Why A Person is Not PTS Because They Cough

And Admitting You are Sick is OK

This post is a continuation of the series of posts regarding the first steps after leaving Scientology. It is an important one because it is something else that is hard to shake after leaving Scientology. I actually did an article for Tony Ortega on when I first realized it was OK to admit I was sick. All these years later, it was kind of a shock to look back and realize just how incredible it was to realize it was not my fault I got sick.

In Scientology, a lesson a person learns early is that “you are totally responsible for the condition you are in.” It’s an odd teaching and one that is very hard to shake when you go back in the outside world. In Scientology, if something bad happens to you, you are taught that you did something “to pull it in.” You are then sent to ethics to handle what you did wrong that caused someone to be bad to you. The same happens if you are sick.

Therefore, you learn to accept blame for everything that ever happens to you. Here is a really good example of how Scientology makes what happens your fault. Trigger Warning: One time during my marriage, my ex’s little sister and I walked in on my (now ex) in bed with a 17 year old girl. Because of this, I was beaten bloody by my ex husband. His twin sister witnessed it and called the cops, who took me to the emergency room.

My GO handlers showed up and had me released as soon as they could. The officers from the Hollywood Police Department left the room as soon as someone from the GO showed up for me. I had to go to ethics to figure out what I had done wrong to make him so angry. He did not go to ethics. And for icing on the cake? When his sister told her mom, she said “well, she must have done something to deserve it.” That, boys and girls, is Scientology in a nutshell.

Remember when you suppressed a cough because it was just a pain to go to ethics? Well, guess what? It’s not a crime to acknowledge that you don’t feel 100% perfect all the time now that you are out. And, as scary as it sounds, it is not a crime to see a doctor and get “gasp” medicine to treat it.

There is no reason to pretend you are not ill when you are. And, there is no reason to show up to work when you feel ill. As a matter of fact, your coworkers will thank you if you don’t pass your bugs on to them.

I was lucky to have my cancer diagnosed and treated in 1986. That was a fluke because I had gone to the doctor. That was 40 years ago now. It was ovarian cancer. It is a deadly cancer and the survival rate is dismal, even with treatment. Yet I lived. I would 100% have died without treatment.

During the time I was in Scientology, I was never once hospitalized overnight. This is not because it was not needed. This is because during that time, if I needed hospitalization, I checked myself out against medical advice. I gave birth to both my children at home during that time. I probably saw a doctor a total of 30 times the entire time I was in Scientology. I gave birth twice and suffered a miscarriage and was severely injured at the hands of my ex-husband numerous times.

My leaving Scientology coincided with spending 20 days mostly in the hospital recovering from the final attack from my ex husband. After that, I also had to undergo a few surgeries to rebuild my nasal passages and a few other pieces of my body I had damaged. I definitely spent more time consulting with physicians the first month after I left Scientology than I had the entire time I was in.

I don’t recommend this as a something anyone should experience, but it certainly helped me get over the hurdle of the programmed fear of the medical community ingrained in me from Scientology. I was also forced to get counseling while I was in the hospital. I discovered that it was not the horrific thing Hubbard claimed it was.

So, in my case, I got the baptism by fire both for figuring out that I could see a doctor and that I could see a counselor. But I did discover that that was not a harmful thing in my life.

It took a while longer to figure out that sometimes the bad things that happened to me were not my fault. And that every time I sneezed, it wasn’t because there was a bad person in my life. Breaking the programming that made it okay to go to the doctor was a lot easier than breaking the programming that made me blame myself because I had to go to the doctor.

About five years after I left Scientology, I sneezed a gigantic sneeze one day. Someone walking by my office said “well, it’s that time of year, isn’t it.” I kind of laughed it off, then thought about it. Yes, it took me five years after leaving Scientology to realize that there was such a thing as cold and flu season and that I wasn’t the only one sneezing at the time!

So, you have permission to forgive yourself. It’s not always your fault and quit looking for how you pulled it in. It’s time to move forward and start looking at what you did right, not what you did wrong.

For Paid Subscribers

Later tonight paid subscribers will be getting The Foster Report which was issued on 20 December 1971 by the House of Commons. It is 203 pages long, but it is a fascinating read. It is pretty damning for scientology.