Reopened Mind

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Posts by Reopened Mind

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  48

  Healing & Rebuilding Your Life - Feedback Wanted

  by jp1692 in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i have been invited to speak at an international cultic studies association workshop this fall.

  i could use your help in focusing on my presentation subject.. these workshops are for former members of any cult or other high-control, authoritarian group, not just jehovah's witnesses.

  last year, i spoke at one of their larger conferences in europe.

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  Reopened Mind

  Jp1692,

  I converted to the borg in my teens, baptized at 20, left completely at 58. It was fairly easy to revert to my former (real, authentic) personality. I had not “put on the new personality” completely as I always considered women more than recruiters and toilet cleaners. Yet I was a full-on Witness while a dub. My husband, on the other hand, had been born into the cult. It took him some time to figure out just what it was that he believed and so we explored different belief systems together. I find this to be an ongoing process for both of us. I think we retain at least some aspects of our personal identity no matter how hard the WT tries to fit us into their mold.

  For myself I did not have to deal with isolation and loneliness as my husband Still Totally ADD exited at the same time I did and we lived near my nonJW cousins which softened the blow considerably. But I do concede that this can be a major obstacle for others.

  So here is how I would rank the six subjects:

  1. Examining Our Core Beliefs and Discovering Your Authentic Self tie for first place.

  2. The Five Stages of Grief

  3. Psychoeducation

  4. Treatments & Interventions

  5. Dealing with Isolation and Loneliness

  These are all excellent topics and all deserve consideration.

  Reopened Mind
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  30

  Awesome, Awesome Report! Wait till you see the end of it!

  by cha ching in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  beccah hendrickson of wgal comes thru again!

  a fabulous interview with barbara anderson, all the pieces of the puzzle are coming together!

  watch out watchtower!

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  Reopened Mind

  Fabulous interview! Things are moving, thanks to Barbara Anderson and reporters who are willing to report the stories. Thanks to cha ching for posting and thanks to Vanderhoven7 for putting up the video. Great Job!!

  Reopened Mind
  
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  114

  The biggest news of the year for Mr. and Mrs. Totally ADD

  by Still Totally ADD in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this is bigger than christmas and birthdays wrap into one.

  thanks to the australian royal commission our youngest son has woke up.

  we received a e-mail from him tonight where he apologized to us for shunning us all these years, how bad he felt for doing this.

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  Reopened Mind

  Diogenesister,

  Nothing would please me more than if former2free and his family would move near us. Of course Still Totally ADD and I would be more than happy to help with the kids.Where we live there are not many opportunities for someone in his field. For now I am "over the moon" that he has contacted us and is fully awake. It will be a very slow process in extricating his family from the cult. We are willing to be supportive of him in any way we can. We are hopeful his wife will join him but the pull of her family is very strong.

  Reopened Mind
  
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  33

  Concerned Parent

  by ConcernedParent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i'm writing for some advice from former jws.

  my family is christian, and my 15yo daughter is "dating" a jw boy.

  (the quotes are because they aren't old enough to actually go out on dates... they consider themselves bf/gf and have hung out and gone places with each other, but always with parents, family, etc.

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  Reopened Mind

  ConcernedParent,

  You are very wise for coming here and asking how things might turn out for your young daughter. She is about the same age I was when I first came in contact with the Jehovah's Witnesses. But that was back in the 60s before information about them was widely available. In my case two JW girls befriended me and began filling my head with how God had purposed to restore the earth to a paradise where there would be no sickness, war, death, and the animals would all be at peace with one another. O how that appealed to my teenage ideology! My parents were good parents so I was not escaping a bad home situation. But of course it wasn't until after I was thoroughly immersed that I learned about the ban on blood transfusions and all the other strict controls imposed by a high control cult. To make a long story short, I married into the cult, raised two boys in it and exited just 7 years ago. I am now 65 years old.

  Tread carefully. Either the boy is trying to get your daughter to convert or he himself is looking for a way out. Be supportive until you learn his real motive. By the way, you haven't mentioned how old he is.

