Sorry does not cut it for probably all of us and we want restitution. Its not cheap to recover from all the trauma of the church and i think we all deserve restitution not for things for pleasure but strictly to recover and try to live a real life and healthy life. If it breaks the back of the church so be it but atleast some of us would have a more confident chance to go forward with a real second chance. And if i go down so be it but this what i want the most for everyone that lived a similar life to my own. No more tactics no more bullsh#t just healing. And if their leaders end up homeless then god bless america, there may be a god. I dont want to see their faces again anywhere.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/20/2017 12:43PM by badassadam.

The only restitution you can hope to recover at this point in time is for healing and recovery from your having been in a cult.

The cult is not going to fill the void that it left in your life.

You need to do that for yourself. With new interests, beliefs, challenges, and goals.

Happiness isn't found outside yourself, but within.

If you seek for it it will elude you.

When you're at peace with yourself, you'll be at peace with the world.

Keep on keeping on.

This doesnt help me at all my phone will probably be shut off in a month.

That's something RfM cannot do for you Adam, is fix the things that are broken.

We can offer support and some guidance. We are not miracle workers.

Don't expect to get all the answers here or you will surely be disappointed. Your expectations are not only high, they are unrealistic.

I hope you are able to work out the issues you're confronted with. Life can be complicated, and there are no shortcuts or easy answers. The answers are there, it's up to you to search them out.

Yep heard this before we are all just human. Nobody seems to be able to fix anything.

I don't want restitution. I want them to admit they are liars. That will never happen.

Anything bad (other than an illegal act, for which both the individual who committed it as well as possibly the church)that the church caused us as minors is ultimately the fault of our parents. Anything bad that happened to us as adults in the church (except to the extent that we were legally violated) is almost entirely our own fault. Even my mission was my own fault. No one held a gun to my head to force me into the MTC or onto the plane. I lacked the strength to say no. I can claim coercion and paint it any way I want, but I chose not to resist. I'm not being an adult if I fail to take any responsibility for the way things unfolded.

I'm not saying that you're not entitled to help (financial or otherwise) but if you don't at some point take responsibility both for your past and your future, nothing will ever go as you want it to go.

Take resposibity for being almost choked to death by a religious leader as a kid, take responsibity for all the brainwashing since i was 3 years old give me a break.

I think what is meant here is take responsibility for your life here and now. Everyone has a sad story, religious or otherwise, but you can choose to be a victim of your past, or a survivor. Victims do not look for ways to improve their lot, survivors do. Once you have moved your emotions along, you will be able to retake control of your life, which includes controlling your where your allow your emotions take you.

You can do it - you are half way there by just being physically out of the church, now you have to work on getting completely out mentally.

You can do it.

Well said, anonuk and scmd.

badass, if you read it again, slowly, SCMD wrote that someone in your situation IS NOT responsible for his decisions. He wrote:

1) other than an illegal act
2)except to the extent that we were legally violated

And you fall into those categories.

But, if I'm entirely honest about that post, it IS written without specifically addressing child abuse,

-as if a child somehow has magical access to healthy decisions upon exiting an environment of abuse, and that the abused person "becomes responsible" merely by attaining that magical age (18).

In the case of child abuse, developmental milestones range from "are impededed" through "do not occur," and I would be willing to lay odds that there would be a strong correlation between the severity of abuse and lack of milestones, variations by individuals and interventions.

AMONG THEM, my dear badass, is the way that survivors, firmly entrenched in survival mode, read only the RED FLAG words. It takes a long time - a long time - to accept ALL of someone's words without our RED FLAG filters.

BTW, it was RED FLAG reading, and someone else's patient refusal to accept it from me, that was a major breakthrough to my path of healing.

Go back and SLOWLY, THOROUGHLY read SCMDs post, and see that if he understood you to have been abused as a child, it WOULD NOT apply to you (or me).

And, dismissing (equating) child abuse as a "sad story" is also called "secondary wounding," a minimization of the abuse, pain snd subsequent losses you suffered. It is more than a "sad story," or there wouldn't be laws against it.

As for restitution, there are more than one kind. In the case of seeking monetary restitution, you need documented "proof" to a preponderance of the evidence. With wealthy LDS defendants, and an LDS jury and or judge, you would need very strong evidence that would cause the defendent to seek a settlement to avoid publicity, which would include a non-disclosure agreement from you. You would never be able to talk about it. For me, that would be too high a price for me to pay for restitution. It would impede healing and growth.

