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Feedback from a Former Jehovah’s Witness

Feedback from a Former Jehovah’s Witness

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This is the kind of feedback that makes it all worthwhile. Thank you for responding, and best wishes to you on your journey!

Until recently, I was just an ex-JW. But now I’m really trying to become a recovering JW. I realized that as soon as I was df’d, I just threw myself into a frenzy of activities and poor choices, with no real direction. I think I was trying to stay busy so I’d forget about it all. But about a month ago, it all came crashing down, and for the first time, I have time to think about the effect it’s had on me. I made a firm decision to get better and stop hurting myself, but I wasn’t sure where to begin. I started meditating on it and talking to some friends about the matter, but of course, no-one that hasn’t been in the situation seems to be able to wrap their head around the idea – much less empathize. I got more frustrated and started scouring the internet for some kindred souls…

The conclusion I came to is this: 90% of ex-JWs are either not trying to move on with their lives, or doing it in a very unhealthy way. I’m sick and tired of hopping from page to page on the web and reading rants and raves of individuals df’d 30 years ago – still b*tching about elder so-and-so like it was yesterday. I’m sick of all the postings that positively ooze bitterness and hard feelings. Even worse, I’m becoming painfully frustrated at all of the “reformed” christians that frequently seem to spawn out of ex’s. It seems like everybody is screaming to jump on the bash-the-JW’s bandwagon – but only as part of an aggressive marketing strategy for their new church. For example, my non-JW grandmother introduced me to a friend that was df’d many years ago, in the hopes that this person would be able to encourage me. But this person really does not care at all about me. All I hear about is how I should attend this person’s church and that jesus will magically take away all the pain! I’m really tired of being alienated even from the people I should have so much in common with.

I’m young, totally over religion for now, and I have my whole life ahead of me. I know I have problems and I think it would help immensely to find people who have the correct, and healthy view on being an ex jw. I have a few basic beliefs about growing up as a jw that I’m trying to stick to right now:

  1. That it’s a traumatic and damaging way to grow up, and even more painful to deal with once you break free from it.
  2. That being an ex-jw is like being the child of alcoholic/abusive parents – it causes problems throughout life that will need to be identified and dealt with.
  3. That the damage caused by being an ex jw has absolutely nothing to do with an individual learning false doctrines, and therefore cannot be fixed simply by finding another church whose teachings you agree with. People get hurt by the practices, not the beliefs!!
  4. That there’s a balance to be found between learning from your experiences and dwelling on them. And it is absolutely worth it to recover and go on to live a happy life!

Tonight I read your blog “advice for recovering JW’s“, and I really think you’ve gotten the most out of your experience. It was so refreshing to finally discover that someone can reach out to other people that are hurting, without sounding like an enraged lunatic, or having alterior motives. The writing is logical, and hints at a wisdom and patience acquired from learning a lot of tough lessons. It helped me so much to finally identify my self destructive habits I’ve been carrying with me! You also made some great suggestions for channeling negative feelings into positive endeavors. Thank you so much for taking the time to share some of the things you’ve learned in this life with others! I only wish that every ex jw had your same determination to get better.

Any time you feel like sharing more helpful advice please do so. Thanks to a very wise friend, and your blog, I now have an idea of what I need to do to stop destroying all the good things in my life. Now I just need people to be there for support. If what I said in this email makes sense, please don’t hesitate to write back and share some of your experiences with me. I feel like I’m about to begin a long journey; and it sure would be nice to get tips from someone who’s already well on their way. Thanks again-I will definitely be checking out the rest of virushead in the near future. 🙂

Another Former JW Writes

Another Former JW Writes

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Thank you for writing, N! This is one of the most wonderful and gratifying responses to my recovering Jehovah’s Witnesses advice page that I have received. It helps me too – quite a lot – to know that you are out there.

I really wanted to say hi and to thank you for taking the time to create a humourous and humanitarian approach to deconstructing the internal witness! It is great for me to read your advice and discover an affiliation with my own methods of survival over the past 16 years. Just recently, I have been observing some parts of me that have been raising there head that i have been puzzled by and not particularly enjoying, its like “where is this coming from ???” and I had this ephiphany, “I was taught my whole life to think that I was right and everyone else is wrong …..in everything !!” So for the first time I decided to get on the net and check out what might be going on for the others of us, and i have found your site to be really right on for me. Then I realised you are a woman….. but of course !!

It took me also about a decade to come to a point of feeling like i was getting a grip on myself, starting to learn who I am, cultivating my own sense of spirituality, coming to understand the powerfulness of woman, bearing two children, travelling the world and always studying culture, myth, meditation, scriptures of all kinds in my own ways, thoroughly and with a passion that I feel like was the gift that I received from being a witness.

