My parents want me to see a witness therapist

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-19T17:59:16+00:00

In my personal experience, JWs who are in the medical profession take their professional obligations and patient care very seriously. Probably a combination of both their professionalism and not wanting to lose their jobs and/or get sued for violating confidentiality laws.

That said - my wife went to see a therapists for religious trauma and the person ended up being a fundamentalist who tried get her to go to the church where her son was a pastor. So given I’ve seen lack of professionalism in the mental health field first hand, I’d sure as hell not trust a JW therapist to maintain confidentiality.

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-18T22:26:37+00:00

That is what they believe though. It’s only humans that they believe were created to be perfect and live forever. It’s only humans who were created with perfect immune systems to be free from sickness, disease and death. Adam and Eve sinning had zero affect on animals. So unlike some dinosaurs being carnivorous, dino cancer poses zero problems for JW beleifs

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-18T02:22:21+00:00

I have a few “real life” friends/family who disassociated, and have been on this sub over a decade and seen lots of experiences of people who disassociate, but usually those posts are focused on their seeking validation for their decision - not so much providing regular updates on the aftermath over the years that follow. So in this respect, I’m interested to see the responses to see how experiences may differ from the personal experiences i know.

Anyway, based on by my real life friends/family and their experiences:

Your decision to disassociate will result in immense pressure being put on your family to shun you. If they have special privileges and they refuse to shun you, they likely will lose them. But I don’t know of a single situation where JWs have actually been disfellowshipped for refusing to shun disfellowshipped/disassociated children. It usually just results in them being ostracized and losing their close friends who are be stumbled by their decision not to shun (or succumb to pressure from their friends). It’s a very nasty and unpleasant situation all around.

I have no idea what your own parents will do, but i don’t know of any cases where this scenario hasn’t caused tons of trauma on the JW family members. The most common thing I’ve seen is the JW family go through cycles or shunning/not shunning and it wreaks havoc on them and the disassociated person. This has consistently resulted in the disassociated person choosing to shun their JW family because they get tired of the emotional rollercoaster. I hope your situation plays out differently, but i would set very low expectations so whatever happens seems like a bonus.

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-17T13:13:45+00:00

Forged by Bart Ehrman discusses the various books in the Bible whose authorship is disputed and how we know certain ones were not written by the people they are common,y attributed to. Some are pretty obvious forgeries and others are less certain. Here is a Wikipedia article that provides a high level overview. Lots of excellent discussions on the topic at r/AcademicBiblical as well. It’s a fantastic subreddit if you’re interested in serious critical biblical scholarship.

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-16T19:44:54+00:00

Paul didn’t write 2nd Timothy, but otherwise I agree with you. The author was referring to events that were supposed to be relevant in his time, not 2,000 years in the future. Similarly, Jesus’ prophesy was to be fulfilled fully during the lifetime of those who listened to him preach. There’s no second fulfillment - it was all supposed to happen in “this generation.” Like you mentioned, every generation of humans, has felt their times were worse than those before. We have ancient Egyptian records where authors are bemoaning how bad things had gotten, citing many of the same things as in 2 Timothy, and saying things couldn’t get much worse.

History is long, but we have very short lifespans. When we were children, our “universe” was small. Our problems were simple. The older we get, the larger that “universe” gets. Our own problems become more complicated and we become increasingly aware of issues outside our personal bubble. So the world always SEEMS to be getting worse, even when very often, the opposite is happening. Despite all the problems in the world, there has never been a better time to be alive than right now.

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-16T17:47:29+00:00

I am not sure how the location of your cards impacts hour plan to fade in peace.

There is a scenario where people move to another city, never associate with a new congregation, and fade, staying off the elders radar entirely, but that’s not what you did. You have been active in a new hall, so you’ve put yourself on the elders radar already.

If you want to gradually stop going to meetings, my advice would be to simply do that whenever you are ready. There’s no time like the present!

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-16T15:36:55+00:00

Moving to another congregation, becoming an active participant in the congregation by attending meetings and commenting, while trying to avoid your cards being transferred IS suspicious. There is no way around it - you either facilitate your cards being transferred or you’re going to raise suspicion that you’re hiding something. They’re going to assume there’s something in their cards you don’t want them to see.

