Cognitive Dissonance

by R.Crusoe 5 Replies latest jw experiences

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  R.Crusoe

  A feeling of conflict or anxiety or uncomfortable tension resulting from allowing or forcing oneself to do what one does not feel inclined to do or preventing oneself from doing whjat one feels inclined to do - an inconsistency between ones beliefs and ones actions!

  So when you have gone your whole life in this mindset, whether in the JWs, outside it , or a combination of both, you likely feel detached from the game of life everyone else seeme to be getting on with!

  The irony is that you may also feel the game of life is its own form of cognitive dissonance on different levels!

  How to evaluate what is reality and then how to hook up with it yourself can be very tricky the older you become!

  Have any of you any practical experiences of how you felt?

  Have you overcome such feelings and what changed them for you if you have?
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  R.Crusoe

  My experience of life, and the JW mindcontrol was a frying-pan to fire continuation, is one of me doing what others required of me to my own personal sacrifice. Ignoring all my own personal preference (even marriage partner due to religious conditioning) and wishes till I accepted it as a way of life!

  So all the dreams I had stayed dreams!

  And I, like many humans, adjusted my goals to extract some value from the life I was in - which became working for and finding pleasure in doing things for my family and others! But this only works if genuine appreciation is evident in the family and others your heart is showing help toward! There are many who will simply take what's going and keep doing so! It is an odd observation but there are those who do because I have tested my own theory to an extreme!

  And when ones who do this are also involved in the cognitive dissonance cycle it is difficult to attach blame in any pointed way - it becomes more a case of recognising which are the ones with empath or judging personas who are also experiencing cognitive dissonance! The judging personas evaluate that evrything you did was for your own ends - your own selfish desires!! This crushes all your goodwill! This devalues all your sincerity! This reduces the distilled focus of all your drams into dust!

  That is simplifying what is occuring but nevertheless it is occuring! It is a chaotic weather machine of socio-emotional reality difficult to see solutions to and more wondering what it brings for everyone and why!

  And so a person feeling all of this utter delusion others have of them is reduced to seeking value in maybe a career or hobby! If they are taken away or lost what then?

  Lost dreams are the only place life had light! And seeing windows of ones life in others: the teenage replica of what you romanced about; the young adults flirtatious fling others had and you feared; the magnificent wife networked to extended family and future you come across occasionally - all these glisten like diamonds as lost dreams to you in your detached delusional frame of mind you harbour on immersing yourself in the social nightlife of the society you are in but so treated as different from! I have visibly had my heart beat in my chest at seeing such individuals - it is a completely asexual experience even when the hot chick is blowing the minds sexual connotations - the biology is detached utterly (maybe a cognitive dissonance out of body experience - I haven't researched what it is - I just know it exists cuz I tried it and mentally went with it - allowed it to run intrigued by what it was and how others responded which is predictable and largely misunderstanding!!)

  Am I alone?
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  compound complex

  Greetings, Mr. Crusoe:

  No, you are not alone.

  Random, seemingly disconnected thoughts and emotions swirl about within our fractured selves. You have given utterance to that which unsettles many of us, we who haven't the ability to voice clearly what we feel.

  I hear you ...

  More later, if I can figure it out.

  Compound-Very Complex
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  R.Crusoe

  Your desire to become functional (in regular society) consumes you and your wish to be on the rails of life others are on seems almost impossibly elusive! As if you don't even want to anymore whilst desiring to because the gulf is so wide. You almost know you can never get to where they are so dont know what to aim for!

  My feeling is that any who have been disfellowshipped or reproved for sexual matters, or even just felt that their sexual feelings are being ridiculed, berated or questioned, may well be consumed by guilt (unless they actually are deliberately not bothered and just using the WT system)!

  This guilt can cause long term CD in the way the human mind and biology link and respond in an ordinary healthy human! The mind may be willing but the conscience imprisoning biological processes (it can be that severe) disconnects it at the moments of expectation or perceived expectation to behave naturally and sexually in acceptable ways which may be pretty clueless about the subtlety of.

  Also to further compound the problem can be self esteem - the feeling developed over time that one is not physically attractive to the opposite sex - conjured up by decades of JW bedroom rulings and detachment from affection due to one being deemed spiritually weak etc.

  So at any point in a persons future where they approach intimacy, fear and rejection inflate the emotions whilst the eyes see what they have long wanted to visit! An inner conflict of shooting onelself in the shooter! lol - but very true and very painful (emotionally I mean)

  Maybe there are other aspects than the sexual which have parallels but I hope you get a rough idea from the above of what I'm on about!

  It disharmonises your thought from your feeling and constucts negative spirals within your core! A very unhappy person period - acting to others as the reverse and for their advantage where possible!! Oneself is living a 'given up' inner self!

  This maybe of some use to anyone in despair:

  Learning how to ground negative energies is a good coping mechanism ( some mange via distracting activities and if not via beliefs such as wicca)

  And learning how to draw positives is a similar thing if you look deeper at some forums and ask questions!
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  R.Crusoe

  Here I go again:

  The idea of giving your whole mind and soul is an interesting one!

  Firstly I advise you never to do this unless its to someone your inner core feels is attached to yours in every positive way - void of negatives and uncertainties!

  If you do so - as I have to parent, siblings , family and religion. - you will find you have created out of yourself a co-dependent persona!

  One who is fuelled by the reactions of others to your attempts to slave for them!

  And amazingly these souls, who would have you slave for them, sometimes reject you as nor being a worthy slave!! The irony of this is taht you would never expect anything from them and accepted them as they were minus any favours! This is how they deplete your inner energies even knowingly being aware that they punish you when they stop you helping them!!

  Incredible really!

  So being reborn - is to be your own god!

  To know you are here as part of nature and a valued life force amongst it all - even as the forests lie dormant they await their time!

  To become god in three persons - your own parent and child to yourself! The secret of yourself to all that love that resides in your heart and is there to give to yourself!

  You must see the life in you and start to live in your own head and let it grow!

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0VqcvD3j1s
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  Hope4Others

  I have never heard of this guy before, it is a great song so I decided to go listen to more of his songs.

  thanks,

  hope4others