It was beautiful for me to discover your encouragement for others to seek the positive in their experience. It seems through my discoveries on the net over the past few days that there are several sites there to help those on the way out, or something, yet the focus seems to be on the pain.

I can really relate to this, yet I feel like the key to getting through it to being a healthy happy productive human being is in finding the way to turn the experience into the positive for yourself. I felt very akin to the record of your advice on this level (right down to the watching of monty python), and it seemed to me really necessary to be said after reading much of the other stuff that is out there. So thanks for saying it.

I too feel a diffinative certainty as to my never returning to the organisation, much to my families dismay (you’d think by now they would have got the picture ) And for me the concept of it being a religious issue has long since passed. I have a rich spiritual life which is my own in the making, its very liberating, exciting even. I am definately enjoying having political opinions and being able to activate myself in those directions feels like a privilage. Yet every now and then I notice things arising in me, qualities, or opinions that I still need to check out, like layers of an onion that I feel like are in some way or another related to my upbringing. I wonder whether I will ever get done processing this ?? Its a bit of a drag, but its cool too in its own way. So thus I write this letter to you, my more than sister if you dig, to ask if this happens to you too ??

I hope to keep some correspondance with you, if you feel so inclined, and once again thank you for taking the time to nourish a different perspective than victim consciousness. Blessed be.
Love -N

I dig. Yes, let’s correspond. Thank you so much for your words, and for discovering resonance and value in what I’ve said. There are others who aim for a more positive and healing set of approaches, but it’s true that we are probably a smaller fraction. Take what you can use and disregard anything that doesn’t feel right for you and your experience.

It’s easy to give in to the substantial feelings of anger, frustration and sense of betrayal. I get bitter once in a while myself, but you are right that expanding one’s ability to pursue one’s own unique spiritual path is the more healing and productive way.

My own feeling about the things you mention – that bubble up from time to time for me as well – is that this is what happens with all reflective people. We are reinterpreting our experiences throughout our whole lives. Something will remind us, and we will view it from where we are at that moment. I think that it part of living and and thinking and as you say, processing – very natural, part of growing. We do this throughout our lives. I still get a sick feeling in my gut when I hear words like “worldly” and “district overseer.” Psychological traumas, basic brainwashing, and even nostalgia are very powerful.

In every repetition, there is always a difference. You have more choice about this than it seems, but it requires close attention and self-awareness. Some memory materials (and some of the frameworks within which we interpret them and feel about them) are configured in certain kinds of fairly predictable ways for anyone who has been a member of an authoritarian group such as the JWs. This is especially so for someone who was raised as a JW from birth. We are so trained to be self-righteous and sure about our (actually the Watchtower Society’s) judgments, that we tend to close down our own curiosity – and imagination – and empathy – and compassion.

So if we want to thrive and grow we are always processing our issues and trying to heal or remake the way we think and react – to gain more insight and wisdom, to pull out what is redeeming and what has contributed in a beneficial way to our growth and thriving, and to grant less power to what has been destructive to ourselves and others.

The fact that you are noticing these moments (these things that you see in yourself that seem somewhat uncharacteristic or preset in some way) is a terrific advance! They remain blind spots for many. Treat each recognition as a gift and decide for yourself how to accept, reject, or transform it – for now.

No, I don’t think the process ever stops – and actually I think that’s a good thing because it creates depth and understanding. If you feel overwhelmed, there are ways to create islands, temporary resting places. You can’t stay on them forever since everything changes, but you can learn how to change along with it. Like surfing, floating, riding – creating an internal center of gravity that can itself move.

For me, it’s learning to ask better questions. It’s a kind of constant concern that I can ride through different perspectives. Maybe later I won’t even need to be focused on forming better questions, but it’s been a good kind of path for me so far. I’ve noticed that the more the questions are in service to others, the better they ring inside. When I get too self-absorbed, I get a bit morbid.

Still, one can go too far. When I get too self-sacrificial, I lose a sense of self-worth. You have to have something to give. You have to care for yourself to care for others. You’re a mom, so you know that – but it bears repeating to any female former JW!

Blessed be, and be blessed.

Another Former JW Writes

Another Former JW Writes

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Testimony and advice from another former JW

R: I really like your site and I feel your advice for new ex-JWs is very wise. It was a pleasure to find your site. I haven’t been a JW for 20 years or so. I was a third generation JW, raised in the religion. By my mid-20s I was seriously depressed, guilty, and aimless. One of the things that made me feel really guilty and like a failure was that I just couldn’t pray with any conviction. Also, I came from an abusive family – at least my father was a dangerous and violent alcoholic who frequently tried to kill us.

