mental health – Page 3 – Homeschoolers Anonymous

Two Messages that Children Internalize that Contribute to Bullying in Patriarchal Church and Homeschool Groups

February 14, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team8 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Sarah Henderson’s blog Feminist in Spite of Them. It was originally published on her blog on January 4, 2014.

Homeschooled children sometimes experience bullying from peers. Part of this stems from the messages that children absorb about themselves.

1. Children respond to the tiered authority by owning the message that they are the not as good as other people and exist to serve people who appear to be more powerful than they are;

2. Children respond to the opposite message that they are the best and brightest and most privileged and enact that power on others.

I have mentioned the issue of bullying in homeschool groups in passing in a previous post, but bullying in homeschooling families and homeschool groups is a serious issue. In a well-meaning homeschooling family from a conservative background, there are several patterns, such as adherence to patriarchal family systems and the sense of responsibility held by the parents to teach their children to succeed in life and grow up to be adults with the same mindset and goals as the parents. There is also often a commitment to having a large family.

This creates unique family power dynamics.

Depending on how the family works, they will send a message to their children that corresponds with one of the point above: that the child is valued and special, or that the child is part of a plan that has nothing to do with the child.

Socialization has become almost a joke to both sides of the homeschooling debate, but the reality is that children who are homeschooled spend less time with other non-siblings, and sometimes this is even the goal of homeschooling. In patriarchal families, children are often authority-tiered in birth order, although preference in the ranking is sometimes given to boys. Sometimes this happens in large families due to the difficulty in parenting large numbers of children, and mothers bring in older daughters to take on various aspects of homemaking and parenting.

There is a large amount of anecodotal evidence that speaks to how damaging sibling parenting can be. There is a series posted by Heather Doney that tells the stories of sister-moms. Many of the personal stories shared on both No Longer Quivering and Homeschoolers Anonymous also outline the difficulties of being an adult who helped raise their own siblings. Children who are part of this tiered authority find themselves always as part of a ranked system, which is different from the experience of children who attend school, who are grouped with peers in spite of status struggles.

Homeschool groups and church “families” are touted as a significant source of socialization opportunities for homeschooled children. However, this means that children who spend most of their time in a tiered family structure are then tossed together as an artificial peer group and left to find their own status among themselves, which is one of the things that some homeschooling parents say they are attempting to avoid. The source for the information in this post is lived experience.

Children in homeschooling groups and church groups vie for status at the expense of each other, just as children do in public and private schools. They put each other down, and use similar ways of determining popularity as public schooled children do, including appearance, status of parents, ownership of desired items, and overall apparent confidence levels. They sometimes use physical strength to exert control as well. Parents do not always see the bullying but it does take place.

However, homeschooled children in these families are also subject to real responsibility/authority status and a tight social circle that is includes all available peers.

Girls sometimes compete to exhibit which is the more capable parent, and it is not uncommon to see these children carrying other children around, usually their own siblings or the young children of family friends. Because it is valued for girls to learn to perform homemaking tasks, girls are put on display to demonstrate proficiency in cooking and parenting, which creates resentment between peers. Financial struggles are a common problem among families with a stay-at-home mother and many children, so girls find themselves ranked in their peer groups according to whose parents have time to contribute to social activities and by common status symbols such as clothing. These families also share clothing, so children with a lower financial status have to wear the cast-off clothing of the more affluent families.

Very young boys in patriarchal families do not always realize that they are being groomed to take part in a power structure, but they do attempt to exert power over each other as much as public schooled boys do. The big difference here between public schooled children and homeschooled children is that since children tend to be part of a self-regulating system (and the parents are busy) there is not as much supervision and few complaints. As stated above, children either internalize that they exist to serve or exist to control. This results in children who are taught to stick to their ranking and do not usually object to unfairness.

Mental health problems are often not identified and treated in children in these circles, and some of the aspects of patriachal homeschooling life may contribute to the development of mental health disorders. This leaves suffering children even more vulnerable to bullying since children suffering from depression and similar struggles may only appear to be quiet and awkward, whereas in a public school they may have been identified as needing a teacher-mentor or recommended to see a mental health professional. An additional problem unique to church and homeschool groups that prevents children from being protected from bullying is that there is no central figure that children can turn to if their life isn’t working like a teacher or principal. Each parent usually has faith in their own children, and all parents in the church group or homeschool group has faith in their system, and it threatens their choices if the system doesn’t work, so there is simply no room for a bullied child to seek help.

Please share your input regarding the differences between bullying in public schools and patriarchal church and homeschool groups!

How I Left My Parents’ Home

February 4, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team4 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Sarah Henderson’s blog Feminist in Spite of Them. It was originally published on her blog on September 2, 2013.

Several people have asked me about actually leaving my parents. It’s kind of hard to explain exactly what happened, because there was not one day when I decided to leave.

When I was 16, I was still attending a conservative church with my parents. In my family we were still expected to wear head coverings all the time, but the church we attended only expected them in churches. So in December of 2004 (when I was 16) I decided to stop wearing one at all – to me you either follow that verse 100% or not at all, and I wasn’t going to be the only one. I also secretly purchased jeans and changed into them on rare occasions when I was allowed out with church friends.

The summer of 2005 around my 17th birthday, I went for a week to visit my very secular grandparents in another province. They asked me some questions about what I wanted to do for a career.

I had not been asked that question, as my destiny was to get married and be a homeschooling mom even though I didn’t want that.

My grandparents mentioned that I couldn’t go to university without a high school diploma, and explained that I probably couldn’t even get a GED with how little schooling I’d had. This was news to me since I’d always been told our way was the best way to do anything, but it had the ring of truth.

