Congrats on your freedom and welcome, HBF!
In early 2011, cognitive dissonance nearly killed me. I had six-week Intensive Out-Patient Hospitalization for severe, recurrent clinical depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. In early May, I had an emergency hospitalization due to toxicity from being over medicated for the same.
I walked out of a TMS/Bible Study meeting knowing that I just couldn't listen to their rhetoric one second longer. I spent six weeks on my living room couch going over all the doctrinal and personal issues that had arisen over my 42 years in-- I took issue with the misogyny toward women in the Bible and in the organization. All the murder and mayhem in the Old Testament in the name of righteous warfare sickened me. Accepting blood fractions but not whole blood parts made no sense to me. I had done a careful study of the newer Isaiah's Prophecy books and knew that the dates just didn't add up. I wrote a letter to NY and received a six-page reply that was just dancing around the topic and not directly answering the discrepancies. I thought the Revelation Climax Book with all its trumpet blasts was a crock, not to mention the idea of crossing things out and penciling in changes. We had to do this at Pioneer School too. They couldn't even keep up with doctrinal changes in the publications. In 2010 when they presented the overlapping generation doctrine at the District Convention, my first thought was, "That's crap."
My tipping point was both doctrinal and very personal. I absolutely knew that when I studied in the early to mid-70s the teaching on shunning was that, if a family member was disfellowshipped, you could still have "normal family relations", but could not talk about "spiritual things".
My son went through a traumatic break up with his JW wife. He was still acting out a year later, so they disfellowshipped him, but he was still living in our home. I knew that when he moved out, I was supposed to shun him. One faction of elders was saying that if we were back in Isreal, as a parent, I would have to be the one to throw the first stone, so there couldn't be any contact. The other faction was saying, that given my concerns for my son's mental health, I could visit and check in on him, but I shouldn't let that be known in the congregation. These were the elders that maintained contact with their disfellowshipped children-- such hypocrisy. One of the hardline elders had lost a son to suicide due to extreme shunning which was unthinkable to me.
We were taught that Jehovah would remove all pain and sorrow in the new system. I reasoned that the only way I could be happy in paradise forever would be to forget my husband (long-time faded JW/"apostate"), my daughter ("disassociated by her actions") and my son. If I wasn't a wife or mother, then who would that be in paradise? Certainly not me.
I chose my life with my family now over life in paradise. At least that's how I saw it at the time. I left a believer and learned TTATT about three months later.