StarTrekAngel

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Posts by StarTrekAngel

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  24

  Has waking up ever made you physically ill?

  by fizzle in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  has waking up ever made you physically ill?

  perhaps because of the emotional strain etc..?.

  if if so what were / are the symptoms?.

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  StarTrekAngel

  For me it was difficult to point to a trigger so for a while it was hard to relate one with the other, which made it scary. I slowly began to realize that anything that was emotional, wether excitement about something good or anxiety about something bad, would eventually lead to the same physical manifestations. I could be laying down in my couch watching a comedy and laughing my butt off. Clear minded and all and then all of a sudden it would come.
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  24

  Has waking up ever made you physically ill?

  by fizzle in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  has waking up ever made you physically ill?

  perhaps because of the emotional strain etc..?.

  if if so what were / are the symptoms?.

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  StarTrekAngel

  The most shocking part, which eventually causes the stress that leads to illness, is the coming to realization that the people you love the most are the first ones to doubt you. The more you understand about brainwashing, the more obvious it becomes that they are not themselves and you can hardly hold them accountable. Which leads to a greater feeling of your family being victimized by these assholes. Being able to reason thru all of these breaks the defense mechanism of cognitive dissonance which would protected you from emotional stress.
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  45

  Disassociation - shunning - can we all lobby Government that it is against freedom of religion?

  by stockholm_Syndrome in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  if jws want to inflict shunning on members who want to remain -- knock yourselves out.

  but if someone wants to leave - dont believe in an evil almighty god, bible ...or just dont agree with the rules- they should be free to leave- even after being 'disfellowshipped'.

  i think it was pre 1980 that you could disassociate yourself without shunning repercussions.

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  StarTrekAngel

  I agree with galaxie. Shunning in and on itself is something that as Simon and others said, would probably never fly. But you know as well as everyone else here that shunning is only the means to an end and that is how it should be looked at. The fact that most JW would shun you just because the GB says so is not the final goal. The GB are glad JWs shun just on their call alone but the ulterior motive is to force people to stick around. I believe that government could take action on those grounds just like the government would take action if a religion would use their belief as a basis to harm people physically. As long as it could be demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that the practice of shunning forces people to involuntarily remain members, may be. But it is a bit more difficult to do this when the responsibilities are put on the actual members and there is no actual physical harm. I believe society is slowly becoming more aware of the damage of emotional trauma and manipulation but it is a slow road.
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  24

  Has waking up ever made you physically ill?

  by fizzle in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  has waking up ever made you physically ill?

  perhaps because of the emotional strain etc..?.

  if if so what were / are the symptoms?.

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  2. 
  3. 
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  StarTrekAngel

  Based on the observations of at least 4 doctors, it has.

  Around February of 2016 I began feeling a bit dizzy. Not nauseous but rather unstable. One weekend it went over the top and so I went to the ER. My blood pressure was 170/110. ER Doc gave me a pill to lower it and sent me home. He did assume that I was going to be in the pill for the rest of my life. Went to family doctor and got labs. All labs were in check (No cholesterol or anything) I am only 38 and up until that point I had been working out 3-4 times a week for the past 4 years. Blood pressure was 108/78. He was reluctant to give me an official diagnoses of hypertension since I told him I had been under quite a bit of stress, both at work and at home. He insisted I needed to calm down but I told him it was difficult to do so because I had started feeling a sensation in my chest, similar to what you feel when you are utterly scared or are watching a very suspenseful movie. He said it was all in my head and suggested I could go get a stress test. He also suggested therapy. Therapist was aware of my situation (TTATT) since I had seen him before. He too said that it all looked like it was just panic attacks as he had experienced them in the past himself. He is a professor of psychology at a local university and he recently asked his students if anyone had ever had a panic attack, to what most replied NO. He told them that was too bad because they will confront the conditions in their career and it will be hard for them to relate.

