potato

the more zombified I became, the more being kind was a risk. kindness was risky.... plus, I became really apathetic in general. we were supposed to have the greatest, sweetest fellowships on earth, the only place to get the real word of god, and I didn't want to bring people. kindness had been taught as a tool to suck them in... I wonder why I felt so guilty about not wanting to subject people to it, and why I didn't just leave... oh yeah, I had a lot to lose at that point, at least I perceived I did. just no kindness in sight. on the plus side, I think the more apathetic I got, the less unkind I was.

sad thing about kindness... it keeps you trapped. like a prisoner who's beaten one moment then comforted the next by their abuser, it builds a sick dependency. the people in TWI became a mish-mash of the faces of TWI, like the organization itself had a life of its own, with many personalities. the man or woman screaming at you, belittling you, lecturing you, "reproving" you from the videos and tapes or in person was one face, then those kind loving people who comforted you afterward and explained God's heart in all of the reproof... kind of dulled my ability to feel at all. the classic abuser beats his victim almost to death, then explains afterward how much he loves her and how he had to do it for her own good.

"I sat there one night while Lou Guigou , one of the Martindale family inlaws , fight with his wife almost to violence , over that fact that she had a peice of furniture that was too valuable/ important to sell and sent the money to Craig Martindale for the staunching of their funds. In nut case rage he ranted, "nothing is more important than the Man of god and his being provided for!!" To the point people wer going to leave the meeting so they could get violent in peace. and his wife had just got to the point of telling him off, and saying there was no argument , No! oh then it went off!! he would'nt be told NO when he was reprooving her into doing his intention. Finally two of us told him either back off it, or we were cancelling the meeting, just insensed that some thing was not going to be converted to cash and sent to headquarters." I'm more inclined to believe this as similar things happened to me. my ex-husband seems to have been put under a lot of pressure at times, which he turned on me if I disagreed with what was coming down through the tree. it was the worst when he had a critical, controlling FC breathing down his neck over ever little thing in our lives. the FC told stories about vpw that made him sound like he was psychotic, but in the FC's mind it was legit for the MOG to act like that and mistreat everyone around him if they ....ed him off. reminds me of another saying I heard in TWI "I've been reproved by the best" meaning you got your "face melted" - I think that was LCM's term. anyway, where was I in all of this? trying to be the good wife and believer and do what I was told and avoid calling attention to myself at all costs.

you know, I agree with that. and it's also a serious overstepping of authority on the part of HP to "tell" or "instruct" or "counsel" a woman to "go tell your husband"... but isn't that what they do?

what do you mean telling them what was going on? I'm wondering, because isn't that an open invitation to also bring a lawsuit... I wonder what the women were actually told. in fellowship we were told that LCM made a one-time mistake and that we were not to waste our time going online and reading rumors and lies of people trying to destroy the ministry. none of us knew the depositions were online, especially LCM's own words. if LCM's other victims were as isolated from reality as I was, then neither the women or their husbands had any idea how corrupt the whole thing was.

I read a psych paper - I thought I had it but it seems I deleted a bunch of stuff, I can find it because it was published in one of the major journals - that stated it takes about 3 years to dismantle a narcissist's delusions and help them become an emotionally functional person. I concluded a few months ago that my ex-husband is narcissistic, and recently that he fashioned his persona after our FC and LCM. it was nice living in HELL for so long. now it makes total sense that vpw and LCM were/are narcissistic (seems leaders of cults usually are) and not sociopathic. the narcissism key was the one that finally unlocked the floodgates of understanding for me.

rereading my post, it seems a bit convoluted. the friendship and marriage thing seem disconnected, but they aren't in my mind because it really boils down to being able to control your own intimacies, whether friend or family or significant other. TWI had to have their nose in everything, and FRIEND wasn't a relationship you had with outsiders. I eventually learned my lesson and stopped mentioning friends to anyone in TWI, unless I knew they were having the same issues.

