by individual 14 Replies latest jw friends
individual,
You make a good point. The emotional mnd takes a long time to catch up with the conscious mind. Long after we have seen through the
nonsense of the Watchtower we are plagued by feelings of doubt.
Time does heal and bring together the whole of our thinking and feeling. Harmony and peace is there but it takes time.
'I was an oak, now I'm a willow I can bend.'
Hi Individual and welcome to the board.
I am glad that you shared your feelings with us as I think this is something many of us experience after leaving the borg. Those feelings of fear were, for me, very intense. I used to avoid the news and newspapers as I couldn't stand the terror that arose in me whenever something even remotely approaching a WTS 'prophecy' was mentioned. And within me there grew an anger at the years of life and peace of mind that had been stolen from me. The horrible nightmares I had that my children would be murdered by Jehovah at Armageddon and that it would all be my fault...what an awful, awful thing to do to someone in order to control them. But I'm glad to hear that you've broken free of that mindset, as have I and life is good now.
If you haven't already, you might want to pop over to the Personal Experiences section and read some of the stories there...its a great way to get to know some of the folks who post here and also to see that you are not alone in your feelings.
Dana
"A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Hi Individual,
Very interesting question.
Even when you have broken free, you will still be haunted by it, watching the news just in case they were right.
I think the unsurprising answer is that it all depends on the individual.
For myself, I had held on for so many years rationalising away my doubts that when I finally did make the decisive break, there was absolutely no doubt and no going back. I never was troubled by any doubts about it.
But, interestingly, I am reminded of a conversation I had with a young woman whom I had grown up with in the same congregation. We were pretty much the same age, and this conversation took place in the early eighties when we had both been out a couple of years.
We met up for dinner, my wife and I, and she with the "wordly" (never-a-Witness)chap she had married. We laughed about the nonsense we had been taught for all those years. We got pretty drunk.
Then she said:
"But sometimes, late at night, say, when you're woken up by a fierce thunderstorm or something, don't you suddenly sit up in bed and say "Oh my God! It's Armageddon! It's happened!"
I just laughed, and told her: No. Never.
But I never forgot what she said. It said something about her.
And I was immensely saddened three or four years later (I didn't see her often, we weren't close friends) to find out that she'd gone back - and worse! She had dragged matey-boy along with her.
He is now an MS. Go figure.
Duncan.
Do you know what makes me angry more than anything - it was all for nothing. 25 years where I could have spent my time doing something more productive. I often wonder where I would be now if I had never had any contact with the organisation.
One of the things I have noted in the above posts is that the effects take time to wear off, so if you are in the organisation for say, 25 years and it takes 5 years to finally psychologically break free, the organisation continues to affect your life even after you walk out of that hall for the last time.
It is good to be able to look at my life with optimism and no longer relying on a hope that is based on the destruction of humanity, people I love.
bump