When I got home, I looked into schools. I found I needed to have parental signatures to attend at age 17, so I privately convinced and cajoled my mom to sign, which she did, although it is my belief that she thought I would give up. My father refused to sign when he found out, and no one told him my mom signed, and the school accepted one signature and none for the bus (as I recall) because by then my mom was too scared to sign anything else. What is confusing about this is that in the summer my father drove me to take an ACT test (useless in Canada) which seemed to encourage academia, but it was with a bunch of homeschoolers so maybe it was the in thing to do for homeschoolers.

Miraculously my parents did not physically prevent me from going to school on the first day, I think because they knew it would probably be noticed if I didn’t go after all the trouble to sign up and get placed into many different classes across all four high school grades. I was expected to wear dresses. That lasted for a few weeks, and then I pulled out the secret pants. My parents tried to force me to change but I refused, and I ran out to catch the bus in a whirlwind of shame.

I quickly made friends with Christian kids at school that were mostly my age, some a bit younger. Two friends I made were sisters, and I would go to their house sometimes for ‘homework projects’. We were on the same bus route so it was easy to do, and their parents drove me home if they asked.

I was invited by other friends to a youth group at a mainstream Pentecostal church. I asked my parents for permission and they said yes sometimes and no sometimes and sometimes would drive me and other times refused when it was too late to find another ride. This was about November.

During this time I opened up a bit to the family I mentioned above with the two sisters. Once at their house I mentioned how hopeless life was with my family and that I was very upset (I didn’t really know what depression was). They told their parents, and somehow I ended up staying at their house for the weekend and just never went home (about November or early December 2005). I know that their dad went to several meetings with my dad and his church friends, and the consensus from my dad’s angle was that at 17, CAS would not force me to return home and it was better not to get the police involved to try and get me back since I was too far gone in rebelliousness anyways, and CAS might take a hard look at seven younger children who were not attending school.

I was able to get a few things from my parents’ home, but my father didn’t waste any time to completely pack up my room, junking most of it and putting lots of my stuff into the damp garage. I basically started life over with the family, I continued going to school, getting decent grades, going to church and youth group, and spending time with friends.

I’ve never really talked publicly about this before, but I need to talk about mental health here. I believe that I spent my first 17 years in some kind of survival state of mind. When I got out and was living with another family, I experienced a whole different lifestyle. The parents worked and provided for the family. I had a few chores like some laundry and dishes, but my job as a student was to do school.

There was also this whole unconditional love bit, and for the most part the emotional state of others in the home was predictable.

Children got pats on the back for doing something well. There was a certain expectation for behaviour and no one really crossed it- it just wasn’t optional. There were no out of control behaviours, because they were taught how to behave when they were younger.

One big problem I had was that I was so used to being told no that I assumed that parents just said no to be nasty. I had to learn at 17, at home and at school, that some stuff was ok and other stuff wasn’t, and how to tell the difference. I had to learn in a flash how to use judgement because I was never taught that. My philosophy had just been ‘do whatever you need to do to stay out of trouble and try to enjoy life’. But in school and normal family life there are rules to follow so that you don’t violate the rights of others and everything runs smoothly.

I didn’t know that.

It was very hard on me to experience this “culture shock” and to realize how bad I was at relationships.

I had to go to grade 9 math, which I found very shameful. I didn’t know what the bells meant at school. I didn’t know how to share tasks at home. I realized I was very selfish after years of looking out for myself for all those years, and it was impossible to just switch that off when I was in an environment where there wasn’t too many people competing for too few resources. I also realized by comparison how chaotic, unreasonable and toxic my home environment had been. I didn’t know. And then it hit me that I still had siblings there.

It was a very difficult few years. I fell into depression for a while, but I somehow continued school because in this family school wasn’t optional so thankfully if you weren’t sick you went. The family also supported me in making regular calls to CAS over the next two years, so by the fall of 2006 my next brother and sister were enrolled in school at CAS’s recommendation, and the following fall my father was forced to leave the home by CAS for non-compliance and all the siblings were enrolled in school.

I also had many excellent teachers over my three years in high school who seemed to look for the good in students and were compassionate as long as I was trying. Between being granted some credits and earning the rest in three years, I graduated at 20 with a real diploma and I was given a plaque from the principal at commencement – a student leadership award. After graduating high school I was able to go to university and get both a BA and a post graduate degree in four years, and graduate from university on the Deans list.

I no longer have any kind of relationship with my father at all, and my relationship with my mother is complex, as do many of my siblings still live with her.

There is no one reason why I left. Obviously I had quite a bit of help, and there must have been a certain obstinate streak for me to seek out that help.

I have been free for 8 years now. It’s great.

Nightmare in Navy and White — Experiencing the Dark Side of ATI: Selena’s Story, Part Three

December 18, 2013May 13, 2020HA Editorial Team11 Comments

Nightmare in Navy and White — Experiencing the Dark Side of ATI: Selena’s Story

HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Selena” is a pseudonym.

< Part Two

Part Three: The Hard Road Ahead

For the first few months, I was a recluse, constantly in my room obsessively praying for God to cleanse me, to forgive me, to surround me with protection from this terrifying world I was thrown into. I was surrounded by a world I had had nothing to do with for these years. I suddenly had freedoms I didn’t know how to handle. I had spent all this time with my every move planned, with every trip to the bathroom a privilege, every little thing a potential reason for shame and punishment. Now the shock was too great.

Eventually, I became suicidal.

I felt I was a failure, I would never be pure. I attempted suicide and my mother sent me to a mental hospital as a last resort. As she had drifted away from ATI’s teachings somewhat, she regained trust in getting medical and psychological help when necessary. Unfortunately, still feeling like the inferior, patriarch-less mother, she leaned on these figures to solve all of our problems and refused to just be a mother to us, unable to handle the responsibility.

