|
In Reply to: Re: Hi Joseph! posted by Joseph on November 26, 2009 at 09:54:54:
Wow, I had no idea you'd been going thru so much. I can really sympathize because I went thru so much of the same, albeit some of it due to my own devices.
One of my children was born under very difficult circumstances, 100% related to me and her mother being in The Family. As a young child, he was fairly normal apart from the strange things he would do--he casually hurt one of his siblings so badly that he was rushed to the hospital--and the occasional uncontrollable screaming fits he would be locked into throwing. The Family's recommendation on what to do in such situations was/is was to spank him on the mouth until he stopped crying. However, I learned to give him a cold shower, literally, as it was the only thing which would cool him off and calm him down so he would be sweet and "normal" again.
Over the years I couldn't help notice that something was amiss. He was adept at understanding social dynamics, but was always on the outside. He micmicked humor rather than experienced any heartfelt laughter. He knew how to be caustic and sarcastic, but could not empathize. He could never admit to wrongdoing, never felt remorse and would never apologize, but rather mimick apologies (kind of like The Family International). He was always quiet and did well at school as long as nobody messed with him. In any confrontations, things would just deteriorate till there was all out war--nobody would win, everybody would suffer. So we figured he was just stubborn, and learned to avoid deadlocks or mexican-standoffs.
However, it got to a point when he was 15, and as a single father working 2 jobs and running a household all by myself, I needed him to carry his own weight just a bit. I asked that he wash the occasional dish, pick up his dirty clothes, put them in the machine and just press a button. Reasonable expectations, I would have thought. But my "demands" simply made him go haywire--we're talking complete deterioration. To my face he was well-behaved, but the moment I was out of the house, his true colors would show. Believing it was some kind of bad teenage phase, I tried every strategy from being understanding to breathing down his neck. Eventually, he began disappearing from home and leading a gang of older teenagers, committing a series of crimes, including some really bad ones which I would hear about for years afterwards when the police came by enquiring. To cut a long story short, he was taken into juvenile detention at my request.
It was then that I realized, too late, that whatever I had done, whichever strategy I had employed, had just made things worse for him. I tried to bring his counselors' attentions to the fact that he had no conscience. He would say and do whatever was needed to appease me and then go on just like before, and that his true definition of "wrong" was "being caught" (again, very much like The Family International). I tried to explain that he seemed half-autistic, but was dismissed, almost ridiculed. Nowadays you have all kinds of definitions for half-autism, such as Aspergers Syndrom, but at the time, there were no such diagnoses--you were either autistic or not. So he didn't get the help he really needed.
Thankfully, he is now a functioning member of society--as long as nobody prods. Often I wonder how things would have turned out if I'd only known better, if there had been more knowledge about semi-autism.
In the process of dealing with my son, I got fired from 2 jobs, couldn't keep up with house payments and had to move out of my house and eventually sell it. Still, I bounced back, becoming a highly-paid jet-set consultant, flying to 15 countries a year on holiday. But as fate would have it, I got together with a girl who had a personality disorder. As a result of the roller-coaster ride with her and all the distractions in my life, I neglected to file my income declarations on time. So when the IRS came after me for hundreds of thousands in back taxes, I caved in, lost my wealth and even my health. Just like you, everything had vanished in a matter of weeks.
Since then, I've recovered my health and had several opportunities to bounce back financially. But after launching exFamily.org, I decided that my commitment to this site, among other things, means that I cannot live the life I once did, working 70-hour weeks and flying around. Running this site requires constant attention. We get so much to do behind the scenes. So today I am relatively a lot poorer than I used to be, but largely out of choice. I choose jobs which allow me the freedom to organize my own time. I would say I have much better quality of life now. I've just learned not to be wasteful as I once was.
It's good to hear that things seem to be getting under control now. Your business model seems a lot more efficient and streamlined.
