JavaJane

Skyrider, this may need another thread, but I would like to know about the deprogramming you went through. What did they tell you? Was it true? Did it sink in? How did you get out and come back to twi? Did anything good come out of it, or was your commitment to twi increased?

I have considered starting up a meet up group for people recovering from spiritual abuse. I'm still thinking about it... Right now I've got a lot on my plate and can't handle much else. It will probably be at least a year, and I need to find some others who I can depend on to help with it. It is needed in this city.

In our area there are a lot of people recovering from abusive churches. I wish there was a way that all of them could have a GSC experience like I did. It was integral to my recovery.

Megan Phelps and her sister have left Westboro Baptist. Their story reminded me so much of the processes and thoughts involved when leaving twi it blew my mind. I guess leaving a cult is leaving a cult no matter what the cult is called. https://medium.com/reporters-notebook/d63ecca43e35 Here's some excerpts I found eerily similar: ... Mostly, the tears have subsided—“in public, anyway,” she says one afternoon, as we sit in a Tribeca café. “I still cry a lot.” Forget what you know of the church. Just imagine what it is like to walk away from everything you have ever known. Consider how traumatic it would be to know that your family is never supposed to speak to you again. Think of how hard it would be to have a fortress of faith built around you, and to have to dismantle it yourself, brick by brick, examining each one and deciding whether there’s something worth keeping or whether it’s not as solid as you thought it was.... ... She kept trying to conquer the doubts. Westboro teaches that one cannot trust his or her feelings. They’re unreliable. Human nature “is inherently sinful and inherently completely sinful,” Megan explains. “All that’s trustworthy is the Bible. And if you have a feeling or a thought that’s against the church’s interpretations of the Bible, then it’s a feeling or a thought against God himself... I feel for you, Megan. And your real life is just beginning.

I think it plays to the ego - it makes you special because you have information no one else does. Most people have been duped, but we have the truth as it hasn't been known since the first century... And the irony is that they have been duped. Probably worse than most. Also, it makes one feel there is order to things. That nothing just happens. This gives a better feeling of control... When in reality $#it just happens for no reason other than it happens. (Example - the law of believing let's you think that when something bad happens to someone it is because their believing isn't right, so as long as I keep my believing right the bad thing won't happen.)

Just an update... I now own and run my own business which involves a lot of culinary creativity... AND I joined the choir at my church. Sang in the Advent Concert. And just finished singing in my first Mass as a choir member. I asked if I could join - didn't have to try out and prove myself, they just said great! and I was in. And I didn't have to wear a lame dress from the Lawrence Welk hand-me-down closet. I wore pants. Take that TWI! My sponsor from the classes I took last year wore JEANS and no one cared. Probably because she's an alto. :wink2:/> AND THE BIGGEST THING: I am on the 7,204th word of a novel. Yep. I am writing for real. A book TWI would never approve of. One I was afraid to write when I was in, because I would be labeled as possessed. Congratulations to me.

I did have a good sense of empathy when I got involved with TWI and then convinced myself that the empathy was wrong. I remember being told right after I cut off my parents (I was having anxiety attacks with some pretty big physical symptoms) that I should stop trying to "put myself in their shoes" because that was causing me to lose control ofmy thinking. So I turned off the empathy. The lesson in empathy I learned is to have empathy for those who hurt others, for those who hurt you, and for those who are led astray by religion to the point they are blinded by it. So maybe I don't mean empathy... Maybe I mean forgiveness and mercy. I don't excuse the behavior, but I do understand how it happens. I've been there. We all have different things we need to learn in life, and we learn differently, even in the same situations and circumstances. Some post-Way people don't have empathy. Heck, some post-Way people are exactly the same as they were in twi. Me? I'm probably more like I was before my life was hijacked by twi at the age of 12, or rather more like the adult I would have been like if I wasn't hijacked by twi. But I think I am a little bit deeper, and I am not so quick to judge those I don't see eye to eye with.

