We wanted to be right with God or something like that. This was taken and used as a rope around our necks. That "in fellowship, out of fellowship" teachings is a noose around the neck, cutting off the air, the spirit. Tighten the rope with fear of being wrong and letting it loose if we were right. Torture, plain and simple. The illusion or delusion of fellowship with God.
We were taught that "in Christ" meant "in fellowship". Therefore the verse "there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus" became conditional. The implication was that if you weren't "in fellowship" you were under condemnation. I was always asking God's forgiveness for sins real or imagined in order to assure I was in the magical state of "in fellowship".
But then, why should there be consistency? What they taught one year or decade could be the exact opposite of something taught in another year or decade.
The ability to deceive yourself is crucial to the kind of group cohesion TWI tried to cultivate. Trick enough people into deceiving themselves, each believing that no one else is deceiving themselves, and you have mass delusion as cult paste!
That's why it was so necessary for them to get as many of us as possible to speak in tongues at the same time, and for TWI to be the people who taught us how to do it. The notion that you faked it is easy for you to believe. The notion that everyone faked it is harder for you to accept, because now you're thinking evil of people, and thinking evil is a big no-no, don't ya know.
Most people think too highly of their critical thinking skills to even begin to entertain the notion that they might have participated in their own duping.
We wanted to be right with God or something like that. This was taken and used as a rope around our necks. That "in fellowship, out of fellowship" teachings is a noose around the neck, cutting off the air, the spirit. Tighten the rope with fear of being wrong and letting it loose if we were right. Torture, plain and simple. The illusion or delusion of fellowship with God.
4 hours ago, outandabout said:
We were taught that "in Christ" meant "in fellowship". Therefore the verse "there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus" became conditional. The implication was that if you weren't "in fellowship" you were under condemnation. I was always asking God's forgiveness for sins real or imagined in order to assure I was in the magical state of "in fellowship".
1 hour ago, Twinky said:
Hadn't heard that take on it, Outie.
But then, why should there be consistency? What they taught one year or decade could be the exact opposite of something taught in another year or decade.
51 minutes ago, Raf said:
The ability to deceive yourself is crucial to the kind of group cohesion TWI tried to cultivate. Trick enough people into deceiving themselves, each believing that no one else is deceiving themselves, and you have mass delusion as cult paste!
That's why it was so crucial for them to get as many of us as possible to speak in tongues at the same time, and for TWI to be the people who taught us how to do it. The notion that you faked it is easy for you to believe. The notion that everyone faked it is harder for you to accept, because now you're thinking evil of people, and thinking evil is a big no-no, don't ya know.
Most people think too highly of their critical thinking skills to even begin to entertain the notion that they might have participated in their own duping.
Great posts
and besides that
Yikes ! Your posts got me thinking about that weird mind-corralling stuff again!...Yeah - they appealed to our desire for fellowship with God and then designed a Rube Goldberg system of thought to “help” us attain that...maybe that weird mind-corralling stuff is the epoxy of group cohesion.
...and whether it was intentional or not – it wound up having us adopt a self-imposed-Busy-Box-mentality...honestly I tend to think that mental habit those pseudo-spiritual bozos promoted was really just to keep us so preoccupied with our own Christian walk that we didn't notice or dared to even think of confronting them about any of their unchristian behavior...hmmmm...
I bet I could have got myself kicked out of the way corps program in 50 words or less - -
just imagine: after a long night owl of wierwille smoking and guzzling Drambui and sharing all his heart, I say to our campus coordinator “Doctor (and I use that term loosely ) sure does like his Drambui.” The campus coordinator (John H) with a scowl on his face says to me “the love of God thinketh no evil. You should think The Word of Doctor (he uses the term reverentially).” And I respond “but I was thinking about The Word regarding his behavior, Romans 13:13 where it says 'Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and debauchery, not in strife and jealousy'. ” - said with a $hit eating grin on my face...campus coordinator turns beet red and growls “pack your bags and go – you don't belong in the way corps”....(okay - so I lost the bet - I could have kept my words under 50 if I quoted just the first part of Romans 13:13 - but all that stuff about sexual promiscuity, debauchery , strife and jealousy seemed just as applicable )
When I think of their pseudo-spiritual hypocrisy and the load of bull$hit they heaped on our backs I think of Matthew 23 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. “Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others.
The ability to deceive yourself is crucial to the kind of group cohesion TWI tried to cultivate. Trick enough people into deceiving themselves, each believing that no one else is deceiving themselves, and you have mass delusion as cult paste!
That's why it was so necessary for them to get as many of us as possible to speak in tongues at the same time, and for TWI to be the people who taught us how to do it. The notion that you faked it is easy for you to believe. The notion that everyone faked it is harder for you to accept, because now you're thinking evil of people, and thinking evil is a big no-no, don't ya know.
Most people think too highly of their critical thinking skills to even begin to entertain the notion that they might have participated in their own duping.
Rocky you've mentioned that book on another thread – and when you brought it up again here, I read the book description – that really got my curiosity up – and it also mentioned another book of his “The Hidden Brain.” - so I read that description too (I'll copy some of both descriptions and paste below to tempt you all... bwa ha ha ha ha ha... try to stop me now Austin Powers )...and so I downloaded both to my Kindle...Ever since I read Jean Shinoda Bolen's insightful book The Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and the Self which also got me into Carl Jung's stuff (and a few other psychologists as well) – I am really enjoying exploring stuff like intuition, Taoism, how and why we decide on certain things, and maybe I'll get a better idea of how critical thinking relates to all this...ya know, when I first came to Grease Spot I really latched onto any critical thinking stuff that folks would share – it's pretty straight forward... but this intuition stuff...this hidden brain stuff...it's some very sneaky and mysterious stuff !
Rocky, if you or anyone else has some more points to share on any of this – whether from those books or your own insight – then feel free to share...I realize I started this thread with just some basic negative aspects of the experience – but in keeping with the spirit of the double-edged sword of Grease Spot (it's sort of a mixed blessing) - a varied curriculum that reflects the duality of life – we learn about our mistakes...we can learn from our mistakes...and then hopefully we can heal (in part anyway) from our mistakes...hmmmm I guess that's a triple-edged sword ...anyway ...it's a lifetime of learning – and I'm still in school... and I have a dual major ...the duality of life.
“Self-deception does terrible harm to us, to our communities, and to the planet. But if it is so bad for us, why is it ubiquitous? In Useful Delusions, Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler argue that, paradoxically, self-deception can also play a vital role in our success and well-being.
