brainfixed

i think i get what john and pawtucket are saying, and i understand a little bit better the purpose of this thing, but i still feel uncomfortable with me being involved, so i hope that those who do get involved have a good time.

"So why did so many of you passively accept the craziness? Why did so many of you stay in until you were told to leave? What stopped you from speaking up when apparently you knew what you were being asked to do was stupid, crazy, or downright wrong?" this is the answer really because only those of us who were taught as children that we had a right to our own thoughts and feelings would be able to understand that "Ultimately I was the one who would have to deal with the "consequences" of my choices." and for me i was taught that my thoughts and feelings and behaviors were under the control of my parents and it depended on which parent i was with on how i acted and lived. i was also taught that the way everybody acted was my fault either because of my lack of "understanding" or because of my lack of "proper" perception if i wasn't "spiritual enough" or something, so i learned as a child that how people live and act and think is not the person's fault but the fault of those who don't "understand" or aren't "spiritual enough", so i learned that my own behavior and life and choices were somebody else's fault because i was a sogwap and they must have been "out in left field", and i also learned that everybody else's behavior was my fault for those same reasons. so it all came out into me feeling like i didn't have anything to account for as far as what i was doing and choosing, but i was accountable for how everybody else was doing and choosing. it is crazy thinking and i know that now, but i didn't know it until i got extensive therapy and psychiatric help because this crazy thinking was a part of my upbringing and shaped my personality from a very young age, so i didn't know any better and even though better may have been staring me in my face i didn't comprehend that it was better or what to do with it or how to use it to make better choices or have better thinking patterns.

how this topic took a turn is nice and i like it very much, with everybody putting their thoughts out here and everybody else expressing their perspective about those thoughts, and i like it very much because it is good coversation to me. i really like how people can disagree without fighting and how even though people might disagree they see where we also agree and then we can see a clear path to communication, which is what conversation is for in the end or otherwise it would just be babbling and nothing would be understood i think. on the subjects of "true self" and "soul" i think that there is no one definition of these things or no one way to look at these things or no one way to find these things because these things are only for the person themselves to define, perceive and find these things as they see and feel right for themselves, so there's no "universal" self or soul to define or discuss. for me what i mean when i talk about these things is that i have learned to look into my own thoughts and feelings and perceptions to see if what i think and feel and want and don't want and all is from my deepest heart of identity or from what others expect from me or trained into me or demanded from me regardless of how i thought i should be. and how do i know if my own thoughts and feelings and perceptions are not just more of the behavior modifications of my lifetime? because i have my own personal experiences of the world now and i can draw from those things regardless of the training of my lifetime, and yes it is hard and it is very time consuming and it is draining alot of the time, but the more i do it the better i get at doing it so it takes less time and effort until i think that someday i will be true to myself as a natural way of being instead of something i have to stop and do. i sure do know that it slows life down quite a bit and at first i was very frustrated with it all because i felt life was going by me without my participation, but now that i am getting used to i have learned that nothing short of a life an death emergency needs an instant or quick action or reaction, so i feel that i am bordering on getting wisdom, which is something i really like alot and i feel like i am living my life for me and not for everybody else, which is a long long way from where i first started this process, and it's a good long long way for me.

i am spending too much time thinking about this place and the issues it raises for me, so i'm going to back off for awhile and find other things to do.

the only "help" i get from being here is from being able to discuss things without explaining everything, but that isn't always true because without face to face it is sometimes hard to get the meaning of what i write or other people write, and then i get some "help" from reading how others have handled things they're going through. other than that i have learned that just because somebody had a root canal that doesn't make them a dentist, and just because someone went to school to be a dentist and are now a dentist that doesn't mean that their root canal makes them a "universal" dental "expert". the worse thing about this all being about cults is that a cult is a mind hump and any "expert" that is not a cult virgin will never be unhumped. i spent a few years seeing only therapists that had experienced abuse and i found out that too often their own issues got in the way of my healing, so i tried a therapist that had had no abuse issues and had lived a realitively easy life and he or she turned out to be the person that helped me to see that there is an alternative way of thinking and living that is not abuse oriented. he or she has been the only person in my life that has ever helped me with my hypervigilance and my inability to accept good things in my life because he or she didn't approach me with an explanation but with an alternative way of thinking and living, and for the first time in my life the other day i got a nice compliment and didn't first duck my head and wonder what the person was looking at and why me, but i smiled and said thank you and it didn't occur to me until a couple of hours later that it had all happened without the abuse thinking.

i don't get what "it" is and what is the deal with "it" anyway?

