How the JWs helped me

by larc 29 Replies latest jw friends

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  larc

  Bridgette,

  I am sorry to hear that your experience was so severe. Have you thought of getting therapy to try to get over this? I was not abused as a child growing up in the religion, so I don't know how I would deal with this later. Although the religion may have contributed to your abuse, I would think that your parents may have been abusive anyway. I know this was true in my wife's case. Her mother was an abusive woman before and after becoming a Witness. (My wife was 12 when her parents converted. I was born in it and my mother was a very loving person.)

  ISP, I think your basic words would sum up the fancy talk of psychotheripists, "crying over spilt milk is upproductive." I think this is very true, no matter how much milk was spilt. At some point, we have to forget with the traumas of the past, learn what we can from the past, and get on with it.

  Proplog, I think you brought up something very important that you are doing, that is, making life better for yourself and your children. My wife did that. She became a warm, loving mother, the complete opposite of her own mother. Thank you for your observations. I think they are very useful to read.
• 

  jst2laws

  Hello Larc,

  I appreciate what you have done here.

  I sympathize with each of you who have differed with Larc’s post. Not because I feel he is wrong but because I see YOU have BEEN WRONGED. You no doubt have been hurt by the WT. But no one is saying you have not been hurt nor is the point that you have been helped you more than you have been hurt. However, it may be healthy for us to look at the positive gains from an experience ALONG WITH THE NEGATIVE so as not to be swallowed in bad emotions

  Larc said:
  “It seems to me, that a good deal of our present happiness is determined by what we choose to dwell on. If we dwell on bad experiences we will feel bad. If we use our past experiences to help ourselves and others, we become much happier people in my opinion.”

  My opinion as well. Having dealt with my own tendencies toward depression as well as helping others, some of us have identified a common enemy we call “Stinken Thinken”. Forcing ourselves to dwell on more positive thoughts does not change our history or the accountability of those who have harmed us, but MAKES US HEALTHIER.

  Thanks for this effort.

  Jst2laws
• 

  patio34

  Hi Larc,

  Thanks for this positive thread. It's interesting.

  Here are a few benefits that I received from being a JW (although, as has been pointed out, it could have been more in another venue):

  1. I got a good sense of history from the Bible reading and many WT and Awake articles on history.

  2. The brain gets smarter from use and all the memory work and arguing skills used a lot of brain power.

  3. I became more skilled at studying.

  And, as others have noted, public speaking, sales skills.

  Take care!
  Pat
• 

  Quester

  OK, Larc, I'll bite.
  What idea were you trying to sell us?
  Or is it already revealed in your posts?

  Was it:
  A. Dwell on the positives instead of the negatives?
  B. Take whatever cards life has dealt you and make the most of it?
  C. There is a point where a person needs to move on?

  All of the above?
  Or is there more?

  Interesting thread and genuinely curious.

  Quester
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  Sirona

  Having been a JW and then having left, I think that I have developed a loving acceptance of people, a non-prejudiced view. The JWs taught me prejudice...but when I left I looked at them from outside and realised how very easy it is for them to hold that view and how wrong it is, but also how I cant blame them all because they really believe it (just like I used to). Thats sort of a benefit of leaving though, not something they taught me while inside.

  Inside, I suppose I learned public speaking skills and how to be disciplined. Somehow I think I would have learned that anyway.

  My ex-hubbie was a teenage delinquent when he joined, and they did teach him how to straighten out his life. However, they stopped him doing professional rugby and then going in the army and to be honest I really believe that going in the army would have likely sorted him out anyway. After all, he was just having a silly teenage phase. Now, he is 30 years old and has no qualifications after working part-time and pioneering. He is not JW now, and wishes he had pursued his rugby career and also joined the army.

  Sirona
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  Pathofthorns

  I know you have been out of the WT for many years Larc. I find your trying to look at the good in the WT was similar to me when I first left and many others when they innitially leave.

  For me, growing up in the religion wasn't really bad at all. I also wanted to be fair and not be the stereotypical "raging apostate". So I reasoned that in fairness, there were good things for having been part of the WT experience.

