Could There Have Been Some Abuse?

[wanderinstar]

 

All good excbooster! I'm not even close to the throwing furniture stage.  

 

Vigile, I am a little confused as to your position; you say you don't want to make a judgement on my situation yet you seemed to indicate that you don't believe people can and do repress memories when you said, 'Repressed abuse and recovered memories have themselves been massively abused by certain sectors of the legal system.  Much (if not all) has been found to have been bullshit.' That was all I had issue with, and forgive me if I have misread you. We do agree that people can confabulate memories, this is clearly demonstrated in literature. All I wanted to add was that I also see it to be demonstrated in both my life, and psychological research, that on rare occurrences people do repress memory only to recall it at a later date. Guessing who may be a problem in some cases, but mine is not one of them; even my abuser didn't deny it when I confronted him about it. 

My position is I'm dubious of the phenomena but I don't feel I have a right nor do I wish to judge someone who clearly had something going on that I don't fully understand as I don't want to add insult to injury. Sorry, that's the best I can do to explain my position. I feel like an NSA agent talking to congress.

 

 

Lol! There was a time when I thought the idea a bit dubious too, but I cannot hold that position in the face of what I have experienced and read. Thanks for being respectful

[VacuumFlux]

And I think the church's damage was compounded by my family's general "you're a kid and dont know shit" attitude on things, instead of encouraging us to become independent.  Others here have reassured me I am not crazy for this anger, and it surprised me because I did not mention (in these threads at least) that I do doubt my sanity, as well as my intelligence, on a daily, hourly basis.  It is as if I was conditioned from age 3 on (my earliest church memories) that any natural interest, thought, or impulse is wrong and must be corrected.  I doubt every thought that comes into my head, and I mull over decisions forever, weighing every angle or outcome, etc.  I agonize over making the "correct" decision in many different areas.  In many ways this has made me excel at my job and earn me respect and recognition.  But it has also hindered me greatly in areas of love and personal levels.  I even doubt a woman could be interested in me, and that usually leads to self fulfilling prophecy.

 

I just want to let it go though.  I think it's time.

 

 

I remember being very confused about "the heart is deceitful above all things" bible verse and the "the world" advocating "follow your heart". I was raised that the heart (ie, anything you feel) is always wrong, so you have to put your trust in either god or logic (one was a more religious issue, while the other was more of a gender issue with backing from religion). But if you try to figure things out by logic, then you're asking the wrong questions and stupid or evil. I eventually learned to shut up and keep my questions to myself.

 

That messed me up, not quite in the same ways as you and maybe not as bad as you, but I still struggle with issues of relativity. I liked christianity for a long time because it claimed to have a whole logic structure to hold it together, and when I let go of that I felt pretty lost. That seems to be normal for people around here. But one issue I still have a hard time with is valuing myself and my own wants and needs. If I have a deep disagreement with someone, like how my parents and I have very different basic values, I always write it off to personal preference and can never feel justified in calling myself right. I can't fight for myself because I can't find any grounding in reality on why anything I feel has any moral weight. So there's certain areas of my life where I just can't deal with the conflict because I can't convince myself that I have any right to the things I want. On the plus side, I have managed to balance that out with finding ways to become more independent and sure of myself in areas that don't cause that problem. I'm nowhere near where I want to be at it, but I'm learning more and more about basic handy-man type skills, wilderness survival (though I'm still at the car camping stage), bookeeping and finances and dealing with the IRS, etc. That way I can watch myself succeed at a lot of things, which helps me start believing that maybe I do have some value, some right to my own thoughts and opinions.

 

Christianity is also absolutely terrible at separating mistakes from moral failures. How can you learn from your mistakes and grow when ever time you fail you think that god hates you and you'd be better off dead (or at least society would be better off with you dead)? It's helped me to force myself to spend time going over the things that I have done right. At first, that was really hard to do and felt sinful for feeling pride. But I'm learning that the more I think poorly of myself, the more mistakes I make. Pride in the sense of overinflating your sense of accomplishment is bad too, but honestly analyzing your sucesses and failures, being happy about what you got right, and deciding how to fix the mistakes for next time (but skip the guilt stage; it doesn't help you do better next time) is a very good thing to do. And sometimes decisions, even major life decisions, will never be "right" or "wrong", which is also something that's a bit unnerving for me.

