I always get the Duggar kids mixed up, so before we start, here’s a quick refresher: Jill Duggar Dillard is the jean-wearing fourth child and second daughter in the Duggar family cult. She’s the one that left the IBLP church, fought with her dad to get paid for her work on Counting On and admitted that she and her husband use some form of non-hormonal birth control so she isn’t popping out kids every year. She also cut her hair and got a nose ring.
Jill and her husband Derick have a book coming out on Tuesday, September 12 called Counting the Cost. While I can say with relative certainty that I’m not putting this one in my Libby queue, I will read all of the juicy excerpts from it because, if I’m being honest, I’m stuck at home with Covid (it’s mild) and bored enough to read anything. In the book, the Dillards spill a lot, including the strain Counting On put on their marriage, how manipulative her dad is, and deprogramming through therapy.
Counting On was a burden: “[Counting On] caused a lot of frustration in our marriage,” Jill, 32, exclusively tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “Especially early on, where he would feel a certain way about filming something. I’d be like, ‘I hear you, I feel you, I also don’t want to do whatever it is they’re asking us to do either. But we have to. It began to feel like a burden.’”
Her IBLP upbringing made it difficult to say no to her parents: “It definitely got between us,” she says of how she and Derick began fighting over the show. “No matter your age, you are to obey your parents’ wishes and you even have to ask them for their blessing for any major moment in your life. That could be buying a house, moving to a different state, where to go to school. We were dealing with this a lot when we were trying to make decisions for our family , and we were really wrestling back and forth with it.”
Jim Bob sucks: Jill claims her father began trying to drive a wedge between them, and Derick agrees. “Whenever we were at odds with what her dad thought we should be doing with filming, he would say things that would be very damaging,” Derick alleges. “He would weaponize the relationship and say, ‘Is this you Jill, or is this you, Derek? Are you leading your wife astray and doing things that are not supportive of marriage?’ And I think that was a red flag.”
What made them join forces: “I saw how deeply we were in an argument one time, and I was like, ‘Whoa, this is not okay,'” she recalls of her and Derick arguing over the show, and the subsequent arguments they had with Jim Bob about eventually being paid for their years of work on it.
“When I saw how it was affecting our marriage, I think that was another wake-up call for me,” she adds. “It was like, okay, we need to either fight this battle together, or it’s going to rip us apart. So yeah, we had to join forces at that point.”
On telling their own story: “I know there will be nay-sayers, but I feel called to do this,” Jill says of writing the book. “We really wanted to tell our story for my siblings, because some of them are going to face similar challenges, if they haven’t already, to what I’ve faced.”
Therapy helped them get to a good place: “Therapy was the gift we didn’t know we needed,” Jill says. “We initially went into it with the goal of re-establishing a relationship with my parents, but once we got there, the therapist was like, ‘I think we maybe need to do a little more processing, a little more sorting out here. You guys need to figure out who you are.’ Which was so wise. It helped us so much.”
If leaving the church cult, getting a nose ring, and doing family planning wasn’t enough to freak her parents out, then admitting that she went to therapy and that it worked has to be doing it. Ha! But in all seriousness, like we talked about last week, I’m always glad when someone is able to successfully work through their issues. Sounds like when the therapist asked Jill and Derick to tell them about her parents and why they wanted to re-establish a relationship, the convo got real toxic real fast and the therapist was like, “Woah woah woah hold up a sec…”
Look, I completely understand having to work through toxic family dynamics and figuring out how to stand up for yourself when you’ve been programmed for decades to please your parents. When those parents are terrible people in a religious cult, it’s going to take years to really work through the damage that’s caused. I hope Jill and Derick are still seeing someone to work on themselves individually because if you think Jill’s the “woke” Duggar, think again. She and Derick may have made a lot of strides in addressing their indoctrination, but are both still problematic in their own way. More deprogramming, please!
I don’t think even Covid could get me to read this book. Hope you feel better, soon, Rosie!
Thank you, Beanie!
How did Jim Bob “allow” her to marry this guy?
“…if you think Jill’s the “woke” Duggar, think again. She and Derick may have made a lot of strides in addressing their indoctrination, but are both still problematic in their own way. More deprogramming, please!”
Exactly!
Also, if you haven’t watched Shiny Happy
people about their cult, please do! A LOT of these folks are getting into politics. Madison Cawthorn anyone? He’s one of them!!
I know everyone was happy to see Madison go but the way the republican ptb got rid of him was terrible. A picture with his cousin became “an affair”. A costume party became “deviant activity”. All because he exposed them.
We saw in real time a republican smear campaign. How they work.
I don’t care. This is a case of leopards eating their own faces and I’m here for it. If they’re going to do it anyway, go ahead and direct that crap inward and implode.
Um, Madison Cawthorn is TOXIC and deserved all the “karma” he received. NC resident here, and having him gone from official political life is a relief. And what do you expect from the republican party these days? They DO eat their young and anything else that gets in the way of their “let’s go back to the 1950s” campaign. UGH!
@ Grace – 1950’s? More like the 1590’s! GOP wants to take us way, way back in time.
They say everyone should have at least 1 therapy session. Like a check-in. I thought that was too much but I now agree. As long as it’s with a real honest therapist.
I say this as someone who has had terrible luck in therapy.
Can you imagine being on a show that everyone watches *because it’s so messed up, and then later you’re saying things like therapy is a gift we didn’t know we needed? Like the entire viewing nation knew…. it was your life….. and you had no clue.
Like the Truman Show, no?