- Ask and elder if he has read Silentlambs website.
- Answer at the meetings original comments not the ones you are supposed to quote by rote.
- When asked at the doors if the media stories about JW pedophiles are true answer that you know of some.
- Have lunch with a dfed person.
- Ask other JWs if they have read the latest dirt on JWD.
- Have Ray Franzs books on your coffee table.
- Attend and participate in Silentlambs march.
- Give away literature and never pay for it yourself.
- Go back to college and develop critical thinking abilities.
- Tell elders you are in therapy to deal with issues created by the religion.
Victor_E
JoinedPosts by Victor_E
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15
The Complete IDIOTS'S Guide to Become an Apostate
by Victor_E inask and elder if he has read silentlambs website.
answer at the meetings original comments not the ones you are supposed to quote by rote.
when asked at the doors if the media stories about jw pedophiles are true answer that you know of some.
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Victor_E
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Trouble in the Spiritual Paradise
by Victor_E insow and act, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap character; sow character, reap a destiny g.d. boardman
nathan knorr the great jw merchandiser coined the phrase the new world society to give the jws a special identity and to have a catchy slogan that new recruits would want to be a part of.
to kick off the new marketing campaign he set out with an entourage of people on tour to personally make his pitch at international assemblies.
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Victor_E
Sow and act, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap character; sow character, reap a destiny G.D. Boardman
Nathan Knorr the great JW merchandiser coined the phrase The New World Society to give the JWs a special identity and to have a catchy slogan that new recruits would want to be a part of. To kick off the new marketing campaign he set out with an entourage of people on tour to personally make his pitch at international assemblies. He then commissioned Fred Franz to come up with proofs of why JWs were so special and different from the masses of mankind. Thus for years JWs were sold on their special status ala spiritual paradise only among themselves.
Time after time JWs were told how in this spiritual paradise Jehovahs spirit was protecting them, with dire consequences if you should ever leave it. Some sixty years later the reality is far different from that envisioned by the architect of the New World Society. The morality of JWs is no better than non-JWs and in some cases worse. In a sexually repressed subculture as JWs are, it is common to have a higher incidence of sexual infractions. While I was a JW I knew of incidents of wife swapping, elders preying on women, people living double lives, financial fraud, backbiting, constant petty fights, animosity among elders, alcoholism, nepotism, abuse of power, pornography, suicide, depression and many other social problems.
Of course since this was not to exist in the spiritual paradise you just denied it and pretended as though it didnt exit, if you dared to speak about it you quickly found yourself in the library being censured for gossip or slander. With recent developments of the lawyers and hardliners circling the wagons and becoming more totalitarian with their membership they will continue to have a brain drain and lose those sincere members who know better than the smoke and mirrors being used to give a squeaky clean image to the outside world.
We couldnt possibly know where it would lead, but we knew it had to be done.
Betty Friedan on the Womens Movement
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10
Bethel Has Known of Sexual Abuse For Years
by Victor_E inbill bowen has acurately brought out that bethel has known for years about the large numbers of sexual abuse survivors among the r&f.
the awake articles that appeared on sexual abuse were originally planed to be a series, if memory serves me right only two were printed.
bethel was flooded with mail with gratitude for the info and requests for more specific info.
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Victor_E
Bill Bowen has acurately brought out that Bethel has known for years about the large numbers of sexual abuse survivors among the r&f. The Awake articles that appeared on sexual abuse were originally planed to be a series, if memory serves me right only two were printed. Why? Bethel was flooded with mail with gratitude for the info and requests for more specific info. The person (s) assigned to the task of writing were drawing from the experiences of JW victims. One woman who contributed her story was the daughter of a missionary couple, she was ritually abused. The person(s) doing the writing were very empathetic to the victims and they are one camp of liberals who have a sincere desire to write articles on psych topics. The other camp of hardliners have opposed the liberals and have viewed them with suspicion.
