People turn back to the religion they know best, when in distress.

by free2beme 12 Replies latest jw friends

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  free2beme

  As a teenager, I was not real into the religion. I went to meetings, lived by my mothers rules, and had a lot of Witness friends. On the flip side, I had dated nonWitness people in High School, was sexually active, drank and partied on the weekends and hide it well from my mom. My father was a nonWitness and due to his putting his foot down, we celebrated Christmas and Thanksgiving. No other Holidays, it was a give and take thing. Anyway, I actually disliked the Witnesses restrictions, but inside I think I accepted that Jehovah must be a real god or the god, so I would pray to him when times were hard. I actually think I might have prayed to him a few times, while I set throwing up next to a toilet, from drinking to much. As I got into my adult years, I did like most people did and moved out to live on my own. I was with two roommates and we had a blast, parties, sex and just plain enjoying youth. My mother got me into a bible study, to keep me on the right track and I went. I just would do that once a week and then it was back to fun that evening, or weekend. Then one night about six months after moving out, my mother calls and says she is divorcing my father for cheating on her. I was thinking, "no shock," as they hated each other for years. I thought I would just role with it, move on and back to the parties and fun. Instead, this ended up making for a lot of distress for me and depression. Soon I did something, that I have learned was normal for people. I turned to the religion that I knew best and hit it hardcore. Got baptized, Pioneered, attended every meeting without fail and was doing parts in assemblies and was very well known in the area. Even moved to another congregation to be more help for their lack of publishers. In that time, I got married to a Witnesses, and so on. Five years later, I woke up and left the religion. I was lucky the person I married, actually resented the religion and only stayed in because they were raised in it and left the religion at the same time as I did or else I would have really created a problem for myself.

  The thing is, this is so common. As much as people will say they dislike the religion or they do not believe in it. I have seen time and time again, people return to that religion or what ever religion they were raised in, when times of distress happen, as it is the comfort zone or what they feel most basic in believing. Has anyone else experienced something like I mentioned happen in my life. I know a few former Witnesses locally, that had things like this happen. Just wondered if others on here, did the same.
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  MsMcDucket

  I think that my near-death experience caused my twin daughters to get baptised. I remember them telling me how I said that I "called out to Jehovah" while I was fighting for my life.
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  Mysterious

  I know this to be true of a few people who had "rebellious teen years" and then crawled back to the JWs. I just regret those that didn't have a chance to get out again in the same way JWs relent that some won't have a chance to come back before the big A.
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  mama bear

  Freetobeme said: -- The thing is, this is so common. As much as people will say they dislike the religion or they do not believe in it. I have seen time and time again, people return to that religion or what ever religion they were raised in, when times of distress happen, as it is the comfort zone or what they feel most basic in believing. Has anyone else experienced something like I mentioned happen in my life. I know a few former Witnesses locally, that had things like this happen. Just wondered if others on here, did the same. --

  You are correct..what we know brings us comfort unless what we know has been the source of such horrific trauma it drives us back even further. For us, it was the trauma of being a Witness which drove us out and back to what we had been 30 yrs earlier...we tried going to different churches and all of them were nothing like what we had expected after being Witnesses for 3 decades but they also really did nothing for us that close personal relationships with others and deeply committed personal spiritual habits could not accomplish. So, just as we were before becoming Witnesses we are now -- just the three of us, a family, older, wiser and in a better place because we took the WT detour through religion. We have culled favorable things from our lives as Witnesses. Things from the lifestyle we really made our own because we truly were convinced of their validity but it is not anything that is uniquely the WTS making. As it turns out, many of our friends, from many different Christian and non Christian sects, have similar morals, similar beliefs, similar faith and hope and similar lifestyles, similar world view, preferring a close family to heavy socialization in any grouping.
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  Sunspot

  I know this to be true of a few people who had "rebellious teen years" and then crawled back to the JWs.

  I have also known of cases where this was true too. They were raised as JWs and after sowing their "wild oats" they returned, although they weren't what anyone would consider "good" JWs but pretty much in name only.

  In MY case....I was NOT raised in it and was "contacted" in the door-to-door work. I began to realize many years after baptism that it was the religion ITSELF that was the CAUSE of all my distress and discomfort, upon discovering just what a fraud it WAS, and all the mess it had been the source of throughout my 30-year involvement. I would sooner think of sticking my hands in a leaf shredder than EVER think of going back into this hideous cult.

  Annie
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  Lady Lee

  I think you are correct to a point. People will return to what they know. But that depends on what they have learned since their leaving the group.

  In the case of the WTS and other high control groups (aka cults) the more infomation they have about the controls, lies and manipulations they might try some other religion instead of going back to the old one.

  Just look on this board. People have lost relatives in death, have life-threatening illnesses but they don't go back. I would be surprised if any of them considered going back seriously.

  Many people might wonder "What if...." but it doesn't last long because they know they will have to pretend, weart the mask and ignore thir thoughts and feelings.

