you and will try to retaliate against you with every piece of personal information they have garnered about you.
It is important to realize that just because you have seen their “true” self, they can still be extremely adept at keeping their mask intact for others. I have seen my sociopath go from screaming at me to laughing and smiling while speaking to someone on the phone… within 30 seconds. But you will most likely never see that initial charm again… unless there is something very specific they want from you.
And generally it is a very short time after you see their true self, no longer a reflection of beauty and adoration, that they will leave you. Or perhaps they already have their victim lined up. Because the sociopath cannot tolerate seeing their imperfections through your eyes. They will begin the romance phase, and once again have adoration from their next target. And the next. Then the one after that.
It is an awakening moment, when the mask slips. You are witnessing humanity at its very worst. (If they can be deemed “human”…I prefer to think of them as aliens).
No matter how attractive you initially thought they were, a sociopath is actually very, very ugly… beneath the mask.
We appreciate all the support from all our friends and fellow cyber warriors.
The Exposer
Take The Power Back!
by John Prin
The simple answer is both. As voters casting our ballots, we rely on secrecy to protect our vote from the knowledge of others. As planners of a surprise birthday party, we create a benign conspiracy that conceals our plans from the person being honored. As scientists, we study the secrets of nature to learn more about ourselves and our world. As lovers in private, we protect our privacy by closing the curtains, shutting the bedroom door, or taking a vacation to a secluded setting.
All of these qualify as harmless secrets, secrets that aren't "bad" or shameful or morally foul. We often engage in keeping such secrets-intentionally hiding or concealing information from others to protect what is vulnerable-without giving it a second thought.
"We call him a good man who reveals himself to others."
—Meister Johann Eckhart, 13th Century German Theologian
But negative views of secrecy are common. "The link between secrecy and deceit is so strong in the minds of some that they mistakenly take all secrecy to be deceptive," writes Sissela Bok in her definitive book, Secrets (Vintage, 1989). "To confuse secrecy and deception is easy, since all deception does involve keeping something secret."
And it is the deceptive nature of keeping secrets that concerns us. For anyone striving to move from addiction to recovery, the essential question is this:
Do secrets play a role in my behavior?
If the answer comes back "often" more than "hardly ever," then for individuals aiming to enhance personal growth or wishing to make vital changes in their lives, the next question becomes:
Can I move from living a secretive, closed, deceptive life to living an open, transparent, honest one?
"Yes" is the answer, given a determined effort at truth-seeking.
The above examples-voters, surprise birthday planners, scientists, and lovers-are all acting without guile. All depend on the protective aspect of secrecy: protection of a democratic right, of a surprise party, of intellectual curiosity, of intimate acts. That's the good news about secrets.
A look at Bok's statement above hints at the bad news: "all deception does involve keeping something secret." To discern the destructive power of secrecy, it helps to distinguish between secrecy and privacy. Both are closely linked. Often they overlap, so let's carefully separate them and see how they differ.
Secrecy vs. Privacy
Privacy can be defined as limiting unwanted access by others. Privacy means, something kept from the view of strangers. People rightly seek protection for the innocent, harmless, legitimate activities of life. One keeps a file of taxes private, or underwear in a drawer or prescriptions in a medicine cabinet. We take for granted the legitimacy of hiding silver from burglars and personal documents from snoopers and busybodies, all meant for nobody else's eyes. "They're nobody's business but my own," we might say.
Bok adds, "But secrecy hides far more than what is private. A private garden may not be a secret garden; a private life is rarely a secret life. Conversely, secret diplomacy rarely concerns what is private, any more than do arrangements for a surprise party or for choosing prize winners. In each case, one's purpose is to become less vulnerable, more in control."
Less vulnerable. More in control. These are the main aims of privacy, and they are justifiable, defensible. Privacy aims to protect one's identity, personhood, plans, and/or property. How? By defining boundaries that others should observe or respect without requiring physical force. A sign on a neighbor's fence says, "Private Property - No Trespassing." A door in an airport is marked, "Authorized Personnel Only." These act to separate what is public from what is private. However, should anybody jump that fence or open that door, then secrecy may be required because it offers additional protection
.
"Secrecy serves as a shield should the boundaries of privacy fail."
Sissela Bok
"Secrecy (helps) guard against unwanted access by others - against their coming too near, learning too much, observing too closely," notes Bok. "Thus you may assume that no one will read your diary; but you can also hide it, or write it in code, or lock it up."
An extreme example of private identity guarded by secrecy is that of the fictional main character Winston Smith in George Orwell's novel, 1984 . Orwell portrays a ghastly view of the future-where Big Brother watches every citizen every minute of every day. We see an ordinary man with ordinary thoughts take extraordinary measures to think for himself. Alone in the evenings in his miserable flat, Smith sits in a nook writing in his diary attempting to evade the Thought-police-at the risk of death. To even keep a diary means capital punishment, let alone to write private thoughts in it. Smith, an anonymous clerk in a government bureaucracy, even risks death rather than forego the chance to set down his private thoughts in secret.
