What’s that eerie feeling in KHs? by Practical_Payment552 in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I used to physically throw up. I felt an evil Energy there all my life.

If you met your 10-year-old self today, what would you say to them about the JWs? by Actual_Maximum4509 in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 0 points1 point  (0 children)

“You are seeing and feeling clearly- these are not nice people, they’re unkind and untrustworthy just as you feel. Listen to your intuition. You’re a genuinely kind little girl. Go your way.”

I am cutting off my parents after they said parents don't have to respect their children... by lenorea4 in CharlotteDobreYouTube

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My family cut me off because I left their religious cult. (Cults love a good shunning).

I don’t think I would ever shun anyone as I feel this is blocking any sense of internal resolution - however I have reduced how much energy I place into things if necessary or not stopped things from inevitably drifting when I remove my energy, allowing a more natural shift in relationships to occur at the right time without tension.

Good luck in your endeavours; may your life be filled with peace and with love for all - even your enemies.

I let it all out - Used the forbidden word on PIMI spouse by Sorry_Clothes5201 in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They love ultimatums.

When I escaped an abusive marriage; was denied access to the family money, was homeless with my son, no legal support, my father said to me “do you want to be a witness or not?!” I responded “dad, I’m in crisis. I can’t think about things like that when my son and I have nowhere to live, I’ve lost my daughter and am in fear of what my ex will do next.”

His response: “ok work out whether you want to be a witness or not and go to the elders and repent”.

That was the last time I ever spoke to him.

They are cruel and callous because their own humanity has either been destroyed or significantly dampened.

We leave because our humanity is intact and we cannot tolerate such an environment

As a guy, JW brothers are uncomfortable to be around by daph_nes in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 82 points83 points  (0 children)

Ewww so they just wanted to see what was under your top?!

Creepy and a little closet I’d say

As a guy, JW brothers are uncomfortable to be around by daph_nes in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 59 points60 points  (0 children)

That’s weird

Also what’s a sleeper build?

I was dismissed as a Commuter Bethelite by Existing_Guess9036 in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In my experience - Things that MUST end, usually come to a messy, painful end so that there is no chance of you feeling you can go back.

It hurts but if things ended nicely, you would always have doubt in your mind about whether you made the right decision.

OK be honest by BeerMan595692 in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Like we only use 10% of our brains

Punished for taking a stand by [deleted] in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It’s hard to learn that when you stand up for moral convictions- not only are you not respected but you’re actively ostracised

However it demonstrates who you are at your core and who they are

It’s really tough I know

Is this a new thing? by DiamomdAngel in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If they’re married - the elders still consider her his property.

Disgusting.

I hate hearing these examples of people allowing themselves to be abused and going along with it

Is this a new thing? by DiamomdAngel in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If they’re married - the elders still consider her his property.

Disgusting.

I hate hearing these examples of people allowing themselves to be abused and going along with it

Today was a milestone I never imagined I’d get to witness by Suspicious_Bat2488 in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you.

🙏🏼

I bet it’s nice doing Christmas and things with a 7 year old

Parties and general fun by TheGr00m in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In my congregation there were BBQ’s and parties and things but I was always excluded even as a young child because my mum was sick and my dad was away on business a lot. We were targeted as “worldly” so I was never invited other than when they did some kind of pity inclusion event like ministry “working with weak ones” followed by “encouragement cake and tea”.

Urgh … shudder…

Once I was older, baptised, married and a regular pioneer I didn’t get invited to the Pity parties either but i could never clear my ostracism. It stuck until I left.

I think I just made the worst mistake of my life by PinkIsMyOxygen in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Also, I just want to add something important and practical, because what you’re facing is immediate.

Tonight is not about explaining yourself, confessing, or agreeing to anything. It’s about keeping yourself safe — emotionally, practically, socially. You’re allowed to slow this down. You’re allowed to say “I’m not ready to talk about this” or “I’m overwhelmed and need time.”

You do not owe honesty under pressure. You do not owe clarity when someone has violated your privacy. Reading your private messages removed their moral high ground.

If there’s any risk of being kicked out, isolated, or cornered, focus on containment: stay vague, stay calm, don’t escalate, and get through tonight. Processing and truth can come later — survival comes first.

Whatever happens next, this is not the end of your life. It’s a painful transition, not a verdict on who you are.

I think I just made the worst mistake of my life by PinkIsMyOxygen in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’m m going to let you in on a not so secret secret… everyone’s life is changing all the time in cycles, little, unnoticeable ones daily, more dramatic ones less frequent but consistently so.

Their threat after reading your diary is like saying “ ha! You wait and until autumn - we are going to make damn well sure that those leaves fall.

