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Epilepsy and Demonic Possession...or something of the sort

Tue, 06/24/2008 - 16:43

Has 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?

Comments

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).

Re: Epilepsy and Demonic Possession...or something of the sort

Submitted by zealot on Fri, 2009-10-16 - 03:59
Your "Oozing Unctuosness and Most Mucilagenous" (Tadzio), I don't know if you're still around these parts, but I'm guessing a fellow fan of Dosteyofski (ooh, sorry, I still can't remember how to spell) is worth following. It seems our friend was here. Stephs, Another brave soul. No one really likes to talk about these things. I am beyond fragmented. I feel like Humpty Dumpty. I've been called crazy and have the papers to prove it. Any one who told you that TL seizures are SPs, needs to be sent back to school. They are complex partials because of what is known as "altered consciousness.". Déja vu, for example. Fractured personality. All of the little and not so little mind benders. It's temporal lobe. Temporal lobe and complex partial seizures are the same thing. People with these types of seizures often are reluctant to make them stop. If you don't mind not knowing how to write or losing musicality or having the same song looping in your head, go ahead. It's a great ride until you crash. Find a GOOD neuro. One who actually knows about this. It may take awhile. Ask for Trileptal, Vitamine D, and Folic Acid. If he asks you why because he doesn't know why or dismisses you outright, FIND ANOTHER NEURO! Please take good care of yourselves. It may be difficult to find anyone else who will. Best of luck to all of you. Zealot

Re: Epilepsy and Demonic Possession...or something of the sort

Submitted by 3Hours2Live on Sun, 2009-10-18 - 05:50
Hi Zealot, Yes, Yes, and Yes. I do have Demons, I do have the Devils and the Devils' notebooks, and I possess the Possessed. Various translators always tinker with the Art, and the tinker's dam gives both more ingress and egress. Speaking the same language doesn't help, as Nabokov's moral art of the aesthete verifies. While epilepsy's ecstatic iurodivyi, but still being the idiot studying the Idiot is a more curious paradox, and playing the Gambler with the Confidence-Man, while being lectured on Job, gives my articulate speaking-in-tongues temptations of engraving Gold Tablets for Uncle GodBucks' immortality program. For sure, it is best to seize on a Fine Persian Rug. And Mammon makes the irreplaceable easily replaced. At least that's what Uncle GodBucks chants in his Dollar Signs: "Lord of Silver, Lord of Gold, Lord for Money, Our Spirits sold, Let the Poor crumble to Dust, In God We Trust." I believe Uncle GodBucks is mistaken, but this Age of Materialism is contrary to my beliefs, like most every piece of USA currency declares. My hematoma stopped me near dead in the middle of Anthony Briggs' new translation of War & Peace, and made the Pevear & Volokhonsky translation a mere future enticement. It is still a shock that the original Anna Karenina is so Un-American past the first page, but the first page is usually considered course-completion. I also studied Tolstoy's What Is Art in philosophy classes, along with various biographies, but don't tell our friend, or Tolstoy will be placed with iurodivyi neighbourhooded Dostoevsky, despite everyone's epilepsy concerns. I better shut-up with my now epileptic inner kingdom blatherings, or I'll never be heard from again!!! LOL. Tadzio

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