The Insidious Nature of JW Abuse

Just food for thought. I've been fully POMO for 10+ years now and I've gone through a variety of stages of processing what JWs are, how they affected me, and how they affect others. One of the things that continues to bother me is the disconnect between the gravity of the experience of being an indoctrinated JW, and the inability to articulate it to those who don't have that experience.

I'll apologize in advance if this doesn't make sense but I'm actively trying to work through this thought process.

I haven't found a single person who seems to really care about the impact or understand the proliferation of dysfunction that being a believing member of JWs can have on someone. And when I listen to others recount their JW trauma, its mostly "boring" in comparison to the other stories from other extreme groups. The overwhelming guilt of lying on your time card report or navigating the minefield of dating as a JW youth, are not as flashy or shocking as the tin can lie detectors of scientology. There's the sexual abuse and the 2 witness rule, but from an outsider, religious CSA cover ups are not novel in any regard. And truly, as someone who has had my fair share of abuse, I feel that the social structure was far more damaging. Please consider that statement with grace, because I don't want to invalidate people's extreme experiences and how awful those were, but I think the social structure likely affected more people, and it requires much more active empathy to understand why its so damaging.

The strict rules around association

The focus on controlling through shame

The command for parents not to spare the rod

The comonitoring between followers

The expectations around dating only for marriage, and God forbid you decide you're not a great match.

The ridiculous status based nature of everything

The bending of the Bible.

The idea that they have grander and truer knowledge than anyone else, and the bull-headed, holier-than-thou attitude that that creates between believer to non-believer.

The idea that if you screw up by someone else's standards (that are not a written rule but you must follow anyways) you will lose literally everything you've ever known

The chronic anxiety that death and destruction are waiting just around the corner, that you could be doing everything right 98% of the time but God might smite you anyways for that 2% of mistakes you've made.

The responsibility of the cleanup after Armageddon.

The rumors.

The constant feeling of not being enough.

The exhaustion

The lack on interest in having your own aspirations because it would be a sin to waste your time on education or dreams since God is going to destroy the world as we know it.

Navigating "acceptable" entertainment.

The list could go on and on...

All these social "norms" for JWs compile to make a highly socially dysfunctional human who's brain is wired to overthink on things that don't matter, is unable to pinpoint accurate social cues, either thinks too highly or too lowly of themselves, or somehow simultaneously both, has inaccurate expectations for themselves and those around them. And years after leaving, because your structure of normal has been based on these things for so long, continues to unknowingly present these norms and expectations in their interactions. Which understandably limits the quality and quantity of their new, real-world relationships.

People talk about being a people pleaser, but being raised a JW left me stripped of a personal identity, unable to make decisions without filtering them through the complex web of other people's thoughts and opinions because of the command 'not to stumble others.' The list of ways this led me to have dysfunctional relationships with friends, partners, and myself is abhorrently long. Each instance feels like something to brush off, but stack those instances and you paint a larger picture of someone unable to function, and/or unaware of the rules of life that everyone else seems to know how to follow.

Does anyone else feel like if they try to explain this to someone who's not familiar with it that the listener mentally taps out way before you can get your point across? Does anyone else feel like youre being perceived as whiny or dramatic? Has anyone else gotten the questions about "well why did you let that bother you?" Or "why do people go along with that?" It weirdly feels like a "well what were you wearing?" Style of questioning. Like you're right, it is all stupid, and I shouldn't have felt that way, or gone along with certain things, but its not that simple. Its so insidious. Its so ingrained. I still cant guarantee that ive abandoned all my JW framing because its the rules I lived by for 17 years. Why does it feel so hard to get people to understand? I feel like we have some of the strongest activists, and yet some of the weakest talking points to the casual observers.

"And now they're just going to let them have beards!" - ex jw activist

"Ummm, okay, but what's the big deal?" - some normal person.

They just...don't... get it