From H20- "The Ultimate Rude Display"

by Dubby 39 Replies latest jw friends

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  SolidSender

  Hi Frenchy,

  regarding your statement:

  Solid: They are not all white anymore

  a PR move perhaps? What's the ratio?-SolidSender
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  SolidSender

  hi waiting, i just read a post of yours elsewhere here and it really summed up a similar point i was trying to make to yourself previously.

  I hope it's OK to use your quotes. I think most here are familiar with your story and respect what you've been through.

  firstly you said:

  I do not come here to bash and thrash the WTBTS.

  in response I said:

  Mindcontrol is the end result of massive doses of a reptitive message to the point of entrenchment. As I said in my post above it seems that myself and others here realise that they have to adopt a similar method in opposition, though we havn't a hope.

  however i feel this quote of yours says what I I'm trying to say in my above quote in a far more effective manner:

  My point in bringing this up is that there are a lot of us, whether we know it or not, who are victims. Or we know, or suspect victims/abusers. The more we talk openly about it, the more chance we can help a child not become a victim. Because we learn identifying traits of abusers and victims. And that is the whole point.
  We survivors are already victims - perhaps by learning about what makes abusers tick, we can prevent our child, neighbor's child, etc. from being the abuser's next victim.

  I feel like a victim of the WTBTS and post for the very same reason you posted the above statement as a victim of your father.

  Does that make sense? Let me know-SolidSender
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  Frenchy

  waiting and solid: I understand there is one black man on the GB now. I got this off H20 a while back and I'm sure there is somebody there that knows something about him...

  -Seen it all, done it all, can't remember most of it-
• 

  waiting

  Hey SS,

  Thanks for your post. I can see your position - victims, perhaps.

  I understand your anger. According to some studies, a person under mind control must use some form of mind control through dissociation in order to be able to have two completely different mind sets at the same time.

  That is also how some victims of abuse survive - using dissociation. Some are aware of this usage, some don't have a clue. It can be helpful or deadly, whichever way its used. Dissociation carried to the logical fullness is the DID personality (multiples). Still one mind - among many parts.

  The reason why I bring this up is that there are similarites between the situations of mind control - no matter who uses it against another person. The results are similar, whether people are aware of the consequences or not.

  But there are vast differences also. The sheer, complete difference. The difference between being "date raped" and gang raped, mutilated, and bleeding to die.

  I've lived through both different situations, feeling the ramifications through adult eyes. What happened as a child is still quite dissociated, probably always will be. As for the ramifications as an adult? I'll go with dealing with the ramifications of a "religion gone bad" over torture and death any day.

  It's all in what you compare it to, actually. Is the glass half full or half empty?

  I don't say I agree, dismiss, or want to be a part of the WTBTS. I just say, compared to being a victim of them as compared to my father - the Society's a walk in the park.

  waiting
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  SolidSender

  Dear Waiting, with all due respect and by no means dismissing the magnitude of what you've been through I feel trauma is all subjective.

  What I mean is two people having undergone an identical traumatic situation will not develop identicatal post traumatic disorders.

  In my opinion ( i know it seems i have a few but "in real life" i'm a total introvert who hardly ever speaks unless they are spoken to but...) i feel it's not beyond the realms of possibility that a person undergoing the WTBTS trauma could have a post traumatic experience comparable to a person who has undergone a traumatic experience such as your own.

  Dichotomizing the psyche as the WTBTS does is the first step down the raod to a nervous breakdown. Some are more susceptible to breakdown than others and do eventually reach that destination unfortunately.

  How do you measure anguish and how can you say one persons anguish is more than anothers? It gets kind of difficult to quantify as far as I can see.

  I am not shrink but like yourself have been around the block a few times now to have at least figured a few things out based purely on experience and this subject happens to be one of those few.- SolidSender
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  waiting

  Hey SS,

  Good points. May I help you illustrate this quandry between us?

  After a year in therepy for incest, I joined an incest group. 10 women - all from different backgrounds, traumas, and reactions. After being in a group session, I would go back and ask my therepist why we all had different reactions, and solutions or lack thereof, to the same general action - incest.

  She told me that there had been studies done on child victims of the Nazi concentration camps. Studies that followed the child as he grew up. The concensus was: People from the same trauma will react differently - for no apparant reasons.

  As she so adroitly summed it up: Put 5 children Nazi victims on the couch. #1 - basket case. #2 - withdrawn, but can focus. #3 - PTS with violent episodes. #4 - multiple personalities. #5 - just goes about his life, putting it behind him.

