A sense of an overall feeling of impending doom.

by Steve Lowry 9 Replies latest jw friends

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  Steve Lowry

  Do y'all (former JW's I'm referring to here), ever get a sense of an overall feeling of impending doom? I have had this strange sensation come over me almost as long as I can remember. I'm not sure if its Watchtower conditioning or just something in my personal make-up that creates this feeling. Usually I can catch it and process the feeling out of my mind. At other times its subtler and some time can go by without me realizing it. Once become aware of it, I take an emotional/mental inventory to see if there’s anything truly bothering me of merit. Usually there isn’t and I discard the feeling. Anyway, I was just wondering if this might be Watchtower conditioning, considering all the fear tactics placed those of us growing up in the Watchtower cult. Lemme hear your thoughts?

  Steve
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  mouthy

  Yes I believe it is a the conditioning of the Watch tower .... Have you read C.of Con...This should help you to see they are wrong to make us all feel like the END is on us every day. This is the first day for the rest of a very long life my friend....ENJOY it... ( of course Prayer would help
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  greendawn

  With me that ended long time ago after I realised that the JW concept of the end of times was totally artificial and unbiblical, it will not be an organisation like the WTS that will participate in the events leading up to the end.
  
  Otherwise all mainstream Christian religions always expect the end to come at an unsuspected time.
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  serendipity

  
  Considering the crazy terrorists and missing suitcase nukes & the N. Korea madman - it's understandable that people have a sense of impending doom.
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  garybuss

  It's conditioning. Maybe you haven't identified and disabled the triggers.
  
  Conditioned anxiety, what the Watch Tower Publishing Corporation calls "living with a sense of urgency", is living with a feeling of impending doom, it's the result of phobia indoctrination. It's common in children raised by Witness parents.
  
  It's kinda hard to find and disable the triggers alone. That's why a good exit counselor is so helpful. Left alone, we actually avoid anything painful. When we hit a trigger we tend to try to stay away from that trigger, when what we need to do is study and dissect the trigger. Some triggers may take weeks to disable.
  
  Music can be a HUGE trigger for some people. Sounds, smells, sights, and food can be triggers. Mind altering drugs like ethanol is almost always either triggering or trigger enabling.
  
  I lived with a terminal case of fear of impending doom while I was a Witness and worse after I quit associating. Now it's all gone. My hardest delusion to face in my core belief menu of delusions, was theism.
  
  
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  MegaDude

  The Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching." Allegedly this came from an Assyrian tablet, c. 2800 BCE.

  Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia." Charles Schultz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip.

  http://www.armageddononline.org/failed_armageddon1.php
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  DanTheMan

  I have a deep-rooted end-of-the-world streak that predates my WTS affiliation.

  I don't remember it, but recently my dad told me that the movie "All Quiet on the Western Front" had a very powerful impact on me as a child. So I did some research on the movie and I've learned that it is very bleak and despairing. I wonder if that experience planted the seeds of the despair that set in during my adolescence and that I have not yet been able to shake. That's not to say my life is unending misery, I do have happy moments and am able to function reasonably well. But, especially in moments of boredom and loneliness usually I feel just as you do - that it's all gonna go to pot any second now.
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  Swan

  Awww (((Steve))). I'm sorry you are going through this. It is a very difficult feeling to live with.

  A lot of people feel this who haven't been involved in a doomsday cult, but being in a doomsday cult is certainly a very good reason to have these symptoms. The MSN health site suggests that you are experiencing anxiety and stress which is leading to these feelings.

• Nervous system. If your fight-or-flight response never shuts off, stress hormones produce persistent feelings of anxiety, helplessness and impending doom. Oversensitivity to stress has been linked with severe depression, possibly because depressed people have a harder time adapting to the negative effects of cortisol. The byproducts of cortisol act as sedatives, which contribute to the overall feeling of depression. Excessive amounts of cortisol can cause sleep disturbances, loss of sex drive and loss of appetite.

For me this feeling happens when I am depressed, suffering acute anxiety, and feeling overly stressed. Surely this tied to a lot of my childhood problems and the constant fear that Armageddon was looming ahead. But not only was their the Big A to fear, we also had the Great Tribulation to look forward to coming before the final war. It's promise was starvation, beatings, persecution, temptations that we must resist, and the mental pressure of living in an underground society where any misstep could lead to exposing our friends and loved ones to torture by the government and police. Anybody we knew casually in the world and liked, including co-workers, relatives, doctors, hairdressers, and barbers, could now become our enemy and persecutor.

Fear of the government is a very big problem for me. When I got a call for jury duty recently, my first instinct was that I was being setup and that it was a trap. Then rational thought took over and I realized it would be okay and a chance to show my patriotism... and to learn be more normal.

Counseling has helped, along with medication for anxiety and depression. You may want to consider going to your doctor for meds and a referral to a therapist if this feeling becomes inhibiting to your enjoyment of your daily life.

Tammy