Normal

I don't know my Mother's birthday. I know the year my father was born but not the day. I don't know my 2 out of 3 of my sister's birthdays. I celebrated my best friend's birthday for the first time last year. I don't know the ages of any of my cousins, Aunts, Uncles or Grandparents.


I don't know because it was never something that was deemed important. In fact I was told that celebrating the birth of a human person was "creature worship".  Imagine not even referring to a human as a person, but a "creature."

1975 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses p. 161

Even though I mentioned and quoted this term as something I was taught. I don't remember hearing the phrase itself. So much of what I was told or taught at one point or another was so ingrained into my being that even after the words themselves have faded, the ideas linger and when the ideas fade, a kind of general discomfort replaces it.


 I've read stories of other former member's having similar discomfort. When we see "breaking news" or "Special Report." When there is an implication that a world event may escalate into something more. When we attend a once forbidden celebration, we may have a general feeling of not belonging or worse yet, of being outed as being where we don't belong.


This is usually explained as residual indoctrination and that is the case, however that term doesn't drill down to the heart of our dysphoria. Our problem has a name. It is called a "Bible Trained Conscience." As innocently religious as that may sound, it is in fact a poison pill that the watchtower uses to assert their undue influence.


The following excerpts from the  9/15/2015 Watchtower outline the thinking behind this highly effective surrender of the mind.







Here the watchtower shares the belief that their God has given people a fully functioning conscience that produces positive moral outcomes. However in Paragraphs 3 and 4 they move their God to the margins and enact a need for "training" to ensure that one begins to "think like Jehovah.





This training ground is where our minds are taught to be observers of our world instead of active participants. This is where we learn to "hate what is bad" or "hate what Jehovah hates". It is where we stop listening for the sake of learning and start being obedient for the sake of the Watchtower. This is where they teach us how to exist in a single context; the terms of which they alone may change.


Each meeting, convention, conversation with an elder is designed to remind us that we have a master. Even when we leave. That's right, even once we think we've rooted out every morsel of watchtower doctrine some of us still hear the faint whisper in our ears.


Voting:



w99 11/1 p. 28-29


 Family Planning:



w12 12/15 p. 16


Where you work:





w02 9/15 p. 25


The watchtower wants to be the authority governing every aspect of our lives and have cleverly developed a catch all to make sure that even if we ever break free, we are still haunted by their pawing piety. So is that it; have they won?


Hell no! Even with all their tentacles stretched out over the minds of so many of us for so long, we still manage to survive and indeed thrive. We know the watchtower hates anyone who goes against them. They are a cult born in the toxic grey matter of one of America's most narcissistic carnival barkers. As purveyors of mind craft they have good reason to hate anything that might sever their reality augmentation connection. They especially hate us former member's who speak out. They know we've seen how the sausage is made.


They also know that we are the most determined and tenacious enemy they will ever face and since we no longer attend any of their meetings, we have plenty of time write, make videos, organize protests, provide support and heal from all they've done to us and that is the key.


Our discomfort is something that we can own. It is a part of us and we get to define it. Some people are able to wash it away completely, others live with it for life. It's ok either way. Trauma is finite; being traumatized is a part of our healing and may be ongoing.


Yes, we have anxiety, depression, malaise, dysthymia. We bear every scar from every lash they laid upon us, however we carry on.


We are coming from somewhere and heading somewhere new. The landscapes are foreign and the people we meet along the way are strangers. Our truth's lie in an idea that we must entertain. That idea has to do with the individual perception of self that we've never been allowed to reckon. In that self is the answer to a question that we've all asked.


When will I ever feel like a normal person?