Because I am listed on the "helpers" page at www.exmormon.org I often get phone calls from people who are struggling in some way with Mormonism.

Yesterday I had a call from the non-Mormon wife of an exmormon. Her husband has a 17-year-old son by his rabidly TBM ex-wife. The son lives with the ex-wife, but visits his dad and step-mom in a distant state several times a year.

The reason the step-mom called is because the son has been in therapy with an LDS therapist, who has now diagnosed the boy with "obsessive compulsive disorder". His obsession? He masturbates. His TBM mother is frantic that he masturbates and checks on him several times a day, asking if he has masturbated. He nevertheless continues to masturbate, so he has been labeled with an emotional disorder.

Because it involves sex, the step-mom is worried that her two little girls will not be safe during the upcoming visit. The therapist refuses to discuss the case with the father, saying that he "doesn't have the time."

Another young mind wracked with unnecessary guilt and anxiety, thanks to Mormonism.

can result in tragedy. There have been suicides over this same issue--any chance you could report the emotional abuse to the authorities and file a complaint against his license for the therapist?

Anagrammy

That's what I was thinking! You don't check on your child obsessively, and ask them if they are masturbating!!!!!!!!! What the hell???

Sounds like the MOM is compulsive. And emotionally disturbed. Poor boy.

Sounds like the MOM is compulsive. And emotionally disturbed. Poor boy.

Oh brother. What is this huge issue with masturbation they have. So crazy!

I have obsessive-compulsive disorder and part of managing it is understanding it. I know about OCD and masturbating is not a symptom of OCD... however... frantically checking and rechecking something (or someone to see if they're masturbating) can be a symptom. Ironic, eh?

Poor kid... and that 'therapist' doesn't sound too bright.

The therapist must be part of LDS Social Services. The father should step in and assert his parental rights as fully as possible to keep this from getting any worse.

I know a family where the Mom put a sign in the shower not to masturbate and would check up on the boys each day to see if they had at all. Pretty normal to me... WTF?

Suckafoo,

I think the big issue they have with masturbation is that it makes it very uncomfortable for everyone to shake hands at church.

Haha! Yeah, yeah. Well maybe they should put a positive spin on it and say I have a healthy viral 17 year old son whose Thimbu works. I'm sure there is all sorts of funky shit on peoples hands you wouldn't want to know about. Ignorance is bliss.

Thimbu should be thingy. I iPhone corrects me incorrectly.

I like "Thimbu"...It made me stop and think...lol.

He he

That's why dad always made us wash our hands after shaking everyone's hand at church.

Poor kid, sounds like even his non-Mormon stepmom is causing harm to him by treating him like he is some lunatic that is going to hurt her little girls just because he masturbates.

Hope at least his dad treats him like a normal person.

That is indeed disturbing. Very disturbing.

The boy has the right to refuse this "therapy." If I were his father I'd also advice him to lie to his mother and the therapist and learn not to get caught masturbating. The therapist and the mother are dangerous idiots.

is simply not the best policy.

Thanks to this kind of upbringing, I learned early to lie to authority figures without blinking. It means no more to me than telling my friend that those pants don't make her butt look big.

Social lies that don't hurt anyone and keep the peace and most important, keep people off my case are fine.

I don't think that is quite the lesson they meant to teach me.

Wow. That is insightful. Yes. Honesty is not the best policy if you are a kid asked that question. A good response would when asked would be "I don't know, you tell me"

If that young man were my son, my lawyer and I would be banging on that therapist's door till we got some satisfaction .

I've said before that I'm working on my Master of Counseling degree. Right now I'm knee deep in ethics classes. What that therapist did is ABSOLUTELY unethical. If it were me, I would find out who that therapist is licensed by and certified by and get started lodging complaints. It is very likely that he/she could lose his license or at least be disiplined.

If he/she is a counselor, I would go to the ACA, NBCC, state licensing board or whoever has endorsed this counselor.

I'm going to tell my ethics teacher about this example, she will be appalled.

