#cult memoirs

[livingfictionsystem]

Anyone buy Living Fiction yet?

-Xanthe

#cult survivor #cult memoirs #dissociative identity disorder

[biglisbonnews]

On Novocain “I’ve been clean for over twenty years.” https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2023/03/06/on-novocain/

#First Person #addiction #cult memoirs #Featured #heroin #Michael Clune #opioid crisis #The Paris Review

[maegalkarven]

Anyone thought about the fact what Gortash knew Zariel personally 10 fucking years ago?

Like Zariel needed someone to test her new machinery and Gortash was around just enough to simply suggest and then sell Karlach.

He knew archdeviless personally. Ten years ago.

Why the hells did he even need Bane anyway? He could've steadily worked towards world domination on his own.

#bg3 spoilers #lord enver gortash #enver gortash #reminds me of auntie ethel saying bane is the laziest tyrant and what everyone just do work for him #sure rings true #not to mention gortash is relatively new chosen of bane #i believe bane made gortash his chosen only after the heist with the crown. it's in his memoirs upstairs the wyrm keep #like he was re-establishing the cult of bane in bg before that but for how long was he working with banites? #he doesn't strike me as a faithful type. or someone to kneel before any god #how long would it take for him to decide to overthrow bane? #if the world domination plan would succeed? #'we will be ruling as gods' doesn't sound very 'faithful servant of the god of tyranny' type of speech. #how long till gortash would become a threat to bane? was there banite version of orin lurking around already?

[marshmellowtea]

Proshippers literally pretend that POCD means you are a pedophile and want it what the fuck are you on about? Proshippers try to force pwOCD to engage in checking compulsions because they pretend it's pro-recovery.

normally this is the kind of ask that i would just quietly delete but i'm actually going to answer it rn because this is so absurd i have to laugh. no, bestie, the people pretending that people with pocd are pedophiles are YOU GUYS. that's all you! antis are the one who i have seen treating intrusive thoughts as secret desires. antis are the ones i've seen with "people with pocd dni" in their bios. and fucking antis are the ones who have made pocd so commonplace on this website in the first fucking place because of the way you try to look for proof people are predators in the most innocuous shit.

believe it or not, part of ocd recovery is accepting the thoughts you have and learning to deal with them in some way. y'all want people to feel ashamed of their intrusive thoughts forever to "prove" they're a good person and that's the exact opposite of healing. that's just making ocd worse. and, in speaking of learning to deal with them, one of the ways to DO that is to write fiction about said thoughts and make them less scary to you! that's part of the reason why i create and enjoy fucked up fictional content! it's a way of dealing with my intrusive thoughts that puts the power back in MY hands, and treating these fictional depictions meant as coping mechanisms as "proof" someone's a predator is not just stupid, it's also cruel, because you are actively trying to make someone's disorder worse.

i guess you missed this part of my original post, so i'll say it again here: when i was an anti, you fucking people had me so convinced i was doomed to sa a child because of 1) the fact i like dark fiction exploring topics such as csa, and 2) my intrusive thoughts themselves, that i thought i was going to have to commit suicide. my life was in danger because of you people. and i was a fucking teenager when this all was happening! i should not have had to deal with that, but because you made this environment so toxic and preyed on my already existing ocd, i did! i was miserable and i hated myself and i thought i was a predator in the making! that's a horrible way to live!

tldr; go fuck yourself anon lmao, you have no idea what you're talking about and the extensive damage people like you have done to people with ocd. fuck off <3

#i'm not gonna address the 'force people to engage with compulsions' part cuz honestly idk what the fuck you are talking about lmao #so please get this through your head: your community has done me so much harm and i will never be swayed back to your side #i will not say irreparable harm because distancing myself from y'all and becoming proship has helped immensely with my pocd specifically #but harm nonetheless #(also as a pro para person i don't love the conflation of 'pedophile' with 'person who hurts children' #because studies have shown most child molesters are not actually attracted to their victims #but i figured now wasn't the time for that discussion) #csa tw #suicide tw #ask to tag #why i left the anti cult and decided to just enjoy things: a memoir #marshy gets asks #anonymous

[fandom-hoarder]

This is part of a longer post that I've been composing in my head for months, but I've been watching a lot of anti-multilevel marketing (MLM) videos and it had started making me think about how, just like my mom has used religion to cope with her (previously undiagnosed) ptsd, she used MLMs also.

