Phantom Stranger

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Posts by Phantom Stranger

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  29

  First dates....what to say....and "all 'dat".....UPDATE, UPDATE

  by logansrun in

  1. social
  2. relationships

  yeah....see below....

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  Phantom Stranger

  Oh, yeah, Bradley, if you can work into conversation that you can dial a rotary phone with your tongue, that's good too.

  If she asks, "Information?", reply, "International..."
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  22

  Would You.....?

  by Frannie Banannie in

  1. jw
  2. friends

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  would you reveal info about what you consider to be the worst turnoffs re: people you've dated?

  frannie b

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  Phantom Stranger

  Frannie, are you asking for the lists of turnoffs or the reasons why/why not to share them? I'm confused...
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  17

  What does a true JW really want from life ???

  by run dont walk in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  could be your parents, a close friend, brother/sister, family member or whoever ........... what do they really want from their life ???.

  paradise earth ?.

  living forever ?.

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  Phantom Stranger

  A "true" JW would want to submerge their wants and substitute the needs of God's organization, in a spirit of love, giving, and compassion, and with a suspension of any doubt, scepticism, or critical analysis.

  Most of what they have is actually people with a desperate need for acceptance, a massive fear of rejection and of being alone, and a tremendous doubt that they are valuable, loveable, or wonderful in and of themselves.
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  15

  Womenz & Menz....Your Worst Date Ever!

  by Frannie Banannie in

  1. jw
  2. friends

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  your worst dating experience ever....with the exception of any encounter involving sexual violence........just your "abby normal" dating experiences..... mine was a double blind date with a skinny, butt-ugly guy that was too old for me and had infected gums...(blek) i was only 17....my best friend and her b/friend had "fixed" him up....with me!...it was totally boring.... frannie b

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  Phantom Stranger

  Tks, Frannie. Hey, I hope it works out for her. I didn't need sex that bad anyway (close, but not thaaaaat bad :)
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  7

  JW emotional probs and Borderline Personality Disorder

  by Phantom Stranger in

  1. watchtower
  2. medical

  i have seen many posts here about addiction psychology and its relationsship to jw's.

  this is an interesting area... and i tend to be a bit sceptical simply due to the "trendyness" that addiction psych is experiencing.

  i personally see links to low-intensity borderline personality disorder (high-intensity seems to lead to self-mutilation and suicide attempts, the latter of which we have all heard about).

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  Phantom Stranger

  I have seen many posts here about addiction psychology and its relationsship to JW's. This is an interesting area... and I tend to be a bit sceptical simply due to the "trendyness" that addiction psych is experiencing.

  I personally see links to low-intensity Borderline Personality Disorder (high-intensity seems to lead to self-mutilation and suicide attempts, the latter of which we have all heard about). The comments below are taken from this site http://www.priory.com/dbt.htm and refer to Dr Marcha Linehan's work in treating BPD with dialectical therapy. The italic and bold is mine. I'm interested if any of you see any parallels.

  The term 'Invalidating Environment' refers essentially to a situation in which the personal experiences and responses of the growing child are disqualified or "invalidated" by the significant others in her life. The child's personal communications are not accepted as an accurate indication of her true feelings and it is implied that, if they were accurate, then such feelings would not be a valid response to circumstances. Furthermore, an Invalidating Environment is characterised by a tendency to place a high value on self-control and self-reliance. Possible difficulties in these areas are not acknowledged and it is implied that problem solving should be easy given proper motivation. Any failure on the part of the child to perform to the expected standard is therefore ascribed to lack of motivation or some other negative characteristic of her character. (The feminine pronoun will be used throughout this paper when referring to the patient since the majority of BPD patients are female).

