Gaslighting and Group Dynamics

"Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented to the victim with the intent of making them doubt their own memory and perception. It may simply be the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, or it could be the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim."¹ This is a form of abuse that runs rampant in religiously motivated abuse, at least in the experiences of pretty much every survivor that I know. It's also one of my biggest triggers.

Gaslighting comes in all shapes and sizes. The term gets it's name from the stage production "Gas Light". In this play, a husband sets out to drive his wife insane by making small changes to her environment and then denying that any changes were made when she noticed them. In particular, he would dim the gas lights that were lighting the house and insists that she is imagining it. I've experienced very similiar, but I've also experienced gaslighting in much more convoluted and destructive ways.

The easiest (well, the first to come to mind, it is not by any stretch easy to relate) example I can give you is the "shapes" game that I had to play with my uncle when I was very little. He would use brightly colored cut out shapes and lay them down in front of me and then a minute or so later he would set a screen in front of them and tell me to tell him what shapes I saw. Sometimes, he would let me win. Other times though, he would go to great pains to completely undermine my memory of what shapes I saw with horrible punishments if I didn't change my answers to what he wanted them to be. Sometimes, he would move the screen away and the shapes would still be what I initially thought they were but I still had to tell him that I saw the shapes he said that I saw. Sometimes, the shapes would actually be what he said that I saw. If you can't see how this would seriously fuck with a very young child, count yourself lucky I guess. I would certainly rather not have to live with the memories of being sexually and physically tortured as part of his sick little game.

This leads me to the crux of how having a trauma history involving gaslighting can make group dynamics very hard for me. I honestly wish sometimes that we could remove the word "never" from the english language entirely, so that I would not have to ever hear the words "we never do that here" when I've just experienced "us" doing exactly what it is you've just said we never do and have empirical evidence of that fact. It is extremely hurtful to have my memories continually undermined by a group where I am supposed to be safe and valued.

I don't have any quick answers for how to act instead, but I would ask that the next time you find yourself forming a statement like "we never do x" or "x never happened" that you would take a few moments and really think about it and try to find a more affirming way of saying it. I promise, it is possible to communicate that something is not *your* experience without completely discounting *mine*.

Blargh

Well, this was going to be a long-ish post on gaslighting and group dynamics and a couple other things. Instead it's just going to be a post to note that I am still here and still writing, but I managed to trigger myself quite badly trying to write this most recent post.... soo, bear with me awhile and I promise real new content soon.

Working Again

And a snapshot on the upside:

I feel great.

I did my first day of training yesterday, and do my second today. Real, actual work with a paycheck. I know I shouldn't let old messages tie up so much of my self-worth in that, but I do. And working again helps a lot.

Mostly because it helps elsewhere. I probably had my most productive day in 2 months yesterday, at least it terms of knocking stuff off my to-do list, and I'll probably match it today. I downloaded a killer app for my cell phone that keeps things like calendar notices and incoming e-mails on the front page, re-did my notebook, and started re-packing my work bag, putting the tools I need to keep going right at my fingertips once again.

And I'm sitting here freshly showered, blogging.

It's not a silver bullet, but it's a start.

A Snapshot

A snapshot of 3 things that are on my mind:

1. Before yesterday's shower, I went 8 days without even changing clothes.

2. I'm probably going to eventually kill myself.

3. Since I'm not going to do #2 tonight, I should finish my room.

I hate being sick.

Living in a shadow

There are days when I really hate feeling like I'm constantly living in the shadows of my past. C-PTSD informs so much of how I think, feel and react that it makes it very difficult for me to stay in the present moment and deal just with the situation in front of me. Instead, if I get upset I will often find myself triggered and locked in to emotional, somatic and sometimes full sensory flashbacks. I will feel the emotions that I was dealing with in the past when I was faced with whatever situation I'm being reminded of, and will react as I would have at that point in time and in that place rather than actually reacting to what is in front of me.

