|
In response to this thread.. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2112062&mesg_id=2112062 I thought I would share some information and my own experinces with fundy excorcism "therapy". Democratic process entails debate, persuasion, and compromise. These presuppose the trustworthiness of words. The moral dimension of severe trauma, the betrayal of "what's right," obliterates the capacity for trust. The customary meanings of words are exchanged for new ones; fair offers from opponents are scrutinized for traps; every smile conceals a dagger. Unhealed combat trauma — and I suspect unhealed trauma from any source — destroys the unnoticed substructure of democracy, the cognitive and social capacities that enable a group of people to freely construct a cohesive narrative of their own future.
I have PSTD. I have dissociated states that I go into that can apppear remarkable different from my usual demeanor.(Hey it even freaks me out sometimes) I "change" because torture and abuse done has a tendancy to damage a persons personality and brain structure .Healing from trauma is not easy to do.
Trauma and past trauma can cause a person to slip into trance states to cope with overwhelming emotional pain.I was a cutter I could slice my arms with razors and knives until I saw the muscle underneath and not feel it at all.I was using physical pain to dull the far worse emmotional pain in a situation where I had no one to express this emotional pain to who I could trust or who was capable of LISTENING to me.To a religious zealot that kind of pain supression could look saintly or demonic depending on the whim or beliefs of the congregation and appearance of my state at the time.Ignorance and zeal can do alot of damage,add a closed social institution with a shared belief system and it can get dangerous.
Traumatic memory is stored in a different place than normal memory is stored.It seems the brain has a defensive structure of memory to enhance bodily survival,and this kicks in during trauma , and it can make recall of trauma later on difficult.This process sadly temporarily protects victims from the overwheming soul shattering expereinces but it also protects perpretrators and keeps them out of jail later.
Sometimes a person gets retraumatized as an attempt to axcess and heal memories that hold parts of thier life in a past time warp state when they trust the wrong sorts of people .And sometimes the traumatized persons self defenses and ego states can appear demonic,literally...when threatened by predatory people they are forced to depend on..
I was hurt by a fundie pedophile. Christians trigger the crap out of me. Yet I am drawn from the past. So I struggle..
Excorcism and apocolypse was some of the imagry and threats used on me.
And I fear,loath and cannot trust neocons.It is like the abyuser who fuckeed up my life is controlling the government. So this situation is very hard for me to cope with.
Christianity is common in America. Christian churches have child abuse scandals coming out pretty often. How do you think this effects the kids involved when they grow up? These kids are confused and if they fail to trust someone who won't take advantage or harm them they will grow up into messed up adults. In the 80's Satanicc ritual abuse became a popular myth. I think it was a group projection of what has been going on in SOME christian churches for a long time..
Because for some ADULTS and PARENTS a Belief in Christianity is a defense against the threat of eternal torture(hell which can be like life in a dysfunctional family with an abuser tyrant or alchoholic at the head forever) and a promise of relief from the struggles and stress of existance and all the parts of life denied or unattainable(heaven/good childhood &idealized parents )
Alot of people cling to Christianity for psychological reasons. Just like the Nostalgia of the Family is a national fantasy that never was for some rightwing family values types it is real because reality is that painful.. It's a form of denial caused by cognitive dissonance.A "faith based" perception so desired for that it feels real in effect becomes an alternative reality when a person can't trust real reality. A fantasy faith based reality is a place to trust in when you are living in a predatory society you can'yt trust. When surrounded by bullies you can invent imaginary freinds to trust. A person can do this to thier selfhood from traumatic amnnilation by a predatory culture. If that fantasy is broken and there is no one there to trust suicide can be the result.That's how coming out of the Church affected me. I was dangeously suicidal when I was abandoned for not playing along.and I realized I had been abused by people who claimed such freindship and caring for me as long as I believed as the church did..
So in churches where abuse occurs and people are exiled,Why do "good christians" decide to lie to themselves? Lie about thier compassion and freindship? Don't they realize it HURTS? And what isd good about a belief that says DO NOT ASSOCIATE WITH NON BELIEVERS..Even if they trusted and befreinded you..?? Isn't that just MEAN?