At times she would instruct me on what to say when she dropped me off at the mental hospital so that they would admit me as a “danger to myself”, and she didn’t have to deal with me while I recovered from the abuse I had suffered. It was the same problem that had her handing me off to counselors and then Eagle Springs instead of taking time to love and care for me as her child; now the pattern continued to repeat itself time and time again.

My days in the mental hospital were traumatizing as well (the shock of being locked in a facility with people screaming, banging their heads, cursing, being wrestled to the ground and injected with sedatives, and so on is bad enough in and of itself – but here I was with full blown, undiagnosed PTSD, coming from the most sheltered life imaginable straight into this!). But there was one good thing that came out of it. For the first time, when I mentioned very cautiously a small hint of what I had been through, I was told that I had been abused. The counselor worked with me to get me out of my shell, and seemed truly disturbed at my level of trauma.

And for the first time in my life, I got a glimpse of understanding that what had been done to me was wrong.

I went home and began to change. I was an emotional wreck – but for the first time, I was angry, and I was tired of being hurt. Then one day my mother tried to get me to go back to church – the tiny little church we went to full of ATI families. I knew by the way she had been acting that I was likely to be subjected to another series of humiliation, prayers, exorcisms, and so on. And for the first time, something inside me just broke.

Now, all these years I had never truly known the police or CPS could help me; all these years I was told to fear these people, never speak to them, because they might come and get us for being godly homeschoolers. They were our enemy; to us, they were the Romans and we were the suffering righteous church hiding carefully in our own homes. We sent letters of thanks according to Gothard’s teachings – but we were always in this state of fear about the war we thought everyone was waging on believers like us. Now, in the hospital, I had been told the truth: that they could help those who had been harmed. I was told that I had options, if there was abuse in my home.

It really shook my whole view of the world. And I wanted more of this merciful world that I had glimpsed.

Presently, the situation began to escalate. I told my mother I did not want to attend church. She started to grow angry, weeping and yelling, and I knew what it could mean for me. Suddenly, I just looked my mother in the eye, and quietly but confidently threatened to call the police if I had to.

My mother’s eyes filled with shock. She took my sister to church, fearfully avoiding me, and never invited me to church again. I saw through her now, and she could never return me to my naive state again. She knew she had lost me. I was kicked out and sent to live with a relative – who was told a lengthy tale about how rebellious and out of control I had become. I was punished further, but since they worked daily, I was left more or less to myself most days.

And so, at 16 years old, I left ATI.

I was never my mother’s daughter again. They left the cult shortly thereafter, reluctant and angry that I had ruined their happiness again. I would never outlive the title of black sheep. I was able to tell my mother some of what happened before she passed away recently, but it will never truly be resolved.

The rest is history. Raised by a family who was wealthy, my rejection of the cult meant I was instantly plunged into desperate poverty. I spent the next 8 years clawing my way from the brink of homelessness, through a relationship that turned physically abusive (even in retrospect I don’t think I, nor anyone else, could have ever guessed that this guy was abusive, by the way – lest I be lumped in with those stories you hear all the time of abused people jumping from one abusive relationship to the next), past a few brushes with death and finally onto a shred of solid ground. My mother passed away this year; the last of her years were spent spiraling into severe mental illness, paranoia, alcoholism and addiction, and she died suddenly while in rehab.

My siblings have gone on to live the high class life, carefully hiding our family’s dark secrets behind flashy cars, million dollar homes and grand parties. They have long since learned to mimic the abusive behavior of my parents toward me, never really knowing or caring where it began. I have tried to build a life on my own, far away from my family and among kinder people. Circumstances brought me back into contact with a dear friend of mine from when I was young, and today we are engaged and living together in a happy relationship.

Through these years I searched for my own spirituality, and through many twists and turns, I landed somewhere outside the box. I spent years of study simply saying that I was an agnostic; I suppose in a sense that remains true, because I feel that faith is, after all, lacking a certain amount of evidence. Today my faith rests in the wisdom that seems present in most religions and belief systems, and in staying stubbornly aloof from religious control of any kind. I will never believe simply because I’m supposed to again. I will always ask, research, study, seek, and never be too comfortable that I know all the answers. I have settled on a more natural spirituality, and found that in many corners of spirituality I once considered damned to Hell, there are in fact some of the greatest truths I could ever know.

Through the years, I began to listen to secular music, dress normally, and slowly grow accustomed to modern living. Now I can’t see for the life of me what they were so afraid of! I am happier now than I ever was under Bill Gothard’s regime. They promised me freedom, but all I got was enslavement. My life now is true freedom: Responsibility for myself, not for my authorities. To find my own answers, not be forced to believe another’s.

I still suffer from very severe PTSD; I think it’s only to be expected. I’m not sure what healing looks like for this kind of repeated trauma, or if it’s even fully possible; but I try to take it day by day. It’s not the best of endings, but a firm and resolute one.

After all, I’m an “apostate” now – and we never give up!

Finding Freedom from My Demons: Nicholas Ducote’s Story, Part Two

December 11, 2013May 13, 2020HA Editorial Team17 Comments

By Nicholas Ducote, HA Community Coordinator

< Part One

You’re just “spiritually sensitive,” they told me at six years old, my young mind racing with anxiety. As my parents entered further into the labyrinthian maze of fundamentalism, they took my mind with them. My parents were convinced that Gothardism held the solution to my issues. If religious options and doctrines were a grocery store, my parents plopped down on the Gothard Aisle and expected me to also enjoy their strict diet of Gothardism. Instead, the doctrines on spiritual warfare, the Umbrella of Authority, and Strongholds increased my anxieties – sending me into a state of hyper-vigilance at night as I waited for the demons.

For years, I confused invasive thoughts, which everyone has, with a Satanic assault on my mind.

