What Was It Like To Grow Up A Jehovah’s Witness?

by The wanderer 41 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  fleaman uk

  It was fucking horrible.I really cannot add to that
• 

  limbogirl

  Growing up JW can be described for me in two words: LONELY and AFRAID. Lonely because I had no friends in the org and lonely because I wasn't allowed to make friends outside of the org. Afraid because my conscience had been so hypertuned that everything made me feel bad and made me feel as though I was letting down jehovah. Afraid also because all we talked about were the "last days" and how any minute it would be armageddon and role playing how we would hold up under the persecution that was sure to come. Afraid because even if praying to jehovah to say thank you for your dinner the prayer generally ended with pleadings of bringing on armageddon and killing everyone in the world (that would include your non-believing grandparents, etc). Afraid because of the constant talk about the devil and demons -- I was terrified of demons being in my bedroom. When I was about 6 my parents took me to an amusement park in the midwest called Silver Dollar City. There was a ride called The Old Mine Train which replicated going into an old mine back in the 1800's -- it was very dark and a bit scary. Thinking about it now it really was fairly benign but because of the dark and the scary noises I screamed through the entire ride for jehovah to save us from the demons. I can only imagine what the other people on the ride thought. I have a four year old son and if he ever did something like that I would probably take him to a mental health counselor ASAP! can you imagine training a little child to react like this? My parents told this story for years and thought it was a cute manifestation of my belief and faith. Sick.
• 

  startingover

  WOW! Alot of those comments sure hit home. I was raised by a prominent man in the congregation, back in the days when the elder arrangement didn't exist and my dad was the head honcho. In a small town that made me a preacher's son. I can't help but feel that scarred me.

  I will never forget going to a high school basketball game with my dad, I might have been 12 years old and when they started the Star Spangled Banner we realized we were sitting right under the flag and everyone in the place stood there looking at us sitting down. How could something like that not damage a young person trying to fit in?

  One thing that sticks out in my mind is the idea that everyone hates you because you are a JW. I didn't make that up in my own mind, and I don't remember ever being hated, but hearing that at the meetings so much made it a fact. If you have any self esteem problems, they are only exagerated by always being told you are never good enough.
• 

  Anti-Christ

  Well I share a lot with most people here, I think school was the hardest. I was a English speaking, strawberry blond, JW kid in a french catholic school, it was not a boring life. Even wen your a child you accept reality the way it is presented to you, I always felt something was wrong. I knew it was not normal for my dad to beat me and always feeling guilty for just being my self but now I like to think that I have a very different out look on life. Like it was mention, I see the world in a new way.
• 

  Hecklerboy

  I can echo just about everything everyone has said. However I was raised by a single mother (father died when I was 8) so I think she was a little more relax on some of the rules. I was allow to have "worldly" friends and join in on some school function. I do remember being very interested in polictics in high school and wasn't able to pursue my interest in the field. I also remember being a senior in high school in 1988 during an election year. People came to my high school to register us to vote. So I ended up skipping class so I didn't have to go through the embarassment of it all.

  One positive thing that has come from my upbringing as a witness. My children will be allow to follow whatever interests the like. They will get to celebrate all holidays and be involved in any school activities they want. I will make sure they have the opportunity of a higher education and I will pay for it all. I want them to have a happy and stress-free childhood. They will have everything I was denied as a child.
• 

  Paralipomenon

  For me it seemed normal.
  
  I felt like a little prince. When I went the the meetings I would get so much attention from playing the part of a good witness. I would comment as much as I could so the older sisters would come over after the meeting and gush over how smart and cute I was.
  
  While others found their self esteem plummeting from being raised a witness I had no problem with it. I listened to the parts and tried to think like a grown up. I would ask genuine questions and for the most part would get answers. This challenged me to learn more.
  
  I was prepped for going for school and warned of all the bullying and abuse that I would get. At school I immediately set out to befriend everyone. As I figured, if everyone was my friend they wouldn't bully me. In this I was always very firm about my beliefs. I would exit the class for the national anthem and not participate in holiday activities. In grade 2, for easter the class was making bunnies out of soup cans to hold their candies. I was given a can and told I could make another animal. I made a fox, the natural predator of rabbits. All the kids laughed and I thought I was pretty clever. Though at the end of the day, all the kids were bringing home their bunnies full of chocolate eggs and I had an empty fox in my schoolbag.
  
  Even though I knew what my parents told me about holidays it's very tough to reconcile that. All my friends believed in Santa and they got gifts, maybe it was their belief that made it true. I prayed to Jehovah and asked for presents and didn't get anything. A couple times I stayed up on Christmas eve looking out the window to see if I could spot Santa and his sleigh visiting the other kids. I thought to myself that if I saw him I would sneak outside and tell him that I believed in him even if my parents didn't. I brought my boots and jacket into my room and hid them under the bed.
  