Right now, I'm having a hard time gauging how I really feel about a situation in a group that I am a member of that has resulted in a lot of hurt feelings and emotions running high. I'm finding myself unable to tell if I'm really reacting logically and rationally to the situation or whether I'm falling to some sort of mass hysteria born out of how similiar situations when I was in the cult would have played out. Then, had I honestly expressed how I was really feeling to the leadership I had to make absolutely sure that what I was going to say was going to be what they wanted me to say, or else I would receive a severe beating at best. In the here and now, I know that the worst that I would probably face would be words, probably not even aimed to hurt, written out of the feelings and circumstances that the others in the situation find themselves in.

In this particular scenario I've even found myself without the mirror of my brother to look in to, as he is upset and hurt over some of what has happened as well. So, in this case I find myself turning to journaling, self reflection and looking to the Kindreds for guidance. Invariable the combination of the three will eventually help me find my way clear of the turmoil I find myself in, but it still leaves me a bit dazed and really wishing that I could get upset about things without finding myself re-living a painful past.

I'll close with this prayer, which I have offered up this night in my search for clarity;

Raven Queen,
Who I have known longest,
Who I worshiped before I knew your name,
Once again I ask that you join your magic with mine.
Spread your wings and lift me up,
Far above the shadows of the past,
Far above the battlefield.
Lift me up that I might see with clarity,
grounded in the present as I see the field stretch before me.
Help me to see all sides,
knowing when to attack, when to retreat,
and when to embrace those standing before me.

Morrigan, first Matron of my heart and home,
Please be with me and accept my offering.

The Maelstrom Claims 3 More Victims

It shouldn't be any surprise to anyone that I've been watching the whole James Arthur Ray saga fervently.


I hope they hang the bastard. Enough said.


But I did want to take a moment and reference the slide halfway down the second page at this page:


"Spiritual Warrior was the final seminar in a sequential series of ever more expensive events"


I've said it before, and I'll say it every chance I can: don't ever, ever play that game.

A Small Technopagan Working

Yesterday, I had a couple of different things come together at once that inspired me to take a stab at a bit of technomancy. I was playing with GIMP, trying to polish my photo retouching skills, and found myself playing with the "heal" tool to try to remove a scratch in the wall behind the subject in the picture I was working on. A bit later, I was tending to a rather nasty cut on my arm that has gotten infected and while doing so was contemplating doing a magical working to hopefully speed along the healing. I wasn't up to even trying to do an ADF style Core Order of Ritual rite and didn't really feel like working in any of the other paradigms that I tend to turn to for healing work.

Then, it was like lightening struck. Heal tool in GIMP. Wanting to heal a cut on my arm. So, in that moment of inspiration, I knew exactly what I was going to do.

I grabbed the tools that I would need for my working; my digital camera, my SD card, my laptop and a running instance of GIMP. I flashed a quick picture of my forearm, then realized the lighting in the living room was terrible. So, I took a few more shots playing around with lighting until I finally got a shot I was satisfied with. I popped to SD card in my card reader and opened up the picture in GIMP.

Concentrating my will on healing the cut on my arm with minimal scarring, I started to very carefully retouch the photograph, largely using the heal tool. As I concentrated on retouching the image, I also poured my intent in to every click, every motion. As I fell into the working, I became less and less aware of my shirt sleeves rubbing up against the cut. Finally, when there was not even a trace of the cut on the photo I was retouching, I released the energy that I had been building, grounded myself and closed up the rite.

Jury is still out on how successful the "spell" ends up being, but it was definitely looking better when I got home from work last night. It's fun working in a different paradigm than I'm used to. I might have to make more use of this one in the future, given how much I like playing around with GIMP and how much energy I pour in to anything I'm working on creatively.

Cult Danger, an overview.

One of, and perhaps the most definitive evaluation methods for the danger of any group is the Advanced Bonewits' Cult Danger Evaluation Frame (which I will refer to as ABCDEF from here on).

