Passing time

I can't believe so much time has passed since I was last here. Only seems like yesterday.
The New York conference went well - the Exclusive Brethren got quite a lot of mentions with two full papers about them and a few mentions elsehwere. My paper went well - I am trying to find time to create a document that I can post somewhere for all the helpful participants to read.

The EB themselves did not attend at all which surprised me. I will be presenting a paper again next July in Barcelona so maybe they will attend that one. It would be good if we could get a symposium together somehow.

My research colleague is once again working on getting the questionnaires on line - we need at least 300 participants, currently I have 53 I think. Anyone reading this and willing to help please email me on brethrenresearach@googlemail.com.

As for me - I was exhausted after New York but am recovering at last. I have been working on the way I float between the real me and the me I was. This happens mostly when I am tired. Someone will say something that will trigger me off and one minute I can be happy and then suddenly plunged into deep distress. And I never know why! which doesn't help.

Here is a little story for you. On returning from NY I had one day break and then had to leave for Glasgow for another conference but this time I was not presenting, I was organising it.

We always have a big social event on the Friday evening. This year we went to the Trades Hall - a 300 year old building with a long history and many traditions. Before the meal we were given a 10 minute talk on the history of the Incorporated Trades of Glasgow which has been in existence for over 400 years. The 14 incorporated trades include bakers, spinners, masons, barbers, etc. Each year they still elect Deacon convener of the trades. The speaker we were listening to had been one of these deacon conveners and he pointed proudly to his name on the wall as he spoke. To begin with I found this speech fascinating intrigued as I am with social history. But then suddenly as he spoke so proudly of his past and his ancestry I became intensely distressed with tears flooding out of my eyes and I felt as if I was falling into an abyss. I am still in the process of figuring out why this happened - it is something about my history and my ancestry that I cannot be proud of and dont want to remember and yet without a memory, without a history how do I have a sense of my self. Where is the continuity. It's a bit complicated to explain but I would like to hear of similar stories. I didn't fall into that abyss because I had a good friend sitting next to me who knows my history. He just put his hand on my back between the shoulder blades, handed me his hankerchief and thus held me. Falling into the abyss would have meant I would not have been there anymore, I would have had a deadness in my mind, deep deep sadness and distress sprinkled with a generous helping of fear. I would have felt about 7 or 8.

I have spent the last 4 weeks working on a paper for a conference in Rome next weekend. The topic is not about the EB - but answers the general question "what kinds of harm do cults cause". Getting that answer into 25 minutes has been almost impossible.

I will tell you how it went!

New York New York!!

In three days (eeek) I leave for New York for a few days before the conference. I ended up with 49 questionnaires - thanks to all who took part (but I need more more more! if we are to make something of this research we need around 200 at least!!)

Anyway I have enough for the conference paper which I am still working on. I enjoy quantitative research but I also get frustrated with it because it often raises more questions than answers!!

Maybe I will post some of these questions on here. Ok here is the first one - over one third have experienced sexual contact when less that 18 years old by someone 5 years or more older than them. Yet when asked to state which of the traumas they have experienced is the main one - 14 of them chose their experience of leaving the EB rather than the sexual contact. Why is this?
Women seem to experience more difficulties with being sociable and with being assertive (though both men and women seem to have difficulty with being assertive).
I will share more when I am less tired ....... my eyes are full of numbers at the moment and my glass of wine beckons

The Quantitative Research

This is the research I have been promoting lately. 35 people have now responded - I have no idea yet what will emerge - maybe nothing in which case what will I talk about in 3 weeks time!
I need more questionnaires really - so where are you all!! Well they are still coming in.

One thing that has emerged is the level of sexual abuse - for many this is perpetrated by other brethren and for many this has occurred when the person was under 18 years of age. I want to challenge the brethren - what have they done about it, what are they going to do about it. I dont know what the statistics are for the general population - if anyone knows please let me know as I would like to know if the rates in my sample are more or less than in the general population. One problem is - how do you define sexual abuse.

It's not so easy this stuff!

Gossamer threads

I have been meaning to come here and write something about gossamer threads are few days now. The problem always is trying to find time, trying to carve out time to do the things I really want to do.

