You sure are taking what you are learning and helping others benefit from it.  Good for you.

My journey since finding out the cult was a cult is well-documented right here.  I think I'm to the move on phase as far as my life is concerned, but I still enjoy coming around here and goofing off with my friends. 

Not quite a ditto.  Because I have a wife still in (as many here have close family in), my move-on phase
is stalled a bit.  My depression over this whole thing has lingered.  I am coming out of it, ready to move-on.
It's just been a long time getting there, and the move-on desire is slow starting.

I do more than enjoy coming here.  I do it as a form of self-therapy. 

Positive things out of involvement in the WT cult- I am still unable to consider that as so.  I am reminded
of their analogy of the drop of poison in the glass of clear water.  The only real positive I have is that I was
a very quiet person who was able to be content as a loner, and the WT taught me to be bold.  I still am
happy as a loner, but am able to do well in groups.  It ain't much. 

Sure, you can list a bunch of stuff:
Better researcher, better speaker, ability to sit for hours of boring lecture and take notes, a greater understanding
of religion and Bible after leaving the cult, meeting a great mate in the cult.
I still go back to that poison.  College could do a better job on the research and speaking without warping the
student's thought processes.  Any subject a person is interested in can get him to sit still.  The greater
understanding of religion and Bible is not attained by many who never free their minds.  My mate was great because
we both were in the cult, our bond was forged out of mutual belief.  I cannot credit them for my "bumping into"
someone that I forged a great bond with. 

I don't mean to attack Hassan's view.  I just want it known that this positive outlook is difficult to acheive. 

Can I be stronger because of my negative experience- yes.  I can support that view, easily. 

Can I realize that others have had worse cult experiences than mine- yes. 

For me, I think I go through a different emotion just about every day.  One that seems to be overwhelming is not having a positive outlook on the future.  I mean, I have no idea where I am going anymore and I have no idea where I go when i die...  I liked knowing these things.  I had a definate plan, a definate hope.  Now, I don't know what I'm doing...  Or what to have hope in.

Cognac:    You will find your way, dear.....trust me.  When your foundation crumbles, you feel like you're hanging in mid air.  It is scary, but you'll develop your own wings and learn how to fly.  You WILL be okay.

Here's the thing, I did just what many of you have done all without any web sites; and with no friends and family because they'd all abandoned me. So, Cognac, I know how you feel in spades.

So, my "worldy" friends were no help, no one to talk to really so, since I was in a band I started living the real rock in roll life... drugs, parties, sex, sex... oh, did I say that twice?  THat's my favorite.  LOL

Empty, that how I feel and have felt for 17 years.. and that's one of the reasons I can't tear myself from this site, for once I have some damned body to talk to.  For 17 years I was alone, I could have some good looking lady by my side and still feel alone becasue she couldn't understand what I was feeling...I couldn't talk to her

I mean, my thoughts were, am I insane, what the hell is wrong with me?  THat coupled with, assurences from no one but myself that I was doing the right, thing.  No one knew the struggle, and the music, and drugs and sex were what kept me from thinking about it...for the most part. 

Here's why I believe in God, the internet... yea, I know that sounds crazy, but I really think God wants us to solve our own problems-I'm a Diest. THe internet will destroy the JWs, either make them change methods, or be even more o fringe group than they are.... an example to others in the world of how bad cults are... but with very few followers. We are the ones the great spirit has chosen to destroy these fools, we will do it just as we did as JWs... one convert at a time, convincing others the error of the fools at Bethel....

Once that snowball starts rolling, w will have completed God's will, it will tumble...the internet and us... we are God's pawns inthis chess game... some do a little and some do a lot..but evil never fully wins, the JWs are evil... the truth will come out, triumph, and w will have done the part God intended us to do. 

Sorry, I've been want to say that a long time.   

Dawg,

I could hug your guts out.

Yeah, I spent my years from 18-34 alone in this mess.  It does help to have someone to talk to who has been there.  No one else could ever possibly understand what we went through.  That is why we need each other.

About your God comments, I believe the same.  It was always in my prayers to find people who think like me (or were damaged like me).  That prayer was answered about 1,000 fold.

Also, I was blessed with an open-minded husband who lets me be ME!  It's priceless.  He knows I spend alot of time on here and he seems to think it helps.

I've come along way from crawling in his lap and crying like a baby.

We are just all looking to fill a void.  Drugs, sex, sex, and rock n roll worked for awhile then you start to feel so EMPTY.

You're doing good, Dawg and I just love ya!

when I was fading and sinking and working just to keep wifey and 4 kids above where I was I often wonder why is it I didn't pull the plug on the kids oing to meets etc etc.

It's because they had me so brainwashed that paradise and the spirituality of all my kids was my responsibility that even when I let myself sink it was so they could make it and I had no alternative I could work out or imagine to replace my and their spiritiality with! The key is an alternative spirituality or atheism that you move on to believe yourself.

All those years I was cut off from any -even 1 of any friends I could make or any social life I could have withthsi idea in my head that I was sacrificing my situation to help theirs whilst struggling in my private life ground zero heart condition.

So when I finally divorced after 20 yrs I felt maybe for the first time I could start to link in some way with the rest of teh world but ex was keen for the kids to go her way and I was free for them to choose it because I believe in free choice - but they grew up with that shunn psychology or something of it that makes it easy to cut others out and the circle of JWs are so cunning with all their remarks and since not one of my 4 have ever got dipped they still get the affection showers which make it seem anything I say is magnified and exagerated! Anyhow non of them are in which is cool but the road has been one which pulled us all apart just like the JWs love to do!

You know evryone - I never needed much from anyone - just the single line of trust and love that showed me I had someone to stand shoulder to shoulder with me in this life on this planet - that's all. And their psychology theives that away from families all over!! Teaches them a different way! It sucks! And in your weakness it reveals a broken you that justifies their smarmy claims that you don't have this steely love in your heart that will stand by them as they twist all their reasonings around and around in others heads!

It is a shame that noone has been able to see in me and be part of what I am enough to build what could have been!!

And I know in having given it my all way past dead inside that many of you survivors have ended up in drydock in the same state of disrepair and anchoring after that same kind of loving, understanding soulful person I searched to find my whole life until way past dreaming! And looking at kids you'd have loved to bring to better times who've sailed a road to someplace else which feels so weak and dilluted!

Funny how and why become so irrelevant till nothing means anything!

Maybe some of you can see patterns in your souls which reflect other feelings?

That's all folks! 

Hi Flipper, This book sounds like a good read.  I should have read something like that months ago.  From the beginning of this journey, I was dealing with an enormous amount of distress and anger.  I was in that state for a long time.  I had been wondering whether I was weak for experiencing these emotions?  It's reassuring to know that it's a normal reaction to finding out you have been living a lie generated by some clever and evil con artists.  I understand that grieving is always an intense and complex process, but it is a necessary start to a new life.  I will survive.

"What seems to help the most is to enable people to realize that positive things did come out of their involvement"

I must disagree with Steve Hassan here.  Nothing good can come from being abused (and watching others being abused) mentally, emotionally, spiritually and financially.