I've been out of the JW's for 16 years now. I was born and raised in the "truth" and was disfellowshipped when I was 22. When I left it wasn't because I didn't believe it, but because I was so unhappy I simply had to change something in my life. Basically I was committing spiritual suicide instead of a physical one. When I left I closed the door on my JW upbringing and rarely spoke or thought of it. I started drinking and partying w/ "worldly" people which made it easy to make friends. For years this wasn't out of control for me and I outwardly had a really good life. Inside though, I always felt something was wrong with me and had suffered with depression for as long as I could remember. I just figured I was born with a chemical imbalance or something and I would be this way for the rest of my life.
Off and on over the years I'd seen therapists and felt I had basically gotten as far as I could possibly go in healing myself and working on my depression. Two and a half years ago I decided to quit drinking and started seeing a new therapist. Besides the normal talk therapy I was accustomed to, she also offered EMDR therapy. (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing) It's hard to explain, but it alternatively stimulates the left & right side of the brain. One side of our brains is thinking and the other is feeling. Initially the therapist had me make a list of about 10 things that I considered extremely painful times in my life and we've worked on them one by one. The therapist asks me to rate on a scale of 1-10 how upset this makes me feel. Then she asks me to think about this thing while the alternating stimulation is occurring. She stops it after a short time and has me briefly share what I was thinking. After perhaps 3-10 of these mini sessions she'll ask me again to rate from 1-10 how upset I feel. Typically it had decreased by 3-4! Each of these therapy sessions feels comparable to about 4 talk therapy session. It's that powerfully.
At the beginning my therapist said that with this therapy I should get to a point where I won't even need to see her again. I'd never heard that before! A year ago we both thought that I was basically done with this therapy when stuff about being raised as a JW came to forefront. I was very surprised by this because I didn't think I had a problem with it and that overall I'd had a good childhood. Certainly plenty of my friends have had worse. But basically I had never deprogrammed what I'd been indoctrinated with from infancy on. I'd never examined my core beliefs and even determined what I wanted for myself from life. As a JW, for me at least, I was just existing until God brought something better. I didn't need to plan for a career, retirement, and even having a family wasn't an ideal JW thing to do. I was told I would never graduate high school. In school I was miserable, I isolated myself from everyone, expecting every one I knew (besides JWs) to be destroyed at any moment. I was teased constantly by the kids and that was considered acceptable to me because thats what happens to Jehovahs faithful servants. Also having been disfellowshipped I have nearly no contact with the people who served as my family until I was 22. This is not normal and I now realize I was very traumatized by this. I had accepted it as part of my decision to move on. For many years I didn't ever think about anything religious or spiritual, but deep in the back of my mind was this thought that at any moment I might be zapped by god. As I got older I realized that the prophecies of the JW's weren't coming true and I relaxed somewhat. The EMDR helped me to first of all realize that these things were upsetting to me and that these religious beliefs had caused my depression since childhood. I was able to overcome the fearful programing to not look at "apostate" information which I didn't even realize I had. When I finally started looking at what others were saying it quickly freed me from those lingering doubts and fears. It's so incredible!!!
I finally am clear and free inside my own mind & heart! All of this from this EMDR therapy. I had to do a lot of work along the way, but whats so cool about it is that my therapist didn't have to know anything about JWs to help me! To me, theres nothing weeby jeeby about this type of therapy because all of the understanding and clarity on this JW stuff was generated within my own mind, I found my own way free of this stuff! Sorry to have gone on and on but I honestly feel I will never sink back into another deep depression again. I know realistically life has its ups and downs and I'll have to deal with that, but I feel ready to face life and live it and feel I will have a quality of life like I've never known before. I would love to help other people to gain what I have gained!