Brainstorm - Psychological Damage

[moksha]

Wasting marvelous volunteer hours on silly Masonic rituals.

Think of all the wonderful things that could have been accomplished for the betterment of Humankind with those generous volunteer hours. That could have made for truly good works.

[RubinHighlander]

You know the family type well. Mother and father in laws are controlling, overbearing, and host Sunday dinner every week followed by home study church and a testimony meeting. All nearby family members are expected to attend. The wife (their daughter) feels obligated to attend and pressures the husband to not complain and swallow the meatloaf without expressing distaste. He complies out of fear she will withhold sex another week and he's already feeling guilty for looking at porn. The wife feels tremendous pressure to please everyone including her TBM parents while raising kids in the gospel,keeping a clean house, and being the best damned ministering sister the 6th ward has ever seen. She's exhausted. He's exhausted. Yet the routine continues week after week. Meatloaf after meatloaf. Enmeshed in the grind of Mormon culture, exceedingly high expectations, and the authorized polyester pattern.

Boy howdy!

My DW's oldest daughter married into one of these families. The dad and step mom are quite narcissistic when it comes to all the kids and spouses being at their house at least every other Sunday and all special church broadcasts and regular broadcast events. Of course it's easier to tell us no when we invite them over once every other month and it happens to conflict. So even though DD and her husband are out of the church and have made that known to his parents, they are still expected to be there. I gotta give my son-in-law credit, he has been honest with his dad on the church issues and it has not been easy.

When it comes to asking for help, like borrowing tools or advice or fixing cars and house things, those kids call us. Isn't it sad that a child would trust others over their own parents because the church is this huge wedge between them. I'm glad I never put that pressure on my kids when they left and I was still in. It bothered me as a TBM but I always put my love for them ahead of the church and I let them know that.

[crossmyheart]

Wasting marvelous volunteer hours on silly Masonic rituals.

Think of all the wonderful things that could have been accomplished for the betterment of Humankind with those generous volunteer hours. That could have made for truly good works.

THIS!

I mean, could some of those things be done in healthy ways? Maybe. But anytime people start going on about how "it's faaaaaammmmilllly and we've always done it this way in our faaaaaammmmmiilllllyy," i think it's a red flag.

I see that you've met my in-laws.

(And alas too - some of your examples so accurate I'd swear you were there, eating the same crappy Sunday dinner and listening to the conversation too.)

My faaaaaaammmmmmmmmmmillllllly too!

Add:
Arbitrary/Made up rules that require blind obedience
Selling indulgences
Aggrandizement of leadership
Stealing from the poor to give to the rich
Exaggeration of charitable donations
MLM- only the highest level of leaders reap the true benefits
Rape culture
Objectification of women and girls
Favoritism
Moral superiority

[alas]

I think reading this, I am demonstrating some of the damage. I get this feeling like I need to defend the church from such harsh criticism, even though it is true. Why? I am out and the criticism is true, but...but...I still get this reaction of needing to defend the church.

We are so conditioned to jump to the defense of the church if it is criticized, ESPECIALLY if the criticism is true. It is a kind of mind warp where we are trained like Pavlov’s dogs to defend the church. The church uses and exaggerates the historical persecution of the early days of the church——-persecution it brought on itself by practicing polygamy, but Brigham claimed was never about polygamy but because we had TRUTH to train us to fight “persecution”. We get this training starting as small children in stories about pioneers and even modern children who stand up against “persecution” by defending the churc. It becomes an automatic response, without thinking we tell ourselves, this can’t be right, and we defend the church. We don’t evaluate the charges, we just defend. The more uncomfortable we are about the criticism, the harder we jump in to defend the church. So, we end up defending the church when it is guilty as heck as an automatic response to the cognitive dissonance we feel because we see the truth behind the charges. If someone throws out something about “Mormons eat puppies” we are not bothered by that because we know it is false, so we don’t even bother to defend the church, our response is kind of, “whatever”. But when we are uncomfortable because we see the truth in the criticism, there is this trained reaction of protect ourselves from the cognitive dissonance, even when we think of ourselves as no longer Mormon.

[Newme]

Alas,
I appreciate your comments, & I wish I was there to tell the bishop off for you when he was demanding you sacrifice you and your health & baby’s life. But I was also a bit self-sacrificing. When you’re taught from birth to put the church first etc - I guess it takes time to deprogram from that.

=

As for my top 10...
1) Depression - not just a state of mind but people/church can make you feel put down - depressed. Polarized thinking extremes, emotional reasoning & other cognitive distortions.
2) Anxiety (besides depression, many members suffer from this)
3) Pain killer abuse (again Ut has high stats)
4) Marital problems - sexual repression & shame
5) Porn - ^ “
6) Narcissism: never apologizing, gaslighting, shifting blame
7) Neurosis - taking on too much blame
8) Co-dependency
9) Group thought (might be #1)
10) False gods that are creating hell but deceptively, so the cause of suffering is hidden