The notion of gossamer threads came to me in my last therapy session when I was talking about the fact that the exclusive Brethren do not have a list of rules and regulations, but they have a wide range of things that they do and don't do. In other words, the rules are not written but those who have been raised in the brethren know that rules exist we just don't know what they are exactly because they are not explicit. As I was talking about the fact that brethren have things that they do do and things that they don't do but these are never really known, the metaphor of gossamer threads came into my mind. Now, I had a feeling that some time or other Roger Stott used this phrase but sadly no one can find the reference. However, I came across a reference I had made in a chapter I wrote on the person centred approach in which I quoted Carl Rogers (the founder of the person-centred approach) who used that phrase, I wrote:

" Carl Rogers originally felt no need to devise explicit, precise theories-- in fact he was suspicious of them. Trying to fit a person to the theory often meant that the client's experiences and perceptions were ignored or misunderstood. But to foster the continuing development of the person-centred approach he realised that some theory was necessary. He regarded all theories as provisional and expected his theories to be developed by others in response to new evidence from research and clinical experience. Theory stimulates further creative thought but only if it can be seen for what it is
"a fallible changing attempt to construct a network of gossamer threads which will contain a solid facts". (Rogers, 1959: 191)."

So I think what I was talking about captured this fallibility and the notion of a network and that somewhere in that network there might be solid facts such as, you mustn't eat with nonbelievers, but the network seemed so nebulous that we didn't actually know what any of these invisible rules really were. My therapist said it sounded like I was caught in a web that I couldn't see and couldn't articulate. If you have a set of rules that you can read, that have some solidity in front of you then you can decide, you can choose, And you have the freedom to choose, whether or not to object to them or accept them. But these invisible rules caught up in this network of gossamer threads (that was perhaps less of a network but more of a floating invisible collection of loose threads waving in the breeze), could not be opposed, I could not think about them, I could not choose whether to accept or reject because I did not know what they were.

By not clearly stating them my freedom to choose was taken away. The therapist said that the long-term consequence of this is quite paralysing and is frightening and ominous because you don't know what's there. I'm not sure if I have remembered all that correctly. I think I was always frightened that I would do or say or even feel something that would be against these invisible unknowable rules and that somehow the consequences of inadvertently doing something that the brethren would say they don't do, would be terrible. The consequences of course were also unwritten, unspecified, we didn't know what they would be.

I think more certainty may have crept in with JTJnr and with the wider dissemination of ministry.

One thing I did know was that one consequence would be a long lecture from my mother which she would continue with until I broke down and cried with guilt.
I think, but I don't really know, that I also feared this awful God that we were taught about that somehow some dreadful punishment would be meter out that would affect me in this life and also in the eternal one. It all felt very threatening.

Today I still think I am aware perhaps erroneously that I still live trapped in a network of gossamer threads and that for me the evidence of my own research through life experiences has not modified the theories in my head enough.

So I am still seeking to make sense of my past. It does gradually become clearer but still not clear enough. I suppose it wouldn't matter too much if it just bothered me but it is clear that sometimes I behave in ways that upset other people especially my two daughters and that I find intolerable. Much of the time I feel strong, capable, free to think, free to feel as I wish that every now and then something is said or something happens that shakes my world and I revert back to feeling threatened, frightened, trapped, caught up in some invisible gossamer threads that I cannot get hold of.

I may have overdone the metaphor of gossamer threads but when I am trying to figure something out and I do tend to repeat myself. But this is my blog so I can do is I like.
It would be great to hear if any of this resonates for you. So let me know!

1960

I dont remember much of what happened when my parents decided enough was enough in 1960 - I guess memories were not laid down because I was so discombobulated I did not know what was going on and probably was dissociated most of the time. These words seem so dry and empty now but sometimes when I talk about it I can feel the terror I felt then - if only I could remember why.

BUT this year - I can celebrate my 50th birthday, 50 years post EB. And I now have people surrounding me who care for me for who I am YAY open up the bubbly

So who will celebrate with me? There must be plenty of former EB out there who are either celebrating their 50th like me or their 40th - if they left when the Aberdeen incident occurred (incidentally Madeleine Kerr was a relative of mine - I must ask my mine of information brother what kind of relative).

Shall we have a picnic in Hyde Park? (weather permitting) everyone "bring your own" and we share on the day?? (bubbly on me?)

We dont celebrate enough - well I will rephrase that I dont celebrate enough. Yet I have much to celebrate - not least that I have two amazing daughters.

The exEB community is now large and in touch - the EB have tried to close us down but they are foolish to think they could, the more they try to close us down, shut us up, the stronger we become. We have a lot to be happy about - and yet we all know that around us are the vulnerable and lonely ones, I just hope that will all the FaceBook activity the blogs and the websites that they find a place to share their pain as I often do and find healing.

