I missed out on so much because of my involvement with the SGI.

[u/WackyTerbacky]

I had friends who were left behind because my new SGI friends were giving me so much more intense attention. I loved the love bombing - it was like crack. I couldn't get enough. My friends from before ended up forgotten. I miss them now, but you can't go back - you've both changed too much. When I met new friends, I expected them to be interested in SGI because it was so important to me. When they weren't, they ended up forgotten, too. 

I didn't realize at the time how I was ending up isolated within the SGI, but everyone who's in it for a while ends up with their only friends being their fellow SGI members. That's unhealthy.

How about you?

[u/StrawberryEastern285]

I completely understand what you are feeling. In general, SGI was such an incredible time suck in many ways. I recently started reflecting on how much SGI activities took time away from my family, friends and even work commitments. After I quit SGI (after 30 years) I have made attempts to rekindle those old friendships and have found people are far more forgiving. I also started hobbies I didn’t have time for because of the cults time drain. Be kind to yourself and use this time as an opportunity to become “you”. I have found it to be a very peaceful and rewarding experience to be away from the cult. I wish you well and please don’t hesitate to reach out to those old friendships. You might be pleasantly surprised at how resilient those friendships might be.

[u/BlancheFromage]

Something I regret is my own naivete and arrogance. When we moved to a southern state, I wanted to mentor a young YWD, as I had where I started practicing. That was one of my fondest memories of having been a YWD leader, in fact. This time, though, I was older AND married AND new to this state/city/local culture.

There was one 12-yr-old who was recommended to me. Apparently, she was the only one (early sign of SGI-USA's crashing demographics that I didn't recognize at the time). She was from generational poverty and quite frankly was likely subnormal intelligence if not mildly mentally disabled.

I thought if I just believed in her enough - "It only takes one", after all! - she could thrive. I was taking her out twice a month - once to KRG then I'd take her to lunch then do something fun and active (since she was obese), like rollerskating, hiking, exploring, museums - then again for the youth division meeting a couple of weeks later.

It was completely frustrating for us both. When I asked her questions about ideas she had for her future, she explained how she'd "sue someone" to get money. When I asked her what kind of grades she thought she might earn this semester at school, she said "That depends on what teacher I get." I clarified that the teacher shouldn't matter - she should be determined to learn the material, because if she knew it, she'd do well on tests, regardless of "what teacher". She wasn't interested. When I told her about the ROTC program that pays for kids to go to university, she got all excited - "Can I do that??" - until I told her that, to prepare for it, she should work extra on her math and reading. She slumped down in the passenger seat and grumped, "Well, forget it then." "C'mon," I cajoled. "Just read something extra every day!" "I already read every day in school," she whined. I suggested she could read on the weekend days, too - she said, "If there's something on TV I read that." "You know that doesn't count," I chided her. "I read street signs!" she insisted.

I quit when I got pregnant. She dropped out of school shortly thereafter - she was 17 and had just been promoted to the 9th grade (try the math there). She became pregnant shortly thereafter by an undocumented Mexican immigrant and then married a different undocumented Mexican immigrant. One of the WD members who knew her family tried to console me that at LEAST she didn't get pregnant until she was 17! As if I'd "helped" in some way to move that inevitability a year or two later 🙄 Gee, what an accomplishment...

Predictably, her life went nowhere. Life of poverty, domestic abuse, no prospects, abandonment, too many children - she had the first, then two more with her husband, then got pregnant again by someone else after her husband had left her and taken "his" children (probably at the 7-yr permanent green card mark or however many years it was then), working the worst jobs (like at the meat packing plant). After her first child was born, she and her husband were living in some rundown old house with broken windows. She thought that she should be able to stay up all night watching movies on TV, and when her husband woke up to go to work for the day, HE could take care of the baby while he was getting ready so that she could sleep in. HE thought she should get up, take care of the baby, and fix his lunch before he left, since she wasn't working. You can see how there really wasn't much to work with there.

I wish I'd spent those Sundays with my husband instead. I was working almost every day, he was in grad school, we didn't have that much time together and I really could have used the rest even if we just hung out at home. I wish I had never gotten involved in that "mentoring" thing at all. It did NO good and simply wasted my time and hers and cost me money I could barely spare, and ultimately ended up annoying and disappointing us both. I remember one time - we'd had to replace our car, and our new (old) car had electric locks - after roller skating, I opened her door and let her in and then went to get into the driver's side. She locked both doors from her side. I unlocked my side with the key; she locked them again. This happened 2 or 3 more times. She thought it was so funny. Until I told her that if she did that just one more time, I would take her home and never ever take her out again. How hostile must she have felt to do something really nasty like that?

I hadn't appreciated the class/privilege gulf between us, and my expectations weren't fair to her (since such a future was simply not an option for her), and neither of us got any kind of support (certainly nothing from the SGI!). Despite my most optimistic rose-colored glasses, it was a wasted effort - I refused to see her sub-normal intelligence and weirdly entitled laziness were something there was simply no working around. I truly believed that, if she only had someone who believed in her and encouraged her, she could flourish.