I began conceptualizing my mental illness as spiritual warfare very early on, probably by the time I was 7 or 8. Recently converted, it was the only paradigm my parents accepted so they explained things to me through that lens. When I had nightmares night after night, my parents told me it was the rock music I could hear through the walls that my sister listened to – certainly not our rapidly changing family dynamic as my parents tried to apply fundamentalism to my older sisters when they had already begun high school.

I remember one night, perhaps after attending the Basic Seminar a second time, my parents decided we should burn all the things in our house that possessed “demons” or a “demonic influence.” This included books and movies and music – especially my dad’s vast collection of rock and roll from his youth. We had to purge our home. As time went on, I was sucked further into this idea of spiritual warfare causing mental, and even spiritual, issues. My education in creationism only further complicated science and confused me about how my body worked. It was not until college at a public university that I began to understand how the brain worked. I slowly realized that many “mysterious” feelings and thoughts, which supposedly originated from God or Satan, were really my own brain simply working.

There were a number of Gothard’s doctrines that caused a great deal of fear.

One of the most problematic doctrines is the Umbrella of Authority.

In this model of communication with God, divine inspiration and guidance flows from God, to the male parent, then to the female parent. It’s clear in this model that wives are subordinate to their husbands and ATI leaders preach that a woman’s first duty is to submit to the male leadership in her life. For wives, that means their husband. For daughters it means their fathers. In this model, the father is the only person in the family unit that has a sort of “direct connection with God.” By this, I mean that if a child believed God was calling them in a certain direction, the child could only pursue that option if their father “confirmed” it with God. This model profoundly impacts a child’s conception of themselves.

If you disagree with your parents, you are disobeying God.

If you are outside of your parents’ Umbrella of Authority, then you are literally opening your mind to Satan and demons.

This brings me to what, in my life, was the most abusive and damaging belief. Gothard rejected the idea of mental illness and replaced it with a concept of “Strongholds” in your mind. Gothard preached that when humans disobeyed God, or their earthly authorities, they allowed Satan to “build a stronghold in your mind.” From this Stronghold, Satan could tempt you and further lead you down the path to darkness and evil. One of the most common weaknesses for teenagers was rock music and dating, which Gothard believed was one of the fundamental reasons why teenagers rebelled and became perverse. In another giant leap of logic, Gothard argued that physical ailments could be caused by Strongholds. Literally almost every cause in your universe stemmed from your spirituality, which included everything from Christian Contemporary music, to apparently demonic Cabbage Patch dolls, and of course Disney.

So over my teenage years, I gradually developed intense anxiety, insomnia, and panic attacks. I would lay awake in my bed, staring at my door waiting for demons to come and get me. This very real fear was stoked by Jim Logan, who would tell his Real Life Ghost Stories. Logan would preach about his many exorcisms, how African masks would literally scream and cry out if lit on fire, and how children’s misdeeds attracted demons into a Christian home. Especially rock music! I prayed incessantly, sometimes screaming with eyes filled with tears, for God to take away my fear and anxiety – but nothing ever happened.

It was because the cause of my mental anguish was not demons and spiritual warfare.

In fact, the further I get away from my internalized fear of demons and possession (taught to me exclusively through ATI), the better I sleep, the less afraid I am of what’s behind the shower curtain, the more confident I am to walk through a room with the light off, and it is because my brain no longer feels like its survival is threatened by the invisible forces of evil.

In my teenage years, some of the only relief I could manage to muster came from listening to a local modern rock radio station. First, it connected me with the outside world and gave me hope that one day I could be in that world and not the one I was trapped in. Second, it allowed me to enter all the conversations my peers had about their favorite music. Third, it gave me something to focus on that took my mind off spiritual warfare, demons, etc. Unfortunately, I was also taught to believe that rock music would open my mind to Satan. I struggled with the cognitive dissonance for a year or two until I decided that the peace I received from rock music was far more important than risking demonic possession (which I was starting to believe less and less). I figured, with all my rebelling as a teenager, if I hadn’t been attacked by demons yet I was probably alright.

It’s not uncommon for precocious, smart children to develop anxiety – as I now know my “sensitivity” is really just anxiety – but my parents only worsened it by focusing on solely spiritual causes and solutions. When we prayed, when I prayed, when we “cried out” – whatever Gothardist ritual we preformed – it never made me feel any less anxious. As a result, I felt like I must not be a real Christian or must have some sin in my life stopping God from helping me. I don’t know how many times I prayed the sinner’s prayer, afraid that whatever I had done before wasn’t “sticking.” I started finding a way out of the anxiety, and sometimes intense panic attacks, by learning about my brain. Not from fundamentalists, but from scientists who studied the brain – neuroscientists.

In the back of my mind, after I left the house, was always a voice warning me that my actions would attract Satan – that he would ruin my life because I chose to live outside my father’s Umbrella, to reject the concept of Strongholds, and I listened to rock music. For quite awhile, I struggled to find out who I was, beyond my fearful subordination to a fundamentalist God.

I now know that I have a form of complex PTSD, which is triggered by my parents and their fundamentalism, especially when they judge my “sinful lifestyle.”

For the longest time, I didn’t know why certain things they said or did would “launch” me into an irrational, emotional state. Sometimes it was something inanimate, like the American flag covering my old bedroom wall or the library of fundamentalist literature I was pressured to read and apply to my life. It doesn’t affect my life much anymore, but it did quite a bit into my early-20s. Part of the reason is because I rarely communicate with my parents anymore. Despite my best efforts, most of our interactions end with me being triggered by their lack of acceptance or the cultic doctrines they still try to evangelize me about. This isn’t a story that takes place wholly in my past.

The third and final part of my story discusses how (as a 25 year old) I am still impacted by my parents’ fundamentalism.