ok, back to the topic... I thought of another today: Friend. in my experience, people on the outside were not friends. you didn't call them friends, if you thought of them as friends. you'd refer to them as "this gal from work I'm witnessing to". if you just said their name, then you'd get bugged about when she was coming to fellowship. referring to her as "this gal from work I'm witnessing to" diffused attention, made the FC happy and left you free to just enjoy a friendship. now, I became involved with a man, and I never, ever told any of the leadership that I was seeing someone because I knew what would happen. they'd start bugging me "when is so-and-so going to come to fellowship?". and now that I'm engaged, I can just imagine them shaking their heads in pity over me throwing my life away on an "unbeliever". at one time, I know I would have been trapped in a room with at least my FC and/or BC while they tried to dissuade me from my decision. I don't know if they still do such things, but one of my friends took a lot of heat for getting engaged to an "unbeliever" last year, and 2 kids in CO got their asses chewed a couple of years ago by their FC for not asking his permission to get married, so I imagine it's still deeply ingrained in TWI culture (even though they pretend to be a softer, more permissive, more loving ministry these days) to control relationships as much as possible.

what qualified any of the corps to counsel anyone on anything? every slut has an opinion on dating,but that doesn't make her any more or less qualified than someone who doesn't date. none of the leadership to my knowledge had counseling training or certification, and that is one of my biggest beefs with TWI.

not only was it an erroneous slogan, but as a TWI expectation it was impossible to live up to. according to TWI, if you spoke in tongues enough all the others would naturally come. SIT was the prerequisite for manifesting. one was made to feel condemned if they didn't manifest, and the only ones we had a bit of control over were the so-called inspiration manifestations... so, we lusted after those in hopes of manifesting the others. revelation? occassionally. healings, miracles? even less often. do they happen? yes. all the time? no. I don't even know what it really means to walk by the spirit anymore. I don't feel like I've been disconnected with God, in fact I feel closer to him than I did before breaking away from TWI, but I've also stopped trying to live up to "SIT much" and I'm giddy with relief. TWI would say my feelings don't mean anything and that I'm deceived, but I don't care.

well put, waysider.

I ran across an interesting article on Narcissistic Personality Disorder in management, and most of what it said fits the TWI hierarchy to a T. NPDs thrive in such conditions. it's pretty sickening to find out the depths of what that disorder can justify, and it seems to explain the leaders of TWI pretty well. I'd love to see some of them undergo pshyiatric evaluations, that would be a kick... I can only imagine what the spin would be on that.

I can tell you from experience that TWI pads the numbers. as a returning WOW, I heard the woman who was responsible for pushing WOWs into the Corps embellish our accomplishments to the RoA attendees of 1992 in order to recruit more WOWs to repeat the cycle. she quoted the words of PFAL graduates, but in at least 2 cases they were people who took the class and never came back and the words were out of context. those people meant nothing to TWI, they didn't get the deliverance TWI said they did. all that mattered was getting the next round of folks out WOW to recruit more people in via PFAL. throughout my history with TWI, I got more out of reading the works of the folks VPW apparently stole his material from. the classes frankly bored me to tears, except for the advanced class which was a horrible experience all around. the last class I attended, the new dry toast family class, was so offensive it helped me get one foot out the door.

I'm very interested in finding out what the "oversight" you mention consisted of. I remember feeling dogged, between my ex-husband talking about me behind my back with the hfc and their personal oversight through 2003. I couldn't imagine them having the time to personally oversee almost every aspect of the lives of every person in the fellowship, but I keep hearing things that make me believe that was in fact what they were directed to do, and I wasn't getting as much personal attention as I thought I was. what exactly was expected of hfc in their "oversight" of the regular folks? I remember being required to be at fellowship 3x/week, as directed by LCM. it was not optional. no time off for illness, either. my baby was sick and I had to take him and sit in the hall while he cried so I wouldn't distract everyone from "receiving the Word". the detailed oversight persisted for a long time.... prior to LCM falling from grace there were weekly reports, no outsider friends, I even got confronted for trying to get pregnant when we were in debt and being told I had no business trying to have a baby. afterward LCM, it lightened up some and one of the families was allowed to take in her unbelieving mother instead of putting her in a home, but there was a lot of grumbling from the hfc about her decision, and about other people... he did a lot of criticizing of people's decisions behind their backs to everyone in the group and actively worked to convince people not to make their own decisions. I think he badmouthed people to make everyone suspicious of each other so no one trusted each other.... another method of control.

maximum conditioning in a fraction of the time it normally would take if you resorted to torture alone.