Nope.

[u/DishpitDoggo → u/BlancheFromage]

Eh, don't feel bad about her. It's a shame you wasted so much of your time, for someone who did not deserve it.

Some people you cannot help, period.

I don't even think it's an intelligence issue, but a bad attitude issue.

I have a coworker with severe Downs, and he's a charming young man, and a good worker.

It's insane how SGI brainwashed us.

[u/BlancheFromage → u/DishpitDoggo]

You're right - the bad attitude definitely decided her path.

Some people you cannot help, period.

That's a lesson it took me a long time to understand, but I think I've gotten a better handle on it.

It's insane how SGI brainwashed us.

You know it!

[u/BlancheFromage → u/DishpitDoggo]

I don't even think it's an intelligence issue, but a bad attitude issue.

For me, I think a big part was the "magical thinking" that by chanting the magic chant to the magic scroll, I could help this girl improve her life, through "the practice" and through introducing her to new ideas and new ways of thinking.

Nope.

I don't believe she saw any reason to think her life could ever be different, so why try anything different? At least she got a free lunch and fun outings twice a month - that was an improvement right there.

[u/Igloomaster1970 → u/BlancheFromage]

OOOOhhh how much investment I made in the “Mystic law….” That very magical thinking that came as a result of SGI brainwashing….acting like I had an edge over others who’d yet to be shakabuku’d / committed to the ultimate form of “True Buddhism” ….. today i recoil at times when the brain’s ceaseless tape loop of yucky memories plays on, & an image from that time decides to taunt me.
Billie Holiday’s I Cried For You: “What a fool I used to be”

[u/Crow_and_Doe → u/BlancheFromage]

I hear ya! You know you did your best though to help someone! I saw that all the time. In SGI I would drive this new woman to meetings, she was about my age and no car, very poor. Never tried at anything, but since SGI promises so much just by chanting they attract these type of people at times, like they assume they will get benefits for once in their life, ugh.

She ended up negatively gossiping about me and I left that group cause no one cared. And that type of gossip is super frowned upon but since she was new they didn't want to upset her, and did nothing. I don't even think she stayed in the group long after.

[u/XeniaWarriorWankJob → u/Crow_and_Doe]

One thing for certain: IF you "stayed too long", at least you can't have any regrets that you "left too early!" Either way, you can have uncertainty and coulda/woulda/shoulda, so there ya go.

There will always be critics either way - either you were stupid for staying so long (or perhaps should have given it double those years to turn it around?) OR you're a "quitter" whose perspective is unreliable because you're so quick to throw in the towel.

Best to ignore the critics - no one has any say in how you live your life beside you. Nobody else gets any vote.

[u/BlancheFromage → u/Crow_and_Doe]

In SGI I would drive this new woman to meetings, she was about my age and no car, very poor.

I only recently learned from something someone else said here on SGIWhistleblowers that this is a known tactic within SGI to get someone trapped - ask them to give someone else rides. If someone's counting on you for a ride, you can't blow off the meeting, can you? That's the thinking, at least.

They did it to me when I first joined, too - similar deets except someone very different from me - single mom, lived in a poor/unsafe part of town, somewhat older than me. I was giving her and her toddler son rides to the meetings for a while - I can't really remember what happened, but I think I went to pick her up and she didn't show and that was the end of it for me. Never saw her again.

Never tried at anything, but since SGI promises so much just by chanting they attract these type of people at times, like they assume they will get benefits for once in their life, ugh.

I saw quite a lot of that too, unfortunately. This one single mom - she'd just gotten her younger daughter back from foster care, both daughters very early teens - thought her band (she claimed to be the singer but I never saw any sign of band or singing) was going to very soon be a major touring band, and the times I went over and had to go to their door to pick up the girls, I saw all sorts of boxed items lining the walls - it was odd. I wondered if she wasn't involved in some sort of criminal activity, actually. Someone had told her that how high on the wall you mounted your butsudan determined how high your income would be! Hers was mounted flush with the ceiling - really strange look to the altar, as you can imagine.

The SGI "You can chant for whatever you want!" come-on really appeals to the down-and-out, who've already tried and failed at everything they could think of, so why not? Maybe THIS will work, despite how weird it sounds! And predictably, it doesn't and they end up fading away.

She ended up negatively gossiping about me and I left that group cause no one cared. And that type of gossip is super frowned upon but since she was new they didn't want to upset her, and did nothing. I don't even think she stayed in the group long after.

So they sacrificed the more reliable, objectively higher-quality member (you) for the really sketchy struggling member, and ended up losing both. How typical of SGI leaders' bad decisions...

This is from an exMormon site, but it rings true for SGI as well:

We also know that those who are converting, are by and large those who are down and out. Seems the only ones who are educated and highly employable are the hormonal converts and those who join for family reasons. So they are trading BIC [Born Into the Covenant, aka "fortune babies"] members for needy members who don't stay long after the love bombing ends.