  I went to get a stress test. The cardiologist was supposed to give me another appointment to discuss the results. Upon stepping off the machine he said the results were so normal he did not want to waste my time with another appointment. At a follow up appointment my family doctor insisted that it was all in my head. He gave me Xanax which helped quite a bit. Since I told him the dizziness was not going away, he sent me to get an MRI. All clear as well. While I trusted his diagnosis of the tests, his tone of dismissal about what seemed very real sensations did not provide me much confidence. (besides, the DR is a JW as well). I ended up with a great doctor who actually takes the time to listen and does a whole lifestyle evaluation, including potential emotional issues. Since he is not a JW I was able to discuss these things with him. Fortunately, he had a grandmother who went thru similar issues and had a fall out with the cult so he understood. He too believed it was mostly stress and anxiety but did not want to dismiss my feelings so he did and EKG and put me in a monitor for 3 days. All clear as well. Labs as well all clear. He gave me a beta blocker, which is supposed to work better than Xanax and is not addictive (plus I can drink :) ). I tried to use alternative methods like meditation and natural relaxers like Valerian root. (besides things were getting better so I figure why take medication).

  Long story short, here I am almost a year later, I am still "recovering". Bellow is a short lists of some of the things that I physically felt. Sometimes I feel a little doubtful as to what is the source of it and wether it is one of those conditions that are hard to properly diagnose. But I figure that if it hasn't kill me yet, then is probably going to be ok. If it helps others avoid such lengthy recovery, then I will feel good about it.

  -Early, like for the first 4 months or so, on I felt dizzy/unstable. Would ask for assistance if I had to climb a lather when before I could balance myself.

  - A sensation on the center of the chest as if I was watching a scary or suspenseful movie (remember feeling very much this way when I watched "The hurt locker"). Never the less, it was never chest pain.

  - A sensation of impending doom which I could not explain. In the worst days it felt like any second my heart was going to burst

  - An unexplainable feeling of sadness to the point where I wanted to cry for no reason whatsoever.

  - Every now and then, and now in hindsight I can say that this happened specially when around a JW, the dizziness would come all of a sudden accompanied with a cold sweat and a buzzy feeling in my head.

  - A fear of going to sleep without feeling that my wife was there. Had to feel her presence in order to fall asleep.

  - Later on, as much of the above started dissipating, I would wake up in the middle of the night with this fearful sensation, like if something was about to happen. After about half hour it would go away and I would fall back asleep.

  - For whatever reason I started to feel like my prostate would contract and release several time during urination, so I would pee in sort of interrupted streams. That too went away eventually

  - I would also shake uncontrollably when having an orgasm, which made sex a bit difficult and scary.

  At this point, I am left with what feels like a cough is stuck in my throat but won't come out. Every now and then I still feel this what can be described as a sudden fear but sometimes it is accompanied by this weird sensation in my chest as if my heart was pushing against the wind pipe pushing air out. I had a septoplasty (deviated septum) surgery last week and had to be tested prior to surgery. EKG, labs and chest X-rays were all normal.
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  30

  Were you aware of the shunning policy when becoming a JW

  by UnshackleTheChains in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  for those who became jws, were you fully aware of the societys cruel shunning policy whilst studying?

  i absolutely had no idea such a policy existed until years later.

  it really only hit home when reading the horrendous stories on the internet around 2002. .

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  StarTrekAngel

  I was too, very early in the process as the elder that "trained me" was very open and direct once he thought you were making good progress. However, the words he used were very subtle. The understanding that I left with is that the person being shunned had committed a very bad sin, like killing or cheating repeatedly and unrepentantly. Even then, my understanding was that certain family ties were irrevocable. My wife referred the story of my brother in law who got married without parent and elders blessings. He got DFd and he left the house voluntarily. Wife insisted that he could have stayed and that no one would have quit talking to him. Which was true for her family but it made it seem like shunning was not that strict.

  This, off course, was before many of the latter crazy push for shunning kids, or even those who talk against the organization.
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  33

  "It is the victims right to approach authorities" The weak excuse used by the society

  by stuckinarut2 in

  1. watchtower
  2. child-abuse

  we have seen that the society falls back on the line "it is the victims right to approach the authorities" during all the abuse claims.. they use this excuse to try and defend the passive lack of action in failing to report suspected cases of abuse.. a comparison came to mind:.

  if we came across a person lying in the street who says they were hit by a car, would we say "it is your absolute right to call the paramedics and police"?.

  or would we take the initiative and call those authorities ourselves to help the person?.

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  StarTrekAngel

  It is the victims right do go to the authorities as much as it is your right to choose to stay in the organization or not. They can not deny you that right. However, the key issue here is that the phrase is incomplete...

  "it is the victims right to go to the authorities.... it is our right to df them if they do so". Last part usually omitted.
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  9

  Regulate the Content of Religion?

  by schnell in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  my mom texted me to come back and said, "they will close religion!

