By Joyce Alexander, RNP (Retired)
I was reading an article about Steve Jobs’ new biography that came out this past week, and some of the stories about his life. There is no doubt in my mind that Steve Jobs was one of the smartest and most savvy guys in the Twentieth Century. The inventions that he fostered or personally thought of have changed our society and our culture, and remarkably changed the communication field. An amazing man!
You may have read the title of this article and are already wondering how Steve Jobs was killed by a “psychopath.” Jobs died of the terminal stages of pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed with this very serious form of cancer. Apparently, according to what I read, it was a slower growing kind of this cancer, and if he had had surgery right then, there is a good chance that he might have actually effected a cure and be alive even today.
That wasn’t what Steve chose to do, though ”¦ he chose to deny the seriousness and the urgency to take drastic action immediately to exorcise the tumor out of his system. He did not essentially “go NO CONTACT” with the toxic, malignant entity that had silently invaded his body. As smart as Jobs was, and even though he had access to the best and most knowledgeable physicians in the world, he did not take the “appropriate action” to have the surgery. Jobs told his biographer that he did “not want to be cut open like that.” He later regretted that decision and even realized that it may have cost him his life.
His biographer says that he ultimately saw that the colon cleansing and other “new age” treatments did nothing for him, and nine months after he turned down after recommended surgery, Jobs finally decided to have it—what is called a “Whipple procedure” to remove the tumor. It was too late; he had missed that narrow “window of opportunity” in which he could have saved his life. He “got a divorce” from the tumor too late, the damage had been done. Though Steve Jobs fought valiantly for the next decade, the ultimate “win” by the psychopathic cancer was a foregone conclusion. He had failed to excise the cancer from his life while it was small.
Psychopaths as cancers
Too many times, I see psychopathic relationships with “malignant” individuals, and like cancers, they may grow inside us without being detectable as toxic until one day, even before we know they are toxic, the fatal damage has been done. Or, we may get a chance recognize them and to excise them when they are “small” in relationship to the rest of our lives. We can remove them without leaving large scars or holes in our lives. If we get this chance to remove the “malignant” people from our lives and we, like Steve Jobs, decide on a “want and see” plan, we allow them to grow and infiltrate our lives more fully, so that if and when we do decide to “surgically” remove them from our lives, the hole and the scars that they leave is much larger and more debilitating than if we had “done the surgery” when the situation wasn’t quite so ingrown.
Jesus talked about “if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, if thy hand offend thee, cut it off,” and went on to analogize that it is better to live a life with one eye or one hand than to live in “hell” with two eyes or two hands. Sometimes I think the “surgery” necessary to remove the psychopathic personality from our lives is very much like “plucking out your own eye” or “cutting off your own hand” with a rusty butcher knife. But the point of the situation is that in order to live a good life, or in some cases to live at all, we must make the hard decision to excise the toxic person, or the malignant tumor, from our lives as soon as we know what they are. Waiting around, treating this toxic, malignant issue with “kindness and love,” isn’t going to remove it from our lives or our bodies, or change it into something benign. We must take drastic and surgical action to remove this malignant person from our lives completely.
Removing those around the psychopath
That may also mean taking out the “lymph nodes” of the people around the cancerous person, just like the doctor will remove lymph nodes from around a breast containing cancer where that malignancy has spread into those nodes so that they, in turn, don’t spread the toxin to the rest of the body. It is unfortunate but true that a toxic psychopath will frequently have spread their lies and toxins to other people around us that we may also love ”¦ their families, our mutual friends, etc. A “cure” from the toxic psychopath may require us to be NC with those people too, and excise them from our lives as well. The longer the psychopath has been in our lives and the more deeply involved, the more likely this will be necessary. Failing to “bite the bullet” and do this as well may result in a recurrence of the malignancy this person leaves in our lives.
Steve Jobs was a significant personality in our culture. Of course there is no guarantee that if he had elected to have the surgery sooner rather than later, that he would have lived longer or better, but I can guarantee that living with a psychopathic person longer, or trying every “alternative” cure, except total surgical removal, isn’t going to improve your life in any way.
I think even in his death, Steve Jobs left us one more important thing ”¦ a lesson for anyone involved with a toxic relationship of any kind.
Bless you EB – you are a true inspiration.
EB,
I gotter half-done. baby steps for me.
Erin
Thanks for your note. It really is a choice. I know that.
It doesn’t make the choice easy.
What a spiral.
I felt like shit the last few days, really in the dumps because it’s been like six weeks NC. There was truly NO CONTACT, but I have not kicked him out of my head. How do I do that?
This afternoon, I figured out that my spath had been stalking me on line. I instantly felt better. And now, I am regretful for feeling better. I should instead be indifferent, and I’m not.
🙁
Athena
Excellent article oxy. Pretty visceral analogy, but I think it really captures the nature of the involvement. To describe sociopaths as a “cancer” is very apt.
Oxy:
Great analogy! Sorry, I had picked up on more of the medical aspect of it earlier. I knew what you were trying to portray with this…good job.
Stargazer:
They threw up?? Wow! I had read somewhere that it was so bad that people were walking out. For whatever reason, I don’t have that type of stomach…I wouldn’t throw up and I wouldn’t walk out either. I have to see these two movies. I am going to have to rent both of them as #2 is not showing in my city. Thanks for the feedback! 🙂
Well, (louise), the midnight crowd I was there with laughed through the whole thing. We applauded when he finally got the “centipede” assembled. But it was pretty gory and disgusting. The first one wasn’t quite so gory. We regarded it as a comedy because it is so farfetched that it could never happen. There were even people there who dressed up in bandages just for the movie. We waited in the same line as the Rocky Horror folks, who were all dressed up. We were standing outside in the cold waiting to get in. The staff member (also dressed in some ridiculous costume that involved a thong and full body tattoos) came out and let the Rocky Horror people in first. He said, “Who is here for the drag show?” And all the RH people went in. Then he said, “Who is here for ass-to-mouth?” All the Human Centipede people cheered and laughed. But they still did not let us in right away. So we all talked about “joining together” LOL and barging in. We sang songs from RH while we were waiting. I’m just giving you an idea as to the kind of crowd we were and the ambience we were creating. We didn’t take the film seriously. We were laughing and applauding through the whole thing, especially when everyone in the centipede got a shot of ex-lax. Anyone who goes to a midnight showing of a film is not there to take it seriously.
Wow, Star! That must have been SOME CROWD….~
Stargazer:
Haha…I love it!! Sounded like so much fun! You know…I am also that type of person with horror films…a lot of times I laugh because they are just so far fetched it could never happen…EXACTLY! You literally took the words out of my mouth. Thanks for the update! Take care!
Hi Guys ~ I have decided to not take anything seriously today and seeing you are laughing and telling horror show stories this seems like to be a good place for my story.
An extremely modest man was in the hospital for a series of tests, the last of which had left his bodily systems extremely upset.
Upon making several false alarm trips to the bathroom, he decided the latest episode was another and stayed put. He suddenly filled his bed with diarrhea and was embarrassed beyond his ability to remain rational.
In a complete loss of composure he jumped out of bed, gathered the bed sheets, and threw them out the hospital window.
A drunk was walking by the hospital when the sheets landed on him. He started yelling, cursing, and swinging his arms violently trying to get the unknown things off, and ended up with the soiled sheets in a tangled pile at his feet.
As the drunk stood there, unsteady on his feet, just staring down at the sheets, a hospital security guard who had watched the whole incident, walked up and asked, “What the heck is going on here?”
The drunk, still staring down replied: “I think I just beat the shit out of a ghost.”