Holy Shit. This Is How the Duggars' Homeschooling Curriculum Allegedly Dealt With Sexual Abuse.

[zazen]

55. paradoxically crazy-making teaching, but it contains means of ultimate emotional survival

The victim-blaming is ridiculous, of course, but immediately internalizing the locus of control is always appealing if you feel you have no other option (that's what we all unconsciously do when someone is victimized--we say, well, that wouldn't happen to me because I --fill in the blank). If you're young and you think you caused it by the way you are dressed, just like the way all abused children would prefer to blame themselves rather than admit they're at the mercy of crazy abusers, the shock of the violation is more tolerable. You tell yourself, I had control--I just failed to exercise it--not, I didn't have any control no matter how hard I could fight back.

But speaking as a survivor of long-term trauma myself, ultimately, after the anger and putting causation where it belongs, the only person who can reclaim one's life is the survivor themselves, and often that takes the form of faith in "God" (that can be inner strength, light, universal consciousness, whatever your brand of faith and/or cosmology. . . ).

So when they talk about inner resources that "God" --a.k.a. our spiritual nature--provides us to deal with and rise above physical trauma--well, that's consistent with Victor Frankl's writings on surviving the Holocuase and a lot of other wise survivors, like survivors of sexual victimization, batterers, crazy-making alcoholics, etc.

I can imagine if you've been schooled with this blend of misogynistic victim-blaming and fundamentally sound teachings like the ones at the end, you'd feel that an attack on any of it is an attack on all of it. You'd feel that you'd moved on through this blend of crazy-and-reasonable, so anyone who questions the original attribution of blame just wants you to live in the pain and victim identity and not "move on."

I think so much of the fundamentalist mindset works because there are parts that make sense, blended in with the crazy. The parts that are psychologically resonant--and when you think about it, that's got to be there for it to have any sticking power, reinforce the person when the delusional parts of their belief system are challenged.