Read this article and thought of my time in the Mormon gulag in the heart of Zion. I know people I loved found ways to pressure me.

“They will find many ways to pressure him,” Mr. Dyomushkin said of Mr. Navalny’s term in Penal Colony No. 2. In these conditions, he said, “your personality deforms.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/your-personality-deforms-navalny-sent-to-notoriously-harsh-prison/ar-BB1e77BT

So my curiosity was pinged with regards to converts to the church. Did your personalities (especially adult converts) experience much change while you were following the prophet?

Offhand, would seem converts self-select for a social club that enhances their innate tendencies.
African-Americans don't join white supremacy groups. Caucasoids do.
It also self-selects for people who want to rigidly conform e.g. groupthinkers.

Would seem the ones who really get warptwisted for a lifetime are BIC.

Thank you for your reply. I was hoping a convert would reply as well.

But in response to your thoughts. I disagree with the self-selection hypothesis generally. Mormonism is classic bait and switch. Not that self selection doesn't happen. Missionary work is specifically designed to avoid it.

About BICs...

If deformation of personality happens from birth why isn't Mormonism more successful? My 10 siblings make Mormonism an 80 percent retention rate with much of my brother's and my time making it 100 percent.

The devil you know...

I was abused as a small child, a preteen, lashed out and rebelled and then conformed eventually dropping the whole thing.

Mormonism didn't have a support structure for me. My parents weren't more than God's caretakers for me emotionally.

My wife's family has the support system but it hasn't been tested with much non-conformism. On sibling is out but I've never seem them do anything but go along to get along.

The whole blank slate "warptwisted for a lifetime" maybe true for many. I don't know. Maybe some here can attest to it. My family's personalities were formed in Mormonism and so was mine. But we have a people pleasing streak in us that could be as much from our parents as our cult.

. . . but she can wear those incredibly tiny pointy doll-shoes
http://uploads.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/footbinding.jpg

Elder Berry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If deformation of personality happens from birth
> why isn't Mormonism more successful? My 10
> siblings make Mormonism an 80 percent retention
> rate
===============================

80% is actually high. It evidences successful permanent warptwisting.
(By comparison Catholics have the highest retention of any religion in England/Wales, clocking in at 55.8% - can dig out the reference if wish)

Your faithful sibs are wearing tiny, tiny, tiny shoes --- and don't even know it.

Evidences uncommon courage in freeing ourselves

. . . for your express pleasure

It's in the "summary of key findings" p.3

https://www.stmarys.ac.uk/research/centres/benedict-xvi/docs/2018-feb-contemporary-catholicism-report-may16.pdf

Catholic study so can't eliminate bias

Dr. No Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Your faithful sibs are wearing tiny, tiny, tiny
> shoes --- and don't even know it.

Temple slippers and togas.

I was an adult convert, encouraged by my then convert of a husband. Fortunately, a strong oppositional defiant streak survived in me and became even more pronounced. In Releif Society, I was often found to be questioning and “antagonistic” (a word reported to the bishop (warden) who reported to my husband (guard) for the purpose of getting me under control. I was shut off from my parents and friends ... everything described in Navalny’s prison. My ex’s credo was, “I rule this family (including his mother and sisters) with an iron fist.” He was basically a batterer who used the church as much as they used him.

I left.

Years later, even this ex ultimately left the churh. His iron fist wasn’t working out so well for him.

The “warp” remains in our oldest son —a despot running his own family. I hope for his children’s missions as a way to at least get away from their father.

kathleen Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Fortunately, a strong
> oppositional defiant streak survived in me and
> became even more pronounced.
===============================

It's not oppositional defiance.
You have a very strong character.
That is why TSCC is so eager to snuff it out.

It is why LDS men are lauded for being jellyfish in public -
- which correlates with some becoming monsters in private.
The two seem anecdotally connected.

I've never read about you personally good Doctor. Are we your patience only to be tested?

Is there a place I can read your experiences with Mormonism?

It deforms strong personalities. My mother's personality is one of defiance and yet she is a defiant deformed Mormon.

I converted at a young age. Converting didn't change my personality but it changed my life. I didn't notice any changes in convert family members' personalities.

All but one immediate family member are now out of "the church." The one remaining has the same personality he had before he was a Mormon but his critical thinking skills have suffered.

I too was an adult convert and almost immediately ran into issues in that I didn't blindly accept everything thrown at me. I tried to understand and believe, I really did, but my penchant for science and need for fact-based information made me realize what a joke TSCC was.

I was recently in a meeting discussing various religions and beliefs and admitted that I'd been a member, but had "gotten over it". Even the one LDS guy in the room laughed...

I wonder if you had "studied it out" if you would have even joined?

Well, I was being led around by a certain part of my anatomy at the time that sort of distracted me from asking too many questions. Once the "director" decided to let go, "mine eyes were opened" and I realized what a mistake I'd made...

It didn't deform that? ;)

My family is complex in many ways, but some strands have been LDS for many generations. I literally cannot separate my parents' dysfunctionality from the religion. Polygamy, lying for the lord, the appearance of conformity, the subordination of family to the church, and a fundamentally twisted view of human relationships: the shadow loomed large.

A close relative who rose quite high in the church once told me that converts are useless. It is the second generation that can really contribute. To that extent a single lifetime is insufficient: you need to indoctrinate and acclimatize the parents so that the child is in the cult from birth. Ideally you can do this through several generations.