 

I'm not sure if this will help you much, but I recently read something on a liberal christian blog about conscience vs obedience in the context of "I'd like to be ok with gay people but the god of love says I have to hate them" and about how much of the evangelical movement's ideas of evangelism violate the golden rule about not being a jerk. It's nice to see other people recognising the problem.

 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/06/17/more-on-conscience-vs-obedience-with-music/

 

...And if loving Christ meant I had to go out and perform a series of rude, clumsy, off-putting confrontations with strangers, then I’d just have to suck it up, set aside my discomfort and do my duty. “Who will go and work for me today?” I will — even if the thought of doing so makes my stomach hurt.

 

It took quite a while for me to realize that queasy feeling in my stomach had nothing to do with nerves or fear or a lack of faith or being “ashamed of the gospel of Christ.”...

 

Contextless, cold-calling, hard-sales evangelism almost always and almost inevitably entails acting like a jerk. It involves treating other people as objects rather than as subjects. It involves forcing onto them an experience that none of us would want to have forced onto ourselves.

 

But I did it. I knocked on doors, I passed out the tracts. I did what I honestly believed obedience required me to do, even when my conscience was screaming at me to stop, just please, for the love of God, stop.

 

So, uh, if external validation helps you, I would like to make sure you know that I think you're alright. The people you grew up with were assholes. They were wrong about you. Your opinions, tastes, preferences, and values are all legitimate and you ought to give them some serious weight in your decision making.

[RipVanWinkle]

Marty: Trying to stuff you in a box could be terrifying. Could you give some details on that, because

that alone could, I think, explain your anger. Was this done by teachers or students? How old were you?

Was in done in front of other students or faculty? What was the reason you were told they were doing this? How did it end? These details and anything more that you think is relevant would be helpful in my

understanding the incident better. bill

[RenaissanceWoman]

my sister ... is a follower and never had any issues with authority because she doesn't question anything.  I was punished for being inquisitive, because I was looking behind the curtain.  And I didn't stop when they told me to stop, so they treated me worse and worse.

 

I suffered this crap as a teen at the hands of my crazy religious mother. She was always worried "what would the people at church think?" Who gives a rat's rear end. I'm the fucking valedictorian and the president of the youth group (among a long list of other impressive things), and you're giving me crap about stuff. What more do you want from me? (I questioned why my older sister got to do stuff I did not, or why I could not do something she did not get to do -- simply because she never asked to do it, so now I should not get to ask either. Wth? My mom was also a bit mentally ill, so something I did one day would be fine, but punishable the next. Questioning that was backtalking and worthy of punishment.) This environment really screwed me up, made me a perfectionist, made me question my sanity, made me fearful of stuff, made me hate her. And my sister got away with everything because she never questioned anything, just kept her head down and snuck around when she could. In the end, she was the one with all the pent-up frustration who ran off to get married and make babies rather than go to college on the full scholarship she had won. (What a huge blow to my parents!) She had to get the hell away from my parents.

 

 

...I do doubt my sanity, as well as my intelligence, on a daily, hourly basis.  It is as if I was conditioned from age 3 on (my earliest church memories) that any natural interest, thought, or impulse is wrong and must be corrected.  I doubt every thought that comes into my head, and I mull over decisions forever, weighing every angle or outcome, etc.  I agonize over making the "correct" decision in many different areas.  In many ways this has made me excel at my job and earn me respect and recognition.  But it has also hindered me greatly in areas of love and personal levels.

