Recovery Toolkit

Recovery Toolkit

Below is a brief summary of key strategies for recovery categorised according to the five key areas identified in both the Cycle of Control and Matrix of Impacts (fear, identity, reliance, compliance and culture, and rewards). Also included are links to various resources which I have found helpful in the months and years since leaving the JWs.

1. Recovering from the impacts of fear based teachings (anxiety, hyper-vigilance, inability to relax and enjoy life, CPTSD):

Fear-based teachings encourage members to be fearful of anything ‘worldly’, fearful of displeasing God, and fearful of suffering negative consequences from not doing what the organisation dictates. This can lead to a raft of anxiety and trauma related symptoms later in life. A good counsellor, therapist, or psychologist is the best way to help you unpack these types of issues. Each of us not only had the JW religion to deal with, growing up with Armageddon imminent and preparing to put our lives on the line for our brothers and sisters from a very young age, but we each have different family structures and backgrounds which means this can’t be a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

Useful resource: Betterhelp.com (online affordable counselling)

In saying that, not all of us can afford a counsellor or therapist, and there are several things we can do on our own to help understand our anxiety and learn to react differently. I am going to list them here for now, but in time I will do more in-depth blog posts about each one:

Journaling. Journaling is a surprisingly powerful way to identify and uncover various ‘triggers’ we may not have been aware of. Try to note down how you felt in certain situations, and think back to other situations in life when you felt similar. Try to work out what you are reacting to. For example, through journaling I noticed that in certain situations I feel my chest getting tighter and find it more difficult to breathe. I didn’t know that this is actually a stress response, and after identifying the types of situations which brought it on, I started to see patterns and work out what I was reacting to. I am now able to identify this as it is happening, and take steps (usually just deep breaths and reminding myself that what I am reacting to is not a threat to my life), to help me feel calmer again.

Useful resource: Journal therapy for anxiety

Learn about CPTSD and trauma related symptoms and recovery. An incredibly long list of symptoms are associated with having experienced trauma. I recommend reading and learning about them, and identifying which ones affect you. With understanding trauma also comes the need to learn a few self-calming and centering techniques (deep breathing as an example). Learning where your anxieties came from and forming a narrative which makes sense of your life is a great way to understand and accept your experience.

Useful resources:

Self-care and compassion. This was totally taboo as a JW, but guess what?! Normal people who weren’t raised in high control groups do take time to care for themselves and are generally not nearly as hard on themselves as we are. We were raised to put all of our own needs aside, but this is no longer the case. Think about what you need to look and feel your best, and do what you need to do to make that happen (says me as I sit up late at night tapping away, knowing it will make me wrecked for work tomorrow :-)). Examples include exercise, eating well, relaxation time (without guilt), and time to just do what ever you may feel like doing. Try not to be too hard on yourself for not meeting some imagined and imposed standard of behaviour.

Useful resource:

2. Recovering from the suppression of your identity:

As a JW we suppress our own identity in order to put the organisation first. Knowing who you are in the absence of all the JW thought patterns, beliefs, and general conditioning, is a mammoth task and one I would say is the most important thing to focus on after leaving the religion. Knowing who you are and what you will and wont tolerate can lessen your anxiety around and in certain situations, and provides a firm foundation upon which to respond to yourself and others, to back yourself, to make good decisions, and to generally direct your life.

As with understanding anxiety, journaling is a really effective tool for helping you get to know yourself. Think about and write down answers to questions like: When are you happy? What makes you tense or stressed? What things do you like doing? What are your values? Do you know what values are? Who are you? Can you describe yourself? What sides do you show to the different people in your life? Can you describe what you need in a relationship? Can you describe what you bring to a relationship? Do you know what boundaries are? Can you identify your boundaries? How do you feel when someone doesn’t agree with you?

Useful resources:

3. Recovering from reliance on the organisation: Improving your self-worth and self-esteem:

JW teachings which aim to keep you reliant on the organisation (ie. ‘man is not worthy of directing his own steps’), carry the inherent message that you are worthless. Incapable of directing your own life and certainly not worthy of respect. The only respect you deserve is respect for service to the organisation. This is incredibly detrimental to our self-esteem and self-worth. These concepts differ in that self-esteem is more about what we think, feel and believe about ourselves, while self-worth is more about knowing your value and the unique role you play in this world.