i have some time now, so jeff i like what you're saying and that you're listening too, and you are right that if you had someone to talk with and work it through with then it would help, but i hope you don't think i was saying that you have "bad" anger or that anger is "bad" in any way because anger is a legitimate and valid thing that deserves its just place in life, so i was not saying anything about your anger or anger itself, i was just saying that anger masks other emotions alot of the time and it is just the first response alot of the time, but there might be more to what you're feeling than just the anger. i quit trying to be "righteous" and that kind of stuff awhile ago because i quit being me when i tried to live up to standards that are usually impossible and are false if they are not from myself but from some high and lofty goal that i'm not sure i want to reach because it was a goal determined for me before i knew what i wanted in life. and even if i did want to reach some moral goal then i would reach it becaue i wanted to and not because i wanted to be "righteous" because to me "righteous" is a standard that is subjective to the person or group setting the standard and it doesn't work in life in general. i think about people that kill their children and think they are doing something "righteous" for their children, or about the way when being "righteous" meant kissing leadership's foot and smoking out homos and keeping a lock box on rape and that kind of stuff, so "righteous" doesn't mean anything real or good to me. the high you talk about with anger is the emotional release from anxiety, at least for many people who get that high from anger, and it serves the purpose of the release, but it also serves to make people think that because they feel better they are better, so the reason for the anger and the possible underlying emotions are never addressed, so it becomes that the anger is the "fix", so then people will look for situations to get angry about or even make situations happen so they can get that release. i'm not saying that's what it is for you because i'm not your therapist or even know you at all, but i'm just saying it in general and if you think it has validity for you in any way then that's for you to figure out and probably not on this site because i wouldn't want to put something like that out here for god knows who to run with and maybe use against me somehow, but i just look deeper into myself concerning my anger because i have learned that i mask my other emotions with anger and the emotions i usually mask are fear, sorrow and shame, so you and i have that sorrow thing in common, so i get it.

hi jeff. i spent all the time i have this morning on another thread, but i want to reply to what you said, but i don't have thime now, so i have to go, but when i have time i will reply better, ok?

it took me a few days to know how i felt about this advertisement for "help", and i didn't really figure it out until i read what groucho said, so now i know that what i feel about this is that i felt like if i did'nt do it then would i be like not supporting this site as good as i could and why do i expect not to have to pay for this site anyway because don't i pay for therapy? i feel that therapy that works is a a trust thing and this site being anonymous and not in any attribute a professional place when it comes to "help", but the technical stuff is professional in the way it looks and works, but anybody can get a site like this and the techical stuff like comes along with the total package of stuff that comes with the site, and so i looked up what it would cost to have a site like this and it is not very much really, but then i thought about the hours of work it takes to keep people from ripping each other's heads off, but then i thought that's a social thing not really a technical thing. and what has what this site does have anything to do with what mr. knapp does anyway, so i thought about that for awhile and figured out that mr. knapp is a professional with all the proper licensing and stuff that makes the difference between professional therapy and self-help, which the way was a self-help group, so i saw the difference very clearly, so i wondered what is a professional doing on a self-help site? that's where i felt funny about it all because no professional i've ever known would feel right about doing something so anonymous and calculated to be as impersonal as possible because that doesn't really help anything or anybody because help starts with trust and there's nothing to trust about how this is going to happen, at least the way i feel like it is going to happen, so unless i don't understand the whole thing then i feel like this is more like going on judge judy for legal "help" because that's all for show and money and has no real legality to it except for the contract that you have to sign giving it legality but then the real courts don't have to recognize the legality of it.

i have spent years working my way out of the insanity that was laid at my feet as early as preteen years for me, and i turned to professionals because after the way i knew that "arm chair help" was as helpful as using a strainer for an umbrella, so if you're skeptical of my thereapists theories i think that i was right in not responding to your questions because now i see that you were not asking them out of concern for me but out of being skeptical, which is a defense thing, and if i said anything you felt you needed to defend i'm sorry, but i was just talking from me and not thinking about anybody else except that maybe somebody could identify with some things i said and maybe feel like they could breathe a little easier or something. and how can i forget you asked? that's why even though they know it's wrong lawyers will say or ask things in court they aren't supposed to say or ask so that the jury will have it on their minds, so now that you've put it out there i can't forget, but i can and will ignore and not bring it up anymore.

