Posts by OneEyedJoe

5

The pen is sharper than the sword.

by The Rebel in

jw
friends

and when as a family we celebrated my first ex j.w birthday, my sons present to me was a " pen".

that pen i am now searching for.

i had it 2 hours ago and for the hundredth time i have lost it again, but i always find it.

OneEyedJoe

Penis sharper - sounds painful... and a sword is involved? Count me out.

32

Finally, after almost 3 years, they want to visit with me

by StarTrekAngel in

so i ended up going to the meeting yesterday.

i have been absent for almost 2 months.

my wife was also absent as long but mostly out of chance.

I think being away from the cult and spending more time around normal people is having an impact on me - it suddenly strikes me as odd that someone that you're not very close with would ask to come to your home for something that is merely a social visit. It seems to me that if they want a social visit they should invite you to their home - they're the ones that want it, so they should be the ones to have to go to the trouble of preparing the home for guests, handling entertainment, etc. It's not a purely social visit - if it were then mr elder would be fine with hosting - it's because he's doing this as a part of his duties that he's looking for a way to reduce the load on himself by inviting himself to your house. The other advantage to the elder in this case is that by meeting at your home he's able to have you cornered - it's much harder to come up with a polite excuse (and most people will actually go a long way in the effort of following social norms of politeness even when the other party is not) to terminate the visit when they're in your home. You can't make a vague claim of other plans or give a reason you need to excuse yourself and leave, you have to kick them out of your home. So, as counterintuitive as it might seem, having the visit at your home actually puts a fair amount of the power in their hands because it forces you to be an impolite and ungracious host if you want to control the length of the visit.

It might be interesting to say something like "well it's actually going to be very difficult for us to have guests at our home right now, even for just a short social visit, but we might be free to drop by if you'd like to have us over. It might be interesting to see how they'd react to that, and if you do end up doing the visit, it will be much easier to politely excuse yourself if things get uncomfortable.

33

Leaving the jws is a "lifestyle choice" according to a counsellor

by purrpurr in

jw
friends

so i had my first appointment with a counsellor, of course i explained about being a born in jw, mentally leaving, the penalty of doing so and therefore the mental strain of pretending to be someone i'm not.

her response was that she couldn't help me with that because leaving a cult was a "lifestyle choice".

i tried to say to her that its a cult not a religion and how it brain washed me but no.

OneEyedJoe

I agree that seeing someone else is the best choice. There's absolutely no point in seeing a therapist that you don't see eye-to-eye with - the therapist/patient relationship is the most important driver of positive results from therapy, even more important than the type of therapy practiced.

Even if it were analogous to picking between a baptist and a catholic church, your therapist should be able to help you with such a "lifestyle choice." Helping people work through and understand their motivations and drive towards what they really want as well as coping with the difficulties of a change in lifestyle are things that any therapist should be well equipped to help you with. If you're talking to a therapist that won't help you with those things, there is absolutely no point in going back.

117

2017 Yearbook released

by bohm in

jw
friends

i saw this on reddit:.

https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/5mlgsm/2017_yearbook_of_jehovahs_witnesses/.

overall the numbers are better than last year (1.8% growth compared to 1.5% last year -- as i predicted ;-) ) with an increase in all major figures including 1300 more congregations (i assume this is not physical kingdom halls?).

OneEyedJoe

What are the numbers for the US? Exciting to see a decrease here, not just because it's home for me but because it's home for them.

I was causing optimistic that this would be the year for decrease in the US, it's nice to see that it happened.

15

Picture of Let

by Tahoe in

my 'still in' family is passing this pic around facebook like proud parents.

.

OneEyedJoe

Couldn't even be bothered to spell their cult leader's name right. For shame!

14

Sheeplike?? A Christian Requirement or WT Controlling mechanism?

by BluesBrother in

when we were practising witnesses we heard a lot about the need to be "sheeplike" , having a sheeplike attitude and personality .

a typical comment might be :.