Self-esteem can be improved by getting to know yourself and learning to accept yourself for who you are. This does not mean avoiding difficult things or not improving yourself. It means understanding and accepting your strengths and flaws, your decisions in life, accepting responsibility for what you can, but also recognising what you cannot control and letting things go when need be. Try not to compare yourself to others. This can be difficult for anyone, but even more so when we have wasted some, most, or even all of our adult years in a cult. You may find you simply don’t know things that others around you know. You can feel isolated and as if no one could possibly understand your experience so you don’t even bother to try and explain it. It is so easy to compare ourselves to others who didn’t lose all of those years and just feel so behind in life. But remember, they did not have to deal with what you had to deal with. They did not have the stifling upbringing you did, and there is no telling where they would be if they did. Just compare yourself to who you were yesterday, or the day before, or a few years ago.

To help develop your self-worth, consciously tell yourself that you belong in this world too. You have a right to be here and you have a right to have your boundaries respected. We are all entitled, yes, entitled (a new word for many of us) to our basic human rights, regardless of anything else. Practice respectfully sticking up for yourself and having your own back. It can take time to recognise when you are going against your own needs to please others, and journalling can help you note the times you felt uneasy about something and investigate why, and what you are reacting to (you can’t go back and change the why, but understanding what you are reacting to now can help you do something about it and handle things differently next time). Try not to be too hard on yourself and have some empathy for where you are at right now: learning some basic life skills you should have learnt a long time ago.

With a stronger sense of our identity, self-worth and self-esteem, we are less likely to do things just to please others. We will also be more in-tune to those occasions where we may have gone out of our way to make someone else happy, and ignored our own needs or values in the process.

Some things to think about:

  • Get to know yourself (#2). Knowing who you are and having a firm grasp on your values and abilities will help to improve your self-esteem and self-worth
  • Learn and show empathy to yourself and others
  • Learn and practice acceptance, of yourself, others, and the human condition
  • Note the situations when you start to feel down on yourself. What are you reacting to? Is this logical? Can you reframe the situation in a more positive light?

An example of this is feeling down on yourself for not knowing the answer to something you think you should know. Does this make you a bad person? No. Is it logical to think that you should know everything? No. Even if you did know everything about that particular topic, is it human to forget things sometimes? Yes. Is there another way to view the situation? Yes. This is an opportunity to learn something new, or solidify existing knowledge, so next time, you will have the answer to that question. Did anyone die? No. Are you worried someone may think you are stupid? Probably. Do you care what they think? Probably. Should you? No. In all honesty, they have likely already forgotten about it. And even if they do decide to never speak to you again because of your unforgiveable stupidity, is someone like that worth impressing? Someone who is clearly so perfect that they never make mistakes? No. We left a religion that thinks like that. Don’t let people with a similar mindset make you feel unworthy of being allowed to be human.

Useful resources:

  • Theramin Trees YouTube channel – Provides insight into the narcissism inherent in Christianity and the impacts this can have on us
  • Brene Brown – See Ted Talks on vulnerability and shame and her appearances on various YouTube channels
  • Patrick Teahan Counsellor – YouTube channel – When listening to Patrick’s videos, think of the organisation as the narcissistic parent. It helps uncover just how unhealthy our relationship to the organisation really was
  • The Universal Declaration of Human Rights – Have a read through to see the rights you are entitled to just for being born and compare these to how the JW organisation treats its members

4. Recovering from the culture of compliance: Empowering yourself by challenging your beliefs, morals, and ethics, and choose what is right for you

This is also very much part of getting to know yourself, but with a slightly more challenging edge to it. Once you have come to know yourself a bit more, have identified some of your core values and are learning to accept yourself and others, then you are ready to challenge pretty much everything you ever thought you knew about anything and everything. As a JW, our thoughts and development are so stunted. We simply never had permission to form our own opinions on anything. The JW system of compliance (judicial committees etc) and the threat of banishment ensured we conformed to the culture of not doubting, not questioning, not thinking, and not daring to be different.

Now is the time to challenge all of this. What do you now think about morality? Mortality? Women being in subjection? Sex and intimacy? LGBTIQ+ communities? Changing your mind about something you once thought was ‘true’? Evolution? Aliens? Giving blood? Work? Looking after the environment? Volunteering and giving back to your community? Voting? It is ok if things are actually easy sometimes? How do you want to dress now? What is your style? What does ‘love’ mean to you now? What does ‘unconditional love’ mean to you now? What is empathy? What is the difference between values, ethics, principles, and morality? What principles do you want to live your life by now, and what does that look like in a post JW world? All of this is just waiting to be explored.

