published in Psychology Today~~~here is a small bit from the article
http://www.dianewilson.net/disc.htm
As desperate as I was to be convinced that the Society would have no effect on my destiny, at some level I still believed it was God's channel and that my life hinged on obedience to it. Unable to separate myself from the organization, the rage I felt with it turned back onto myself. One day I cried out to my therapist, "I fear this religion is the truth, and that I'm just wicked for being unable to accept it anymore!" I kept telling myself, "You're going to die!" There was no escaping the nagging fear that my disagreements with the Society would cause Jehovah to have nothing to do with me until He killed me at Armageddon. Feeling my pain, my therapist acknowledged, "It sounds like you're just really being tortured by this."
Indeed, I was in anguish. Being in the organization had come to feel like I was locked in a room that had no windows and was surrounded on the outside by blackness and death. If I stayed in the room, I felt I would suffocate, for the organization gave no space to breathe and had no capacity to admit its errors or allow its members freedom of conscience to have their own opinions. If I left the room, I felt I would die, for the Society had implanted in its members the phobia that certain death lay outside of it. "The organization, the place I once ran to for safety, is sucking me under!" I bewailed to my therapist. "They can take away my family!"
I have spent a good part of my afternoon reading her site .....about her life and her life as a JW. She explains herself so well, her feelings, thoughts, torments, I can't wait to read her book.
Has anyone read her book?
AWAKENING OF A JEHOVAH'S WITNESS:
Escape From the Watchtower Society
I emailed her today.........I dont know why it felt so liberating to do it, but it did.
purps
edited to add:
A review of the book
A SPIRITUAL THRILLER!
Diane Wilson, former long-time member of the Watchtower organization, has written a veritable "spiritual thriller", describing her dramatic journey to psychological freedom. She explores with frankness and passion her unfortunate servitude to the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, an organization which views itself as the sole possessor of all religious truth.
The fascinated reader will be swept along emotionally as Diane details her odyssey to freedom from what most former Jehovah’s Witnesses describe as a mind-control cult. Diane spells out her initial vulnerability to the unique claims of the Watchtower Society and her fierce struggle to disengage herself from such powerfully persuasive people; in short, she reveals the dark side of Watchtower worship.
As a former high-ranking member of the Watchtower Society, I can personally vouch for the veracity of her analysis of Watchtower methods and policies. In my twenty-two years as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, I had attained the position of “Traveling Overseer” both in the United States and Brazil. I am a graduate of the Watchtower Bible School, “Gilead”, and have spent tens of thousands of hours attending meetings, studying their literature, going from door-to-door with the Watchtower message, and giving sermons in hundreds of Kingdom Halls (Witness churches). Diane’s description of life in the Watchtower Society is painfully accurate. If the reader has friends or neighbors or loved ones in that Organization, Diane’s moving autobiography will poignantly underscore the tragic position these individuals are in. The reader will put down Diane’s book (and I’m sure most will read it in a single sitting) with a greatly enlarged understanding of what life in the Watchtower cult is all about. And, perhaps more importantly, with deeper sympathy for those unfortunate people known as Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Donald Nelson
Former Watchtower missionary in Brazil