The ABCDEF asks you to rate groups on a scale from 1 to 10 on 18 distinct factors. A very high score indicates a group that poses a high risk of danger. A very low score is problematic as well, but groups that score low tends to be very scattered and disorganized rather than posing serious risks to the physical and mental health and wellbeing of the membership.

Let's take a look at the factors being evaluated. Italics are my commentary.

1. Internal Control: Amount of internal political and social power exercised by leader(s) over members; lack of clearly defined organizational rights for members.

Internal control is pretty self explainatory. How much control over members do the leader(s) exert over members? Are there clear member's rights? A low score here would indicate a group that does not try to control their members and clearly defines the members rights. A high score would indicate a group that tries to control many aspects of the lives of members and that does not make any attempt to define member's rights.

2. External Control: Amount of external political and social influence desired or obtained; emphasis on directing members’ external political and social behavior.

See above. Pretty much everything that applies there applies here.

3. Wisdom/Knowledge Claimed by leader(s): amount of infallibility declared or implied about decisions or doctrinal/scriptural interpretations; number and degree of unverified and/or unverifiable credentials claimed.

Does the leader of the group have verifiable credentials and admit to their own fallibility? Low score. Does the leader claim credentials they have absolutely no proof for and claim to be speaking the infallible words of the gods? That's a 10.

4. Wisdom/Knowledge Credited to leader(s) by members: amount of trust in decisions or doctrinal/scriptural interpretations made by leader(s); amount of hostility by members towards internal or external critics and/or towards verification efforts.

Is the membership open to hearing criticism of the teachings of the leader? Does the membership trust the leader but at the same time remember at all times that the leader is ultimately human and fallible? Low score. Do members of the group become extremely hostile towards members or outsiders that question the teachings of the leader? Do members trust the leader absolutely? That's a 10.

5. Dogma: Rigidity of reality concepts taught; amount of doctrinal inflexibility or “fundamentalism;” hostility towards relativism and situationalism.

Have flexible doctrine and cosmology and open to the views of others? That's a 1. Rigid, inflexible doctrine and cosmology and a belief that reality is only what the leader says it is with no regards to the views of others? 10.

6. Recruiting: Emphasis put on attracting new members; amount of proselytizing; requirement for all members to bring in new ones.

7. Front Groups: Number of subsidiary groups using different names from that of main group, especially when connections are hidden.

This is a complicated one. As a general rule, almost all groups do not have front groups. Generally if there are any groups outside of the primary group, they are just subgroups that are clearly part of the mother group. A classic representation of a front group would be a store that is staffed by members of the group (generally unpaid) that "donates" all of it's proceeds to the group but does not claim any association with the parent group. This is generally only a scenario you are going to see with high power, financially heavy hitting cults.

8. Wealth: Amount of money and/or property desired or obtained by group; emphasis on members’ donations; economic lifestyle of leader(s) compared to ordinary members.

Wealth and front groups can go hand in hand, and I would say that both factors would get higher scores of the front groups exist solely for fundraising purposes. A group that would score low on this factor most likely would have a negligible budget, will not emphasize donations, and the leaders will live roughly the same kind of lifestyle as the membership. A group that would score high would most likely either have or want a large amount of liquid assets and/or real property, members will be called on to give large portions of their finances to the group and the leaders will likely have a much higher standard of living.

I personally feel that this is one of the most subtly dangerous factors. It's fairly common for groups to ask for member donations and I think it's very easy to loose track of exactly how far that is getting pushed and in a group with far flung membership it would be very easy for a leader to be living a much higher standard of living on the groups dollar without people becoming overly aware of it for awhile.

9. Sexual Manipulation of members by leader(s) of non-tantric groups: amount of control exercised over sexuality of members in terms of sexual orientation, behavior, and/or choice of partners.

I'm not going to go in to much commentary here, for fear of triggering myself. This was a huge element in my former cult. I think everyone reading this is well aware of the controversy over sexual abuse within religious organizations.

