Posts by dubstepped

60

Rec'd a letter from my Dad - need some advice...

by Fadeaway3pointer in

fader here - last meeting was in autumn 2005. lurker on this site and others.

not one to get all controversial.. typical situation, pretty much a born in and left the church at age 38 and never looked back.. i'm 53 now, parents getting older - late 70s but very active, dad is still an elder.. parents, in laws, brother and brother-in-law still uber active jws.. my family (wife and 2 adult children) out since 2005.. we have stayed close to our parents - we have treaded religion lightly and have had a pretty good relationship and have kept our personal lives and beliefs/opinions separated from them.

this was intentional - as we love them and do not want anything to cause shunning since they are getting older and want to be there for them and we respect their beliefs.. got this letter today.

dubstepped

What is tough is that we have been close for past 15 years. I call my Mom weekly and speak with my Dad a couple times per month. Visit them at least once per month. Took them out to dinner in October and then brought food over and had dinner with them early December.

I have to ask. Everything you said above is what you did for them. I noticed this because this situation just happened in a group I run and we talked about these things. Do they call you regularly? Do they visit you? Do they take you out to dinner or bring food over? Or is this purely a one way street?

I ask because the reality is that many ex-JWs have very narcissistic parents that they fawn over and are codependent with, doing anything they can for them and calling it love when really it's servitude in the hopes of one day being good enough for their parents' love, much like the way people serve Jehovah hoping to one day be good enough. People sometimes say they love their parents when in reality they seek love, they don't have it.

If nothing else, your parents just showed how shallow their love really was, and you had to hide your true selves all of this time. So although you had good times with them, there were always conditions to it all, they've now added another.

I'm sorry this happened. It's typical. JWs are typically incapable of real love. It's about control. Guess who gets to decide what "necessary family business" is? They do, not you. I've spoken to people that were homeless and that didn't qualify. They want you to fail. They want you to hurt. They want that to make you come back because once again, it's about control, not love. Control is the opposite of love.

If you get an opportunity at some point to show them what "unconditional love" is, my assertion (from my own experience) is that they won't see it and won't care so you would only be doing it for yourself while in essence not effectively loving yourself, allowing yourself to be their doormat once again. That's not loving to them, as they are enabled to act poorly with no consequences, and you hurt yourself once again not being authentic and spending life looking more codependent and obsessed with their feelings than caring about your own.

From what I see these relationships get truly twisted, including the feelings around them. That's my view, yours may differ.

In the end what they did was awful and cold and typical of Jehovah's Witnesses, destroying another family. That's what they do, and honestly for many the family was effectively destroyed the moment that virus came into their lives because something was always in between their relationship. I'm so sorry. So much unnecessary pain and suffering because a cult stole the minds and hearts of people and their base humanity has been stripped. Hugs to you and yours.

24

My BPD Sister Passed Away

by babygirl30 in

jw
friends

i have started this, then restarted it, and it still sucks to even write this out - but my younger sister passed away unexpectedly last saturday (on my birthday).

i am going through all the grieving emotions, but there is more to the story that i could never and would never talk about to anyone that didn't understand the jw rhetoric.

so...here i am.. my sister has had borderline personality disorder (bpd) for as long as i can remember.

dubstepped

There are two books about BPD, one about walking on eggshells, the other called something like I hate you, don't leave me. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

You're right, she didn't love you. She wasn't capable of love. That happens to remind me of my dad. My mom said that when she was engaged to my dad, his mom took her aside and told her "you think he loves you? That man has never loved anyone or anything in his life.". That rings true after a life with him.

You aren't obligated to go to her funeral. If you go I'd highly recommend having an exit strategy in case it gets to be too much. It can also help to have a buddy, to take someone with you as a support, with that exit plan agreed upon. These are things that have helped others from the group coaching that I do. But ultimately you don't have to go. You could always choose to grieve this in your own way.

I wasn't invited to my dad's funeral. It upset me at first, but upon further review it would have been awful for me and honestly there were certain people there that could have pushed buttons back then resulting in me acting out in a bad way. A couple elders that I have really bad feelings toward.

Best wishes, whatever you decide to do. What pain are you willing to endure? You'll have to decide that.

24

My BPD Sister Passed Away

by babygirl30 in

jw
friends

i have started this, then restarted it, and it still sucks to even write this out - but my younger sister passed away unexpectedly last saturday (on my birthday).

i am going through all the grieving emotions, but there is more to the story that i could never and would never talk about to anyone that didn't understand the jw rhetoric.

so...here i am.. my sister has had borderline personality disorder (bpd) for as long as i can remember.

dubstepped

I've seen you mention this a few times:

I think THAT hurts more than anything...Im crying over her loss, but if the tables were turned, I guarantee she wouldn't do the same for me.

