Hi, Waiting!
Thanks very much for the kind thoughts and wishes.
I've missed many of the folks here on the board, but I'm also grateful that circumstances were such that I distanced myself from the board and online life for awhile. I've always admired the balance Englishman seems to maintain between his life online and his life in person. I shamefacedly admit that I did a very poor job of maintaining balance. For me JW.com ceased to be an "accessory to real life" (to use Englishman's phrase). Instead I allowed it to consume much of my time and emotional and intellectual energy. I felt like an alcoholic--I found it very difficult not to respond to certain posts, and once I responded to a thread, I felt duty-bound to see it through to a conclusion.
While I've been away, I've tried to do some soul-searching about why I have been drawn to ex-JW forums for the last seven years or so. What did I want? Socializing? To feel part of a group? Intellectual sparring? To help? I'm still sifting my motivations, so I can't give an answer yet.
I also wonder why passions often run so high on ex-JW boards. What is it about ex-JWs that makes us so verbally combative?
I buy and sell used books for fun and profit, and I read something recently that made me think of we ex-JWs who after we leave a high-conformity group seem hell-bent on arguing our new group into thought conformity.
The paragraphs below are from a book called Hot Monogamy by Dr. Patricia Love and Jo Robinson. They follow an exercise in "mirroring." Here's how the book describes mirroring:
One person, the sender, begins by stating a brief sentence or two. The other person, the receiver, restates the message in his or her own words. In essence the receiver becomes a mirror, reflecting back the content and the tone of the message. The receiver's role is not to interpret, diminish, or magnify the message but simply to reflect what was said.
I smile when I imagine this exercise being used on JW.com. Polite, gentle responses . . . "Let's see, did I understand you correctly? You said . . ."
The book also explains why this exercise is powerful:
One of the reasons the exercise is so helpful is that it prevents many of the common intimacy-blocking behaviors I mentioned earlier, including dominating the conversation, interrupting, being overly critical, being too closemouthed, and failing to pay close attention. It also puts an end to the "shoot and reload" school of communication, in which one partner "fires" the first shot of words and "reloads" the mental gun while the other person is talking. . . .The fact that you can't fire verbal bullets at each other during the exerices creates an all-important demilitarized zone. As long as you stick to the rules, you won't be able to wound each other psychologically by ignoring, discounting, shaming, interrupting, or contradicting each other.
Here's what I found most interesting of all--perhaps a factor in the why ex-JWs discuss and argue so vehemently:
This mental coercion is not unique to love relationships. Many families are built on the premise that "we are all the same," the parents dictating to the children how to think, feel, and behave. Friendships, too, are often formed around shared opinions and values. Many of your closest friends are likely to have similar politics, values, and lifestyle.
One of the primary reasons we surround ourselves with likeminded people is that we don't want to experience our separateness. If someone else agrees with everything we say, we can fool ourselves into thinking we are not separate from them. And the reason we want to feel psychically joined with others is that when we're aware of our separateness, we are confronted with the fear of death. [bolding mine]This may not make sense on a conscious level, but the unconscious mind has its own logic. On an unconscious level we are under the mistaken impression that we cannot survive on our own.
I believe that our past history as Jehovah's Witnesses makes us especially vulnerable to this fear. We were part of a "family" that valued "unity" at any cost, a family that told us how to think, feel, and behave. This "family" also told us we would likely never have to confront death.
Discussion boards have many helpful and positive aspects--support, sharing information, socializing--and I don't mean to discount those aspects by sharing these quotes. I offer them to those who, like myself, have experienced the addictive, unhealthy side of life online.
For now, I'm trying to restore balance to my life by spending as little time as possible online. Even though I don't check the board as often as I once did, please know that I think of you all often and wish you the best on your journeys.
Ginny