  But for those who have left and still believe (like I did for 10 years after I left) I think they are at much greater risk for going back. Information really is power. The more information you have, the greater your chance for making healthy decisions for yourself in times of stress.

  Really the last thing anyone needs in a time of stress is to get back into something that imposes stress on you
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  Gill

  My husbands parents are the sort that go back to meetings regularly whenever they have problems in their lives and then infrequently when things are fine.

  It has been commented on by JWs that they know and they don't like them for it.

  However, they have recently connected to the internet. I notice a severe decline in their being out of the house during meeting hours. Interesting!
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  Backed away

  Freetobeme,

  How you described your teen years sounds so much like me.however, both my parents were witnesses. I never really embraced this religion and led a double life. my meeting attendance was forced and my interest was half hearted. I lied to my parents just to spend time with my "worldly friends" and this also was the only way to date. I became involved with someone at a early age and was a father before I was 20.as a result, I was DFed for my "immoral activity". because most of my family and friends were witnesses, I really felt alone, so, for all the wrong reasons I came back. I was reinstated but again my heart wasn't there. I have slowly faded (I love that term) over the years and never have I wanted to go back. I have since told every witness I know that each one of them should be disfellowshipped once in their lives because the view from outside looking in is very different from what they know.

  They say, absense makes the heart grow fonder, for me and this upbringing, absense made my heart wander..
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  Terry

  Trainers know that a boxer who is in trouble in a fight and losing will "revert" to his old habits; bad habits which were engrained and "trained away".

  What we learn before the age of accountability has the deepest roots. Our intellect is as yet unformed when we are young and impressionable. If religious indoctrination finds us we are not able to rationally defend against its precepts.

  No matter what layers of skepticism we overlay in later years; these early indoctrinations will surface in an emotionally trying situation.

  Why?

  Our values are the empowering force in our emotions. Core values are the deepest and oldest motivators we possess.

  I've seen it happen often that a man and woman who profess to be not that into religion will suddenly argue and clash when the wife becomes pregnant. The key issue? What religion will the baby have?

  Unless we completely root out each and every concept we possess for examination and possible replacement, we have no genuine conception of how we will revert in an emergency.

  You'll find atheists praying in foxholes and skeptics groveling on their knees at the event of a loved one's death bed.

  It doesn't matter what we profess consciously if we do not bother to drill deeply into the crust of our ID (actually, our limbic system and amygdalea) where religion is most deeply planted.
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  Terry

  The limbic system (Latinlimbus: "border" or "edge") includes the structures in the human brain involved in emotion, motivation, and emotional association with memory. The limbic system influences the formation of memory by integrating emotional states with stored memories of physical sensations (see emotional memory).

  The amygdalae

  Your amygdalae are essential to your ability to feel certain emotions and to perceive them in other people. This includes fear and the many changes that it causes in the body. If you are being followed at night by a suspect-looking individual and your heart is pounding, chances are that your amygdalae are very active!

  Children have less control over their emotions, because the axons that send information from the cortex to the limbic system are not yet fully developed. In addition, the neurons of the prefrontal cortex that provide much of our rational control over our emotions do not mature until early adulthood. In contrast, the amygdala is mature at birth and thus exerts a heavy influence on children.

  Emotions are something that happens to us much more than something we decide to make happen. Much of the explanation for this lack of direct control over our emotions lies in the way that the human brain is interconnected. Our brains have evolved in such a way that they have far more connections running from our emotional systems to our cortex (the locus of conscious control) than the other way around.

  In other words, the noise of all the heavy traffic on the major highway running from the limbic system to the cortex masks the quieter sounds on the little road running in the other direction.

  The amygdala lets us react almost instantaneously to the presence of a danger. So rapidly that often we startle first, and realize only afterward what it was that frightened us. How is this possible? It all has to start, of course, with a sensory stimulus, such as a strange shape or a menacing sound. Like all information captured by the senses, this message must be routed first to the thalamus. The thalamus then sends this message on to the appropriate sensory cortex (visual cortex, auditory cortex, etc.), which evaluates it and assigns it a meaning. If this meaning is threatening, then the amygdala is informed and produces the appropriate emotional responses. But what has been discovered much more recently is that a part of the message received by the thalamus is transferred directly to the amygdala, without even passing through the cortex! It is this second route, much shorter and therefore much faster, that explains the rapid reaction of our natural alarm system. Since everything has a price, this route that short-circuits the cortex provides only a crude discrimination of potentially threatening objects. It is the cortex that provides the confirmation, a few fractions of a second later, as to whether a given object actually represents a danger. Those fractions of a second could be fatal if we had not already begun to react to the danger.

  FEAR or even PERCEIVED (but imaginary fear) avoids the RATIONAL cortex FIRST.

  Our most primitive notions act upon our fears BEFORE what we have learned can influence them.