As self-indulgent as it may sound to anyone who has been a JW, getting to know yourself is the best thing you can do to help yourself learn to live after leaving.

As a JW, your entire sense of self is set aside, squashed, and told that it has no right to exist. The only thing that matters is ‘serving Jehovah’ (aka the organisation). Everything you may like, need, or want, is suppressed. If you were born-in, likely some of your earliest memories include sitting in meetings, not allowed to draw or do anything but listen, going witnessing on weekends rather than playing sport or doing what you wanted to do, and having your family study at some point during the week whether you wanted it or not.

As a JW child, every memory, every activity you ever did, including ‘non-theocratic’ activities like making a sandwich or going to the movies, was done through the prism of being a JW. We have no idea how we may have developed if such a restrictive, narrow-minded view of life had never been imposed upon us. What might we have done with our time instead? How might our lives and interests have developed? What might we have achieved?

While we can’t go back and change any of that, we do have the freedom to get to know ourselves now, and make choices for ourselves, now.

If you display any of the following types of thoughts or behaviours, it is likely you do not have a strong sense of your own identity:

• You constantly feel torn, not quite sure where you belong or what you should be doing with your life
• You find it difficult to make decisions
• You constantly compare yourself to others
• You constantly seek advice and approval from others
• You are easily influenced by other people’s words and opinions
• You go out of your way for others at the expense of your own time, energy, and resources, then feel resentful if you are not appropriately appreciated
• You find discussions on matters you don’t agree with very difficult to handle, so you either shut the conversation down, run away, or get angry
• You feel that others take advantage of you
• You may feel irritable at times but are not sure why

The benefits of knowing who you are

Knowing who you are, your values and principles, what you like and don’t like, what you want for your life, and who you want to spend it with, are all things we never explore as a JW. Now that you are a Witness no more, allow yourself the time to get to know yourself in the absence of your imposed JW identity. The benefits of doing so will spill over into almost every aspect of your life. For example:

• If you know yourself, your boundaries, and situations you struggle in, you will be able to manage any anxiety more effectively.
• If you know your own worth, and value yourself for who you are because you now know who that actually is, your self-worth and self-esteem will grow as a by-product. You will learn to respect your boundaries and not violate them just to please others. 
• If you know and accept yourself for who you are, you will be more able to accept and love others for who they are too, without judging them or needing them to change for you to be happy.
• If you know yourself, your values, and what you want, you will trust yourself and feel empowered to make the right decisions for you.
• If you know what you like and what makes you feel content, fulfilled, and satisfied, you will be more able to identify and seek out opportunities to create a rewarding new life for yourself which is in line with your values.

Based on work done with my own therapist, this post will explore four key strategies to help you get to know yourself.

This is quite a detailed post, so here is a TLDR version for those who want a summary:

1. Connect the dots. Understand and accept your ‘story’.

Analyse your life as if you are a third party observer. Learn about how and why you got to where you are now so that you can better accept yourself and your journey.

2. Get to know your underlying thought processes, feelings, and emotions.

As JWs we are disconnected from how we really feel. Learn to identify your emotions and what you are reacting to so that you can better handle stressful situations and improve your interactions with others.

3. Identify your values.

Living in a way which does not line up with your values is bad for your mental health. To make better decisions for yourself and improve the congruence between who you are and who you want to be, you need to identify your values.

4. Identify what you want.

As JWs we are not allowed to pursue what we want, or even try to work it out. To have any idea of what we want, we need to get out of our comfort zone and be exposed to new and confronting information. Before tackling this, work through the first three steps so you have a sense of who you are first. This will bring a sense of inner safety, giving you the courage to explore areas which were previously off-limits.

And now for the long version:

1. Connect the dots

As mentioned, JW children have their identity derailed from birth. We all have this in common. However, there are many other facets to our lives which mean our experiences are not uniform. Our families and family structures are different, the norms within our families are different (ie. some families adhered to JW expectations more closely than others), our socio-economic status may differ, countries of birth, our experiences at school and with friends etc, the list goes on.

Somehow though, you have made it to where you are right now. If you had to explain how that happened coherently, could you? Taking stock of how you have arrived at this point in your life can help you understand yourself and your journey up until now. It is likely something you have never done as a JW, but understanding the narrative of your own life is an extremely powerful tool to get to know yourself, and accept all of the ups and downs which have brought you to where you are now.