I've been reevaluating and thinking more about my time in twi - and I think I am thankful for it, in a weird way. Without twi I would not have been able to do the kind of soul searching and deep thinking I have done in the last seven years. I have developed empathy, and tolerance, and greater spirituality. And I don't think I would have been able to do that sort of deep introspection if I had not survived the hell that was twi on the field, in a limb home, as a fellowship coordinator, WOW, Way Disciple, Staff, and peon. SO, in a way, thank you, TWI for ruining my life so that I could grab it back as my own. That being said, and rethinking this thread and all the weird conflicting things we were supposed to believe, I started to think about how I thought when I was in twi. My mind was constantly consumed with a cacophony of thoughts that I now realize were designed to drown out my real inner voice (and probably the real still, small voice od God.) I was constantly obsessing about the Ministry, and how I was or was not "doing the Word" - was I speaking in tongues enough? My desk isn't "decent and in order." I shouldn't condemn myself. I am righteous now. I should go into the Way Corp. I am scared to death of going in the WC. That's devilish. Fear is of the adversary. Is that guy possessed? Am I being influenced by spiirits? Is my life really abundant? Why do I hate witnessing? That's not godly. I'm supposed to be an ambassador for Christ. Why don't I have someone in the class? Someone wants to talk with me. It must be a confrontation.. What did I do this time. If it's a confrontation I should be happy to recieve it because I want to be meek and change. I miss my family. My family is evil and devil possessed. And it just went on and on and on like that all the time... I didn't have enough room in my head to think my own thoughts, and when they came up, I would squash them back down with some retemory, which I never knew enough of. There was always more to do, and never enough time to do it all, and it was never good enough. I realized last week that my internal voice sounds like a WC overseer, or like LCM. I yell at myself when I screw up the way LCM yelled at everyone at all times. I would never speak like that to anyone else. Why do I speak that way to myself? A better question - WHY DO I STILL TALK THAT WAY TO MYSELF?? I am going to have to work on that. A lot. But, TWI, I'm not afraid of you anymore. Or of your made up adversary. Kiss my @$$.

I think it's weird that I wasn't supposed to be perceptive about people, but they focused so much on discerning of spirits. To this day I will tell myself that I am doing wrong to someone if I think they are being mean or are creepy or something else negative. I learned to shut off those instinctual reactions to people in the name of positive believing, when I should be paying attention to those reactions as a God-given still, small, voice. So instead of teaching me in depth spiritual perception, they taught me to think God's warning system was evil. I have read that often when normal people are around psychopaths, they will feel uncomfortable, like prey who can smell a predator. Twi taught me to be perfect prey.

Spiritual death, incorruptible seed.... Conflicting truths.

But of course, the real sin was in condemning yourself... So many conflicting "truths."

I read The Cult That Snapped last week, and since then I have been remembering things I forgot about (repressed) years ago. The chapter where he lived at the Limb home really hit me. Now, don't be mistaken, the Limb coordinators I lived with I genuinely believe were good people. And still are good people. But living at the Limb was hell for me, in much the same way it was hell for the author of The Cult that Snapped. SO many similarities. Cleaning and cleaning and cleaning, never getting it quite right. Not ever really feeling like I was home enough to relax. Two instances came to mind upon reading it: One day I came home sick from work to find the region coordinator meeting with the Limb coordinators. I was confronted at the door by the limb coordinator's wife demanding to know why I was home in the middle of the day. I told her I was ill, and I just was going to go into my room and sleep. She told me I could not be in my room because they were meeting in the living room and I would disturb them. I couldn't hear anything from my room, but I was obviously not welcome to be there. She was kind enough to put me in the room she shared with her husband so I could rest, but the whole situation was just weird. Also, I never could clean anything to anyone's satisfaction, and I knew it. I could feel the tension building from the LC's wife, and asked her one day if she was upset with me, because it felt like she was upset with me. She told me she wasn't, and to stop thinking evil (or something to that effect). I said, OK.... A week passed and she still seemed ....ed at me, but I kept trying to not think evil. And then she came up to me and said, "remember that day you asked me if I was upset with you? I was, because you didn't do ______" (I don't remember what it was I had effed up, something trivial) "And I didn't want to feed into you thinking you could tell how I was feeling and being paranoid, so I told you I wasn't mad. But I was." OKAAAAY...... So, you were mad at me and lied, because you didn't want me to think I was right about how you felt, but I was right, but I'm still wrong for thinking "evil" of you when you were doing exactly what I thought you were doing? (Incidently, I was put on a lighter version of Spiritual Probation (no social activities or tv or secular music and meetings with the limb coordinators for some period of time) because I lied to cover my @$$ and avoid another face melting because I used the wrong something or other on a poster and smudged it. I was told I was close to spiritual death, whatever the f*** that means because of that incident.) I had another situation like that happen to me at Headquarters. I could tell my Department Coordinator was not approving of me. I asked him about it, and he told me it was fine. Then said he needed to meet with me after lunch (ominous music plays in my head.) I tell my fiancee (now husband of almost 8 years) what is happening, and he goes and talks to my boss when he walks me to our meeting place. The Department Coordinator tells him, "Everything's fine, bro. No problem," and pats him on the back. My fiancee leaves, and I am taken for confrontation (face melting) from my department coordinator AND cabinet coordinator because I had a pattern of thinking evil of my boss and gossiping. WTF? I guess it was ok for others to lie, but not me. It was also not ok for me to read body language when it came to a leader. And that I was not supposed to be paranoid. But they were after me. And I wasn't supposed to know they were.