The lies we tell ourselves sustain our daily interactions with friends, lovers, and coworkers. They can explain why some people live longer than others, why some couples remain in love and others don’t, why some nations hold together while others splinter.”
“The hidden brain is the voice in our ear when we make the most important decisions in our lives—but we’re never aware of it. The hidden brain decides whom we fall in love with and whom we hate. It tells us to vote for the white candidate and convict the dark-skinned defendant, to hire the thin woman but pay her less than the man doing the same job. It can direct us to safety when disaster strikes and move us to extraordinary acts of altruism. But it can also be manipulated to turn an ordinary person into a suicide terrorist or a group of bystanders into a mob.
In a series of compulsively readable narratives, Shankar Vedantam journeys through the latest discoveries in neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science to uncover the darkest corner of our minds and its decisive impact on the choices we make as individuals and as a society. “
….But as I kept thinking about what Bolshevik said I sort of relaxed my focus on self-deception and began to see some relevancy...
Narcissism is defined as excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one's physical appearance; in psychology it's selfishness, involving a sense of entitlement, a lack of empathy, and a need for admiration, as characterizing a personality type. In psychoanalysis it's self-centeredness arising from failure to distinguish the self from external objects, either in very young babies or as a feature of mental disorder...a synonym for that is self-obsessed - excessively preoccupied with one's own life and circumstances; thinking only about oneself...
...Considering the malignancy of narcissism in wierwille and other cult leaders I would think it's possible an infectious self-obsession variant could beset devoted followers of those leaders – sort of vicariously - experienced in my imagination through the actions of the cult leader...I remember a limb coordinator trying to psyche me up by saying you've got to see yourself as God's man for the fellowships you oversee. That's got to be some type of self-deception – we were just kidding ourselves about our importance to God...we were important to managing a cult maybe...but important to God? Uh-uh !
Looking back, I sometimes wonder if there was some quasi subliminal message in the way TWI promoted wierwille and all his “accomplishments”. Perhaps a subconscious motto was formed – something like wwwd - or - what would wierwille do - that encapsulated the revered position wierwille held in our hearts – that anything he thought, said or did became almost sanctified as a standard, an ideal, a guide for doing anything...I dunno...just thinking out loud...who really knows what all goes on in the subconscious anyway...I do appreciate the work of philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, etc. but most of the time when I read up on that stuff I feel like a new renter in an apartment complex – and the maintenance guy tells me there's a problem in the attic...the basement...actually it's in the attic over your next door neighbor – it's running down the common wall between you two and dripping onto your storage unit in the basement...geez - life is complicated...and who changed their oil in my parking space?
I've been reading the “Useful Delusions” book Rocky mentioned earlier and just wanted to elaborate on my thinking behind my first post – and hopefully clarify some things about self-deception (which sounds like an oxymoron ).
If you will look just below my first post on this thread you will see that Grease Spot displays the message:
“Jun 13 T-Bone changed the title to Self-deception hides the truth about TWI”
Originally the title of the thread was “Self-Deception hides the truth of TWI”.
...Right after I “published” the starter post – I quickly realized it was possible for certain folks to misconstrue the idea to mean self-deception keeps people from seeing the truth taught by TWI...maybe I was being too particular but I had no intention of catering to any straw man arguments certain folks try to push here – like wierwille's plagiarism or bad behavior negates any of the truth he taught...nope - I've never said that it does.
So let me be clear about that. PFAL and any of wierwille's other work (whether plagiarized or actually his own ideas) are basically teachings on how to interpret the Bible and how to apply the Bible. Sometimes his interpretation or application may have been right – but that does not grant any of his work or the work of any other person for that matter the same status as Scripture. He may quote Scripture but that doesn't mean his interpretation or application is the gospel truth.
As hard as it is to believe that there are still some folks who hold the work of wierwille in such high regard...The starting post on a recent thread stated: “I was an advocate here that we return to PFAL to see how much we missed the first time(s), and to see how much we forgot or drifted from. I am convinced that 99% of all the woes reported here are due to us all NOT GETTING IT RIGHT the first times.” ( you can see the full post here )
as of this posting there are 18,032 Grease Spot members. Should we assign just 1 woe (cause of sorrow, distress, or trouble) to each member? 99 percent of that would be 17,851.68 woes (.68 being a fraction of a woe). 18,032 minus 17,851.68 leaves only 180.32 actual legitimate woes...I am 50 percent convinced that anyone who pulls such a ridiculous statistic out of their a$$ is either totally self-deceived, a soft-core troll, a TWI-paid-informant or thinks we're all idiots...there could be more options too – but I'm just gonna move on to make my point.
And my point is simply thatself-deception keeps us from seeing TWI for what it really is – a harmful and controlling cult.
that I mentioned in my first post – Gardner said he focused on changes of mind that occur consciously, typically as a result of forces that can identified, rather than through subtle manipulation.
I Googled “brainwashing versus indoctrination” and among other things I found a couple of good answers like this :
"1. Your confusion may come from the historical existence of ‘indoctrination camps’, usually run by Communist regimes, which exacted a form of obedience through hardship, forced education, deprivation, humiliation, and sometimes torture. Non-aggressive indoctrination is as you describe: in a religious setting, the willing reception towards, and acceptance of, doctrine.
Brainwashing, on the other hand, is a more forceful and invasive process on an unwilling or unwitting subject, which involves coercion, torture, drugs, hypnotic suggestion and other methods to affect behavior. Theoretically, brainwashing leaves the subject thus affected not consciously aware of the brainwashing experience, and unaware of the altered motivations behind their actions.
The protagonist of the ‘Jason Bourne’ action movies and novels is an example of brainwashing taken to an extreme I don’t believe exists in the real world...
2. ...According to online dictionary definitions indoctrinate and brainwash are near synonyms, however indoctrinate is a much older (17th century) word which originally merely meant "teach", although it seems to have been applied mainly to the teaching of religion: brainwashing as a word did not appear until the 1950s.
The difference between the two words is that brainwashing originally described coercive techniques applied to unwilling subjects (there were suggestions that Gary Powers had been brainwashed after his U2 plane was brought down over the USSR in 1960 and spy fiction and movies like The Ipcress File included supposed brainwashing sequences) whereas indoctrination has usually been thought of as a gentler and longer-term process applied to children and willing converts. The definition of brainwashing in popular usage has, however been broadened to include what would previously have been thought of as indoctrination ("The government brainwashed us into supporting the war", "North Koreans are all brainwashed", "ISIS fighters are brainwashed into carrying out suicide attacks" and so on).
