Learned Helplessness

[aron]

Wasn't sure where to put this, so starting a thread. Moderator can append it elsewhere if desired.

"When human beings are continuously exposed to situations where they have little to no control over anything, it often results in learned helplessness. A real-world example of learned helplessness occurs when people are taken as prisoners of war or placed in concentration camps. Those unfortunate people are almost always stripped of their dignity, and basic needs like adequate food, clothing, shelter and medical care are often withheld from them, not to mention the physical abuse and even torture that many have endured. They are also usually denied something just as essential to the mental and physical well being of all humans: autonomy.

Unfortunately, there are many examples from history where people were denied the ability to make even the simplest decisions for themselves, like when to sleep or go to the bathroom, or whether they could even speak. Prolonged exposure to that kind of environment exacts a huge physical and psychological toll. As a result, many eventually either suffer irreparable psychological trauma or lose the will to live. For every story of the triumph of the human spirit like Victor Frankl, John McCain or Louis Zamperini, there are hundreds of others who succumb to their circumstances and die a slow, miserable death."

https://medium.com/@richardobenjr/wh...s-f2567a6dc40f

[aron]

Following the first post, there's a lot of literature about what happens psychologically when people believe that they have no choice. It is discouraging and dispiriting, and if it's combined with abuse, people tend to depression and despair.

Imagine that you are 3 years old, and continually told that reality is "X". You go to meetings sit with Mommy and Daddy, and continually hear "X". Then you are 4, 5, 6 and go to children's meetings and sing nursery rhymes about "X". Then young people's meetings, high school meetings, and your peers get up and speak and reinforce "X".

What if "X" includes, "You must do as you are told, always trust leadership, they are always right, be one with the speaking, anyone who thinks differently is rebellious against God and marked for destruction" etc etc...? LC members literally hear this day and night from infancy. If this was your experience, what to when you're 25, 35 years old and hear of abuse? Or see it, or experience it? You're relentlessly trained into passive obedience. But something is clearly wrong here! Perhaps the teachings don't make sense, or they are self-contradictory, or don't follow Scripture, or deviate from "orthodox" understanding of Scripture (i.e. traditional church teachings). Or else the family member of the Church Leader begins to abuse the church members, or takes their money.

At that point the programming takes over, and one sees evidences in the speaking. “We do what we are told” was what one Blended RG said to a co-worker in the SE USA during the New Way, who protested against the heavy-handed Ministry "Office". “I’m proud to be an ostrich with my head stuck in the sand”, said another, when turmoil arose subsequent to the revelations of the Office (Philip Lee’s) predatory abuses.

Originally Posted by PriestlyScribe

...or the notion that any attempt to defend a "personal boundary" against an abuser in position of authority would render you an enemy of the cross of Christ!


Above quote is from STTIL page 21: https://www.johningalls.com/#/reader/chapter/15

The above quotes from P.S. are examples of what people hear from infancy. "Do what you are told". "Don't think". "Don't do anything without fellowship." It brings a state of learned helplessness, of conditioned paralysis. Then, either follows numbness or despair.

[Ohio]

aron, tragic indeed.

I was just given a booklet by Ray Comfort, Scientific Facts in the Bible. In the Intro, he proposes a potential narrative, " Imagine you are viewing a luxury liner moving thru calm waters. To your amazement, a dozen people jump off clinging to a lifeboat. The rest of the passengers laugh at their stupidity. What they did was so foolish, it made no sense. Suddenly the ship hits an iceberg and sinks..."

The author is an evangelist with a gospel message, but it also applied to the LC mindset. What is one to do when raised from birth that everything ever needed must be found in that ship? No matter what dangers lied ahead, one must never leave the boat.

I have watched young people, who knew nothing about Christians beyond the Recovery, so immature towards life in general, able to so easily spout off wholesale condemnations of the entire body of Christ. Nothing out there of any value!

When their own "ship" begins tossing in the "wind and waves" of life, what options do they have? Do they really have the Lord at their side? Can they find a safe "lifeboat" with other children of God? Can they swim to a "lighthouse" on the distant shore?

