My Story (page 2)

diamondblue1974

the formula is so predictable. ;
Mildly interesting anecdote.
Christendom's churches bla bla
The proper bible instruction is.. bla bla
Outrageously unfounded accusation bla bla
We can conclude then bla bla bla.

Jgnatyou have an amazing grasp of what goes on at the meetings for a non witness...you are spot on with this;

When I'd pick up any other magazine or book (other than JW literature), I'd get guilt feelings

I also remember feeling guilty for reading external books and literature...my feelings of guilt also were about having doubts though...everyone else was believing this crap yet I was unable too...it kind of makes you feel like you are different and it affects your self esteem not being part of the group...the witnesses always used to babble on about peer pressure at school...hell they were experts at it in the Kingdom Hall...quite the authority!

Gary

Black Sheep

As a 'born in' I had a helluva job reading WT. I could read anything else with good comprehension, but I just couldn't turn my brain on for WT.

Trying to write a talk, or answer a question in my own words were a nightmare. I just used to paraphrase everything. I was just a WT parrot.

If my parents left a marked WT lying around I would grab it and mark mine, never reading the words, just looking for the patterns in the page and making sure I didn't underline the wrong bits.

I find that reading 1930s WT I am fine and can comprehend the drivel they pour forth, but give me something new and the old brain cells turn off very quickly and I soon find myself reading a page without any of it getting past the retinas. Very frustrating. I'm only looking for the juicy bits, but the brain turns off before I get to them.

lisavegas420

sphere wrote...

I had always been so confused as a witness, so much of the literature and reasoning just didn’t make sense, but I knew it was the truth so I just figured I wasn't smart enough to understand it.

I remember asking my mom if a mentally handicapped person knew that they were mentally handicapped. I thought there was something wrong with me and no one ever told me..... and that's why I didn't/couldn't understand it.

lisa

Beachbender

I`m seeing a pattern here! I can see a little of me in everyone`s comments!!! Especially the last few. I was also an avid reader as a young girl, but simply just couldn`t figure out alot of the material that was covered. And I really hated sitting through the Sunday WT meetings! I always used the answers that were given when I raised my hand to participate, cause I just couldn`t elaborate on my own I felt so dumb! Good to know it wasn`t me all those years!!!!

sweet tee

Good thing was that all that time something was screaming inside of me to continue to read, to research, to study wider than what WTBS required. (Though I would be “encouraged”, regularly, to stop doing it)

Like you Zagor, I was an avid reader before my indoctrination also. When I first came into da troof, I would research everything. I loved the aid book and really enjoyed reading the litterature. It's funny you should bring this up today, I was just thinking yesterday how good it used to feel doing all that reading - did someone slip me something too ?

I wanted to read studies in the scriptures and the finished mystery but was discouraged by the elders from doing so. Now I know why! I was excited when the reprints of the bound volumes started coming out but again I was discouraged from going back too far due to 'noo light', they didn't want me to get ~~the real truth~~ confused.

Eventually I lost my interest in doing deep research and over time the litterature became dull and boring and I didn't enjoy studying anymore I just endured it. Once I started reading secular books again and exposed myself to 'worldly' people at work I realized that the world was a lot bigger than the borganization and not nearly as frightening or corrupt as the gutless boobies had led me to believe. Couple of flip-flop-flips and bam! I was gone.

sweet tee

zagor

Thank you guys for all your replies, I can't tell you how much I appreciate that you didn't laugh at me. I was quite reluctant to even post something like that at first. There is something quite mysterious going on here, isn't it. Where else do you hear that people feel like there is a fog in their head or that they have mental blocks or something that generally acts as breaks on their intellect? I mean I've been through university and workload was many times greater than what meeting require yet I felt only enlighted not other way around.

Is it the nature of the beast or something deeper much more sinister. I mean I agree that repetitiveness of meetings does exhaust anyone and you tend to feel too tired to read anyway. But does that explain completely that feeling of saturated fat in your head, feeling of a fog. What is going on really?

From my research I gather that we are talking about similar symptoms experienced by extreme stress.
Are any of you working in field of psychology so that you can explain it in a bit more details?

hillbilly

Do you find that your thinking capacity has stalled after becoming a JW?

I was about 12 when the folks dove in. I noticed their ability to reason and think diminished at the time. Looking back, I wonder how they bought into the cult...they had been very squared away most of the time.

Rational thought and flexibilty went away in many areas.

I was old enough to know the difference...and was well on my way to being an independent thinker. I was still young enough to be eager to please. That's the only thing that stopped me from outright rage against the WT system for a long time. It was stupid but at the same time it was "the right thing to do".

At 12 I was caught between to worlds mentally. I am suprised that I can reason and argue as well as I can today.

~Hill

My Story

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