I have a co-worker who is a good friend.

She is going through some stuff and is trying to confront control issues and being too passive.

She was raised SDA. Anyway, I suggested that she check out some SDA recovery boards because I saw some parallels.

I just got a message from her.

"I. didnt. know. Ellen white. plagerized her shit.
omg.
my whole life was a lie."

My heart broke for her because I know the feeling. But she's already started to understand where and why she has issues with control/subservience to dominating males/being too passive.

SDA is just like Mormonism in a lot of ways.

Just be there for her; if anyone can help her and be a listening ear, it's you. You know what this is like. Let her talk when she needs to.

Frankly, all fundamentalist churches are the same. LDS, JW, SDA, evangelical.. no real differences except theological nitpicks.

The next closest person outside of specifically exmormon boards who can relate to my past is a former JW.
Unfortunately, he is maybe a bit more stuck in the past and how it colors his views of things now. A bit more than me. I've still got plenty of hang ups myself, but I think he's much more stuck in the reactionary stage, while I'm trying to get past my reactions. Not always successfully... :)

Your friend probably wants someone to hear her, obviously.
Not enough real life people have the sort of patience for expeeps who have JUST seen the light, there can be a lot of verbal hashing things out.


Fucking brainwashing fuckers!

I visited one of their recovery boards when I was leaving the church, and they sounded just like exmos, with slightly different religious lingo, but the same types of brainwashing and manipulation to overcome.

It actually reinforced my decision to leave Mormonism. I was so scared of being wrong. I had wondered if had been deceived by Satan, etc. Were my misgivings a sign that the church was true after all?

Then I saw that THEY had misgivings, too, except a lot worse. Did that make THEIR church MORE true than Mormonism?

In a word, NO. I felt confident that THEIR church was absolute BS, and their feelings were evidence that they had been deceived and manipulated horribly. And it helped me see the LDS church isn't so different than theirs when it comes to indoctrination with fear and gaining conformity with social pressure.

Extreme cognitive dissonance around the behavior and teachings of an 'inspired' leader/prophet...revelations later themselves revealed to being plagiarized or made up. Furious backtracking and handwaving and denial. Shake ups in the leadership and membership. Association with nutty, pseudoscience beliefs and cultural insularity. Denial of "weirdness". I could go on and on.

SDA. Gotta give her credit for raising some good kids without a father (he's a shit I gather). They are very devoted to their beliefs and as far as retention, they do much better than the TSCC, with much more difficult beliefs to adhere to. Don't know much about their religion much, but the 7th day is a biggy. They also seem to lean towards vegetarian, and similar WOW diets. I'm sure there's some creepy stuff there too just like mormonism. I think their philosphy is trinitarian though.

The ppl that invited us hoped we would convert, we hoped they would convert. The service was very similar to a Mormon sacrament meeting, except a woman officiated the meeting. They had youth speakers, a reverent musical number. I believe I remember hearing Jesus wants me for a sunbeam or some other primary song I thought only TSCC sang.

They had us over for lunch afterward and it was vegetarian entrees which I found gross at the time. Of course I was used to giant helpings of red meat everyday from ward members. Maybe that's one reason I'm a vegetarian now :P