Or do they only see a coming disaster because they have they been programmed with "learned helplessness?"

[aron]

(I meant to write a 3rd part to my comments earlier, but got occupied).

Every child comes into the world helpless, and told (and shown) what to eat, what to wear, what to think and to speak. And there’s always a bias, often implicit, sometimes explicit. “This is the way to do things.” But in fact it is really only one possible way out of many.

In my case, I got the Baptist “hellfire” sermon at around age 7 when my family was invited to church and given the altar call. I went forward. It’s hard to imagine a young person in that circumstance doing anything else. My entire family went forward. But my point here is that eventually one should learn to take responsibility for one’s life, one’s person, and actions. What I do, what I think, what I wear, what I speak are my responsibilities.

So if someone is born into the Islamic faith, or their parents are atheists or agnostic, or they live in a Buddhist or Confucian culture, that’s completely understandable. We all are born into something. But if we are condemned merely for thinking, for attempting to understand and consider, for asking questions to find out what really happened, then we are kept in a state of perpetual infancy. Everything is handed to us, and we passively accept everything like a 4-year old.

This is what I meant by 'learned helplessness'. When we are confronted with a problem, we have no skills to solve it, and resolve the difficulty. We are forced to ignore, to pretend. In the case of WL and the LSM, all other Christian groups were hopelessly defective, corrupt, deformed, and so forth. Then, when WL and family inevitably get exposed, what to do? There is no way to resolve the difficulty.

[aron]

I wanted to add as a kind of postscript, a final thought, related to my third post.

We only can build the world out of the ingredients we are given. Only God creates out of "nothing". The rest of us are forced to use the ingredients we are given. "What do you have, that you did not receive?"

But what we do with the ingredients that we receive is our fully responsibility. The world we build is still our world, not somebody else's. If you want to live in Witness Lee's world, you can. But it is your choice, and your responsibility.

Some will say, "No, it's not Witness Lee's world, it's the Bible." But that is disingenuous. It's the Bible interpreted by Witness Lee. Some verses are deemed crucial via his supposed revelation, and many others are ignored or deemed as mere human concepts. But in reality, the human concepts belong to Witness Lee. The question is, do we passively receive them, or examine them critically, like any other input?

[ThankfulForever777]

While it may not directly align with the concept of "learned helplessness," I've observed a trend among many young and middle-aged men within the Lord's Recovery. Many struggle to maintain steady employment or adequately provide for their families. It's disheartening to see a pattern of passivity, where instead of actively pursuing solutions, they resort to complaining about adverse circumstances such as a tough economy or unfair employers. Rather than taking responsibility, they wait passively for someone else to intervene. They won't even adequately pray, fast or have faith in God's promises in his Holy Scriptures.

Interestingly, this contrasts starkly with individuals in another (non-recovery) church where I currently attend where such situations seem nonexistent.

It's clear to me that these men in the Lord's recovery got damaged by confusing teachings and philosophy of Lord's Recovery.

[PriestlyScribe]

Originally Posted by ThankfulForever777

...It's clear to me that these men in the Lord's recovery got damaged by confusing teachings and philosophy of Lord's Recovery.

Thanks for this astute observation. I observed the same trend well before I left the group in 2009. While it's true that some portions of "the ministry" give lip service to the importance of a balanced home life and for the responsibility of a man to provide Christ like leadership and ample provision in his home - the system Nee/Lee built is terrified of men who can think for themselves, or who would dare to hear from God directly for themselves and for the care of their families.

The blatantly obvious push from Anaheim in the early 2000s for elders to become mainly passive "meeting time setters" & "ministry book salesmen" in their respective churches was another form of this deliberate dumbing-down of what ought to have been a scripturally based exhortation of men unto godly responsibility & watchfulness.


Screen grab from Chairman Mao's 130th Birthday Celebration

It's obvious that when it comes to current qualifications for becoming a "good brother" or an "elder" in the Lord's Recovery -
ALPHA MALES NEED NOT APPLY!