You're right, she wouldn't do the same. She was unfortunately a broken person. It wasn't personal to you even though it felt that way. I can see that it impacted you in that way though, and it hurts. Again I'll encourage you to try to understand her because it will help set you free from some of that. But that comes later. Right now you're probably angry, another step in the process of grieving, and that's okay. Be there, feel it, let it out, and you'll get to a point of greater acceptance later.

my little sister - was an adult who CHOSE not to have me in her life. She chose to make this decision to be separate and not include me in she or her childs life.

I think that the element of choice is seen so black and white, without all of the levels that go into things, and that because of that it hinders understanding of another. She was under the influence of brainwashing and a personality disorder, so choice is relative to those things. Jehovah's Witnesses teach that everything is a matter of choice, and by doing so they get to moralize everything and then judge. Your sister didn't choose to grow up in a cult, or to have BPD. You didn't choose to have a sister with those issues. Looking back lots of us acted in ways under the cult influence that we would never act like as a free person. Your sister was never free. She had multiple influences, including that of a personality disorder, one of the hardest things to even begin to treat in any therapeutic setting, something that has a higher failure rate than success at any level.

I think that sometimes our perspectives contribute to the pain we experience. Again though, while in anger isn't the time in all likelihood to challenge those things. Maybe I shouldn't even be saying anything now. I don't want to make it worse or make you feel like I'm coming at you. I hope that later, after some time, you can sit down and re-read things written here, whether by me or others, just different perspectives, and get back to some of the places of acceptance or even forgiveness that you were in at one point and time.

I truly am sorry. Pain has a way of trickling down to everyone. She had a lot of it, clearly, and she transferred it to others, made it their pain. Your sister was who she was, for better or worse, and nothing could change that even when she was alive. That's why I put forth that definition of acceptance, letting go of the hope that things could have been different, because I see you held onto that hope for a long time and now that she's gone you're feeling the weight of that hope collapsing. She was never going to be able to be a friend or sister because she was just so hurt and the illness had her more than she had it. It's a shame. I'm so sorry.

I hope that, in time, you find more peace.

24

My BPD Sister Passed Away

by babygirl30 in

jw
friends

i have started this, then restarted it, and it still sucks to even write this out - but my younger sister passed away unexpectedly last saturday (on my birthday).

i am going through all the grieving emotions, but there is more to the story that i could never and would never talk about to anyone that didn't understand the jw rhetoric.

so...here i am.. my sister has had borderline personality disorder (bpd) for as long as i can remember.

dubstepped

I'll add, with regards to your niece and the possibility of you trying to take her and raise her as your own. If you are doing so because you just love this girl so much, that's a great and noble thing to do. If you do so because you're trying to get some relationship that you missed with your sister, you'll bring all of that dysfunction into that relationship with that girl and it may not be fair to her. Also, simply because an opportunity presents itself doesn't mean that you're ready or really even want to be a parent to the child.

If you want to fight to take her, do it because you truly want to be a parent to the child and because you genuinely care for her, otherwise you may be doing her a disservice if others are out there that she loves and that love her, even if they're Jehovah's Witnesses. It is easy to romanticize things like this and to read in some fairy tale happily ever after scenario that happens just because you kept her from a cult on some level, but it doesn't mean that would be the reality or overcome detached feelings. And doing this as some relationship with your sister by proxy isn't a fair expectation to put on the child. Just some things to think about. I may have missed some of that discussion in this thread.

24

My BPD Sister Passed Away

by babygirl30 in

jw
friends

i have started this, then restarted it, and it still sucks to even write this out - but my younger sister passed away unexpectedly last saturday (on my birthday).

i am going through all the grieving emotions, but there is more to the story that i could never and would never talk about to anyone that didn't understand the jw rhetoric.

so...here i am.. my sister has had borderline personality disorder (bpd) for as long as i can remember.

dubstepped

My dad died 6 months or so after I was shunned. Of course, he pre-shunned like the extreme JW he always was. I remember my mom researching BPD to try to figure him out. It never fully fit as a diagnosis, but in the end it doesn't matter the label, he was who he was. When he died I grieved not the loss of the father I had, but the loss of the father I never had, and honestly my life didn't change for the worse because he was gone. I honestly let go of him when he shunned me. I was dead to him, he was dead to me, same with the rest of my family. I'm not going to sit around pining for people that actively shun me. I mourned their death with my shunning. If they come out someday then it will be like the resurrection I was promised. If they don't, that's on them.

I'm sorry that you lost your sister, and that with that you lost opportunity. I'm sorry that she was such an awful person to be around. However let me say, in response to......

I have ALWAYS held out hope that she and I would at some point reconnect - I have wanted that desperately. Every major life event that happened to me, I'd send her an invitation (never got a response). The only thing I wanted was to have my sister be my best friend...that's it.

Acceptance means letting go of the hope that it could have been any different. Read that again. Now once more and compare that definition of acceptance to what you wrote above.