I went to massage school in my early 30s. Giving and receiving massage made me feel worthy, and even loved. Other things that helped me were maybe a little silly – a bumper sticker that said "since I gave up hope I feel better." That’s how I felt! Massage school gave me culture shock; I was exposed to all sorts of viewpoints and beliefs. I realized that much of what is taught by and to JWs is simply not true. Also, I realized that many many many JWs are leading dual lives – they are good JWs when with each other, but very worldly, even promiscuous when no one is watching. What a shock. I went to a psychologist for a year or so – and I highly recommend it. Talking with him, I realized that the root of my depression was something I felt strongly but couldn’t express – my deep sense of betrayal by my mother and the elders. The elders kept telling my mother it was her duty to stay with my father, because he was the head of the house, even though he was a non-believer, and extremely violent and dangerous. When I realized how I felt and expressed it, I felt much better. I was even able to forgive my mother for not protecting us. She really believed she was doing the right thing. And I began to realize what a sick religion it is.

Eventually I was able to tell another truth: I just plain don’t believe. I don’t believe the Bible or any of the other religious writings. I don’t believe in religion. There’s a lot going on the universe that we don’t know about or understand, and it doesn’t matter. I detached from having to have all the answers. I don’t think it’s important to know who made the world and who or what is running the show. We can’t know, therefore it doesn’t matter. What matters is trying to live a noble life. I checked out other religions, but I’m just not impressed. I just don’t believe. I did learn some useful ways of thinking from Buddhism, especially some of the books by Alexandra David Neel. I’m also not interested in discussing it. I don’t care what other people believe, and I feel I have the right to pursue my own beliefs without having to justify them, and I don’t have to put up with people who want to convince me I’m wrong. If there is a god, which I seriously doubt, I can’t see him/her/it rejecting 99 percent of his children and accepting only JWs. God, if he/she/it exists, could hardly be less loving than people in general are.

What I lacked in the first years after I quit being a JW was someone to talk with who could relate to my experience. My sisters don’t relate; although they are not JWs any more either. I finally ran across a wonderful woman in (deleted) who was a former JW also. She shared a great book with me, the first hand account of a former JW. I think it was called "Clouds of Glory," and I wish I could find another copy of it.& The author of that book expressed many of my feelings and reframed the whole experience for me.

When my mother died three years ago, I was immersed in the JW world again for a week, while my mother was in intensive care. I realized how far I had traveled. Now that she is gone, I don’t have to ever have anything to do with any of them ever again, which is a great relief.

I’m a lot happier, healthier, and more useful person now. And terribly grateful that I managed to get out of the JWs. And although I was never able to pray with any conviction as a JW, I learned how to meditate by doing massage, especially lymph drainage massage, which is very quiet, still, and repetitive, and requires that the therapist pay attention to his/her breathing.

Nice of you to provide a place where people like me can unload. I looked for a friendly website for ex-JWs for a long time. Most of the ones I found, though, were very angry and were bent on proving that JWs are wrong doctrinally, and I don’t really care about that. I don’t believe the Bible anyway, so what does it matter? I was very impressed by the wisdom and compassion in your advice. Thanks! I see from your web site that you get a lot of hate mail from JWs, and I really don’t want that. But if my experience would help anyone, it’s OK to share. Like you, I don’t want to make the past the center of my life, I don’t want to be bitter and focused on how I was harmed. I just want to leave it in the past and enjoy the life I have now.

I also liked your advice about overreacting to JWs when leaving the organization. I have seen a few others in the last 20 years or so that have left the organization. However, they seem driven to prove how bad they are: drug abuse, promiscuity, other risky behavior. Self-destructive behavior won’t help.

I would like to tell them: Nurture yourself, don’t destroy yourself. If you are leaving JWs, and you feel angry and guilty, just lie low for a while. Don’t talk about it all the time, although you may be tempted to do so. Don’t act like a victim. Look around and find people who are living lives you admire, and get close to them. Learn how to live a new way by hanging out with wise, compassionate people who are successful at living noble lives. You’ll get through the stage of feeling like a traveller from another universe, and you’ll find worthwhile friends and rewarding activities.

Heidi: What a wonderful treat to get your letter this morning – thank you, thank you. I too saw a therapist when, during two separate occasions in my life, I just felt that I had been ill-equipped to navigate the psychological terrain. It was a big big help to me, especially since in both cases it was short-term with limited goals. I didn’t want to turn into a narcissist, I just wanted to know how to get through to the next level. One of the things that was most enlightening to me was a very simple message that I had a choice – that I could decide for myself what was important to me among the conflicting voices inside. That somehow allowed me to shift and sort and to find more authentic paths. Sounds so simple, but it wasn’t something I had been allowing myself.

