I can’t have friends, nobody would like me, I’m so awkward. My nose is crooked, I’m too overweight, I don’t have a good enough career to have anyone interested in me romantically. When I lose weight I’ll put myself out there. When I get good at (insert skill here) maybe I’ll join a group and try to make friends. When I’m productive enough in my work/home life then I’ll suddenly qualify to be happy and try to have some fun.
My question is, why not you? Why not now?
It was the cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses that made us feel that if we ran a rat race built on lies for our entire lives that then, and only maybe then, we would be good enough for love or saving. It was all lies. The gaslighting was real, and it made us feel like we could never be good enough so we’d have to look to others for their approval, thus giving them power. They sold us the disease so they could sell us the cure.
Why me, that’s what they made you feel. Why would you possibly be worthy of friendship, love, enjoying life, etc. Just another lie. Just another distorted way of seeing yourself and the world around you.
So why not you?
Look around you. You’ll see people of all shapes and sizes out there living life with friends and romantic partners. You’ll see people that aren’t highly skilled at what they do out there earning an income from what they do, making friends around it, etc. Surely there is someone out there worse off than you that has some of what you’re looking for today. So what makes you so special that you individually are not worth having these things? Anything other than that a cult told you that you weren’t?
Something that many don’t realize is how many people in the cult were shamed for their laugh, their smile, their face, their body, their voice, their skin, their weight, and on and on and on. Just another aspect of the controlling nature of a cult that can’t ever let you feel good about yourself. Again, they made you feel like “why me”, because heaven forbid you feel good about yourself or even have a chance to get up off the mat.
Again though, it was all lies. It was control. You can see that the cult lied about certain dates, manipulated scripture, was based on books that today you see today as fiction. Is it possible that the things the cult also told you about yourself were equally wrong?
One of the things I see the most are objectively intelligent, kind, beautiful people that have been made to feel like they are steaming piles of hot garbage, and that was a lie like everything else.
Somewhere out there is a meme where a person is walking around with a cage on their head. The person feels like they’re in prison and can’t get out but the reality is that they’re free, it’s just their mind that is held captive. The cult was interested in confining our minds and hearts based on lies and manipulation. That then can confine us even after we leave for a time as we work through the healing process.
So again I ask, why not you?
I understand that it’s not as simple as asking that question, and that we all have feelings of unworthiness that hold us back. Many of us also have perfectionism and the idealized measuring stick that it brings with it and that can be a roadblock. There are things that can be in the way, walls we built or that were built for us, but ultimately and objectively those things are lies too. When I work with people we question these things, but if you want to start on your own, start with “why not me”.
Grandiosity can be “I’m the best in the world”. It can also be “I’m the worst in the world”. You are objectively neither. Question the way you see yourself and the world around you. We were all lied to at the deepest levels. Work on letting go of the lies about yourself the same way that you worked on letting go of the lies the cult told you about everything else. They’re equally invalid. We just carry around the feelings left over from those lies.
Why….not….you?