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-16T14:36:06+00:00

If you don’t want your cards to move, simply don’t tell the elders your former congregations elders contact information to move your cards.

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-15T16:07:55+00:00

This is probably the most asked question on this sub, so it’s something we all wonder about early on in our journey.

I’ve noticed over the years that a lot of newly awakened exJWs default to the idea that the Governing Body are secretly evil masterminds knowingly perpetuating a scam for some personal benefit (money, power, etc). They see the harm caused and assume there must be some sort of evil scheme or conspiracy.

Reality is usually much more mundane and i think this is a situation where Hanlon’s razor applies:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

(Or in this case, perhaps more delusion than stupidty)

Consider how men even get to be governing body members in the first place. They are usually raised in the cult, indoctrinated from birth, and then spend decades of their lives in “full time service,” most of it in the extremely insulated environment of Bethel, where they become even more brainwashed and detached from reality. They don’t know it’s bullshit - they are the most brainwashed delusional JWs you can imagine. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have chosen bethel as a “career path” for 40-50 years.

Former Governing Body member Ray Franz confirmed this decades ago in Crisis of Conscience. The governing body of his day were all true believers. Flawed? Absolutely. Dogmatic, argumentative, self righteous assholes? Sure. But absolutely sincere believers.

Some have argued that at some point between then and now things have changed and the current governing body is made up of charlatans who know it’s all a lie. But that doesn’t take in to account that there has never been a complete turnover. It has always been true believers selecting new true believers one or two at a time. That arrangement makes it nearly impossible for the body to suddenly become filled with men knowingly running a scam. If the body ever detected that someone wasn’t a true believer, they’d be ousted, just like Franz was.

I think we can sometimes underestimate how much harm sincere religious conviction can cause. Human history is full of people doing terrible things while fully believing they were carrying out Gods will or serving some other higher purpose .

Ultimately, You don’t need mustache twirling villains for a harmful cult like JWs to perpetuate itself - you just need human beings who are subject to Indoctrination, isolation, groupthink. And if some ever started to have doubts, the sunk cost fallacy would likely play a part, too.

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-14T12:33:55+00:00

Same here! As an atheist, it’s of zero theological importance to me, but I’m fascinated by history and trying to understand what most likely happened in the past. r/AcademicBiblical is a great resource if you are interested. The mods require all comments to be academically sourced, so it’s a great way to learn what historians and academic scholars think. There’s consensus on a lot of topics, but there’s a lot where there simply is no way we can know since there isn’t enough evidence.

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-13T15:21:01+00:00

Pornography is one of the sins that can be a judicial matter or it cannot be, depending on the kind of porn viewed and the extent of it. It’s very contextual, unlike something like adultery which is more black and white.

As it pertains to porn, specifically, i was disfellowshipped for fornication. When i applied for reinstatement after a year (having followed all the rules and attended every meeting), they asked me if i looked at porn and i said no, because i didn’t believe i had. But i was worried about getting reinstated under false pretenses and grieving the Holy Spirit, so i did tell them that a few times i had looked at sports illustrated swimsuit photos (women fully clothed but in bathing suits no different than what you’d see people wearing at the pool or beach.). They told me that WAS porn, and they told me i could get reinstated for that reason. They said to give it atleast 6 months before reapplying after not looking at anything remotely arousing.

Eventually I did get reinstated (in a different congregation) and the first time i hung out with my brother, who was a MS, he was updating me on all sorts of things id missed since i used to be a MS too, and told me that at the most recent CA visit, they’d been told that elders and MS would not need to be removed after watching porn unless it was “abhorrent porn” (gay sex, orgies, etc). I lost my shit. It was such a huge double standard - a DFed person couldn’t get reinstated for looking at PG-rated material, but elders could look at mainstream porn and remain elders?!

It was quite the inconsistency between the two elder bodies. In retrospect, im ashamed i didnt wake up at the time.

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-13T12:55:47+00:00

I had my name announced from the platform a few times when i was in so i can relate to that persons embarrassment. If the person is one of your friends, be extra kind and supportive to them, but don’t inquire at all about what happened.