  Best of luck. We are interested in how this turns out.;

  Reopened Mind
  
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  114

  The biggest news of the year for Mr. and Mrs. Totally ADD

  by Still Totally ADD in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this is bigger than christmas and birthdays wrap into one.

  thanks to the australian royal commission our youngest son has woke up.

  we received a e-mail from him tonight where he apologized to us for shunning us all these years, how bad he felt for doing this.

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  Reopened Mind

  former2free,

  So good to have you on the board with us.

  Your mother,

  Reopened Mind
  
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  114

  The biggest news of the year for Mr. and Mrs. Totally ADD

  by Still Totally ADD in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this is bigger than christmas and birthdays wrap into one.

  thanks to the australian royal commission our youngest son has woke up.

  we received a e-mail from him tonight where he apologized to us for shunning us all these years, how bad he felt for doing this.

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  Reopened Mind

  Mrs. Still Totally ADD here.

  This was such good news we just had to share it with all of you. Your support has also brought tears of joy to our eyes. It's been a long road wondering if any of the seeds we tried to plant when we were leaving had taken root. It's good to know something sprouted. We can't take all the credit though. He has been reading and researching on his own. His conclusions are his own.The ARC hearings seem to have been a tipping point for him most likely because he has small children.
  

  He has a wife and young children. I know the road ahead for him will be a rough one. We will stay in communication with him to give him all the unconditional love and support we can.

  Thank all of you again for your encouragement and kindness.

  Reopened Mind
  
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  8

  Nice thought for the day ...

  by neat blue dog in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  just thought i'd share what i found in my fortune cookie.

  (i know, fortune cookies are inviting demons, just like lucky charms cereal 😜) well actually it's more of a proverb, like most of them are nowadays:.

  "as one grows to understand life less and less, one learns to live it more and more.".

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  Reopened Mind

  My mother (nonJW) used to say, "the more you know, the more you know you don't know."

  I don't think this saying is original with her, but it sure rings true.

  Reopened Mind
  
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  50

  You Know You're Starting To Wake Up When...

  by pale.emperor in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  you start listening to music deemed "unsuitable for christians".

  you pretend to knock on the doors.

  you explain a jw teaching to someone and realize how ridiculous it sounds.

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  Reopened Mind

  When you muster up the courage to visit an XJW website.
  
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  29

  conversation with a JW about the sun

  by neat blue dog in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  jw: didn't we just hear somebody say that the sun's gonna blow up?.

  me: well, they were saying that it will expand and eventually burn out.. jw: but it can't do that, it just keeps blowing up inside and getting more power.. me: well, they were talking about stars in general, how they have a life span.. jw: but god didn't make it that way, it's firmly established to time indefinite.

  it's not like the sun is a regular star.

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  Reopened Mind

  Time indefinite does NOT mean forever! Indefinite according to Webster's dictionary means "not definite", not precise", "having no exact limits". Therefore the sun will last to "time indefinite" and will eventually burn out at an unknown time.

  Reopened Mind
  
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  25

  Did You Ever Find The Theolgy of JWs Reasonable?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  when i was a young man growing up in the religion, i would try to defend whatever the understanding of a doctrine was.

  i won a lot of arguments based on the idea that i knew better than anyone i was talking to and defended myself admirably.

  (lol)....eventually, i realized i was in a cult but for many years i was a believer and i had faith that the gb knew more that i could understand..

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  Reopened Mind

  I was first contacted by JW girls in school when I was 14, baptized at 20. I really wanted to live forever on a paradise earth. I really wanted there to be no more wars. I really wanted there to be no more sickness. And so it became urgent to warn people of the impending war of Armageddon in 1975. Their theology appealed to me because it changed; only it didn't change with "new light", it changed with new opinions, opinions of the governing body. I was completely immersed for 38 years until... I found a website in my local newspaper about Jehovah's Witnesses and blood. That was the first stepping stone to learning more and more about the organization I was ensconced in. But I had a big problem---my husband was the presiding overseer. How could I show him what I was learning? As it turns out, he too was harboring his own doubts. We danced around each other for a while until we finally had enough courage to talk frankly. We laid plans and we exited together. My biggest regret (and my husband shares this regret) is that we didn't do this before we raised our children.

  So, to answer your question minimus, yes, at one time I did find the JW theology reasonable because I wanted to live forever in health and peace. Those pesky truths got in the way!

  Reopened Mind