10. Sexual Favoritism: Advancement or preferential treatment dependent upon sexual activity with the leader(s) of non-tantric groups.

Again, I don't have much commentary to offer here.

11. Censorship: Amount of control over members’ access to outside opinions on group, its doctrines or leader(s).

This one is a little hard for groups to exercise unless there is some sort of communal living environment. Short of that, this is typically going to consist of leaders using heavy peer pressure and discrediting outside sources.

12. Isolation: Amount of effort to keep members from communicating with non-members, including family, friends and lovers.

Again, you are mostly going to see this factor when there is some sort of communal living environment or when members are strongly encouraged to only live in certain neighborhoods and communities. Short of that, you might see leaders encouraging members to abandon relationships and threatening them with various consequences should they fail to do so.

13. Dropout Control: Intensity of efforts directed at preventing or returning dropouts.

All I'm going to say on this one is if leadership physically stalks and seriously injures anyone trying to leave the group, you have a serious problem.

14. Violence: Amount of approval when used by or for the group, its doctrines or leader(s).

15. Paranoia: Amount of fear concerning real or imagined enemies; exaggeration of perceived power of opponents; prevalence of conspiracy theories.

Leader think the rest of the world is out to get them with advanced weaponry and hostile magics? You might be looking at a 10.

16. Grimness: Amount of disapproval concerning jokes about the group, its doctrines or its leader(s).

17. Surrender of Will: Amount of emphasis on members not having to be responsible for personal decisions; degree of individual disempowerment created by the group, its doctrines or its leader(s).

I would also like to point out that surrender of will can go the other direction as well. Some dangerous groups hold members responsible for their every action with the expectation that members will entirely subjugate personal will to the will of the "group" (which I'll also point out is generally just the will of the leader in a dangerous group).

18. Hypocrisy: amount of approval for actions which the group officially considers immoral or unethical, when done by or for the group, its doctrines or leader(s); willingness to violate the group’s declared principles for political, psychological, social, economic, military, or other gain.

I'll pull an example from my own history for this one. If the group does something like condemn child rape but also makes sexual intercourse part of a mandatory rite of passage for young teens, you've got a 10. Another example a little less close to home would be the group openly approving doing things that would generally be considered unethical or immoral to fund raise for the group.

So, as you can see, the ABCDEF is a comprehensive framework for evaluating groups of any type. I would like to point out that this can be extended to cover any type of group that is not entirely consensus based, not just religious ones. While the focus of our work here mostly deals with religious cults there are also financial, corporate, lifestyle and myriads of other types of groups that can also be classified as dangerous cults. If you are worried about any group that you are a member of, take a serious look at your group through the framework you've seen here.


Advanced Bonewit's Cult Danger Evaluation Form
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New Post at Druish Diaspora: 10 Years

J's birthday blog tradition continues at: 10 Years

Where J has been.

So, I'm back from the Crisis Stabilization Unit (CSU.)

I know, I didn't have a chance to say I was going, and believe me I'm hearing about that now from several people. But I didn't know I was going. I completely fell apart at work, and just couldn't stop crying, completely detached, and actively suicidal. I was, frankly, shattered.

One of my co-workers pushed hard for me to commit to going to the CSU, but I wouldn't commit until I'd spoken to my sister who was waiting for me outside. Unbeknownst to me, she was planning to drive me to the CSU if I'd go. So I went.

Intake went well. I was willing to own up to being severely depressed and actively suicidal. We discussed my medical phobias and my *lack* of treatment goals. Truth be told, I didn't know what I wanted or needed, I just knew that I'd given up and wanted to die, and all that had kept me from doing it so far was that I didn't want to abandon people who were counting on me.

So I was admitted that night. I think I pretty much just sat and thought. I made a list of what I actually cared about. It was 8 items long: Family, Apartment Cleaned, 2 Friends, Work, ADF, Writing, and Guitar. And I hadn't been writing or playing the Guitar in quite a while. And I felt more hopeless, because I couldn't see anything I could drop. 8 items, and I couldn't keep up.