And because the public at large had psychological dependance and fear of hell they blamed a scapegoat, the satanists when people started to realize the churches are not trustworthy or kind as they pretend to be..
It's easier to blame the weirdoes in society for social problems rather than admit most child abuse happens at the hands of people you are told you MUST trust or else.. thier own parents or the most trusted adults or institutions(church school counselors ect.)the parents trust.
So by default if dad or mom trusts them as a kid you must or else.
Isn't this MEAN?
The guilt and shame of being that honest about the real dysfuctions in a judeo christian ,nuclear family dominated culture that really does not do much action to protect kids from sexual abuse or belief induced trauma or breaks in trust from parents or caretakers would be devistating to the two faced ego of this culture.
It would ruin the concept of family that our economic classist system relies on to exploit every generation..If trust,trauma,manipulation,cocercion,fantasy and the breaking of trust was discussed in any deep way in the public sphere.
Our country talks alot about protecting kids from abusive adults ,but it it is not doing all that top stop child abuse when 1 in 4 girls are still raped before age 18,and family services are underfunded even in the Clinton years..Child abuse has to stop for societies healing to begin.Traumatized people have to relearn to trust to heal.And if society is not safe because of the bullies sand thier enablers and the game of make believe how can we heal?
There are plenty of hypocrite control freak parents that agree with child abuse advocates like Dobson and see NOTHING WRONG with it. Dobson implies kids are evil and must be tamed into submission with the stinging tip of a switch and the scars of a deep betrayal and cognitive dissonence that takes years to cope with..
He is advocating torture humiliation. Dombson has an S/M mentality.
It's far easier for a "triggered" and in denial,dishonest adult to beat a child for causing a ruckus than to get out of thier own defensive head,stop,care,identify with the child and understand thier helplessness.For some adults this is more frightening than the fear of hurting thier own kid. It's easier to slip into master VS slave mentality and beat the disobedient slave,and forget that uppity slave is a dependant vunerable child..much smaller than the parent and totally dependant upon the parent.
Because to understand the child's situation with a trauma and betrayal of trust with something like a spanking that honestly would mean the adult on some level has to face thier less than perfect childhood and thier own helplessness. and this is PAINFUL.
A crying child reminds an adult who has denied and supressed thier own childhood scars of abuse about how helpless it felt to be at the mercy of thier own control freak parents,most people do not want to introspect into painful things.The brain compartmentalizes trauima memories in a hard to axcess way.So the pain is transfered into another generations problem with every adult who hurts, or takes advantage of a child...Emotional debts from generations before cover the world..like the Govt.Debt or pollution ,child abuse is left for the next generation to fix in our soiety.
We have to be there emotionally and try to trust for our collective survival sake..We need to stop hurting each other for hurting.And we need also to be INTOLERANT of bullies and those wo excuse abusers,tolerate torture,cocerce or engage in humiliation/shaming/domination..
A large segment of our society is sick because our parents could not heal trauma enough to realize how to stop the cycle of abuse ,denial and enabiling in our culture.So to fixit without needing to trust societies turn to exorcists ,religion,sylvia brown, channelers,drugs and booze,food,cutting,and pop psych and S/M rituals ,attempting to heal trauma scars locked in state dependant areas of the brain that influence and haunt us that are partly inaccesable to normal consious states..We struggle with trust and abusers during life we get hurt again and traumatized and it creates more scars and stress..until we find and reinforce boundaries and become intolerant of bullies.
Trance tricks like exorcism do not remove the causing problems trauma creates in people.Trauma breaks of trust on a primal level. The brain never rearranges it's "memory files" in the correct order magically with an exorcism. Healing is not taking place because trust and boundaries and sactity of a persons mind,consent and body are not respected in exorcism.. And if society fails to respect these things,the society is sick and abusive and untrustworthy.
