Why does guilt often remain so long with those who've left the JWs? (page 2)

sweet pea

Try getting DF'd for apostasy when all you did was have some issues with what the society teaches and as a result you lose all your friends and half your family overnight. No feelings of guilt here, just anger and frustration at a sick and twisted organisation that damages so many peoples lives.

Bring_the_Light

No guilt, just anger, rage, and the reality of knowing how pathetic human beings is has left me not willing to trust others. At any moment it feels like that fairly lucid person you are getting to know could turn into a non-lucid Borg drone. The real world is slightly ugly, but the fake world is uglier.

Mysterious

I'm not sure really. I have never felt guilty but again my whole life I was told I wasn't generous or selfless enough so maybe that has something to do with it. Or being an only child ;p

steve2

Hey, steady on: Residual guilt is by no means a peculiar left-over of the JW religion. Let's normalise it. It seems to typify feelings experienced by people raised in many Christian religious groups. I've heard so much about "Catholic guilt". One of my colleagues was raised in the 7th-Day Adventist religion. He never made a commitment to the religion but he's told me that he still finds it hard treating Saturday as just another day of the week. Hell, he stopped going to their services over 30 years ago!

Many Christian groups thrive on emotional blackmail and there's no surer way to keep people chained to useless beliefs than the Fog Trinity: Fear Obligation and Guilt. Learning to make room for these three little manipulative devils is a little like learning to be an adult: Look the suckers in the eye and just get on with your life.

WTWizard

If that was your earliest memory, it is all you have to work with. People will tend to feel that whatever they grew up with is the truth, even if it isn't. Which is why born-ins tend to have more of this kind of guilt (as well as those whose parents came into the cancer while the children were little).

The way I got past the guilt was by reasoning. I saw that, if I got into the New Dark Ages, it would be a travesty of paradise for me, even with paradise surroundings. I did not want to not have access to the opposite sex forever. I did not want to just meet men forever. I did not want everything I ever did to be something someone else told me to do, forever. So I just plain said "Fxxx it, I do not give a fxxx if I pxxx Jehovah off. He did that to me first, so I no longer owe that almighty Scumbag anything." And that was the end of my involvement in any religion, especially the witless one.

talley

In answer to the OP's question:

Because one has not read Ray Franz's book "CRISIS OF CONSCIENCE" and come to see and understand that the whole basis of the WBTS is unscriptural. Once that is understood, any 'guilt' is GONE from one's mind/conscience along with any JW based unhappiness.

av8orntexas

Hello everyone. I'm new...well somewhat new. I joined SIX YEARS ago and I've see-sawed now back and forth. I have been to an convention since 2002 !!!! I'm neither DF'd of reporved. Yet, I'm starting to feel many who attend subscribe to a "do as I teach,not as I do " philosophy. In the last year I've started to feel as if I've wasted the last 12 years of my life. My mother lives in another state and thinks I still regularly attend. I hang on,going once every 3-4 months or so,I've told people I was attending an english hall because my work schedule, as I am in a spanish hall. Right now In limbo. I've lurked here off an on over the years and lately, I think I'm becoming increasingly aware that the JW's may not be it for me,but.........I keep hnaging on, a bit nervous of who I'll have if I leave ? Does this make sense to anyone ?

Frustrated and Lonely.

av8orntexas

So about those typo's

Satanus

Many very good points have been made, especially along the lines what garrybuss said, ie unravel your beliefs, each and every one. A point i would add is that some of us have a nature that allows guilt to come in too easily. It can be not just religious issues. Check out the current tide of guilt floating in the waters of western civilization; guilt for past wrongs to natives, guilt for consuming too much, guilt for doing well, guilt for globle worming, guilt for slavery in the past, guilt for the holocaust, and the list goes on. So, shuck the guilt blanket and try enjoy freedom as much as possible.

S

S3RAPH1M

How much baggage do you still carry from that corporation??

Why does guilt often remain so long with those who've left the JWs?

Share this