I was going to leave a response in the comments, but it got too long, and I felt the topic deserved a second post.

“I’m not entirely sure what it is, but I’m sure that my parents, in concert with the WCG created it.”

There’s an article on PT that always makes me feel a little bit depressed. (Word of warning the author was a JW apologist at the time of the writing. Don’t know where “Louise” is at now theologically.)

“On coming into a cult, the personality splits or “doubles” as Dr. Lifton says, and then while IN the cult, the true personality goes on “hold”, then upon exiting, the old pre-cult personality emerges, and therefore, you have three things to integrate: The pre cult personality, the in cult personality, and the post cult personality. You will never be the pre cult self again. WWCG did happen. You are not the WWCG person you were.

“You are now a conglomerate of the three. However, they are somewhat incompatible, therefore you have mental stress and confusion. Welcome to the club. You are normal. You are suffering from the normal reactions to a very abusive abnormal situation put upon you. It is not you that not o.k., it is the cult experience that is not o.k.

“Integration comes if you like it or not. It causes much confusion and mental pain. Therefore, you are very vulnerable to going back into the cult, or entering another controlling cult. My advice to you, is to stay still. Rest, read and recuperate.”

Yeah that’s great. Good advice. For someone who has a fucking “pre-cult personality” to go back to. Being born and raised in the church, our pre-cult personalities know no borders, either. We have nothing else.  As Bereans Did just touched on this in a recent post as well, “Crazy or Not, Here I Come”.

I find that being on the forums and with the blogs, and especially the whole Weinland fiasco, has helped me exit mentally, over ten years after I exited physically, moreso than I would have been willing or able to, if the converted parent and I had plunked ourselves down in a deprogrammer’s office at the time that we made the decision to finally quit going. The time definitely would not have been right for something like that back then. Ten years seems to be the average, for most children of the church, to start coming to terms with what the belief system was, and what it did.

It seems for me at least (YMMV) it comes down to being a lot more “conscious” of yourself and your actions than the average person is. Which is good in a way, because you end up being more self-aware (or trying to be).

There was a thread on the Ironwolf forum on mindfulness that touched on this, in a tangential way. I’ve been trying to pay more attention to WHY I may be acting or reacting in the manner I am, not just observing that I am acting or reacting in an undesirable manner, or getting undesirable results.

I have said it before, but I will say it again: When my family dropped the church, they literally dropped the church, just as much as Tkach did, if not more. What, Holy Days, what the fuck are Holy Days? Crank the volume on those Christmas carols louder and let’s drive around and look at all the pretty lights!! As far as my family was concerned, it was as if twenty years of our lives had never happened. Which encompassed the entirety of my life, but oh well, suck it up and go along to get along was the prevailing attitude.

My family had no problems whatsoever going back to their pre-cult personalities. It was like flipping a fucking switch for them. But I never had a personality that wasn’t shaped by Armstrongism. So the threads are deep and thoroughly tangled. Deeper than I realized, until I started pulling on one, and beginning to unravel the tapestry of lies, misconceptions, deceptions and plain wrong-headed perceptions that are still lurking in dark corners.

Will it ever leave me? Hmm. I thought just dispensing with the external trappings had already done that. Turns out there are a lot more internal things that I have to shake, that I didn’t even realize I still had in me. “The world” as “the world” for example. I am getting better with that particular problem, since I recognized that I still have it, and knowing where it came from.

That’s only one misconception I realized was still affecting me, though. Are there others? I can’t tell, I haven’t run across any of them yet—at least not any of them that I am aware are affecting me negatively. I’m sure there are. If I pay attention, I should be able to catch them. Maybe.

We don’t have the luxury of having “pre-cult personalities” to re-integrate into society with. We’re left with just plain integrating, period! Or trying to. Mark my words: Integration is NOT having the biggest Xmas tree on the block, eating ham on Easter and watching TV on Friday nights. That is external “integration”, and I have come to realize it is every bit as legalistic as the system that required us not to do those things was/is.

You can chow down on all the pork chops and shellfish that you want, and you can club till 4 in the morning on a Friday night, but that isn’t going to get to the heart of the really pernicious stuff that’s still stuck in your head. Viewing yourself (intentionally or not) as “set apart” from “the world” for one thing. That is something I will probably always struggle with, probably always have to consciously remind myself that I am not.

It all comes down to making conscious choices, instead of just blindly going through your life, acting and reacting to situations without stopping to think why you are acting or reacting in the manner that you are. True, that is an extra step more than most “normal” people have to take, but in the end, if it gets you to where you want to go, and mitigates otherwise unpleasant circumstances, maybe it’s worth a shot.

That is my current thinking at least. It seems to be working. One incident at a time.