I have been excorcized by fundies at Assemblies of God Church.. It was dramatic,it was weird. It was a hellova ritual "show" and trance game.The whole church was involved.It felt at first like such a caring and compassionate community. But it was all a game,a show. In reality the church was very abusive to me and they abused my trust and vunerability. I was in denial about that because I was vunerable and had no one to relate to. When I reasoned through the belief system and found it was not what I believed ,I saw that thier interpretation of the unknown was making me sick inside,So I left christianity. As the reality of what I was doing there hit,and what I had been trusting in(predatory exploiters)and the realization that I had been conned and manipulated came rushing in it was painful,I was retraumatized and the church abandoned me for being an unbeliever. I wanted to die.
Thier compassion and freindship was all a lie.They would not care about me as a human being unless I believed the theology too. And I couldn't believe it. It is wrong to FAKE Compassion and freindship..So I will NEVER trust Christanity again. To me the church system is abusive. Christians who do not question certain tenets of thier faith on moral and human rights grounds are morally questionable at best and downright evil at worst.Jesus is perverse and two faced as any other abuser is..And it is MY RIGHT to not trust,any belief or any person. Until I choose to do it myself on my terms...
By brain is fried enough from others abuses. My identity is as fragmented as my brain is.And despite this I have to be responsible for my own reactions maintaining my boundaries,and how it effects others because I do not want to cause MORE pain. .I am not who I was taught to believe I am. And I do not trust the world to reflect back to me anything honestly.
I am not sure I can ever trust the world or humans again.
So many humans are bullies and say mean shit as if it was"funny".
And enablers play along blithely. Over and over abuse patternsd in conversations. It makes me sivck. Its on DU it's everyfuckingwhere.
If I say it hurts to be teased they say it's MY fault I am hurt. This is ABUSE.One cannot choose to not be hurt because some ass say so. That's denial and it can make you sick. But one can choose to not say shit that will hurt other people for kicks and pretend it's funny ,or shame the hurt person for not pretending along with the verbal abuse game.
I know have to trust someone again before I can heal.That takes time. Trauma destroys trust.It's a horrible catch 22.It's CRAZYMAKING.
Listening is uncomfortable for people hearing about others trauma.And thier defenses makes me feel they are not worth my trust.
Listeners grow impatient, asI stumble over words,they get defensive or ask me to minimize my own pain or hurry it up..or worse they pull out the pain worthiness yardstick and make comparisons..This kind of game breaks trust.It's a sad situation.
Exorcism is bad for trauma victims because it short circuits trauma healing on all sides.It's destructive and abusive. People have died being excorcized. If excorcists are so "compassionatte why are victims hurt MORE by them so much?
With excorcism there is no need for trust or for listening with empathy to the voice of someone in pain who sounds like a demon because of what happened to them..It is selfish practice to short circuit trauma healing for the convience of those who are made uncomfortable by the reality of the fact this world is violent and sick and bully people choose to make it worse..
Beating up a small kid may make them tougher skinned and able to endure more abuse and hardship but it does not make them a warmer,more genuine,healthier,more compassionate,more whole, happier or more wise person.
..A number of authors have discussed potential negative effects of trauma focus therapy if patients aren't carefully selected. Retraumatization can occur if patients are unprepared to engage memories or if the process occurs too rapidly (16). Retraumatized patients simply "re-live" the event in therapy, feeling isolated and emotionally overwhelmed, re-experiencing a loss of control. Dramatic forms of dissociation may occur (1) and for some patients there is a risk of substance abuse relapse (17) or "flight from treatment." Judith Herman (16) has suggested that premature trauma focus therapy may result from a common fantasy of a violent, cathartic, rapid "cure," a fantasy sometimes shared by both patient and clinician, and also reflected in the exorcism myths of many cultures. Dr. Herman has suggested that the first stage of recovery from trauma involves establishing safety on several levels
For more information on this sort of stuff read the links below.
http://www.goessoftlyishere.com/RETRAUMATIZATION.html
http://www.sidran.org/anna.html
http://www.aetheling.com/docs/Persistence.html
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/013858.html
http://www.psychohistory.com/
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
