I'm going drinking. Anybody want to join?
Did You Start "Losing It" As A Witness?
by minimus 36 Replies latest jw friends
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
Min, I just opened a crazy good Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat.
But I've got to go easy tonight. I did more than enough at a crazy fun wine tasting last night. My liver is my friend!
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Lady Lee
I was suicidal before I left. I had suffered severe depression for decades and being a JW only made it worse. I had my plans made. I had talked to a couple of JW friends and asked them to watch over my kids..
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White Dove
I became emotionally imbalanced after I was robbed at gunpoint with two others and had PTSD. The brothers didn't care at all even when I had meltdowns at the hall and roamed the parking lot at night meetings just to get myself together again.
In time and after leaving that cult, I'm pretty much fixed up to the same level I was before the robbery. The thing is that after leaving, I began to be better than I was before. I am now more emotionally balanced than I ever have been and feel great, mentally and emotionally.
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wantstoleave
I've been through periods of being over zealous to doing nothing at all, and still feeling unworthy the entire time. The different pressures within the organisation, not just door knocking and meeting attendance, but also things like worrying about not finding a partner before you're classed as 'over the hill' added to it. The constant self scrutiny, which becomes self loathing because you think you're not good enough to be a witness...it's just endless.
For the 'good witness girl' that I was, I still hated myself. I am still struggling to gain self esteem and I'm almost 30. I realise this is not something someone else can hand to me, but I do believe being in the organisation hindered my emotional growth and self value as a person.
Being 'in the truth' felt suffocating and the thought of ever going back to a meeting scares me. In fact, today my mom text me to ask if she could take my oldest to the meeting. I replied saying no, he was watching a dvd and would stay with me. She gave me no grief. That small milestone made me feel better within myself :)
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yellow
I became mentaly unbalanced after I was being stalked and harrassed by a bro in the hall. After nothing was done to him I became even more unhinged completely losing the plot after I spent a weekend on a trip to Bethel. I was following this guy around, don't know why, and was very suicidal almost throwing myself off a train. Of course nobody was there to notice. I then knew I had to get out, the lack of love shown was evidence to me that God wasn't behind this org. Have never felt better since.
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minimus
Yellow, your experience is something I believe to be very true, especially the fact that once you left, you have felt better.