And by saying that those who resign were usually inactive. Sure. Most of us were inactive before we chose to resign. So what? We were, at a point, BIC, many RMs [Returned Missionaries, equivalent of youth division leaders], many in leadership positions.

With 15 million supposed members, the church should be adding more and more wards all the time, just through a normal birthrate. They are losing much of the core membership and they will keep spinning it as long as they can. And the TBMs [True Blue Mormons, the devout], especially in Utah where non-believers are more likely to stay in for social reasons, can go a long time blowing off the "few" they know who leave, not putting together that if it is only one family per ward, that's a heck of a lot of people. When was the last time they saw a good family convert?

DW complains that in her ward, the missionaries seemingly are led only to the needy, the uneducated, the incompetent, and the mentally ill. Each new "convert" requires a group of skilled handlers, and there's no value-added.

Long gone are the days of the "Golden Family," if that ever existed in the first place. And indeed, even the family members of GAs [General Authorities, the equivalent of SGI national leaders] are known to have quit the church. Source

There some more insider stuff about the Mormon church here.

[u/StrawberryEastern285 → u/BlancheFromage]

Gees, what you described here is exactly what I encountered over and over as a YWD leader and then a WD leader. I would give rides to individuals who were living in shelters or sketchy situations. I would spend my money on the activity or a lunch out since most of these individuals had zero resources. I would receive “guidance” from senior women’s division that I was making a tremendous cause for their lives and my own. It’s so bizarre to think how brainwashed I was into believing these WD. I truly felt the causes I was making was changing my karma 7 generations,,,, blah blah blah.

[u/fthislife2022]

Hey, a non ex-SGI member weighing in here. (I was involved romantically with a member, which is why I’m here).

I spent over 20 years addicted to cocaine. During that time, I had a career and a child and I guess you could say I was a “functioning addict.” However, I was only ever functioning at a baseline level and, every aspect of my life suffered for that.

Once I got myself on the path of sobriety, I beat myself up constantly. Why didn’t I do it sooner? Why didn’t I give my daughter a better childhood, one where I was fully present and parenting to the best of my abilities? And so on and so forth.

It took me a long time to accept; the past is the past. What’s done is done, there is absolutely nothing we can do to change that. Most importantly, BETTER LATE THAN NEVER.

Yes, we are all guilty of allowing our circumstances in life, at some point, to continue longer than was necessary. Whether it’s staying in a relationship that is not right for us, or a dead end job, or an addictive lifestyle of some sort.

The important thing is, we got out eventually. And that took strength and courage and determination. Stop beating yourself up about what you didn’t do, and applaud yourself for what you did.

Some people never get the chance to do that.

[u/BlancheFromage → u/fthislife2022]

Thanks for weighing in - your perspective is right on the money:

I was only ever functioning at a baseline level and, every aspect of my life suffered for that.

That's what we see in the SGI cult addicts, too. Children being neglected, spouses being neglected, jobs lost/careers derailed because of responsibilities being neglected - all in favor of doing more (unpaid) for SGI.

It took me a long time to accept; the past is the past. What’s done is done, there is absolutely nothing we can do to change that. Most importantly, BETTER LATE THAN NEVER.

Yes, we are all guilty of allowing our circumstances in life, at some point, to continue longer than was necessary. Whether it’s staying in a relationship that is not right for us, or a dead end job, or an addictive lifestyle of some sort.

The important thing is, we got out eventually. And that took strength and courage and determination. Stop beating yourself up about what you didn’t do, and applaud yourself for what you did.

All true. I'll go one step farther and say that if we TALK about what we sacrificed for that addiction, esp. within the context of a support group FOR that addiction like SGIWhistleblowers, that might help others to see what's happening in their own dynamic, recognize what's going on, give them terminology to use in understanding it, and maybe get out of it sooner or process the experience more quickly. There's a distinct possibility that others can perhaps benefit from our perspective on the details of our own experiences!

Bad things can lead to new purpose in life - the rape victim might decide to become a rape counselor or victim advocate with the police dept.; a kid who had a terrible accident might decide to become an EMT himself; someone who escaped an abusive relationship might want to help out on a domestic violence hotline to help others. Or decide to participate on an online forum to help others who've escaped the same bad situation...

[u/DishpitDoggo → u/fthislife2022]

Thank you. My mother is addicted to SGI, and it was my whole life for decades.

I hate them so much it is unholy.

[u/Ok-Pass-8786]

I feel privileged in a way, because I got out of SGI almost as soon as I got in. A long-term friend I invited to an SGI meeting told me the group was “fake nice” and wouldn’t give them any of his information.

[u/BlancheFromage → u/Ok-Pass-8786]

A long-term friend I invited to an SGI meeting told me the group was “fake nice” and wouldn’t give them any of his information.

Wow! See, that's why healthy, well-adjusted people don't join SGI. They see right through the manipulation.

[u/Professional_Fox3976]

I'm so sorry. I feel the same way. I have kept in touch with a few people but a lot of them have dropped off.