Ideally with a counsellor or therapist (because a fair amount of anxiety, grief and shame may pop up), try to make some sense of it all. For me it helped to start right at the beginning and look at my life as if I was a third-party observer. I looked at the personalities of my parents and siblings, how I was influenced by them, and how this then influenced certain decisions I made. I realised that there were a few key messages coming through consistently from the most significant people in my life. I could then see how I had internalised these messages and how this influenced the decisions I made, and the reactions I had to various stressors. After a while I was able to see it as one rather large messy picture, but it all made sense.

This exercise helps you understand the ‘why’. Why you are the way you are, and how you got to where you are now. It helps identify influential people and various events and situations which were turning points in your life. Unpacking your story can uncover a great deal of childhood trauma, but the aim is to give you permission to understand where the pain comes from. Identify examples of key situations which may have affected you and note the emotions that come. Have the same level of compassion for yourself as you would for anyone else who went through what you have.

Working through your story in this way can also bring up a certain amount of grief for the childhood you didn’t have. It can be extremely difficult to look back and see just how clearly our lives were hijacked for an organisation which lied to us and exploited us. For example, I have absolutely no memories of believing this world was a safe and good place, with good people in it just trying to do their best. I have no memory of not knowing what sex was, what rape was, what wars were, or what domestic violence was. Our childhoods were spent being dragged out witnessing, getting prepared to die for our fellow brothers and sisters, and hoping we wouldn’t die too horribly at Armageddon. Childhood innocence is completely trodden on and abused by this organisation.

The aim of all this is to bring a measure of self-acceptance. If you can understand your journey and see how you got to where you are now, it will help you accept that journey, and yourself. The aim is not to lay blame on yourself or anyone else, just to understand and accept. Remember, you can’t change others and you can’t change the past. Holding grudges against anyone will only foster anger and make your life miserable. A grudge is just punishing yourself for something someone else did, and it certainly won’t help you to move on and live a happy life.  

2. Get to know your underlying thought processes, feelings and emotions

After you have pieced together your story and have an improved understanding of why you might behave in certain ways or think the way you do, the next step is to identify what you may be reacting to in any given situation. Knowing why you may be a certain way doesn’t necessarily help you change anything right now. Knowing why you may get angry at certain things does not actually help you not to be angry at that thing (in fact it will likely make it worse).

You can’t go back and change the why, so now you need to identify the ‘what’. What you are reacting to, and what your reaction actually is. Identifying what you are reacting to will help you understand your thought processes, feelings, and emotions.

Feelings and emotions are a bit different. It helped me to think of it this way: Every emotion is a feeling, but not every feeling is an emotion. For example, you may feel hungry or thirsty, but the underlying emotion accompanying it could be sadness or frustration. You may feel frustrated at a situation, but the underlying emotion could be disappointment or anger. Feelings tend to be conscious in that you are more easily aware of them, while emotions tend to be subconscious and may take a bit of work to identify.

At first I found the concept of ‘identify what you are reacting to rather than the why’ a bit confusing, so here are a few examples to get you on your way:

You may have worked out that you have low self-esteem because you think negative things about yourself and constantly compare yourself to others, and you may know that this makes you defensive at times, such as when someone criticises you. But, knowing this won’t necessarily help you to accept feedback more easily when that situation is playing out. Will your manager go easier on you if you tell him/her you know why you can’t handle their feedback? Probably not. Is it their fault that you can’t handle constructive feedback? No.

But, what if in that moment you identify that the criticism is making you feel attacked, and as if you are not good enough to do the job. The attack is what you are reacting to, the feeling is fear, and the underlying emotions are likely anxiety, insecurity and inadequacy. Now you can assess the situation more objectively. Are you really being attacked? Probably not. Is your manager actually telling you that you are not good enough? No. Do they have a legitimate concern? Maybe. Is there another way you can view the situation, ie. as a chance to learn something and improve the quality of your work? Likely yes. Does this change how you react? Hopefully. You are now more likely to now be curious and ask for clarification, rather than get defensive and put the barriers up.  

As another example more personal to me, I once became really angry when my step-kids (aged 6 and 8 at the time) whinged about having to eat some strawberries. My anger surprised me, so I thought about what I was reacting to. I knew why I was angry. It was because their problems seemed so insignificant compared to what I had experienced at their age. But was that their fault? No.

I realised that what I was actually reacting to was a sense of injustice at my own childhood being taken away. It was nothing to do with my step-kids. There is no way I would want them or any kids to have my childhood anyway. So now, instead of getting angry and taking it as a personal slight that their childhood is so easy in comparison to mine, I can empathise with them when they need to do something they don’t want to do. We all know what that feels like.

