Something's Gotta Give

pale.emperor

I've been 100% alone since my DF last month. I'm dead to my family now, unless i return to their cult - so i recently made contact with 3 former JW's that were in my cong when i was in my youth. To my surprise, they all had exactly the same doubts and reasoning i had and said even though they've been out 6-7 years they "still feel tied to it in some way" and "feel guilty celebrating xmas or birthdays". One of them, related to me some very startling facts involving how he was treated by the elders. ALL of them had a lot of things they could have spread around, but none of them did, they just got on with their lives and wanted to be left alone (so much for leavers being malicious, lying, mentally diseased huh?).

Fortunately all 3 of them managed to fade successfully. I wasn't so lucky.

With this years convention admonishing JW members to report any inactive ones in their territory to the elders, and even to begin shunning inactive family members it gets me thinking that something has to change. We all agreed things have to if this cult is to continue. People exploiting the loop hole to fade out, young ones not getting baptized, people waking up and leaving, memorial partakers going UP not down, the GB getting pretty old now and the end still isnt here, money is as tight as Anthony Morris's boyfriends pants...

Some changes have to come in in order to maintain control surely?

Half banana

PE, it was good to find friends who were JWs. In fact it is a good thing to make new contacts and friends after having been locked into the Watchtower social club. Keeping company with sensible non-JWs is a real a help in losing the insane JW way of thinking.

When we leave the org most of us follow a familiar pattern. The anger, the shunning, the new found freedom and the unfamiliar need to think for ourselves. Actually we have to be constantly re-thinking EVERYTHING for quite a time.

While we are doing that, things continue to drop into place and we become normalized, we realize the enormity of the hold the JW thought-vice once had on our brain.

After a while I think you might agree, perhaps not yet but later on, that the need to reform the JW org is futile. If it is not God's exclusive "spirit guided organisation" then it may as well be disbanded...and the sooner the better to prevent any more harm being done to people's minds, education, well-being and self esteem.

truth_b_known

The most miserable portion of my life was after the total fade, but before I stopped trying to keep the practices of JWs.

Be all the way in or all the way out. There is no grey or middle ground when it comes to Jehovah's Witnesses.

As soon as I got on with my life things were so much better. The best, actually.

I got on with my career and advanced quickly. I made great new friends whose friendship is truly unconditional. Life became enjoyable.

I'm happier now knowing that this life is all there is and that one day I will die than at any point in my life where I thought I was going to live forever in a paradise earth.

scratchme1010

Some changes have to come in in order to maintain control surely?

I think yes and no. I wouldn't surprise me if the cult continue doing exactly the same thing even if they lose people. remember, they have alternatives. They are not in the business of caring for their people; they are in the business of money. They are in the real estate business now and they are doing well, so who cares about being less people. They will find some kind of biblical reason to do what they have.

pale.emperor

It's all very much like the book 1984 by George Orwell. Before i was "given the boot" (DF) i was talking to my mum about the changes that keep being made. She called it "new light" and proof that this is Gods organization. I said "what about the overlapping generation teaching?" she said we've always believed in the overlapping generation. She, honestly, 100% completely, could not remember believing the "generation that would not die". (She was baptized in 1976.) This is the same woman who boasts that she's never told a lie since becoming a JW.

It's scarey how an organization can have that much control that their followers will genuinely wipe their mind of old teachings and completely believe the new one to the point of death.

FayeDunaway

I think your friends might feel guilty celebrating birthdays and Christmas because they maybe never did the research. They must still believe that it's at least partly "the truth." Unless you do the research of their history and doctrine you will just be living with the guilt. I have a friend who felt guilty for 10 years before finally delving into research. She read crisis of conscience, and websites like this one, and finally she's happy. There's no moving on emotionally from it until you research. So direct your friends to jwfacts.com and you will be doing them a favor.

Gulf Coaster

FayeDunaway has a very valuable point there. Once you look into the background of the jw cult, you see it for what it is. A man-made scam.

I left way before the internet days so my research consisted of a few books in the Religion section of the library. The fact that I was doing that research was a clear indication that I felt there was something very wrong with that "religion". I felt that from about age 15 and over the next few years I became 100% convinced that the cult was full of sh**.

So when I left at age 20, I felt no guilt at jumping right into the worldly life because I knew those simple joys were not wrong. Christmas, Halloween, birthdays, singing the anthem, playing sports, sleeping in on the weekends, clubbing, swearing, making my own true friends who did all of that and more.

No guilt but the ties are still there today, 36 years later, because my 88 year old mother is still in and will die in it. She shunned me for a few years but after that, I forged a civil but cool relationship with her. Out of obligation, I suppose. I avoid talking about her cult because that's the fastest way to get her yabbering on about her jehoohah and how I need to return, blah blah blah. I change the subject, or end the call. Even after she dies, that tie will still be there because I'll look back and see that I didn't have the same close, loving relationship my friends and family have with their mothers. And I will forever look back at the early years of my life and see the deprivations and bizarreness of it, thanks to the cult.

I wouldn't worry if you don't feel you're ever totally over it. It's not surprising because face it, the cult damages us.

FayeDunaway

It's true, gulf coaster. No matter if we do find out for ourselves that it's all a scam, we are forever affected by it. I unfortunately live with the sadness of a distant relationship with my nuclear family as well, and many regrets about my life, that I had control of or didn't have control of. The ones who are with the witnesses for a relatively brief stint, without growing up with it and without family in it, are lucky and might possibly be unaffected. The others of us, all we can do is live each day grateful that we currently are not under the control of the cult and cultivate new friendships that can feel like family, and give our kids better childhoods than we had.

OUTLAW

Some changes have to come in in order to maintain control surely?

ONLY IF THIS HAPPENS..

LV101

YOU'RE right, Outlaw! LOL/Too funny - love your graphic shows.

Something's Gotta Give

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