The experience of unlearning, I guess, is part of any human life, but is something we particularly have in common as xJWs. Once upon a time we knew it all -- the right and the wrong things to think or to do -- and then we had to unlearn somehow. Give up beliefs, ideas, prejudices, attitudes, etc.
The discussions on this board suggest that we all had -- and have -- different ways or strategies in unlearning. Some seemingly were able to forget almost overnight about all they had learnt since childhood, as if they were waking up from a bad dream; others followed a much slower and more gradual path, negotiating and exchanging ideas one by one as it were, perhaps keeping some items (such as belief in God or in the Bible) out of the negotiation, at least for some time; some felt the need of conscious provisional syntheses along the way, or deliberately settled on a new non-negotiable set of ideas, others were content with professed "agnosticism" (in the broad sense of the term = ignorance) and drifting with the flow of life and ideas. Moreover we unlearn more or less deeply (ideas or patterns of thinking and behaviour for example).
We have strategies because we meet resistance, sometimes around us but mostly in ourselves. As we unlearn we all have to cope with some sense of loss or being lost, perhaps worthlessness. How do we deal with it?
I feel attempting to describe our unlearning procedures, methods and strategies (and by those words I do not mean they are always conscious and deliberate, in fact they rarely are) would be very interesting and helpful to ourselves and others. Especially this could help to better understand what is really at stake in some of our endless discussions of JW doctrines and policies.
So, how did you and do you unlearn?