hi watered garden and waysider, and no it wasn't anything but that one post i quoted, and it wasn't the person or anything like that, but just the way it made me feel, which is my problem not anybody else's. i like it when i tell something about me and then others tell something about them, like in real life maybe, but i am very uncomfortable when i have told something about me and then someone asks "deep" questions without offering something about themselves according to the already happening discussion. it's like interruppting the discussion to zero in on one person, which happened alot in group therapy and we were taught that that is inappropriate because a discussion is a 2 way street and nobody need to feel singled out. it is good stuff here and i like the discussions, so please don't stop the discussions about this stuff because it is good stuff that helps me think, so maybe others are thinking too, and maybe seeing things in a way they didn't see them before. and i know that it is not a "have to" here or anything like that, but it's just what i felt like reading that post, so i have to back away and think if i felt like that why did i feel like that, so it's just me.

this makes me think of way corps too much and i feel like that instead of talking about the discussion this is trying to get me to give out information "on demand" instead of me volunteering it as i feel comfortable, which when i put these two things together i think i am trying to be manipulated into something i don't like, so i will read for awhile all the terrific discussion and let things go for now.

i'm glad somebody besides me thinks this is a good topic because i sometimes wonder if it's just my damaged brain that thinks things like this are good things to talk about when it comes to talking about the way. chockfull what you said is better than how i was trying to explain things and thank you for saying it right. :) jeff it mkes me mad sometimes too, but being mad is often just the first emotion because being mad is a "safer" emotion especially when talking about the way or a way offshoot, because being mad was the only allowed emotion. i remember my brothers and sisters and mom would get real mad and red in the face and they would say it was "spiritual anger" and that a "devil spirit" around me would make them that angry at me for not renewing my mind, so calling it "spiritual anger" and blaming me was really a justification for their out of control rage. so what i've learned to do is look deeper into my anger and find out what i'm really feeling, because all those years of not being allowed to show my real feelings means that i often don't know what's really the underlying emotion, so maybe if you wanted to think about that when you feel anger then you might find out something more about you and maybe find another piece of what they way took, because that's what i think it's like is taking back another piece of my stolen soul, and that helps me do the work to look deeper even if it does feel bad.

it took me awhile to think this through how i feel and think about it from me and not just from my warped experiences reactions, so i'm glad i have a couple of days off or i would fidget all day at work tomorrow thinking about this in my brain or fall asleep at work because i fidgeted all night about this. i'm not sure if you're being funny or not garth because it comes across to me as maybe both tongue in cheek and serious, so i don't really know, but you bring up things that i've heard many times before, so i think it's good to talk about them. i'm not really talking about the way and whether or not it was a cult or anything like that because as you point out the "cult" label can fit anything that's organized. i'm talking about how the way was very much like an abusive relationship, and i put "brainwashing" in the title because alot of people don't know that's what they mean when they say "behavior modification". like alot of people seem to think that "brainwashing" is some thing done in a back alley and "behavior modification" is done in some sterile psych ward or rehab center to houswives addicted to prescription pills like valium and hydrocodone and starlets addicted to meth and alcohol. but behavior modification is something everybody does to everybody else everyday. believe it or not that's how society functions at it's root. raising children is one big behavior modification journey for both the parents and the children if you think about it. what happens when you're flying down the interstate at 85mph or more and suddenly see a cop alongside? well, you slow down, don't you? that's a result of behavior modification either because you're afriad you might get stopped and you've heard horror stories about fines and jail and all that, or because you've been there and done thate one too many times and have learned your lesson. now if you had never speeded in your life then you wouldn't have been speeding in the first place, so since you're speeding in the first place, you have to think if you should modify your behavior. see? but if you're the type that just flies along without regard to what's around you and you don't give a flip about the cop, oh well, then that's a whole different psych thing besides behavior modification. haha so what i'm trying to say is that behavior modification is not good or bad, it just is. but on the subject of how a victim is made, then behavior modification is bad. see? and the "love bombing" is very much a part of the behavior modification an abuser uses on a victim, but it is clinically known as "the honeymoon phase" in the cycle of violence. alot of people don't know that the honeymoon phase is a part of the violence. it is the place where the behavior modification takes root in the mind of the victim which is why the cops and anybody else who asks an abused wife why she stays she says "because i love him". and the abuser knows this in his gut, but he may not understand that he knows this, it's just a part of what he knows he needs to do to keep the victim in a "willing" state to be the victim. but he's just buttering her up and he knows it, but he doesn't play it like that at all. he plays it like he made a huge mistake and look how good he's being and shouldn't that count for something? and he may even believe it himself during the honeymoon phase. but don't think for one minute that during the explosion/violence phase he isn't thinking that when it's all over he'll just butter her up again. and that is how the way was like an abusive relationship for me. but yes the professional circle certainly has "defined/diagnosed" mind control, but it's not what the way called "hookey pooh" and all that "possession" and "devil spirit" stuff, but it's behavior modification to the maximum limit. haven't you ever heard of "battered woman's syndrome" or "stockholm syndrome"? those are actual sub-diagnoses and are recognized as such in the legal arenas as well as in the psychological professions. but i'm not a professional anything but have been told these things by professionals who have helped me, so maybe i got it wrong, but i don't think so, but i will ask. i think maybe i'd better go to bed now. haha

