Last week, I posted Letters to Lovefraud: Who we used to be, written by the reader who posts as “Panther.” She called herself a “new survivor,” having just left the sociopath and gone “No Contact” less than a month ago. She wrote: Through reading various Lovefraud articles, I've realized that the veterans have so much invaluable advice to offer. However, at times I wonder how the voice of a survivor sounded right after the break. The reason this matters to me is because the veterans seem so much stronger than I feel right now. I cannot help but wonder, as I read through their wise words, if they have something I don't have, which enabled them to get over this. To Panther and other Lovefraud …
Where there is life, there is hope … or is there?
By Joyce Alexander, RNP (Retired) One of the things I was raised to believe was, “where there is life, there is hope.” It was one of the precepts I was taught to believe to always keep “hope” alive. In the last few decades, there have been many advances in the medical profession's ability to save people that not long ago have surely would have died. My grandfather was one of the early members of my family who was “saved” from a sure death from pneumonia by the first “sulfa drugs,” antibiotics. It was a miracle, as he was already thought by the doctors to be “sure to die,” but he returned from the very brink of death and survived. With cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and advanced …
LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: Who We Used to Be
Editor's note: The following letter was written by the Lovefraud reader who posts as “Panther.” This little bundle of words comes from a new survivor. I write this hoping that I can find these thoughts to be consolation for myself, as well as to share them with others for the same reason. Through reading various Lovefraud articles, I've realized that the veterans have so much invaluable advice to offer. However, at times I wonder how the voice of a survivor sounded right after the break. The reason this matters to me is because the veterans seem so much stronger than I feel right now. I cannot help but wonder, as I read through their wise words, if they have something I don't have, which e …
Cigarettes And Sociopaths – Stop The Insanity
This week I am inspired to write following another intensely personal experience that happened to me the weekend before last. I was in London, attending Allen Carr's workshop “Easyway To Stop Smoking”. Yes, I am ashamed to admit that for most of my adult life I have been an on-off smoker. I have had countless long periods of non-smoking (six months, eighteen months”¦ two years was the longest) and I have never classed myself as a ”˜proper' smoker as I rarely exceeded ten a day. But I had been fooling myself. Because the fact is, as I learned last week, that I was an addict and I had been hooked right from the very start. During the course of the workshop, I came to the conclusion that add …
Research finds brain changes due to PTSD
New research has found a specific change in brain chemistry due to trauma. An article on Medscape.com says: "Lower serotonin 1B levels were also strongly associated with age at first trauma. The earlier the trauma exposure, the greater the brain alterations and the greater the severity of PTSD symptoms, and the greater the risk of developing comorbidities," senior author Alexander Neumeister, MD, associate professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, told Medscape Medical News. "These findings establish that trauma at a young age causes long-lasting neurobiological and psychological effects in survivors with PTSD. In other words, early-life trauma can …
Injuries from psychopaths are like burns
By Joyce Alexander, RNP (Retired) I was thinking about 9/11 and the horrible burns experienced by some of the victims who did recover. Being a registered nurse practitioner with a wide variety of clinical experience, the burn units had always been the one place I did not want to work. The terrible pain experienced by the victims of burns always tore at my heart, and even my professional distancing from the pain of my patients could not keep me from “feeling” their pain. On the day the U.S. mourned the fall of the Twin Towers, I started thinking about the analogies of those 9/11 attacks and how they are so much like the attacks on our lives by the psychopaths, and the injuries we suf …
Standing Up To The Bully
This week's post was inspired by a heartfelt email I received from a Lovefraud reader who has just successfully achieved the final step in her resolute struggle to break free: “Two years of tears and agony, stress and anxiety. Nevermore!” As we all know, it takes a huge amount of guts and gritty determination first of all to escape and then to heal — and as I sat reading her words I whooped for joy and punched the air. YES!!! Because it means that one more person is free. One more person has shattered the chains that used to bind. One more person has broken out of the shackles of manipulation and madness — and I am pleased. In fact I am delighted. Every time I hear stories — or recei …
After the sociopath, advice for heartbreak
I subscribe to a service through which reporters who are looking for information for their stories can find sources. Not long ago, a reporter posted the following query: A reporter at a national publication is writing about the hell of heartbreak and is looking for people to interview who have experienced a romantic breakup or divorce and who have creative/unusual advice on how to get through the day-to-day emotional turmoil of it. If you've been through a breakup (as an adult), how did you deal with the emotional pain, especially in the very beginning? How did you distract yourself from your heartache? How did you keep yourself from calling or texting your former beloved? What advice would …
Lessons From The Men I’ve Loved
Thank you very much for all the comments and emails I have received since my last post. I am so glad that I'm able to make a difference, and I'm deeply honoured to be part of this amazing site. This week's writing has been prompted by something in my personal life — I hope you like it. Happy Birthday It's just turned midnight on my son's sixteenth birthday as I sit down to write this week's article. I am so very proud of him, and am constantly amazed at the depth of wisdom, strength and kindness in such a young man. When I look back at the day just two and a half years earlier when I had to sit him down and tell him the truth about the man who had been his step father since just before …
Hurricanes, terror and sociopaths
Once again, I was terrified that my life was going to collapse. Eleven years ago, my fear was caused by my sociopathic ex-husband, James Montgomery. Because of him, my savings had been wiped out, I was overloaded with credit card debt and my business was decimated. I was fighting him in court, and even when I won, it didn't matter. The court ordered him to pay me, and he ignored the order. I got nothing. I had been well and truly betrayed. I berated myself for my stupidity in believing his grandiose schemes. My relations with family members were strained—they also thought I was stupid. I was 44 years old, and facing the fact that I'd never have the only thing I thought that I wanted in …