When I ran from feelings that were starting to come up, I allowed them to build up and become more potent until they burst out and spilled all over me and everybody around me. A Survivor
In the JW religion feelings are repressed and denied as something illogical and messy. The whole epistemology of the religion is built on rational logic. To quote Bernie Siegel MD, If you rely solely on logic you become pathological, and in many aspects to abuse survivors the JW religion becomes very pathological stifling their recovery. Most of the concepts of Christianity have been reduced to hundreds of written spoken and unspoken rules and regulations.
JS was a middle aged elders wife who struggled with constant depression. She would miss many meetings and when she attended she did not look well physically. In the congregation she was viewed as an paradox due to not being an exemplary elders wife who could put in a lot of field service time but didnt. We all knew there was something wrong with her but it was one of those things you dont talk about. As you may have guessed JS was an abuse survivor who needed professional psychological help. Her elder husband was untrained unskilled and powerless to help her. He tried buying her a house in the country, sending her on expensive shopping sprees, and even taking her on exotic vacations all to no avail. He was caught in a double bind that would become very costly. He was damned if he took her to get psychotherapy since this was something to be avoided as instructed by the society and he endured his own turmoil from seeing his wife suffer silently behind closed doors. In time he could no longer take her perpetual states of depression and he began to focus on himself. He stayed more and more away from her finding refuge in his business. One day he came home and found her dead, she had taken a gun to her head and killed herself. JS is a portrait of the JW abuse survivor in that they suffer perpetually with no voice to tell their story and with little to no avenues for healing from their traumas. In general the congregations have become a very dysfunctional family with many patterns of a tyrannical paternalistic family.
DF is and elders wife who also suffers from deep depression and as JS lives in a perpetual prison of logic. Since her depression is in part hereditary she will live with it for the rest of her life. Since her condition is organic she has the congregational approval to get medication, but even this venue is limited in allowing her to have a functional life. Her choice is to either be sedated and sleep or live in an emotional mine field at home. This of course has taken a toll on her teenage daughter who has her own emotional and adolescent problems, running away from home and eventually being dfed.
LS used to be a pioneer till one day she got into trouble for smoking and getting drunk. At age 40, her repressed memories from childhood sexual abuse bloomed as flashbacks. She had enough common sense not to go to the elders and she turned to her best friend for help who was also an incest survivor. Prior to being recruited into JWs she had led a very promiscuous life as a rock band groupie doing drugs. Her husband a musician was killed in an accident and she was left with two little children to raise. The JWs became her surrogate family and support group to help her deal with all her emotional issues she carried with her. Since a pioneer recruited her she got talked into becoming one and of course this became a regimented life for her. In time she struggled with issues that no one could help her with. She suffered from constant fatigue and feelings of worthlessness and emptiness. The religion could no longer ameliorate her feelings with all its neatly packaged answers. When she turned to the elders for help they just gave her their canned answers to wait on Jehovah and do more in service and attend all meetings.
The stories are countless and each congregation has members needing professional help. Having attended KM schools we were merely trained in how to follow policies and procedures. We were warned and even threatened that if we would take any kind of special training on our own we would lose our positions.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you are fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking is freedom. D Eisenhower