This dynamic of men's abdication of personal responsibility seems to develop & become entrenched within every form of dictatorship.

P.S.

Originally Posted by ThankfulForever777

While it may not directly align with the concept of "learned helplessness," I've observed a trend among many young and middle-aged men within the Lord's Recovery. Many struggle to maintain steady employment or adequately provide for their families. It's disheartening to see a pattern of passivity, where instead of actively pursuing solutions, they resort to complaining about adverse circumstances such as a tough economy or unfair employers. Rather than taking responsibility, they wait passively for someone else to intervene. They won't even adequately pray, fast or have faith in God's promises in his Holy Scriptures.

Interestingly, this contrasts starkly with individuals in another (non-recovery) church where I currently attend where such situations seem nonexistent.

It's clear to me that these men in the Lord's recovery got damaged by confusing teachings and philosophy of Lord's Recovery.

Something I recently learned through getting Christian counseling in my life:
There is a such thing in the religious groups (like LR), and others, which is basically called Self-Inflicted Martyrdom Complex.

The definition of it is very simple: A person who through his/her actions, creating an environment where they affect people around themselves in a very negative way. That’s done through religious beliefs, teachings, rituals and such. When the people around them finally reach the point of not being able to handle their environment and eventually snapped, the person with SIMC feels as if they are being persecuted or reaching some new spiritual maturity that requires absolute suffering, even to the point of martyrdom. The idea also has roots in principle on self centered sacrifices to receive public or private attention and privileges. It has very destructive effects on people, and even the persons themselves who is doing it. Most of the time those people are very miserable on the inside, have mental problems, although on the outside they will not let anyone know about this.

Upon learning of this, I just realized my days in LC and all of the people that are doing this every day.

How many of us heard things such as:
- [ ] I want to be a martyr!
- [ ] My marriage is a furnace for the Lord!
- [ ] My wife or husband is my cross!
- [ ] My children are my cross and are there to break me!

I heard a lot of this, and it was awful environment to be in. No one should be subjected to this type of behavior as a Christian, including husbands, wives and especially children. People who are practicing this think they are suffering for God, but in essence it’s nothing but self inflicted consequences of own actions that causes them to suffer.

There is a secular definition that doesn’t involve religion, you can read it here.

https://www.verywellmind.com/martyr-...ome-it-7553595

However when religious beliefs are combined with these traits, it’s a truly unbearable situation. Here is a simple quote from the website above:
…a martyr may “feel that they don’t trust anyone else to complete tasks and they need to do it themselves. In exchange, this person often expects recognition of their sacrifice, expansive praise, and gratitude from others and is disappointed and resentful when they don't receive it." This reminds me of a lot of my days around the people in LC, which is extremely unfortunate and painful. There are a lot of people there that just don’t know what’s going on.

[aron]

Originally Posted by Unreg☆

My wife or husband is my cross!

My children are my cross and are there to break me!

I heard a lot of this, and it was awful environment to be in. No one should be subjected to this type of behavior as a Christian, including husbands, wives and especially children.

This is similar to the learned helplessness idea. Is the leader of your group funneling money to immediate family members? ''Take the cross" etc etc

But does the NT tell us to allow this? Not at all! "Remove the evil man from your midst" and "If he still won't hear you, tell the church".

[aron]

Another example that comes to mind is that when church members' money goes to a for-profit business run by the church leader's family, then the cheerleaders say, "It is a test", supposedly a test from God to see your purity to bear affliction.

Likewise, in the letter by Greg & Jo Casteel, that if they noticed something amiss, they were worried that THEY were wrong! Somehow anyone who sees the problems in the ministry, the leadership or church affairs has a problem with God. Number 1, this is an invitation to abuse, and #2 the person (like Jo & Greg) lives in mental disarray, fearful of God's wrath.