Comment problems

I have been told by two people that they cant leave comments- as far as I can see the settings are correct. Are you clicking on the word 'comments' at the bottom of my posting? That should open up a window. Please do try again!!

Jigsaw puzzles

I have just started seeing a therapist again - it made sense really for me to do so since embarking on qualitative research, it can be daunting and it requires the researcher to bracket off their own issues, values, concerns, thoughts etc etc - well how can I do that until I know what these are.
I have chosen an existentialist therapist because the word 'authenticity' has been resonating with me recently and I wonder how authentic I am, I never feel I know really - wondering how authentic we as children were allowed to be. Didn't we all have to be what 'they' wanted us to be? did we develop a kind of proxy self to survive? I certainly dont seem to know when I am being ME - who is this ME? When I am chattering nineteen to the dozen,.... is that ME? When I am being the life and soul of the party ... is that ME? When I am sitting quietly alone ... is that ME? sometimes when I talk a lot, especially when people are really listening (eg students) I wonder... is that ME, It feels sometimes as if I am observing myself and I would much rather stop doing this.

One thing that struck me during this first session was this. I was telling my therapist - I will call him just G - about how I feel sometimes as if my whole history is a large jigsaw puzzle, 5000 pieces, that someone has knocked onto the floor and during my first long bout of therapy I began to put some of the pieces together creating little cameos of memories. But there is still to much fragmentation. Then I said that part of the problem seemed to be that I dont remember much of my childhood (is that so for others?).

G came back with something that really makes sense. He said 'so it's like some of the pieces of the puzzle are blank, they have nothing on them'. I liked that and have been thinking about it since. It isn't so much that they are completely blank but what is on the faces of those pieces is a kind of greyness, an emptiness, a deadness, nothing there but grey colours and swirling blankness. And maybe just maybe that is what my childhood was like - maybe that is why I cant remember because there is nothing to remember and maybe the dead feelings I have when someone asks me what memories stand out for me - emptiness in my head and I have no answer. I had to be dead to survive.

It makes sense to me and maybe means that it is ok to accept this as an explanation of my feeling of nothingness but emotion - emotions of fear mainly. Well emptiness and void and greyness are scary to a child aren't they?

Double Time

I have just reread my entries and see that I commented on the time issue twice - odd that i did not realise. Perhaps time really has stood still for me!! (or maybe early dementia)... Clearly it is preoccupying me and as I watch my mother's time coming to an end and for her time is nothing but confusion now maybe it has become an important aspect of life for me - a real existential issue.

I want to say something about authenticity but will listen to the recording again too. I am curious though that time and authenticity should come into my thoughts and at the same time I get a job teaching on a counselling psychology programme that takes an existential perspective.

Time

I have just been for a walk in the woods to clear my head and I listened to part of the interview.
Time stands still, time is suspended almost as if my life is a tape recording and someone has pressed the pause button..... not me you understand. Paul asked me for memories that stand out - it was as if he had pressed the pause button right then but I knew he hadn't, someone else had all those years ago. Sitting in the meeting hall on a Sunday morning in the silence - and time stood still. And in that empty space of frozen time there is a nothingness, a blankness.

There was a clock ticking in Paul's room - in the timeless silence I heard it, not ticking the time away but sounding like a broken record stopped in an endless groove, never moving onwards, just sitting there. I wondered - is this how I experienced those tedious and often scary meetings? Meetings that were filled with incomprehensible pleadings, pontifications, prayerful exhortations - none of which I understood.

I lived in my own inner fantasy world - I am very good at drifting away into that world even now. I can be listening to a fascinating lecture and annoyingly I drift away and miss crucial parts of it. Do other people do this too?

Probably

The interview

As I expected after the interview I feel very tired.
I should correct something from yesterday - because I did not know how to describe the interviewer I called him a colleague. In fact it would be more accurate to call him one of my tutors from the college Metanoia where I am registered for my doctorate. His name is Paul.

We talked for about one hour and a quarter - maybe we could have gone on longer but I was flagging and I think for both us so much emerged it was enough for one day!

Lingering thoughts - some are around the fact that I don't celebrate my life - it is now 50 years this year since I left and I have achieved a lot in those 50 years but I don't celebrate. So this summer I think I should along with many others who have left - like those who left 40 years ago after the Aberdeen incident. It is also a milestone year for them(for those who have never been in this branch of the brethren the Aberdeen incident occurred in 1970 when the then leader James Taylor Jnr. was allegedly found in bed with a distant cousin of mine. Both of them were married so this incident was described as adultery and many thousands left).

