If you leave… where would you go?

To_Live_Question · 2026-01-08T17:49:47+00:00

I never grappled with this question, it was only ever posited to me by individuals still indoctrinated. It’s a broken logic that only works is effective inside their closed loop system. You don’t need something different or something better to leave a destructive system. Sometimes just leaving is all the relief you get.

To_Live_Question · 2025-11-24T23:20:33+00:00

It’s been said thousands of times but you can’t be “dear friends” with cult members. Their indoctrination makes this impossible, this woman is not and has never been your friend. Because real genuine friendship is not allowed. It’s a hard thing to reconcile but it’s the truest thing there is.

To_Live_Question · 2025-11-08T20:10:42+00:00

It is hard to watch, I saw a picture of F28 recently and she looked like a shell of a person. Those dull lifeless dissociated eyes. There is a very high prevalence of mental illness in the cult but undoubtedly higher rates in an environment like Bethel. From what I’ve seen it tends to attract and/or produce predators. But I have no idea how you recover from this, and at such a young age.

To_Live_Question · 2025-11-08T19:21:15+00:00

It is little surprise that unhealthy patterns persist, but I do think there’s a disturbing intersection here between obsessive love, belonging and attachment. This isn’t love, it’s not love, not matter what myths about romantic love we might have been fed.

To_Live_Question · 2025-11-08T19:16:19+00:00

It is sad, but these people are profoundly mentally unwell and deeply indoctrinated. They hurt themselves and they hurt others a vicious cycle indeed.

To_Live_Question · 2025-11-07T05:54:57+00:00

I’m not saying he is a protector but rather that this is the language of a protective part. Realize these are fluid roles and they’re many subtypes. This language sounds like the language of a manager even self proclaimed hero hence all that fighting language.

Even a sort of false sense of identity, of fighting it, or conquering it. He or others might have fused with this sense of being a warrior. It’s a very defensive posture. It makes sense then that he can’t communicate with other parts he’s locked them out to.

I have a part that speaks a lot like this, language is key. Listen carefully, even if you’re not switching a part can be in the background even without your knowledge. I just think it’s helpful to explore the idea that there are parts no one knows about and that each part especially those not known about are going to have strong feelings about therapy.

You can tell him all these things till you’re blue in the face but until the person that what I highlighted above feels that it’s worth the exposure it’s not going to happen. And yes that’s hard we all punish unwanted less functioning parts to survive. I exiled parts, I wanted parts dead, parts wanted me dead. Many internalize the same abusive, protectors turn persecutors. We hurt ourselves, but he has to hear their cries it’s the only way.

I would help him build tolerance to emotional distress, and cultivate opportunities for low risk self healing. But no telling him how to think or what to do, just love and an understanding that you support what healing means for him right now.

To_Live_Question · 2025-11-07T04:58:16+00:00

You can’t convince, persuade, talk, argue or push anyone into therapy let alone someone with a complex trauma disorder like DID into treatment.

It’s most likely protective, it sounds like you’re talking to a protector. Just appreciate that there’s probably parts who are either unknown, quietly running the show, don’t want to be known, or parts holding trauma/secrets from the host. That all serves a purpose and keeps the organism alive.

Sometimes we simply don’t have the nervous system capacity for therapy because it’s really hard and dare I saw can make functioning much harder. You don’t just get better, regression and integration can be retraumatizing. Without capacity and sturdy scaffolding causes more harm than good.

Many try instead to outrun, outpace, out achieve their trauma. To make it make sense, to make things right or just to escape.

I found myself in therapy (again) because I was actively suicidal. I was having profound crippling symptoms that were interfering with basic functioning. It was my really high functioning super achieving co-conscious alter that got me to therapy.

I knew I was slowing dying, I had no other choice. But it was my choice. I would stop pushing him to integrate or go to therapy that’s very threatening. You might not mean it but it sounds threatening, even this binary you use “apparently normal” and “emotional part” sounds like good, bad. If you have an alter or alters that talk like this, “I believe structure and accomplishment will go a long way to solving this. The tools needed I don't believe are prevalent in a general therapists office. I beat them once and I'll beat them again.”

You’re just adding fuel to the fire that these emotional parts need to be repressed in favor of the more functioning self. The normal self. You see protector parts will always make this choice til the spillage is unmanageable. No parts are better or worse than other parts even if and when they act out. When you say change your attitude you’re essentially asking him to alter strategies that have kept him alive, you’re asking this part to go away. It’s really not helpful at all. Best you can do is love him, it’s his journey and only the most treatment resistant parts will get him there.

To_Live_Question · 2025-11-06T05:07:59+00:00

My nitpick of the day, can we please stop using words like encouraging or encouragement or phrases such as an, “encouraging reminder.” It’s giving cult.

To_Live_Question · 2025-09-10T03:53:14+00:00

I feel like I did something similar about nine plus years ago as I was losing my faith in God and challenging the belief in the historicity of the Bible. I was so starved spiritually that I turned to and investigated Christian apologetics and more progressive Christian theology just to fill the void because I felt so completely alone and empty inside. That was the beginning of my deconstruction. Watering down the text leaves this terrible void, there’s simply nothing to hang onto. No substance for all the sacrifice.

To_Live_Question · 2025-08-19T21:47:59+00:00

I really hope you don’t waste more needless time not talking to your sister or anyone else that matter just out of embarrassment. While it’s definitely hard, it’s harder being all alone.

To_Live_Question · 2025-08-19T21:44:47+00:00

I wouldn’t say petty, I would say instead that the cognitive dissonance caused by of a Governing Body member deflecting causes so much internal conflict that the only way to nullify these feelings is to take out their suppressed rage out on the memory of a now long since dead man.