In that example, knowing that I was angry because I had a screwed-up childhood as a JW, would not have helped me to change my reactions. In fact, it probably would have just made the anger and resentment worse. It was understanding what I was reacting to, that sense of injustice and grief at my own loss of childhood, which helped me to behave more rationally. In this example, the conscious feeling was anger, and the underlying emotions were a mix of indignation, violation, and grief.

Ideally with a counsellor or therapist, and through journaling, start to notice when and how you react to various situations, be it at work, socially, with kids (either yours or anyone else’s), or even just noticing mood shifts when you may be completely alone. What feelings, thoughts and emotions come up? Can you identify what is causing them in that moment? What are you reacting to?

This isn’t easy. Too often we had to suppress our own needs, and everything we may have thought or wanted in a given situation. It is incredibly hard to just suddenly identify them now, or even let yourself identify them now, but unless you get to know what’s going on in that brain of yours, you are pretty much guaranteed to make the same mistakes again and again.

Being around others helps you to learn about yourself, so don’t feel like you need to shut yourself away to ‘go and find yourself’. It is not like you go away for a few weeks to an expensive retreat, then come back all perfect, totally sorted, with nothing more to learn. Having time to yourself regularly to process thoughts and emotions is healthy, but we learn most about ourselves by our reactions to other people and situations. Use your interactions with others as development opportunities.

As you get to know yourself better you will become more adept at working out what you are reacting to in any given situation (either at the time or later) and identifying the feelings and emotions which arise. You will gradually become more self-aware, and your emotional intelligence will also start to improve. As a result, you will have vastly more satisfying interpersonal interactions with others.

3. Identify your own values

You may wonder, what are values and why should I even care? The answer, quite simply, is that if you are not living by your own values your mental health will suffer.

Our values define us. We may not realise it, but our values direct our lives. We make large and small decisions based on values every day, from ‘Will I pay for parking or walk?’, to ‘Will I be honest about this thing I have just done?’. When our actions don’t match our values, we will feel discontent.

When there are differences between what we think we ‘should’ do, versus what we want to do, and how we actually are, the mental stress this causes is known as ‘cognitive dissonance’. As JWs, we all put up with, went along with, and made excuses for, so many things we didn’t agree with just because it was ‘the Truth’. We forced ourselves to think and act in ways we didn’t agree with, and blamed ourselves for not being who we thought we should be. Because this began at such a young age, we likely didn’t even realise that what we were experiencing was cognitive dissonance. Some examples:

• You should value your relationship with God. But, it doesn’t quite seem right that God will kill me if I don’t do what he wants. Is that really love? This is ‘the Truth’ though, and the only way to please him is to stay here. Where else would I go anyway? I shouldn’t be thinking like this…
• You should value the spiritual food from the organisation. But, most of it is repetitive and boring. Oh well, it’s ‘the Truth’, so I need to go along with this. I guess if I was more spiritual I would find this easier. I’m just not spiritual enough…
• You should value theocratic activities over other worldly pursuits. But, I dread going out Witnessing, and I would rather be doing anything other than sitting in this hall right now disagreeing with everything I am hearing from the platform. Why do I find this so hard? I should value being one of the privileged people who have ‘the Truth’. I really don’t deserve to be here…
• You should value being part of an organisation where everyone is of the same mind, putting on the new personality. But, I actually feel a bit stifled because I’m not allowed to have my own opinions about anything, and I’m tired of constantly being judged for everything I say and do. I’m tired of putting on an act all the time. I guess I just need to put up with this though if I want to please God. Oh wait, does this mean I’m not serving God with the right heart condition so I will probably just die at Armageddon anyway? I’m so confused…

Thought processes like this are all examples of cognitive dissonance and they are a recipe for anxiety and depression. This, in my opinion, is the leading cause of the high rates of mental health issues among practicing JWs. Living up to who they ‘should’ be is impossible, doing what they want is not an option, and what they are actually doing is neither what they want nor what they ‘should’ be doing.

In some respects, having values imposed upon us is not unusual. Everyone has values imposed upon them from various sources, mainly parents and other significant persons. Our job is to work out which of these values we agree with and want to keep, and which we want to discard. Not all of the values drummed into us through our JW upbringing are terrible. Honesty, integrity, and loyalty, for example. We may just want to redefine what these values mean to us now, in the absence of any ‘JW imposed’ meanings.  

Here are some examples of worksheets which my therapist gave to me to help identify my own values. They are quite simple and straightforward, and at the end of it I could quite easily see where my values differed from my parents, and from the organisation, but also where some values aligned.

