Well I got fired from the JW's in 1992 so my experiences are from the good ole 80's. You call it disfellowshipping, I call it being fired.
Plenty of local needs talks devoted to rumors that circulated among the congregation about me. Never anything concrete, as back then as a teen I was a good JW and tried to live as I was taught. But when you're the only teenager with a car in a small congregation, you become a 50 meter target. It didn't help that the car was a 2-door. Just disregard the fact that it was a 1976 Mustang II (a Pinto with a trunk basically) that was GIVEN to me by my non-JW grandfather.
Hair too short, then too long, then just "too worldly". I did what I could with it. I just had bad hair. After I was fired, I grew a mullet halfway down my back. Now it's high and tight and I'm sure that's not acceptable to an organization that refuses to publish a JW regulation 670-1 that defines acceptable hairstyles.
Listening to 80's hard rock/heavy metal. Ok they got me there. Not like the music that the mainstream JW teens listened to was any better, but it's just the loud electric guitars and screaming vocals were just too much for JW's I guess. Funny story about 80's rockers. My dad HATED it. Then one day I had the TV on and a Def Leppard video was playing. I forget which one but remember it was from Hysteria. Dad saw their drummer Rick Allen playing with his feet and his one arm and just sat there and watched in amazement. Coolest thing he'd ever seen.
Stopping at the post office to pick up mail while in field service. Not counselled directly, it was just one of the gripes from a particularly unpleasant backstabbing little elder who would drive his company van to meetings.
Not showing proper respect for elders. Well I apologize if I've come across that way Brother X, I didn't mean things that way, please tell me specifically how I gave that impression so I can not do it again. Which only resulted in anger and berating for another hour in the meeting.
Not going through "chain of command" when interested in a single sister. Apparently, according to the elder, I should have talked to my body of elders who would then contact the sister's body of elders. Or maybe he was just not happy that a young teen male such as myself was interested in girls.
Strangely enough, I never got a word of counselling for driving too fast. Closest I came to that was when I passed my great-great-uncle (an elder in his 80's) on the way to an assembly. He came up to me later and started to say something about it but another elder who was close to his age cut in and said "now Oliver, you know you weren't going more than 45!" and shut that down quick.
All the nitpicky counselling serves just one purpose and that is to beat people down and establish control. To act like the Pharisees during Jesus' time, when they'd "travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are." Or so Jesus said. What would he know? He was never a JW and never would last very long as one.
