It Was "like" A Cult...but It Wasn't A Cult

[Powder]

I wasn't there. Maybe this woman is a piece of horrible work. I've seen some people who get off on being horrible.

If she's not, I hope you can forgive the cousin for saying something without thinking if she recently had a baby. Remember, there's a host of postpartum depression and hormone fluctuation issues to contend with, along with sleep deprivation. Not excusing her statement, because it was extremely unsympathetic and the product of a callused (or bruised) heart.

But, If I ever said anything truly stupid or horrible, (and I can think of at least one memory in which I did) it was within the first couple months with "mommy brain." In my case, I didn't hold back a truth that wasn't nice to bring up so openly.

I hope nobody judges me for what fell out of my lips when I was young, inexperienced, and that hormonal. I was still in PTSD dissociation and amnesia as well. And I do tend to forget that "honesty is (not) always the best policy."

For young people who make mistakes, just being around a deeper, wiser person with more experience who can model empathy will help bring them around in time.

I'm sorry you had to hear that. Doesn't it always seem Murphy's Law.

Why must they drop their bombs near the most wounded and sensitive souls?

When I'm working (teaching) I overhear boys talking flippantly about horrible things similar to my traumas. They are too young and naive to suspect that their professor had to survive what they are talking about. They don't suspect that among 30 strangers, mostly women, someone might have been raped. They must think that no rape survivor would leave her house, much less go to college, much less teach at a college.

We don't all wear a mark others can see. Or maybe they sense it subconsciously, and try to enrage it out, indecently.

 

[sedna]

@theshadowoftheliving - I think you're starting to hit the nail on the head t...

It only insensitively minimizes the situation of cult members if you insist on saying your experience is identical to theirs. You're doing the opposite of that.
Why would it be unhealthy to process your experience by relating it to situations that feel emotionally similar? When you're trying to understand how something happened who cares where you get the understanding from, as long as its valid information and it helps you.

 

[Sideways]

emotionally similar?

That phrase!!! Love it!!! I think I'll be taking this issue, along with that exact phrase, to my therapist:)

 

[Abstract]

I don't think its helpful to anyone to validate that the apples are the same as the spores when they aren't even both foods! Very unhelpful in your cousins situation. In other situations it can stop someone getting appropriate help and more. That's not the situation for you with the cult topic.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

It only insensitively minimizes the situation of cult members if you insist on saying your experience is identical to theirs. You're doing the opposite of that.

I agree with that.

I think (what i can think of listening to work training and typing) that a lot of what you are talking about is what i worked so hard to name and come to terms with it. What actually my trauma was and actually accepting it. Its hard.

And personally, i am VERY sensitive to feeling invailidated because in my mind, i go back and go over every single detail of my trauma and start to doubt of what i came to terms with in these last few years. I think im so sensitive to that and not like stand tall and say "no this WAS this" is because its so recent that i came to terms with it. Its new so theres already some self doubt to begin with so that hightens it. Not to say thats not my issue, it is, just saying, as a cult survivor that you saying you were in a cult when it may not fit exactly what is known as a cult doesnt effect me at all. Its if you go and say to me about my trauma (just as example) "your trauma wasnt defined as being captive" when it felt that way and feels that way to me. I go back and say well when this and that happened, was i really captive or was i just abused.

Not to say being "just abused" is not as bad, im just saying that right now, i am not at all effected by you calling your trauma a cult but very effected if you doubt my own trauma. Does that make sense?

ETA: Broke that up a bit, sorry.

 

[Sighs]

@Ragdoll Circus - my mother is a clinical psychologist specialising in working with adults who suffered sexual abuse as children. She uses the term "ritual abuse" to describe the systematic ritualised abuse that is often seen in a cult environment, but does also occur in the absence of a actual cult. Disregard if that is unhelpful for you.

I agree with @Abstract - I think attempting to describe actual abuse by reference to abuse that the general public understands (or thinks it does) is a world away from describing something which is not abuse by reference to abuse.

I have a real problem with rape used as metaphor. I have never suffered sexual abuse but I find it incredibly disrespectful to those that have.