The negative implications of indoctrination come from the fact that much indoctrination involves presenting the subject only with material and sources which support the views held by the person or organisation doing the indoctrinating, and classifying other material and sources as evil or incompatible with the views being promoted (the attitude of some fundamentalist Christian organisations to The Origin of Species being an example)"
To me the difference between the two is soft-sell(indoctrination, friendly persuasion, person-to-person that is indirect in that it focuses on building a reputation and a relationship with the customer...think romance-phase of new TWI-members – love-bombing...soft-sell tactics are usually associated with brands, large firms, complex sales)
versus
hard-sell (brainwashing, aggressive tactics to persuade customer to make an immediate purchase, repeated calls to action, make strong claims to address common objections...hard-sell tactics are usually associated with small firms, one-time sales -think sell-your-soul-to-the-cult-leader – like the way corps program – "a lifetime of Christian service")....
and regardless of what ever type of selling it was and whether or not we were aware of all that was in play – we fell for it – we were deceived against our will – the scamming party shares the blame of our condition – being fooled. for if we knew the details of the scam we would have said “no deal”. But if the deception is self-imposed – we may not be consciously aware of it...it may be hard to detect and hard to eliminate.
When I started this thread, I had a one dimensional concept of self-deception – it was mostly bad and hard to identify...since I've been reading “Useful Delusions” I'm seeing some relevance to another topic I find fascinating – the authentic-self versus the adaptive-self...and that being adaptive isn't necessarily a bad thing if it helps an individual to function well within a society...Googling “adaptive self versus authentic self” I found a number of good articles – one of which I copied below (note the author uses the term “conditioned self” instead of adaptive self...”conditioned” in psychology is proceeding from or dependent on a conditioning of the individual; learned; acquired) :
“Authentic Self
We’re born as an “Authentic Self” – which includes our genetics, innate qualities, gifts, preferences, temperaments, and more. At some level we know our purpose for being on the planet. Even babies can make their feelings known, and there’s initially no conflict about it. We want what we want, and we express those desires simply – sometimes loudly! We sleep, eat, and poop according to our own inner clocks. We respond to others, and spontaneously smile and laugh. Hopefully our parents accept us exactly as we are.
Conditioned Self
But things become more complex with time and proximity. The mutually reverberating, emotionally charged connections between ourselves and our parents continue to develop. We learn what makes them smile and frown – and it feels better to experience the former than the latter. In order to fit in and be loved, we unconsciously tailor our responses accordingly. This process creates the “Conditioned Self,” which grows layer upon layer over time.
Our Needs for Connection
Our needs for connection can make us gradually move farther away from our natural, “Authentic Self,” and more into “Conditioned Self” mode. We can also become fearful or distraught when our natural urges seem to conflict with the preferences of important others we love and want to please. Our survival instincts rear up to keep us safe – sometimes at odds with our desires for adventure and growth.
I started off my first post with a bold phrase: Self-deception: The Enemy Within
Simply put – sometimes we can be our own worst enemy. (there's all kinds of articles on that - like here )
In “Useful Delusions” the authors talk about a kind of lie people don't really think about. The kind of lying that doesn't want to hurt someone's feelings. It's not that we don't value honesty, but we value the other person's feelings more and so bend to our feelings of loyalty toward them...
...when a loved one asks “does this dress make me look fat?” “what do you think of my new hairdo?” “did you like the present I got you?” or when a co-worker asks “what did you think of my idea at the meeting today?” are you always brutally honest ?
Perhaps some little white lies are an integral part of interpersonal skills...I actually have thought about starting another thread “Adapting to life in a cult” - what would it get into...I dunno...maybe stuff about our adaptive-self setting up insulation, defenses and countermeasures so that some leadership a$$hole doesn't run roughshod over our authentic-self...it could wind up being a real soap-opera-tear-jerker-episodic-TV-MA kind of a thread...you know, kind of a name-the worst-situation-and-what-you-did-to-cope sort of a thread...it's been done here many times before.
I think self-deception becomes self-sabotage when it creates problems in daily life and interferes with long-term goals. Like thinking your biggest problems, failures or not getting anywhere in life are actually due to you missing, forgetting, not getting it right the first time or simply drifting away from PFAL...how sad...
Think about the two quotes I gave in my first post:
Self-deception is a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. Self-deception involves convincing oneself of a truth (or lack of truth) so that one does not reveal any self-knowledge of the deception. from Wikipedia
We deceive ourselves because we don’t have enough psychological strength to admit the truth and deal with the consequences that will follow.(clinical psychologist Cortney S. Warren )
Now think of your scale of values – the mental inventory you use to determine what is of merit, useful, desirable in life. Can you separate fact from fiction? Can you separate truth from lies? How many times have you glossed over certain points in TWI-teachings or ignored red flags that cropped up from TWI policies or practices or from what someone did? Do you have the strength to be honest? Are you willing to face the consequences? You all probably know me by now and that I like to address those in or out of TWI who kid themselves out of thinking TWI is a harmful and controlling cult.
“The problem is that when you are not aware of your thinking you have no chance of correcting it. When thinking is subconscious, you are in no position to see any problems in it. And, if you don’t see any problems in it, you won’t be motivated to change it…most people are in many ways victims of their own thinking”
Exposing self-deception regarding the TWI-mindset is not as difficult as it sounds. It can be a fun exercise in critical thinking - if you're willing to dig into the various levels of your own thinking - and be honest about it . It's a matter of writing down some of the big ideas promoted by TWI that sold you on the ministry. Write one point per line and skip down a few spaces for the next point – so you leave some room under each point to write down if you've had any doubts, issues or red flags with it......if you don't come up with anything counter to TWI stuff then stop wasting time on this – get back into that joyous and exciting Groundhog-Day-rut-of-a-life-in-TWI and continue wasting time in that...come on...be honest...I am 99 percent convinced there are Grease Spotters out there with 180.32 actual legitimate woes (refer to my above math problem - yeah honestly I always had a problem with math )...you know who you are...uhm...or maybe it's just one poor Grease Spotter bearing the burden of all 180.32 actual legitimate woes...not sure...I'm getting a really strong feeling about these woes...call it an opportunity if you like...awoes by any other name would smell just as bad...it's being revealed to me that someone's bursitis is acting up while typing on the computer...oh wait – that's me.
