Whether we have emotional or logical issues with the WTS that ends up making us leave, either case can cause what psychologists refer to as "cognitive dissonance". Here's the definition of that term from my medical dictionary:
a state of tension resulting from a discrepancy in a person's emotional
and intellectual frame of reference for interpreting and coping with his or her environment. It usually occurs when new information contradicts existing assumptions or knowledge. - Mosby's Medical, Nursing & Allied Health Dictionary, 4th Ed, 1994.For both my husband and myself, it was an issue of how people were being treated, so the cognitive dissonance had an emotional trigger in our case. When we tried to resolve that by stepping up the intellectual process and researching what our gut was telling us, we discovered the intellectual dishonesty of the GB (with the inappropriate translation in the NWT, misquotes in the Creation book, for example), the false prophecies as a matter of habit rather than mere human error, and the use of disfellowshipping and shunning to silence dissent. It didn't take much research once I was in nursing school to realize the information that JWs had on blood transfusions was horribly slanted and biased in favour of WT doctrine.
Either way, for men and women, if the triggering event is emotional, then the person uses an intellectual approach to try to stabilize the 'attack' to the emotional aspect, and vice versa. When the attempt to reconcile the triggering event fails, the person realizes the need to modify their behaviour, and change has to take place in order to resolve the dissonance.
Love, Scully