Values: Self-exploration (TherapistAid.com)

Exploring values (TherapistAid.com)

There are also several sites online where you can pull up lists of 100 or so values, then do the exercise of culling the important ones from the unimportant ones, then culling again, and again, until you get down to your top five. Working out my top five overall values resonates with me in some way almost every day.

After you develop a clearer idea of your values, you will be more able to identify thoughts, beliefs or behaviours you may be hanging on to which are not in line with your values, and which no longer serve you or the life you want to lead now. Identify these, then replace them with thoughts, beliefs and behaviours which are in line with who you are now, and who you want to be.

4. What do you want?

As JWs, we simply did not exist as individual people. We were part of a collective, communal identity. We never learnt how to identify what we want, how to express what we want, and how to back ourselves if we faced resistance achieving what we want. When we leave, we likely have no idea what we want or even how to ask for it because, as my therapist once said, ‘You can’t stick up for someone that doesn’t exist’.

By working through the previous steps, you will start to find the person that previously didn’t exist. You need to do this before you try to work out what you want, because this part requires putting yourself in uncomfortable situations. You need to challenge yourself with new ideas and new information to even have a hope of working out what you want. If you haven’t developed a core sense of self first, you will find it all too different, too confronting, too difficult, and likely retreat back to safety.

As covered in the Recovery Toolkit Step #4, now is the time to ask yourself all the difficult questions. Don’t feel threatened by the answers, or by the fact that you don’t even have answers. Just take the information in. It is just information. You don’t need to shut it down or run away from it. You have the power to choose which parts to take on and which parts to leave. As JWs we weren’t allowed to choose what we picked up or put down, but now we can. Give yourself permission to explore.  

When are you happiest? What things make time fly for you? What brings you satisfaction? What do you think about mortality? Morality? Aliens? Evolution versus creation? Giving blood? Playing sport? Try new things. Journal your reactions. What do you want for your life? Your career? How do you want to spend your time? Who do you want to spend time with?

After leaving the JWs you may not be up for anything new straight away. You may need time to lick your wounds and gradually start engaging with the world. Others may be ready to launch straight in, jumping at every new opportunity which comes their way. Either way, go at your own pace and try not to compare yourself to others, including ex-JWs. Don’t worry about what they have done since they left, or how much they have or haven’t achieved. Just worry about yourself.

As you get to know yourself and what you want for your life, you will feel more empowered to make decisions for yourself. No decision is ever easy. Every decision will leave a path untrodden. All you can do is make the best choice you can in that moment, with the information you have available, based on what you want for yourself and your life, and for others in your life. No one can know for sure what the best decision was until all of the consequences have played out, and you can only know that after a decision has been made.

When I was struggling with a personal decision, my therapist once said, ‘You can drown in a few inches of water’. When I asked what he meant (I can be pretty slow sometimes), he said that sometimes we can get so bogged down with over-analysing a situation that even small or really obvious decisions can feel overwhelming and paralyse us. We could allow ourselves to drown in a few inches of water because we simply didn’t lift our heads up, look at what is really going on, then act on it in the way which most closely supports who we are and want to be.

Click. The answer had been staring me in the face. What I had been struggling with was someone else’s opinion of my decision, but inside I knew what I really wanted. Their values are not my values. I made my decision and haven’t looked back.

You have the power to lift your own head up, look objectively at your situation, and make the best decision for yourself with the information you have, knowing who you are, who you want to be, and what you want for your life. Noting also that what looks like the easy path may not necessarily be either easy, or the right path for you.

Start small. Identify what you want, then if it involves others, ask for it. This can be as small as letting someone know that you don’t like it when they call you a certain name or touch you a certain way. It might be realising that something is really inconvenient to you and that there is a simple solution which would make life so much easier, but it involves asking others to consider your needs. Or it could be as life changing as breaking off a relationship which is no longer healthy, starting a new relationship, or deciding to remain in an existing relationship because you know that while no relationship is easy, this one is worth the effort.

Asking for what you want requires tact and an emphasis on you and what you would appreciate, rather than blaming others. For example, something like, ‘I would really appreciate it if you could please do X, because that will then support me in doing XX which is really important to me’, will be more effective than ‘Why won’t you ever do XXX?! Don’t you realise how inconvenient that is for me? You are so inconsiderate and only ever think of yourself’.

It’s hard but it’s worth it

While these strategies will help you on your way, there is no denying that getting to know yourself will be hard work. It takes sustained effort, and the ‘job’ is never ‘done’ (if it is, it means we are either dead or have stopped living). But it’s worth it. You are worth it. Not only will your quality of life improve, but you will be fascinated (and also amused and occasionally horrified) by the person you finally get to meet.