Ex Jw - Tumblr Posts
Where is my exjw friend?
I'm looking for a friend who used the nickname "eu fonico" in 2022 here on Tumblr. He was a member of the JW and told me that he was having a lot of trouble leaving there, because he was involved in music and counseling for young people at his church. He was Brazilian and spoke Portuguese, English (and Spanish, I guess? though, I'm not even sure).
If you're seeing this message, I know it's been many years since our last conversation, but I was worried about you and wanted to know if everything was okay. Maybe you think I'm just a stranger you met on the internet (and I trully am, but I'm also a real person, and I got emotional about your story and I really hope you're not in danger anymore). Big hugs to you, I hope you have the energy and strength you need.
Cults in media: 12 guys in robes in the woods chanting as some random is pulled into the circle to be stabbed as a sacrifice to Satan or something
Cults irl: Why does our meeting up location have no windows? Why am I so sleepy. Why is everything monotone? Why is it all multi-hour long repetitive, simplistic rhetoric and parts of acting out or repeating back near exact language? Why can't I go to school or play with other kids? Why are you showing me images of outside people dying in fear and panic and blood, of us being attacked and tortured for our "faith" any day now. Why do I have to be happy about that? Why is it always any day now. Why am I so sleepy. Why is the air-con set so weirdly and why can't we change it. Why is my stress response in life to smile.
[Image ID (sorta, basically just the text from it):
GET KOSA TRENDING.
STOP SCROLLING NOW!
AS OF FEBRUARY 21ST, 2024, WE GOT FIVE DAYS UNTIL THE DAY OF DECISION OF THE KOSA BILL, WHICH WILL CAUSE MASS CENSORSHIP ROUND THE INTERNET IF PASSED. OR DOOMSDAY. WE NEED EVERYONE TO KNOW ABOUT THIS AND CONTRIBUTE. I'M NOT GIVING UP ON YOU ALL.
WE'RE DOWN TO THE WIRE BUT WE CAN'T GIVE UP YET. IF WE GIVE UP, EVERYTHING IS OVER. IF WE DON'T, AT LEAST WE HAVE A CHANCE.
I'M THE ONE WHO SOUNDED THE ALARM, AND I'M NOT GOING TO CURL UP AND DIE YET.
Reblog this post in every LEGAL way you can under the Tumblr guidelines with the appropriate tags. TELL AND TAG EVERYONE YOU KNOW, then add the tags to see below... and more if you can think of any complying.
Visit badinternetbills.com if you want to find a way to defeat KOSA. It WILL NOT take much of your time. Reblog with any other information or sources, too-- but make sure to reblog if you can.
Reblog if you support lgbtq+ content.
Reblog if you support questioning queer youth and/or abused youth getting the information they need.
Reblog if you support Ao3 and/or other sites that wholeheartedly preserve talentedly made media.
Reblog if you're going to repost this on other sites than Tumblr and spread the word across Twitter, Tik Tok, Pinterest, or elsewhere, alongside the link to badinternetbills.com.
END image ID]
Hey, everyone. So yeah, this is happening. We're still fighting this battle. And we can't give up now. We can't. We can't stand idly by while one of the most important resources that helped us all wake up, or at least start to question things, is being threatened by the government.
We can't stand idly by when kids, teens, and adults just like us still trapped inside might lose access to the resource that could help them wake up. We can't stand idly by when they might lose access to their non JW friends and family. We CAN'T stand idly by when we can do something to stop this bill from passing.
I am sick and tired of this same old song, where conservative fuckers higher up think they can oppress everyone. I am FUCKING SICK of it.
Please, reblog both this post and the original post linked above what I've written, and do what you can to stop KOSA, please. We are running out of time.
I suggest that if it is within your power to do so, that you do more than simply reblog and assume someone else will do something. DON'T assume that. Please do more than just reblogging if you are able to, because that's not really enough at this point.
Call/email representatives in the House and tell them to oppose KOSA (you may want to list different reasons depending on who you're calling, some House representatives are anti-LGBTQ+, so it may be best to tell them to oppose because it violates people's privacy, safety, and anonymity online). Print posters and put them up where legal if you can.
Sharing all this information to other social media sites (Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, the bird app) to reach more people can really help too. The wider the reach, the better.
