ExJW Quiet Activism: Summer Deprogramming

Summertime is a good time to think about starting your journey on deprogramming from the Jehovah's Witness (JW) culture and mindset.

Summer is a relaxed and easy season when we have a break, when people are planning vacations and if you have children, they will be out of school. What started me on my journey from deprogramming from the JW culture, was just reading on my own with no outside help or encouragement.

When I finally made that decision that I needed to break free from the Watchtower Society because it was made up of their own false teachings and misinterpretations of scripture, I began my fading routine inside of what would be my last congregation. First, I searched out the Internet and found a message board which is still in existence:

https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/

I was very afraid when I made my first comments on that message board under an assumed name, and took on a male name since I thought a woman would not be taken as seriously which was just more of my JW programming, where women are basically silent in public unless they have a male lead telling them what to do. The fear comes out of a lifetime of indoctrination of being told what to think, feel, say or do. You will soon realize you have been living under a thick cloud of massive, mostly useless information. Message boards help you vent your frustrations and you quickly realize you have a lot in common with other people trying to wake up from their life long indoctrination and worship of a book publishing company, with its Governing Body spouting any rhetoric they think will work to keep their membership in fear of some impending doom and destruction.

The JW message board can help with sharing opinions and get some questions answered about JW doctrine. The Watchtower society has been holding your family hostage forever, especially if you lost someone because they were denied a potentially life-saving blood transfusion or killed themselves for this misguided belief system. If you want to see that loved one again, well, you are held hostage inside the organization because you have to follow all of their man-made rules if you want in that fantasy new system of things to see them resurrected in an earthly paradise. All made up stories and scary fairy tales coming from the Watchtower Society and their fear-mongering tactics.

No person can constantly live for a future time that may or may not happen. We've got to live in the here and now and make solid plans for whatever we want to accomplish in the coming years. It's okay to change your plans, but it's important to be on an upward curve of learning and increasing your knowledge and enhancing your personality, to learn how to deal with the world, both the good and the bad. The JWs never learn this. They quite literally sit and wait for some god Jehovah to suddenly wipe out the bad people and present them with a perfect paradise where everyone just wanders around reading JW literature and not much else but praise Jehovah.

A few books that are a good start on your journey to deprogram are pictured below. It helps to see that you were not alone in how your parents raised you to be JW recruiters and not much else. It's also a good idea to know the inside workings of not only the congregational activities but obtain insider information from a member of the top ruling class called the Governing Body, Raymond Franz. His book is very detailed and he wrote many of the Watchtower books and magazines and his image and interviews also appear to this day on YouTube. Don't be shy about picking up any one of these books or other types of these kinds of books that relate personal experiences of people born and raised inside the JW society.

You must realize you have been indoctrinated into a huge money-making scheme of a publishing company with endless, useless religious material not based on the Bible, but is just the JW's own interpretation of their own Bible. The JWs have amassed great wealth via real estate and it is no secret they just sold off billions of dollars worth of real estate in the Brooklyn Heights area of New York and moved further upstate into brand new posh buildings and condos.

A person has to come to realize these facts on their own about the god they worship and the organization they are devoting their entire lives to and subjecting their children to. It is a torturous life for a child since I was that child, and had a life of loneliness, punishment, strict religious routines, and now have been in a very long recovery process that has taken me years to just realize that I had been damaged mentally, emotionally and sometimes physically by my indoctrinated JW parents with reinforcement from the Elders of the congregation [my father was one of those appointed Elders].

I hope you take some time for yourself this summer and think about where you are now and where you would like to see yourself next year at this same time, or in a few years from now. Don't waste it on a billion dollar book publishing company and real estate moguls. Withdraw your monetary support now and start putting that money into a savings account for yourself or your children. Pick up a few books to read on how to exit a mind controlled religious group, seek out friends or people at work who are non-religious. All these things are a start to your waking up and deprogramming from the JW culture which is essential for your future health and happiness.

Waking up is difficult. I have good days and bad days but I am moving forward and seeing reality, facing the facts of our mortal lives here on earth now and thinking about what I want to do with my future. It may mean simply doing better at work, exploring more travel destinations, reading more books, I don't know, but all those things I am working on now and am happy to be on a journey of discovery.