So for a while, I didn't. They started me on medications to control the insomnia and anxiety, and just encouraged me to rest. So I did, just sitting and thinking.

Then I started to meditate: open contemplation, Two Powers, thought-linking, Just listening to myself for once. I had brought some religious literature, and I devoured Real Magic, Neopagan Rites, and A Book of Pagan Prayer in 2 days. They managed to get me out of my room more. I started to feel and look better. I started talking to people.

And they started working on me. Over the next 3 days, we talked about my past and they tried to give me a radically new way to see my situation: I wasn't incapable of handling only 8 things. Trying to handle only 8 things was making me incapable.

I wasn't on that list anywhere, and I wasn't taking care of me. I'd landed in the CSU because I wasn't eating, sleeping, resting, or really listening or caring for myself in any way. And that had to stop.

My discharge plans were kind of sad. "Sleep, eat, shower, clean the apartment, pray/meditate, start spending time on hobbies, and exercise."

So I have been. Tanwyn showed me how to set up Wii Fit, and I've already lost 1.5 pounds. I've just finished off a bowl of ravioli, where an earlier me would have just had a glucose tab. I set up my Netflix account on the Wii, and I've watched 5-6 movies that I'd been putting off for *months,* two of them concerts. I spent 6 hours visiting a friend because I wanted to, and we're well on our way to having a clean apartment again.

And I'm happy. And thankful. And back.

A PTSDruid's Prayer for Peace

Flame, kindled at sacred Kildare,
Kindled now upon my hearth.
Flame on the hearth, illuminate my way.
Driving all shadows from my path.

From threshold to hearth,
To the north and to the south,
To the east and to the west,
Lighting all corners of my home.

Where your light spreads,
May I know peace and warmth.
Driving out all doubt and fear,
Melting away stress and pain.

Brighid, Lady of the Flame,
Whose fires burn on Hearth,
Whose fires burn in the Head,
Whose fires burn in the Forge.

May your fire brightly burn,
Fire kindled in the head,
Illuminating all corners of my mind,
Driving out shadows of pain and fear.

Brighid, Matron, Healer.
May your fires burn ever brightly.
Wrap me in your peace and healing.
Hear this Druid's prayer.

3 Cult Patterns that are opposite to the Maelstrom

Maelstrom's a complicated pattern, but the three of it's most common opposites aren't.

King of the Hill involves, at its simplest, one democratically-elected supreme leader with unquestioned power. That doesn't sound like a cult pattern, but it can be. In such a system, the only way to look after one's own interests is to either take the position, or put a trusted friend in the position. The amount of factioning, back-biting, sabotaging, political gamesmanship, and various other nasty crap that occurs just damages people and pulls attention away from what the group is actually intended to do. Don't play this game.

Mess of Porridge also sounds good on paper. Everybody is exactly equal to everyone else. One nose, one vote. We're all brethren here. So on, so forth. Sounds good, doesn't work. You still have all the same issues, except now they're back-channel and usually nastier. Tyranny of the majority tends to rule here, and schooling to get hooks into new people as soon as possible quickly becomes standard procedure. Stick with representative democracy whenever possible.

Scottish Knights is a sort of deliberate double Maelstrom. Rather than pointing to another group and calling them the "real" members, Maelstrom-style, two different groups are each told they are the true members and the other group is being misled for the good of the organization. Taken from an apocryphal story that Aleister Crowley titled his financial backers who bought their way in as "Scottish Knights" to indicate to his "Inner Circle" that they were cash cows to be fleeced for cash and misled as to the "true" teachings, while boasting to the Knights about sexually exploiting and misleading his Inner Circle as to the "true" teachings. Maelstroms can build up on accident, this one is just fraud.