 

I was 38 years old when I started letting my church get to me this way. It's as if I should have known better, and I had a choice to keep going back there for the abuse (which you did not since you were 3). I think my religious upbringing (family and church) conditioned me to think this kind of treatment is normal. No matter how much I gave, and how much I sacrificed, and how much I tried... I was never good enough, never sure of my salvation, could never figure out why some people were treated better with less effort (church politics = evil), always trying to check my humility (despite working my ass off to be the best I could be for them), always self-doubting. I agonized over everything like you are describing. Constant noise in my head. Once I realized what was going on and started questioning their motives and actions (it was hurting others as well as me, so I thought I could fix it for all of us -- wrong!), that just made them turn up the heat on me more and more. (Do not point out non-Christ-like behaviors to powerful Christians, for future reference, LOL.) I nearly went crazy! (Seriously, my therapist was quite alarmed there for a while.)

 

My husband sometimes blew me off (out of exasperation, and looking back, I can't blame him) by saying that mulling stuff over like this is a woman thing. I was just overthinking. But I can now confidently call bullshit on that. It's a fucked up religious system that makes people do that in their minds. (Since you're a guy, that helps my case... thanks for that. Ha ha)

 

Marty, you are sooooo not alone. These people specifically -- the the religion in general -- are messed up, evil necromancers sucking out our souls and our life energy. We have to stop letting them. Being angry is entirely appropriate! But yes, you're right, eventually we must let it go.

 

In the meantime, let it out! I for one enjoy reading it, because it comforts me to know that I'm not the only one. (That's kinda sick, I know. Sorry.)

 

Soldier on, my friend. It will get better, and the anger will one day subside a bit.

[Guest]

Marty: Trying to stuff you in a box could be terrifying. Could you give some details on that, because

that alone could, I think, explain your anger. Was this done by teachers or students? How old were you?

Was in done in front of other students or faculty? What was the reason you were told they were doing this? How did it end? These details and anything more that you think is relevant would be helpful in my

understanding the incident better. bill

There is just so much.  There was a general air of intolerance from every one at that school, but one teacher in particular had it out for me and the other 2 "heavy metal boys" in our class to save us from satanism.  This was mid to late 80's, so if you were alive and going to church then, you may know what mindset I am talking about.  I was in 6 through 8th grade at the time, so I guess thats around 12-14 or something?  We were singled out for every infraction of the rules, while other students were obviously doing the same thing at the exact same time.  Sounds trivial now, but my parents supported every word of authority and never listened to reason or my side of things.  A quick case in point:

 

Like most adolescent boys, we were into Bruce Lee, Steven Segal (I know, I know) and general Martial Arts stuff, and during our free time we would choreograph these elaborate kung fu style "fights".  On the weekends we would also make home movies, so this was not new for us, but a teacher who didn't know us saw us and thought it was a real fight, which was ridiculous, the way we choreographed it was typical hollywood "one man at a time" style fighting, and everyone in our class knew we were just the weird kids.  But we were sent to the principle and suspended for fighting, no one listened to us and seemed to forget that we were the 3 lone amigos and best friends.  When I got home, my parents also did not listen to me, and my mother laid such a pile of guilt on me by saying when she held me in her arms as a newborn she imagined a lot of things for me but never to be suspended from school for fighting.  They didn't care that I said it was fake, they didn't care that they had seen some of my movie attempts and knew that we boys did this.  I was obviously lying to avoid trouble, so they grounded me for a full month.  Nothing but reading.  My mother actually threw out all of my cassette tapes, Guns N Roses, Motley Crue, even Stryper and Whitecross, the "christian" bands.  My voice, my side, never counted in that school, or even at home, really.

 

Ironically, since all I could do was read, and she wouldn't let me go to the bookstore to get more reading material, that was the first time I read the bible from cover to cover...

 

*ADDED*

 

A less "violent" example would be "violation" of the dress code.  There was no uniform, but both boys and girls had to wear collared shirts and T-shirts were expressly forbidden.  However, most girls would wear not just collarless T-Shirt style tops, but actual Hard Rock Cafe Orlando T-shirts.  But if one of us Heavy Metal Boys wore the exact same shirt at the exact same time, we were punished and forced to change and nothing was done about the girl. I would also routinely try to wear black pants and a black collared shirt, because I was into the heavy rock scene, and even that was not allowed, despite it being to the letter of the dress code.  The one teacher told me black is the color of satan so I cant wear all black, my parents supported this with no explanation.  