i looked to see if a man or a woman wrote this and was surprised to see that a 52 year old man wrote it. is this a california man's way of thinking or something? and how did you learn to think like this? it took me years and years to get all that bs out of my brain and i'm alot younger than you, so how'd you do it?

thank you, but i did not learn this from observation or come up with it all by myself, my therapist showed it to me. she also showed me some of the things the way used to modify my behavior, like "believing equals receiving" is really a behavior modification tool that teaches the victim (of the behavior modification) to think that whatever happens to the victim is the victim's fault, and "renewed mind" reinforces the fault of the victim and teaches the victim "fix" their brain (get it? haha) to accept the fault put on their shoulders and to "excuse" the ones putting it on their shoulders because it all happened because the victim believed it to happen, so who's fault is it. when someone does this for years and years and even decades, they have learned that they must accept whatever happens to them because it is their fault. and when something like gang rape happens to a person who has been modified in this way and has learned that they are "blessing" some man who is their superior (husbands and leadership and bosses), then even though the whole world may "know better", some who's behavior has been modified to sublimate and negate and deny what their inner gut is telling them will "choose" to go along with it to avoid the worse abuse for not going along with it all. it's still a choice, right? no, because when someone is given a choice after years and even decades of behavior modification, they can't make any choice except for what the behavior modification trained them to make. "right" and "wrong" are subject to what somebody was taught is "right" or "wrong". people may think it' obvious to anybody that murder is wrong, but why are there so many murders, then? people may think it's obvious that having group sex is wrong and that anybody involved in group sex is involved by choice, but why do the courts recognize spouse rape and date rape? it doesn't always take the threat of death to make somebody do something they don't really want to do. usually it just takes years and even decades of conditioning via behavior modification. people know that children are not "asking for it" and do not "enjoy" being molested because children are not expected to have the capacity to understand what is really going on. well, though, it has been proven over and over again that even grown up people over 30 years old or older that have been conditioned via behavior modification don't have the capacity to understand what is really going on. i'm sorry this is so long, but this is new to me to talk about it with anybody besides my therapists and it seems to all come out like a flood.

thanks for the welcomes, and for the replies. jeff that's alot of reading, and alot to take in, so i have to take my time with it. it took me a long time to get up the courage to post here because i don't want to sound like a victim, but that is exactly what i was, until i learned how to stop it, but i was already too old to really help what had already happened, but now i keep trying everyday to ask myself what i am thinking and feeling and why i am thinking and feeling those things. i have to get my brain fixed. (get it? haha) "victim mentality" is something that sounds like a choice, but is really a behavior modification produced by years of abuse. it trains people how to shut up about the abuse, how to go into denial of the terror and unreality of it all, how to think that it's all "normal", and how to hide it all with a smile and an "excuse". "victim mentality" is trained into a person. so i learned that to admit that i was victim is not the same as saying that i chose to be a victim. how could i choose when i didn't know better even if i am over 30 years old?

sometimes i wonder if anybody understands that what happened in the way is seen by many mental health professionals as abuse, and by domestic violence professionals as classic abuser setup. me and my dad were the only ones in our family that didn't get tangled up with the way to the extent that the rest of my family did, but whenever us kids stayed with my mom we had to act like we were in the way, so i got everything from the wooden spoon to being forced to take pfal. and mom and dad were divorced before the way, so we all had issues before adding in the way, so i had all the stuff before the way to figure out but didn't get it figured out because my mom made me renew my mind, which is really forcing people to go into denial. so here i am all these years later after many years of getting in and out of too many abusive relationships, then years of therapy when i finally learned that the love bombing followed by the slow but methodical manipulations and conditionings (classes, twigs, "hints" that i wasn't "spiritual enough") and then the impossible expectations of performing bizzarre and dangerous and stupid "blessings" for leadership were no less than the typical cycle of violence seen in abusive domestic relationships. which means that what i saw my parents do was bad enough, but then the way made it all like that was what life was supposed to be like if i wanted to be "spiritual enough". but why did i want to be "spiritual enough" anyway? because i was already trained to try harder to fix my parents and my family. see how it's all alike?