Well it's actualy fortunate the boy has an ex mo father. The father has as much rights as the mother to the medical records and if the mother can demand it so can he to see them. The ecsuse from the therapist itself can be seen as malpractise and in most contries and states can have the therapist sued for takeing so long it appars they are neglecting thair duty. If that gets out then the father can also sue for malpractise on the masterbation equaling OCD diagnosis.

It is best that the son agree to a cort case if it goes that far for the sons safety.

The mother is right to worry about the younger children. Often with miss diagnosis with some sort of mental problem and the mother attempting to treat it by makeing it much more of a problem the older child can act out and bully younger kids.

Best thing to do is treat the kid like a normal person and keep a close eye on his behaviour towards the younger kids. Slowly get what info you can get out of him about the therapy and give good advice. Just be carful he's turning 18 soon and it's then his choice or apparently his choice if he wants to put up with that sort of treatment from people that say they are medical professionals.

First of all, he is NOT a risk to the younger kids at all, and there is no need to keep an eye on him. :P Just wanted to make that clear.

My father was/is rabidly tbm and growing up when my brother masturbated became an obsession of his. It is sexual abuse, but the morg construes masturbation as such a serious sexual sin that it encourages parents to do anything they can to actively protect their children from exploring their normal sexuality. This practice abuse and oppression is sanctimoniously taught and encouraged.

In my household, my father removed my brother's bedroom door, would regularly search his room for porn, and stand outside to listen for my brother to masturbate to catch him in the act. He regularly grilled my poor brother about his behavior daily. Eventually my father took away my brother's privacy altogether and made him start sleeping on the kitchen floor.

It was just all so awful and it is still painful to think about. I was a child at the time, but I still can't get over the guilt I feel, as though I should have been able to protect him somehow.


Looking back I honestly think my father was actively getting counseled by the bishop to do these things. My father was called as ward clerk under that man, and always seemed to be over at the church. The bishop was a complete control freak and handed out all sorts of extremely fanatic advice and opinions on anything and everything.

Get two fanatics together giving each other positive feedback, and you have a serious situation of the highest order of concern.

It would be perfectly understandable if your brother just did not want to have anything to do with your stupid ass father.
I have to ask, What the Hell was going on? that deal is not about sex, its about personal loathing & hating & mental illness. I think my father hated me, for some reason totally beyond how I acted because I was a model MORmON, but he would never admit that he hated me or even admit to treating me unfairly because that would go against the official MORmON line of having loving families. I am so glad he is dead! my life has been SO much better. I think its better for all the family even though it will take a while for others to realize it.

Strange as humans are, I am afraid to hear that your brother grew up to be just like your dad. But I am interested in hearing about it.

Not good at all. Brother married an RM who keeps him in line and moved across the country. I don't think he goes to church now. He went sporadically during his engagement, continued to smoke the whole time. I sort of scratch my head at his wife being so tbm and marrying someone who would never set foot in a temple, but she's really nice and laid back in her own way. They are happy together too.

so this was fairly recently. is your brother going to get past this as it is or is it going to blow up eventually when he has more perspective on it ? he has been subjected to a lot of abuse.

Many people get the strangest look on their faces when they hear that. They react will incredulity,
"after all, churches are good! dont you know nothing!"

LDS inc is evil, it is built on a foundation of shattered lives & terrorism. Its good to see that someone else can see this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xaYMdHNILw

I mean, seriously? Wow. Masturbation is a normal part of pubescent development. I started long before I even knew what sex was. It just made my doodle tingle. I didn't equate masturbation with sex until I hit puberty, and then everything was about sex, so it's not like masturbation was special in that regard. Repressing things like that can cause a skewed sexual development (and I don't mean homosexuality) as the kid looks elsewhere for fulfillment. I wish people could shed their old prejudices and accept that some things are natural.

And yeah, I still don't shake hands. If I masturbate, so does the guy wanting to shake.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2010 05:01AM by xcon601.

"Masturbation is a normal part of pubescent development."

and apparently loathing & insane abuse of teen age boys is a
*normal* part of middle age parenting for self absorbed
MORmONS hell bent on building the MORmON kingDUMB at the expense of anything & everything else.