I am sorry about your family. There is an awful lot of this sort of thing. It took me until the year of my own father’s death to be able to forgive him – and then only because he was around a lot, being good to my son, and had overcome both the alcoholic and the post-alcoholic madness that had destroyed his own life.

It is so true that sometimes all it takes is exposure to other ways of being for some JWs to be able to realize at some level that their own way is somehow wrong. I think that is why (along with other authoritarian and controlling groups) that the JWs so discourage “worldly associations.” They framed it in such a way that we would think all outsiders are bad – some then seek out the badness as the only route out. But of course most of it isn’t bad at all – there is a lot of kindness and compassion and fun out there too! You were fortunate to have found a window that included a sense of healing and a respect and acceptance of the body.

I studied world religions, and that helped me a lot – but my own path of questioning is somewhat eclectic and I too see nothing but strife in arguing over doctrinal and interpretative matters. I have always found that if your focus is intellectual, learning to ask better questions promotes wisdom a lot more than the illusion of having the answers. In many ways, a breathing meditation accomplishes more – you get centered, attuning your spirit and body. I also like sound, attention, and compassion meditations – even just paying attention to how different bodily positions affect your emotional state – bowing, reaching up to the sky, etc. Ultimately your spiritual path is your own – between you and your sense of the cosmos/God/gods, whatever you like to think. Words are so misleading anyway.

For myself, I decided long ago that if God were really like the God of the JWs, then such a God was not worthy of my attention, much less my worship and obedience. I have since come to believe that this could not be God – I use in meditation Anselm’s thought that God is that “which none greater can be thought.” So I think of the best God I can possibly imagine, and then assume that God, or the cosmos energy of love, or what we label as these things, is much much better in ways that I just simply won’t be able to understand given the way we perceive the world in human terms of space and time. And, to quote the character Stuart Smalley, “that’s…… OK.”

R: So nice to hear from you – your point of view about JWs is so intelligent and realistic. I remember being surprised to find that non-JWs could be good friends, and weren’t all bad, which is what I believed for a long time. There’s a little superiority in that feeling, too – everyone outside the organization is evil, and we’re so good. A lot of narcissism too – look at how good we are, how holy, how superior. With distance I realize that JWs are a narcissistic group, and more afraid of demons than of god, which is interesting, isn’t it? Anyway, I have found many better friends outside the org. than I did inside it. I remember when my mother came to my wedding (she stood outside the church and watched through a window), she said with surprise at the end of the weekend "Ramona’s friends are nice!"

I don’t actually believe in Buddhist doctrine, but I have learned a lot from the writings of the Dalai Lama about how to live, which has made me a much happier person. I really respect the Dalai Lama. Another book that really helped me is "Women Saints East and West." I learned something really important from that book – that although the doctrines were very different (Catholic, Muslim, Buddhist), these women had very similar lives. They all had an experience of the divine, meditated or prayed about six hours a day, and lived lives of service to others. The modern example is Mother Teresa. I couldn’t agree with her doctrinal beliefs, but she lived that life – an experience of the divine, six hours a day of prayer, and a life of service. Evidently god spoke to her in a train when she was a young woman. Then I got the big Aha! from a book by Alexandra David Neel. She went to Tibet early in the 20th century to learn from Tibetan Buddhist mystics. She spent a lot of time there, learning really difficult meditation practices, the short path. At the end, she asked the monks a couple of good questions. She asked if all that she had learned wasn’t just in her mind, not real at all. The monk said yes. Then she asked about people who couldn’t do the short path meditations, which were really hard and didn’t allow time for a person to earn a living or live a normal life. The monk said "then they have to live noble lives." I really got that. We don’t need doctrines, special clothing, special buildings, special rituals or a church hierarchy. We just need to try to do the right thing on a daily basis. That’s actually tougher than going through the motions of religion, but it’s also more rewarding.

You know, I haven’t said this much about my beliefs to anyone before now. Do you have a lot of ex-JWs bending your ear and unloading like this? If so, you’re a really compassionate person. I have been toying with a book on spirituality for people who don’t believe anything. One of these days I’ll finish it.

H: Yes, I do get a lot of email on these topics, but although compassion is a major path for me I think it is healing all around. It is, as you say, beneficial to communicate with someone who understands the issues involved and has a certain kind of common ground of insights and experiences. And I need to hear it as much as anyone else. It fills me with joy to see others who have found (or rediscovered) their own path. Thank you for sharing your experience here for others to read.