In his view, narcissists have lost their "true self", the core of their personality, which has been replaced bydelusions of grandeur, a "false self". Therefore, he believes, they cannot be healed, because they do not exist as real persons, only as reflections: "The False Self replaces the narcissist's True Self and is intended to shield him from hurt andnarcissistic injuryby self-imputingomnipotence... The narcissist pretends that his False Self is real and demands that others affirm thisconfabulation,"[23]meanwhile keeping his real-life imperfect true self under wraps.[24]Vaknin extends the concept ofnarcissistic supply, and introduces concepts such as primary and secondary narcissistic supply.[25]He distinguishes betweencerebralandsomaticnarcissists; the former generate their narcissistic supply by applying their minds, the latter their bodies. He considers himself a cerebral narcissist.[26]He calls narcissisticco-dependents"inverted narcissists."[27]"[They] provide the narcissist with an obsequious, unthreatening audience...the perfect backdrop."[28]He believes that disproportionate numbers of pathological narcissists are at work in the most influential reaches of society, such as medicine, finance and politics.[7]
I personally remember fear and threats for most of my experience. I did hear items above, like crumbs from the table.
For others I'm sure the love-bombing was too good to be true and who doesn't want to hold on to that? People will are willing to take abuse if they think they can earn their way back to "the good 'ole dayz". It is a shared fantasy with the leadership. Self delusion feels good and is a band-aid for pain.
You have to consider the possibility god does not like you. He never wanted you. He probably hates you. - another misquote from some fantasy
I found this short article interesting for a few of reasons. One of which it gives a clear definition of self-deception – a set of practices and attitudes that hinders one from making a reliable assessment of their situation – in other words you're not hopelessly blind, you may just need to clean the smudges and fog off your eyeglasses.
The second point which has been mentioned before is the good and bad aspects of self-deception in regards to being adaptive, helpful or harmful. self-deception can be intentional or unintentional - or move from one to the other.
And third, the article reminded me of the insanity of the frustrated repetitiveness with the TWI-mindset – I often would spend a whole lot of time and energy doing something but achieving nothing. Albert Einstein is credited with saying “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”
here's the article:
Self-Deception Has Many Faces
Self-deception involves incongruity between beliefs, actions, and the world
Posted May 6, 2015 by Peg O'Connor Ph.D.
“Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving yourself.”—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Self-deception is often easy to recognize in others but far more difficult to recognize in ourselves. With another, we may have a better perspective that is not colored by an investment in seeing that person or his circumstances in a certain light. With ourselves, we both lack perspective and have an investment in seeing and understanding ourselves and our circumstances in certain ways. The lack of perspective combined with needing and wanting to see ourselves and our circumstances in certain ways is why self-deception is so potentially dangerous and debilitating if it runs too deeply or in too many directions.
Self-deception has many guises, which also contributes to its being difficult to identify. There are the more familiar forms of denial, rationalization, and minimization. But what exactly is self-deception?
A preliminary definition: Self-deception is a set of practices and attitudes that hinders a person from making a reliable assessment of her situation. As a consequence, she is unable to appropriately recognize her own agency and often fails to grasp what is or isn’t her rightful responsibility.
Self-deception may be intentional. It may be unintentional. The line between the two is blurry; one form can often change into another. The more frequent direction is from intentional to unintentional. In certain situations, engaging in intentional self-deception may be necessary and life-saving.
Two very different cases involving different types of self-deception illuminate these features. The first case involves denial.
Consider a person who is experiencing something traumatic such as domestic abuse. She may tell herself that it isn’t really happening or endows it with very different meaning. She may know on some level that it is really happening but she denies it as a matter of survival or preservation of her well-being. She may become habituated to telling herself the same story about what has happened; it is her primary way of making sense of what she’s experiencing. The intention to preserve herself may recede deep into the background over time. Her self-deception moves from being intentional to unintentional. In this case, there is a clear investment in not seeing/accepting that she is being abused. As is often the case in abuse, the victim gets it wrong about what she can or cannot do; she can’t see where her agency ends and her abuser’s begins. She may believe that she can control enough in the environment so that her abuser will not get set off. And for some victims, they may assume they are somehow responsible for what others are doing to them.
In this case, self-deception may be adaptive and helpful in some ways. At the exact same time, it may be dangerous and debilitating. This case of self-deception creates a double bind that is extraordinarily difficult to escape.
The second case involves procrastination, an especially tricky form of self-deception. Consider a person who knows that he has a substance use disorder (SUD). He can clearly describe his drinking patterns, increased tolerance, and feelings of withdrawal as well as chart the adverse effects caused by his drinking. He’s taken more online quizzes than he can count and has told his friends that he knows his drinking has progressed down the spectrum to full blown disorder. He knows he is an alcoholic and that he needs to do something about it. Today he makes himself the promise that he will get help tomorrow. Tomorrow he makes the same promise. This is procrastination.
Procrastination is a failure of the relationship between knowledge and the will, according to Soren Kierkegaard. Knowledge should guide our actions but when we know what we should do but are unwilling even for a moment, a gap opens. A quick as a wink moment of hesitation can grow into a long series of moments of nonaction.
Procrastination is deceptive because it masquerades as activity. The man who promises to get help can tell himself that he is gathering more information, getting his affairs into order, making arrangements, etc. He can keep turning all the considerations he can possibly identify over in his mind. Repeatedly. He can begin to manufacture other concerns that warrant consideration. He can tell all his family and friends everything he’s doing. At the end of each day, though, he still has not gotten help.
This person has an investment in seeing himself as the sort of person who does something about a problem. He may even see himself as the sort who grabs the bull by the horns. He is doing many things. In fact, he may be a whirling dervish gathering facts and “taking care of business.” But all this activity may make it very hard to accurately see his situation; he’s still not getting help. He isn’t exercising his agency effectively, which in turn means that he isn’t fully taking responsibility.
As Kierkegaard notes, procrastination is like sewing without tying a knot at the end of the thread. One makes the motions but one actually doesn’t sew. The practical consequences are quite different; the seat of your pants will still be split.
I was really fascinated with what the article said about procrastination. Reflecting on some of my old TWI-mental habits I think many of them fall into this category of procrastination. In TWI we were taught that “believe is a verb and a verb connotes action”. wierwille and other TWI-leadership would extrapolate on the numerous “activities” you could or should perform to keep your believing engaged until you got what you were believing for. If you're believing for rain carry an umbrella. I once heard a teacher give an example of a business man with only one foot who always carried in his briefcase a shoe for the missing foot should it ever be miraculously restored while he's out and about at work.
Other suggestions to keep yourself busy with the work of believing... or... building your believing were positive affirmations, specific prayers, Bible studies on examples of believing, focusing on believing images of victory in your mind, telling everybody and their brother what you're believing for. I think a lot of this stuff is as the above article said procrastination deceptively masquerading as activity.
