Do Your Emotions Come Back When You Leave a Cult?

D wiltshire

I believe they do perhaps as gradually as they left.

I remember when I was 18 yrs old and first started becoming a JW that was 30 yrs ago and the one thing I remember is that I loved my worldly relatives and wanted so much for them to get saved and the emotional torture I went though thinking they were all going to die soon at Armageddon. It was really hard to cope with the thought of them all being destroyed.

I work really hard not to think about it, and over time I started to view all my nonJW relatives as worthy of destruction at Gods hands in order to have my thinking line up with Gods. Thats how I coped and slowly over time lost a great deal of natural affection for friends and family. I thought that was Jehovahs will.

How sick can that be!!!!

Ive been out now about a little over a year and one of the first things that happened to me, is Im able to cry. For years I have not been able to do it. Even when my fleshly sister died about 13 yrs ago I couldnt cry and I wanted to so desperately but nothing, I felt dead inside.

Finally after leaving this God-awful cult my crying came back and I been able to make up for some lost crying time. I hate to ever cry in public you look so pathetic, but when Im alone and think about the many people I know who have died, or some other tragedy has happened to them, it makes me cry, and I feel more human again.

I think this is a good sign that one is coming back to reality, and returning to his original self before the cult .

patio34

Hi DW,

Wow, that was so insightful. I had the exact same views as you point out: always trying to justify why this or that person was worthy of death, they must be secretly wicked, etc. And soooo judgemental about everyone, trying to be in line with "God's thinking." Then, how much more HUMAN one is when leaving that horrible way of thinking.

Thanks for this thread. It mirrors my experience, except I could always cry

Pat

Marilyn

After you leave a cult you quickly return to normal. Least I did. (whatever normal is) The problem with your emotions normalizing is that many of yourloved ones remain locked up inside the cult and our emotions have to be curtailed still. I've been out for over 20 yrs and although I still love my jw siblings, who've shunned me all this time, the lack of association and exchange of warmth and experiences, means I've cooled off quite a bit towards them. I still love them, but. I think it's called "the law of deminishing returns". I really don't know if we could rebuild again if they were to wake up. So much water has gone under the bridge....................

Marilyn

Lady Lee

I didn't learn to cry again until after I left. It was so hard in the beginning to just let go and give myself permission to feel the grief.

Because of the emotional controls placed on victims of mind control most people wind up feeling dead inside. The only expression that is allowed is to be happy because you are part of "God's happy people" but inside I was dying and thought of dying every day. Sadness grief loss anger rage are not permitted and if you have to hide some of those stronger feelings then it is only natural that the softer feelings go into hiding too. They only thing left is the mask that hides the true self even from ourselves

Carmel

I've never blamed my juu experiance for not crying. I'm more inclined to think our whole western society makes it a no-no for men to show their emotions. I've always cried inside, just never let the world know it. Not till I participated in several communications workshops have I been able to really show on my skin what is going on inside. In my business circles, being honest about your feelings is a sign of weakness or at least not being "emotionally stable" when in fact its the stoics I've come to distrust.

carmel

DanTheMan

Marilyn said:

After you leave a cult you quickly return to normal

How long is quickly? I've been out 3 months, and am still pretty dazed and confused over the whole thing. I'm so fortunate that I've made some friends and my family were never Watchtowerists.

Marilyn

dantheman, my husband and I left together which probably helped somewhat. Plus

our neighbours quickly invited us into their lives. We had 2 small children - another avenue

for meeting people and my husbands work colleagues were a sociable lot. Having a

social stucture to turn to helps very much.

I have also changed countries a couple of times (since leaving the Org) and I know that

all change takes about 2 yrs - especially if the change is very radical - maybe even

longer. We had been loosing faith for a good three years before we 'down tools' and

walked off the job. When we left we were VERY ready for change.

So there weren't a lot of recriminations about whether we'd done the right thing. We were

very sure we'd done the right thing.

What aspect are you finding the most difficult? We didn't have the internet in 1981 nor

had we met anyone apostates - so we had to sort out the spiritual stuff ourselves. Actually

it was our commonsense that prevailed in the end - a kind of gut feeling that the whole

thing was terribly flawed.

I guess you are learning very fast from what you are reading here. So glad your family

weren't in. I've had 20 yrs the shunning thing. :-(

Marilyn. email me any time [email protected]

LDH

I don't know what Marilyn's got in that pipe, LOL, but nothing about returning to normal is "quick."

The reality is, YOU WILL NEVER BE NORMAL. No matter what, you will have wasted years of your life in a cult, and that by itself means you don't fit the stereotypical "NORM".

I think you can get to a good level of personal development, and I think with a lot of hard work your personal growth will mirror that.

But you will never, ever, ever be normal.

And DW I felt the same way the whole time in the cult. Never even cried when JWs I knew died. Just said,"Well I'll see them in the New System anyway." and kept going.

Now that I'm out, I see how fragile our lives are, and how tomorrow is promised to no one. And yes, sometimes it moves me to tears.

Especially I'm moved to tears when I'm so proud of my daughter and her accomplishments at age 12, and yet I reflect on my own and there was nothing remotely similar. The only thing I could do at 12 was steal (yep I stole gum, candy etc) and sell magazines. I wasted three days a week at church, and I spent my school days defending myself or putting on a face of bravado as though being made fun of about being a JW on a daily basis didn't hurt.

And I learned not to care about people unless they let me sell them a magazine.

After all, they were going to die at Armegeddon, right? Why bother caring about them.

Lisa

D wiltshire

Recovering your old personality will come I think, as you correct all the shit the WT put in your head. It seems to me everyday I find myself changing, almost like I'm makeing up for lost time.

Many things we do in a mindless way through out the day that are from the conditioning we recieved from the WT .

Often I find myself being more mindfull of why I feel certain ways and realize that much of it is carry overs that our fading as the mind control is losing its grip. I don't think it can be any other way if you have spent many years in a cult.

Satanus

Right you are d wilt, and LDH. After my wt exit in 1995, i started dealing w grief that i discovered was pre-wt. That would be from some family things that happened in the early sixties. I just discovered a while ago what the grief was about. That is grief that i suppressed to the point of not knowing it existed, for 40 yrs. The wt effects are outrageous!

SS

Do Your Emotions Come Back When You Leave a Cult?

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