Yup. That was me. And I'm not interested in making threats... She'll kick off on her own soon enough unless she has become immortal from feeding off the blood of the innocent. She is a bloodsucking old bat after all.

Rosalie has no soul. By that, I mean she has no "feel" to her. You know how you can tell someone walks into a room or is right behind you even when you don't register it consciously? Rosalie doesn't give off anything. Once, while "treving" (using the HUGE industrial vacuum to clean the carpets) in the OSC, she came up on me. I looked up and almost ran her over before I realized she was there. It gave me the creeps. At the time I renewed my mind by saying to myself that it happened because she was just an extraordinarily peaceful person. Now I think she is (a) sneaky and always has been in the background with no one knowing and (b) she has no soul. BTW, I used to clean her office. She'll get a copy of this thread printed out (no computer) so she can be kept informed. That was my first exposure to GSC. Reading a thread that she had left on her desk... Yep. Hi, Linder. Tell Rosalie I wave my buttocks and fart in her general direction. Also, maybe the bathroom break procedure caused people to hold it too long which would explain the constantly backed up toilets near Rosie's office. :) I am a bad, bad, girl.

Losing the Way. Read in less than 24 hours. Wow. What an eye opener to so many things. Things about how I used to be. The numbness. Deciding not to feel. Trying to think the best about other believers when they acted like a$$πoles. Making excuses for weird teachings (like the myth of the Holocaust.). The loneliness... Wow. I need to process. Wow.

Thanks. I'm reading Losing The Way right now.

Hey, OldSkool, where did you get your copy?

Morning, Johniam. I was in TWI during Rosalie's reign. What you are seeing is the kinder, gentler TWI of her administration. It is kinder and gentler on the outside. So kind and gentle that it's downright flavorless. But that's the surface. Rosalie is better at hiding her controlling methods than LCM was. She is a master of controlling things from behind the scenes through layers of bureaucracy and procedures and paperwork. Those you run into on the field will tell you it's so much better than it was before. That's true. On the surface... But all spontaneity in teaching is gone - it's been regulated away. The Sunday Teaching Service is READ from notecards at the podium, all personality and emotion scrubbed away beforehand by layers of proofreading and corrections. (Ask OldSkool - he went through it first hand.). But on the field it's probably a nicer place to be. Less stressful. Just attend your meetings and give your money and witness and you're good. No weekly a$$-rippings anymore. But when I left it was boring beyond belief. I have to be thankful for that boredom, though. It gave me time to think about things and sort things out. After a horrible micromanaged existence at HQ for two years I thought life out on the field would be better. It was. And it gave me time to sort things through in my head... And see how life on the field reflected life at HQ. Boy, it sure looked pretty on the outside... And was still dead on the inside.

I sometimes look at people who are in twi on Facebook. Most of them are so overly censored - like everything that comes out of their mouth goes through a twi filter before being posted. What started me on this rant today was realizing that these people are EXACTLY the same as they were 10 years ago, while I have drastically changed and grown as a person in a lot of categories. So has my husband. And OldSkool. And Mrs. OldSkool and others who are now out. They live colorful lives with real social interactions and careers. The old twi people may have moved physically but are still stagnant and boring. And if they aren't boring, they are spouting twi doctrine and anger and hate towards all that are not twi, and especially towards those groups they have been taught to hate (homosexuals, other religions, liberals, etc.). And their arguments sound ridiculous. Especially after being on GSC and seeing how REAL discussions and disagreements are handled. They look like morons trying to defend insanity. Delusional. Willfully blind to logic. The phrase "conscience seared with a hot iron" comes to mind. Who are my favorite people on line (other than GSC)? My weird friends that twi would frown on - agnostics, cybergoths, heathens, pagans, Baptists, Buddhists, artists, drag queens, and wannabe superheroes. If I was still in twi, I would be depressed and bored compared to life now. What is funny is when I see twi people get in arguments where they are completely outclassed by the debating skills of those outside twi. But I guess devil spirits can make you really good at arguing... ;) Now I'm just rambling... Good night all.