The TWI-mindset is especially adept at conflating two or more ideas into one – but that does not mean the combination is necessarily true or correct. “Believe” is an action verb. And from there wierwille's materialistic focus skyrocketed – wierwille reinterpreted the more than abundant life Jesus offered in John 10:10 to mean you can have whatever you want – you just have to believe. If you don't have it yet – just keeping on believing – act and talk like you've already got it – believe in your believing – keep rubbing the magic lamp and sooner or later the genie will grant your wish.
Telling yourself the truth is rarely easy, but it’s a sure fire way to free yourself from your own subconscious self-sabotage trap. What makes self-reflection challenging is that you’re both the con artist and the one being conned.
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cman
We wanted to be right with God or something like that. This was taken and used as a rope around our necks. That "in fellowship, out of fellowship" teachings is a noose around the neck, cutting off the air, the spirit. Tighten the rope with fear of being wrong and letting it loose if we were right. Torture, plain and simple. The illusion or delusion of fellowship with God.
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outandabout
We were taught that "in Christ" meant "in fellowship". Therefore the verse "there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus" became conditional. The implication was that if you weren't "in fellowship" you were under condemnation. I was always asking God's forgiveness for sins real or imagined in order to assure I was in the magical state of "in fellowship".
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Twinky
Hadn't heard that take on it, Outie.
But then, why should there be consistency? What they taught one year or decade could be the exact opposite of something taught in another year or decade.
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Raf
The ability to deceive yourself is crucial to the kind of group cohesion TWI tried to cultivate. Trick enough people into deceiving themselves, each believing that no one else is deceiving themselves, and you have mass delusion as cult paste!
That's why it was so necessary for them to get as many of us as possible to speak in tongues at the same time, and for TWI to be the people who taught us how to do it. The notion that you faked it is easy for you to believe. The notion that everyone faked it is harder for you to accept, because now you're thinking evil of people, and thinking evil is a big no-no, don't ya know.
Most people think too highly of their critical thinking skills to even begin to entertain the notion that they might have participated in their own duping.
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T-Bone
Great posts
and besides that
Yikes ! Your posts got me thinking about that weird mind-corralling stuff again!...Yeah - they appealed to our desire for fellowship with God and then designed a Rube Goldberg system of thought to “help” us attain that...maybe that weird mind-corralling stuff is the epoxy of group cohesion.
...and whether it was intentional or not – it wound up having us adopt a self-imposed-Busy-Box-mentality...honestly I tend to think that mental habit those pseudo-spiritual bozos promoted was really just to keep us so preoccupied with our own Christian walk that we didn't notice or dared to even think of confronting them about any of their unchristian behavior...hmmmm...
I bet I could have got myself kicked out of the way corps program in 50 words or less - -
just imagine: after a long night owl of wierwille smoking and guzzling Drambui and sharing all his heart, I say to our campus coordinator “Doctor (and I use that term loosely
) sure does like his Drambui.” The campus coordinator (John H) with a scowl on his face says to me “the love of God thinketh no evil. You should think The Word of Doctor (he uses the term reverentially).” And I respond “but I was thinking about The Word regarding his behavior, Romans 13:13 where it says 'Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and debauchery, not in strife and jealousy'. ” - said with a $hit eating grin on my face...campus coordinator turns beet red and growls “pack your bags and go – you don't belong in the way corps”....(okay - so I lost the bet - I could have kept my words under 50 if I quoted just the first part of Romans 13:13 - but all that stuff about sexual promiscuity, debauchery , strife and jealousy seemed just as applicable 
)
Edited by T-BoneWhen I think of their pseudo-spiritual hypocrisy and the load of bull$hit they heaped on our backs I think of Matthew 23
Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. “Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others.
formatting & typos
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Rocky
BAM! Nailed it.
Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain - Kindle edition by Vedantam, Shankar, Mesler, Bill. Health, Fitness & Dieting Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
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T-Bone
Rocky you've mentioned that book on another thread – and when you brought it up again here, I read the book description – that really got my curiosity up – and it also mentioned another book of his “The Hidden Brain.” - so I read that description too (I'll copy some of both descriptions and paste below to tempt you all... bwa ha ha ha ha ha...
try to stop me now Austin Powers)...and so I downloaded both to my Kindle...Ever since I read Jean Shinoda Bolen's insightful book The Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and the Self which also got me into Carl Jung's stuff (and a few other psychologists as well) – I am really enjoying exploring stuff like intuition, Taoism, how and why we decide on certain things, and maybe I'll get a better idea of how critical thinking relates to all this...ya know, when I first came to Grease Spot I really latched onto any critical thinking stuff that folks would share – it's pretty straight forward... but this intuition stuff...this hidden brain stuff...it's some very sneaky and mysterious stuff !Rocky, if you or anyone else has some more points to share on any of this – whether from those books or your own insight – then feel free to share...I realize I started this thread with just some basic negative aspects of the experience – but in keeping with the spirit of the double-edged sword of Grease Spot (it's sort of a mixed blessing) - a varied curriculum that reflects the duality of life – we learn about our mistakes...we can learn from our mistakes...and then hopefully we can heal (in part anyway) from our mistakes...hmmmm I guess that's a triple-edged sword
...anyway ...it's a lifetime of learning – and I'm still in school... and I have a dual major ...the duality of life.
== == == ==
as promised:
Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain :
“Self-deception does terrible harm to us, to our communities, and to the planet. But if it is so bad for us, why is it ubiquitous? In Useful Delusions, Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler argue that, paradoxically, self-deception can also play a vital role in our success and well-being.
The lies we tell ourselves sustain our daily interactions with friends, lovers, and coworkers. They can explain why some people live longer than others, why some couples remain in love and others don’t, why some nations hold together while others splinter.”
The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives
“The hidden brain is the voice in our ear when we make the most important decisions in our lives—but we’re never aware of it. The hidden brain decides whom we fall in love with and whom we hate. It tells us to vote for the white candidate and convict the dark-skinned defendant, to hire the thin woman but pay her less than the man doing the same job. It can direct us to safety when disaster strikes and move us to extraordinary acts of altruism. But it can also be manipulated to turn an ordinary person into a suicide terrorist or a group of bystanders into a mob.
In a series of compulsively readable narratives, Shankar Vedantam journeys through the latest discoveries in neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science to uncover the darkest corner of our minds and its decisive impact on the choices we make as individuals and as a society. “
Edited by T-Boneformatting & typos
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Bolshevik
"The key to recovering from narcissistic abuse is to confront one's own narcissism"
- probable misquote of some guy on YouTube
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waysider
"The key to recovering from alcoholism is to raise a glass to toast sobriety."
