Were you df'd while suffering depression???

Pistoff

I have a son who was disfellowshipped while suffering serious depression and who was not actively "sinning".
I feel this is OUTRAGEOUS and want to know how widespread the practice is. Please tell me what your experiences are, I am interested and want to try to get the brothers to factor this in, so we can STOP losing people to depression.

witchywoman

In the last months of my marriage, I now realize that I was in a depressed state. That is probably why my dsfsping hit me so hard. I am sure that I was being pushed to the edge. I needed help and was asking for it. (from my ex)

Once I was dsfsd the depression was still there but my thoughts were not as destructive. Still it was pretty rough.

witchywoman

Beck_Melbourne

My depression came immediately after I left, but it was soon followed by jubulation when I discovered the truth about the troof.

I'm sorry to hear your son suffers from depression, but he can now seek the medical help he needs without the boundaries and narrow minded thinking of the society.

Beck

Scully

I've never DAd or been DFd, but I was suffering from severe postpartum depression during the last year or so I was an active JW. Despite knowing that what I was going through was a diagnosed illness, the JWs we knew used it as an opportunity to treat me and my family with utter contempt, instead of the support and compassion that would have hastened my recovery.

When I asked the Service Overseer (in confidence) for assistance in arranging for me to keep my service hours up by going on Bible studies because I was having panic attacks, a rumour suddenly started circulating around the congregation to the effect that "Sister Scully doesn't want to go door-to-door anymore".

When I composed myself enough to come to meetings, elders would greet me with "Well would you look at what the cat dragged in", and "I hear you're having trouble coping with motherhood <guffaw guffaw>. Serves you right for getting pregnant so close to Armageddon."

When I was so upset at the treatment we were getting - we were given the cold shoulder, other parents wouldn't let their kids play with my kids, so-called friends would hang up on me if I called them - that I ended up weeping in the Mothers' Room during one meeting, another "Sister" reported me to the elders (after she gossiped it through the whole congregation first) and said that I threatened to kill everyone at the Kingdom Hall with a gun.

The last Memorial we went to in 1994, the brothers refused to let me pass the emblems. They went out of their way to make sure I didn't. Apparently they were concerned that I might partake "unworthily". I was so overwhelmed by a feeling that they'd judged me as being so undeserving of the benefit of Christ's ransom sacrifice on my behalf, that I became suicidal and had to be hospitalized.

When I confided to a friend that I felt like I needed a "vacation" from The Truth(tm) to figure out some things for myself, she told me that if I turned my back on The Truth like that, my three beautiful children would be better off if I took them out in the back yard and blew their heads off with a gun, so they'd be guaranteed a place in the Paradise and wouldn't be destroyed at Armageddon with me.

Depression is the worst thing a JW can have. When it happens, it's feeding time for the vultures. They're circling and keep pecking at you, waiting for your carcass to drop.

Love, Scully

Edited by - Scully on 1 August 2002 23:41:36

minimus

I've been to many elder's meetings where I have heard that we should take into consideration a person's mental state BUT that did not in any way absolve one from a sin. Even if a person was said to have multiple personalities, we were to deal with the sin and the sinner(even if 1 personality blamed the wrongdoing on another).

outoftheorg

It seems that a large number of people are in clinical depression at the time of df or da. I know in my case I had experienced a lot of problems, a suicidal wife, due in part to childhood molestation and incest, finding out that a daughter was molested by an elder a few years earlier and a 17 yr old son who decided alcohol and drug abuse and fighting with the police was to be his life. All of this in about a 2 yr period. This along with my wish to get out of the borg and trying to run a business and I found myself in clinical depression.

It was at this time that the elders wanted me out and my now ex wife decided this was a good time to get a divorce and keep the elders approval. keep the borg in her life and get rid of me.

It seems to me that this is a pattern that when one finally has enough they are emotionaly worn out and the vultures take this as the time to kick one when they are down.

Being born into a jw family, the final decision that one has been deceived their whole life and the dysfunctional family and dysfunctional friendships all collapse.

I believe that most if not all jw families are highly dysfunctional and ill prepared to deal with the challenges of life.

When one is severly depressed the only strong emotion still intact is usually anger. An angry & depressed person that elders or others want to abuse is a very dangerous person. I am surprised there are not more physical attacks or killings in these situations. I would not be surprised to see some of this as this current situation with the jw's causes more and more to walk away.

Dia

Wow. What a thread. All of your comments were extraordinary.

Scully, it brought back such a vivid memory of the 'feel' of the place, it was just like being there.

(Excuse me, I've got to run away screaming!)

I'm so glad you're out. Hope things are going well with your kids.

bigfloppydog

I was very depressed, about alot of things, but do not really want to speak about it as it would make me feel bad. Depression can really make havoc with your life.

DanTheMan

Last October I sat in the Star Chamber. I had been going through severe depression in the prior 1 1/2 years, and I had committed an indescreet act with a coworker.

When I came back into the room to hear the decision, I was scared to death. I felt like "if they DF me, I'm gonna kill myself". I could tell that two had won out over one, and I was reproved. A different group of three and it VERY easily could have gone the other way. I think that 90% of people in a similar circumstance would have been DF'd. I just got lucky. Now that I'm DA'd, I'm sure the three look back and say "we should have DF'd him".

Interesting thing was, is I only attended 2 meetings after that. I'm hardly the picture of mental health, I have a lot to work through, but I'm way better off than I was a year ago, when I was so depressed that I was nauseous until around noon every day and couldn't eat, I was losing weight, hair falling out, it was lots of fun. Thank God for the internet and all the wonderful ex-jw books.

Sentinel

ABSOLUTELY. NO DOUBT IN MY MIND THAT I WAS EMOTIONALLY ILL AT THAT TIME.

BUT DO YOU THINK THEY CARED?

DO YOU THINK I RECEIVED ANY REAL HELP OR LOVING SUPPORT FROM MY MOTHER?

I learned a very important lesson in my youth. When it comes right down to it, the only person I know I can depend on is me.

Karen/Sentinel

Were you df'd while suffering depression???

Share this