Cult Pattern: Malestrom

The Maelstrom comes first, because it's the one usually foremost on my mind. I tend to trigger on it fairly hard. And, frankly, it's a pattern that I'm currently rather concerned with because at the moment, I see elements of it seeping into the ADF.

This is a pattern I named myself, and I named it for maelstrom in their original sense as whirlpools. In fact, the word maelstrom actually means grinding stream in Dutch. The word play darkly amused me because as a pattern it's avoidable but nearly inescapable, and it has a tendency to grind people down.

In a Maelstrom pattern, the phrase to look out for is "the real work happens behind the next door."

That's not to say that doors or graduated work are bad, in fact they aren't. A healthy group will often have a "getting to know each other" group and/or a "learning to be a functioning member" group, a "functioning member" group, and an "organizing the functioning members" group. Which is normal and healthy. And not the Maelstrom.

The Maelstrom happens when the definition of the "functioning member" group keeps changing. Most worrisome is if what is described as a "functioning member" changes at the time you arrive at what you were previously told was the level of "functioning member." In a fully-developed Maelstrom, this happens at *every* level.

Again, that's not to say that levels are bad. One of the *healthiest* models I've seen involved grouping people into "consumers," "producers," and "organizers." with a lot of shifting between the groups based on what contributions that individual was capable of making at the time.

Humans are primates (you'll hear that from me a lot.) We like levels. We like attaining things. We like identifying people to emulate and learn from. Those are, frankly, awesome. I've been in the dynamic I call "mess of porridge" and it's no fun either. We *should* recognize the people who have learned the path, the organizers, the volunteers. An organization with a clear map into those roles is *ahead* of the game.

But it shouldn't turn into a "march over the next hill" repeating endlessly. The first time you're told that the level you just obtained is "really" just the free sample for the level after it, think about running. Because, like a maelstrom, the more invested you get, the more you'll be invited to invest to get to the rapidly moving "good parts."

And, in an organizational sense, the Maelstrom is no less seductive, and no less likely to capsize you. Your newest members are going to need training wheels. The people who organize things are going to end up being The People who Organize Things. That's okay. That's healthy. That's, frankly, needful.

But everybody should have the same map. If you tell people that Confirmation makes them a "real" member before confirmation, don't tell them Bible College makes them a "real" member after. Of course "there" has more benefits than "here," or people wouldn't go "there." But be honest about where they're at now, and what "there" really is. Otherwise, you just end up with bitter people on treadmills, and the world has enough gyms.

Sermon over. Gods bless.

Working Definition: Cult

Okay, bear with me cause this is gonna get pretty convoluted, but necessary.

By book definition, a cult is a spontaneously originated religious group focused on personal experience, in the sense that it is not a schism of a larger group but a completely new religious movement.

In common parlance, though, we use "New Religious Movement" for tiny, experience-oriented spontaneously arising religious groups that have a positive influence on their members, and "cult" for a group of people being led to make bad choices. In this sense, the group may be religious, political, or financial.

The gap between the two makes getting a single definition for serious discussion difficult.

So here's mine:

To qualify as a "cult" in a pejorative sense, 3 elements must be present:

• Recruitment - the group must actively encourage people to become involved
• Retention - the group must actively encourage people to remain involved
• Bad End - the group must as a natural result of its internal and/or external activities have a tendency to cause harm. This doesn't include bad luck or one or two members acting in bad faith, but the actual group dynamics causing the harm. It also applies to all harm: physical, mental, social, spiritual, sexual, and financial.

By this definition, all three criteria must be met. An abusive relationship may have cult-like retention factors, but it isn't a cult until it crosses the line into recruiting others. A con-artist may recruit people to bad end, but he's not running a cult until he starts grooming them for repeat business. And a group that recruits and retains people to good end is just a normally functioning group.

This is not a perfect definition, but it is a functional one, and it does do a decent job of generating room to discuss cult dynamics objectively and without regard to size or history. This can be important for discussing cult dynamics, because most cults aren't aware that they are one, and the dynamics that can create a cult can actually occur unwittingly, like in the next pattern we discuss, which I term the Maelstrom.

