Prime - After The Tower (Page 2)

After The Tower

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9. Overload as a control mechanism

Have you ever noticed that when you are overwhelmed, you stop thinking and start reacting? That is not an accident, it is a design principle. When our sympathetic nervous system activates (fight, flight, freeze) our body feels like there is an immediate threat to survival and our brain prioritises short-term

8. You are not alone

I want to share some numbers with you. I put out a survey for former JWs to do some research for this project, and honestly I expected around ten responses. HUNDREDS of responses arrived in the first week, and almost a thousand within the month the survey was active. The

7. It's okay to be angry

Fifty-eight per cent of the people I surveyed report anger or resentment as an ongoing mental drain. Fifty-three per cent still monitor JW scandals and developments. I am not going to tell you that you shouldn't be angry. It's more than likely that every last bit

6. Beating yourself up

You celebrated your first birthday and felt like a criminal. Maybe it wasn't your first birthday, maybe it was a Christmas dinner, or a holiday with friends, or intimacy with someone you love. The activity was normal by any reasonable standard, nobody was harmed, you might even have

5. Life skills we never got taught

There is a unique shame that comes with being a grown adult who does not know how to do things that everyone around them seems to find effortless. Making friends. Managing money. Building a career. Navigating a date. Handling conflict without either caving in completely or cutting the person off.

4. Grieving the living

There is a particular kind of grief that most people in the world will never experience. It's not the grief of losing someone to death, where at least the finality is clear and the world around you understands what you are going through on some level. It'

3. Big promises

"I honestly don't think I'll die of natural causes. I can't picture myself as an old man." Sit with that for a moment: A grown adult, out of the organisation, intellectually free of its doctrine, who cannot imagine growing old. Not because

2. A smile can be the most expensive thing

"I was isolated and depressed, going from crying in private to putting on a smile and faking happiness for meetings." That line is from someone who responded to the survey I ran. They were describing their double life - the one where you perform beliefs you no longer

1. Saying the quiet part out loud

You knew something was wrong before you had language for it. It might have been small at first. A doctrine that shifted and no one acknowledged the contradiction. A rule that made no sense but was enforced as though your eternal life depended on it. A talk at the convention