I belong to a wonderful private Facebook group. What makes this group part of my daily social networking addiction is what we all share in common. We are all former members of a fundamentalist Christian cult.
We share our stories, really bad jokes, get brutally and often profanely honest, connect with old friends, and generally support one another as we all work through what growing up in a very controlled and toxic environment has done to us. Personally, it has helped me finally have a place to share with those who truly understand what my past was really like, something I’ve not been able to do completely until I found this crazy cavalcade of cult survivors.
Every so often someone joins our group, and is dismayed by the raw and painful emotions they encounter there. They don’t quite understand the anger and the pain displayed, often by people who escaped the cult years ago. And so they usually end up offering the same advice: Get over it.
I really hate that platitude.
How does one “get over” discovering that everything they’d been taught about God and religion since childhood was a lie? How does one get over needless deaths or prolonged illnesses brought on by church teachings? How does one get over being inculcated into a “religion” that fostered rape, child abuse, spousal abuse, forced divorce, abandonment of every sort—that created and insisted upon poverty?
How does one “get over” losing family members who will no longer have anything to do with you, because you walked away from “God’s True Church”?
How does one “get over” all the things, and all the ways, that have nearly broken us, when patching and sewing back together all the cracks, rends, and damage done to us is such an agonizingly slow process?
While it is true that time can soften the memories and ease the pain of past traumas, “getting over it” is an impossibility. Life-altering events forever change us—even positive ones. But it seems to be the negative events that we have such a hard time with. Maybe it’s because we suppress the emotions they bring up in us, and don’t share our stories, because we’ve encountered too many “get over it” responses. Maybe it’s because our culture and our churches tell us that we must forgive, must be strong, must move on, must stop “living in the past.”
So we try to do those things, by hiding our anger and anguish. Which only leaves us feeling fragile, stuck and alone.
Everyone wants to feel like they belong, even just a little bit, that they matter, that they are understood, that they are cared for who they are right now, where they are, how they are. Everyone needs compassion—or its more personal sister, empathy.
I sometimes wonder if being empathetic is becoming a lost art. Other people’s pains and struggles can make us feel uncomfortable, yes. And hearing of the pain of another can also make us prideful, insofar as we make the terrible mistake of assuming that we know what they really should be feeling and doing.
When that happens, the other person—the person who only needs to be heard and maybe even a little respected—finds themselves dismissed. Declared (however subtly) lacking and weak, they turn away, feeling just as bad, if not a good deal worse, than they did before they reached out.
Empathy does the opposite. Empathy doesn’t cower at the brutal honesty of pain. It doesn’t write off the sufferer as immature just because they fail to take pre-formulated steps to wellness.
Empathy embraces the person and the pain they are wracked with. It lets the sufferer have freedom to heal in their own way and time: it does not rush them, or immediately formulate a solution for them. It allows him or her emote, to vent, to feel like someone finally gives a damn about them.
People who are empathetic—empaths—often understand suffering up close and personal. They are coming from a place that is true to Jesus’ ancient and beautiful teaching of “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” They know how to do that. They know what that means.
All of us need empaths in our lives. They are, to me, a divine blessing, tools in the hands of a loving God, gifted to us so that we can feel less alone, less afraid, less misunderstood, less like giving up. Their examples of kindness and patience, and their capacity for loving so beautifully, are something that I strive to emulate.
I want to show others the love that I have been shown. If you would join me in this nurturing and passing along of empathy, maybe together we can bring a little bit of healing into the world.
14 comments:
I still get a bit weepy at times from the death of my cat and german shepherd from 20 years ago as a young teen. They were the best pets ever, and were actually friends with each other and would share the dog house. Smart and cute they both were, and they both died within a short period of time and without warning. They were adorable to me, and I cried for several weeks when each met their end.
Guess Im not "over it" yet.
I don't think it could have been expressed any better than this. Thank you for saying what many of us are feeling.
Part of getting over things is to realize that the reason the Buddha can't vacuum in the corners or the curtains is that he has no attachments... lol
Sorry..... :)
Sounds like a Facebook group for women that sit around and cry in their lattes. If life has delt you bad hand, just pull up your boot straps and move on with your life.
