WAS THERE ANY MENTAL INSTABILITY IN YOUR CONGREGATION?

by badboy 30 Replies latest jw friends

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  badboy

  ANY TAKERS?
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  candidlynuts

  all the old hens would gather in the bathroom at one point during any 2 hour meeting and hand out xanex or valium to each other.
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  Mamacat

  There was a guy in the hall who was a little "off" as everyone liked to say. He used to stare at people a lot and sometimes he'd just say totally off the wall and inappropiate things. He had a thing for my friend's mom and wouldn't get it that she didn't like him for a long time. My mom always said that he had done a lot of drugs before becoming a dub and he had 'emotional problems' because of it, so it seemed that people excused his behavior. He would disappear for a few months at a time, which I later found out was because he was checked into mental hospitals.

  Later, he decided to get married to a woman from a congregation some 200 miles away. My mom and I and a few others from the hall went to the wedding. The sister was 18 years old, and he had to be at least 35 at this time. (I have nothing against big age differences, but this is important for later.) She moved in with him but things fell apart within 6 months. The story was that she locked him out of the house and was screaming, accusing him of all sorts of perverted things that weren't true and that she was just too young to be married. She went back to her family, he becomes a MS.

  Later still, he married my cousin..she's a distant cousin, but we grew up together and are about the same age. He was in his 40's at this time, and my cousin was early 20's. She kept trying to get in touch with me, but I had moved away, so I never did get to speak to her at this time. Then, I hear that they are divorcing and it's just horrible and my cousin is absolutely crushed. No one would tell me what in the hell was going on though.

  Then, I moved back to the area a few months later and I hear you can look up to see if sex offenders live in your area and see their pictures, etc. I decide to look and see if any live by me. OMG There was this guy accused of lewd conduct with someone under 14. I brought it up to my mom who finally told me the story as to why my cousin's marriage with him broke up...um yeah, I think I had figured it out the second I saw him in the sex offender's registry! I think of all the times he would stare at me when I was younger and offer to work with me in service and drive me in his van! :::shudder::: I never went because he always creeped me out.

  I wonder if anyone ever did go with him back then...my mom tried to say that since he was an active witness back then, of course nothing happened. She seems to forget he was 'active' when he was married to my cousin and got jailed for this stuff! I still have no idea if the victim was a jw, or if he met her somewhere else.
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  Seeker4

  I saw lots of mental instability in lots of congregations. It's very common.
  S4
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  blondie

  What is your definition of mental instability?

  Blondie
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  HadEnuf

  I remember my oldest son once commenting to me, and this was when he was still in his mid teens..."Mom...there sure are a lot of crazy people at the KH"! Probably because they never got the proper help in the form of counseling or medication...weren't we always told just to rely on Jehovah and the elders to "fix" our problems. No wonder everyone was a nut case...including myself. I have since reformed...slightly.

  mumsy
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  Warlock

  Only when I was still attending.

  Warlock
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  freetosee

  I remember complaining as a teenager why only strange people become witnesses and not the normal. The answer was that the happy people are happy in the world and can’t see the truth.

  Every congregation has instable people, one of our CO’s suffered from depressions and was suicidal before he became a jw (that was part of his introduction at his first visit).

  We had a few serious cases in our cong, one brother who worked at a music store started acting up one evening at our home, speaking very loud and not fully in control of himself. A few days later my father got called in the night and had to quickly leave the house. Later we were told what happened and went over to the home of the brother to tidy it. Broken music records and personal items were laying on the street. In the stairway as we got closer to his apartment smashed furniture was all over. The apartment looked like it was hit by a bomb. The chaos was covered with LP’s as his collection was very huge. The strangest thing was smeared chocolate cream on the walls.

  Couple of days later I accompanied an elder visiting him in a mental home after a day in FS. The elder brought along different wts alerting about the dangers in music. He told the brother that it might be that he was attacked by demons because of the music he’s been listening to. The brother said that the problem was that he didn’t continue taking the medication he was under. He was warned but didn’t like the side-effects (gaining weight) and decided to reduce the doses. I asked him about the chocolate cream, to which he said he did that because he had to feed little creatures he saw. The brother was nice and friendly seeming back to normal. After all of this the brother moved to another city.

  I doubt the elders counsel helped the recovery, but we had a ‘local needs item’ cautioning about demonic music. fts
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  roybatty

  Funny....my ex, who's still a faithful JW, and I were just talking about this. Not sure what brought it up but I asked her if mentally ill people were attracted to the WatchTower or did the Watchtower make people mentally ill. I have to admit, she had a good answer. She said that a lot of people are attracted to the WT because for the first time in their lives they feel appreciated.

  Great place to raise kids I suppose, surrounded by mentally unstable people.
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  Gregor

  The last time I brought up this topic it was extinguished by someone on the board of lords.

  Hell yes, there was. Committee meetings with people suffering from what I now know was a common mental disorder, OCD. It was really disrupting their lives (things like having to turn the lights on and off over a hundred times before they could leave a room.) and all we had to offer was to encourage them to pray. Then there were the various "anointed". One elder, of the 144K class, was absolutely one of the strangest people I have ever known. Among other things he could not handle the frequent winter extended periods of fog and would leave town to go up in the mountains until it cleared. He was a GB groupie and was constantly corresponding with NY on various matters of inspired knowwledge. he is also the uncle of the 20 year old who tried to seduce our 12 yr old daughter and called a special elders meeting when I took it to the police. Another partaker firebombed several local churches one night and ended up in the state hospital for the criminally insane.

  Is it fair to refer to wives of unbelievers who beat and abused them horribly but would not leave because they didn't have the famous "scriptural grounds" as being mentally unstable?