Part Three >

Finding Freedom from My Demons: Nicholas Ducote’s Story, Part One

November 18, 2013May 13, 2020HA Editorial Team17 Comments

By Nicholas Ducote, HA Community Coordinator

Friends of mine and readers of Homeschoolers Anonymous may notice that, despite my involvement in HA from the beginning, I’ve yet to tell “my story.”

At first, I wasn’t sure what my story was or what information I wanted to make public, so I waited. I also hoped my gentle public criticisms of homeschooling would start a dialogue with my parents. Quite the opposite: they talk to everyone but me about HA.

I do not want a bad relationship with my parents, but I am no longer willing to limit my expression in an effort to try and appease them.

It’s sad because my parents no longer participate in ATI, but they still hold to the most radical and cultic beliefs promoted exclusively through Gothard and his allies in IBLP and ATI. Sometimes I see glimpses of the loving, fun people that my parents are, but the religious fundamentalism preached by ATI hijacked our relationship.

To put it simply, I was raised in a homeschooling cult (ATI) and my parents were/are emotionally manipulative and spiritually abusive. It has taken me a long time to be able to write that, and for the longest time I didn’t want it to be true. But my time reading others’ stories and talking about our complicated parental relationships, patterns began to emerge. I hope that telling my story can help other troubled young adults to find ways to assert, defend, and express themselves with their parents. As for me, I’ve given up waiting for the fun, loving version of my parents to take over the fundamentalist version.

Many people will call me embittered, angry, or any number of pejorative terms to delegitimize my story, but I am not telling my story in an attempt to lash out and hurt my parents. I am telling my story because I now know that my story is not unique. All across America, former homeschoolers are dealing with convoluted and dysfunctional relationships with their parents. Sometimes parents give up the rigid legalism of Gothardism as they age. But my parents did not.

All too often I see the scared little boy (me) that my parents created — cowering in fear of reprisal, instead of confidently asserting my thoughts and beliefs.

This may seem odd to the people that know me because I am far from meek in debates about politics and religion. I debated competitively for eight years, which makes me good at finely tuning my advocacy to avoid conflict. Over the past few years, I’ve carefully avoided answering questions about my religion because I was too afraid of the reactions my immediate family would have.

It was easier to lie to them than to deal with being their “project.”

So for all the people who wonder where I am coming from — and I know religion is prima facie to many Christians when weighing an argument’s or source’s validity — here is it all laid out.

I am a non-Christian Theist.

I believe that there is something in the universe that is omnipresent and supernatural — unexplainable by modern scientific knowledge — but it certainly is not some father-God-Lord-Universe-Creator. I believe the universe originated at the Big Bang, which may have been triggered by aforementioned supernatural being, and life evolved. I believe humans have consciousness that is equivalent to a soul. I arrived at these beliefs through years of study, exegesis, and weighing of all sides. I don’t need evangelizing.

As far as the Old Testament of the Christian holy scriptures, I view them as a typical ancient history where a cultural group claims some supernatural justification for their conquest. I do not believe a loving God would order genocides, but I believe a group would commit genocide in the name of God and defend their actions with “God told us so.” I view Muslims, Christians, and Jews as essentially the same monotheistic religion, relying on ancient incorrect history to prop up a modern religion. That said, I believe the modern forms of these religions look nothing like they did in their original form. All religions evolve substantially over time, often changing core tenants or relying on arbitrary man-made decisions as Divine Truth (i.e. Council of Nicea, Papal Ex Cathedra, etc.).

When it comes to the New Testament, I believe that the historical Jesus was nothing like he was portrayed in the epistles and NT outside of the Gospels. Jesus was likely a real person, but the historical Jesus and verifiable source texts do not reflect the modern Biblical interpretation of Jesus’ divinity. That said, I believe Christianity, like Islam, Judaism, and many other religions, introduced many great moral codes to humanity.

When I traveled to Afghanistan to teach debate, I could not believe how similar the rural orthodox Muslims were to patriarchal fundamentalist American homeschoolers. (I’m sure some of you are incensed reading that, but remember I’m just being honest). Women were treated as second-class citizens, many were forced into a form of “stay-at-home daughter,” and laws discriminated against them. It was the exception for a young Afghan girl to attend as much school as her male peers, and certainly to attend a university.

Modesty is also rigidly enforced in both cultures, to an obsessive degree. Only in Afghanistan and American homeschooling have I seen so many arbitrary rules regarding modesty only for women. Granted, the level of modesty required of American homeschoolers does not reach the level of the burqa, but the philosophy and its outcome is relatively the same thing.

Just like many of the rural Orthodox Muslims, patriarchal fundamentalist American homeschoolers want their version of Christianity enforced through the government. Afghans also revere and respect their elders – a tradition that thrives in patriarchal fundamentalist American homeschooling. Even as a married adult, my advocacy in America faces the “you’re just a rebellious bitter child” line all too often.

The similarities were haunting and during my month there I started writing what would become a catalyst for the stories that built HA.

My mind made so many connections and being in the repressive atmosphere brought back so many memories. Even teaching Afghans debate mirrored my experience teaching patriarchal fundamentalist American homeschoolers. At first, they could not grasp the idea of arguing both sides — since they had been raised to only believe in one side. But as the light bulbs went off they lit up and they were so excited by debate. One thing that struck me was how religiously devout the Muslim students of the universities remained. Although they were among a very small cohort of their peers who attended secular universities, they all left the debate tournament after lunch to pray. The entire tournament halted because they needed time to pray.

Something like that would never happen at an NCFCA tournament!

My next essay will focus on the impact of ATI on my childhood and teenage years. And the terminal third essay will explain how ATI’s toxic teachings continue to poison my relationship with my parents.

Part Two >

Be Excellent To Yourself: By Rene

October 19, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team4 Comments

Be Excellent To Yourself: By Rene

HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Rene” is a pseudonym.