Calling it a 'sad story' and saying everyone has one was not intended to minimise any abuse anyone feels they endured, nor to wound them 'secondarily'. We do not all feel the need to post our moniker as a survivor to make us appear more sympathetic or more entitled to comment. It seems obvious now that the term I used was a RED FLAG to you and possibly others and if so, I apologise. It WAS to intended to demonstrate that the whole world and his brother all have a story they can tell about their past which they believe rightly justifies all their future behaviour, or affords them special treatment, or allows them to remain in their victimhood indefinitely, always focusing on the negatives in their life and life story.

We all have to move on from victimhood, some find it harder than others, and that is why we need a place to voice feelings. Some people never talk about the wrongs done to them and how they endured it and survived to adulthood.

However, constantly focusing on the wrongs that have been forced upon a person does not help that person move on emotionally. It is easier to accept you were wronged than it is to decide those wrongs do not define who you are now. We cannot change our past, but some of us live in our past, unable to move on from the pain and anger, which only does us harm; physically and emotionally. We can always redefine our future and that is the point I believe SCMD was making.

https://psychcentral.com/lib/the-long-half-life-of-trauma/


Google "PTSD secondary wounding" for a wealth of information; I didn't invent it.

Naming a thing for what it is, is not to say that the (unknowing) poster had ill intent. Secondary wounding is real, and my intent was and is to raise awareness, especially for badass, so he can recognize and dismiss the wounding as [the writer] not understanding the harm done.

As a survivor traveling the path that is causing badass so much pain, my desire is to let him know that he is not alone on the path, and that there are tools - many of them come from recognizing and being able to develop methods for coping with the constant pain.

Yes, secondary wounding does raise a red flag for me, and I intended to point it out. I know that it is most often not done to harm, no intentional malice, but harm is the result. If a survivor cannot identify it, he likely will internalize it as "something is wrong with me."

Survivors who can recognize and categorize it can ease the pain of it, not accept self-blame, and become more accepting of their very valid reactions.

Red-flag reading a skill that would benefit you, badass, and that's what I'd like for you to take away from this. At first, when we start to heal, those red flags hurt, and we either take the pain (internalize it), get angry, or both. Someone telling us to discount our pain is a trigger. When a trigger happens, and the blood boils, we get tunnel vision and react in survival mode. That is a normal, human reaction to pain, but those with PTSD have extra-strong reactions, because our bodies have been conditioned to pump loads of adrenaline into our systems.

And here's the thing about that -

Let's say that one time, while a person was being abused, he heard the sound of leaves blowing and rustling in a strong wind, and the smell of an approaching storm. As a child, his mind is trying to cope with the abuse happening at the same time, so it focuses on the stormy weather, throughout this session of abuse.

Fast forward many years. He has escaped the abuse, went on with his life, done productive things and never really dwelled on his pain. But, he gets tense and irritable whenever a storm is coming, and reacts to others from those moods. Others react to his dislike of storms by calling him names, telling him he's stupid, to quit being a baby. He accepts that they are right, but he has no control over his reaction, and doesn't know why he has such a reaction.

Out of the hundreds of times he was abused, there may be many such shifts of focus, but no specific memory. If abused once or twice a week, once or twice a month, during a person's entire childhood, who could remember - and who would want to - each shift of focus used, each smell, sight, sound, word, etc.?

Those can become triggers. Identifying them eventually removes the power they hold over our minds and bodies.

Telling a person to ignore them is not helpful.


An example -

A woman I know is deathly afraid of rabbits. People make fun of her, and bring her "joke" gifts of little rabbit toys, figurines, pictures. They love to tease her about it, and she gets a half-grimace, half-grin on her face and takes it in seemingly good humor.

I bought her a little Yosimite Sam toy, slighty larger than most of the figurines. It took center stage among her menagerie. Later, the subject of her fear came up, I didn't laugh, asked her if she knew why she was afraid, and she fought tears as she shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. I told her it was okay, took her hand, and she squeezed mine.

Those who bring her rabbits don't intend to hurt her, and are trying to make her less sensitive to rabbits, but are likely imparting the opposite effect. Does it make them "bad?" No. It means that they are unaware of the consequences of their behavior.