  As time has passed on though, I find myself identifying with posters like Bridgette and Badwillie instead of my old self and what you have written here.

  The little good in the WT is what makes it all the more dangerous, because it is this good that they project to the world to appear so harmless. It is this good that enslaves its members for endless years and blinds them to it's destructive side until it is too late.

  In this 'all or nothing' religion, it is the price at which the good in it comes that makes it all so worthless. One cannot accept the good without the bad; one cannot accept what is true without that which is false.

  And so I give them credit for nothing except for the painful experience of having been misled. I wish nothing for the religion but the same fate they wish upon the world and freedom for those who are enslaved by it.

  While things have worked out very well for me, I wish this one thing was never in my life. I no longer hold any special place for it.

  Path
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  larc

  Path,

  I don't know if you meant this interpretation of my words or not, so I will respond to what I think you meant. Because there is some good within, that does not mean that I would recommend staying. Quester had the answer to my sales pitch correct if he marked all of the above.

  I think it is a good idea to take stock of ourselves, what we now can contribute to help others and how we can improve our own lot in life. I think part of that self assessment has to do with taking a realistic look at where we came from, how it has shaped us, and how we can capitalize on our strengths and minimize the impact of our weaknesses. To be sure, we can have regrets, sometimes major ones. I think that dwelling on our regrets is not only contraproductive, but down right damaging to our emotional well being.
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  GentlyFeral

  I can't find much good in having been a JW. Yes, there was some – but it was pretty damn paltry.

  A large part of the problem is that I'm keeping in mind how well my jaydub training fitted me for the larger world; that is to say, egregiously; and that was the whole point. To make it impossible for me to function in society. The damage is severe enough that the motives are irrelevant to me. It doesn't matter that they were trying to save me from the devil, because they have handed me over to poverty and ignorance – right in the middle of a recession. If I'd never been a jaydub, I'd have twenty years of savings to tide me over; but no, we were too busy being "non-materialistic," hubby working for shit wages while I stayed home with the kids and learned to be unemployable.

  It's true, as Steve Hassan says, that the "good" in cults appeals to the "true self" – but so does some of the bad. The dream of the paradise earth appealed to my hair-trigger sense of justice; "wait upon Jehovah" appealed both to my laziness and my fears about actually working for justice.

  I’m conquering those fears now – oh how slowly! But to do it, I have to break some WTS regulation virtually every step of the way.

  Gently Feral
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  larc

  GentlyFeral,

  I have been thinking about your post for two days, and I am not sure how to respond. If you just recently left and are in dire straits, you have good cause to be bitter and angry. I hope that things improve and this discussion board has helped you.

  I have a good friend who didn't leave until he was 40. I talked to him many times when he was first out and he was very angry. He had no education beyond high school and told me he was a poor reader. Shortly after I met him, he and his JW wife got a divorce. She turned him in to the elders because he voted for a local school bond issue, and he was disfellowshipped at the time of the divorce. Today, he is remarried to a very fine woman. He has a Master's degree and a good job.

  I cite this example to show that life can get much better if you work for it.
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  GentlyFeral

  I have a good friend who didn't leave until he was 40...

  This story sounds familiar. Are his initials M.H.? (Can't remember his name; he used to post on the old philia list.)

  I was forty when I left. I'm still overcoming the ignorance and pessimism about grown-up takin' care of business that the jaydubs fostered...and which was the principal reason I joined them, in retrospect. At 18, I knew I couldn't take care of myself and knew that the jaydubs would take care of me. I learned a lot of other bullshit from them, too, but that was the most damaging.

  Someone, in a recent post about testing religions, admitted she had a void in her heart. I have one too, and it isn't god-shaped at all. Rimbaud once complained that "those three Magi, the body, mind and soul, are immobile and mute"; I feel the same way. This particular combination of fear and immobility is fatal, and it trips me up every time I come close to doing anything important.

  I'm going to spend the next year or two working on it directly.

  GentlyFeral