-prolly the same guy on YouTube
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T-Bone
When I first read your post I thought maybe it was supposed to be on another thread – maybe that one started by Rocky in open - malignant narcissism
I Googled “recovery from narcissistic abuse” and found some good articles – like this one Recovery from narcissistic abuse by Dr Sarah Davies Sept. 22nd 2020
….But as I kept thinking about what Bolshevik said I sort of relaxed my focus on self-deception and began to see some relevancy...
Narcissism is defined as excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one's physical appearance; in psychology it's selfishness, involving a sense of entitlement, a lack of empathy, and a need for admiration, as characterizing a personality type. In psychoanalysis it's self-centeredness arising from failure to distinguish the self from external objects, either in very young babies or as a feature of mental disorder...a synonym for that is self-obsessed - excessively preoccupied with one's own life and circumstances; thinking only about oneself...
...Considering the malignancy of narcissism in wierwille and other cult leaders I would think it's possible an infectious self-obsession variant could beset devoted followers of those leaders – sort of vicariously - experienced in my imagination through the actions of the cult leader...I remember a limb coordinator trying to psyche me up by saying you've got to see yourself as God's man for the fellowships you oversee. That's got to be some type of self-deception – we were just kidding ourselves about our importance to God...we were important to managing a cult maybe...but important to God? Uh-uh !
Looking back, I sometimes wonder if there was some quasi subliminal message in the way TWI promoted wierwille and all his “accomplishments”. Perhaps a subconscious motto was formed – something like wwwd - or - what would wierwille do - that encapsulated the revered position wierwille held in our hearts – that anything he thought, said or did became almost sanctified as a standard, an ideal, a guide for doing anything...I dunno...just thinking out loud...who really knows what all goes on in the subconscious anyway...I do appreciate the work of philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, etc. but most of the time when I read up on that stuff I feel like a new renter in an apartment complex – and the maintenance guy tells me there's a problem in the attic...the basement...actually it's in the attic over your next door neighbor – it's running down the common wall between you two and dripping onto your storage unit in the basement...geez - life is complicated...and who changed their oil in my parking space?
Edited by T-Boneformatting & typos
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T-Bone
I've been reading the “Useful Delusions” book Rocky mentioned earlier and just wanted to elaborate on my thinking behind my first post – and hopefully clarify some things about self-deception (which sounds like an oxymoron
).
If you will look just below my first post on this thread you will see that Grease Spot displays the message:
“Jun 13 T-Bone changed the title to Self-deception hides the truth about TWI”
Originally the title of the thread was “Self-Deception hides the truth of TWI”.
...Right after I “published” the starter post – I quickly realized it was possible for certain folks to misconstrue the idea to mean self-deception keeps people from seeing the truth taught by TWI...maybe I was being too particular but I had no intention of catering to any straw man arguments certain folks try to push here – like wierwille's plagiarism or bad behavior negates any of the truth he taught...nope - I've never said that it does.
So let me be clear about that. PFAL and any of wierwille's other work (whether plagiarized or actually his own ideas) are basically teachings on how to interpret the Bible and how to apply the Bible. Sometimes his interpretation or application may have been right – but that does not grant any of his work or the work of any other person for that matter the same status as Scripture. He may quote Scripture but that doesn't mean his interpretation or application is the gospel truth.
As hard as it is to believe that there are still some folks who hold the work of wierwille in such high regard...The starting post on a recent thread stated: “I was an advocate here that we return to PFAL to see how much we missed the first time(s), and to see how much we forgot or drifted from. I am convinced that 99% of all the woes reported here are due to us all NOT GETTING IT RIGHT the first times.” ( you can see the full post here )
as of this posting there are 18,032 Grease Spot members. Should we assign just 1 woe (cause of sorrow, distress, or trouble) to each member? 99 percent of that would be 17,851.68 woes (.68 being a fraction of a woe). 18,032 minus 17,851.68 leaves only 180.32 actual legitimate woes...I am 50 percent convinced that anyone who pulls such a ridiculous statistic out of their a$$ is either totally self-deceived, a soft-core troll, a TWI-paid-informant or thinks we're all idiots...there could be more options too – but I'm just gonna move on to make my point.
And my point is simply that self-deception keeps us from seeing TWI for what it really is – a harmful and controlling cult.
In the book Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other Peoples Minds by Howard Gardner
that I mentioned in my first post – Gardner said he focused on changes of mind that occur consciously, typically as a result of forces that can identified, rather than through subtle manipulation.
I Googled “brainwashing versus indoctrination” and among other things I found a couple of good answers like this :
"1. Your confusion may come from the historical existence of ‘indoctrination camps’, usually run by Communist regimes, which exacted a form of obedience through hardship, forced education, deprivation, humiliation, and sometimes torture. Non-aggressive indoctrination is as you describe: in a religious setting, the willing reception towards, and acceptance of, doctrine.
Brainwashing, on the other hand, is a more forceful and invasive process on an unwilling or unwitting subject, which involves coercion, torture, drugs, hypnotic suggestion and other methods to affect behavior. Theoretically, brainwashing leaves the subject thus affected not consciously aware of the brainwashing experience, and unaware of the altered motivations behind their actions.
The protagonist of the ‘Jason Bourne’ action movies and novels is an example of brainwashing taken to an extreme I don’t believe exists in the real world...
2. ...According to online dictionary definitions indoctrinate and brainwash are near synonyms, however indoctrinate is a much older (17th century) word which originally merely meant "teach", although it seems to have been applied mainly to the teaching of religion: brainwashing as a word did not appear until the 1950s.
The difference between the two words is that brainwashing originally described coercive techniques applied to unwilling subjects (there were suggestions that Gary Powers had been brainwashed after his U2 plane was brought down over the USSR in 1960 and spy fiction and movies like The Ipcress File included supposed brainwashing sequences) whereas indoctrination has usually been thought of as a gentler and longer-term process applied to children and willing converts. The definition of brainwashing in popular usage has, however been broadened to include what would previously have been thought of as indoctrination ("The government brainwashed us into supporting the war", "North Koreans are all brainwashed", "ISIS fighters are brainwashed into carrying out suicide attacks" and so on).
