(((Lee)))
Abusive Women and manipulation
by Lady Lee 62 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse
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ziddina
"...My mother could be very mentally abusive toward my lil brother. The most tragic part of it was my mother would act totally different towards me. She favored me over my brother. I dont know which one is worst, being the one that is abused, or the one that is NOT being abused. ..."
Oh, trust me, Joliette, you were being abused, too...
In my family, it was the other way around. My mother was abusive, too, but it was ostensibly a male-dominated family since my father - the biological sperm donor, as I like to call him - was the one who joined the JWs first.
My mother - the biological incubator - followed, as he was "the man" [anyone remember Meryl Streep's line from the movie, "She Devil"??] and she, as "the woman", had to follow.
With such a skewed value system, it was only natural when they joined the misogynistic Watchtower Society that the female first-born child (me) was considered as "less-valuable" than the second-born son. I was the one who was physically disciplined - and picture an adult male kicking a nine-year-old girl in the shins with his steel-toed work boots at the dinner table for allegedly "smacking", just to get the proper mental picture there.
HE was NEVER physically disciplined. Both parents focused on HIM - he was the "favorite" child, the one who THEY took to the amusement park while farming me out to the grandparents - for the summers, and so on...
I envied my brother - was jealous of their attention to him - for many, many years. But then, when we - brother and I - became adults, the "worm turned"... Their careful cultivation of him served to bind him to them totally - to the extent that he never even had the opportunity to DATE, let alone marry - for that would have separated him - and the money he, as a male wage-earner could earn - from them...
They've been feeding off of him emotionally and financially ever since.... When I saw that, I was SO GLAD that HE was the "favored" child... Truly, he's paid a heavy price for that childhood favoritism...
And in case you're wondering, yes, I did try to warn him, as soon as I began to see the reality about the Watchtower Society and my parents' poisonous behavior. My idiot brother just smiled at me and looked at me in a tolerant, smug, superior manner, when I urgently warned him to break away from them... He was in his mid-twenties at the time...
I don't think he's smiling now... In fact, by the last communication I had with my poisonous family, he'd been hospitalized for severe depression and was on suicide watch...
So much for the family's "favorite" not being damaged...
Zid
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avishai
Ugh, that's horrible, Zid.
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ziddina
Yup, Avishai, but much more horrible for my brother... And thanks for your comment...
It was actually a blessing in disguise to be the "discarded" child - it meant I was able to escape the diseased family system with little damage. I had been ready to leave for decades... My poor brother, on the other hand, was totally trapped...
Being the "favorite" child is sometimes a horrible fate...
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ziddina
Sorry I dragged the thread off-topic, Lady Lee!!!
I thought I had that bad habit under control...
Trying to get back on topic...
I kept running into manipulative female supervisors - or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I found I was extremely vulnerable to their manipulations... It was only when I reconized my mother's manipulative behavior - which seemed to come from being the "lowly woman" in a male-dominated household, by the way - that I ALSO recognized the reason I was so vulnerable to similar forms of manipulation...
Those manipulative female middle-management supervisors were NOTHING compared to your "demon", Lady Lee... Do you suppose that she ever succeeded in changing??? Did she ever realize what a helpless, parasitical personality she had???
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Amelia Ashton
Lady Lee, that's my mother.
The book never met her but has described her behaviour perfectly. I knew she was toxic which left me ripe for JWdom when they came knocking but I always thought everything was my fault.
I accepted 20 years ago I would never get her approval and she would criticise me til the day I died so I stopped speaking to her. Unfortunately for me the damage is done. Her voice telling me how useless I am still resonates in my head on a daily basis.
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TotallyADD
Thank you Lady Lee. My wife and I will read this one for quite awhile. You just describe my mother to a tee. At almost 88 years of age she is trying her best to turn our life upside down. But we will not allow her to do it to us. I told her before two elders I will not have anything to do with her until she gets help. What is amazing how many people in our congregation are falling all over her to help her. It has been a real eye opener for us to see how this cult supports and enables a mentally sick person. But for us they don't even lift a finger. Some even believe some of the slander she saying about us. I think this is reason number 1 why I hate this cult. Totally ADD
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Band on the Run
Reading this thread, another thought came to mind. I expect a certain edginess and even cruelty from men. My father was a monster. I expect nice mothering and feminity from women. Queen Bees have been the bane of my existness. As much as I project my father on to men in general, the women trigger me more. Perhaps being raised a JW, I don't fully approciate their headship. Women who hate women were constant in my life.