"To be able to hold back some information about oneself or to channel it and thus influence how one is seen by others gives power," states Bok.
So, it stands to reason that privacy can be healthy and beneficial. To have and maintain control over how we direct the flow of information to others increases our personal power. Keeping a secret, therefore, is not automatically unhealthy or damaging or "bad"-depending, critically, on the nature of what is being kept secret. If it is something shameless, not shameful or nasty, then secrets aren't "bad."
Secret KeepersSM
The opposite is also true, however. Some people's secrets have power over them and can motivate them to misbehave, become sick, or violate others. Burdened by unhealthy Secret-Keeping habits, they may "steal hours" away from their public lives to act out secret behaviors or passions - sometimes for decades. These people are plagued by self-defeating behaviors such as alcohol/drug abuse, compulsive gambling, sexual addictions, habitual Internet use, and eating disorders.
These Secret Keepers live in a parallel universe based on the intentional concealment of what is shameful or discreditable beyond the limits of privacy. By their very cleverness, Secret Keepers elude getting caught. The people closest to them may suspect their excuses or alibis at times and think to themselves how odd or eccentric they are, or they seem lost in a private world of their own . But hard evidence rarely surfaces and telltale clues, if there are any, go unnoticed.
Secret Keepers, even when they function smoothly in their public lives, carry with them the concealed secrets about themselves that nobody knows about-not wife, not parents, not siblings, not friends, not bosses. And so they live a double life continuously, whether stealing hours to act out or not.
Secret Keepers may be too smart and too clever to overstep legal boundaries. They may skirt the law, but hardly ever get arrested or labeled as criminals. They may be alcoholics or sex addicts, but not the obvious ones who abuse openly and deceive nobody.
Whether they are your next-door neighbor, the person ahead of you in the supermarket line, the driver beside you on the freeway, or maybe even you, they are human beings with two opposing selves existing in one body.
Projecting a wholesome self for all to see and approve of, Secret Keepers carefully hide their secret selves for none to discover and denounce. Meanwhile, the competing selves within them wage war and, over time, wear down the person until a crisis (still another secret unknown to everybody) threatens their sanity. Unavoidably, their inner warfare then leads to a buildup of pressure to disclose intimate knowledge to somebody, wreaking daily suffering until they surrender or "do something."
If these traits describe you or someone you love, there is help available.
Consider that we live and breathe on a continuum where openness is at one end and secrecy is at the other. What determines how open or secretive we act and behave? In the case of privacy, we guard the intimacy of personal information we believe is ours, as well as our need to control the flow of this information. In the case of Secret-Keeping, the stakes are much higher. Because of the shame and guilt attached to the information we are trying to hide or cover up, we block the flow of information and shut down avenues of communication or discovery as a way to protect our vulnerability.
• Privacy is an act of choosing healthy boundaries and staying comfortably within them.
• Secret-Keeping is an act of hiding from the embarrasent of disclosing things shameful or discreditable.
Clearly secrecy can debilitate character and judgment, and it can also lower resistance to the irrational and the pathological. "A stifling rigidity hampers those who become obsessed with secrecy," states Bok. "For them, it no longer serves sanity and free choice. Secrecy allows people to maintain facades that conceal. It shuts off the safety valve between the inner and the shared worlds."
Ultimately, truth-seeking is required, because shameful and discreditable information that remains hidden by deceptive secrecy will hurt the Secret Keepers and those who care about them until it becomes known, acknowledged, treated, and healed.
John Howard Prin, BA, LADC , writes on recovery topics and lectures to a variety of audiences about healthy ways to think, behave, and live. His career as an addictions counselor began with his own recovery from chemical addictions in 1996.
Since publishing his first book about Secret-Keeping, Stolen Hours: Breaking Free From Secret Addictions (Syren Books, 2004), he is currently writing his second book, Living Secret Lives.
JOHN PRIN'S WEBSITE
More reason to expose them.
You are doing yourself AND THEM a favor!
The Exposer Takes The Power Back!
exposer@37.com
Im not sure if its the medication or stress that has been causing these very bizarre and disturbing dreams... no lets face it they are nightmares. Im not fond of this at all. *grr*
All the time of trying to sleep there were soo many interuptions... oh what fun. hahaha. But I will catch up on sleep somewhere Im sure.
I get to see my owie and stitches now!! Its downright ugly and makes me feel grosssssss. I would show you but Im sure I would get in trouble here. Im not timid at all about showing people and maybe I should be. :P I can just imagine me scanning it and uploading it only to gross out and offend everyone. And yet Im still tempted to show you all. hahaha.