Thank you. Now let's fucking rip that bill apart like we rip apart Watchtower magazines and eat it for fucking breakfast. (In a "we're eating it and the politicians who are sponsoring it are looking on in horror" kind of way)
🌟 Would anyone be interested in participating in a live zoom call with fellow cult/religious trauma survivors? Hoping to create a safe space where we can all share our experiences and offer advice to one another 🌟
I’ve written a good bit about this on here and on Twitter X,
the way that authoritarian ideology, specifically salvific ideology (that is, ideology that purports humans must be saved by some external means due to some internal fault), teaches that you must separate True self (“capital T!”) from your humanity.
C. S. Lewis famously wrote, “you don’t have a soul. You are a soul, you have a body.” This emphasis on the soul and the diminishing of the physical has legitimate psychological consequences, especially when pushed through a values system that determines whether or not you are pure enough to receive not just god’s love, but his attention, his favor, his protection in your health and safety, and every possible aspect of your conscious life and your eternal retirement.
Gnosticism asserts that your body—any tangible human identity and experience—is corrupted, and only the soul can be purified. Evangelicalism insists that it is not gnostic, that Gnosticism is a heresy, but it continues to teach this existential division. One scripture speaks of the Holy Spirit acting as a sword that separates even the spirit from the soul, and this is taken up in further teachings about divisible consciousness: your flesh, your soul, and your spirit. How the hell does this work? They teach you are a spirit, who has a soul (a self, your feelings and personality) that lives in a body, and the spirit is what ascends and is perfected and made whole at the end of all things. Even factions that believe you get a physical eternity teach that your current body is either renewed, made new, or you get a new body entirely.
Your current self (the only one you have ever known and as far as you are capable, can ever know) is an offense to god, one he graciously tolerates until some time which only he has determined to make all things perfect. You are stuck.
How is any human being supposed to address this and live accordingly? Especially really serious believers who really care about getting it right to demonstrate how much they love and trust god?
The teachings get overly complex from there, trying to substantiate themselves with esoteric phrases and hidden wisdom, but the application is what remains consistent: your current conscious and physical self is corruptible, has already been corrupted, and who you are must be saved and sanctified, and even that is not enough because there is still yet another stage when “the kingdom comes in its fullness” and it’s finally complete with a Brand New Self that is not corrupted like you are now.
There are different interpretations of what that existence will be like. But for the earnest and intensely faithful of us, what else can we do now but “die to ourselves”? We become shells of people, an entity occupying a body, trying in every way to allow ourselves to be taken over by god himself, to be a conduit for his will to all humanity that we encounter. Our desires and preferences are selfish and sinful, or conversely they have been transposed with the will of god.
Often times we merry-go-round or see-saw between these extreme ends, in a desperate attempt to be So Pleasing To The Lord, and in the process we either reject any intrinsic sense of self, or we outsource it to the divine. It is so profoundly confusing to live this way, and the easiest way to make sense of it is to decide that you are nothing, and nothing you want matters.
For a time, I was asked to be a youth pastor at my small church. This was something I never wanted to do. I felt so uncomfortable, so unqualified, not at all gifted, and very unsupported materially and relationally. And because of that, I wondered and eventually “trusted” that this must the will of god because he wanted to purge me, he wanted to force me into submission and to force me to trust him because I couldn’t do it without him, and this was his good gift and perfect love. After all, the bible teaches that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. If this is what god will do, through my suffering and struggle, why would I pray against that, ask god to change that? I stop existing, my fears, discomfort, and desires do not matter, and I only need to die to myself, give up every concern and hesitation because God’s love is poured into my heart.
The worst part of all this is that if you grew up in an abusive home, your survival mechanism of dissociation is not only reinforced in an authoritarian religious community, but it is rewarded—you’re so faithful! You have such a beautiful spirit! You’re such a servant! You are an example to the rest of the body of Christ!
The abuse-survival mechanism-reward dynamic can be extremely difficult to untangle. Who are you? If you grew up in this, there is likely never a time where you truly felt like you knew yourself, that you mattered, that your interests, preferences, and needs—all the things that make you human and shape your unique personality/self—were valid. How do you heal from this if you don’t know what you want or who you are because it was a deadly, existential threat to even think about?
It is possible, it is. Sending and extending courage to all those recovering from chronic, spiritualised dissociation.
Who wants to talk about borderline alterhuman identity acquired through cult socialization and separation of the self from human identity at an early age