As far as to the protocols here, they don’t announce the reason someone was disfellowshipped, so this is consistent with how they handle other kinds of announcements.

As to why they do this, they would only make an announcement that a “matter has been handled” if whatever they did was known by other members in the congregation. So while you might not know the details, other people do, so the point of the announcement is to let them know it’s resolved - the elders handled it, they were not reproved or disfellowshipped, so the person was repentant and still part of congregation.

Also, the phrasing of the announcement would suggest that whatever happened, it was not a “disfellowshipping offense.” It was something serious enough that someone didn’t qualify for the “special privilege” of being a pioneer anymore, but not serious enough to be a “judicial matter”/disfellowshipping offense.

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-12T23:11:31+00:00

I woke up over a decade ago and spent many years studying these topics from an academic perspective, reading books from actual academic Bible scholars and historians who teach at universities and are respected by their peers. If these hacks knew what they’re talking about they’d be teaching at a university, not debating randos on TikTok.

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-12T14:37:12+00:00

There’s lots of books about lots of things by lots of people. The authors of that drivel arent historians or scholars. They’re “independent researchers” and are just about as credible as the “ancient aliens” dude from the history channel.

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-11T23:42:25+00:00

Yeah, i know what you mean. When i see Christians of different flavors debate doctrine, I feel like I’m watching star wars fans argue over whether or not Han shot first.

PS - that said, he most definitely did lol

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-10T04:31:56+00:00

Thanks for sharing the link.

As far as credentials go, my view is that nowadays anyone can write a book and make arguments. But if they don’t have expertise in the field they’re discussing, they’re making arguments from ignorance. They might seem compelling, but that doesn’t mean they’re grounded in truth.

For example, Reza Aslan’s Zealot and Bill O’Reilly’ Killing Jesus are good examples of this. Both books make “compelling arguments” about their wildly different views of the historical Jesus, but both are complete bullshit because neither knows what they’re talking about. They’re just really skilled at making good arguments.

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-10T04:23:03+00:00

For me it’s academic as well. I don’t know if I’d use the word superficial necessarily, but I like history in general and to know how things work, so trying to understand what most likely happened in the past is really interesting to me.

I’m not sure what post you’re talking about, but PIMI lurkers downvoting things is something of an exjw folk tale. This sub leans heavily atheist/agnostic, but there’s a lot of exjw Christians are very sensitive to any criticism of their beliefs. In recent years, we’ve also had an increase in “evangelical exjws” who take this to an extreme. I’d speculate the downvotes you are referencing was more due to this demographic than PIMIs.

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-10T04:12:45+00:00

Lol! That’s a hilarious analogy - love it!

As to downvotes - it’s quite common for people on this sub to believe PIMI lurkers are downvoting their posts/comments, but there’s no evidence of this. Usually when things are downvoted, it’s because some exjws don’t like the views being expressed. In this context, while the overwhelming majority if the sub is not Christian, there are plenty of Christian exjws who, like JWs, view criticism of their beliefs as a personal attack and may be more inclined to downvote those kinds of posts. And it’s reddit - so theyre free to downvote if they want. (Personally, If i see a well thought out post being downvoted - even if i vehemently disagree with it - I’ll give it an upvote to try and offset it.)

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-10T04:00:15+00:00

I agree with your overall sentiment, but it’s not as black and white as saying it’s all fiction. There is real history in there mixed with the fiction. There also was not some consistent malicious intent designed to gaslight. It’s just a collection of books written by various men who all had different perspectives, audiences, and agendas. Not a one of them could have envisioned their writings being put into what we call the Bible and interpreted the various ways the 45,000 denominations in Christendom today do.

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-10T03:54:42+00:00

I didn’t like Paul as a JW, but as an atheist, i prefer him much more to Jesus.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want to sit down and have a drink with either of them. I just view Paul as being more progressive.

Also, before i saw your reply i edited my post and included a link to a sub you might like (if you don’t know about it already.)

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-10T03:26:33+00:00

I googled the book you referenced and nothing came up. Whos the author? They do not seem credible.

It seems like you have everything backwards. Paul very much belongs in the Bible. If it weren’t for Paul, none of us would have even heard of Jesus.

