Knowing the Real Truth about the "truth" when you're stuck inside...

by OneDayillBeFree 70 Replies latest jw experiences

• 

  ziddina

  Hmmm. This is a subject I've mentioned before - I need to start a thread on this and pull together all related thread references I can find.

  However...

  From this thread:

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/members/private/225935/2/My-Story

  I gave this shortened list of the major steps you might want to undertake, in the process of building a new life for yourself, outside the Watchtower organization:

  What Vidgun said...

  "Seems like you need help urgently. First of all, I would reccomend you getting professional help, e.g., talk to a psychologist. You need to talk to a neutral person (not affiliated with JWs). As you will no doubt find out, a lot of the posters on this board have been helped by such therapists. Hopefully such a person will help you to work on your self-esteem. If you are depressed, such a person can help in that regard too. Treatment for this is available. Perhaps those posters in Canada and surroundings can help you with the particulars. ..." Vidgun, page #1

  That is very good advice.

  Quandry and many others also gave good advice when they said, "STAY IN SCHOOL"!!

  You will be VERY THANKFUL that you did so, down the road.

  I've often given this advice for young JWs who are uncomfortable with the religion's demands, but here they are again, in a nutshell...

  1. Either go to school so you can earn better wages as an adult, or get some sort of technical training so you will be very employable.

  2. Get decent-paying work, and SAVE YOUR MONEY.

  3. If you've been able to save your money and have a steady job, then LOOK FOR YOUR OWN PLACE. An apartment, a decent trailer house, a small house. Try to avoid the "roommate" situation, if possible - that can become sticky if you end up with the wrong roommates.

  4. Once you've gotten over the financial burden of the move, continue to save your money - as much as comfortably possible. If you've already gotten an education, then you're saving for a future house, car, further education. If you haven't gotten as much education as you want/need, then you're saving to further your education for greater employability.

  Once you're out of your parents' house, you will have more freedom. USE THIS FREEDOM TO DO RESEARCH about the Watchtower Corporation, its origins, its business practices - whatever has puzzled or troubled you about the religion.

  Hope this helps...

  Zid
• 

  ziddina

  Went back and re-read your OP.

  I would like to add a few more points - others may have already made these suggestions, but here goes...

  Talk to your neighbors. Perhaps you can make some friends there.

  Getting a job is a VERY good idea. Sometimes one makes lifelong friendships at work. Just be cautious about the character of the person you're making friends with. After I exited [I was fortunate enough to be in a position to just walk out - but I had a job, car, apartment...], I learned that I was very naive about dishonest people. I suspect I'd been trained to accept lies in the cult for so long, that I had some trouble telling lies from truth when I first left.

  (I'm talking about being able to spot people with closet addictions, two-faced back-stabbers, that ilk...)

  Making friends with "worldly" people can help you network for jobs, apartments, and so on. If you can go to a trade school or a community college, they may be able to provide some assistance, perhaps even some minor counseling. Plus, you can ask your teachers/professors the occasional question about how to deal with life's smaller issues - unless you happen to be taking some sort of "comparative religions" class.

  Again, I hope this has helped...

  Zid
• 

  sseveninches

  I've learned that when you learn TTATT while living at home with parents, the best way to get out of it is to deal with it in phases:

  Phase 1: Realize that "the truth" isn't really the truth. This is the period of shock, where you see that everything you've been taught is a lie. Reading up on JWfacts.org helps a lot with getting your facts straight.

  Phase 2: Start making plans to get out of the JW world. It's very likely that no matter how you approach your parents with your discoveries, nothing will work, except getting yourself kicked out. To keep yourself from getting kicked out, wait until you have a reliable source of income, and you willingly want to move out.

  Phase 3: Make some quality friends outside of the JW world. In the event that you were to be kicked out, you'll need a good friend to fall back on temporarily. Even if you aren't kicked out, you'll need some people to socialize with, to fill the newly created void.

  Phase 4: Start living the life you actually want to live, even if it's only partially. Once you learn TTATT, there are certain things that you couldn't do before out of fear and guilt that you'll now be able to do. Some things will have to wait until you move out, but not others.

  Phase 5: Stop making friends inside the JW world, and distance yourself from current friends. This may be a bit difficult, especially if there are already some close relationships established. Be careful not to spill the beans with such people, because they will try to get it out of you (and then subsequently rat you out).

  Phase 6: Wait. The first few phases will happen rather quickly, but this is where you'll be crying out in agony on the inside, since it's the longest phase of them all. Most young JWs are stuck at this phase. The hyprocrisy, the lies, the JW-speak at social gatherings, the field service - it will all kill you inside. But you have to endure it if you want this "operation" to go as smoothly as possible.

  Phase 7: Move out. The time has come - you're an adult, graduated from college (ideally), with a decent job, and ready to have your own place. You will no longer be under your parents' control, but your own. You can come and go as you please, buy anything you want, wear anything you want, and do anything you want.

  Phase 8: Exit. How you want to exit is up to you. Just remember - no matter how you do it, you will be shunned. But if you have a decent social network outside of the JW world, it shouldn't bother you (much). You can either slowly exit, or just leave in one shot. Considering that you've spent so much time making your exit, leaving in one shot is the best option.
• 

  ziddina

  EXcellent list, 7"...

