by Pwned 54 Replies latest jw friends
For me anyways.
I still have nightmares about demon attacks. That was the one belief that really had a grip on me growing up. I was terrified of demons and even thought I was being attacked one night for bringing home a toy with a pagan symbol (ying-yang) on it. Anyways of course I was conditioned to say or think Jehovah to ward off demons and to this day when I have these nightmare I still do it. I'm 29 and i havent been to a meeting in over 10 years. anyone else out there experience this?
Kind of. Your not alone in the fact, that they drilled fear into you. Its not going to take days for you to get rid of some things, were all different. It may take 'years'.
As with any fear, it is always best to confront it head on. I might recommend a book by C.G. Jung, Man and His Symbols.
I make this recommendation because this book, among others to be certain, should provide some insight into what certain archetypal images mean to us. Once you come to terms with what these are, demons included, your perspective should change.
Whatever you were taught to fear as a child, will be a terrible almost uncontrollable fear as an adult without therapy of some kind.
Anyone could take a child and instill any kind of fear in it and get the same results, nightmares, frights, dreads. I was not raised a witness so do not have such fears.
Like any phobia, it should be addressed head on as they say to prove to you there is nothing to fear.
Maybe going to a fortune teller and having your fortune read in a small, dark, red painted walled room.
(You'd probably faint!) I went with a friend. Boy was it an experience! She said she "saw" many spirit guides all around me! (They would have to be demons, cause I was newly dfd!)
She said I was a very special person to the spirit world. (How nice, cause this world didnt care about me that much!) After 10 minutes she concluded and said it would be $20 payable to the cashier in the other room. That was it. No demons. Just a rippoff phony.
I fear violent painful death in a head on car collision or plane crash...but I guess that's not really religion related.
This sounds beyond phobia indoctrination to me. I might be wrong. I hope you get evaluated by a doctor. Get a good physical and mental evaluation.
I never really had nightmares as a JW or after I had left. But I did have issues with major natural cataclysisms. After the Whittier Narrows earthquake in 1987 I went back to "mother" out of fear or Armeggedon.
I think it is only natural to have those fears. When you are a child and it is taught to you that there are demons out there trying to take your soul, it will frighten you. I know adult Catholics that have nightmares of a burning hell with them in it. It is the fire and brimestone approach to raising your kids that causes the underlying root of fear with follows a child into adulthood.
However, I would still encourage you to go to a therapist, as you may have an on-going underlying fear that is manifesting itself in its current state.
Hi, yes I used to have dreams about demon attack. Lasted for a long time, I was always trying to yell out "Jehovah" to ward the attack off. Then one night in a dream attack, I managed to get it yelled out, and that was the end of those dreams!!! Corney isn't it?
Now I wished I had have tried to reason with the dream demon and find out all about everything!!
Oh well, mental conditioning affects/ed us all on various levels.
Take Care.
Thanks Daystar for the link!
I stopped going around 17, and I still looked under my bed half way thru twenties. And still, whenever my gf goes away for the weekend to visit her mother, I feel at unease, being alone in the appartment. I really hate being that way, that I have this anxiety still, it`s embarassing (to myself). That shit is always going to be with me, I now realize. But here`s a trick that might help a bit: When you`re lying there in bed, and you start feeling at unease, and you know that pretty soon you`re going to have to turn around (you know, to look for that demon that might be hiding behind you, lol), or you have to open your eyes to see if there are any demunz in the room, try to think about something else. Let your mind wander, daydream, travel in your mind to a safe place that you love, but just don`t think about those demons. And before you know it, you`ve fallen asleep (and then the demon`s gonna get you, lol ).
The demon-crap is probably what I hate most about my upbringing, and my parents, mainly my mother, she was literally obsessed with demons. Parents are supposed to calm down their kids when they reach a certain age, and start thinking about ghosts and stuff like that, but JWs do the exact opposite: They feed the childs fear! "No kid, there`s no such thing as ghosts, that`s just silly superstition, but there is something much, much worse, there are demons"! What the fuck is that crap!?!?! (btw, I think Garybuss is wrong this time, there`s nothing wrong with you, this demon-anxiety is very common among JW-kids, especially for those that had parents that were very focused on it. It will often take years to get better).