I know what fear and pain feel like for me, but I don't know what they feel like for her. I know that being human animals, we have the power to gain mastery of many of our thoughts, but to do that, we must be able - free - to pay attention to them.

In my case, my abusive father loved the weather, the nastier, the better. I absolutely knew I would never be abused during a tornado warning or oncoming storm, because he was enjoying himself elsewhere. For most of my life, I didn't know why I liked storms. To this day, decades later, I feel myself relax when faced with "nasty" weather, and people still think I'm weird. I get it, and their name-calling can no longer hurt me, nor do I feel a need to explain. I am empowered by knowing my history. I "got over it," but not by thinking that I was "supposed to be the same as everybody else." Knowing my triggers allowed me to let go their expectations of me.

I've identified many of them, but there are more. The more I know, the more manageable my thoughts and reactions.

Yes, most everyone has experienced trauma, but those who experience it regularly throughout developmental years are prone to self-harming thoughts and behaviors. That was the long-term conditioning wrongly, criminally, thrust upon them, us, usually in our own homes, a place that is to now be supposedly "safe," a place we may now have trouble relaxing, a place where they now may turn to self-harm.

It's a matter of degree. In moism, abusers will justify the abuse using their "authority of god," adding heaping, stinking, filthy layers of self-guilt and thought control (mental chains) onto the truly innocent victims. The victims become survivors by identifying and clearing that excrement from their minds, hearts, souls and homes. We all deserve this freedom, and it takes time and compassion.

I don't "police" this forum, and am grateful that you reacted, anonuk. It gave me this opportunity to try to explain, and I intend you no slight or harm, nor do I think that those were your intent.

My earlier post - I was limited for time, and used the caps as a short-cut to emphasize the concept. I apologize to all.

I am aware of my different "modes," from being all calm and rational, to nearly completely triggered and "ready to go a few rounds." I was somewhere on that spectrum in my earlier post. I do not claim mastery. I claim progress. It is all someone like me can do.

Yup. That's me - a survivalist.

I think you are right about the secondary wounding thing. But what do i do about it? avoid all conversations in fear of getting triggered?

No, we can't do that, but what we can do is try to pay attention to how we feel, and honor our feelings, especially when something makes us feel bad.

At first, when a person is trying to identify and rembember traumatic events, he is very, very sensitive. One reason for that is that the newly-recalled memory is a "fresh" memory (even if at first it's only a feeling and not yet the whole memory), and it can feel like that traumatic event is happening right now, in the present (because of the adrenaline), but his rational brain knows it's not happening, so a person often feels as if he's "going crazy." That "crazy" feeling is a clue that he has been triggered.

Another reason that he is so sensitive to the "new" memory is that when/while the trauma happened, he was not allowed by the abuser to express his pain or anger, but now, as an adult, he is free to feel and express those things, often for the first time in his life. It is as if the adult survivor is being the "safe place" for the child (his child inside) victim, who never had a safe place as a child. - The dad in you, the badass dad, comes out fighting to protect the child indide that no one, or few, ever protected.

So, whatever triggers you, which can also come from secondary wounding, are big clues to which you should pay attention, and think inside, "When this bad feeling passes, I need to try to remember and think what triggered it."

During the trigger (adrenaline flood), the most important thing to do is keep yourself safe, and prevent yourself from harming others. Set up a safe area in your home, wherever you feel most safe, and put things there that you think would comfort "the son - little boy," because the adult you has so much more power than that little boy had. "He" needs to "know" and trust that it is okay if he hurts and is angry. Let him scream his lungs out (maybe into a pillow so neighbors don't call the police), let him express his pain and rage.

Here's another way to think about it. In your mind, that little boy has ran and hidden among the trees in order to survive. You can sense that he's there, and very afraid to trust anyone. He's not yet letting you in on his secrets, but he's let you know that he has them, and is waiting to see how you'll react. He's scared and small, was very, very hurt, and wants to take it slow.

Just like a good parent, you'll prevent him from harming himself, you'll set healthy limits and boundaries. He can beat the pillow with a bat, but not the TV. He can have an ice-cream-all-you-can-eat (or whatever) comfort session, but probably not every day. You'll maintain as safe and healthy environment as is possible.