  Maybe you should start a thread on that subject, hint, hint...
• 

  Billy the Ex-Bethelite

  You've already gotten some good advice and suggestions 1...free.

  Normally I would have posted to this thread sooner, but your OP was so hard for me to read. The tone of your depression reminded me of dark places I've been before.

  "I must seem like such a hypocrite..."

  Pfft. Correction, THEY are the hypocrites. Comparatively, you're hardly a tiny blip on the hypocritometer. Those wolves in sheeps clothing have stacked the deck against you. And don't let them label you "apostate", because WT is an apostate false religion built atop pyramidology, numerology, and a bunch of other messed up 19th century end time mumbo-jumbo. You aren't depressed because there's something wrong with you. You're depressed because there's something wrong with them, and they're messing up your (and your mother's) life. All that dark garbage that's poisoning your mind is part of the "self-destruct mechanism" that gets programmed in at the KH. You've been taught to believe that if you leave "the truth" you'll curl up and die. It certainly doesn't have to be that way.

  "if you have any advice or help or anything to say at all, please say it."

  Here's what I'll add, what's worked for me during some of those difficult babysteps of my early fade. I was honest about the depression, hopelessness, and suicidality. At the time, I still wasn't coming to terms about TTATT but I was an emotional mess. The depression was because I was spending so much time and energy on WT stuff that I had nothing to live for. I get the impression that this is a card you can play for yourself. Obviously, you have genuine feelings of depression and you've given the impression in the congregation of being very unhappy. Hmmm, maybe because you lost a good job because of the DC and your "faithfulness" was "rewarded" with a crappy job demanding more hours. How unhappifying! And how can you pioneer if you don't have your own car? Wherever I served, a pioneer without a car was "baggage." I'm wondering how you could be in this situation and the elders NOT think you'd be depressed. What kind of future can you have with a lousy job, no car, no path to better education, no friends, no romance, living with your parents until the end of the last day of the last days (that are called the last days because they last, and last, and last...). I'm hearing violins in the background for your "get out of pioneering free" meeting with the elders.

  Later as I progressed in my fade, and my parents realized that I was not returning to the meetings, I made it clear that I was no longer depressed. It makes it very hard for them to try to coax me back to the meetings when they realize that it was completely the religion that made my life unbearable.

  Anyway, just thought I'd suggest that tidbit. Good luck with whatever path you choose.
• 

  Joe Grundy

  Billy: " WT is an apostate false religion built atop pyramidology, numerology, and a bunch of other messed up 19th century end time mumbo-jumbo."

  Top marks for the best one-sentence summation of WT I've seen for a long time.
• 

  Botzwana

  Yknot has the best advice on here.
• 

  moshe

  Practicing deceit is not considered good form and yet, the advice given by most here requires the careful and successful execution of deceit in order to work. In everything else in life, people would give advice to avoid businesses and individuals who are found out to be using deception in order to obtain something of value from you that they can't obtain by being honest and above board.
• 

  Billy the Ex-Bethelite

  moshe,

  You give me the impression that you're the type of person that tells it like it is. Like calling out "fatty fatso" to every overweight person you meet. And every girl you see, you yell at her your honest rating of her body on a scale from 1 to 10. And telling elderly grandmas on Social Security that they need to get a job and stop being a leach on the working class.

  To do otherwise would be deceitful after all.

  If you decided at 18 that you wanted to never see your family again and completely abandon them to the cult so you could adopt the military as your new family, fine by me. I have no interest in judging you and I don't know your family. Maybe your mother danced a jig once you left and stopped eating their food. Certainly for my family, that would completely play into WT propaganda that "mentally diseased apostates" unthankfully abandon their parents to live it up in Satan's system. My parents would have wept themselves into an early grave.

  So you decide that the rest of us are "deceitful" because we love our families and aren't prepared to surrender them to the mind-fu@k that they're getting from WT. Fine. Slap whatever label on me you want... "hypocrite, lazy-a$s, deceitful, stupid," I really don't care. Because I've eventually been able to speak my mind to my parents about WT and they still talk to me, every week, and I go visit them every couple of weeks, eat their food, and do chores for them that they need help with. Maybe you'll call me a pussy for talking to my mom on the phone so she doesn't feel lonely or abandoned. Pfft, I'm over whatever name you call me. You'll probably think I'm a major leech for actually allowing my parents to help me financially while I'm in university. *gasp* I really don't need it that badly, but for me it was a huge emotional victory over their slavery to the cult. Also, I'm now closer to my sisters than I've ever been and they're on their way out of the cult and its cult thinking. And I've made a little progress with some others. None of that would have happened if I would have disassociated by joining the military and burned my bridges behind me.

  There is more than one road out of WT slavery.
• 

  moshe

  Billy, I am sorry, if you took offense- But, I am not one to proffer fake pollyannaisms as workable advice for fading out of the KH.

  ExJWs do not leave their JW familes, you know that. Interesting that you would pick obese people to use as an illustration-

  Also, I'm now closer to my sisters than I've ever been and they're on their way out of the cult and its cult thinking.

  Hooray, Billy gets his sisters out- hey mom, Billy was a secret apostate all along, - he wasn't slacking- he was fooling you. - I think your goose will be cooked- forget about talking to mom and dad anymore.