It happened to me when I was in the org-I'd be reading a pretty good book, and every once in awhile JWs would be mentioned in a less than flattering light( or a description of "the dark night of the soul" would feel a little too familiar). I would skim that part really quickly and tell myself that it was just opposers "persecuting" the JWs. But a little flag would go up in the back of my mind. It's not that I knew the mention was in the books, they were innocent encounters, but they did leave me wondering, even as I was trying to refute what I'd read. I knew what I was reading was being played out in the congregations I was in, not to mention it was happening to myself.
One such account was in the book Nurse, by Peggy Anderson (1978, St Martin's Press). In it, she describes an account with a JW that she befriended on page 89-90. It says in part, "She was the first Jehovah's Witness I had ever known, and she talked a lot about her religion. I thought she was interesting. Even though I sometimes thought she was trying to convert me, I became fairly attached to her.
But she was a strange person. How much that had to do with her illness I don't know. Personality changes are common with lupus, and Shriley was also on cortisone, which can affect mood. She would go through crying spells, then be euphoric."
...Finally, the doctor ordered us to try Shirley on a placebo injection.Then she found out. I tried to explain to her that emotions play a large part in a person's reaction to what's happening in his or her body. She would have no part of it."
I read this book about a year before I decided to leave. I was going through crying spells and periods of euphoria myself at that time. And I suffered bouts of unexplainable chronic pain. When the docs tried to suggest it went far beyond the injuries I had sustained, I just didn't want to hear it. Only I knew the doubts I was having with my religion, my trials with dealing with an abusive mate and the society's lack of support, and how it was all eating at me.The happiest people in the world never felt like this, right?
Ironically, when I was an up an coming but as of yet unbaptised believer, I read an article by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison that said the JWs were a cult. I fired off a nasty letter to the editor defending my new found "family".
Some twenty years later, I read her account online. I was surprised to see how much my decision to leave paralleled hers. I, too actually lost touch with myself to the point that I ended up being "lost" in very familiar territory. I was driving down a road I took every day, and I had no idea where I was at.
This dissociation and my other symptoms fitted beautifully with a description in the book "Women Who Run With the Wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. In a part called "Sealskin, Soulskin", she writes "But as time went on, her flesh began to dry out. First it flaked, then it cracked. The skin of her eyelids began to peel. The hairs of her head began to drop to the ground. She became naluaq, palest white. Her plumpness began to wither. She tried to conceal her limp. Each day her eyes, without her willing it so, became more dull. She began to put out her hand in order to find her way, for sight was darkening."
(This was me-my skin was white as a ghost's and it was dry and peeling, my clothes hung on me, and I limped. I was literally falling apart, and the doctors were clueless how to help.)
Estes went on:"The seal is one of the most beautiful of all symbols for the wild soul...Like the seal woman in the story, and like the souls of young and/or inexperienced women, she is unaware of the intentions of others and potential harm. And that is always when the sealskin (soulskin) is stolen."
My only regret is that I never got to tell Barbara Grizutti Harrison thank you.