Creativity, Play, and the Dirt Road to Freedom Witnesses often have functions such as congregation picnics, and sometimes, family outings and vacations. There is participation in volley-ball, croquet, Frisbee toss, baseball, ice-skating, and many other activities. My family was very active and constantly participated in activities with our own and neighboring congregations. There was a large social aspect that must be recognized. The problems do not lie in the attempt to bring members together, for this is a natural process in all cults. What was absent, especially in my later childhood, were any friendships between my family and people outside the congregation. There were none. Everything was done within the structure of the organization. While I can remember congregation picnics where I had fun splashing in the water, or playing tag, or looking at boys, I also remember a deep seated feeling of never fitting in anywhere, of never being good enough, and never being appreciated. I learned from the survey that I am not alone in this. Tracy M. writes, “Even as an 8 year old child, I felt that I wasn’t good enough for Jehovah, my family, or the congregation.” Viki writes, “I always felt like an outsider, whether at school or with the JW’s.” Steven writes, “Even within the ‘organization’ there was a separateness from other people.” Since Witness children are discouraged from after school activities or playing with neighborhood children, and often live in neighborhoods away from other Witnesses, most of their time after school is spent alone or with siblings. Children frequently recreate the manner of their abuse and/or trauma through their play-time activities. Children who have no experience of trauma work out their every day problems through play. Trauma victims re-visit, and stay stuck in their trauma, over, and over. Terr reports that among traumatized children, “monotonous, literal play” is the usual course. The “child becomes stuck having to play himself,” and, she says, it is “highly contagious” (241). The traumatized child brings others into his or her game. “One [does] not have to be traumatized to join in” (241). The observance of an entire group of children enabled Terr to make some striking observations in the significance of the play habits of the traumatized kidnapping victims of Chowchilla. She writes:
The child may try to pretend she is someone else, but the attempt itself brings with it a lost feeling, a sense of insecurity, and a sense deep down in the stomach that this “pretend” is really a lie. When the switch turns on, illuminating the lie, the child immediately reverts to flat, one-dimensional play. The child has no ability to escape her predicament through play. Several participants in the survey reported creative tendencies during childhoods spent in extreme psychological isolation. They were not encouraged by their parents to pursue their dreams. Some were directly discouraged. Whenever a teacher or counselor at school recommended further pursuit of an area in which they excelled, the child became downtrodden since permission would never be granted to pursue such a profession. Interestingly, and on a positive note, what the following two participants may have perceived as play, or at least escape, in their youth became creative pursuits in adulthood. Dave writes:
Lynn is currently writing as much as she can, exposing even her most private journal writings on the world-wide-web to preserve her thoughts and expressions. She writes:
Barbara Harrison cites from the April 1, 1975, Watchtower magazine a quote, made from the Australian Journal of Personality of March 1973, which concerns a study of twelve year old boys and girls, stating:
In contrast, Harrison reports that children from fundamentalist religious upbringings were found to lack creativity. She questions why there would be such a difference between Witness children and fundamentalist children. Her conclusion is that the results are due to the extreme suppression of sexuality in Witness children. Another factor Harrison points out is
The suppression of sexuality, while certainly a factor, would seem to play a less prominent role than Harrison suggests since the developmental stages of puberty have mostly only begun for twelve-year-old children. However, she brings up the point of suppression, which is, in my opinion, key. Perhaps a fundamentalist child is sexually as suppressed, but not as restrained overall as a Witness child. The complete quashing of natural responses in the Witness child is rampant, be it joy, anger, sadness, or despair. The child knows nothing of natural emotive response. She is told that anger is bad, liveliness is flirtatious, joy is pretentious, confidence is boastful, sadness is self-pitying, drowsiness is laziness, and on and on. While suppression may be key to the creativity of Witness children, the very images that create fears are also key. The images that contribute to suppression also spring to life in the imagination of the Witness child, creating a vast landscape of imagery and energy from which the child may extricate her own creativity. Appel states:
She continues:
