INSIGHTS — New tab on top menu bar

twbtc ♦ 19th June 2015 ♦ 8 Comments

UPDATE Sept 2021: I have come to believe that Jeff Crippen does not practise what he preaches. He vilely persecuted an abuse victim and spiritually abused many other people in the Tillamook congregation. Go here to read the evidence. Jeff has not gone to the people that he spiritually and emotionally abused. He has not apologised to them, let alone asked for their forgiveness.

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Analogies are wonderful learning tools.  Good teachers will use analogies to help their students make sense of new information by comparing the new with something they already know.  Teachers know that a good analogy can provide helpful insight and deepen one’s understanding.

Likewise, our readers have provided us with some excellent analogies which have given us insight into the confusing and complicated world of domestic abuse.  Recently one of our readers suggested we make those analogies easier to find by gathering them together. Thank you, Reader, for that suggestion. We have done just that.

We have created two new pages; one page of analogies from the comments and another page of analogies from our posts.  To accommodate these new pages we have restructured the GEMS tab on the top menu bar.  Instead of GEMS the tab is now called INSIGHTS.  Click on the tab and you will be given three options:  GEMS – Great Quotes (which has not changed) and the two new pages:

Allegories, Analogies, and Fairy Tales — from Comments 
Allegories, Analogies, and Fairy Tales — from Posts.

We hope you will find these helpful and encouraging.  Here are two examples of what you will find.

By Barbara Roberts — The Backstitch Analogy

The take home message for victims is: it’s okay if you find yourself making one step forward and one step back. In fact, it is often a sign that you are coming out of the black hole, and healing is occurring.

The Lord showed me a truth about this: one step forward and one step back is like backstitch in sewing. Backstitch makes a stronger seam than running stitch. The overall progress is forward, so don’t worry about the fact that sometimes it seems like you are going backwards. The Lord is just bringing about your healing so it is good and strong in the end and cannot be easily pulled out by the catches of life.

By Ps Crippen — The Shell Shock Analogy

Judith Herman says in her book on Trauma that in WWII the military learned a bit more about “shell shock” (later turned out to be PTSD). What they found is that soldiers who were traumatized needed to be treated close to the front lines near where their company of fellow soldiers were, and the sooner they could get them on their feet and back to their buddies, the better for them. Why? Because of the bonds that formed between those soldiers in the misery of war. Furthermore, they found that soldiers who were in a unit that was led by an officer who was confident and competent bore up under the trauma of war much better than those soldiers who weren’t blessed with such a leader.

And so I thought. That is what we have here at ACFJ. We have a bunch of soldiers who have been traumatized. Here, they are able to form bonds with one another and do some “talk therapy”. They can hear from others with experience in the fight and be encouraged as they are told “hey, this is what happened to you. This is what it is called. It happened to me and this is what I have learned.”

I suspect that there may well be more help being given to victims and survivors here than we all might realize. It’s like when veterans who had been traumatized in the Vietnam War started getting together in small groups to talk about what had happened to them. Over time, people started listening to them. Maybe that will happen with all of us here. Maybe more people will start listening.