 

[Ronin]

Saying it was by a cultist would cover that for me.

Since that addresses the perp's mindset & type of abuse & the dynamic, but without specifying larger organized settings.

Or, ditto, describing the practices. Cultic / ritualized / sectarian etc descriptors may all have merit. Since that doesn't address if individual or group settings, 'only' describes the happenings.

 

[Air]

@Ragdoll Circus - my mother is a clinical psychologist specialising in working with ad...

I'm probably in a minority here, and maybe it's because of my sense of humor which has been described as dark, morbid, and occasionally disturbing, but I don't really have a problem with people using anything as a metaphor such as rape, abuse, etc... as long as it isn't seriously used. For instance if someone does something and says "it's like I have OCD" I have no problem with it, since they don't actually think they have OCD, merely that they exhibit some characteristics of it. Now if someone is tidy and self-diagnoses themselves with OCD and posts about it on social media and tells their friends, then I think they are ignorant and doing a disservice to people with OCD.

In a similar vein, I don't have a problem with someone saying something along the lines of "he raped me at that video game last night" or something similar. I think the reason this has sprung into usage is because degradation and domination is considered characteristic of rape, so people use a verb signifying that as a way to say that they overpowered someone in a different situation. It may be in poor taste, but I don't consider it to belittle actual rape or to be disrespectful. Now (this may seem like a silly example) if someone lost a game badly and actually claimed to be a real rape victim as a result I would consider that to be either incredibly stupid, incredibly disrespectful, or both.

So yeah, in short I don't believe that someone saying something is "like" something else is a problem, as long as you can draw parallels. There is such a thing as empathy that most people have that allows us to feel how someone else would feel in a situation, and if you can empathize with people in a certain situation even to a small degree, then simply saying something was similar to something else in some capacity is generally accurate.

 

[Ronin]

I don't believe that someone saying something is "like" something else is a problem, as long as you can draw parallels.

These parallels are shit parallels.

Focusing on something arbitrary that is nothing like the experience they are supposed to be 'like'.

And these parallels promote the opposite of empathizing with.

So wrong logic, all around.

 

[Air]

Focusing on something arbitrary that is nothing like the experience they are supposed to be 'like

Well My point is that sometimes there are definitely parallels to one degree or another. Saying something is "like" something else is a pretty vague statement by its very nature, even if there is one strong parallel then it can be considered "like" that thing.

And these parallels promote the opposite of empathizing with.

I don't see how. It's true that some basic parallels you draw don't really promote empathy, but they do take some basic empathy to come up with, and they certainly don't promote the "opposite" in my opinion (which I can only assume is sociopathy).

 

[lostforgottensoul]

"ritual abuse"

My therapist used that A LOT in the beginning-ish, when i was idenitfying rituals as rituals and could idenitfy what they did as also rituals. Yes, there was a time I didnt not. They were just things I was supposed to do back then and at the time in therapy.

He now just calls it a cult and refers to everything in that manner. Sometimes still uses it depending on the conversation and context.

 

[Ronin]

I don't see how. It's true that some basic parallels you draw don't really promote empathy, but they do take some basic empathy to come up with, and they certainly don't promote the "opposite" in my opinion (which I can only assume is sociopathy).

Empathy and not being empathic and sociopathy are different animals and this dualistic thinking is part of a problem of discussing empathy even remotely seriously.

If someone who never was raped and has no idea what rape is like uses it to describe just about anything that is not an actual rape, they normalize that usage, or that it is completely alright to do that with about any experience one can think of.

Not only that leads to confusion, and ostracizing of actual victims, who are once again told to just suck it up, it is all humor.

In other cases it obscures seeking help for the victims of those crimes. Because the common usage has become an exaggeration. A joke. A stereotype to point fingers and laugh at.

And for populations already disadvantaged, and not taken seriously? That attitude can be -deadly-. Denied medical care, denied law enforcement help, denied access to other resources, focusing NGO workers in all the wrong directions, et cetera.

That is not even starting on what kind of bullshit chaos the same attitude brings to already failed states or situations of conflict and-or war.