The cult mentality obliterates the preamble of the fairy tale, replacing it with a preconceived recipe for the child’s fate. Much of the cult child’s terror lies in the future. What is healthy mythology in fairy tales becomes fear and nightmares for the cult child. She must find a way to release this fear, lest she succumb entirely to its presence, lest she die. The child releases the demons proposed to be real that are dancing through her mind onto the sheet of paper, with words or drawings, in song, or through a continual delving into her own imagination. She transforms them, unconsciously, into their rightful place as she struggles to become unburdened by fear. Jung’s four ways of knowing, presented as slightly altered by Eligio Stephen Gallegos in Animals of the Four Windows, include thinking, feeling, intuition/imagery, and sensing functions (6). Imagination is ruled by the unconscious in dream-states, day and night. The cult-child’s thinking function is spent overwhelmingly in a state of judgment, necessarily so due to the absolute nature of what she learns. She must judge every move she makes, and automatically judges every move of others, including each time someone looks at her. She analyzes every glance. Most often, she cannot bare the criticism she is sure she is enduring. She may become defensive and anxious. She is taught to respect and obey her elders, even those “worldly ones” in which she has contact. This does not lead her naturally to trusting, but to gullibility based in the feeling of inferiority of being a mere child. “Thinking is a mode of knowing that involves dissecting, labeling, comparing, categorizing and linking parts to one another . . . .” (55). The only function that cannot be quashed and ruled is the unconscious dream-state, for it has a life of its own and lashes back. The Witness child’s dream-time is her only way of knowing that is protected from the iron thumb of rules and regulations. Because she is asleep and silent, she is safe from all judgment in her dream-time, if not in her dreams themselves. Her dream imagery is unchained. Gallegos says, “Return to wholeness is within the domain of imagery, not of thinking. What thinking can do is to support and nurture imagery, learn from it, and be willing to enter into a relationship with it” (63, italics his). From these vast resources, in the mind of a child pregnant with imagery of creation and destruction, may spring forth a well of creative waters. These waters collect all thoughts, feelings, senses, and intuitions of which she is stripped in waking life. Therefore, if a child can mindfully learn ways in which to unleash her unconscious, her conscious then has the opportunity to grow away from the confines of rigidity. It creeps like ivy to the other side of the “walls,” and eventually, breaks free. The inability to share thoughts and feelings in the home was a common theme throughout the surveys. With this in mind, creative release becomes even more important. When a child has no permissible way in which to let off steam, imagination and dream-time become vital to survival. The child who is encouraged or compelled to explore her own creativity, be it through dance, music, writing, drawing, sports, science, etc., is in safe territory. For danger lurks in the halls of expression without a voice. Even listening to music that expresses what is happening deep within one’s being is honoring the creative impulse. After telling of his mounting internal quandary, due to having strong doubts about the organization, and while still participating in all the activities, Neill writes, “Voices like Nirvana . . . actually expressed the frustration that I was feeling.” In the surveys, it was apparent that the children were made to feel guilt about listening to “worldly music” (yet the vast majority of them do in today’s congregations), and in all matters of a sexual nature, especially masturbation and fornication. Penton states, “the very creativity and educational curiosity so evident in Witness children and young adults . . . causes many of them to leave the movement” (274, italics his). The creative urge is synonymous with the quest for self. Perhaps it is the child’s curiosity coupled with the urgency to break free from constant double-binds, double-speak, and double-standards that cause one to leave such a restraining society. Certainly any child who grows to honor her own opinions, thoughts, and independence must reach this point eventually. It certainly takes a force of will to follow such a decision through. The first stage of leaving is much like the process of divorce (deconstruction), whereupon one feels the imminence of the decision building over time, then the decision is weighed with awareness of potential consequences and losses, and then, finally, the break is made (departure from the cult and the family). The second stage of leaving (reconstruction), can be likened to giving birth. The seed of thought is fertilized (she is “pregnant” with ideas), the gestation period ensues (the rebellious stage where new thoughts and ideas become observable in one’s actions), and finally, the labor begins (finding her way in the world). The stages of birth are felt with great pain and sacrifice and may be experienced concurrently. Very much, the new born worldling is in a stage of infancy as she sets out into the world alone. In place of a mother to nurture and console her, she must rely on herself. She must learn to nurture and console herself, lest she destroy herself through unwise choices. Breaking away from the cult, whether voluntarily or not, requires both a death and a birth. Disfellowshipping children