I have a feeling that the area I lived was as bad as any root location or corps-heavy area. I was required to submit a weekly schedule to my FC (just me, not anyone else, because of how "dangerous" I was). I was even told that I started preparing dinner too early and that I needed to adjust my schedule because I was wasting time. never mind that I like gourmet food cooked from fresh ingredients and sometimes cooked some things that had to be in the oven for an hour! Here's another: Reporting Back If we ever did anything out of sight of our FC, we were to report back. If we went out of town for even a day, we had to report in when we got back. if we were doing anything significant that they weren't involved in, we had to report back and let them know we were "safe" (i.e. hadn't been tricked out of the Word by the adversary). any task they gave us required reporting back, especially any of those lovely things they presented as a "decision". now that I think about it, there was a pretty good chunk of time when everyone was required to submit written weekly reports. one report per married couple.

Interestingly enough, I have another in the post, I just realized: Weakness. ick. I can't go on, but I'm sure you all can fill in the blanks on that one.

I gave this a lot of thought today and came up with 3 biggies for me: Wrong "you're wrong", "your thinking is wrong" = any action, desire, idea, thought, inspiration that you can't line up with TWI doctrine for your leadership. The desire to do anything, to live somewhere, travel, join an activity to make friends, was suspect unless it could be justified in some way. there had to be some "spiritual" advantage (it couldn't just be because it was fun or I wanted to). Any thought or act was under suspicion, and if you could not show a good reason, you were wrong if leadership felt like you were. Decide "make a decision", "decide to live for God", blah blah etc. = you have 2 choices, do the Word (TWI doctrine or anything your FC on up approves of) or do what's wrong. that's the choice we're given, and we have to make a decision. bleah!!! In the Word "stay in the Word" = go to fellowship, submit to leadership, study the Word (approved topics, because if you have weakness in your life, you're not making the "right" Word your own) daily. lots of guilt motivation to crack open the bible every day as a supporting source when "working" Way mag, STS tapes, and what you hear in fellowship. if you're not "in the Word" you're out of step with God's will. being "in the Word" requires going to an approved fellowship, no one can be out on their own or they're easy prey for "the adversary". not "in the Word" = "out of fellowship" = easy prey for "the adversary" = your a$$ is grass.

I've been reading up on loaded language. it's one of the things that showed me that TWI is indeed a cult. I regularly have reactions of guilt, fear, and yes, the desire to vomit during normal conversations with people, expecially my kids. I have to work really hard not to panic, and especially not to correct every little thing that my kids talk about.... why? because they aren't saying anything wrong! I have so much fear of the appearance of evil because of TWI and my ex husband that I was a nervous wreck for years. I'll try to keep track of my reactions and post the responsible words and phrases here.

pinklady, I'm in your shoes as well although my spouse didn't hurt me physically quite like that (he did throw a fit and hurt me and my baby) the thing about abuse and outfits like the way is this: it's crap to tell someone they have to forgive. you don't. when I realized it was ok to get mad as heck over what my then-husband did to us, it helped me get my life back. now I'm angry at TWI for helping him do what he did and for basically egging him on. forgive? no way. not yet. you need to take care of you and your kids and damn the forgiveneess for now. that will come later on in your path to wholeness. don't worry about it for now, if you need it you'll get there later. what he did was wrong and evil. love yourself. love your kids. love God. you don't need to work toward compassion for those that did this to you. work the other stuff first. I had a lot of guilt, and I blamed myself because I thought I made the bad things happen with my unbelief. being victimized is enough to recover from for now.