If you're in public when you become triggered, you're still "the parent," still "in charge"(in healthy good ways), and you would acknowledge those feelings, offering (in your mind) that you will get to a safe place as soon as is reasonable. Think of it like this - if you're shopping, cart half full of what you need, maybe 10-15 minutes more to do and get through checkout, and your for-real-life child started throwing an all-out fit, how would you react? Abuse and neglect are out of the question, right? The healthy ways that you, badass, would react to a little Adam are the things you would do. You would listen to him, acknowledge his feelings, ask him what you can do to help, and follow through on a negotiated settlement. ("You (little Adam) want X, and I can't do that at this very moment, but we can... Will that be okay?" Sometimes you get a "NO!" in response, but it takes patience to be s parent ;) ) Sometimes, a parent is obligated to say no, but not just out of meaness or cruelty, but because we care. Children test limits and boundaries, and we help them learn to set healthy ones.

Sort of like you told off the mishie, but didn't punch anyone in the nose. :) That was great limit setting!

If you're driving, pull off the road as soon as safely possible. Tunnel vision and driving do not mix. If you're triggered and driving, that can result in road rage, and that, dear friend, is not healthy.

Of course, in real life, you are actually taking care of both yourself and that hurting child, so the "conversations" are private, and going on while you "feel crazy." They are short, as quick as the speed of thought, but it's still important to follow through on healthy promises to yourself.

It's NOT crazy. It's delayed onset PTSD. Which is to say that the traumas were severe enough to go into deep hiding for a long time, and overt symptoms have surfaced. That life-long depression - that would be a symptom that was never linked to trauma so never properly diagnosed.

All your life, that depression has hounded you, carrying its weight of abuse, and contrary to sometimes popular belief, people like you and me never relied on the "victim" card. We pushed through any pain and depression, didn't "whine," just kept working, working, working 'til our bodies gave out.

Then, when we no longer have work to distract us, and are still (by ourselves) for a bit, is it any wonder that the physical pain and solitude create a space for emotional healing to begin?

Here's the good news. The feelings coming out may seem really unjust, but this is the first time in your life that "little Adam" feels he has a badass dad to love and protect him - YOU. You, badass, are not being abused right now, and that's the message you give the adult you. "It's not happening right now, but that boy deserves my honesty, honor and loyalty, and with my last drop of power, I am going to see that he has them!"

Badass, Boner is so very right about you. You accurately identified some of your great qualities, and I agree, I think there are more.

And here is the really, really good news - In trusting you, "little" Adam is telling the you and the world that you, badass, are trustworthy and deserving of his love and respect.

And the really, really, really good news is that wife, two kids and picket fence you want? You are in training at this very moment. You are learning how to truly love yourself, which is the first step in knowing how to love and care for another. Your wife and children are going to be so very lucky to have you. Don't rush this, loving someone takes time, and you deserve to love yourself in every way possible.

You make me cry, badass, in such a good way. You are loved. You are healing.


____________

FYI - I am working, desk job, because that's all I can do. I was told by the SS office that disability was only for people who are permanently, fully, disabled. It's not like my back is getting better, and I'm in pain every day, but I didn't want to mislead you about my current status. I don't know how some backs qualify for help and others don't, but working is very hard on me. I think my mistake was saying "I'm willing to work when I get better..." There has been very little "better." That was hope doing the talking. Sort of wanted to warn you about that, too.

Wow survivalist you know a lot and ii is all accurate even the body giving out part. Could i work right now maybe but i know i have made that mistake in the past of working when i should not have. I have really tried to be smarter this time around about my decisions instead of burning my body out because everybody else said so you know? Because we both know that not one person cares when you burn out so i have to care.

I am just in a bad position survivalist but it is getting better as time goes. Ill point the finger to whoever i can before i have to meet my inevitable end to the bullet. Somethings may have no way to come back from i just thought restitutution would help me to get there but maybe it wouldnt. There is no cure pill for the abused and we almost live in an alternate world than everyone and i really dont know how to close the gap and be more normal like everyone else appears to be and so therefore the obvious choice is always death if one can not make a come back to total reality.

no one is 'normal' - everyone puts on a show in public to some extent. As a song says 'we only see what people want us to see'.

Who gets to define 'normal' anyway? What is normal/usual for one person might be totally different from what is normal/usual for someone else.