She sold Tupperware and got the Sea World convention trip. She sold Mary Kay and got the car. She sold other things I can't remember-- vitamin stuff, and was super into it.

And the way some people break down the MLMs in the videos I'm watching, really made me think about how that structure of having to constantly recruit new people is so much like evangelism in general, but particularly Jehovah's Witnesses. They are constantly trying to recruit you -- not just to save you, or teach you something they say will enrich your life, but because they have to make their quotas!

And now I'm watching these ex-JW vids, from Elders who have left the Jehovah's Witnesses, and it's bringing up a lot of memories, but also I'm getting even more of a peek behind the curtain of what goes on in the upper levels... it really is set up like an MLM corporation.

And if you're good at making those quotas, you'll probably thrive. My mom was always good at making her quotas -- both in MLM sales AND her monthly field service (proselytizing) hours. All aspects considered, she was a "better" JW than my father. She was always a joy to the congregation and everyone wanted her involved in things, she sewed the dresses for so many weddings, she sang out in meetings, and she was a zealous Pioneer who always made her quotas and brought new people in. She learned ASL to minister to one person in her territory, and ASL became a passion that led to her going to college once she was out of the JWs.

It's kinda hilarious to me that they lost a truly devoted JW when they disfellowshipped her because she wanted a divorce. 👀 (She had to break a religious law for her divorce to be recognized by the congregation, because dad being abusive wasn't enough-- because of their "two witness" rule about proving guilt. So she had an affair with a coworker, and let people find out about it, and then refused reconciliation in the prescribed Elder marriage counseling.)

When someone is disfellowshipped, they are fully shunned. Baptized people and full members of the congregation aren't allowed to speak to them or even acknowledge them. But my mom at first wanted to earn her way back in!! For which, she needed to stay devout and keep going to meetings, even though she wasn't allowed to sing or do service anymore or talk to any of her friends. And every 6 months or so, she could write a letter to the Elders and the Organization about why she should be reinstated. I overheard these things laid out to her when I snuck downstairs to listen in on their counsel. It was such a scary feeling, compared to the excitement of weeks earlier when my brother and I sat in my room listening to my parents fight about her affair, both of us crossing our fingers and whispering, "Please get a divorce."

Idk if this is where I lost my faith exactly, because even though I was raised in it I had ALWAYS questioned things that didn't make sense and got in trouble for it. But I also DID believe in the religion still-- I was 9/10 and didn't yet realize how that religion had actually been CREATED by men just the same way as Mormonism and all the other sects JWs decry. I just really started labeling them all as hypocrites at that point. The way everyone abandoned my mom, and acted like my dad was so betrayed and perfect; the way they TALKED about my mom and compared me to her all the time to keep my behavior in line. The way they would still talk to me, but not my mom. When she was right there.

...I intended this to just be short and get my thoughts out but I just kept going. Lol I'm stopping here.

But this is the video I was watching when I had to pause and type this lol.

#anti JW #ex JW #anti mlm #(as in multilevel marketing) #cults #religious trauma #my memoir #ish #podcasts #ex-cult

[bisansastarks]

This is such a random assortment of books I’ve read so far this year ??

#it’s got everything! #memoirs poetry children’s poetry horror novels romance and even cults! #need to read some classics though I’m slacking there #i have alias grace on audible as well as Frankenstein I should get into #right now I’m reading a fantasy and a romance #and maybe ocean voungs time is a mother #also the children’s poetry books is because I am a TEACHER 😤😤😤 #but also? those books slap

[airjemsfandump]

companion selfies

I've just figured out how to take selfies with companions. Please, why am I dumb. 😭

Here's Liz and Vitto bc they're my OTP. Mob couple ftw.