  Linehan suggests that an emotionally vulnerable child can be expected to experience particular problems in such an environment. She will neither have the opportunity accurately to label and understand her feelings nor will she learn to trust her own responses to events. Neither is she helped to cope with situations that she may find difficult or stressful, since such problems are not acknowledged. It may be expected then that she will look to other people for indications of how she should be feeling and to solve her problems for her. However, it is in the nature of such an environment that the demands that she is allowed to make on others will tend to be severely restricted. The child's behaviour may then oscillate between opposite poles of emotional inhibition in an attempt to gain acceptance and extreme displays of emotion in order to have her feelings acknowledged. Erratic response to this pattern of behaviour by those in the environment may then create a situation of intermittent reinforcement resulting in the behaviour pattern becoming persistent.

  Linehan suggests that a particular consequence of this state of affairs will be a failure to understand and control emotions; a failure to learn the skills required for 'emotion modulation'.

  Linehan groups the features of BPD in a particular way, describing the patients as showing dysregulation in the sphere of emotions, relationships, behaviour, cognition and the sense of self.

  Firstly, they show evidence of 'emotional vulnerability' as already described. They are aware of their difficulty coping with stress and may blame others for having unrealistic expectations and making unreasonable demands.

  On the other hand they have internalised the characteristics of the Invalidating Environment and tend to show 'self-invalidation'. They invalidate their own responses and have unrealistic goals and expectations, feeling ashamed and angry with themselves when they experience difficulty or fail to achieve their goals.

  These two features constitute the first pair of so-called 'dialectical dilemmas', the patient's position tending to swing between the opposing poles since each extreme is experienced as being distressing.

  Next, they tend to experience frequent traumatic environmental events, in part related to their own dysfunctional lifestyle and exacerbated by their extreme emotional reactions with delayed return to baseline. This results in what Linehan refers to as a pattern of 'unrelenting crisis', one crisis following another before the previous one has been resolved. On the other hand, because of their difficulties with emotion modulation, they are unable to face, and therefore tend to inhibit, negative affect and particularly feelings associated with loss or grief. This 'inhibited grieving' and the 'unrelenting crisis' constitute the second 'dialectical dilemma'.

  The opposite poles of the final dilemma are referred to as 'active passivity' and 'apparent competence'. Patients with BPD are active in finding other people who will solve their problems for them but are passive in relation to solving their own problems. On the other hand, they have learned to give the impression of being competent in response to the Invalidating Environment. In some situations they may indeed be competent but their skills do not generalise across different situations and are dependent on the mood state of the moment. This extreme mood dependency is seen as being a typical feature of patients with BPD.
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  20

  "Raised in the Truth" or What the Hell Was That Anyway?

  by Perry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  about the only model that i've found that helps define the experience of being born in the truth (bitt), is one used in studies on addiction.

  basically, that model says that people who are addicts form maladaptive relationships with things, experiences, and i'd argue ideologies as well, in a vain attempt to achieve "closeness".

  of course real "closeness" or "psychic validation" as i prefer to think about it, is only truly achieved during and after the interactions between two mutually accepting and non-judging people who possess intimate knowledge of one another; starting with one's primary caregivers... or parents.

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  Phantom Stranger

  I see parallels to low-level Borderline Personality Disorder more than to addiction. (whoops hit Post too soon).

  Although the dependency relationship has parallels, I think the dependency is often short of addiction. I went and posted the BPD topic on a new thread so as not to hijack this one.
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  15

  Womenz & Menz....Your Worst Date Ever!

  by Frannie Banannie in

  1. jw
  2. friends

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  your worst dating experience ever....with the exception of any encounter involving sexual violence........just your "abby normal" dating experiences..... mine was a double blind date with a skinny, butt-ugly guy that was too old for me and had infected gums...(blek) i was only 17....my best friend and her b/friend had "fixed" him up....with me!...it was totally boring.... frannie b

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  Phantom Stranger

  OK, here we go.

  So I was meeting people on Match.com a few years ago. The strategy was, 2 or three exchanged e-mails, going to phone conversation ASAP, if the first phone call went well then coffee/drinks ASAP. I figured out fairly early that the less time in email or phone, the better.

