I am just curious.

Every since the encounter in November is have being totally shunned. Which I could care less and really glad they aren't bother me.

But What is the purpose of doing this?

Don't they realize it hurts them more then the person who they are shunning?

I am not giving in regardless of what they say or do and honestly I would prefer they never speak to me again. I just don't understand the purpose of this. For petes sake I recently had another encounter from a nonmormon stood by grounds and held my boundaries and she's not shunning me. Actually she apologized and we are still are speaking terms.

This stupidity just leaves me scratching me head on how immature some people are.

Its stupid, more so when its coming from people who CLAIM to be religious. I'd really like to get a bulk order of those "what would Jesus do" bracelets they used to have in the 90's and hand them out to a few people...

Pretty Insane

isnt' it?

It's a good example of how the church keeps grown adults in a child like state.

What is shunning other than a grown up version of the 'silent treatment?

It's completely petty.

Has nothing to do with you. They are exhibiting their inability to accept people the way they are. It's core is fear. They are afraid of you.
Don't ever take it personally. It's not about you anyhow!

Chin up! Ignore them! Be polite and courteous and if they can't handle that, it's their problem.

Bravo, I was going to say much the same thing, but you covered it perfectly.

Meh, I really wish the mishies would shun us.

Ha-ha! I agree, and I'm happier being shunned by the Mormons than I was being fake-friended and love-bombed by them.

You go too deep. I think shunning is simply a manipulative technique for childish people to make others feel bad. Usually, it is because they want something, such as a confession of wrong-doing, or a return to the fold, or some other demand. It is passive-aggressive behavior at its finest. My mother used to give us the silent treatment--not fix us food, not drive us where we needed to go, even leave the house for several days. We were too young for this, and it only made us feel unloved, and that we couldn't depend on her.

Don't give in to it. It is a mind-game.

YES!! Shun me please!!! We're on round 3 of love bombing. Gag.

Many mormons want to teach us a hard lesson.

What else can they do? Danite-type action would get them in trouble with the law and make the church look barbaric. Shunning is subtle and can be explained away as a problem the victim might be imagining.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2011 05:10AM by Cheryl.

By shunning you they intend to make you feel cut off and to do whatever you have to do to get back into the community/family/friendship. Very much like the silent treatment we played as kids.

By shunning the apostate they protect themselves from what is perceived as evil.

By shunning they inavdertantly admit that they pretend to love you for only as long as you are one of them. Once you voice contrary opinion they will tear of their mask of fellowship faster than you can drop your fork.

It's partially an ancient tribal ritual to turn the "offender" out of the village and pretend they don't exist, and partially a child-like thing: not letting little Johnny into the game of 4 square because he said something bad about the most popular kid in school (who's really a bully), so that he's supposed to get all pouty and longlingly watch through the chain link fence at his buddies having fun.

The Church is excellent at creating guilt. They figure that if they shun you, then you'll give in and come back. Once they get to the point of shunning, that's their last-ditch effort to punish you for leaving and their last hope at bringing you back in. It usually happens after their love-bombing tactics don't work, or if they realize right off the bat that you're serious and you're not going to be guilted back in.

But I tend to believe that they mostly act that way out of fear. They fear that you wield some sort of power which could damage their testimony, so they push you away to protect themselves.

I don't know if we're being shunned, or just plain ignored, but we haven't been to church in 6 weeks and they haven't attempted to contact us in any way.

I was hoping for love bombing. I enjoy homemade brownies.

It would be interesting to get a psychologist's take on shunning. I see it as an emotionally immature way to inflict "punishment" on someone. I'm fascinated by it since it seems to take so much energy to do it. The person doing the shunning has to take notice of you, and then deliberately ignore you even if you greet him or her. That takes a lot more concentration than just saying a hurried hello and then going on your way.

Sometimes I wonder if it's a form of mental illness.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2011 02:55PM by CA girl.

I do think fear of Satan is a big part of it, but it can also be an expression of disapproval--especially when your family does it.

My mom's been shunning me for several years now, even though we're no longer having the arguments that started when my dad died. She used to call me about once a week; now she goes for months if I don't call her. I'm not sure why and I can't ask. Well, I could, if I wanted to be infuriated and start up the same old conflict. She'd just play dumb and deny and blame me.

There's something fundamentally wrong with both sides of my family that I think is rooted in Mormonism. Especially on my dad's side, if you don't behave just so, it's this huge personal affront to your elders--who get to do and say whatever they want, because they're older--and you are cast out and not spoken to until the cows come home or someone dies, whichever happens first.

Even though my mom wasn't raised Mormon, her father, my Mormon-hating atheist grandpa with the pink car, came from a staunch Mormon family and wasn't a very good father. He wasn't affectionate or supportive or inclined to treat you like a person with your own ideas and feelings. As with my dad, you were just supposed to know he loved you, even though he never said so in a direct way and didn't even really act like it.

The only person who ever dared tell him where to get off and got away with it was my grandma, who came from the only non-Mormon line in my entire ancestry.

Grandpa gave most of his attention to my mom's older sister, who he was grooming to be a newspaper man like himself--that is, until she disappointed the holy living crap out of him by marrying the son of a Mormon co-worker he could't stand. The night she came home with her engagement ring, he refused to get out of bed, saying something like, "Please relay my congratulations on her decision to become a baby factory."

She didn't become a baby factory and didn't become Mormon, either, but she did get to stay home and never work. She also continued to be the smart, capable one who got all the responsibility while my mom was the lazy, boy-crazy one who didn't have to do anything but be pretty. My mom is incredibly jealous of her sister, even though she won't admit it.