"lasting peace & happiness just ahead" 2009 p 30.

OneEyedJoe

The constant talk telling us to be "sheeplike" always bothered me when I was in. Even then, it seemed like a way of encouraging blind obedience. Same thing with the warnings about "independent thinking" and being childlike. When I found the BITE model and Hassan's references to cults age-regressing members and encouraging them to be like children before god, it made so much sense.

25

Jehovah God Is Not Real

by Onager in

there are many of us on this site that do not believe that jehovah truly exists.. i think this is a great and wonderful thing to be celebrated!

i'd like people to list the reasons why they do not believe that jehovah exists.

this is open to all, not just atheists or agnostics, but anyone that believes that the god as put forward by jw.org does not and can not be real.. i'll start: .

OneEyedJoe

I think Pierre-Simon Laplace put it best when questioned about why he didn't mention god in his explanation of planetary motion. "I had no need of that hypothesis." Simply put, there is nothing that the existence of god explains that warrants such a grand leap as to assume a deity. While there may be some gaps in our understanding of the universe, those gaps are steadily shrinking and the trend demonstrates that any time someone tries to insert god into the equation, another simpler explanation is soon to follow.

12

Taking up a Cause

by OnTheWayOut in

jw
friends

so recently, my jw wife asks me if i ever considered taking up a cause.it was a question out of the blue, coming off of a discussion about politics.

so while it was unsaid, she was really getting at whether i was considering being politically active in some way.. i already have a standard answer that i have used before with other people, so i said it.

"no, i will be content to work and get by then retire and sit in the sun with a good book and a cold water.

OneEyedJoe

Very well said. In the back of my mind I've been trying to find a succinct way to explain why I'm not super involved in causes like some of my friends are, should it ever come up. You've done a great job of that. Thank you.

21

If you read the bible w/out instruction, what would you think?

by TTWSYF in

anyone reading [or did read] the bible without someone else telling you what it meant?.

would you be leaning towards the jws or baptists or lutherans or what?.

just asking.

OneEyedJoe

I'd be leaning towards the idea that its a hodgepodge of stories (some of which based on history) written by men who were trying to explain and control their world with limited knowledge of how the universe worked. I'd find that in doing so, they invented a god full of contradictions and enormous moral flaws that deserves worship from no one. It is only due to someone else telling you that it's inspired (i.e. telling you what it means) that anyone forms a religion based on the bible. If you had someone that was raised completely outside of that influence and you gave them the lord of the rings and the bible, they'd see them as being no different from one another (ok well the lord of the rings is definitely better written). Anyone reading the bible today, free from the imposed influence of others, would regard it as pure fantasy and nothing more.

9

When leaving was due to "Sin" and not Apostasy

by Cat2016 in

it has been 18 years since i decided to leave and fade away, and at that time i was feeling a lot of pressure that i wasn't doing enough, didn't fit in with the folks in my congregation, and was unhappy in my young jw marriage.

needless to say i recklessly went and had an affair that left me pregnant.

i did not know what to do, i panicked and got major anxiety.

OneEyedJoe

As far as deprogramming yourself goes - education seems to be the best bet. Read sites like jwfacts.com and jwsurvey.org and you'll start to see holes in doctrine and how you were manipulated. Books by Steven Hassan and his site freedomofmind.com are also good resources that will help you understand how you were manipulated and come to terms with the guilt associated with that (the feelings of "It's so obvious, why didn't I see it before?" - turns out that lots of smart people get trapped in cults and the deck was stacked against you). Learning how you were manipulated the first time around also has the effect of helping you to avoid letting it happen again in the future - without that, many who leave high-control groups or cults find themselves falling into another cult.

If videos are more your thing, the ones by TheraminTrees on youtube are great as well. A favorite of mine, and a good primer on how you were manipulated, is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaUhR-tRkHY

Congrats on starting your journey out of the indoctrination of your youth! It can be a long one and there can be challenges, but it's well worth it! I wish you the best of luck going forward.