I Don’t Want To Hurt My Family By Leaving Jehovah’s Witnesses

You don’t hurt your JW family by leaving the cult to be your authentic self. Your family is hurt because they have a narrow definition of what is acceptable based on distorted cult beliefs and they are intolerant of anyone not like them. That is what hurts them. The doctrines and beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses that they hold fast to are the anchor that drowns them. We don’t fault a black person because a racist is somehow offended by them. We fault the racist person and their racist beliefs. We don’t fault a gay person for the homophobic stance of someone with narrow minded beliefs. So don’t take the blame that your victim blaming, distorted thinking JW or other cult family try to lay at your feet.

Most of our families and former friends can only love us if we reflect back to them a version of themselves. They aren’t now, nor have they ever truly been, interested in getting to know the real us. Heck, many of us weren’t even interested in getting to know the real us. And as soon as we are, those people can no longer accept us. They are intolerant of anyone not like them unless they think that a person is potentially interested in being like them and suddenly the love bombing comes out, which really isn’t love at all anyway.

So if you’re walking around with your head down feeling like you’re a bad person that hurt your family deeply, please realize that the programming is designed to make you feel that way. Guilt is “I did a bad thing” but shame is “I am a bad person”, and they want you to feel the latter, to need them to tell you that you’re a good person. You aren’t a bad person for being you. The fact that you would ever think you are shows the depth of the manipulation.

Don’t take the blame for other people’s narrow and intolerant beliefs. That’s on them.