And then this one with my hot jiejie and my new pet dragon. 🤧

Bonus selfies with said dragon because look at that baby.

#time princess #dress up time princess #dutp #dutp gotham memoirs #white snake #gotham memoirs #elizabeth colvin #vittorio puzo #vittorio puzo cult #the white snake #mobile games #fashion game #i love this game #dress up games #games #visual novel #interactive game #game recommendations #you should play it #it's good

[thoughtportal]

thoughts on the book Spare

#tiktok #book review #british royal family #royal family #family #sibilings #memoir #biography #Society and Culture #culture #pop culture #cultural critique #cultural criticism #cult #books and literature #books and writing #books and authors #books and reading #read this #ghost writer #prince harry #media #books #book #new book

[sanctfy]

crazy how every cult ever is actually exactly the same inside

#every single time i watch a doc or read an article or memoir or listen to an interview etc #i walk away like ‘this is my exact lived experience’ #it doesn’t matter what the religion or spirituality or political affiliation the group follows #at the core they’re all the same bc the goal is always mindless devotion to the cause #(achieved through keeping members exhausted and terrorized) #+ total control over the members #(achieved through isolation from the outside world and some version of collateral and the practice of shunning) #it’s so wild like if you’ve never been in/close to cults it’s hard to get it #but once you understand it you can pick them out immediately bc #the only differences are aesthetics + vocabularies

[livingfictionsystem]

Pov: Someone asks you if your magnum opus is the feel-good story of the season.

Photography by: @Julesjulesphoto

#authors #non binary authors #dissociative identity disorder #did system #cult survivor #cult memoirs #cult #book signing #newly published book

[friendly-neighbourhood-librarian]

Breaking Free: How I Escaped My Father—Warren Jeffs—Polygamy, and the FLDS Cult - Rachel Jeffs

Content warning: child sexual abuse, incest

Rachel Jeffs tells her story of growing up in a polygamist cult as the daughter of the man who would eventually take over leadership of the FLDS and end up on the FBI's most wanted list. She describes in detail the ways he sexually abused her starting when she was 8 years old, and how, later on, he began doing the same things to his underage wives.

When Rachel was 18, she became the third wife of a kind young man, but she was still under her father's influence. She spent many of the following years separated from her children and/or husband as Jeffs sought to keep control of her so she wouldn't reveal the secret of what he had done to her.

Gradually, Rachel's disillusionment with the church and its leadership grew until she finally took the leap to get out and take her kids with her, leaving behind everything she had ever known for the hope that the unknown would be better.

It's a hard-hitting memoir that fearlessly draws back the curtain on life as a woman in the FLDS and what kind of man Warren Jeffs really is.

Not for the faint of heart, but the worst of it is mostly packed into the beginning chapters and tapers off as Rachel gets older.

#breaking free #rachel jeffs #nonfiction #memoir #autobiography #flds #cults #bookrecs

[standupcomedyhistorian]

I've finished reading ALL of Maria Bamford's new book, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult! 🙌🏼

What a fun and fascinating read (and I adored the "recipes" at the end of each chapter). As I had mentioned previously, I do plan to post a review on my website but—for now—please check out my two articles on Maria and her influence on the comedy community:

10 Fun Facts

Bo's Comedy Heroes: Maria Bamford

Happy reading, and keep it here for more comedy fun! ✌🏼🐔

#milestone #finished a whole book #maria bamford #mental health #i love how she says she has the mentals #not mental illness #i can definitely commiserate there #bo burnham #alternative comedy #comedians of comedy #sure i'll join your cult #memoir

[baby-dips-into-the-taboo]

A living document

So, what is it that I'm doing here, sitting on the periphery of things, the edge of ideologies?

