which JEHOVAH'S WITNESS SCARE TACTICS kept you from leaving?

by Ms. Whip 40 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  doofdaddy

  OK

  It's tough medicine time.

  Sitting on the fence only gives you a pain in the arse. No one is happy with that position. You need to trust yourself. Trust that the decision you make is truly the best for you. Those people have conditional love for you. If you do what they want, they will love and except you. If not your gone man.

  Is that the kind of people you want to be with for the rest of your life? There are some damn fine people on this planet, don't believe the jw bullshit that all are evil. It's just not true.

  Trust yourself
• 

  Ingenuous

  What worked on me?

  Being raised to believe there was only one true religion and this was it - that the Org had researched all those other religions for me and I could just read their books and find out just how wrong everybody else was. That you had to go through an organization and, in particular, this one, to be acceptable to God. That there was no other way out there and wasn't I "lucky" for having been born into the right one. We had such a "wealth" of "spiritual food" that I could never get through it all, so I might as well just use all those books to do my reasearch - no reason to strike out in the Bible on my own.

  They also kept me "in" by demonizing anyone and everyone who disagreed with them - Idolizing my parents, particularly my father (with their help, of course) - making my happiness dependent on others' approval - and, of course, all that wonderfully effective guilt, guilt, guilt!
• 

  Ingenuous

  Why do so many exjws give their power away? Don't you see that by excepting their judgement you are feeding the monster?

  When I was practicing to become a doula and was madly passionate about letting every expectant parent I ran into know about it, my favorite quote was:

  "If you don't know your options, you don't have any."

  I still think this is true. If you have not researched/been informed of/experienced the options we have in life, you don't know they're there, and they might as well not even exist.

  Even when reality starts to crack open the shell of isolation, old habits of thinking have literally blazed a trail in your brain that can make it difficult to remember what you've learned. Until you've burned a new pathway in your mind, it's like having the wipers on your car on intermittent: for a minute, you've got a clear view, but in no time the rain has clouded and distorted the glass again. It takes a lot of repeated effort to finally keep the view visible.

  So please be patient as you continue to encourage those of us who are still trying to get used to reality. And keep your chin up, GGG!
• 

  tsunami_rid3r

  i was already dead to my mom when i said i don't want to be a jehovah's witness, and now i pretend to be a worshipper of jehovah. i feed her so much bullshit, i lie to her so much, i feel like scum.
• 

  GetBusyLiving

  The "scare tactics" are what made me disassociate instead of doing the fade. I wanted to give that entire organization a big public middle finger.

  GBL
• 

  Ms. Whip

  The "scare tactics" are what made me disassociate instead of doing the fade. I wanted to give that entire organization a big public middle finger.

  GBL

  so what do you do with an entire "generation A" (A for apostate) group of ex-witnesses who are living a lie out of fear? where is our rainbow flag and parade?
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  doofdaddy

  Yeah understand the hesitation. It took a big reality check on my part to move on but its like being a twig stuck on the side of a river. Eventually you gonna have to let go and trust the direction of the flow. See jws told you that you must be in control of your life even the future...Impossible and stressful.

  Lot of fear to face before you let that river bank go...
• 

  doofdaddy

  Sorry ms w I didn't follow. Are you still involved with jws? Remember I've been out of the picture for a while..

  Explain?
• 

  KAYTEE

  I do believe now, on reflection that the JWs are experts in manipulating your imagination and painting a portrait of such beauty i.e. Living for ever etc.on a paradise earth, that I did not want to lose this. Even their illustrated pictures of animals and mankind living together and not one bit of animal mess on the floor, although unrealistic, appealed to me. The greatest threat to my conscience though was the fear of going against Jehovah, thinking that he was behind this Organisation. On research I do not believe that He is behind this Organisation, and therefore the fear is no longer there.

  Kaytee
• 

  findingmyway

  give them back their fear and guilt...tell them you don't want it any more

  I'm working on it. Although I am an adult and a parent, there's a part of me that still wants to please my parents and make them proud. Of course, my struggle is letting go of that desire to please them, because I will never be happy until I do.