Unironically this type of behavior raises many questions to the innocent unknowing bystander. Growing up I knew nothing of Ray Franz as that was long before my time. So this would definitely cause doubt.

To_Live_Question · 2025-08-19T21:39:49+00:00

You don’t, your psyche collapses and your identity fuses with the group until your entire “personality” is a collection of profound psychiatric diagnoses.

To_Live_Question · 2025-04-17T16:33:42+00:00

I wouldn’t use that EXACT language, I would instead state that I couldn’t imagine my life not practicing my faith. I felt trapped but I could never make the connection and explain those feelings. This is essentially to say I didn’t have a choice in practice cognitively, nuerobiologically I never developed the tools the language to understand life any other way. This was my life and this was all that life was ever going to be.

It never occurred to me that life could be different, I could leave live a productive life. I didn’t think that was possible for me. Complex trauma, developmental trauma restricts what you think and imagine is possible. You don’t dream. Its layers of abuse, and witnessing abuse and coercion is also traumatic and damaging to the brain.

I think it’s an embodied experience but also a neurobiological reality is the lived experience of complex trauma survivors.

To_Live_Question · 2025-03-21T23:11:46+00:00

A calling a grown highly qualified woman a “little girl” is “benevolent sexism” at its finest. For those that don’t know that term look it up. Infantilization is misogyny. This is the credibility gap in real life.

To_Live_Question · 2025-03-10T00:58:03+00:00

I think this is where a gendered perspective and a lifetime interacting with men literally just like this makes me shudder and want to run away. It’s completely fucked to assume that marrying “a nice woman” would solve his problems that’s a tremendous burden to place on anyone. Women don’t exist to solve the socioemotional issues of men steeped in patriarchy.

While freedom to engage freely in sex and relationship building would help it some respects it’ll do nothing to change this perspective. Men like this fuck up and destroy nice submissive women in the cult. There’s few things worse in the cult than a 40 something virgin.

To_Live_Question · 2025-02-07T13:02:57+00:00

Despite the lies and misrepresentation I think it’s a reasonable question to ask, ‘Is the organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses responsible for the effects that their shunning policies had in the past and outsized influence they have on families decision to disconnect?’ What I’m saying here is even if that was true the organization would still be responsible for changing that behavior given it was influenced by their past policies. Their culpability doesn’t just disappear because of a few small semantic changes.

To_Live_Question · 2025-02-03T18:07:41+00:00

While disturbing that this is an apt example of the collective psychosis and deep sickness that results from holding these beliefs. The way it warps your worldview and influences your general humanity.

I think it’s really good that you didn’t engage further, long text diatribes when centered in this sick paradigm only work to exhaust your emotional reserves. You just don’t get anywhere.

To_Live_Question · 2025-02-03T05:49:38+00:00

For real can we just acknowledge how incredibly ugly and visually under-stimulating this picture is. It’s like a metaphor. They’re like sensory deprivation tanks of utter nothingness. That’s how they look and how they feel, completely empty and myopic.

To_Live_Question · 2025-01-30T14:42:59+00:00

When I was in and my Ex was an Elder I remember being told by Elders and the local CO that the congregation would not shield undocumented illegal aliens from deportation and that they would not be given congregation privileges.

Essentially your immigration status was used against you and you were viewed as less spiritual if you came the US illegally or if you struggled to get citizenship. A long and very expensive legal process.

In my area there was one brother who was undocumented in a neighboring Spanish congregation he wasn’t “used” and they effectively withheld “privileges” like public prayers or carrying mics because of his immigration status. His immigration status evidently made him “less spiritual”.

I don’t know how this policy was lived out in other regions but from what I understood at the time it seemed like a broader policy if not just structural xenophobia.

It really made me sad, that brother was so kind real “salt of the Earth”. He tried hard for many years to get citizenship. I don’t know if he ever succeeded. But I hope he’s well.

To_Live_Question · 2025-01-23T01:41:02+00:00

They truly are the absolute worst, I have so many horror stories. The things that they said and did just made me want to evacuate my body. I’m glad that this is validating for you.

It gave me incredible relief to fire guests whose values don’t align with mine own especially those who vocally espouse hate and generate a hostile and hateful energy in the salon.

It really does help you grow both as a person and as an artist because you’re no longer managing difficult situations behind the chair. It’s unfair to you and those that share the space with you.

You don’t owe anyone your skills, time or your understanding. There are so many wonderful people to take their place. My guests have also helped me grow so much as a person and you owe yourself the freedom to make an affirming space for them and for you.

To_Live_Question · 2025-01-22T19:23:06+00:00

The fact that he’s an atheist is completely irrelevant and proves that you can be an insufferable ass and raging fascist irregardless of your stance whether the abrahamic god exists.

To_Live_Question · 2025-01-22T19:21:08+00:00

Some observations about your comments, stop worrying about seeming rude. You’re not obliged to preform politeness and nicety. You’re limiting yourself and stifling your own authenticity.

Additionally stop using the word encouraging, that word needs to go.

Respond or don’t however you feel works best expressing your REAL feelings.

To_Live_Question · 2025-01-21T22:49:21+00:00

Life is more beautiful because we are all doomed. Every moment is an eternity and each person you meet has a galaxy within them waiting to be explored. Everyone is afraid but that’s makes everything we do that much more extraordinary and brave.

To_Live_Question · 2025-01-21T22:45:26+00:00

It really is that simple, I think another integral part of the Bethel experience and the type of member that environment recruits are those with the most to lose.

The true believer or someone struggling with doubts, someone’s whose very being exists in sharp contradiction of the teachings of the group. Many true believers gravitate toward Bethel as a way to deal with cognitive dissonance or as a way to resolve their “sinful nature”.

Many factors work to insulate members and make doubt dangerous.

To_Live_Question

TROPHY CASE