baptized at a young age is often the result of natural rebelliousness and serves to honor one’s individuation. The psychological blackmail doled out is excruciating even for adults. To the child or young adult, this is devastating. Hebrews 12:6 is used to justify this psychological torture, “for whom Jehovah loves he disciplines.” The purpose of disfellowshipping a person who has fallen out of the graces of the organization, according to Jehovah’s Witnesses, is not only to “keep the congregation clean,” but also to show Jehovah’s mercy and love by means of punishment. By banishing all assembly, the person is supposed to see his or her “wrongdoing” and actively repent by attending all meetings, and doing all things in accordance with the society. All the while, former friends and family members refrain from speaking to the person being punished. When a Witness child is disfellowshipped while still living at home, the tone of the house becomes immediately sullen and morbid if it was not previously. Since the parents cannot offer spiritual advice to a disfellowshipped child, they are required only to “associate” with their child to the extent allowed by their “conscience.” This is yet another area in which the society has flip-flopped over the years. As parents go through various stages of communication due to recent society rules, many disfellowshipped children sense that they are on the society’s yo-yo. They are at times pulled close, and at other times on the far end of the string with no communication. Many parents have thrown dependent children out of the house before they reached a legal age. There are many children on the streets today for this reason. Some children are permitted to stay at home. However, the pressurized atmosphere and constant blame for “tearing the family apart,” or for the father having “lost favor” among the elders or brothers, becomes so great that many, for health, welfare, and sanity, revert into the confines of the cult. Even as this occurs, they are aware of their lack of belief in the teachings. B’s case is especially brutal, but unfortunately, not entirely uncommon. She writes:
B reports having to withstand a week’s worth of elders’ meetings before her initial shunning at age thirteen. She considers herself to have been at that young age, “a very god loving Baptized child up to that point and really trusted the elders [because] they loved me even if my parents didn’t [or] so I thought.” She wrote, “My parents took the gag order inside the family home and didn’t allow siblings to talk to me either. There were six of us at home at the time.” B reports that upon exploring other churches as an adult, she felt that the walls would start crumbling down upon her. She was diagnosed with severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She reports that now she is faced with “having to restructure all the emotional development that should have been [a] normal part of healthy growth as a child.” Getting baptized at a young age is the single most regrettable incident in many grown-up ex-Jehovah’s Witness children. The elders’ meetings, which usually take place before a person is disfellowshipped, are often one-sided and based on information that has come to the elders through spying or divulging information that was to remain confidential. Many young people who struggle with their sexual feelings are disfellowshipped because the partner with whom they shared physical intimacy, confesses to the elders. The elders often go much further than necessary in questioning the accused. Many times, instead of simply asking if the young person feels remorseful for their “sin,” the elders demand details of the lurid event. In the videotape, Children of Jehovah, which focuses on young people who have been disfellowshipped, a young woman named Ruth reports that the elders asked her if her boyfriend touched her over or underneath her panties. When the elders questions go unanswered due to deep embarrassment, fear, and humiliation, the child is seen as uncooperative, hence unrepentant, and subsequently, disfellowshipped. According to the Watch Tower, people need to be disfellowshipped for refusing to repent. In actuality, however, the elders’ meetings in which questioning takes place are fundamentally accusatory; wrongdoings are embellished and exaggerated, and little fairness ensues. Only people who have been baptized are disfellowshipped. Unbaptized individuals are often “marked” and treated in the same fashion as those who are disfellowshipped. Breaking the commitment one has made to Jehovah is the ultimate crime, even when this commitment has been made before one has a fully developed body, or before one has an adequate education, or before one is given permission to date, or before one is given permission to drive, or to marry, or to associate with whom one chooses. The society professes that those who have not publicly devoted themselves to Jehovah are not punished as severely since they had a lesser understanding of the truth. Luke 12:48, states, “But the one that did not understand and so did things deserving of strokes will be beaten with few” (NWT). So then, the one who understands fully, must be harshly punished. In a recent letter to the society, I expressed my home-life situation around the time of my baptism. I asked for annulment of my baptism since I was a suicidal teenager hoping to gain my family’s love, acceptance, and approval. This was more of an experiment, than a sincere effort. I had little doubt that the society would flatly refuse my request, but I had little to lose, and my family to gain. They responded through a letter (see appendices) in which they referred to, and sent a photo-copy of, a Watchtower magazine from March 1, 1960. They have changed or “brought new light,” to many teachings since this time, but with this subject they remain stagnant. The article quotes:
