Community Forum Archive
The Epilepsy Community Forums are closed, and the information is archived. The content in this section may not be current or apply to all situations. In addition, forum questions and responses include information and content that has been generated by epilepsy community members. This content is not moderated. The information on these pages should not be substituted for medical advice from a healthcare provider. Experiences with epilepsy can vary greatly on an individual basis. Please contact your doctor or medical team if you have any questions about your situation. For more information, learn about epilepsy or visit our resources section.
Epilepsy and Demonic Possession...or something of the sort
Tue, 06/24/2008 - 16:43Has anyone had problems with religious family members whipping out Mark 9 (the chapter where Jesus heals a boy who apparently is having seizures of some sort), then declaring that you must have demons in you, or you have spiritual unrest, or are somehow "not right" with God?
My father did that to me recently. When he started talking about it, I was afraid he was going to try an exorcism on me right then and there. But he didn't - he just prayed. Ever since then he's been pushing me to talk to my minister about my alleged spiritual unrest. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to do that - soon we'll have a new minister and I can just see me going in on his first day on the job and saying, "O hi, sometimes I wake up at night with a yell and then I shake. Can you help me? I must not be right with God." The poor minister would probably put a request in for a transfer that same day.
I mean, I do have Demons. I really do. And I have Crime and Punishment and The Idiot and Brothers Karamazov and most of Dostoevsky's works. (Sorry - had to get a book nerd joke in there.)
Seriously, I thank this very same Deity (with whom I am supposedly not right) that I'm an adult and live a few states away from my father. But this still bothers me because I have to deal with my father's pestering me to talk to the minister. Truly, I think it goes beyond just a religious matter and it's more a question of my father's sanity.
So has anyone else dealt with this demons issue?
Re: Epilepsy and Demonic Possession...or something of the sort
Submitted by 3Hours2Live on Mon, 2009-01-05 - 02:25
Many religious people have told me my epileptic speech problems are a gift from god to speak in tongues. A few of them become very angry when my epilepsy doesn't cooperate and I don't "truly try"! TLE's sexual apathy became a troubling lure to a few self-professed religious individuals in my middle to late adolescence; while they were preaching against what they wanted, they demanded it from me to no cooperative avail, and they became very angry too (and physically rough). The biggest fear of the "demons" of epilepsy are now with the various Schools of Psychological Thought and their magical (read this as "stupid, blindly believed") Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which accomplishes nothing but needless trouble as a "cure" for epilepsy, since they "know" epilepsy is so "rare" as to be not worth considering as a serious initial possibility before the cure of everything else is administered (I decided not to major in psych when I witnessed how homeless epileptics sufferring seizures were treated by Mental Health "experts", with my close study of the MMPI).