A couple of years ago, another young victim wandered into the FDR forum:

Benjamin wrote:

My name is Ben and I've been listening off-and-on to the podcasts here for I think about a year. Initially I would only listen to a couple, and the shock of some of the ideas that I heard would send me scurrying away for a while. I have always been very curious and found coming back for more was irresistable. At this point, I come to the website and listen to podcasts quite often. I have heard many compelling arguments here, some which are completely new to me, and many which have crossed my mind in one way or another before. I know Stef's position on Ron Paul, and I agree with it, but would like to give a little credit where I think it is due. His recent campaign is really what triggered my exploration into libertarian philosophy, not that I couldn't have been inspired at a later date, by something else, but this is how I came to the discussion, and I am glad for that. This is my first post here, and I hope that I can become a valuable contributor in this community. It seems like there are so few people with an interest in intellectual integrity, and that is quite sad. Hope to talk to some curious and rational people soon! Sincerely, Ben

He was still in touch with his family:

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I'm 23, a recent college grad, working full time in Chicago. I have a degree in Psychology from The Ohio State University, and now I'm doing mechanical and electrical drafting for an engineering firm. I was raised in Columbus, Ohio and only recently moved to Chicago for this job. I was raised Presbyterian, but over the past few years I have come to realize that there is no god. Like I said before, I became interested in Libertarian ideas during Ron Paul's campaign, but have been moving more in the anarchistic direction since finding FDR. I still see my family, and am struggling with how I want to breach issues such as atheism with them, as the majority of them are quite christian (at least nominally). I consider religiosity to be the biggest problem between myself and my family. Otherwise, I enjoy music, philosophical conversation, sports, good beer, and exploring Chicago.

Now in Seattle, he recently asked his mother for money to have therapy. She sent the money:

Quote:

I am feeling nervous to write this post. I really really don't want to talk with my parents, not even by email. My mother very suddenly plopped a thousand dollars into my bank account for therapy, and it made me uncomfortable when I saw that. I feel trapped by the thousand dollars. I don't know that the last sentence makes any sense. I am having a lot of trouble thinking logically about the money. There are strong parts of me that want to just take a break from my family right now. There are other parts that feel some obligation to wait because of the financial help. There are other parts of me that want to wait until after my birthday because I'll be getting a bunch of calls from family. My birthday is on Friday. I am sensing that my defensive walls have been working in overdrive. At work, because I deal with a volatile population, I have to put my feelings aside and stay calm and collected for my clients. At home, ever since just before I started this job, I have felt mostly blocked off from myself. There have been times when I have tried to reconnect with myself by journaling or listening to one of my favorite albums, and it feels like I can sense incredibly strong emotions, but they are on the other side of my defenses. It's like I try to beat up against this wall, and while I may find a tiny crack here and there, it has remained strong despite the incredible torrent behind it. When I'm not at work, I want to get connected with my thoughts and feelings, so I can deal with them, and grow as a person. I wonder how my 25th birthday will be for me emotionally. I'm not looking forward to all the phone calls and all the small talk. I need help understanding what my confusion is with the money that my mother put in the bank. I wonder why I decided to ask my mother to help pay for therapy.

He thinks he's involved with a "crazy cult"

Quote:

Earlier today, I was thinking a lot about the possibility of going ahead and taking a break from family, and leaning emotionally on the side of doing it. This evening, I was doing some journaling and I ran into parts of me that are against this. I am feeling strong ambivalence about it right at this moment. I was to some degree trying to engage these parts, but not directly. I was trying my best to describe them and to talk about their importance, and to invite them to the table, and to reassure them that I saw them as important, not only in the past but also in the future. I was thinking about the possible role that parts of me that opposed negative thoughts about my parents would play. The role that they would play would be to protect me when I was dependent upon my parents. Negative thoughts about my parents when I was a kid would have been dangerous, and so parts that would have attacked me morally for having those thoughts, and blamed me for any problems, or called me crazy, would have served to protect me and to maximize my ability to thrive in my environment. I tried to thank these parts for doing that. I feel like those parts are very active right now. I want to find a way to incorporate those parts into my internal system in a way that is healthy and will allow me to act in my best interest. I'm afraid that those parts are going to derail me in my quest for growth and health and happiness. One message I am getting from those parts is that I've got my relationship with my parents all wrong. Another is that I am bad for thinking such negative thoughts about my parents and that I am even worse for considering not seeing them. Another thing I am getting from these parts is that I am crazy and that I have gotten sucked into a crazy cult that I have gullibly let convince me of all these wrong things about my family and about possibly breaking from them. I feel emotionally sick and twisted up. I am also already self attacking for choosing to take the birthday phone calls, to not take a break from family, and to just continue on as I have been doing, holding these values but not living them and not living with integrity. I haven't even made this decision yet. Another part of me is afraid that I will never do what I need to do to be healthy and happy. This is all getting pretty ranty now, so I think I'm going to stop as there is a lot here. Does this all make sense?

He's seen a therapist:

Quote:

I have found a therapist and I'll start this Tuesday. I talked with her a bit and she says she is comfortable with everything I have told her, including the possibility of not seeing family. In fact, she says that she has even recommended that to people before. I'm thinking about focusing on the ambivalence that I have with regards to seeing family right off the bat. This question is one I've been thinking about for over a year now and I'm tired of being stuck in ambivalence land. It is time to move forward in my life.

Maybe the therapist would not have been "comfortable with everything" if he'd told her he's "gotten sucked into a crazy cult that I have gullibly let convince me of all these wrong things about my family and about possibly breaking from them".

Happy Birthday Ben. You are having these doubts for a very good reason. You really have been sucked into a crazy cult.

This is an amazing and tragic self-documentation of someone's recruitment and absorption into a cult!

You don't normally see this kind of self-awareness. Typically, the victims are more like Candace--one of her early posts was about how she couldn't imagine being separated from her mother. Her later posts were about the evil of her family--but she never appeared to realize or acknowledge role that the "crazy cult" played in it. I think she believes she came to her beliefs completely on her own.

But Benjamin is amazing. I hope he has the courage to give his therapist "On Truth" to read or some of Molyneux's essays about family.

And so it continues. April 30th post:

Benjamin wrote:

SUBJECT: I don't want to be vulnerable with my parents I don't want to be vulnerable with my parents. I am terrified of them. I don't want to face all the fear and pain and then get smashed up or manipulated or confused or stifled... I have written a letter describing my decision to take a break from communicating with family and asking for this choice to be respected, and I have placed it in an addressed envelope, but I have not yet put it in the mail. There is a bank account issue that I have some worry about and that I cannot deal with until the bank is open on Monday. I think that I will feel more comfortable sending the letter that I wrote when I know that the bank account issue is resolved. I am feeling strong feelings of anger, sadness, pain, fear, frustration... I am sick of being stuck in a holding pattern. I am terrified of going the RTR route with my family and don't feel capable of doing so. I hate the doubt that I feel about whether or not to take a break from them. I tend to think that if I took a break from seeing them, it would be permanent. I am afraid when I think about what it would be like if I chose to take a break from them and then needed them again for some reason. I have a laundry list of reasons why I don't want a relationship with my parents and why the relationship has been and still is unhealthy. I seem to understand the problems intellectually, but often the feelings I have seem disproportionately small compared to the subject. What if I don't want to be vulnerable in an RTR style confrontation? What does it mean that I don't want to? What are the consequences if I chose not to? What I can't do is go on as I am right now. I am so stiffled and depressed and angry and sad and everything else that makes life not worth living and nothing that makes it wonderful and fulfilling.

I wonder how similiar Benjamin's "passage" is to other FDR victims. In all the time I've been watching, I've never seen a victim document their transition into the cult with this level of detail about what's going on inside.

So now he is "terrified" of his parents. Okay. Initially, the only thing he complained about was their "religiosity." He cannot see that the only thing that has changed over time is him.

The FDR-inspired defoo is actually a lot sadder when you watch it in progress.