I’ve been reading Homeschoolers Anonymous since the very beginning and really love this community. Perhaps now I can give a little back! I want to tackle the writing prompt number five: “Practices, techniques, etc. that you have found helpful for managing your mental illness.”

My background in mental illness involves a family riddled with various mental health challenges, all exacerbated by the isolation of homeschooling, poverty, and living in another country.

My personal “mental health profile” includes OCD, Tourette Syndrome, general and social anxiety, recurrent episodes of depression that at one point led to several months of being suicidal, and many years of disordered eating. I’ve never had access to therapy, but the last few years have seen steady progress toward greater and greater quality of life for me. There are so many variables and things you can try and I love the way the internet gives access to so much support and knowledge and research, though it can be overwhelming at times!

The things that have been most helpful for me personally have been:

*****

1. I realized that a lot of the problems I was having were normal reactions to extreme stress and trauma.

It was okay for me to be in pain and not functioning well, just like it would be okay for me not to be capable of running with a broken leg.

2. I started learning to celebrate small, even minuscule, victories.

It might seem ridiculous in the grip of depression-fueled cynicism, but keeping a daily gratitude journal or literally patting yourself on the back for, say, going outside on a one-minute walk, can over time add up to big improvements in self-care habits. As a former fundamentalist, I had to get over the habit of bashing myself for my deficiencies and weaknesses. Instead, I just recognize that if I am struggling and still manage to do something beneficial, then that is awesome and time to celebrate!

3. I learned some things about diet and what my body needed.

Vitamin D3 supplementation is what I credit with getting me out of the suicidal hole I was in. Since then I have learned a lot more about what my body needs, including that I can’t do gluten and that as long as I eat a balanced, no-grain diet I no longer struggle with binge eating. It turned out that most of my eating disorder was physiologically-based and getting over that has had many ripple effects on my happiness.

4. Living simply but in a consciously hedonistic way, that is, simple living in order to promote pleasure, not deprivation, has been and continues to be one of the ways I care for my mental and physical health.

It has helped a lot with my OCD and Tourette Syndrome, though leaving my parents’ house several years ago and no longer being constantly on edge from emotional abuse also helped erase most of my symptoms.

5. I consciously try to treat myself well.

If I would not yell at a stranger or child or friend for doing something, then why yell at myself for doing it? This helps a lot with my social anxiety and the guilt I tend to feel when I make faux pas, which has in turn helped me gain more and more confidence and make a lot more and better relationships.

*****

These are the main things that have helped me.

It’s been four years now since I hit rock bottom and thought life would never get any better, four years since everything looked black and despairing, and now I’m pretty damn happy. I never knew it was possible to be so consistently happy and resilient — and I purposely am not using the Christianese “joyful” here — I mean happy, not gritting-my-teeth-determined-to-be thankful.

I hope that if you are struggling my story gives you a little bit of hope.

Be excellent to yourself.

Recovering…: By Lana Martin

October 18, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team8 Comments

Recovering…: By Lana Martin

A while back, I had a vivid dream.

I am standing in my parents’ house. The house I grew up in. The house that, in my waking hours, sends shivers down my spine at the mere thought. Police have ordered an evacuation of the area.

Something terrible is about to happen.

I tell my parents they need to leave the house. Get in my car and drive away with me. They seem to not hear me. My dad is sitting in his chair, watching a muted TV. My mom is sleeping in bed. No, really, I tell them: we all need to go. I feel panicked. I’m responsible for moving them to safety. As they fail to look at me or stir, I realize that I have to leave. Their bodies seem trapped in a soundless chamber. There’s no hope for us to escape together. If I stay, I will die. I go back to my car. As I pull onto the highway, I feel deeply sad and guilty. I feel as though I’m abandoning my family and that I should to go back for them.

As I drive on down the highway, I sense a giant explosion behind me. The house I grew up in has disappeared into a massive, fiery mushroom cloud.

This dream took place at a point in my life when I was actively confronting my past.

I was coming to terms with the physical abuse, the emotional abuse, the spiritual abuse. I was trying to shed the deep shame I had long carried about the way I was homeschooled for eight years. I lived, for the most part, in isolation and received no parental education. I read and “graded” my own workbooks. I assumed domestic responsibility and took care of my mother, whose mental health and functionality deteriorated as our years spent homeschooling progressed.

The house that exploded was my prison for eight years.

The living room was where my mother slept on the sofa all day. The kitchen was where my slapdash dinners of canned and frozen food were consumed in uncomfortable silence. My parents’ bedroom was where my father beat me as a small child. The family bathroom was where I nursed the bruises and welts.

My bedroom was a sanctuary, almost shielded from my mother’s overbearing scrutiny of my thoughts and emotions.

The field behind this house, it was the true oasis. Freedom could only be found in the open prairie grassland. Trees, unlike my distant father, do in fact hug back.

Children who are homeschooled in the fundamentalist Christian subculture are particularly vulnerable to the effects of unmanaged mental illness. Stigma surrounding mental health problems is particularly strong when one’s wellbeing is tied to a positive relationship with God. Fundamentalist Christians often avoid psychiatric help and effective talk therapy due to their skepticism of scientific and humanistic thought. Learning disorders are seen as malevolent inventions of the public school system. Violence toward women and children can be normalized and justified with authoritarian, patriarchal ideology.

Black-and-white thinking and paranoia-driven behavior nicely fill the Reconstructionist mold.

Adolescent depression is perceived not as a medical condition or experiential phenomenon, but as a sinful teenage rebellion. The imposed isolation characteristic of many abusive homeschooling situations only worsens these problems for both parents and children who are struggling to identify and manage a mental illness.

I used to see myself as just another survivor of child abuse and family dysfunction, another piece of collateral damage in the Christian fundamentalist “culture war”. My homeschool situation was a failed social experiment, a delusional fantasy of my mother’s quite realized, a convenience for my father. These are clinical, academic terms and they reflect the stark lens through which I rigidly viewed myself, my history, and the psychiatric symptoms I experienced as a young adult.