When Paul asked me his first question a heavy silence descended on me and could be felt in the room. I felt that hand across my mouth that I have felt so many times before though a it is more rare occasion these days. I tried breaking the silence by talking about it but the ticking clock and the external silence that was in the house around us, transported me back to my childhood and the long silences of the meetings. It was as if time stood still. Is this how I experienced it then? And this feeling of pressure in my chest, an inwards sinking of my breast bone and a pulling in of my body ... is that how it was? I also recalled some peace though - as the sun shone through the windows of the meeting room in Selsdon and the local church bells called the "faithful to church" - but we knew they were not the faithful as we were in the only true church. But there was a kind of momentary peace. The giving out of a hymn or a brother standing to pray shattered that peace.

That silence is powerful - it deprives me of the words I never had. Even writing this now I can feel the tight band round my head as I transport myself back again to that meeting room. The evening gospel was far from peaceful - we children sat on that front row beneath the preacher and his 'pulpit'. His words thundered like heavy hail down on our young shoulders, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday.

At one point Paul used the word 'embedded' and I felt it was a good word to describe how I was embedded in that EB world, enmeshed in it, it was part of me and I was part of it. To some extent I still am and I suspect this journey I am on is part of that. Will the journey end with this doctorate - I hope so for I am now a weary traveller.

I have found my voice but it is still silenced at times and at other times it seems to come from a different person and I am not always sure which of my persons is the authentic one. I sometimes observe them, hear myself speaking and wonder that I can sound so erudite and lively and excited by what I am talking about. Is that me? Right now as I write these words I can feel the struggle and the frustration I feel as I try to voice the feelings inside me.

I will listen to the interview again and transcribe it and maybe post some parts of it on here.
Thank you Paul for being a sensitive, accepting and empathic listener.

If you have had a similar experience it would be good to hear from you. And if you have had a different experience it would also be good to hear from you.

Being interviewed

On Tuesday - a therapist colleague of mine is going to interview me about my experiences as a child and about what it was like to leave the brethren at such a difficult age, ie 16. I am trying not to think about it as it seems important that I dont come up with pre thought out ideas but answer his questions and probes as he makes them. But I wonder how it will go given that I have thought so much about my past, my experiences and have been in therapy a number of times trying to make sense of my past and of my experiences.
We shall see what he manages to get to from me!

I am having some difficulties getting the questionnaires together - one of them costs a bomb to purchase so that has somewhat stymied our attempts to really get going on this research.

I am a little bothered by the lack of response so far to the resurrection of my blog but I guess it just hasn't been noticed yet.... or has it and you just haven't written anything!! Please do - I would love to hear from you even if it is only to say you are listening!

One thought I have had recently is about authenticity - were we as children able to be authentic. I shall think about this some more but it ties in which another phrase i heard some years ago and that was about the proxy self. In other words, as children were we able to true to ourselves or did we build defences to keep ourselves safe.

I'm Back!!

But for how long. I am full of good intentions!
Much has happened since I was last here - I presented at a conference in Geneva July 2009 and there were 4 brethren in the audience including my brother. I have had very little contact with him - it's a long story that perhaps I will tell another time.

Right now - I have two research projects on the go.
One is a quantitative study - I will be looking for a very large sample to test. I have a colleague working on this with me - Andrew is a research methodology expert currently working at the University of Bournemouth so he can provide me statistics help as well as resources including money for the questionnaires. Great! Now that I am no longer at the London Metropolitan University his collaboration is essential. So if you are an ex member of the Exclusive Brethren and would like to take part please email me on brethrenresearch@googlemail.com. No names will be used on the questionnaires so it will be completely anonymous. I am hoping to present the results of this research at a conference in New York this July.

The second study is qualitative. I want to know more about what it is like to be brought up in the brethren. I know what it was like when I was a child though I have forgotten much of it and I have someone lined up who will be interviewing me - I feel a bit nervous about that because I do still get triggered off sometimes and end up occasionally an emotional mess!! But I would also like to interview others particularly those with childhoods more recent than my own. I also want to know more about the experiences of leaving and what people do to help themselves, how do they cope with the transition. And what is life like now.

Lots to talk about really. If you think you might be interested in helping me here - again please email me!

I hope I come here more often now - as part of the qualitative research I need to be keeping a research diary anyway!

But for my first posting in a long while that will do for now.