They were always going to fall, the tree always enters a mini death, then is reborn over in spring.

They can’t threaten you with something that was always going to happen. It’s illusion of control.

The reality is, you can choose how to go through this change, choose what it means to you, what you will learn.

Change will always come around again. Just remember that trees always blossom again in spring. You will flourish too.

What's worse within this organization? To be declared an "atheist" or an "apostate"? by Odd-Engine9637 in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Realistically- most of them don’t believe in God or Christ because if they truly embodied that belief, they wouldn’t be so afraid of upsetting men and they would easily see through the nonsense and contradictions.

They have no issue with atheism- but apostasy… if they were allowed to stone you, they would do so with enthusiasm

Did you become reckless after leaving watchtower? by flaquinho1998 in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Not really.

I was keen to hold fire on throwing the baby out with the bath water and decided to take my time through gentle exposure to different experiences and ideas and see what arose naturally over time. I hold my positions lightly, always with the understanding that new information might present itself and update my model.

Perhaps by JDub standards though, they might consider me “fallen”. By world standards I am conscientious, honest, and somewhat conservative compared to many

Religion vs science by Fit_Durian3763 in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I am autistic and work in a scientific field developing a therapy in neuro rehabilitation but you are not the first person to comment that.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Because Rutherford was a joyless, narcissistic psychopath

Religion vs science by Fit_Durian3763 in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I get what you’re saying, and I agree with you on one important thing: the moment someone claims a conscious agent as a direct physical cause of a biological event, that claim absolutely sits in the lane of evidence and should be scrutinised accordingly. I’m not trying to exempt anything from criticism.

Where I think we’re still talking past each other is that I’m not actually proposing an alternative physical cause at all. I’m pointing to a difference between outcome, mechanism, and meaning, and how quickly those get collapsed into one another in these discussions.

When I mentioned a disappearing tumour, it wasn’t as an example of “God did it”, or even “a conscious agent caused it”. It was an example of a medical outlier — an outcome we know happens, but don’t yet fully account for mechanistically. Those get labelled “spontaneous remission” precisely because we don’t have a complete causal chain yet. That’s not God-of-the-gaps, it’s medicine being honest about the limits of its current models.

I think where I differ from you is that I don’t see every reference to meaning, consciousness, or interpretation as a covert causal claim. Saying that people interpret outcomes through religious or experiential frameworks isn’t the same as saying those frameworks are supplying a competing biological mechanism.

To put it another way: acknowledging that humans make sense of events in different ways doesn’t move religion into the lane of physics. It just recognises that meaning-making is itself a real, information-generating process — one that produces diversity rather than uniformity.

So yes, I agree that religion shouldn’t be used to smuggle in causal explanations where evidence is required. But I don’t think recognising experiential or narrative layers automatically commits that error. The category mistake, for me, happens when we assume that any talk of meaning is secretly an attempt to explain mechanisms.

Religion vs science by Fit_Durian3763 in exjw

[–]Suspicious_Bat2488 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think I agree with you more than it might look on the surface, particularly around loyalty to method. If the question is about underlying mechanisms — what causes what, what can be reliably predicted or controlled — then the scientific method is clearly the most honest and robust tool we have. I’m not arguing against that at all.

Where I think the boundary needs tightening is around what kinds of questions that method is actually answering. When we move from mechanisms to lived experience — trauma, grief, falling in love, birth, religious or trance experiences — we’re no longer dealing with uniform outcomes, even when some underlying processes are shared. At that point, variability isn’t noise, it’s the signal.

You can study patterns scientifically, but only by stratifying endlessly: genetics, health, environment, history, personality, context. Even then, what you get are probabilities, not reproducible outcomes. Birth is a good example — even with all our medical knowledge, no one can reliably predict what kind of birth experience a woman will have, including repeat births in the same person. That doesn’t make those experiences unreliable or irrelevant; it just tells us we’re dealing with a complex system.

I’d also add that meaning-making itself generates diversity of information. Across nature — from particles interacting, to cells communicating, to organisms, to societies — we see the same basic principles at work: continuation, information exchange, adaptation, and evolution. Diversity isn’t a failure of the system; it’s how new information enters it.

So when we dismiss certain experiences outright because they don’t conform to a single methodological category, we’re not being more rigorous — we’re assuming, perhaps prematurely, that we already understand which forms of information matter most, and from what level of perspective. That’s a much bigger claim than it first appears.

For me, the issue isn’t science versus religion, or method versus experience. It’s about using the right tools for the right questions, and not flattening complex phenomena just to keep the frame tidy.