And, so I thought, my depression, anxiety, insomnia, hypervigilance, dissociative episodes, panic attacks, persistent sadness, suicidal thoughts, and explosive anger might be easily resolved once removed from the toxic home in which I grew up. I should be able to get over the past and move on with life once free, employed, and college-educated. But it didn’t work out that way.

Ten years later and 1500 miles away, I still felt like an awful person, permanently damaged, incomplete.

I still drowned in shame when I thought about my past, but couldn’t shed a tear over my injuries and losses. And I still experienced quite a few undesirable symptoms of unresolved stress and trauma. I judged myself harshly for this perceived failure.

Fast-forward to a point in my life, five years into therapy, when this stoic attitude begins changing. I see my parents more clearly for who they are: selfish, exploitative, and severely maladjusted. I know that neglect impacted me perhaps more so than abuse. I struggle to feel present because I was not seen, valuable because I was not respected, calm and centered because I was not protected. I cannot remember a time when I did not feel responsible for my parents’ welfare, simultaneously fearful of my dad’s anger and my mother’s psychotic delusions.

In working with these memories and feelings in therapy, I have gradually let down my defenses. I have peeled the proverbial onion down to the part where, if I was hurt by the other person in the room, my usual defense tactics of denying, rationalizing, dissociating, and, perhaps, hissing and growling would not be enough. But the other person in the room has not hurt me, and deep vulnerability has in fact not been unpleasant.

My instinct to fortress my soul is quite strong; my desire to regenerate and heal is yet stronger.

Reacquainting myself with buried emotions has led me to feel more fully human and deserving of kindness. Through the years of sorting through my fragmented memories with my therapist, through time I remember, feel, and react to them in a new way. A way that resonates in some deep place I hadn’t known existed. That feels more relieving than triggering. That clears self-doubt from my narrative.

My therapist demonstrates empathy for me through each of these developmental phases; in turn I feel compassion and forgiveness for myself in the past and present. Because of this experience, I’m hopeful that one day I will feel comfortable discussing my past outside of that oasis.

I want to believe my therapist is not the only person capable of appreciating my true self and the strange experiences of my childhood.

Hindsight tells me that my intuition led me to this place because I wanted to see what it would feel like. I spent a young lifetime fearing authority, internally fighting coercion, and managing my image to please others, prevent conflict. I was curious what it would feel like to let go, to allow someone else to do the fixing, the soothing, the pushing, thinking of the right words to say and being most concerned with how I might feel in response to them.

At some point I began to sense this happening. It felt incredibly, intoxicatingly good.

Some days I feel really sad without knowing exactly why. I often dream of losing something very dear but not actually knowing what it was. Now I know at least part of this loss. And now I grieve my injuries and losses, in words and tears, alone and with others.

At the end of my dream, I did not mourn the shattered house.

I kept driving away, without looking back.

It’s a Long Road Out of Depression, But There is a Road: By Lana Hobbs

October 18, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team3 Comments

It’s a Long Road Out of Depression, There is a Road: By Lana Hobbs

HA note: Lana Hobbs blogs at Lana Hobbs the Brave. Lana describes herself as “an aspiring writer and a former religious fundamentalist” who currently identifies as “post-Christian.” She was homeschooled in junior high and highschool.

College freshman.

Achy back, achy bones, dizziness and blackouts, inability to focus, crying at school. My head, oh my poor head always hurting. Always tired, so tired.

Sick sick sick.

Why?

*****

Going to the doctor: exercise more, eat healthy, we can give you antidepressants to help cope with school stress.

Antidepressants? You mean witchcraft? No thanks.

*****

Blood tests, chest x-rays, nothing looks wrong.

Is it all in my head?

*****

Go to church: pray more, trust more, confess your sins

*****

At home: love us more, if you loved us you would be happier here. Why don’t you sing while you work?

Dizzy, sick, tired. Will I pass out?

Blacking out again.

Just not happy. Why not happy? Trying.

*****

In bed, listening to music to fall asleep. Going to bed late. Scared at night, sensing demons around the room, why are they attacking me?

Pray more, think holier thoughts.

Evil girl, evil, evil girl.

*****

At school: must get perfect grades. Crying over a bad paper, afraid of failing.

*****

Failure.

Everywhere I am failing.

Failing to keep healthy, failing to be happy, failing to handle stress gracefully. Fail fail fail. I should die, i should die and stop failing — suicidal.

*****

This is what depression looks like for me.

I didn’t recognize it because I didn’t believe in depression. I thought all one needed for mental health was faith in God and I had that. And I tried to have it more and more. I prayed and felt guilty and despaired that if I couldn’t handle school stress, I would never be able to succeed as a missionary. I also had severe anxiety — my demonic attacks turned out to be anxiety attacks, and treatable by medication and therapy.

It was years before I finally got help. If you have unexplained sadness, exhaustion, and sickness, please get help. Medication isn’t really ‘witchcraft’ and therapy isn’t ungodly psychobabble. There is help and hope for a healthy mind.

It’s a long road out of severe depression, but there is a road out.

Take it.

(For the whole story about my journey from being in denial about depression to taking meds and getting therapy, see my series, “from shame to seeking help.”)

I Hope That I Get To See My Sister Again: Elizabeth’s Story

October 17, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team5 Comments

I Hope That I Get To See My Sister Again: Elizabeth’s Story

HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Elizabeth” is a pseudonym.

Growing up in a fundamentalist family is a unique experience for everyone.

For my ten siblings and I, we were consumed by an “attitude of gratitude” that our parents instilled in us from an early age, and any lack of gratefulness was a rebellion that had to be beaten out. They also taught us that an illness was God teaching us something, and intervention was only acceptable under dire circumstances.

