Frasch Ideas—Examine, Inquire, Explore

Be Careful Where You Look

• Posted by Theresa on February 23rd, 2006 filed in My Musings, Believe It or Not

I am reading Amy Tan’s Saving Fish from Drowning. In the book this tribe has been looking for the Younger White Brother for a hundred years. They studied every foreigner that came to the dock where the first Young White Brother had arrived for signs that would reveal the Younger White Brother.

“These people,” the narrator of the story says, “now so desperate for any kind of hope, saw what they wished to see, the signs, the promise. Don’t we all see them? We wait for signs that we will be saved, or protected from future harm, or endowed with unusual good luck. And often, we find them.”

The mind is so easily convinced, especially when we want to believe or when everyone around you believes. This can be a good thing if you train your mind to believe, for instance, that there is some good in every person or in every situation and you just have to look for it. You will be a very positive person.

But it can be a derisive thing as well. I think back to my church going days and remember when Flip Wilson’s phrase, “The devil made me do it.” became real. Regular church people began looking for the devil in everything. I remember one pastor talking at an Aglow meeting and telling us he had to cast the devil out of his VCR. He had bought it used and was convinced that the previous owners had watched bad stuff on it and the devil was infiltrating his household because of it.

Over a dozen years ago I was very depressed and in an unhealthy, bad marriage. We went to marriage counseling but I couldn’t deal with my marriage until I dealt with me. I did individual counseling with the therapist, read books, took tests, talked to my friends and all things led to - sexual abuse. I had all of the symptoms. It’s hard to explain, but everything seemed to fit and the more I looked back at my life and talked to my family the more real it seemed. If I had stopped with the actual incidents in my life when I was in high school, I might have come out of it okay. But the books, the therapists, the word out on the streets was that a “normal” teenager would not let herself be abused in those situations unless she had been abused in her childhood. And so began the search…who did it to me? I probably had repressed memories said all the books. I wanted the memories to come so I could know for sure.

Instead of dealing with my bad marriage and my depression we went off on another tangent. In looking for the cause, I found the cause. I ended up accusing my father of abusing me when I was little because I had a repressed memory “come forth.”

Coming to the realization that it was not true was a very gradual process for me. Over the years I had gotten away from the group of people and their mindset that said if you have the symptoms of depression then you have been sexually abused. I don’t blame anybody for leading me astray or want to make excuses about how I ended up in that frame of mind.

I will tell you that I was going through hell during that time of my life and the mind is a fantastic thing, it will believe almost anything you tell it to. Having read up on FMS (False Memory Syndrome) I know that is what happened to me. I was immersed in sexual abuse, from my counselors, the groups I went to, the books that I read, and the seminars and workshops I went to. It is almost like a religion, the way one becomes indoctrinated.

I am not saying this as an excuse. I was wrong for believing it. But I did not do it on purpose nor did I do it maliciously. I truly believed it. I didn’t want to believe it, I didn’t want it to be true, but they all told me it was true: If I “remembered” it, it was true.

I feel the same way about my christian beliefs. I was immersed in them and believed them. I was told to look for God, for miracles, for God’s hands in things, and I found them, much the same way the tribe found the Younger White Brother, much the same way I found undeniable symptoms of abuse in my life.

I am careful now. I hope I have learned my lesson. I hope I can share my learning with others.