Benjamin wrote:

To any extent that I have doubts, I hate it so much. The parts of me that tell me that I am wrong about my parents, or that I am bad for thinking what I do about them and that I would be bad for not seeing them do exist. I hate these parts and I want them to either provide me with an argument and or some evidence of their assertions or that my thoughts and feelings about the relationship are questionable, or to shut the fuck up.

Is this Benjamin's "cult personality" in the final battle with his genuine personality? Who's going to win this time?

I feel for him; sounds like he's really struggling to figure some things out. I don't want to comment on his personal life beyond that, but yeah, it's really interesting to see such a high level of awareness of the battle between the pre- and post-FDR personalities.

This caught my eye:

Quote:

What if I don't want to be vulnerable in an RTR style confrontation?

There's a battle going on within this sentence between the romantic notion of RTR as peddled by Stefan (Christina and I talk for hours, share our deepest vulnerabilities with each other, end up even more in love, etc, etc) and the reality of how he encourages RTR to be used (wherein the "I'm not saying you caused these feelings, I'm just saying I feel them" line seems to be used to avoid having to give family members any concrete complaints and thus any possibility of doing something to rectify the situation). What he failed to get from the FDR doublespeak is that you don't actually have to be vulnerable in defoo-style RTR, you just have to spew out enough cryptic nonsense to get your family members to react with confusion and fear, so that you can dismiss them for not being unconditionally curious.

Admin's in our forumz, moderatin' our postz...

Welcome back, Karen! It seems to me that the mother's last email is totally in line with RTR. She communicated desires, feelings, and physiological reactions. She asks questions and shows curiosity. No blame-throwing, no accusations, although with the help of FDR members he seems to have read that into the email all the same.

Your post also got me thinking... I wonder what FDR members' position is on parents intervening when their children get taken in by organizations that FDR members deem to be cults. Especially if the child resists the intervention. Should parents respect their (adult) children's freedom of choice and association no matter what? Or is it neglectful to let your child wander into something that "clearly" is a trap that may cause life-long damage? If they do think intervention is justified, what about borderline cases like FDR? Where does one draw the line? They'd probably dismiss the whole thing with something like "Well if the parents had done their job properly in the first place, the child wouldn't have been attracted to the cult."

And, in the battle between Benjamin-personality and Benjamin-cult-personality, we have a winner!

I recently decided to take a break from communicating with my family.

So, one more family gets a heapin' dose of FDR heartbreak. Molyneux's reply was typically insidious:

"In the past, have they asked you why you are in therapy, or what sorts of issues you were working on? I'm just thinking how I would act if my daughter told me, years from now, that she was in therapy for family issues..."

Translation: "Don't forget, B. They've been ignoring you for years! And welcome to the team!"

interesting Stef response (also not sure I agree with your

Quote:

on's) interpretation) [quote]I must say, this seems to me like a pretty decent letter to get under such challenging circumstances -

which seems reasonable, but then the responses of the others who are out-FDR'ing Stef in the sense that they are responding in the way that Stef used to respond (picking apart a parents' letter like that to expose what it 'really means'), but didnt now.

Even the OP seems a bit ticked off at Stef's response, probably having expected a response more negative of the parents' letter, "analyzing" all the supposed hidden, sinister messages in it.

I supposed it hinges on how you interpret Molyneux these days. Either he (A) is becoming more reasonable in family matters or (B) has simply polished up his act.

I'm strongly in the "B" category. I don't think it's an accident that the next tier down members are doing the job Molyneux used to do. (In public.) I do think that Molyneux has greatly compromised himself (as the absolutist I still believe him to be) in his public behavior simply to improve his reach in the promotion of FDR. If his closest followers had an ounce of awareness, they'd should feel greatly deceived by all this.

Based on that, Molyneux's response makes perfect sense to me. He gives an obligatory ht to the parents to make him look reasonable, followed by a faux expression of sympathy, followed by a little dig--hopefully "proving" to Benjamin that his parents don't care enough to know why he's in therapy.

New dog; same fleas.