  I didn't last all night and woke up in the morning trying to explain to my parents where my boots were. I was very bitter. When the neighbor kids were playing outside telling me all the stuff Santa bought them I broke the family rule and told them there was no Santa Clause. It was their parents and I knew because I stayed up all night watching. They were in tears and I got in big trouble. I felt guilty but smug at the same time. At least I had ruined Christmas for someone else.
  
  As I got older I was no longer the cute little kid getting tons of praise for commenting so I tried harder and harder for the attention that I used to get. I would volunteer for every part, have my hand up for every paragraph, look up all the scriptures faster than everyone else. When people asked what I planned to do when I grew up I found that saying pioneering or bethel would get the same amount of praise. I didn't really want to, I didn't enjoy service. I loved the winter time because if it was really snowy we could stay home and watch cartoons on Saturday morning. Service itself was boring. The grown ups would talk about work, gardening, cars, grown up stuff as I sat in the back seat between two oversized grownups reading the magazines for what seemed to be the umpteenth time.
  
  The meetings weren't fun, service wasn't fun but it was just the way of life. We didn't know any different. I knew my friends went to church so I thought it was the same.
  
  Getting into the teen years was very difficult. I had requested the baptism questions the same time as my oldest brother did when I was 9. They humored me and started going through them. I knew all the answers. The brother giving the questions cut the session short and went to talk to my parents. I listened from my room as he talked. My mother was absolutely thrilled that her son could get baptized at such a young age. My father and the elder were trying to explain to her that while I knew the answers, I didn't have the understanding of the meaning. Eventually she conceded and I was told that I'd have to wait until I was at least 12 before going over the questions again.
  
  I was really angry.
  
  Into the teen years is when the child starts to look at the organization with open eyes. We can start to see the cracks. At that point you can either ignore the cracks or start to check them out closer. While my friends saw the cracks as an excuse to misbehave I was disturbed by them. They started sleeping around, drinking, smoking, doing drugs and going to bars. For some reason I was always invited along but never succumbed to peer pressure. To date most of them are disfellowshipped and I would suspect several are in jail or dead given the direction their lives were taking.
  
  Their stories would be much different than mine.
• 

  Country Girl

  Well...

  Just imagine yourself in a foreign country, as an enemy spy. That's what it was like.

  Sorry for the subjectivity.

  CG
• 

  RubaDub

  It was ... well ... different. Very hard to explain.

  You sort of look at life from a different perspective. Sort of like looking at the world through binoculars, backwards.

  Rub a Dub
• 

  limbogirl

  you grow up an observer -- never a participant in life. this is what works for the dubs...they don't have to (actually are forbidden from it) participate in anything and can therefore condemn things they've never done or tried. they don't have to achieve anything because participating in life is the wrong thing to do. so, instead of feeling like a "loser" they feel like they are doing the right thing and simply being persecuted for it. that's where I differed --- I did feel like a loser and once I was able to break away I started participating, learning, competing and living.
• 

  Liberty

  Hi Wanderer,

  You've got some great responses but I haven't had time to read them all so I hope I'm not just repeating some one else's point.

  Even if I try to be objective my observation would be that Watchtoerism is/was most damaging to me and other children because it never allows you to naturally develope a sense of time found in other normal non-JW kids. By this I mean that since we were brain washed into believing we would never become adults (let alone grow old and die) before the big "A" we are forever crippled by not having the same sense of reality that regular folks have including an adult convert to JWism.

  We (JW children) never come to grips with issues such as needing an education, a real life sustaining career, retirement planning, old age health issues and instititionalizment, and most fun of all...death. There seems to be a crucial developmental stage that, thanks to the Society's propaganda, is skipped by the true believer. I think there is a natural tendancy to avoid thinking about the harsh realities of life but the Watch Tower Society cult uses this to help self limit the believer into more dependancy upon the cult. Most JWs are miserable because they are not equipped to deal with the realities of life outside the JW fantasy of big"A" soon. That is why JWs are always so anxious for the End to come and hold on so tightly to the cult when reason and logic says let go.

  The Society may have modified some of their hardline BS about how it is "spiritually weak" to have worldly thoughts about preparing for the future in "this old world" since I left but for kids in my generation (1960's, 70's) and older I would say it is a major impediment to living a full life. I went to my last meeting sometime in 1980 but I have been slow to resolve my own sense of a realistic lack of life's urgency. This is a disaster and my never-been-a-JW-wife points this out to me nearly every day. She literally doesn't understand how I go through life without great concern about some kind of plan for the inevitable realities we all must face. Due to her urgings I now do have some kind of career, retirement planning, extra life insurance, savings, etc. but I go about it with a strange sense that it won't matter hoping that winning the lottery or some other outside event will intervien and solve my problems for me. I think this has to be the old big "A" solution hiding under different names.

  I want to clarify that I don't believe this rationally but rather emotionally but this still has an effect on some of the choices I have made/still make. Just another in a long line of crippling side effects from being brought up a JW.