And all of this, naturally, comes from a source with a clear conflict of interest. The teaching to "bear the cross" in this circumstance is published in a book sold by a publisher that's run by the book author! The affiliated church groups use materials written by the owner of the publishing house, with full time laborers whose only job is to promote (sell) the publisher's materials and to get others to go to the training, where they're trained to read more material telling them to obey without question.

And if the trainees notice, they're trained (conditioned, or brainwashed) to think that somehow it's their fault, like they aren't being spiritual enough.

[TheStarswillFall]

Originally Posted by ThankfulForever777

I've observed a trend among many young and middle-aged men within the Lord's Recovery. Many struggle to maintain steady employment or adequately provide for their families. It's disheartening to see a pattern of passivity, where instead of actively pursuing solutions, they resort to complaining about adverse circumstances such as a tough economy or unfair employers. Rather than taking responsibility, they wait passively for someone else to intervene. They won't even adequately pray, fast or have faith in God's promises in his Holy Scriptures.

It's clear to me that these men in the Lord's recovery got damaged by confusing teachings and philosophy of Lord's Recovery.

ThankfulForever777 your assessment is an accurate observation.

I recognized this "learned helplessness" personally after my 10 years in the LORD's RECOVERY. I started meeting just before I turned 30 and left just before I turned 40. (I drank Lee's whole cup while at his table).

Since I have left the LR I slowly but surely identified the deep phycological derailment I incurred while under the non-stop indoctrination of GODS's UNIQUE ORACLE. Under THE TOP APOSTLE's speaking your whole identity outside of the LR is reduced to ZERO. The aftermath is that the real world outside of the LR bubble becomes largely inaccessible to the indoctrinated individual. Your whole mind has been programmed to believe that everything and EVERYONE outside of THE WISE MASTER BUILDER's house is WRONG (somehow).

I do absolutely believe that the world is an evil place and that believers must be set apart unto Christ and His purpose, but one should still be able to navigate this current age with a sober mind under Spirit-lead conviction and revelation. The fact that I relinquished so much of my (God-given) personality during the time in GOD's MOVE ON THE EARTH TODAY uprooted many necessary social skills I developed before my time in THE ONLY GENUINE CHURCH.

But praise be to God, who always leads us unto triumph through Jesus Christ. It has been 5 years since I have left the LR. During these 5 years I became painfully aware of the fact that I could no longer relate in a proper way to:
1. my parents
2. my larger family
3. other believers (BABYLON)
4. unsaved people
5. work colleagues
Yes - practically all of society outside of GOD's BEST.

In all of these environments I experienced a sense of internal "helplessness" that I could directly attribute to my learning under THE MINISTRY OF THE AGE.

Today I can testify that the Lord has brought about a work of restoration (in me) wrt all of those 5 categories listed above.

The Lord emptied Himself and took the form of a slave to serve an evil and contrary world. Only in this way could he be exalted by the Father to be higher than the heavens.

The Lord still has much shining, healing and re-building to do in my heart (emotion, mind and wil) after the deconstruction that took place in THE LORD's ARMY.

Of course I am barely scraping the surface of what I identified as "learned helplessness" in my own personal life experience since I have left PHILADELPHIA, but I hope this is a fitting contribution to this thread.

[TLFisher]

Every child comes into the world helpless, and told (and shown) what to eat, what to wear, what to think and to speak. And there’s always a bias, often implicit, sometimes explicit. “This is the way to do things.” But in fact it is really only one possible way out of many.

From a once upon a time churchkid, you were ingrained with submission and authority. Learned helplessness for me was being raised without boundaries, not knowing it needed to be created, and regretting later in life I never did.
Having boundaries is necessary for youths, young adults, and people of every age. Submission is not absolute when it comes to the brothers.

When we are confronted with a problem, we have no skills to solve it, and resolve the difficulty. C

This is what happens when you want to say no; to self-advocate. You know to comply is the only answer to avoid being labeled.
Little do you realize, your parents are in the same position. When we are confronted with a problem, we have no skills to solve it, and resolve the difficulty. "We are forced to ignore, to pretend."