An ex-Jehovah’s Witness recently made a social media post lamenting the length of time it took to realize they were in a cult. Many of the comments expressed a similar shame and reluctance to talk about it. It’s heartbreaking, but not surprising, to see people who managed to get themselves out of an abusive cult, continue beating themselves up after leaving. That shame cycle is part of an extremely insidious indoctrination that takes real work to dismantle. It’s paradoxical, in that this major hijacking of our thoughts, worldview and behavior is accomplished by mental conditioning so imperceptible that many of us leave without realizing we were in a cult until years later.
Most people don’t get it. For non-extremists, religion does not dictate every minute facet of life. If they decide to change religions, or even become an atheist, they are free to do so without the abrupt loss of their family, friends and entire social circle. Nobody is going to hunt them down and force them to sit through a judicial proceeding. Our experiences are unparalleled, and thus difficult to fully comprehend by the uninitiated.
Unfortunately, our silence lends itself to oblivion. There are myriad reasons why so many of us are reluctant to talk about it, most of which point back to internalized shame. We feel stupid for having fallen for the JW rhetoric. We feel like we are betraying our families. We feel like we should be over our childhoods. Here are a few nuggets I keep in mind to combat these damaging thought patterns.
HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO STUPID/NAIVE?
From the outside looking in, it’s easy to see how precisely JWs fit the criteria for a cult. On the inside, however, information is carefully curated and controlled, while information from non-JW sources is discredited as “apostate lies.” For those of us born into JW families, this restrictive, authoritarian lifestyle was our normal. Young children rarely think to question the teachings of their parents.
Even those who converted as adults have no cause for shame. Cults use very effective and well-researched tactics to indoctrinate and control people, usually while the convert is feeling vulnerable or otherwise unsettled in life. No one is immune, no matter how intelligent, educated, or accomplished they may be. Human behavior can be very predictable, and thus highly susceptible to influence and manipulation. It is the same concept that makes algorithms effective.
Unfortunately, the same shame that keeps us miserable when we break free prevents some from ever leaving. My mother once told me she has enough sense to know whether or not she’s in a cult. When it’s framed that way, it’s easier to double down when you have doubts rather than admit you didn’t “have enough sense to know better.” It’s important to reframe that narrative so association with the JWs is not seen as an intellectual failure.
Nobody joins a cult! Nobody. They join a good thing — and then they realize they were f*cked.
Mark Vicente, former NXIVM cult member
Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you learned it.
Maya Angelou
I DON’T WANT TO AIR MY FAMILY’S DIRTY LAUNDRY
If you lived it, you get to talk about it.
I learned I was in a cult when my brother, with whom I had never had a cross word, called the police to have me escorted from his wedding because the JWs present were prohibited from associating with me, a disfellowshipped person. This occurred ten years after I had left, and it was the worst day of my life at the time. It would be another twelve years before that incident was ever mentioned by anyone in my family again. I kept silent because I should have known better. Protesting may have caused me to lose the little contact I still had with them.
This is one of the many ways we were trained to devalue ourselves. When I finally found my voice and unburdened myself of that crushing weight in a 10-page handwritten letter to my mother, it felt like freedom. We do ourselves a disservice when we shrink ourselves so as not to lose the scraps tossed to us by people from whom we are hardwired to desire love and acceptance. It is not worth it.
Talking openly about my experiences helps to remove the stigma of shame. Reading about the experiences of others helps me feel less alone. Writing about my life helps me recognize thought and behavior patterns that may not be serving my best interests, some of which can be traced back generations in my family. This is what it means to break generational curses. We must first acknowledge the thing that ails us before we can heal. There is great value in owning your story, getting it out of your head and coming to terms with it.
“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
“No person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you were intended. Or who belittles in any fashion the gifts you labor so to bring into the world.”
Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Prose
WHY ARE YOU STILL HARPING ON WHAT HAPPENED IN YOUR CHILDHOOD?
When I started grief counseling after Steven’s death, the counselor asked what coping skills I had used to deal with the grief and trauma of leaving home at 18 and losing all my family and friends. She realized the work she was in for when my response was a blank stare. I never knew I was supposed to do anything other than move on with life. The coping skills my brain employed when it realized perseverance was my only plan, were a mix of anxiety, numbing, depression and dissociation. Now I am better served discarding those maladaptive coping mechanisms in favor of real healing that involves acknowledging and working through my feelings instead of suppressing and avoiding them.
My counselor reminded me that while “normal” people were learning life skills, social skills, and reaching age-appropriate milestones, our formative years were spent adapting to survive the trauma of growing up JW. Most of us endured emotional and financial struggles due to the loss of a support system, so our early adult years were most likely spent surviving poverty and trying to claw our way out of it. We are wired to have our basic human needs met before even contemplating the higher needs of self-esteem and self-actualization. The increased stability that usually comes in later adulthood may be our first real opportunity to delve into the effects our upbringing has had on our lives. Even still, many of us go years without realizing we need help because dysfunction and abuse was normalized.
We are where we are in life. Inner peace comes with acceptance of that, while wishing otherwise causes stress. We can acknowledge how we were affected by our past and work to heal from it without getting stuck there. Tell your stories. Acknowledge your pain. Give yourself grace. Shine a light on the shame that thrives in the shadows. If not now, when?
As traumatized children, we always dreamed that someone would come and save us. We never dreamed that it would, in fact, be ourselves as adults.
Alice Little
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