One member of the governing body is married to a woman who was sexually abused and still suffers from it. He was once lobbied by a personal friend who was my client. The appeal was to take notice aknowledge the problem and let those who needed professional help get it without the criticisms from the hardliners. I even volunteered to go to Bethel and explain the seriousness of the problem. I had some 15 JWs write personal testimonies of how they were being harassed by the elders for seeking therapy. Bill Bowen I think submitted 5,000 and the reality is if 50,000 victims came forward it would not make a difference. The governing body is culpable for the lack of attention to this problem and for its tyranny against those who speak up. It only cares about it's financial interests and its power. As Ray Franz wrote their philosophy is that directions and mandates flow only from the top down and never from the bottom up.
Few are they that look through their own eyes and feel with their own heart. A Einstein
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Bipolar JWs And Their Care
by Victor_E inwhen nobody around you seems to measure up, its time to check your yardstick.
bill lemley
sj is a middle aged jw woman who used to be married to a non-believer.
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Victor_E
When nobody around you seems to measure up, its time to check your yardstick. Bill Lemley
SJ is a middle aged JW woman who used to be married to a non-believer. Her physician diagnosed her as being bi-polar. This condition used to be called manic-depressive due to the emotional euphoric highs and depressive lows. In one of her euphoric episodes SJ felt an extreme state of spirituality and acting on it she went to pioneer in Europe. This emotional high cost her lifes savings and her marriage. This crazy episode has convinced her that she needs to follow her physicians orders and take her medication as prescribed. When you listen to her at the meetings you can hear her emotional fatigue still waiting for the new order to cure her and rescue her from this chemical existence. She uses her clich phrases of the new order as a mantra of hope for herself and those she preaches to out in service. She at least has adequate medical care having returned back to work as a teacher.
In the euphoric spiritual state SJ went into, you could not talk any sense into her and in fact she may have questioned your spiritual maturity to stop her from doing something that in her heart was the right thing to do. One dilemma facing bi-polar people is that their actions are done impulsively oftentimes with little to no regard of the consequences of their actions. So what happens then to those JWs that commit moral infractions? Is their medical condition factored in to treat them mercifully while admonishing them to get professional help? Perhaps we could hear from former elders to this question. What effect does being dfed have on this type of personality especially one that is not taking any kind of medication? These are people at great risk of swinging into a state of hopelessness and hurting themselves more or in some cases even ending their life. If you add the JW beliefs and their myopic meaning to the act of dfing followed by the shunning it only compounds the problem more.
Her father a JW elder repeatedly physically abused my ex-wife as a child. She along with her four siblings grew up to be very anxious and nervous women. They suffered from somatic problems and my ex-wife was diagnosed as bi-polar. Very early in the marriage the symptoms were manifested by extreme bouts of rage and extreme loving states. The abuse as a child and the religion stunted her emotional growth and this led to her having very little coping mechanisms to function in the real world outside the home and religion. After spending a small fortune on psychiatric and psychological bills she made some progress. The paradox was she could only go so far, her family all JWs discouraged her from continuing with therapy, filling her mind with all the clich phrases they were parroting from the religion about psychological care.
In my opinion the JW religion only worsens this type of disorder. The religion is extremist in its theology and having a constant diet of black and white extremist beliefs without any critical thinking ability often leads to the person developing very distorted and over generalized thinking that only perpetuates the emotional polarity. This type of disorder should be handled under the care of a physician along with psychotherapy to learn how to minimize the extremist thinking. Even if the person develops enough motivation to get professional help the cost is prohibitive if they have to pay out of their own pocket and insurance often limits the coverage to brief therapy thus leaving the person to deal with life as best they can.
The whole issue of mental illness among JWs is a complex one and there are so many variables that there are no simple solutions. A person suffering from emotional/ mental problems needs to become proactive and make themselves responsible for their own well being, this requires education and having a strategy for finding the right professional care for themselves. To the Watchtower, people are expendable and as we have seen with the mistreatment of sexual abuse survivors they have no regard for people's well being, their priorities are bent on advancing their financial interests and retaining their power.
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Emotional Turmoil of JW Abuse Survivors
by Victor_E inwhen i ran from feelings that were starting to come up, i allowed them to build up and become more potent until they burst out and spilled all over me and everybody around me.
a survivor
in the jw religion feelings are repressed and denied as something illogical and messy.