Due to this mentality, we were blind to the mental sickness that was creeping slowly into each and every one of us, accepting it as “normal” and “God’s will”.

Though we all suffer from varying degrees of mental sickness, one sibling experienced hardships that surpass anything the rest of us have faced. When my oldest sister was a little girl, our grandmother (we called her “Nana”) noticed that she was adopting a passive state and not acting normal for a girl her age. When Nana pointed this out to our parents, they just brushed it off and were offended that anything could be wrong with a child under such “attentive” care.

Another factor was that they didn’t (and still don’t) believe in health insurance, so any medical expense was out-of-pocket, and only mild care like dental health was taken care of due to the impoverished lifestyle our parents adopted for all of us. This selective blindness allowed our parents to see my sister as a girl in perfect health and focus on building character and obedience.

Years passed, and my sister became more and more withdrawn, putting on a face to keep our parents happy.

Her life was becoming a miserable mess, but she didn’t show it for fear of punishment and rejection. When she went off to Harvard (something that didn’t happen without a big fight), she was still marred by the view on healthcare we were raised with, and didn’t see a professional to start working through her issues, mostly because she didn’t see them herself. A life of neglect was all she had ever known.

Upon graduation from college, she moved to Germany for business and to be with her husband. She would visit home once or twice a year, trying to maintain a relationship with the rest of us at home even though her relationship with our parents was crumbling. She was able to keep this up for 12 years, but spring of 2007 was the last straw. As everything she had tried to smother surfaced, she was overcome by the depressive state our parents modeled as “normal”.

She stopped coming home.

We kept up by email over the next two years, but she stopped that also because I, in my naivety, had become the synapse between her and our parents. I was hurt then, but looking back, I see that it was the best choice given the situation.

In early 2009, my family came home from vacation to hear a phone message from her (my sister’s) sister-in-law. My sister’s husband had committed suicide. When our parents successfully contacted my sister to express their deepest sorrow, she was very upset that they knew, and replied via an official stamped letter from her lawyer stating that she was changing her legal name so we couldn’t find her. My understanding is that some siblings were in contact with her after that, but those communications were eventually cut off as well, and none of us have seen her in over 6 years, or heard from her in over 4 years.

My family was seen as the pinnacle of perfection by most, and what happened behind closed doors was viewed by select individuals who couldn’t do anything to help.

As I begin to realize how neglected my siblings and I were, it frustrates me even more that our parents think it isn’t their fault. Observing the individuals my siblings and I are becoming, they are blind to the reflection our instability has on them, thinking it’s our fault for leaving the community they created. As some of us seeked out therapy and realized that communicating with our parents regularly was hindering our ability to heal, they compared us to my oldest sister, assuming that the months will turn into years for the rest of us as well.

I hope that I get to see my sister again someday, but I am now starting to understand why she cut off contact.

I can’t hate her for that.

Picking Up the Pieces, But Not in Twelve Steps: By The Prodigal Son’s Brother

October 16, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team4 Comments

Picking Up the Pieces, But Not in Twelve Steps: By The Prodigal Son’s Brother

HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “The Prodigal Son’s Brother” is a pseudonym.

Today, I was denied treatment by a mental health facility.

I set the appointment up through a crisis hotline a month ago, and thinking I was finally going to get help was the glimmer of light on the horizon … and I was denied treatment.

They recognized that I had severe depression. They recognized that I was suicidal. They recognized how much my background in the Homeschool movement has contributed to my issues. They recognized that I am in a new city where I don’t have much of a support network.

But still they denied me therapy, because they said a prerequisite was for me to complete their 12-step-based alcoholism program.

Now, the assessor knew, because I told her, that I have used drinking as a crutch in the past. She also knew that I have been sober for two weeks, through sheer willpower. But before they would even let me talk to a therapist, I had to complete a program, and the one they offered was 12-steps-based. I voiced my opposition to the 12 Steps on religious grounds – the AA 12 steps are incredibly religious – and she denied they were religious. “Atheists use it all the time,” she claimed.

How, I wonder?

Here are the twelve steps, according to Wikipedia:

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

How do you “make a decision to turn your will and your life over to God” if you don’t believe in god?

How do you “humbly ask” something you don’t believe in to remove your shortcomings?

How do you seek through “prayer and meditation” to something you don’t recognize?

But deeper than the simple religious differences is something much darker. Step one: “We admitted we were powerless…”. Steps five, six, and seven involve “the nature of our wrongs”, the removal of “defects of character”, and “remov[ing] our shortcomings”. For an alcoholic who has been damaging other people with his or her lifestyle, these might make sense. But a prerequisite for therapy for someone who is already dealing with shame?

How exactly can I work with a counselor or therapist to feel my own worth when I’ve just come from a program in which I’m constantly expected to assert my own shortcomings?

Because, as I mentioned, I set this appointment up a month ago. I have been hanging by a thread, but I am alive.

As Penn Jilette said in the Bullshit episode about AA,

What about people who say, ‘But AA works. I’ve got a brother … who was saved through AA.’ Well great, but give your friend some credit: he made the choice to quit when he picked up the phone, and it worked because he wanted it to work, and he made it work. He wasn’t powerless, he was powerful.

And that’s the point that the “mental health” facility didn’t seem to grasp. I cannot enroll in a program that starts off with an honest admission of powerlessness, because my willpower is the thing that has kept me alive for the past month. Even the willpower to ask for help in the first place.

Right now I feel very empty due to the loss of a hope I was holding on to. I am picking up the pieces and determining where to go from here, but the notion of taking my life has not suddenly increased. If anything, I am more determined than ever to live, and I hope I will find the help I need.

Because I am not powerless.

I am powerful.

And so are you.