The letter proceeds with more double talk. “The article points out that in a case such as yours, if you feel that your baptism was invalid, you may get rebaptized after you are reinstated. If you are not interested in working toward reinstatement, then things will have to remain as they are.” This rigidity and double-speak passes thoroughly through the organization and its vast hierarchical system, from the leaders down to the churls. For the disfellowshipped child to be treated as invisible when in the presence of Witnesses produces feelings of isolation that can only be reckoned with two ways: one, with an attitude of compliance, and two, with an attitude of indifferent rebellion. Compliance means to once again sell one’s soul to the organization. Many cannot endure the alternative and must choose to return. Complete indifference is mostly unobtainable to the child who has nowhere to turn. The child finds herself to be the willing or unwilling rebel. In either case, she is very lonely, confused, perhaps even in a state of shock, and sad. The loneliness is unending and debilitating, and often drives her into dangerous life situations. She may find refuge with other children who are outcasts from society: the drug users, loners, criminals, and delinquents. Although she may not have chosen this route before, since she has already been labeled defective, she may begin to indulge the lifestyle into which she has been tossed. Often, the child is acutely aware that how she is being treated is wrong; painful as it is, she is able to continue and pull herself up into clarity, even if it takes years. Undergoing this most impressive method of torture commonly leads one to severe psychological problems and extreme problems in life, including relational difficulties and eventual underemployment, and sometimes suicide. If a child is still in school while she is going through the disfellowshipping process, she will find that most of her peers have no idea what she is talking about; that is, if she is lucky enough to have made outside friendships and chooses to reach out. Teachers and counselors may have written the child off as a lost cause due to either poor performance or lack of participation. It is only very recently that 800 numbers for crisis intervention for JW’s in this situation have begun to appear along with internet connections. Connecting with others in like situations is much easier now than it was in the past. These connections ease the loneliness and often make a huge difference in the rate in which recovery is facilitated. Unfortunately, when one is tossed aside and alone, and one has no self-esteem or self-confidence, personal resources often remain undiscovered for many long years. While in the intensity of these events, it is very difficult to keep an objective stance. Often people have no one to turn to outside the cult, since all they have ever known is within the cult’s domain. All or most family with whom one maintained contact, all or most friends with whom one associated, are cult members who are now banished from speaking with a disfellowshipped person. The child is now completely denied all humanness, love and expression; she is treated as non-existent. The child is now considered “dead” for all practical purposes. Some parents will maintain a degree of communication with their disfellowshipped children, checking to see if they’re still alive. My parents, for instance, have typically called me about once every six months. We may talk, at times, for forty minutes. Some parents maintain secretive relationships with their disfellowshipped children. Yet, still, some children get banished completely and forever. Langone reports that the child coming out of the cult and entering into the real world experiences “culture shock” (338). She is likely to need a vast re-educational period of adjustment. “Moreover, [her] capacity to negotiate the transition successfully is likely to be hampered because the society [she is] entering places a premium on critical thinking and independence, both of which were stifled in the cult” (338). Some accounts report that perhaps the child who showed the most rebelliousness in the cult is the child who will have least difficulty breaking into the mainstream world (338). The child coming out of the cult is in need of care that provides more specialized mental health counseling than standard treatment methods provide. She will
Though cult children face long and difficult periods of adjustment upon leaving the cult, there still is much hope. Discovering a value system that is based on balance is essential. A person may come out of a cult and go overboard in all judgment calls, and only years later begin to find a balance. If a person can reflect on some of the positive attributes that his or her involvement in the cult may have inspired, it can be most healing. It is a huge task to discern each of the beliefs instilled by others versus solemnly discovering what resonates inside one’s soul as truth. In this process, the ex-cultist may have much difficulty. Singer refers to ex-members as having problems in remaining “rigid in their attitudes” (328) and offers the following:
