Did Your Experience As A Witness REALLY "Damage" You?

Englishman

Or was the experience just a glitch that can be overcome?

Englishman.

OldSoul

Many times damage can be repaired. That doesn't mean there was no damage.

I am damaged. I am emotionally ill-equipped for a world without structure, order, and stable expectations. I am, in many ways, retarded by my long-term exposure to the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses.

I have been taught a dread of success in this "old wicked system" and have to fight hard against a tendency toward living for bare sustenance only. This limits me in my ability to travel and experience different perspectives and viewpoints as much as I would like to. I am working to repair this damage, but it will take time and effort. I am damaged by the energy and time lost that can never be recovered, the devotion of much mental attention to lies can never be reclaimed and put to a better purpose.

So, yes. I believe I am damaged, harmed, made unwhole because of my association with this organization. I believe the CCoJW (Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, formerly WTS) damages everyone who listens to it.

Respectfully,
OldSoul

vitty

It definitely damaged my childhood, my role as a mother and I believe to a certain extent my kids. My son is socially behind ( I never even realized when I was in).

Im more concerned with the damage it will do to my future within my family, now that my husband and I are out and my adult daughter is still in.

It worries me about my daughter and any future grandchildren and the relationship I will be allowed to have with them when they finally find out we dont go anymore

Shania

To use an illustration of the Tower of Evil------------take a baking pan with a dent in it, use it to bake with and you will always have and imperfect cake...................No matter what I feel I have their teaching and reasoning popping up in my head..........I try hard to dismiss it, I go to shcool and mingle dare I say with "nice worldly people", but something always comes up that shakes my thinking..............I still get the magazines and we have alot of family in, they love us and are always trying to encourage us..................so I think I definitly feel damaged........but as I said in the past :I AM A WORK IN PROGRESS.

katiekitten

Damaged, but am repaired now.

Had a very screwy warped view of sex - basically couldnt do it while I was a dub, even though married. Had counselling that didnt work, because I didnt disclose the real root of the problem, that I was a dub (thought it would be disloyal and a bad witness to Jehovahs name!)

My confidence and career was badly damaged I would say. I was classic straight A's kid, but was disallowed from carrying on at school, and pioneered instead. As a result it has taken me 15 years to reach the beginning of a career that I could have started years ago.

Gozz

For me just a bump on the road; the most energetic years of my life wasted in a cult that discourages achievement.

.

scotsman

Not for me. Just part of my life's rich tapestry, freakier than a lot of people's but not as shitty as a lot of other's.

prophecor

I'll admit to being imbalanced emotionally and mentally, long before going into Jehovah's alledged organisation, but introduce a mildly psychotic teenager to a religion that is steeped in mysticism, totalitarian type rule and guilt reinforcing order, and its like taking one of those highly prized, delicate british sports cars, ( I would've loved to have been a TVR Tamora ), and introducing it into 24 hour mind numbing dirt track, rallye race at full tilt.

I was already slightly off center, but add all that into the mix and it just magnified by 1,000 fold, everything else I was experiencing. I was called out of the world at the delicate and critical age of fourteen. When you multiply that teenager, having no stablised upbringing, coming into a world where there is an authoritarian air and the responsibility that comes with the " Learning of the Truth " and all that your expected to do with it, and what's more important, what not to, then you have a very powerful mixture of nitroglycerin which if not already handled properly can blow up in your face, for which happened to me.

Being the only person who was trying to serve Jehovah's alledged organisation in an already twisted and torqued out unstable family envioronment pushed me even deeper into the religion, like a tractor beam pulling the shuttle on the USS Enterprise, only there was no beloved Captain Kirk who was there to meet me when I got out, just the vision of a God of impossibly high exacting moral standards that were often out of reach for me, introduced 1,000,000,000,000 tons of guilt for not being good enough, and there you have it.

I don't blame them for what has happened to me per se', as I was already a near basket case when I showed up, I do realise now, however, why I've been overtly twisted thru out my life. A result of having the tons of guilt that had been beaten into me over the years. Never finding the space where I could measure up. Resigning myself to a life where I would just have to suffer and die because I could never make the grade of even becoming a witness, much less a regular human being.

LittleToe

I have to agree with Scotsman.

I was raised a JW so it was just something that I was. I spent a good deal of my teens as a double-lifer, but then buckled down and eventually got married. It's just part of what I am, and I can't complain too vigorously about being forced to speak publically - it's now of benefit in my career.

The harm it has done has been to my family relationships, given that most of my family wont speak to me. It's also contributed directly to my impending divorce from a woman that I love dearly and whom I have been married to for over twelve years.

These are "damages" that you can recover from, but you can't help but grieve. They aren't uncommon in the world at large, either, as people fall out, people divorce, and people die, all leaving us with emotional issues to deal with. What stinks is that a "religion" can cause a "strike" worthy of a ten-pin bowling alley, in an individual's life.

Many people make career changes later in life. Some just bum through life without any incentive to better themselves. Some never have the opportunities they need. You can be sure as eggs are eggs that I'm making the most of my opportunities now, buckling down with my career and education, and enjoying a wide range of friendships.

I guess that would be a positive accruel from my WTS experience, albeit after-the-fact

The best revenge/therapy is a life lived well !!!

Finally-Free

Yes, it damaged me permenently. I slipped and fell on some ice when out in service™ and injured my knee. A piece of bone and cartilege broke off my femur and had to be removed. I doubt it will grow back.

W

Did Your Experience As A Witness REALLY "Damage" You?

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