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Victor_E
Long time no see, how ya doing? Glad to see you posting here.
Always enjoyed what you had to say.
Hi Jim,
It's been at least 5 yrs since I last heard of you and your brother on Jes Wit and Philia. As you can attest I'm sure our inner demons drive us to help those who are just coming out of the darkness of the Watchtower. I am doing great as you can see from my posts now older and wiser and kinder. We are all work in progress with a story to tell. Thanks for your words I also enjoyed your posts....ah those were the days.
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Emotional Turmoil of JW Abuse Survivors
by Victor_E inwhen i ran from feelings that were starting to come up, i allowed them to build up and become more potent until they burst out and spilled all over me and everybody around me.
a survivor
in the jw religion feelings are repressed and denied as something illogical and messy.
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Victor_E
Do I dare show her this article? Shes been raised as a JW and has been DFS several times for different things. Shes been stiffled all her life by this book publishing co disguised as a religion. She refuses to go to the meetings but loves her family who are devout JWs.......I feel so bad for her ...and helpless too.
This article is not really for her, I will write one when I have the time, that fits her more. I invite you to go to these articles I wrote years ago in the meantime that may help her.
http://www.jwfiles.com/recovery.htm
and
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6
Emotional Turmoil of JW Abuse Survivors
by Victor_E inwhen i ran from feelings that were starting to come up, i allowed them to build up and become more potent until they burst out and spilled all over me and everybody around me.
a survivor
in the jw religion feelings are repressed and denied as something illogical and messy.
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Victor_E
When I ran from feelings that were starting to come up, I allowed them to build up and become more potent until they burst out and spilled all over me and everybody around me. A Survivor
In the JW religion feelings are repressed and denied as something illogical and messy. The whole epistemology of the religion is built on rational logic. To quote Bernie Siegel MD, If you rely solely on logic you become pathological, and in many aspects to abuse survivors the JW religion becomes very pathological stifling their recovery. Most of the concepts of Christianity have been reduced to hundreds of written spoken and unspoken rules and regulations.
JS was a middle aged elders wife who struggled with constant depression. She would miss many meetings and when she attended she did not look well physically. In the congregation she was viewed as an paradox due to not being an exemplary elders wife who could put in a lot of field service time but didnt. We all knew there was something wrong with her but it was one of those things you dont talk about. As you may have guessed JS was an abuse survivor who needed professional psychological help. Her elder husband was untrained unskilled and powerless to help her. He tried buying her a house in the country, sending her on expensive shopping sprees, and even taking her on exotic vacations all to no avail. He was caught in a double bind that would become very costly. He was damned if he took her to get psychotherapy since this was something to be avoided as instructed by the society and he endured his own turmoil from seeing his wife suffer silently behind closed doors. In time he could no longer take her perpetual states of depression and he began to focus on himself. He stayed more and more away from her finding refuge in his business. One day he came home and found her dead, she had taken a gun to her head and killed herself. JS is a portrait of the JW abuse survivor in that they suffer perpetually with no voice to tell their story and with little to no avenues for healing from their traumas. In general the congregations have become a very dysfunctional family with many patterns of a tyrannical paternalistic family.
DF is and elders wife who also suffers from deep depression and as JS lives in a perpetual prison of logic. Since her depression is in part hereditary she will live with it for the rest of her life. Since her condition is organic she has the congregational approval to get medication, but even this venue is limited in allowing her to have a functional life. Her choice is to either be sedated and sleep or live in an emotional mine field at home. This of course has taken a toll on her teenage daughter who has her own emotional and adolescent problems, running away from home and eventually being dfed.