The negative implications of indoctrination come from the fact that much indoctrination involves presenting the subject only with material and sources which support the views held by the person or organisation doing the indoctrinating, and classifying other material and sources as evil or incompatible with the views being promoted (the attitude of some fundamentalist Christian organisations to The Origin of Species being an example)"
from: English Stack Exchange - Indoctrination vs Brainwashing
To me the difference between the two is soft-sell (indoctrination, friendly persuasion, person-to-person that is indirect in that it focuses on building a reputation and a relationship with the customer...think romance-phase of new TWI-members – love-bombing...soft-sell tactics are usually associated with brands, large firms, complex sales)
versus
hard-sell (brainwashing, aggressive tactics to persuade customer to make an immediate purchase, repeated calls to action, make strong claims to address common objections...hard-sell tactics are usually associated with small firms, one-time sales -think sell-your-soul-to-the-cult-leader – like the way corps program – "a lifetime of Christian service")....
and regardless of what ever type of selling it was and whether or not we were aware of all that was in play – we fell for it – we were deceived against our will – the scamming party shares the blame of our condition – being fooled. for if we knew the details of the scam we would have said “no deal”. But if the deception is self-imposed – we may not be consciously aware of it...it may be hard to detect and hard to eliminate.
When I started this thread, I had a one dimensional concept of self-deception – it was mostly bad and hard to identify...since I've been reading “Useful Delusions” I'm seeing some relevance to another topic I find fascinating – the authentic-self versus the adaptive-self...and that being adaptive isn't necessarily a bad thing if it helps an individual to function well within a society...Googling “adaptive self versus authentic self” I found a number of good articles – one of which I copied below (note the author uses the term “conditioned self” instead of adaptive self...”conditioned” in psychology is proceeding from or dependent on a conditioning of the individual; learned; acquired) :
“Authentic Self
We’re born as an “Authentic Self” – which includes our genetics, innate qualities, gifts, preferences, temperaments, and more. At some level we know our purpose for being on the planet. Even babies can make their feelings known, and there’s initially no conflict about it. We want what we want, and we express those desires simply – sometimes loudly! We sleep, eat, and poop according to our own inner clocks. We respond to others, and spontaneously smile and laugh. Hopefully our parents accept us exactly as we are.
Conditioned Self
But things become more complex with time and proximity. The mutually reverberating, emotionally charged connections between ourselves and our parents continue to develop. We learn what makes them smile and frown – and it feels better to experience the former than the latter. In order to fit in and be loved, we unconsciously tailor our responses accordingly. This process creates the “Conditioned Self,” which grows layer upon layer over time.
Our Needs for Connection
Our needs for connection can make us gradually move farther away from our natural, “Authentic Self,” and more into “Conditioned Self” mode. We can also become fearful or distraught when our natural urges seem to conflict with the preferences of important others we love and want to please. Our survival instincts rear up to keep us safe – sometimes at odds with our desires for adventure and growth.
from: Authentic Self or Conditioned Self: Who's Showing Up in Your Life? By Dr Pam Pappas March 19th 2019
I started off my first post with a bold phrase:
Self-deception: The Enemy Within
Simply put – sometimes we can be our own worst enemy. (there's all kinds of articles on that - like here )
In “Useful Delusions” the authors talk about a kind of lie people don't really think about. The kind of lying that doesn't want to hurt someone's feelings. It's not that we don't value honesty, but we value the other person's feelings more and so bend to our feelings of loyalty toward them...
...when a loved one asks “does this dress make me look fat?” “what do you think of my new hairdo?” “did you like the present I got you?” or when a co-worker asks “what did you think of my idea at the meeting today?” are you always brutally honest ?
Perhaps some little white lies are an integral part of interpersonal skills...I actually have thought about starting another thread “Adapting to life in a cult” - what would it get into...I dunno...maybe stuff about our adaptive-self setting up insulation, defenses and countermeasures so that some leadership a$$hole doesn't run roughshod over our authentic-self...it could wind up being a real soap-opera-tear-jerker-episodic-TV-MA kind of a thread...you know, kind of a name-the worst-situation-and-what-you-did-to-cope sort of a thread...it's been done here many times before.
I think self-deception becomes self-sabotage when it creates problems in daily life and interferes with long-term goals. Like thinking your biggest problems, failures or not getting anywhere in life are actually due to you missing, forgetting, not getting it right the first time or simply drifting away from PFAL...how sad...
Think about the two quotes I gave in my first post:
Self-deception is a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. Self-deception involves convincing oneself of a truth (or lack of truth) so that one does not reveal any self-knowledge of the deception. from Wikipedia
We deceive ourselves because we don’t have enough psychological strength to admit the truth and deal with the consequences that will follow. (clinical psychologist Cortney S. Warren )
Now think of your scale of values – the mental inventory you use to determine what is of merit, useful, desirable in life. Can you separate fact from fiction? Can you separate truth from lies? How many times have you glossed over certain points in TWI-teachings or ignored red flags that cropped up from TWI policies or practices or from what someone did? Do you have the strength to be honest? Are you willing to face the consequences? You all probably know me by now and that I like to address those in or out of TWI who kid themselves out of thinking TWI is a harmful and controlling cult.
I kid you not.
TWI is a harmful and controlling cult.
Self-deception may be hard to detect but I believe there's ways to smoke it out. In the book Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life authors Richard Paul and Linda Elder address the issue:
“The problem is that when you are not aware of your thinking you have no chance of correcting it. When thinking is subconscious, you are in no position to see any problems in it. And, if you don’t see any problems in it, you won’t be motivated to change it…most people are in many ways victims of their own thinking”
Exposing self-deception regarding the TWI-mindset is not as difficult as it sounds. It can be a fun exercise in critical thinking - if you're willing to dig into the various levels of your own thinking - and be honest about it . It's a matter of writing down some of the big ideas promoted by TWI that sold you on the ministry. Write one point per line and skip down a few spaces for the next point – so you leave some room under each point to write down if you've had any doubts, issues or red flags with it......if you don't come up with anything counter to TWI stuff then stop wasting time on this – get back into that joyous and exciting Groundhog-Day-rut-of-a-life-in-TWI and continue wasting time in that...come on...be honest...I am 99 percent convinced there are Grease Spotters out there with 180.32 actual legitimate woes (refer to my above math problem - yeah honestly I always had a problem with math
Edited by T-Boneformatting & typos
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Bolshevik
I think it was Dr. Sam Vaknin. I don't know about his substance uses. Probably not a guy you'd want to know on a personal level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Vaknin
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Bolshevik
It's God in Christ in YOU
God Bless YOU, YOU are the best.
Shure luve YA
YOU have power from on high
I personally remember fear and threats for most of my experience. I did hear items above, like crumbs from the table.
