Hello again starchild. You touch on some very significant issues with the BKs here:
starchild wrote:The huge added difficulties in the BK environment are; firstly, they are self focused, so the lack of awareness of others feelings is more pronounced.
You obviously experienced the harm of that firsthand. I remember becoming gradually more concerned about this aspect while I was still there. On a number of occasions, I became very concerned for individuals who experienced a personal tragedy, and the complete lack of permission to respond with real emotion, or have the experience validated by the supposed family of BKs. I still think this is a very damaging aspect of the BKs.
This quote of yours:
When it became obvious that I was getting worse, not better I was no longer welcome in the way I had been..
I think encapsulates a great tragedy and the huge irony of a system that believes it is saving the world. A system like the BKs is not self-reflective. It is externally focused and preoccupied with presenting a perfect face to the world. That takes precedence over everything. Nothing can be tolerated or accepted that reflects back to the group the possibility that it might be failing. If you or I, in our grief and time of need, don't get over it quickly enough and prove that their message works, we have to be sidelined and labeled as the one who has it wrong.
The BK system, which I have described elsewhere as
shame-bound fundamentalism, very closely models the system of the dysfunctional family -
don't talk, don't feel, don't reveal, don't rock the boat, don't tell the truth. In the dysfunctional family, the child who cannot tolerate this, begins to
act out and is called the IP - identified patient. The parents, or extended family, truly believe that this child is the one with the problem. So it is with the BKs. We are no longer welcome if we are not contributing to their status quo and sense of success.
The alternative to
acting out is
acting in, or internalising and suppressing all our true emotional responses, needs, energies, until we no longer know what they are. I believe that many BKs who stick around for years practice this. I certainly did, and many years later I am still unraveling that. For me, the BK system tapped into my own internal system that had been set up in childhood, and compounded it. I don't know if that is true for everyone.
starchild, it sounds as though you have come a long way. I don't know who you are, but we were around at the same time, and I remember a truly terrible family tragedy. I remember being appalled at the thought of how the BKs might try to "help" and at the stupid and useless Murli quotations used to try and explain it. It was another event that definitely contributed to me moving away from the BKs. Clearly, you have moved on too, and I hope this forum helps you examine your BK experience and come to useful insights and even greater healing, as it has for me.