And so it begins....

As I'm sitting on the couch typing this entry, I can see the winter wonderland outside. We've gotten a lot of snow this winter, but I think this is the first time I've been able to look outside and see literally everything covered. At this moment, I'm glad to be safe at home, nestled comfortably in my favorite chair, knowing that I don't have to go outside at any point today. We live at the top of a rather large hill, and I know the driveway is completely covered right now. It's quiet too. The only sounds are J's snoring in his bedroom, and the soft hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. I should be asleep, but I took a long nap last night and can't get to sleep right now.

And so the scene is set. All is quiet and calm and some really productive conversation happened last night. I should be feeling at least okay. I should at least be feeling somewhat at peace. But, I'm not and given the time of year I'm not confident that I'm going to be for a month or so. You see, February is just around the corner and true to fashion J and I are exactly the same in that February is the hardest month of the year for us.

I'm not really sure what triggered it, but the rough patch is hitting me a bit early this year. It's usually at least a week or so in to February before it gets too bad, but right now it's not quite February and things are already starting to get a little bit rough.

I think part of it is because we've both been having a bit of a rough time with something that happened a few weeks back and that's left us both a bit... fragile. We talked a good deal about it last night. It still surprises me sometimes how different we occasionally are. I swear, there is no middle ground with us. We're either perfectly in synch or diametrically opposed.

So, looks like we are headed in to a rough patch. I know we'll make it through it together though. Just try to be gentle for a few weeks?

Flu AND Pneumonia

We've been quiet for the past week or so mostly because we've been dealing almost constantly with my current very serious illness. I have influenza type A and then got pneumonia on top of it, and all of that is complicated by my underlying asthma.

I am starting to head in the right direction towards recovery. Definitely feeling more stable today.

So, keep your eyes on this space. More content coming very soon.

I Wish I Missed My Church

Tanwyn's post "Confession" inspired me to respond. However, as a long running gag, it seems like whatever we do we either agree 100% or disagree 100%. And this is one area where we disagree strongly.

I don't miss my church at all. I wish I did. At the time I had the opportunity for some wonderful church experiences, I declined them in favor of some horrible church experiences.

My church was filled with wonderful people and terrible books. The assumption was made that you would read the books, you would study the books, you would claim you believed the books, and then you would use the sense God gave a rock to know better than to follow the books.

I didn't know this, I followed the books.

And the books were nasty. I owned literally thousands of dollars in books of the Evangelistic subculture, which I spent hours reading and re-reading. And they were terrible, twisted, dark things. Between that and the family I grew up in, I internalized some of the most terrible ideas and concepts. I simply lacked the sophistication to realize that we were supposed to say we believed every word of our church charter. We weren't actually supposed to believe the thing, much less all the "guidebooks" I read.

The books I read were toxic, and they poisoned my mind. I came to believe terrible things about the nature of the world, people, and God. I exchanged truth for a lie and delighted in suffering. At one point, I realized that I didn't love God, not one bit. And as I worked through that, I came to decide that it was because I had reached a point of progress at which love for God was meant to be discarded. I decided I was ready to face the belief God was remote, and unlike us, and did not require our love, only our worship and obedience, for two very dark definitions of worship and obedience.

This was the cult before the cult. This was the damage that would make my time in an abusive organization happen. This was when I let hatred into my heart, and came to glory in the suffering of others, but in the real actual now and the imagined hereafter. Any hopes I had for normal development, or relationships, or even actually discovering who I was were dashed under a desire to follow the books. Because no one knew I didn't know any better.

I came to hate and despise women, although I wouldn't have known to admit that was what I was doing at the time. I hated and despised anyone who chose different things than me out of life, or beliefs, or took risks I didn't wish to. Only the parts of me too taboo for discussion escaped, and they didn't unscathed.