  So this "32-year-old" woman and I had exchanged a few emails and I had sent her my phone number. She called me on a Wednesday afternoon and wanted to know if I'd like to meet for drinks. In 45 minutes. Well, my schedule was open and she sounded pretty sexy, so I agreed. BTW, I was 35 at the time.

  We met at a local pub at about 4:00 (McMenamins, for you in the NW) and she ordered a pitcher of beer. She was already pretty relaxed, and when she ordered the second pitcher she admitted that she had had a couple of glasses of wine before hand. Didn't seem to slow down her consumption, though. During the second pitcher, she made the following confessions:

  1) Her younger boyfriend has just dropped her a few weeks ago - said he needed space, then stopped returning calls. Clearly not over him.

  2) She just got "laid off" from her job as a counselor in a school for special-needs kids. Oregon was not laying off at the time... suspect she got fired.

  3) She was not really 32 (like I cared!). She was 35. I asked why she lied about this (while wondering what else was fictional in her bio). She said that she didn't want 40-year -olds hitting on her. I explained that 40-year-old men, like 35-year-olds and 25-year-olds, will pretty much hit on anything with a pulse. In hindsight, I don't buy it - I think she lied to this boyfriend guy about her age and was hoping he'd see her ad and call.

  Well, at this time, she's pretty drunk, and also admits to not having had lunch! So I tell her that we need to get food into her, and we go to a youth-oriented, casual Japanese restauarant nearby. Fortunately, they are empty.

  She orders sake for two as soon as we sit down. At this point I am suspecting that she's just looking for casual sex to take the edge off of her getting dumped and fired, and I am debating my ethical position on this as I notice that she has killed the rest of the sake, and after praising the beautiful sake "set" (which didn't match), she proceeds to stuff it into the pockets of her cargo pants.

  I manage to get her home, all the while continuing the debate in my head, which was obviated as soon as I get her into her house and she has to run to the bathroom and throw up. So here I am, first date, holding her hair out of the toilet and fetching her a glass of water as she cries. A drunk, crying, puking, depressed woman. I got her to her bed and I went home.

  The next day she called me and told me that she was so embarrassed that she could never see me again - and she wasn't ready for a relationship anyway. Of course, I know what this means. About a year later, I meet someone who knows her (a former co-worker at the school! PDX is a small city) and it turns out she is married to a guy she first dated immediately after our date!

  Anyway, that's my worst.
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  17

  JW 'urban legends'

  by Steve Lowry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i was thinking about some of the old jw urban legends that we grew up with and believed in as jws.

  most of the ones i remember revolved around stories about demons, and jws being "attacked" when they would do something wrong.

  some of these legends scared the crap outta me when i was little.

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  Phantom Stranger

  The only one I remember was story from the platform at the assembly about the couple in service gettting charged by the dog and the dog being magically stopped in midair, as if "by an angel".

  Even my dad didn't buy that one.
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  83

  My two week consulting trip to Bethel (the beginning of the end) Part 4

  by seven006 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the next day was going to be tough.

  i had to do kind of a portfolio check session with the illustrators and work on some photo retouching for an up coming italian awake magazine and work with someone from the graphics department on the miniaturization issue.

  as i walked around a little bit i noticed a large hell scanner sitting in a room with a plastic tarp over it.

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  Phantom Stranger

  (sotto voce) Movie rights...moooovie rights...
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  8

  dont know what to do!

  by Gavo in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  here is my story and dilemma!.

  i was kindof raised a jw.... i have been going to meetings as long as i can remember... but i met this girl who was 'of the world'.

  (she was a christian).

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  Phantom Stranger

  Well, before you thought that you were right... and you had no problems because your family agreed with you.

  Now you think that you are right, but you want your family to agree with you, now that you've changed your mind.

  As previous posts said, just be the best person you can be (that includes being the most accepting, non-judgemental, non-self-righteous person you can be) and things will work out.

  If you wait for them to change before you fully love them, you're behaving the same way the witnesses do.

  BTW, distinguishing between JW's and Christians is an interesting topic - before you bring that up here too much, I advise you be pretty darned familiar with the arguments you plan to cite.