She's also deeply insecure, despite being beautiful and creatively talented and funny and liked by everyone. Only my brother and I know how irritating she is. It dawned on me a few years ago that she was competing with me for the attention she never got from her dad. I think she married my dad to annoy hers and then regretted it, but she'd never admit that, either. She enjoyed my dad's failure to develop a relationship with me based on anything but authority, and actually did some engineering of that failure.

Given her reaction to the softballs I've thrown at my dad and the Mormon church, I hate to think how she'd take my saying she married my dad and then joined the church to piss off Grandpa.

On my mom's side of the family, you smile and act nice and invent innocuous reasons for not hanging around together. And the affront-to-the-elders thing is alive and well. My mom can't stand to be disagreed with any more than my dad or his mom could, and even though I haven't said so in so many words, I think she knows I wholly disapprove of everything she claims to believe. I don't think she really believes it, but to admit that would involve some fact-facing about her life that she's not willing to do.

And that, I believe, is why she shuns me--it's a combination of insecurity and disapproval.

I wonder how many here have mistaken their parents' insecurity for something else, because of the elders thing. I know that's not exclusively Mormon, but it is big in Mormonism, with the leaders being ancient and parents being taught that they're stewards over their children. Rejecting their faith is a big FU to their stewardship ... not to mention their intelligence, because I think most of them know deep down that it's not true.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2011 05:25PM by munchybotaz.

..shunning is supposed to force compliance. If it doesn't force the person to shape up and comply, it protects the group from the influences of the person who isn't playing by their rules.

interprets your decisions/choices as a personal rejection of them. It's all personal and emotional.
They don't know how to not take things personally that are not about them in the first place.

It makes the shunners feel more righteous.

Ok Great explanations and they all make sense......they can just keep shunning me their leaving me alone and that's what I want. Otherwise it could get really ugly if they continued on. I don't take it personal just wanted some opinions on its purpose...... Shun away......... Such child like behavior and yes it would be interesting to see a professional counselor would think of it. Thanks All.....back to my corner for a while......

My DH is feeling the affects of the shunning from his TBM daughter. She is basically ignoring him (us) and will only speak to him now via text messaging . . . what a nice way to shun her father. I guess we should feel lucky that she hasn't completely cut off all communication. He texted her last night and asked why she blocked him on FB . . . no response as of yet.

The purpose of shunning is to emotionally break the target of the shunning. It is designed to weaken them and show them who has all of the power. The goal is to bring the target back into blind obedience to the shunners.

In the case of Mormonism it is also to protect the members from learning that they have been deceived.

My step-son would love to shun us, but he needs our money. It will be interesting to see how it goes next year when he's out of school and working.

I think I am in the beginning stages of being shunned by my sister. She has talked to me almost every day for 20 years. Suddenly that has been cut to 1 or 2 days a week. If that's what is happening, that will be a tough one for me. She has been my best friend. I like to think she is more open minded than that. However, fear is probably a big part of it. She has way more to lose than I do. All 6 of her kids, her husband, his parents, and 10 bros. and sisters are all TBM. It would be very bad for her if she left. I actually think she is one of those people who should stay in for her own well being.

Seriously, though. It's like getting out of prison and being shunned by your former gang members that are the reason you were arrested in the first place. It's really not a loss unless it's family. It's much more irritating when Mormons try to fix you. It's condescending and there is nothing you can do to make them see that they are being insulting...they have a pre-programmed answer to everything.

A while back, I posted about how my TBM friend rarely talks to me anymore and almost all of the "friends" I made while investiging the LDS church even bother to acknowledge me. I made the comment that if I am ever searching for a new church in the future, I'd never consider the LDS church again for this reason alone (not to mention all the theological problems). I feel sorry for my TBM friend that he has such petty friends and aggravated with him for becoming som petty himself.

I can't help but compare his reaction to me not joining the LDS church to my reaction to this situation. A friend is looking for a new church and I invited him to mine. He turned me down, saying that my church is too traditional for his liking. Now, I suppose I could have gotten all offended and ended the friendship over this, but our friendship isn't based on where each of us goes to church. I decided to take his words as meaning that my church simply doesn't meet his spiritual needs. In that case, why would I want him there? I'd want him to be somewhere that does meet his needs. He may have found a church and we're still friends. Why is that concept so hard for Mormons to understand?

Among elephants and mustangs, troublemakers are punished by exclusion from the herd. Certain tribes and barbaric societies practice ostracism and "casting out" in various forms for societal punishment.

Modern prisons are a form of removal from society as punishment.

The LDS subculture practices actual shunning while the religious orthodoxy attempts to deny it (despire early prophetic quotes). The reason this practice has survived to modern times is because it conserves energy for associating with potential members.

There is no value to the collective for energy to be spent on those who will not obey and surrender their assets and energy to the Morg. From a practical standpoint, it is much more efficient to spent the time with those who can still be sold the con. Those who reject the message are the "swine" who are not entitled to the "pearls."

In the folklore of the religion (what is practiced in daily life), people tend to feel guilty when someone in their family or even just someone they know drops out of the religion. They tend to blame themselves for not being a good enough example. Rubbing shoulders with someone, they are told over and over, attracts them to the church. If instead they leave, well it must be your fault.

It is importance to the maintenance of the morale that no one ever question the gospel itself as being distorted or repugnant in any way. Which is why they ask, "Were you offended?" Had to be a person that offended you and they want to hear that it was not them.

Hope this is somewhat helpful...:)

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