[Today’s guest post is by Sunny Pereira.]
Scientology in the 1970s was known for being a fun place, a cool hang out, a place to make new friends. This appeal brought in many new followers. Scientology was supposed to be a different kind of religion, a hip and cool one.
Although the general beliefs and goals of Scientology have not changed over the decades, the day-to-day operations have in many, many ways. I believe that the evolution of Scientology over those years has made it hard for some to back away and say, hey, this isn't what I signed up for.
Some have woken up and realized they did not want to be there, and that is what this article is about.
Has the desire to leave or "blow" Scientology ever been an overwhelming feeling for you? Have you felt an urge suddenly to take off? Or fight the bad in Scientology? This is a recognized feeling known as “fight or flight.”
Scientology believes that the only reason a person wants to leave a place is because of “overts and withholds.” In other words, the person who does not want to be there is only waving a flag saying he has undisclosed transgressions.
The fight-or-flight reflex is an indicator of trauma, not overts and withholds. In my personal opinion, Hubbard had it upside down, backwards, mistranslated, incorrect and very, very wrong.
A fight-or-flight response happens when a person is in the presence of something physically or mentally terrifying. The response is triggered by the release of hormones that prepare your body to either stay and deal with a threat or run away to safety.
If these stages occur over and over again, such as when a person is under constant stress, it can cause the body to become exhausted and break down.
Never have I seen a person truly recover from fight-or-flight mode by interrogations. For the most part they remain traumatized, because the trauma is not properly recognized or addressed at all in Scientology.
I had signed my first billion-year contract when I was 6. I knew that my mother would also have to sign it as a witness (because I was a minor), which is why I agreed in the first place. Back then I was still trying to get her attention. If I had to sign a billion-year contract to see her for five minutes, then so be it. Between being 6 years old and signing the Sea Org contract, there was more leniency and trust from the day care, and I had, in a sense, more freedom. At this age, one qualified to be a Cadet. As long as you had the other basics in such as being able to read and doing simple math. As a Cadet, we were now getting prepared for the Sea Org. Also, Hubbard did say we were adults at the age of 6.
We had one person overseeing all of the Cadets, called the Cadet Co-Ordinator. Otherwise, it was a regular Sea Org Org, making money and having its staff work long hours. We did what was called “missions,” which were just assignments into the regular orgs for things they wanted done, such as selling Freedom magazines, filing papers, stamping and mailing things, etc. The orgs would pay the Cadet Org for the work and the Cadet Org had its own financial planning and payroll.
As always, the adult staffing for the care of children was deficient, and when one staff member had enough and no longer was there (blew post or reassigned), it would be forever or never that a new person would be assigned to supervise the children. Meanwhile, the Sea Org style Cadet Org would run, to a degree, in its machine-style.
But it also gave some of us more of a chance to wander, goof off and even, heaven forbid, play. Sometimes. As the days without adults turned into weeks, months and years, things really got out of control with the kids.
When the childcare staffing was lacking, it was the responsibility of the parents to keep their kids under control. This sounds like a simple task, but with so many Sea Org children improperly raised, it was more havoc than anything else. We had some kids starting fires, others smoking cigarettes, others stealing, some torturing animals, some learning how to build pipe bombs, some off playing video games all day. You name it, the kids there, who were raised essentially by the streets of Los Angeles, were not in any sort of parental control.
The parents would try, between and after post, to be parents. But what an impossible task when you have the demands of a Sea Org post as well. A post in the Sea Org required more than 24 hours a day of work, and only if you were incredibly efficient, could you get everything done.
The parents, honestly, never had a chance.
But coming back to fight-or-flight, the true point of this article.
For me, as a child, I saw my only parent as an unreliable and mean person. It’s funny looking back and talking to so many people who knew her, she was actually apparently quiet, kind and mannerly. That was not the same person who was constantly frustrated with me for the “thing I did that day.”
I got tired of the fighting, got tired of someone trying to control me, tired of a dumb life that I could not understand or figure out.
I was going to run away! But for my mom to know I was missing, I had to leave her a note. Otherwise, I wasn’t sure she would even try to look. I left a letter in an envelope on her bed and I left. I went down the street to a local market and played video games for a few hours. I got bored and went back home. My mom had just finished reading my note after a long day on post.
“Are you back already? I thought you were running away.” She asked me.
I had an urge to turn around and leave. I already knew I really had nowhere to go. I felt sad. Trapped. Alone. Unloved. Angry. Frustrated.
“You know wanting to leave and leaving are signs of overts and withholds. So that means you better sit yourself down and start writing them down for me. You will never be happy until you clear up all your bad acts. I’m sure if you clear them up you will be happy here again.”
I could not, for the life of me, get across to my parent that I was not happy there. I did not want to be there. Bad things had happened and I did not like the life we had there. I did not feel safe at all. I had no idea what the future held.
But what I did learn is anytime I don’t like my situation or feel like leaving it, its my own fault. I am the reason I want to leave. Its because of something I did that makes me no longer want to be in that place. And this became a lifetime (or at least “while in the Sea Org/Scientology”) concept.
Scientology cannot grasp the actual concept of trauma, or the fact that it is capable, just by the way that it functions, of causing trauma. Anyone with grief or complaints about Scientology or the Sea Org or the way it functions has their own hidden transgressions.
Scientology and the Sea Org does not have to change, ever. Because the archaic technology of its founder tells its members that only transgressions make a person desire to leave. No other reason ever, at all.
But in the real world, where people live and try to survive as best as they can, trauma is a very real thing, and can really cause confusion and upset in a person’s life. And Scientology does not acknowledge or address it at all.
So please, if you’ve been in Scientology any amount of time and wonder to yourself, “What did I do to deserve this?” Or if you feel compelled to search for your own transgressions, remember this: It was not your fault. We all got conned to one degree or another.
Staying in a mode of fight-or-flight is not good for our health and can cause chronic physical problems (from the stress) such as chronic fatigue, depression, gastrointestinal issues, headaches, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and even breathing problems.
We can move forward and do what really matters to us. And love those who matter to us.
No matter what Scientology tries to make you think about yourself, remember this: You matter. You are loved. You are important. And transgressions you may or may not have ever committed have nothing to do with your desire to leave something. And just because you feel the urge to fight something, does not mean you need a sec check or an ethics handling. You have a right to your feelings. Listen to them.
— Sunny Pereira
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Sunny, you are such a remarkable person to make it out of that horror story of a childhood. To be able to separate yourself out from that into the normal world and a normal life with an understanding of what happened and what is - remarkable.
THANK YOU for this article. It resonated to me for different reasons; fight or flight from the trauma is a very real phenomenon for so many scientologists, whether in as a child, sea org member or just a lowly member. Every bit of truth spoken/written about what happened is a bit of healing.
A sea org member is busy non stop. They do not have time to think of their children. The children are considered small adults and left to raise themselves with no judgment skills and no guidance. The real irony of this is that their parents time spent being busy would be so much better spent raising their children.
A sobering moment came for me about 10 years ago when I was trying to explain my life in sea org to someone who had never been in and he asked me a simple question “What did you do that kept you busy all the time?” I thought about this hard and the truth was “busywork”.
There was no reason to work that hard, there was not that much to do. Parents and children could have spent time together, but one of the core goals is to not allow the person time to think.