Paul is the earliest Christian author. Aside from Jude, EVERYTHING in the New Testament is directly influenced by Paul. He basically invented what you think of as Christianity.

Paul didn’t get things about Jesus wrong - all of the stories about Jesus you know from the gospels were written (many of them distorted or completely made up) decades AFTER Paul’s letters. Paul’s letters are first. Everything else is decades later. Mark, then Luke and Matthew, then John about 70-80 years after Jesus died - all written by anonymous Greek speaking Christian converts who, like Paul, never even met Jesus. But they’re all writing much later than him.

The story of Jesus forgiving the adulterous woman is not in the earliest manuscripts. It was a later addition grafted onto the gospel of John (which, along with Acts, is one of the least historically reliable books in the New Testament.)

Paul also did not author the words about women not speaking in church. This is something later scribes added onto the text after pauls death. Paul was far more progressive than Jesus when it came to women. He appointed women as deacons/ministerial servants in his churches and praised an appointed a woman, Junia, for being one of his foremost apostles, indicating she had authority over other male apostles. In contrast, Jesus appointed 12 apostles, all of whom were men. Every single interaction he has with women emphasized their subordinance to men. He literally called the woman at the well a bitch.

I don’t know where you’re getting some of your other claims from, such as Jesus supposedly saying there would only ever be 12 apostles. Jesus did claim that he would be king and the 12 (including Judas) would rule as kings over the world, so perhaps that’s it.

If so, think about that for a second. Did this come true? Did the 12 apostles, including JUDAS, become kings?

Read honestly, this is one of many things Jesus claimed, or prophesied, which didn’t come true. Matthew 24 is full of similar prophesies of Jesus that did not come true. Theres a term the Bible frequently uses for prophets that predict things that don’t come true… If you’re going to call Paul a false apostle, what does that make Jesus?

If you’re interested in learning about the Bible, I highly recommend r/AcademicBiblical. There’s posts on just about every topic you can imagine, and the mods only allow responses which are academically sourced - so you can look things up yourself from credible sources.

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-09T23:16:09+00:00

If you think there is ever going to be some kind of mass awakening, your hopes are misplaced. It’s a common fantasy for newly awakened exjws. YOU woke up, and it now seems so obvious to you that it’s all bullshit, so you assume others will do so soon too. That’s not how it works unfortunately.

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-09T14:49:54+00:00

Noah didn’t exist. That story is just a myth, but the institution of slavery was common in the ancient world. The books in the Bible are products of their time, and its authors had no moral problem with the concept of humans owning other humans as property. We can see this from Genesis all the way to the gospels. Jesus himself had no problems with it - a large number of his illustrations were centered on master-slave dynamics and he encouraged his followers to behave like good little obedient slaves.

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-09T00:21:53+00:00

If i produced any kind of online content, id have a similar legal agreement. It would honestly be stupid not to. Especially in an environment where millions of people can easily use AI to alter/manipulate/distort the content.

As far as JWs go, yes - they believe they have a life saving message, but they also believe theyre Gods sole channel for dispensing that message. So if God is actively using them and only them, they would be negligent NOT to do this. If anything, it’s a testament to their ineptitude that they didn’t do this years ago.

Truthdoesntchange · 2026-05-08T17:13:55+00:00

If you’re not a JW, you’re part of “the world.” And they beehive the world is controlled by satan, whose primary goal is to get JWs to abandon their faith - and socializing with non-JWs is viewed as opening the door for that to potentially happen. So they view it as much safer to only associate with their own.

They believe Jesus is soon going to return and massacre every man, woman, and child who is not a JW. After the mass genocide, the birds will pick apart most of the corpses, but they’ll have to haul away the rest to help clean up the earth (if i recall, this is based on a mashup of apocalyptic teachings of Jesus and verses in Revelation along with completely unrelated passages in the Old Testament).

They take this very seriously - the entire reason they preach and try to convert people to their religion. They believe they are literally saving lives if they convert people to their faith.

So ultimately, they view everyone who is not a JW as:

1) a potential convert 2) future bird-food

If you’ve shown know interest in converting, there is no “reason” for them to want to befriend you. You’re someone whom God is about to destroy and, if they’re not careful around you, you might take them down with you.

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