And I did this all to myself. Had I followed the example of those around me, I could have had wonderful experiences and joyous memories. But instead I turned to the books, and tried to align myself with them. And in turning away from that which makes us human, became monster. But I was too young to know this, too young to separate ideal from practice. Too young to that hypocrisy can, in certain circumstances, be a virtue.

In time, I would learn better, but at high cost. Among it, I can't miss the church of my youth, as I never really experienced it, only it's reading list. And that saddens me even now.

Confession

I have a confession to make; although I'm not sure "confession" is really the word I'm looking for as I have no shame in what I am about to say.

I miss the church of my earliest years.

Yes, you read that correctly. When I was very young I was taken to a vibrant young Presbyterian church on the outskirts of Atlanta, a church my adoptive parents had helped to found. In those days it was a simple building with one room that served as sanctuary and fellowship hall and another wing with sunday school classrooms... mostly for kids. It was a much more simple time, and probably among the last moments of innocence I would experience.

It was a place to bring your kids and raise your family. It was the proverbial village raising up children steeped in God's Word and equipped with the tools for raising a family of their own.

The preacher taught a gospel of grace. He spoke in simple words, easy to understand and even engaged the children as much as he could. Much like the Christ of the Gospels he didn't turn the children away. He taught about a loving God who loved His children so much that He would give anything to save them. Despite the Church's Calvinist roots he taught a gospel of grace, open to all. Didn't have to do anything special to earn it. Didn't have to have some special calling from birth. All you had to do was open to Him and let Him come to you and lift you up out of darkness.

In later years, I would look back on those few years of my life in wonder. I prayed that this all loving God would come and lift me up out of the darkness and turmoil that was life in the cult. Years passed, and no one came to save me. No one came to lift me up out of that darkness.

In the end, it was my own strength and courage, and the Kindreds that I had built *ghosti with that lifted me up out of it. It's hard to come away from that still believing in a all loving God and a gospel of grace. Still, I look back on those few years of my life fondly.

Sometimes, I wish it had never changed.

3 Things Before I Sober Up

1. Wartenberg Pinwheel's rock for solo play.
2. Endorphin rushes are good self medication.
3. I love everything.

Feedback Loops

One thing that I'm rapidly learning as we continue this whole "living together" thing is that we both have a tendency to feedback on one another quite badly. Take last night for instance; J got really badly triggered by a comment that someone made towards the beginning of Druid Moon and had to leave the room very abruptly. Well, of course I followed him out to check on him, as is my usual habit. He... wasn't budging. He just wasn't ready to come back in. Meanwhile, I had apparently stored up a lot more hope in finally being able to go to one of the smaller rites and really experience it with him, so I ended up in a bad state.

What happened after that was probably the least pleasant four hours that I have spent in a really long time. He pointed me at a blog post not realizing how seriously I was going to take it and without letting me know that the blog post didn't really reflect where he was at that point but by then I was so badly triggered that I just couldn't talk to him about it and it basically devolved to the point that I was the one in full bore crisis even though he had started to hit recovery upswing.

So, I'm really starting to realize that this feedback cycle is causing us a lot of problems. I'm not really sure how to address that right now. I guess now that we've identified that it is an issue we can at least start to try to work on it.

It's a starting point, right?

Chasing Hope

So, what's with this whole "PTSDruids" thing?

Well, this is where my brother and I come to write about our experiences as we grow and recover together as we walk ADF's Dedicant's Path together. We both had pretty horrific childhoods and ... well, when you hurt kids that young, Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder is pretty well guaranteed and neither of us is an exception to that.

Trying to live, work, play, grow, worship and heal while living under the same roof is a challenge in the best of times. My husband is a saint for putting up with such a dysfunctional wife and brother-in-law and a neurotic cat all living in the same, smallish two bedroom apartment.

All of that said, we both feel extremely blessed to have each other as we work through this together.

I'm sure you'll be getting to know the two of us much better in coming days, so I'll leave this here for now.