  The reason why the differences? No one knows.

  I apologize if I belittled your unknown experiences - I just react differently than you. Some would say I react differently than most people - I don't listen to them.

  waiting
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  SolidSender

  Waiting - excellent point and exactly what I was attempting to say. I was thinking the same in regard to war veterans etc. Re: your quote:

  The reason why the differences? No one knows.

  I'll hazard a guess and say because everyone is a unique individual.

  Another thing I remembered and I'm sure a lot of other people here can add similar experiences. I had two close personal JW friends, both from the same congregation committ suicide after being DF'd. ( not together or at the same time ) I was fairly intimate with their emotional conditions. Both were roughly around 30 years old.

  I guess it's difficult to get more anguished than that.-SolidSender
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  waiting

  SS,

  I'm sorry for your friends' suicide. Tragedy of unnecessary death lingers forever.

  I've been close to several suicide victims in the past. Both were witnesses, both young men.

  However, this is something that you are going to have to come to grips with - both of the men I knew also had emotional problems, which were ingrained in their very fiber of beings.

  The first: I knew him before either of us even studied. He was into drugs, alchohalic father & brother, uncaring and stupid mother. He was constantly prone to depression - for the 14 years I knew him as my husband's best friend. We sisters use to seriously "joke" that he "traveled to the beat of a different drummer."

  He had an argument with his wife in a park one evening. She walked back to their car - came back to find that he had hung himself by the chain of a child's swing. He was 26. I happened to be the only one home when she called from the hospital. It was terrible. He had emotional problems and depression before every becoming a Witness. He continued to have problems afterwards.

  The other young man came from a family who had a history of pronounced bipolar disorder (manic/depressive). His grandmother and mother also suffer from this physical ailment. He was handsome & gifted, and constantly on the fringe of becoming a ms or a street bum. His wife left him during an argument, he went to a high bridge, took his clothes off, folded neatly in his car, and then jumped. After 3 days, the authorities found the lower half of his body. He was 24.

  The teachings of the WTBTS may have accentuated these young men's problems, but they did not cause them. Everything in their lives accentuated their problems, even, I suppose, living.

  Their deaths were tragedies - but not necessarily the Society's doing. I think you could blame life.

  I assume you'll disagree with me, as you said, that's part of a forum. But I stand on this one issue, the Society is not the total sum of one's problems.

  waiting

  PS, Both men, being well known in their cities, had huge funerals and each were well attended by JWs. Their perspective families were given as much support as possible during this trauma.
• 

  RedhorseWoman

  waiting, while I agree that the Society does not cause these problems, the prevailing attitude within the Society does tend to exacerbate them.

  I know that things have loosened up as far as seeking psychiatric help is concerned, and this is good. It used to be that any form of mental health therapy was straight from Satan and was strongly discouraged, if not forbidden.

  A lot of people with problems are drawn to a religion such as the JW's where one needs only to "wait on Jehovah" and all one's problems will miraculously disappear. All one needs to do is to be a "good Witness" and Jehovah will make everything fine.

  Certainly many people do experience a remission of sorts when they get totally involved with meetings and service, but then there is the emotional crash when they realize that whatever they do, it's not enough.

  The Society is certainly not to blame for these unrealistic expectations. However, as I've stated before, elders need to have some sort of basic psychological education so that they might be able to recognize a person's symptoms and recommend professional help.

  Doing more in service is not sufficient to handle severe psychological problems.
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  waiting

  Hey Red,

  You are absolutely right - I also feel that persons with psychological/emotional/physical problems gravitate towards an answer - and the Society presents one for the whole world. I bought it. The point I was trying to make to SS was that they did not create my problem. Nor of my friends who committed suicide.

  I totally agree about elders not being trained to be counselors. I approached them in '76 - when my husbands's being raised by a dyke with a sock in her pants and his drugs were met with encouragement to go to more meetings. That was the end-all statement.

  Later, when it was deemed that anti-depressents were an individual matter - I was counseled just that - and I continued on them as I had been using them for years anyway.

  Later, when therepy was a private matter- I continued since I was already doing that.

  However, I had done these things anyway for myself with/without the Society's approval. I think a lot of JWs are like myself. We are not all sheep waiting to be slaughtered.

  My only point to SS was that the Society does not cause all emotional ills in a person's life. Some, undoubtedly, but life itself causes many problems.

  Nice to hear from you.

  waiting

  Edited by - waiting on 15 July 2000 7:40:7