  " here is my response:.

  no, they're not closing religion.

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  StarTrekAngel

  You may never be able to regulate the content of religion but you should be able to regulate the context of it. The issue of taxation is very valid and I am all for the removal of such allowance. However, it is only a means of diminishing their power, not eliminating their ability to inflict influence that harms people.

  The constitution broadly states that no law should be made against a particular religious belief or that limits religious freedom but it defines religious freedom to include a lack of belief. If no law should be made against religion, what can be said about laws that limit your lack of belief?

  For example, when we make laws against abortion, we are favoring a particular belief. If someone was to establish a religion that granted the individual's choice to terminate a pregnancy under religious belief, would this be in conflict? Would the law be favoring one belief over another? Lets take this in theory, because we all know that preservation of life, is at the center of this particular example.

  With that in mind, I see that we can not create law that regulates religious beliefs but we can create laws that create a context where the individual's right to choose is limited to certain principle. Just like we understand that abortion is/could be considered a crime and in the process favor a particular belief (the favoritism towards that beliefs is taking a secondary role in my analogy), then therefore we can allow, for example, JWs to exercise their freedom of religion but such should not extend to the point where exercising such freedom entails terminating someone's life, including your own. (like in the case of blood)
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  45

  Why Did JWs Abandon Brooklyn for the Sticks?

  by Room 215 in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  i may have missed this, but can anyone tell me what was the pretext the gb concocted to justify their abandonment of a perfectly suitable, high-profile, high-visibility complex in what is arguably the world's greatest metropolis for the bucolic isolation of upstate new york.

  any how does the move square with their purported belief in the imminence of armageddon?

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  StarTrekAngel

  Most of what we hear around our congregation is simply that the old facilities no longer fit the new way of spreading the good news. That since more and more information is distributed electronically there is no more pressing needs for printing facilities with access to distribution chains.

  A couple of years back, a Cuban brother that moved to our Congo for some time, related the story of a building (a believe it was a Home Depot) in Florida. He said that he volunteered during the time that the building was bought, transformed into an assembly hall and then the adjacent land that was part of the development sold off at a profit. Everyone at the social gathering where this conversation took place was amazed on how the "slave" so wisely manages Jehovah´s belongings to further kingdom interests.

  No much effort is needed to justify your actions when your have indoctrinated the crowd.
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  27

  Do you still go to meetings?

  by NikL in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  as i was sitting in the meeting last night i thought about this question.. sometimes it feels really lonely because i don't connect with most others in the congregation and i have to be so careful with the ones with whom i do associate.. quick rundown on my life...got baptized at 17...married at 20...became inactive at 28 wife still active though...came back to meetings with her 20 years later just to keep her quiet and see if they had changed (for a while i actually thought they had)...now i am still inactive and haven't gone out in service or anything.

  i just go to meetings with my wife who is happy as a lark to have me there with her...just go to meetings and think...and think...and think.... anyway, i just wondered if there are any out there like me who are going to meetings and nothing else?.

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  StarTrekAngel

  I too go to the meetings but my attendance frequency is shifting from going to most meetings to skipping most meetings. I go when there is a subject that could affect my child´s reasoning into submission or when there is a controversial subject that I know will come up in conversation with my wife.

  i give to my wife. She would rather go to every meeting but she does see the faults in the doctrines. Although this faults do not present a problem in her view, she could go as far as taking detailed notes of the meetings if I ask her for such favors and I can trust that she is not leaving out anything bad.
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  14

  Was kidnap victim Sherri Papini a JW?

  by NikL in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  sherri papini is that woman kidnapped in california and released on thanksgiving day making the news right now.. during one of the reports this morning on the today show there was a quick scene of an investigation going on at a kingdom hall.

  there was crime tape up and everything.

  credit goes to my wife for catching it.. i just wondered why the kingdom hall was a crime scene when she was abducted and released somewhere else?anybody else catch this?.

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  StarTrekAngel

  A while back there was a break in to a house next door to our KH. The police came with 5 min to the start of the midweek meeting to see if the cameras from the hall may have caught a glimpse of the perpetrators. The elders dropped everything and began retrieving videos with this exaggerated sense of duty in their faces.

  Is funny how they are so ready to help find faults on others by whatever means necessary. A single sided sense of justice.