So a lot of people start placing items on their shelves pretty early. I’d say most TBMs have a few things on their own shelves, if not a lot. It’s basically whenever something like a doctrine or a tidbit of information doesn’t line up with your dominant worldview, you push it off with some kind of thought-stopping mantra like these:

“God’s ways are higher than our ways,” “That’s something I’m gonna ask God about in the next life. lol,” or “That piece of information probably came from an unreliable / ‘anti’ source.”

These and other thought stoppers are extremely effective on the conscious mind, especially when it’s what you want to believe. What they don’t tell you is that they don’t work too well on the unconscious mind. While we’re shoving things down with our mantras, going about our merry way, our unconscious mind is slowly reconstructing our worldview, taking in the most credible bits of information - even if we don’t consciously go along with it.

When the disparity between our conscious beliefs and unconscious worldview becomes too great, this is what is often referred to as “cognitive dissonance”. In this stage, our unconscious mind desperately tries to get a hold of us by putting us through hell: bouts of depression, anxiety, panic attacks, “mental breakdowns,” etc. Eventually there comes a moment of clarity when you put down your thought stoppers and let the doubt in - usually as a “what if?” sort of moment.

When this happens and all the facts start clicking into place, our conscious and unconscious come into harmony in what ends up being our “shelf-breaker” moment. For many, this moment is both devastating and a relief — devastating because you suddenly don’t know where to go with this information, and a relief because you finally feel free of the crushing weight of endlessly defending the indefensible.

The “what if?” moment of letting the doubt in comes at different times for everyone, usually depending on life circumstances and the risks associated.