Hello all:
I have introed myself on another thread and by biography is not on my profile because it keeps coming up with an error message so I will intro again.
I usually just read these and dont reply because I am sometimes TOO outspoken for other people to accept but I AM going to reply to this one due to my own experience with therapy and with the jw's.
I was born and raised a jw by an alcoholic, abusive mother with no father until I was 12 years old. My mother was SO abusive that she would gather up "weapons of torture" from around the neighborhood and our house and use them on my brother and sisters, (who were 7, 8, and 11 years older than me). She would be drunk and then beat them for some imagined wrong and I would be curled in the corner as small as I could get so that she wouldnt see me and start on me and would cry silently for my older siblings. When they started getting married and leaving home, (brother left when I was 9 and sister left when I was 10) she started focusing more on me.
She married a child molester when I was 12 and he started molesting me at 13 and 14 and I repressed those memories until 2003 when I accidently found the silent lambs website. I was disfellowshipped at the age of 14 for "bringing reproach on the name of Jehovah" because when I went to the elders for help from my step-father 's molest and from my mother's alcoholic beatings, they didnt help me. (I didnt have 2 witnesses except immediate family who would help me and my family was too scared of mom to say anything at all). So I went to my favorite teacher in school who had noticed my bruises and she took me to the police for help. I remember that I always knew what I wanted and didnt want back as far as I can recall. I knew that I didnt want to be a "submissive wife" knew that there was something wrong with the blood issue etc... of course if I questioned any of it, I would get a beating. I also knew that I wanted to stay in school but my mom had removed both of my sisters at the ages of about 14.
I was taken away from my mother for child abuse (it was just becoming not ok to beat your kids) (she used to pull me out of the car in front of Raleys grocery store and beat me with a belt) and was disfellowshipped. Went to live in foster homes (12 of them) and learned to live in the "world".
I was reinstated at 20 after I married my first husband and again disfellowshipped at 21 for divorcing him without scriptural grounds although they tried to find a loophole for me (they knew me all my life) by asking if he forced me to have oral sex with him (he was an unbeliever). I have been out of the Borg ever since. (over 20 years)
I had to start therapy with my children due to the molest of my children and was in therapy for 6 years with them and I have to say that it was one of the best things that I could have done for them and myself. I would never have imagined that my son would respond so possitively to therapy and as for myself, it saved my life. LITERALLY!
I had started trying to kill myself when I was 7 years old! That behavior continued until I had 3 children in my house and my only thought was that "someone will find them" I never thought "what if they find me" . I probably tried to kill myself about 5 times total. That ended after therapy. If only that. It would be enough.
I consider myself a survivor not a victim and I attribute alot of that to therapy. My sisters are unfortunately, victims still with one of them a paranoid sckitso and diagnosed multiple personality, (due to being sexually abused by my jw father at the age of 4 years old) and my other sister is barely holding onto her sanity. Neither have had any therapy as far as I know. Just my 2 cents worth.