Self Mutilation - In A "Spiritual Paradise"? Awake Feb '06

by metatron 29 Replies latest jw friends

  • Mysterious
    Mysterious

    It's a sign of mental distress, and is anyone surprised that there is mental distress in the organization. Of course they will say it is the pressures of Satan's world and they need to take refuge in more theocratic activities, which is also not suprising.

    This is an excellent website on cutting and other forms of self injury for anyone interested in understanding more about the topic in a less JW slanted sense. They also have a forum attached to the site.
    http://www.palace.net/~llama/psych/injury.html&e=9797

  • tetrapod.sapien
    tetrapod.sapien

    when i was a wit, i was into it too. one time i sand papered my right cheek, and told people at the hall that i had been mugged. but you know, i still cut myself. it doesn't mean you want to really harm yourself, it just means you want to escape for a bit. the pain comes back worse than before, but like any addiction, you keep doing it because the relief is, for a few moments, beautiful.

    i am trying to get out of it, and the Awake actually has some good things to say about the sitch. but really, they have no f-ing clue what in the sam-hell they are talking about. i find that writing, or painting or playing the guitar helps me avoid it, on good days. it gives me a release that i can be proud of, instead of ashamed of. but on the bad days, ya, i still cut myself. i am not defending it. just explaining it.

    technically, if there were such a thing as a spiritual paradise, witnoids would not be cutting themselves. but since no such place exists, it makes sense that there are a whole spectrum of cutters, including witnesses.

    depressed apes. who would expect different?

    TS

  • Lady Lee
    Lady Lee

    I have had quite a bit of experience with cutters. Most of the ones I worked with had been sexually abused as children. Some used cutting to deaden the emotional pain by creating a physical pain. Others felt dead inside and the sight of blood was a "proof" to them that they were still alive. And for all it was an issue of control. After so many others taking control over their lives cutting was a way for them to have some measure of control. Interestingly I found the same thing with people with eating disorders.

    The WTS demands total control over people. It wants their thoughts their emotions and their feelings to be always under control. So it doesn't surprise me that a growing number of people will resort to the various forms of control that they can have over their bodies.

  • juni
    juni

    You're right VanGogh. Litter - ature. This org. is so not with it. DF people who have mental problems. Where is the love that they are so happy to claim?

    Hamsterbait - isn't it sad? And this is supposed to be God's org? I don't think so or if it is I don't want to worship a God like that. How the hell did the whole family get DF because of their ill son??? Juni ~~~~~~~~~~

  • ballistic
    ballistic

    god, what an awfull post... love to you all.

  • wednesday
    wednesday

    also another excellent site for persons with any form of mental /emotional illness. Cutting has it own forum, as do eating disorders, anxiety, depressin, bipolar, Stress disorders,(ptsd, "DID, etc) autiusm, and so much more. They are a wonderful grup of people and a large group. Their forum's move as fast as this board.

    weds

    http://crazyboards.org/

  • purplesofa
    purplesofa

    Thanks for this thread........my daughter has done this ......and I have tried to understand, but your posts have made me understand more about it...........esp the part about doing it to relieve the pain.......also..........tetra's post about channeling that energy into something creative and positive.

    purps

  • kiddotan
    kiddotan
    but you know, i still cut myself. it doesn't mean you want to really harm yourself, it just means you want to escape for a bit. the pain comes back worse than before, but like any addiction, you keep doing it because the relief is, for a few moments, beautiful.

    Yeap, sometimes I catch myself thinking about cutting instead of crying. Crying's ok. But people can see you been crying. Cutting can be done out of site and it hurts only me.

    Like Lady Lee said it's to deaden the emotional pain. I am a reforming cutter, physical pain is soooooo much easier to deal with than emotional pain. I never cut where anyone could see, but I did do it as a so called adult, only occasionally in my late teens.

    I'm afraid JW's don't have the all of emotional pain, they just seem to have more condensed within a group than many other groups in society.

  • Lady Lee
    Lady Lee

    Allowing ourselves to feel the emotional pain is the only way to get passed it. It is hard. If you are involved with anyone or anything that denies the emotional pain that is experienced then some other outlet is needed to release it.

    The WTS insists that JWs are a "happy people", "the happiest on earth". The individual's pain means nothing. It is totally denied. And then the person is left believing it is wrong to feel the way theu do. This is an organization that continually tells people they are not good enough, they are not doing enough and do more more more. Under all the pressures, stresses and fears it is no wonder people are forced to hide their emotions. But it does come out - as depression, psychosomatic disorders, many stress-related illnesses. The lists of illnesses I know of among JWs is very very long.

    If just this one thread on one discussion board can help people to realize the problem is not with them but rather from external unhealty pressures then hopefully people will begin to look at why they hurt themselves and then learn other ways to deal with the feelings

    My heart goes out to all of you who have been courageous enough to speak out

  • metatron
    metatron

    It's quite a path we're on, isn't it? You grow up dismissing all such aberrations as a product of Satan and feeling little for the sufferers,

    telling them to 'get over it' - and then empathy tells you something different. Sometimes I feel like that Dylan song, "I was so much older

    then, I'm younger than that now".

    metatron

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