We are all different, but we are still, essentially, all the same: We live, we learn, we hurt, we live some more and do it all over again. That is a bit of a cliche and here is another that is relevant not just to exercise but can apply to life in general: no pain, no gain. You are obviously hurting, but this will pass eventually and you will understand people better but probably the biggest gain at the end is that you will recognise true happiness when you feel it, now that you understand despair. Most of us here also know despair and sometimes it feels it will never end, but we are proof that it does end.

I once felt that grief, sorrow and despair were not adequately strong enough words to describe the depths of emotional pain that can be experienced in life. However, these experiences do not define us, they push us along our path and contribute to who we eventually become and who we eventually become is down to us. We are allowed to change our minds from time to time, we cannot control all events in life, but we can control how we choose to respond.

I definitely know despair. As for the opposite of that i have no clue what that is, not yet atleast.

The church will never pay restitution until the resolution of a lawsuit that you have a good chance of winning or where the courts order the church to pay restitution. Right or wrong,the odds of that happening for most of us is next to zero.

If the church would simply recognize their wrong-doing publicly, and admit to everything they've done wrong and change how they operate going forward to stop causing harm, that would probably satisfy me. The odds of that happening are next to zero.

So without any satisfaction from the church over their wrong-doings and continuing path of destruction, I accept the next best thing. No matter what good the mormon church does in this world, unless it meets the above criteria, is not enough. They can never win in my book. I will always be there to expose their frauds, and to help others who are ready to leave the church, to leave it. I am a leader in my community and I do what I can to keep the church in a box, to avoid them, and to not recognize anything good they do. It's just a cult, and my opinion goes unchanged. I use descriptions of the pre-1990 temple ceremony penalties amongst many other real-life-experiences I have had, as examples when talking to people about how screwed up the religion is. Before I and many like me are done, the mormmon church and its leaders are the ones who are going to kicking against the pricks. But I do not hold my breath, waiting for it to happen. I put infinite faith in my resolve that I am right and they are wrong, and I don't look back. They (the church and its leaders) are and will increasingly will be the outsiders in any arena they step in to. If the mormon church doesn't collapse in my lifetime, that is okay. As long as I am alive, I am going to act as though it has already happened.

In the mean time, I live my life with happiness and success.

Well you are a good man azsteve. Some of that may satisfy as well instead of restitution and i am trying my best to live my life like a normal person and the things that the church did or still does have it not affect me but it is difficult as hell. They really worked my mind especially through my family and all of their brainwashing tactics. Its hard to clear all that crap out and live normally.

Hi badassadam, you will eventually heal and be able to move forward with your life. At my lowest, right after the church's betrayal of me, as well as lots of friends stabbing me in the back, things got pretty bad for me. Clinical depression led to me losing my business and I ended up in a homeless shelter for several months, living with parents again before that (in my mid 30's) and with serious mental issues for a number of years. I Lost roughly ten years of progress by the time I started moving forward again. Eventually I found a good woman who loves me and is still with me, earned two professional degrees, and ended up with an Engineer's salary and a good life. You can achieve your dreams too.

Although I have healed mostly, there are still searing emotional wounds that don't ever seem to go away or to get much better when it comes to the church. You learn to put them in to a container and only open the container to work on those issues when your energy is high enough that you can afford to take some hits again. You meter it. Life gets mostly good again. Eventually, I started looking at that container the same way someone would look at a broken limb that never quite healed correctly. Once in a while, an issue in that container seems to get resolved, and disappear. So far, I am in good health in my mid 50's. So I feel fortunate. Having recovered and regained my strength (for the most part), the church isn't going to get off the hook for their role in destroying my life at one time. I know how to hit them where it hurts. For now, that's good enough. Some day I might write a book about the whole experience. When I do, I plan to use real names, my real name, real Bishop and Stake President's names and dates, Real ward and stake names, and real legal names of real and living individuals and the terrible things they did, interwoven with the theology and the role the church played in making things far worse than it ever should have been.



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2017 11:39PM by azsteve.

I would love to get really healthy and hit them where it hurts as well. I feel like i could but i dont really know how but i feel like if i progress to an even stronger individual than i am then i will be a force to be reckoned with. Its a crazy thought but me getting healthy and living a healthy life will hurt them somehow because it has never happened in this life yet i was kept suppressed for decades.

Just focus on yourself and getting your better for now. After life has improved significantly, you can revisit your former life and address the past grievances. That's what I did.

I do need to focus more and not distract myself so much with pointless things.