 

It sounds so trivial now, but it was basically shit like that at every turn.  Whatever I wanted or liked must be shunted and denied.  And I most assuredly was singled out along with 2 other boys, but of course, I was just making this up when I told my parents.  Im a kid, what do I know about persecution?

 

**ADDED SOME MORE**

 

My mother admits now that that school and that teacher in particular was "a fanatic" in her own words.  But she didn't come to this epiphany until after I had come out of the Atheist closet.  THEN yea, sure, that guy was going overboard... 

[Ravenstar]

I'm still angry.. I don't think that will change.. because religion is still out there abusing people. I'm not an angry person otherwise... unless it's about child abuse. (of any kind)

 

I don't apologize for it.. religion is poison, especially Abrahamic ones.. it's a disease upon the earth and my anger is my motivation to fight it.

 

A counsellor once told me that feeling anger is the body/minds way of telling you something is harmful to you and giving you the energy to resist it... or even heal from it.

[RipVanWinkle]

It was a virtual prison to you, with torture added. Gawd I'm sorry for what you went through. There are

far too many stories similar to yours. The churches can't handle it. They cause it. What utter stupidity.

Keep coming here. It will at the very least be a place to vent. And you probably will pick up some more

good advice. bill

[RenaissanceWoman]

Marty, I must be your exact same age. Did you have to sit through any of those christian assemblies where they put the album covers up on the screen and pointed out all the satanic elements? I wasn't into most of those bands, so I didn't really care, but my mom freaked out totally. That whole era was so dumb! Who started that crap anyway? Wow, that was all the rage at the time.

 

My sister's friends used to make copies of their cassette tapes and write "Amy Grant" on them and give them to her, even though they were Def Leppard and such. Def Leppard -- oh the horror! (Of course, she never got caught on that, but everything of mine was combed through for such evidence. I know how you feel about being singled out.)

 

Everything else you describe as being "trivial" is very similar to the stupid stuff my crazy religious mom did to me. None of it was major, no child services needed, etc. -- but it was constant, and it all added up to messing with my mind, making me feel evil and untrustworthy, and belittling my sense of being an individual. I was grounded all the time for practically nothing. We lived out in the country, so I never got to see friends or do anything in town with my friends, unless it was band practice or church youth group stuff. (I even got grounded from some of that on my mom's worst days.) That kind of thing can warp a teen's social development, I think.

 

My dad worked a lot and left that stuff up to my mom. They hated each other, and he just stayed out of it all to avoid her wrath. She had me convinced at all times that he was mad at me for such-and-such so I was in perpetual fear of him and never spoke to him when he was around. (Turns out, everything she told me was all lies -- he knew nothing.) He has since apologized for the whole thing, but it's too little too late.

 

I went off to college and pretty much never looked back. I did not speak to my mom for about 17 years. My fear of her and the "church people" and what they must think of me (they really knew nothing, as it turns out) made me quiver at the thought of going back there.

 

Sounds like our parents were both warped by the same child rearing concepts of the day. Maybe it was a generational thing, an 80s reaction of our parents to the 70s or something. Who knows.

 

I'm still dealing with that stuff too. It's another layer of my onion of anger at christianity and how it messes people up. My willingness to let church people abuse me in my adult life stems from my childhood yearning for acceptance and forgiveness and love of god (and other people and parents). Nice how the church swoops in when you're at a low point and really takes advantage of your weaknesses. Oh man... I better stop before I get all riled up!

 

I feel for you, man! Totally been there. It is verrrrrrry hard to shake.

[RenaissanceWoman]

Hey, Marty, you still here? I heard a podcast yesterday where someone referred to that 80s music backlash time period as the "satanic panic." Ha ha! I love that! Sounds like you and I not were not the only victims of that nonsense.

[rachel15]

hi Marty, just wanted to say that having experienced emotional abuse and emotional invalidation growing up, I know that they can cause a LOT of anger. Emotional invalidation especially can happen without a person being able to identify what's happening at the time - there's quite a bit about it on google.