Joyce Alexander

By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired) Years ago I used to think that healing from an emotionally devastating experience, like tangling with a psychopath, was like recovering from a physical illness or injury. If you cut yourself, you put a band-aid on it and a few days later, the cut was "healed" and you didn't need to work on it any more. Or if you got the flu, once you were over it, it was all done; you didn't have to worry about it again. Or if you got the measles once, you could not get it ever again, because you were immune. Now I realize that healing from an encounter with a psychopath is not like a simple cut that heals, never requiring any more care or even notice. It is also not …

Healing from a psychopathic experience is a continuing processRead More

By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired) One of my cousins, a lovely lady in her early 80s, who still has every marble she ever had and a heart as big as a wash tub, sent me the following story in an e mail. I had heard the story years ago, but hadn't read it in a long time, but today when I read it, I thought about how the psychopathic experience makes this a very valuable analogy. A well-known speaker started off his seminar holding up a $20 bill. In the room of 200, he asked, "Who would like this $20 bill?" Hands started going up. He said, "I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this." He ”¦ proceeded to crumple up the $20 dollar bill. He then asked, "Who still wants i …

We are valuable, and the psychopath can’t take that valueRead More

By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired) Wearing my “nurse Joyce hat” is part of what I am, although I am retired. Even though I am no longer in practice giving out specific medical advice to patients and billing insurance companies, Medicare and private payers for the advice, I still am inclined to look at things from a medical point of view. One of the things I used to teach my diabetic patients about their condition was that I was the “coach” and they were the “team.” I could not get out on the field of life and play the “game” they had to do it. But if I were not a good “coach,” and didn't teach them the “rules of the game,” they were not going to be able to play a good game. I told them t …

Taking care of ourselves–FIRST!Read More

By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired) I was reading an article the other day that talked about “justice” for victims. It said that a rape victim is “made whole” after his or her attack when the perp is put in prison. How can a victim of violent rape be “made whole,” no matter what justice is meted out to their attacker? It can't be done. There are some things that can never be “fixed” like they were before the damage, and I believe the “soul rape” by the psychopaths is one of those things. Some of you who have been physically raped may ask, “What do you know about rape?” Well, my bona fides are that my psychopathic sperm donor beat and raped me when I was 19, so I have been both physically …

Psychopaths rape the soulRead More

By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired) Each one of us has more power than we generally perceive we do. Some people, in fact, do not recognize that they have any power over either what happens to them, or to how they react to what happens to them. Yet, we are totally powerful people; we have total power over what goes on inside us. Recognizing that I am a powerful person with ultimate control over my emotions and actions is a heady feeling, and a scary feeling too. It is heady because it gives us a feeling that we can control ourselves, but it is scary because we also realize that there is no one else who can save us if we fail to exercise that power fully or competently. When we were …

Taking back our powerRead More

By Joyce Alexander, RNP, (retired) There have been some discussions on Lovefraud lately about people not taking care of themselves, “until X happens, then I'm going to go to the doctor.” This got me to thinking about how important it is for us to put ourselves first. The very person who has always “put others first” (me) because that is what a “good person does” would feel very guilty if I spent money on myself, even for things I needed. I would send money to my son Patrick in prison for commissary money when I had to do without things I needed or wanted, because I felt guilty if I didn't send him money. Eating to feed his children You may have heard me tell this story before and I'm …

Taking care of our own needs firstRead More

By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired) One of the things I have heard from victims of psychopaths here at Lovefraud, seemingly over and over, is that people compare their losses to my losses and Donna's losses and Dr. Liane Leedom's losses, etc. and think that their losses don't “count” because they haven't lost X, Y, or Z and we did. They seem to think that because I lost a child, or Liane lost her medical practice, or Donna lost a quarter of a million dollars, that they are not entitled to feel as injured as we were/are. The people expressing this somehow seem to have “survivor's guilt” about feeling so devastated when their losses were somehow “less.” Or they feel that we are somehow “sup …

Comparing our losses to the losses of othersRead More

Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired) After reading Donna's newest book on the 10 Red Flags of spotting psychopaths, I got to thinking that there are Red Flags in our own lives that we should also take notice of and avoid. When we first start the “journey toward healing,” and I do think it is a journey, not a destination, we have to learn the things about ourselves that we need to change in order to live a healthy life, one free of psychopaths and other abusers. Our journey started out in learning the behavior of the psychopaths and abusers so we could spot these people who will not change their bad behavior, but it ends up being learning about ourselves, and how our own behavior contributed t …

The Red Flags of dysfunctionRead More

By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired) If you are not willing to learn, No one can help you. If you are determined to learn, No one can stop you. A friend shared that saying with me today in an email and it made me think about what we say here at Lovefraud when we encourage a new poster to read and learn about psychopaths, to arm themselves with knowledge: “Knowledge is power.” Knowledge is a powerful tool in our lives. If we have no education, we are powerless, as we see in people who have dropped out of school illiterate. We encourage our children to do the best they can in school, to go on to higher education, so that they are better prepared in life, have more power to determine their …

Knowledge is powerRead More