Your sister was hurt in some way, thus the BPD. She was doing her best, and sadly her best was pretty awful. My dad's was too. In learning more about my dad's past though I get it. He was the byproduct of terrible parents that drank and threatened each other with guns and put him in the middle of a bitter divorce that split him from his siblings, who as the oldest he felt responsibility for. He was a very hurt person, and hurt people, hurt people.

That doesn't mean that the hurt he caused me doesn't hurt, but I can't hold someone to the fire for doing the best they could with the tools, or lack thereof, that they had. I had to let go of the hope that it could have been different because it couldn't. The same is true with your sister. She was likely doing the best she could with the pain and dysfunction that she carried and that others played into. People with BPD change the people around them too. It impacts others who then act in a reactionary way. It's like an addict and how they make everyone around them sick and often codependent.

If you want to love her then you have to love her for who she was, balance the awful treatment you received with the understanding of who she was and what she herself was up against, and let her go. Maybe write a eulogy you'd give and even if you never give it, get those feelings out and find some closure. Say goodbye to the reality of who she was and who you wished she could be with the acknowledgement that she was likely doing her best. Most people, even awful people, aren't malicious, they're just messed up, broken in some way, taking that brokenness with them everywhere they go and impacting others because they either haven't got help or there's no help for them. For many with BPD they will never get help and honestly the disorder itself precludes them from doing so. It's awful, and she wasn't happy either. A very tortured soul.

Take care of yourself, hugs to you, and I hope that you can find some acceptance in your life. It's one of the stages of grief, the one you want to get to, but also remember the grief isn't a linear process. It's messy. And it's not something you may just go through once and it's done. You take grief with you through life, but you get better at managing it. Let go of the hope that this could have been different. Everyone was likely doing their best, even if it wasn't good enough.

19

Poll: When my PIMI wife comes back from meeting. she is a different person. how many out there experience the same and why?

by goingthruthemotions in

so i am trying to understand if i am the only pomo that experiences the situation where the pimi spouse comes back from a meeting a different personanlity.

it may not be obivious to the untrained eye, but i notice it and i know my sons notice it.

this last round after all the loyalty bs and armagedon bs it's like she has stayed stuck in it.

dubstepped

It's not a personality disorder, she's just riding that brainwashed high. Lots of people go back to their parents house as adults and revert back to certain dynamics for a time. Kids go stay the night at a friend's house and are different for a bit when they get home. It's a very normal and human thing, hers just happens to be surrounding a cult. All humans have mirror neurons. You can see it in people picking up accents.

23

Russell's followers in British Columbia?

by dubstepped in

jw
friends

so i was interviewing a guy for a podcast episode today and he went and saw his grandmother over christmas to gather some history.

he wasn't raised a jw but it turns out his family was actually opposed to the jws because they went all the way back to russell.

according to him (from her stories), they refused to follow rutherford and that's where the split took place.

dubstepped

Interesting stuff. The guy that I interviewed reached out to his grandmother for me and I'm going to try to interview her. We'll see how it goes.

23

Russell's followers in British Columbia?

by dubstepped in

jw
friends

so i was interviewing a guy for a podcast episode today and he went and saw his grandmother over christmas to gather some history.

he wasn't raised a jw but it turns out his family was actually opposed to the jws because they went all the way back to russell.

according to him (from her stories), they refused to follow rutherford and that's where the split took place.

dubstepped

A quick search turned up this.

https://canadianutopiasproject.ca/settlements/standfast-bible-student-colony-british-columbia/

23

Russell's followers in British Columbia?

by dubstepped in

jw
friends

so i was interviewing a guy for a podcast episode today and he went and saw his grandmother over christmas to gather some history.

he wasn't raised a jw but it turns out his family was actually opposed to the jws because they went all the way back to russell.

according to him (from her stories), they refused to follow rutherford and that's where the split took place.

dubstepped

Thank you Vienne (Vienne's daughter, right?). That gives me something to look up.

I might see if his grandmother would be up for an interview. It's not really the subject of my podcast per se, but it might be really fascinating.

23

Russell's followers in British Columbia?

by dubstepped in

jw
friends

so i was interviewing a guy for a podcast episode today and he went and saw his grandmother over christmas to gather some history.

he wasn't raised a jw but it turns out his family was actually opposed to the jws because they went all the way back to russell.

according to him (from her stories), they refused to follow rutherford and that's where the split took place.

dubstepped

So I was interviewing a guy for a podcast episode today and he went and saw his grandmother over Christmas to gather some history. He wasn't raised a JW but it turns out his family was actually opposed to the JWs because they went all the way back to Russell. According to him (from her stories), they refused to follow Rutherford and that's where the split took place. But before that he said that Russell's followers had photos of him in their homes (kinda culty) and that many sold their earthly possessions and lived in some commune in British Columbia.

Anybody else heard of this? I'm trying to research this commune or whatever it may have been. Sounds interesting, and admittedly the history of all of this still escapes me on many levels I'm sure, things I just don't know.