This is a special and, honestly, difficult day. It is a reminder of someone whom I loved very much. I know too much about grief and loss for someone who hasn't seen as much literal death as many people have; particularly, in this moment.

Many feelings and experiences seem to lie at the heart of the cult escapee's experience, including this familiar feeling of severing - of losing people who are very much living, who occupy space and time in a manner that is intimately acquainted to you, or that you're used to being very familiar with. Knowing you'll never see several people again, that your paths will diverge now, that like a coin flip you're eventually an enemy... In a way, it's a lot of break ups happening all at once. So much love lost - what can be done with this love? Possibly similar to experiencing a string of deaths in one's family (an experience that is, in fact, known to me), but with the added injury of having self-inflicted this pain with an eye to healing.

In some ways, leaving a cult, particularly for someone raised in it, is as radical an experience as the act of entering one for someone who wasn't raised in it. There is a symmetry to these things: the parent, grandparent, or ancestor completely leaves their understanding of reality and gains a lease on life, a sense of purpose, a community by adopting a new set of beliefs and leaving their old lifestyle behind. Similarly, their child or grandchild abandons the set of beliefs they are raised with to experience life in a completely different way - to completely rewrite their understanding of normal. Both child and ancestor are engaging in acts of curiosity and hope: they are rewriting how they transact with the world, how they relate to others, and so, in a lacunary fashion, leaving a cult or movement actually brings the younger generation closer to the parents who entered it even if proximity is removed or attachment is severed by leaving.

Interestingly, then, these multi-generational churches and movements, are stuck becoming a duopoly: they have to, of course, continue their current recruitment efforts, and they have to cater to an audience that has never been initiated from any other reality - that has never experienced the intensity, clarity, certainty, or euphoria around entering this space. There is no door for the latter audience to walk through, except out. How can they be kept sated - how can they be convinced that they have it so good that they never want to leave, or how can they be fed such despair about ordinary reality that it seems discolored and lacking any allure?

There are reasons why I wonder all this; reasons having to do with someone I've loved a lot, who is no longer accessible to me. It has been my choice to pull away from her, and now it seems that there is no going back - she was deeply hurt. Knowing her past breakups, she adheres to No Contact no matter what. Leave it to someone raised in a cult to understand how to go cold turkey serially, no matter the history or the true emotional cost.

I am living that 20s theme where some of us find ourselves consecutively severing relationships, becoming increasingly untethered, as the gaps in our lives and hearts are left unfilled. I find comfort in the memory of movies like Sleeping Beauty by Julia Leigh, even if I don't rewatch them because of the shame, the degradation.

Some of these losses feel like a gain: I am porous, elastic, like a sponge full of blood vessels and with eyes, free to stretch, bend, breathe in ways that weren't possible when I had fixed myself to accommodate things that didn't totally fit, and I couldn't admit it, thinking sometimes that I was just the worse for wear or unrested... Why is it, anyway, that sometimes a little bit of rest, a little bit of love, can make us anew?

And then there are times when the losses just leave this emptiness... Like a white noise machine at the top of its lungs, sucking us into the void with its O-gape scream. In times like those, I'm moving towards a siren barefoot, too saturated with dread to register the metallic chill of the rocks in this hypothermic air. So magnetized by the moment, I lose sight of the future and of myself.

This is the act of intentionally numbing yourself - something we never quite realize is taking a lot of effort and investment... How cycles or spiraling trick us into thinking they're effortless just because they have aced the short circuit. I brought you to a checkout line so quick and you do not remember how you got here instead of on that social media page for the ex you were initially planning to cyberstalk. "This doesn't exhaust you", the Devil always manages to say, unearthing some supernatural energy that cannot be found in routine.