Children who are shunned may have need for a deeper level of adjustment than those who have left on their own. They often deal with feelings of the ultimate rejection. Rejection from the mother, the father, the siblings, the extended family, and finally, rejection from God (the universe). Although she may still experience much rejection, the empowerment of going through the letter writing ritual of disassociation is a factor very much on the side of the disaffecting child. They too, however, may experience feelings of rejection as their old friends refuse to speak or even look at them. The child who is disfellowshipped feels very much like a tossed out dish rag, used, and abused, while the child who has disassociated herself has made her own break. There are those too who remain believers even after their expulsion. They are especially tormented until reinstatement is achieved when they can again feel secure of their place in the New World. Even if a child is no longer a believer, the fear of obliteration can linger for a very long time. A sense of “floating” may happen from time to time, when thoughts or distinct voices from the elders, or others one knew, pop up out of nowhere for several seconds or minutes (Appel 146). This can induce feelings of fear, and thoughts like, “Maybe I made a mistake; maybe it really is the truth; maybe I should go back.” Many reject any thoughts of God or spirituality for many years. This is too sensitive an issue to touch. The double process of breaking away from both the family and the cult is extremely difficult. Five of the women and two of the men in the survey reported leaving the cult in late adolescence, a time many young people still rely heavily on their parents for both moral and financial support. They could no longer stand the constraints imposed upon them. When the creative urge, or the desire for autonomy, is strong enough to demand individuation, the child can no longer play by the rules of the society. Born of “two witness parents,” Steven became aware that he was gay while a teenager. Inwardly, until leaving at age twenty-five, he led a dual life. He wrote:
Many children raised as Witnesses are unable to break away; they spend their entire lives in the cult. Sometimes their fears keep them in; sometimes their sadness at the ultimate loss of their family keeps them in. Sometimes they cling fervently to their image of surviving Armageddon’s mass destruction and their opportunity for eternal life on a paradise earth. However, children do make it out of cults successfully. They often further their educations and do quite well as they gobble up all the new worldly knowledge. They retain gainful employment, make new friends, and start new families. As they learn to grieve their losses, mourn their past, and cherish the present moment, they are able to mend and rebuild, and lead rich and rewarding lives. In the case of a youth who can no longer play the game at the cost of her soul, the answer is obvious. The break must be made! Kathie Carlson provides insight on recovery:
Through indulgence in her search for self in relation to the world, through a creative outlet, a hobby, books, rebellion, even lofty dreams, or whatever method she finds to escape into her own reality, she saves her imagination and her own life. It is the power and surging of a creative impulse or response that instrumentally catapults a person into the process of seeking completion and wholeness. This urge is strong enough to venture out into the real world. This is her birthing time. It may take many years of exploring the threads of her very new, loosely woven, unplanned, unequipped, new life. She needs, from this time on, to learn how to cry, laugh, find happiness, find truths she can live with, test the waters of her own spirituality, learn how to cope with anger, and explore fully her emotional nature. She will need to learn how to trust, to give and receive sincere praise, love, and affection. She learns to become a relational being, where she will find the beginnings of healing. She may forget to take care of herself. She may take warm healing baths. She may become desperately lonely and fall into the arms of strangers. She may learn to buy herself flowers. As those in the survey, she may come out swinging and fighting, and grasping, and gasping, and stretching, and growing, and crying, yet laughing when able. From my survey, I have seen glimpses into the lives of fourteen extraordinarily strong and courageous people whose stories could each fill a book. They are survivors. They are searchers, and they are healers. They have walked through dark caverns and deep chasms truly unfit for giants. They have scaled cliffs and canyons on moonless nights, guided only by the ever-increasing lantern glow of their hearts. They have shorn their own roads, rough and unhewn. They are reaching into the light and climbing the green vines and the sturdy ladders of consciousness. Some are now mothers and fathers who are dedicated and devoted to saving the lives of their own children so that their children never come up against the abuse they themselves have faced.
|