LS used to be a pioneer till one day she got into trouble for smoking and getting drunk. At age 40, her repressed memories from childhood sexual abuse bloomed as flashbacks. She had enough common sense not to go to the elders and she turned to her best friend for help who was also an incest survivor. Prior to being recruited into JWs she had led a very promiscuous life as a rock band groupie doing drugs. Her husband a musician was killed in an accident and she was left with two little children to raise. The JWs became her surrogate family and support group to help her deal with all her emotional issues she carried with her. Since a pioneer recruited her she got talked into becoming one and of course this became a regimented life for her. In time she struggled with issues that no one could help her with. She suffered from constant fatigue and feelings of worthlessness and emptiness. The religion could no longer ameliorate her feelings with all its neatly packaged answers. When she turned to the elders for help they just gave her their canned answers to wait on Jehovah and do more in service and attend all meetings.
The stories are countless and each congregation has members needing professional help. Having attended KM schools we were merely trained in how to follow policies and procedures. We were warned and even threatened that if we would take any kind of special training on our own we would lose our positions.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you are fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking is freedom. D Eisenhower
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Coping Mechanisms of Sexual and Physical Abuse
by Victor_E in"as a child, i learned that strength was the denial of feeling.
now i see that feeling is the key to self-honesty.
within feeling is found the passion for change.
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Victor_E
I don't know. I feel compelled to understand it further, to understand the relationship I still want to have with this person even though this relative is shunning me now. I have covered this with a psychiatrist several years ago, but lately I have been thinking a lot more about this incident and wondering if there was some memory of it that I missed. I feel that there is some sort of key there. Can there be some sort of obsession involved in trying to understand the abuse? Can there be a love-hate relationship with the incident and the person involved?
Generally what you describe does not need a regression to the abuse. From what little you tell me there is a part of you that wants to come to terms with some issue or put closure to this past. As far as being obsessed, it is quite common for abuse survivors to have obsessions and yes you may have a love hate relationship with this person. My recommendation is with as little as two sessions a skilled clinician can help you sort this out.
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Coping Mechanisms of Sexual and Physical Abuse
by Victor_E in"as a child, i learned that strength was the denial of feeling.
now i see that feeling is the key to self-honesty.
within feeling is found the passion for change.
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Victor_E
When I was in therapy, my therapist also treated pedophiles. She said it was very difficult for her and eventually she stopped seeing any offender. But she did tell me once that most pedophiles do target very young children specifically because of this behavior you point out.
I personally choose not to work with pedophiles I have seen too much and dealt with too much damage done to victims. I have worked in the Texas Corrections Department and Supervision with adults on probation. Many of these people with serious drug and alcohol problems were abused as children.
When I was growing up, the simple solutions they offered, the demanding regimen of meetings and service actually helped me. It not only gave me something to hope for, but it offered me a way to "earn" approval from God; a way to work off my ugly secret. But when I got married and moved away from my abusive family, this "religon" no longer helped, but began hurting. The simple solutions no longer worked
I concur with your comments about the religion. JWs tend to recruit many people with emotional problems; initially it seems amelioration to their pain but in time it becomes a crutch that only inflicts more pain.
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Coping Mechanisms of Sexual and Physical Abuse
by Victor_E in"as a child, i learned that strength was the denial of feeling.
now i see that feeling is the key to self-honesty.
within feeling is found the passion for change.
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Victor_E
Is there such a thing as trying to remember the incident so vividly that you are wanting to go back and relive the abuse, at least in your mind? Does this make any sense?
Before I can answer this question I would need to know what is the intention behind regressing to the abuse? In the care of a skilled clinician regression is a powerful technique to induce a catharsis, which is a release of trapped emotions. We call this re-experiencing experience with intent. It is not necessary to feel all the pain from the experience and I partition the pain to about only 10% and no more. Healing should not be as painful as the wounding or the cure should not be worse than the ailment.
I highly encourage any victim to learn to regress under the guidance and care of a skilled clinician because you will need someone to establish a communication loop to help you recover what needs to be recalled to accelerate the healing process. In one study done, researchers discovered that the real healing starts to occur when a person has a witness to witness the abuse and trauma that they have held for so long. The rescuer whom ever that may be whether its a parent or a therapist plays out that witness role. Think about what has happened with elders following the directives of the Watchtower to suppress the victims and as stated by some this is another form of victimizing the victim. Bill Bowen is a hero and I applaud his efforts in helping these victims have their voice and start the healing process.