I am generally a very nice (probably too nice sometimes) person... I make excuses for a lot of bad behavior and stupidity among people. I dislike thinking badly about others, especially those who are involved in twi. After all, I was involved in it. I did horrible things to my family with the best of motivations. I just wanted to serve God. I just wanted to do good. But that was ten years ago. Ten years ago the scales started to fall off my eyes. My response? Increase my commitment. Ignore the alarm bells. Go Way Disciple. And not just any version of Way Disciple.... I was an HQ Way Disciple I haven't been entirely truthful about myself on this forum. I have never said that I was on Staff at HQ. In fact, I have denied it, and related my stories from the perspective of a friend of someone at HQ. Why? Because I was afraid that those who were my friends might shut me out. That if they knew I posted here they wouldn't hear my own testimony of what twi was - that I would be branded as possessed. But you know what? It's been ten years. People who are still in that corrupt organization, defending it, posting about it on Facebook, actively "witnessing" about its greatness are willfully ignorant of the truth of how bad and evil TWI is. I was that way, too. It's why I went Way Disciple. It's why I accepted the assignment at HQ. It's why I stayed for an extra year after I already knew firsthand the misery that is life at HQ. It's why I stayed and finished that second year even though I cried every time I was alone and free to show emotion. I didn't want to see the truth. But if you are STILL in after all this time, and you are STILL in pain, or if you have just become numb to it, it's because you choose to do so. I'm not talking to new people. I am not talking to those who have family involved and are afraid to lose their families. But anyone else? You are in a hell of your own making. And at this point it is on you. I can't help anymore.

Just wanted to get the last word in. ;-)

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/14/3915020/suspect-appearing-in-court-in.html Well, a little update on the cult.

The "false pretences" are exactly right in this case. He was abusive before they were married (isolation from her family, monitoring of every call, email, and Facebook activity, constant accusations of cheating if she didn't answer her phone or left a text message unanswered for more than a minute. When she did get to a family gathering her phone would go off every five minutes with texts from this guy.). She was ready to leave him, but then he got involved with this church and suddenly did a 180. They got married a couple of months later in that church. When I got there and the ceremony started I started having flashbacks to twi. The sermon was about how wives needed to submit to their husbands... and an advertisement for the church. A church member tried to take my fidgety daughter out of the church without my permission (my kid was with her grandpa playing on the floor on an outer aisle of the church - not disturbing anyone. She was three at the time and the service had already lasted over an hour and a half.). At that point I decided to go outside with her and calm myself down - and the ushers tried to tell me I couldn't leave. I did anyway.... Anyways... I figured I would stay out of it unless asked to help. She is in a difficult situation. Now he is back to his controlling of her every move even with family since it has become evident that none of us are interested in converting. And now he has the sanctioning of the church and the Bible to help control her. It makes me sad. Thanks for the help, everyone.

Thanks, shaz!

One of the reasons I was able to leave twi fairly easily was because my husband and I both agreed that we needed to get out. My husband decided to leave first. I decided a couple of months later. But we both had decided before we were even married that twi was second to our marriage. That gave us the freedom to leave without tearing us apart. I have a cousin who is currently involved in a fundamentalist Christian cult. She and her then-boyfriend now-husband got involved with the group about two years ago. Before that, he was an obnoxious abusive son of a bitch, but after getting involved he seemed to have a chance of heart and they were married. He is still obnoxious - but quotes the Bible instead of profanity. Now she is pregnant with their second child. And she is starting to feel uncomfortable in the church and with her husband. How do you get out when one spouse wants to stay and is mentally and emotionally abusive? Especially when there are children involved? He has stated that he was told by God that this second child would be a boy and would do great things. He is going to make this incredibly difficult for her. She has asked for help from me because I have been in a cult... but I haven't been in a controlling abusive relationship. Any advice or stories would be appreciated. Thanks, guys.