(If Facebook were a family of functions, it would be mapping every human feeling or experience to an array of products, based on location, class, etc too of course. Any feelings you have, any connections you have, can be redirected towards shopping. Sometimes, I do wonder if cults work kind of the same: sublimate/repress what isn't useful for the cult's self preservation or proliferation, and the rest of feeling and connection can be subsumed to things within the cult. How much more of ourselves, of life, we can experience by metaphorically amputating some parts of ourselves. And, who knows, maybe sometimes it actually is a reasonable deal for some people: I'm sure some gain more than they lose.)

Anyhow, the promise of access to these hidden reserves of supernatural energy is part of what's, well, exhilarating about alternative lifestyles and religions. There is something about the humdrum of life, of routine, that makes us feel like we're not enough. Somebody or something seems to want more of us than we feel like we have, more of us than we can reasonably manage - at least not without some tailoring of our fundamental realities.

In America, our jobs are very good at this; frankly, in any economy that isn't developed it is common to break your back, but in America it's continually surprising because things will always be like this, no matter how developed or wealthy America gets to be.

There are too many ways to feel deficient, fractured, especially once you're already closely acquainted with this feeling because of the gift of history, of a continu: things were broken at the root, and don't people who know me, don't past memories, all love to remind me of this? Rites of passage swirl with all the bad stuff, so how can you forget? They are embedded in the reference points of your existence.

Personally, I could never be enough for my parents' egos - how could I possibly compensate for their insecurities, their proclaimed losses from choosing to birth, raise, and abuse me? And still, I haven't fallen into a single cult or movement, but chronically find myself in close proximity to cult members or recent/budding escapees. Where does this repeat proximity come from? Why are both parties magnetized by each other?

In any case, when it comes to her (the one whom I am recalling today), whether it be a kindness or a laziness, goodbye it is.

#experiment #social experiment #manifesto #life writing #memoir #memory #cult #culture #ideology #trashcan of ideology #loss #grief #phoenix narratives #absence #loneliness #yearning #numbness #white noise machine #ogape of despair

[woodsfae]

me, to myself: which of these early childhood experiences of truly unbelievable levels of neglect and abuse best illustrates the dynamic of professed values vs hypocritical implementation?

also me to myself: damn it was like, really fucked up, wasn't it? like, I didn't imagine how bad it was, it was bad.

#nonfiction #memoirs #raised in a cult #woodsfae

[bright-eyed]

Huge problem in society is that people equate "nonfiction" with "truth" when non-fiction is not required to be fact-checked (and when it is it's at the author's expense) and so people straight up make up things and lie in nonfiction all the time

#astrology is nonfiction... books by fox news pundits about how the american education system is socialist indoctrination is nonfiction... #not all nonfic is deceptive ofc but when you lump in truth w memoirs by police psychics and turning point cult-fascists where does that end #innocent people going to prison because a police psychic said the ghost said they killed someone? #people believing charlie kirk ben shapiro milo yiannopoulos types because they wrote books and everyone knows you can't lie in books? #so now pete hegseth and charlie kirk can say that kids are being indoctrinated into leftism by the us education system #despite the ample and easily accessible evidence that that is not happening #because they wrote down the nonsense they believe in words and someone printed it not caring if it was true knowing they’d make a buck #and millions of people believe them because we all have faith in a publishing system that is motivated not by truth but by profit #and will throw our faith back in our faces sacrificing truth for profit #and this is supposed to support a functioning democracy! #kennapost

[ablackchicnolalife]

Weathering the Storm: Our Continued Journey Beyond the Cult and Reconnecting Our Family Bonds

“Welcome to the continuing saga of a family’s journey towards healing and reconciliation. This story picks up from where we left off in ‘Escaping the Clutches of a Cult: My Journey to Reunite with My Daughter’. It is a testament to resilience, strength, and the enduring power of love in the face of unimaginable trials. To protect the privacy and safety of the individuals involved, names and…

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#Cult #Domestic Abuse #estrangement #healing #Memoir #parental Alienation #parenting #Personal Story #Relationships #Religion and Family