For others I'm sure the love-bombing was too good to be true and who doesn't want to hold on to that? People will are willing to take abuse if they think they can earn their way back to "the good 'ole dayz". It is a shared fantasy with the leadership. Self delusion feels good and is a band-aid for pain.
You have to consider the possibility god does not like you. He never wanted you. He probably hates you. - another misquote from some fantasy
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T-Bone
I found this short article interesting for a few of reasons. One of which it gives a clear definition of self-deception – a set of practices and attitudes that hinders one from making a reliable assessment of their situation – in other words you're not hopelessly blind, you may just need to clean the smudges and fog off your eyeglasses.
The second point which has been mentioned before is the good and bad aspects of self-deception in regards to being adaptive, helpful or harmful. self-deception can be intentional or unintentional - or move from one to the other.
And third, the article reminded me of the insanity of the frustrated repetitiveness with the TWI-mindset – I often would spend a whole lot of time and energy doing something but achieving nothing. Albert Einstein is credited with saying “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”
here's the article:
Self-Deception Has Many Faces
Self-deception involves incongruity between beliefs, actions, and the world
Posted May 6, 2015 by Peg O'Connor Ph.D.
“Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving yourself.”—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Self-deception is often easy to recognize in others but far more difficult to recognize in ourselves. With another, we may have a better perspective that is not colored by an investment in seeing that person or his circumstances in a certain light. With ourselves, we both lack perspective and have an investment in seeing and understanding ourselves and our circumstances in certain ways. The lack of perspective combined with needing and wanting to see ourselves and our circumstances in certain ways is why self-deception is so potentially dangerous and debilitating if it runs too deeply or in too many directions.
Self-deception has many guises, which also contributes to its being difficult to identify. There are the more familiar forms of denial, rationalization, and minimization. But what exactly is self-deception?
A preliminary definition: Self-deception is a set of practices and attitudes that hinders a person from making a reliable assessment of her situation. As a consequence, she is unable to appropriately recognize her own agency and often fails to grasp what is or isn’t her rightful responsibility.
Self-deception may be intentional. It may be unintentional. The line between the two is blurry; one form can often change into another. The more frequent direction is from intentional to unintentional. In certain situations, engaging in intentional self-deception may be necessary and life-saving.
Two very different cases involving different types of self-deception illuminate these features. The first case involves denial.
Consider a person who is experiencing something traumatic such as domestic abuse. She may tell herself that it isn’t really happening or endows it with very different meaning. She may know on some level that it is really happening but she denies it as a matter of survival or preservation of her well-being. She may become habituated to telling herself the same story about what has happened; it is her primary way of making sense of what she’s experiencing. The intention to preserve herself may recede deep into the background over time. Her self-deception moves from being intentional to unintentional. In this case, there is a clear investment in not seeing/accepting that she is being abused. As is often the case in abuse, the victim gets it wrong about what she can or cannot do; she can’t see where her agency ends and her abuser’s begins. She may believe that she can control enough in the environment so that her abuser will not get set off. And for some victims, they may assume they are somehow responsible for what others are doing to them.
In this case, self-deception may be adaptive and helpful in some ways. At the exact same time, it may be dangerous and debilitating. This case of self-deception creates a double bind that is extraordinarily difficult to escape.
The second case involves procrastination, an especially tricky form of self-deception. Consider a person who knows that he has a substance use disorder (SUD). He can clearly describe his drinking patterns, increased tolerance, and feelings of withdrawal as well as chart the adverse effects caused by his drinking. He’s taken more online quizzes than he can count and has told his friends that he knows his drinking has progressed down the spectrum to full blown disorder. He knows he is an alcoholic and that he needs to do something about it. Today he makes himself the promise that he will get help tomorrow. Tomorrow he makes the same promise. This is procrastination.
Procrastination is a failure of the relationship between knowledge and the will, according to Soren Kierkegaard. Knowledge should guide our actions but when we know what we should do but are unwilling even for a moment, a gap opens. A quick as a wink moment of hesitation can grow into a long series of moments of nonaction.
Procrastination is deceptive because it masquerades as activity. The man who promises to get help can tell himself that he is gathering more information, getting his affairs into order, making arrangements, etc. He can keep turning all the considerations he can possibly identify over in his mind. Repeatedly. He can begin to manufacture other concerns that warrant consideration. He can tell all his family and friends everything he’s doing. At the end of each day, though, he still has not gotten help.
This person has an investment in seeing himself as the sort of person who does something about a problem. He may even see himself as the sort who grabs the bull by the horns. He is doing many things. In fact, he may be a whirling dervish gathering facts and “taking care of business.” But all this activity may make it very hard to accurately see his situation; he’s still not getting help. He isn’t exercising his agency effectively, which in turn means that he isn’t fully taking responsibility.
As Kierkegaard notes, procrastination is like sewing without tying a knot at the end of the thread. One makes the motions but one actually doesn’t sew. The practical consequences are quite different; the seat of your pants will still be split.
from: Psychology Today: self-deception has many faces
** ** ** **
I was really fascinated with what the article said about procrastination. Reflecting on some of my old TWI-mental habits I think many of them fall into this category of procrastination. In TWI we were taught that “believe is a verb and a verb connotes action”. wierwille and other TWI-leadership would extrapolate on the numerous “activities” you could or should perform to keep your believing engaged until you got what you were believing for. If you're believing for rain carry an umbrella. I once heard a teacher give an example of a business man with only one foot who always carried in his briefcase a shoe for the missing foot should it ever be miraculously restored while he's out and about at work.
Other suggestions to keep yourself busy with the work of believing... or... building your believing were positive affirmations, specific prayers, Bible studies on examples of believing, focusing on believing images of victory in your mind, telling everybody and their brother what you're believing for. I think a lot of this stuff is as the above article said procrastination deceptively masquerading as activity.
The TWI-mindset is especially adept at conflating two or more ideas into one – but that does not mean the combination is necessarily true or correct. “Believe” is an action verb. And from there wierwille's materialistic focus skyrocketed – wierwille reinterpreted the more than abundant life Jesus offered in John 10:10 to mean you can have whatever you want – you just have to believe. If you don't have it yet – just keeping on believing – act and talk like you've already got it – believe in your believing – keep rubbing the magic lamp and sooner or later the genie will grant your wish.
Edited by T-Bonetypos and formatting
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T-Bone
Telling yourself the truth is rarely easy, but it’s a sure fire way to free yourself from your own subconscious self-sabotage trap. What makes self-reflection challenging is that you’re both the con artist and the one being conned.
From Stop Doing That .... by Gary John Bishop
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