This is the same bunch with the history of abusive adoption practices where they would move the pregnant girl away from her support system to some remote place before having the baby.

They love to interrogate depressed people to find out what's causing it. It couldn't be the Church, right? That makes people happy. Is it alcohol or drug abuse? No? Aha! Masturbation! That's what's causing the depression, not the Church. You see, masturbation causes your body to rebel against your spirit, which results in depression. Here, let's associate negative thoughts and emotions like pain, fear or revulsion with sex in order to reduce the desire to masturbate.

Are these therapists really licensed? I just wonder how they get away with this stuff.

That's seriously disturbing and sad. In this day and age, with all the resources and information that are out there, it amazes me how people can have such seriously twisted attitudes about sex. Even if you are religious (as I am), you can definitely reconcile healthy, relaxed sexuality with spirituality if you have reliable information, the ability to think for yourself and more than two brain cells to rub together.

That poor kid is going to have more sexual issues than he knows what to do with. Not only the obvious wrong of teaching that masturbation is some kind of mortal sin, but the enormous violation of privacy by his mother (ew!!!!!) and denial of free agency over his own body. That is sexual abuse in my book. If my husband ever said one word to our daughters about masturbation other than, "It's healthy, it's normal, it's private, and most of all it's your business," if he ever expressed any interest in the details of their intimate activities, I'd move them away from him immediately.

{Survivor of sexual abuse within the family talking, by the way.}



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2010 10:02AM by readthissomewhere.

She went totally batshit insane. I thought she had lost her mind. She grounded him and made him sleep with the door open until I finally screamed at her and told her that if there were a fire, he would have no protection.

And these same people wonder why there are Anti-Mormons, why ex-mormons are usually hostile, or why people leave the church to begin with. What do you expect when you put people through ridiculous shit like that, alienating them to the max, and making them uncomfortable with who they are. Then blaming the problems that form from this abusive culture on the person. It's an unstopping loop that is bound to drive a person crazy and yeah MAKE THEM HAVE AN AXE TO GRIND! There are some amazing mormons out there, who I really admire, but they never ever hold the same views as the Church's Board of Directors and are usually quite liberal.

Something else to add, which is interesting. This kid got diagnosed with OCD... When I was half way through my mission I canned my testimony and became vocal about it to the Pres. We had a 4 hr debate in his office with me telling him how it's all so jacked up and ridiculous. He suggested I talk to a Psychologist from Church services. So this guy calls me in the evenings and we talk, AND WHAT DOES HE DIAGNOSE ME WITH? OCD, and I'm not OCD at all, the conclusion he made was that because I wouldn't conform and see the truth there had to be some mental illness preventing me from seeing it. As he and the PRes put it, sometimes mental illness or states of mine prevent the spirit from coming to us, which is why he had me talk to the Psych in the first place. Maybe OCD is what they diagnose anyone without a real diagnosis.

Hell, you'd need to put a 17 y/o into therapy who *DIDN'T* masturbate.

And how did info about this 17 y/o's private business get into the hands of his mother & therapist in the first place? Worthiness interview, I'd wager.

And what constitutes "obsession"? Masturbating a couple times a week?

On the plus side, if the boy keeps this up, he won't have to go on a mission.

Sometimes I don't want to be polite to some LDS members, though a minority of them only.

This is what LDS4Life71 youtuber said to me after visiting my channel and a brief exchange of truths.

quote:

"I'll see you in HELL from where I am in Heaven, bastard son of Satan."

My reply

quote:

"How can I be a bastard son of satan when according to LDS that he has no body so he has no penis?
Don't you ever use your dumb pretend LDS brains?? Do not comment on my channel anymore you are ridiculous and an embarrassment to the LDS church."

I get so upset hearing this type of thing. I was asked by almost every Bishop during yearly interviews about masturbation. I remember the first time... I was so humiliated, my face turned red, the room started to spin and I lost all vision except tunnel vision... it really was one of the most emotional damaging experiences of my whole life. After that, I vowed to myself, that I would lie every time after that rather than confess again.

This topic really brings to surface my hate of Mormonism.