The obverse of this is that on average converts suffer less damage than BIC people, and BIC people are less damaged than multi-generational people. I think this is correct. We know that most converts leave the church quickly and that more established families are more loyal.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The obverse of this is that on average converts
> suffer less damage than BIC people, and BIC people
> are less damaged than multi-generational people.

Thanks for sharing. Interesting that "unto the" 2nd generation is the curse of Mormonism needing to take a real hold.

I don't understand how you see "multi-generational people" more damaged?

My mother's side were multigenerational but outsiders who didn't follow all the rules. My father's side were followers and both sides had dysfunctional families. In the information I've got I doubt there was a single functional family in my generations of Mormonism.

> Thanks for sharing. Interesting that "unto the"
> 2nd generation is the curse of Mormonism needing
> to take a real hold.

The biblical curse is "unto the third and fourth generation," which underscores the point. Events now have consequences stretching long into the future.


-------------
> I don't understand how you see "multi-generational
> people" more damaged?

I believe that Mormonism consciously and subconsciously evolved a system of control and constantly reinforces that system. I'm confident that (some of) my families were profoundly damaged by polygamy, which divided fathers from their wives and children and taught women and children how to compete with each other through patterns of passive aggression. Interestingly, the same thing happens in Islamic polygamy.

I believe the church has for generations taught members that their primary obligation is to the church and hence that children should be deprived of adequate love and attention. That experience then marks the children, leaving them relatively needy and therefore eager to prove themselves to the authorities.

Are there variations in these patterns? Yes. Human character and family dynamics fall along a Bell Curve. I simply believe that the Mormon mode is quite different from the non-Mormon mode. To put the point personally, my parents are a product of generations of Mormonism and of polygamy and I cannot separate them from that history. Nor, no matter how much I try, can I wholly separate myself from that history.


-----------------
> My mother's side were multigenerational but
> outsiders who didn't follow all the rules. My
> father's side were followers and both sides had
> dysfunctional families. In the information I've
> got I doubt there was a single functional family
> in my generations of Mormonism.

That's my point.

More damaged the longer you go back generationally. Well, I go back to the first bastards on my father's side. Deformation is normal. I do admit that there is a twisted comfort in some Mormonism and I probably self abuse with it in my conditional of being fully immersed with the Mormons.

Sad. I will always see the world through Urim and Thummim lenses.

Elder Berry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> More damaged the longer you go back
> generationally.

That may be a little too simple. There are some Mormon families that function well despite the history; it is possible to break the chains--or at least to loosen them.

My observation is simply that a long history of Mormonism affects the probabilities. The likelihood of unhealthy dynamics now is higher in families with strong Mormon traditions than in other families.

I think back to those of our fore-mothers who were polygamist. The father wasn't around to help, the systemically weakened wives competed against one another in the catty way that is inevitable in all polygamist societies with which I am familiar, and poverty was common. I know that some of the women in my ancestral tree were severely harmed by that and that they passed on a lot of damage to their children. Those woman remained very real to my parents and hence to us.

I seriously didn't see many healthy families until I got out of Utah and started interacting with non-Mormons routinely and intimately. That's where my (conscious) role models came from.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I seriously didn't see many healthy families until
> I got out of Utah and started interacting with
> non-Mormons routinely and intimately. That's
> where my (conscious) role models came from.

I thought I did. I saw my friends with families I thought really loved them in comparison to mine. When I rebelled they sent their kids to rehab.

What I didn't understand is their families might not have loved them like I thought they did. They just thought that they were worth saving.

I was in the cheaper by the dozen bunch.

That's the sort of thing that I have in mind.

I believe that Mormonism has so twisted the notion of a healthy family that our standards are way lower than they should be. I saw my parents abandon my siblings and me at various points in life as if that were okay. Often the abandonments, small and large, were undertaken to help the church. That's the Mormon culture.

Meanwhile much of the world has good families. They prioritize each other over everything else. They don't live in a culture that has for generations distorted the meaning and standards of familial loyalty.

I was baptized at 17, and yes, looking back I did become a counterfeit version of myself during the 30 years that I was in the Church. I reverted back to the real me over time though, after I left. A more familiar me. I'm finally comfortable in my own skin.

Greyfort Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm finally
> comfortable in my own skin.

Something about comfort in your own and other people's skin and Mormonism...what is it??? Does the color of it matter to the Mormon God?

I found that being a sheep was humiliating.

Tithing: The shearing of the sheep.

"Volunteering" = The work of shearing of the sheep.
Tithing - The fleecing of the sheep.

Subtle difference.

Wolves in sheep clothing = 2nd Anointed by Corporate Soles.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/04/2021 12:34PM by Elder Berry.

Yes, *fleecing* is a better word for sheep of the human kind.

Are exmos the new *Unfleeceables* ?

YES! We are unshearable. We are their Golden Fleece that they can never get.

You guys wear spandex, too?

Yes. 5% in my underwear. So silky!

*blush* Thank you.

My mom got to be a bit of a zealot after she joined.

My son went off on his mission a happy-go-lucky kid, and came home a sullen man.

A mission taught me as a young man that my worth as a soul was wrapped up in a male hierarchy that I had no desire to exploit for my own benefit.

Many male missionaries who "get it" didn't understand me because I didn't think of religion as rising in ranks.