Joyce Alexander

Time as a factor in healing

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By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)

Many times our friends, in an effort to be helpful, but not actually understanding what we have been through in a “break up” with a psychopath, may tell us, “It’s time you move on with your life, and start dating again,” or words to that effect.

Any time you lose something important in your life, you suffer what is known as “grief.” It doesn’t matter if that something is a break up of a relationship, a job, a death of someone you love, or you lose the Miss America Pageant when you expected to win. Anything that was important and is lost causes grief.

Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, MD, an internationally known psychiatrist, studied … Read more

Posted in: Joyce Alexander, Recovery from a sociopath

Reliability – either it is or it ain’t

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By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)

What is the one characteristic that we must have, and must demand in those with whom we are associated? My thought is that it is reliability.

Most virtues exist on a “sliding scale.” These vary from “all the way” excellence to total ineptitude. Most folks are some where in the middle and that is pretty acceptable. The one virtue, however, that is all or nothing is reliability. You are either reliable or you are not. It is sort of like dead or pregnant either you is or you ain’t. There is no middle ground.

If I employed someone, I would be willing to put up with just about any deficiencies, but not with … Read more

Posted in: Joyce Alexander

Expectations and the half-billion dollar lotto

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By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)

I don’t normally by lotto tickets because the odds of winning are so powerfully against winning. Yes, I know “someone eventually wins,” and “if you don’t buy a ticket you don’t have any chance of winning.”

When the payout on the recent Powerball got so high though—a half-billion dollars—like lots of folks I decided “why not?” I bought a $3 ticket and let the computer pick the numbers for me.

The odds of being attacked by a shark are 1 in 11,000. The odds of being the lotto winner are about 175 million to one.

On the way home, my son and I fantasized about what we would do if we won the … Read more

Posted in: Joyce Alexander, Recovery from a sociopath

Where are the chinks in my armor?

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By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)

Back in the days when wars were fought with bows and arrows, swords and slings, soldiers wore armor to protect themselves from the enemy’s weapons. Various kinds of armor were designed to protect the soldiers, while at the same time giving them the ability to move. At each of the places that were left open so that the soldier could move, there was a “chink” in the armor. This was where an enemy’s arrow, spear tip or sword could pierce between the plates on either side. So the term “chink in the armor” came to mean the places where we were vulnerable to attack, even though we were covered everywhere else by protective … Read more

Posted in: Joyce Alexander, Recovery from a sociopath

Even with all that I now know, I got scammed

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By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)

I like to think of myself as pretty wise, now that I have learned to recognize most of the red flags of dishonesty and people high in psychopathic traits. But I recently got scammed by three people working in concert. They also scammed another party as well.

I bought a dog that was actually stolen. Here’s how it happened:

I went to a web site in Georgia looking for dogs that are trained as protection dogs. They cost quite a bit of money, starting at about $5,000 and I knew this. This man offered me a “sport” trained dog for $4,000 plus freight which would put her in the $5,000 range, but he … Read more

Posted in: Hooked by a sociopath, Joyce Alexander

Sowing the seed of knowledge

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Editor’s note: The following article refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud’s statement on Spiritual Recovery.

By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)

You know sometimes we tell others about the things that we have gone through, and hope that they see by our example what has happened to us because of our associations with psychopaths or with people who are high in dysfunctional traits common to psychopaths. Sometimes people “get it,” and sometimes they don’t get it.

A passage of the Bible refers to this:

And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying Behold a sower went forth to sow; and when he sowed some seeds fell by the wayside, and the fowls came and devoured

I Don’t Want to Live That Life

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By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)

Recently I found a book in a “junk book store” that caught my eye. Its title was I Don’t Want to Live This Life, and it was written by Deborah Spungen. The book is about her family trying to raise a “difficult child,” her first daughter, Nancy. Nancy was murdered by her boyfriend, a “rock star” named Sid Vicious, in the 1970s.

Nancy’s birth was problematic with the cord around her neck, and a rare blood disorder caused her to need a total blood exchange transfusion immediately after birth. From the day that she was brought home from the hospital, she screamed and fought her caregivers. By the time she was 14 she … Read more

Posted in: Joyce Alexander, Recovery from a sociopath

People with bad behavior in the news

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By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)

I recently read this article in the New York Times about Lance Armstrong. Armstrong is a world famous cyclist and well known “do-gooder” with his “Live Strong” website, which purports to tell others how to “Live Well and Live Strong.” Armstrong is a survivor of cancer. Testicular cancer is a “young man’s” disease and one that I sought to teach my college-aged patients about when I worked as a director of student health. I also have a close friend who is now a middle-aged man who is also a survivor of testicular cancer. It is a horrible disease.

Details of doping scheme paint Armstrong as leader

It has been rumored for years that … Read more

Posted in: Joyce Alexander, Media sociopaths, Millions of sociopaths

The Psychopath’s Enablers

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By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)

Psychopaths do a great deal of damage to their victims. The fact that there are people who are aware of what they are doing and choose to “look the other way” or to “sit on the fence and do nothing” enables the psychopaths to continue to abuse their victims. If the bystanders would stand up and assist the victims, even acknowledge that they are being victimized, the psychopaths might not be quite so successful.

One of the most famous of these enablers who chose to look the other way was a man named Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect in Jerusalem in AD 33. When Jesus was brought before him by the Jewish leaders, … Read more

Posted in: Hooked by a sociopath, Joyce Alexander, Recovery from a sociopath