As ex-JWs however, we likely have a few impediments to being open to new ideas, developing productive relationships, and having respectful discussions about difficult topics. We may lack empathy for ourselves and others (because we had no empathy shown to us), so we may shut down discussions we simply don’t want to engage in, or ignore genuine pleas from others to engage with us over various topics, dismissing the issues as unimportant. We may think that conditional love is normal, and so have high expectations of others and be quite open in our inevitable disappointment. We may be pretty judgemental too, thinking that only our opinions are correct. None of this is conducive to learning from others and expanding our own understanding of anything.

As JWs we were taught that everyone outside the organisation is a potential threat. Challenge this view by now seeing others in this world as comrades, not enemies. In reality, we are all in this together, trying to get through our lives as best as we can. Generally, no one gets out of bed in the morning intent on making life more difficult for others. No one tries to do a bad job of anything. It’s just that humans are imperfect, and to beat ourselves (and others) up for being human, is a bit pointless. We can’t help that we are human, but we can take responsibility for how we react and respond to ourselves and others. Accept yourself for who you are, but also accept others for who they are.

Practice having challenging but respectful debates and discussions. Try to understand where others are coming from, without judgement. Only when you can listen to others viewpoints without feeling threatened will you be able to learn from them. Expose yourself to as many different sources of information as possible, and also think about the nature of that source. Is it trustworthy? What were the motives of the person or group conveying that information? What were their credentials? How much evidence is there for or against the differing viewpoints? After critically assessing the information you have gathered, you can then decide what you want to do with it. Some information or ideas you will adopt or modify slightly before adopting, but other viewpoints you will respectfully agree to disagree on.

By all means share your own views when having challenging conversations, but try not to impose your own thoughts or values as the ‘correct’ way. Really listen to what others are saying rather than just think of what you are about to say next. If you find yourself getting heated, perhaps request that you resume the conversation after you have had a chance to digest what has been said so far. Journal about this later to try and work out what you were reacting to. Why did you care so much? How did that interaction make you feel? How might you be able to handle that in the future?

Robust discussion and debate is foreign to us as former JWs. It is a ‘read the paragraph, find the JW sanctioned answer in the paragraph’ type of existence. Critical thinking is highly discouraged. It is their way or the highway, and that highway leads to shunning, so we never develop the skills to engage in respectful discussions on topics when views differ. Now is the time to rectify that!

Useful resources:

  • The School of Life YouTube channel (Life lessons we simply don’t learn as JWs)
  • The Behaviour Panel YouTube channel (understanding non-verbal body language)
  • Martin DeCoder YouTube channel (understanding the nuances of language and logic)
  • Check out free and reasonably priced online courses such as at Coursera.org to broaden your mind and interests
  • TopThink YouTube channel (General tips for understanding people and developing good habits)
  • The Art of Personal Growth YouTube channel (General tips for understanding people and developing good habits)
  • Podcasts: Freakonomics and No Stupid Questions (two of my all time favourite podcasts for learning about how life works in the real world)

5. Find your new ‘system of rewards’ – Your new purpose or passion:

When you leave the JWs you also leave behind everything you previously thought was worth living for: Serving God, having a ‘clean conscience’, bringing the ‘good news’ to people, cleaning the toilets at the hall, standing for hours at a freezing literature cart with no one coming near you, whatever. Everything which previously got you out of bed in the morning is now gone, and finding something to replace this is no quick and easy job.

Hopefully a combination of the earlier sections and resources will help you eventually work out who you are, what you bring to this world, what you find interesting, what makes you happy, and what brings you contentment and fulfilment in your post-JW life. You are now deciding how you want to live. Don’t beat yourself up for not knowing already. There is a lot to learn after you leave, but this is the good bit. It is like ageing in reverse. You will finally learn things you would have learnt years ago if your growth had not been stunted by a crazy organisation that we all had the misfortune to have been a part of.

But now you are out. Free. A Witness no more.

Enjoy the journey. You’ve got this.

Renee

Useful Resources:

  • Book: IKIGAI—The Japanese secret to a long and healthy life—Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles, 2017
  • Book: The courage to be disliked, Ishiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga, 2019.