Anxiety Attacks At Meetings

by EmptyInside 28 Replies latest jw friends

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  Nice_Dream

  Before field service I would feel physically ill and usually try to get out of going. I would sometimes get physically ill before conventions and assemblies, especially if I didn't know many people there. Turns out I suffered from social anxiety! Too bad I didn't know that then.

  To avoid people at the meetings, I would hide out in the Mother's Room once I had a baby. Turning down the volume in the Mothers Room to block out the speaker gave my mind the space to free myself mentally from the religion. And once I learned TTATT, my heart would race at the meetings and wouldn't stop until I left. That made fading super easy and quick!

  I bet lots of people suffer from anxiety at Hall. It is an anxiety inducing environment.
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  thecrushed

  I sorta had the same thing going on myself although as a man I think it all came out as pure disgust and anger. At first I couldn't figure out why I was so mad all the time. I went to my psychiatrist and they numbed me for awhile with antipsychotics but even that didn't work after a while. That all was a precurser to my awakening.
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  thecrushed

  I sorta had the same thing going on myself although as a man I think it all came out as pure disgust and anger. At first I couldn't figure out why I was so mad all the time. I went to my psychiatrist and they numbed me for awhile with antipsychotics but even that didn't work after a while. That all was a precurser to my awakening.
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  thecrushed

  Nice_Dream: Yep I remember my heart racing too just before and during the meetings as well. I thought I had high blood pressure but really it was just the damn meetings!!! Peaple that can think become allergiac to this religion!
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  cobaltcupcake

  I'm a naturally anxious person, but meetings didn't give me extra anxiety. I felt more of a heaviness of heart at the thought of going. Once inside my home at the end of the day I sure as heck didn't want to venture out again in the evening, especially for what I started calling "the beatings."

  Toward the end of my association when I was at the meeting I would feel as though my insides were trying to crawl out of me and I would often just get up and leave.
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  scotoma

  It is much deeper than your mind.

  It was your body telling your mind something.
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  l p

  Yeah I have to say I use to as well...I use to always sit up the back of the hall couldnt stand anyone behind me

  and i always use to go to the mothers and babies, or up the back or sit in the back room...i use to get these feelings like to leave the meeting...i never understood it...

  i do now

  Lp
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  FWFranz

  Hi Emptyinside

  I also suffered with some peculiar symptoms when attending meetings. I remember when I started attending meetings regularly that when I sat down in the KH that my stomach would start churning like mad and I had this overwhelming feeling like I was going to let the loudest fart in recorded human history. I would sit there thinking that if I squeezed my cheeks any tighter that my head was going to pop off. I am sure this sounds pretty hilarious, but at the time I was certain that I was going to embarass myself so badly that I would never be able to live it down. I also felt very uncomfortable after meetings, like a lot of those smiles where undoubtedly manufactured. The meetings where designed to keep you at such a high level of WT indoctrination that you where doped up enough just to last to the next one. All this was a million miles away from real Christianity. I do feel that my experience with the WT was for a specific purpose. To understand deeply what its like to be lost in a cult. Once again, a million miles from NT Christianity.

  FWFranz
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  designs

  The guys could get on Parking Lot duty but the sister's were kind of stuck if they didn't have kids they could take outside once in awhile.
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  Fernando

  Since leaving the Watchtower my levels of social anxiety and arkwardness have dropped off dramatically, albeit over several years (since mid-2009).