Almost all my big battles were with female supervisors. Maybe b/c I worked in female ghettos. When I upgraded to mostly male fields, such as law in the 1980s, it seemed more sane. Some petty female lowly boss treats me worse than men who counsel entire international industries. I've heard that female culture does not translate well to the workplace. It is complex b/c men set it up for their own ends. Sports are extremely important to learn how to interact. Cattines among women is legendary. I despise women fighting women over silly things.
My feminism cries out to stop immediately, esp. in front of men. I had a very painful relationship in law school. B/c I did very well through discipline, sheer determination and even harder work, she was jealous. Rather than acknowledging that we were different people, she tried to drag me down into her mire. We were very close. I started to receive anonymous telephone calls from other students telling me I should know she was besmirching my character while posing as my friend. When the sixth or seventh call came, I exploded. I need to get out before she pulled me under. We lived as roommates, an accomodation I made for her. I scored very high and could have had my choice of single rooms. I told her I was furious and did not want to even talk with her. She took her tales of woe about me to every student, faculty, and service worker in the school. I maintained my silence saying I wanted dignity. When I refused to discuss it with a male friend, he summed it up, "Women."
Maybe cattiness occurs in women b/c we are closer than men generally are. B/c of feminism, I receive incredible support from other women. In contrast to my past, I relish knitting, crochet, quilting, makeup, fashion. Our culture is male dominated. There is no image of catty men.
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mrsjones5
Thank you Lady. This all fits my mother to a T. The stories I could tell about what she's done to me over the years.
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Lady Lee
Jolette
UNnike you I was not the favored child. It does indeed have its blessings. My mother abandoned me to be raised by other people and I think that is the reason I turned out different than the other kids. My pre and early teen years were spent without her.
LV101
The comparisons are right on between the WTS and abusive people. For those who haven't seen these two threads you might want to look at:
- Toxic Parents Toxic Religion 1http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/59414/1.ashx
- Toxic Parents Toxic Religion 2
- http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/59448/1.ashx
Don't be fooled. Men use these techniques too. We just tend to look at their physical abuse more but they use all this stuff. But we need to look at the fact that women can be and often are just as abusive and maybe inflict more harm emotionally nad psychiologically than men do.
avi
You are absolutely right. Once people have been abused this way they are at a high risk for getting into other kinds of relationships that are just as toxic without realizing it. Even if my family had never gotten involved with the JWs my mother's behavior put me at high risk of getting involved with other abusers - hence the girlfriend. Once I figured all that out with the girlfriend I was then able to look at my mother's toxicity and then stopped feeding into her abuse. It was an extremely hard lesson to learn but once learned I was able to use it to protect myself from further abuse by other people. I can see it coming now and can leave and not go back. I no longer think "Maybe its me."
cantleave
I haven't seen that book. I agree that once we can label the behavior it is a lot easier to see. My mother is a pure narcissist. My father was the sociopath. What a team they made.
Band
It is good to be reminded that women are just as capable of bad behavior.
Yup If we don't see it we can't protect ourselves from it
zid
Like you I feel sorry for my siblings who were raised by my mother. Their lives are a mess with no hope of change. But they have all cut themselves off from my mother to the point where she has not known where they are for years and even decades.
No you didn't take it off topic. You are on-topic because you gave a clear example of this kind of abuse can do. Thanks
I've had bosses like that and co-workers. As for my "friend" No I doubt she changed. She read the letter and agreed she had done everything I wrote but no apology. I can hope it gave her somethign to think about but really - these people think they are right. They believe it with every fiber of their being and will justify their behavior to make it seem necessary.
Amelia
We can slowly erase those messages by creating new ones that slowly drown out the old. Think of it as having 2 radios and turning down the volume on unwanted messages and turning up the volume on positive messages.
TotallyADD
Bravo for seeing it and stopping it. Eventualyy people will get tired of it and will desert her. That is what has happened to my mother. She is alone. Even her sister prefers that she live in another town. They seem to do better when they live far apart lol.
Band
Exactly We expect woemn to be "nice" which is why I never noticed my mother's behavior. She seemed nice compared to my father. Well her nice included beating her children, tying babies and small children to their beds and locking older kids in theri room o she could sleep in the morning, various forms of punishment that were very similar to torture techniques that the Japanese used on POWs, name-calling, singing songs to us about her going out to a party while her baby stayed home and died, and on and on and on. And that was the stuff I thought wasn't so bad.
They are also very good at making us look like the one with the problem and everyone will side with her - poor victim. And I think this goes way beyond beign catty. It can be vindictive.
MrsJones
Sorry to heat you are one of the crowd.