Excellent insights Sylvie BTW...
Very kind, compassionate and realistic
Very good post & points. I'm both blessed & burdened to be an empath blessed cuz I can help others & burdened cuz I can feel some of what others feel by their feeling, by which I mean if someone in the same room is angry, sad, nervous, in pain I can tell it & start feeling the same if not careful. I know it's wierd but it seems to be one of my gifts
This hits the nail on the head. I'm 3 almost 4 years out of Armstrongism and I still feel like I have no one that actually understands. My family doesn't understand because they were never in it and didn't see the weekly/daily abuse. Honestly most of my family I feel like a stranger to now anyway because I pushed them away the 10 years that I was in "the church". The friends I have made outside of "the church" since leaving don't understand how much of a cult it actually was because I won't bring myself to tell them. The less than handful of people that I stay in contact with that are still in "the church" still have no understanding whatsoever why I left and still try to guilt me into coming back. THIS is why I cling to Banned by HWA and other websites. Its a comfort to know that there are other people like me that get it.
Those that realize that they have been abused and try to vent are further along in the healing process as those that pretend that everything is find and say, "just get over it". Some of those people don't even realize that they have been abused, and some of those that do realize that they have been abused think that they can heal instantaneously like turning on and off a light switch. Life is not that simple! I have heard "just get over it" many times since I have left the WCG. All I can do is sigh and hope that some day they will understand and make progress in the healing process themselves.
The best comeback I've ever encountered to "Get over it!" is "We are! This is how we do it!"
There will always be masochistic people who can't understand that not everyone else can be a masochist. But, that's their problem, not ours.
BB
A religion that fostered rape? What plant is this drama-queen reefer-head from? Oh, I guess they are one of the people who believe the big feminist lie that we live in a rape culture. The only rape culture that I know about is the financial rape of men. Just go to any divorce court and witness the carnage. Over a few decades in a few COGs nobody fostered any rape of any kind. Nobody told me to rape anyone. In fact the stupid over-protective ministers went hysterical if some dumb paranoid broad thought you looked at them the wrong way. Asking for a coffee date was just too risky some times. Far better to remain single.
I am not sure what I really think about the whole church thing. I left a long time ago, 1970's, and I suppose I've had a relatively normal life. I grew up in the church. My family was totally dysfunctional maybe that is what attracted them to the church, in a way the church gave me another family, and an escape from my human family by going to AC. For a while I blamed my family for a lot of problems in my life.....but really what is the point in blaming others? Then you just move from blaming one group to blaming another.
I left home when I was 17 and never went back, then I left the church when I was 21 and never went back. My marriage didn't last long, I wasn't prepared to put up with being miserable. I can't even remember all the jobs I have left -- my god I've had some awful bosses and some good ones too. Altogether its been a blast. I can't really complain because it seems partially my fault when others mistreated me. When all else failed I have often counted on the kindness of strangers which has given me much faith in humankind.
I am grateful I don't live in one of those awful Muslim countries where women are slaves and have to wear burkas, at least here we have the freedom to complain. Try complaining in a communist country pre-1970.....it would be a labor camp and reeducation in Siberia.
I was in WCG for 3 years and I wasn't abused or felt as though I was mistreated in some way. The only reason I stopped attending is because the congregation at the time was almost three hour drive from my home and I simply got tired of the drive. But, some people take things to heart when someone says something to them. Some people are wired to tight and to damn sensitive for their on good.
4.39 AM
My observation was that some church members were left alone while others weren't. This paralleled bully behavior in the schoolyard. Some are ignored while others are victimized, based on a risk/reward assessment. Sometimes congregations have a better minister, but that's the exception. And it doesn't last.
You make no mention of the abusive brainwashing such as the constant 'obey, yield, surrender, submit.'
Most the time, people who are verbally adept and confident have a higher than average survival rate even in bad conditions such as an ACOG. The problem is that Armstrongism progressively debillitates its members. By the time you finally get full blown PTSD, you are depressed, paranoid, and convinced that everyone and everything are against you. That can become a hole so deep that you can never dig your way out.
BB
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