Chameleons change their appearance for many reasons, one of which is to avoid predators. Growing up in an abusive home with his stepdad, who was only 11 years older than him, Kevyn couldn’t be himself. At an early age he had to be who he needed to be to survive at home and to try to make friends with the limited opportunities that he had as an isolated member of the cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Eventually he would finally earn positive attention from his stepdad because he made it to Bethel, cult headquarters, where he quickly learned that not everyone there was who they appeared to be either. Finding the “degenerate” Bethelites, he learned that there was a world outside to explore, and eventually through several more changes he would find himself enlisting in the Army to leave the life that he had behind as he changed yet again to save himself.
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Support the show by donating to the cause on our Patreon page, Patreon.com/shunned
Are you struggling in some area of life? Feeling stuck? Need an accountability partner or some encouragement? Need to talk to someone that understands cult life? Reach out and let’s talk. I have affordable programs to help as a certified life coach. Click HERE for more information.
Want more resources? Go to my other website exjwHelp.com
You can listen to the Shunned Podcast Spotify playlist here for all of the songs chosen by guests of the show.
This podcast was made possible by my original podcast This JW Life. You can find it on any podcast app. It is a 9 part series about life as Jehovah’s Witnesses designed to help you understand how it worked in one comprehensive story and to help you process your own if you came from that environment.
Tara grew up in a family where fear ruled, whether that was of the cult indoctrinated teaching of Armageddon, or whether it was fearing abuse from those entrusted with her care. Future relationships for her sister and herself would involve men that were abusive as well, and the cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses would come up woefully short of supporting them in healthy ways. In the end, despite her prayers, despite her pleas with the elders for help, it would be Tara that would break the patterns herself and change the course of her life.
The song that Tara chose to represent her journey is How by Lisa Loeb
Support today’s guest by leaving her a comment HERE
Support the show by donating to the cause on our Patreon page, Patreon.com/shunned
Are you struggling in some area of life? Feeling stuck? Need an accountability partner or some encouragement? Need to talk to someone that understands cult life? Reach out and let’s talk. I have affordable programs to help as a certified life coach. Click HERE for more information.
Want more resources? Go to my other website exjwHelp.com
You can listen to the Shunned Podcast Spotify playlist here for all of the songs chosen by guests of the show.
This podcast was made possible by my original podcast This JW Life. You can find it on any podcast app. It is a 9 part series about life as Jehovah’s Witnesses designed to help you understand how it worked in one comprehensive story and to help you process your own if you came from that environment.
Between being told that she was an accident that ruined her mother’s opportunity to be a “regular pioneer” as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and eventually being shunned, Alyssa was baptized into the cult at the ripe age of 9 years old. This is the story of what it is like to have the pressure of expectations to be an adult at such a young age, worried about the end of the world. This is the story of trying to be what your parents want you to be in order to try to earn their love. This is the story of feeling so desperate that you consider doing something absolutely life changing in the face of one of the secret “judicial committees” where your fate is held in the hands of three men. This is the story of growing up and moving forward while others remain stuck in dysfunction.
Support today’s guest by leaving her a comment HERE
Support the show by donating to the cause on our Patreon page, Patreon.com/shunned
Are you struggling in some area of life? Feeling stuck? Need an accountability partner or some encouragement? Need to talk to someone that understands cult life? Reach out and let’s talk. I have affordable programs to help as a certified life coach. Click HERE for more information.
Want more resources? Go to my other website exjwHelp.com
You can listen to the Shunned Podcast Spotify playlist here for all of the songs chosen by guests of the show.
This podcast was made possible by my original podcast This JW Life. You can find it on any podcast app. It is a 9 part series about life as Jehovah’s Witnesses designed to help you understand how it worked in one comprehensive story and to help you process your own if you came from that environment.
Many have heard the phrase “what would you do if you knew you could not fail”. Inside the cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses, opportunities for failure abound and the constant refrain of “I’m never good enough” echoes in the minds of those exposed to it. But what if a family that started out in the cult started to change the narrative? What would it be like to change the way you see the world as parents, and to then try to implement that change with your own children so as to give everyone a chance at success, instead of abundant focus on failing? How would you feel as that parent? What challenges would arise that perhaps you never even considered if you grew up JW yourself? What beautiful possibilities could lie ahead? This is one family’s story.
The charity mentioned in this episode can be found at https://tbbcf.org/
Support today’s guests by leaving them a comment HERE
Support the show by donating to the cause on our Patreon page, Patreon.com/shunned
Are you struggling in some area of life? Feeling stuck? Need an accountability partner or some encouragement? Need to talk to someone that understands cult life? Reach out and let’s talk. I have affordable programs to help as a certified life coach. Click HERE for more information.
Want more resources? Go to my other website exjwHelp.com
You can listen to the Shunned Podcast Spotify playlist here for all of the songs chosen by guests of the show.
This podcast was made possible by my original podcast This JW Life. You can find it on any podcast app. It is a 9 part series about life as Jehovah’s Witnesses designed to help you understand how it worked in one comprehensive story and to help you process your own if you came from that environment.
Arthur was introduced to the concept of extreme shunning by the cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses when he was just six years of age and was forced to shun his sixteen year old big sister. This moment would send him on a course that was opposed to the path that his parents had set out for him, one that would leave him in a place to face his own disfellowshipping and shunning. However, in a surprise turn of events, Arthur’s baptism was invalidated and annulled rather than being disfellowshipped. Did that make any difference? This is Arthur’s story.
Support today’s guest by leaving him a comment HERE
Support the show by donating to the cause on our Patreon page, Patreon.com/shunned
Are you struggling in some area of life? Feeling stuck? Need an accountability partner or some encouragement? Need to talk to someone that understands cult life? Reach out and let’s talk. I have affordable programs to help as a certified life coach. Click HERE for more information.
Want more resources? Go to my other website exjwHelp.com
You can listen to the Shunned Podcast Spotify playlist here for all of the songs chosen by guests of the show.
This podcast was made possible by my original podcast This JW Life. You can find it on any podcast app. It is a 9 part series about life as Jehovah’s Witnesses designed to help you understand how it worked in one comprehensive story and to help you process your own if you came from that environment.
This is a recording of my presentation at the 2023 International Cultic Studies Association annual convention in Louisville, Kentucky. It was recorded on Friday July 30 in front of a live audience, as well as streamed online for those with tickets to the event. The theme of the conference was “The Cult Phenomenon in the Covid World”. My presentation was about the cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses and their response to the pandemic.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are a doomsday cult. They believe that this world is getting nothing but worse every day and that it will devolve into a period of time known as the Great Tribulation for mankind that will be followed by a fiery Armageddon in which their god will have the wicked (or basically non-Jehovah’s Witnesses) killed so that the righteous (or Jehovah’s Witnesses) can live at peace in a world that will be turned back into the Garden of Eden.
While prosocial behavior is about helping and comforting and having empathy for others, Jehovah’s Witnesses were busy hoping that this calamity was going to usher in even more calamity so that they could get their promised reward of salvation at the expense of everyone else.
Jehovah’s Witnesses took a very firm stance on the virus itself from the beginning. They shut down their in-person meetings and also the door to door preaching work that they’re known all over the world for. But what makes Jehovah’s Witnesses different than most others is the length of time that they remained shut down. They didn’t go back to their Kingdom Hall gatherings until April 1 of 2022. For all of that time they had been having their meetings, their conventions, everything on Zoom and on their JW.org website. That was their only real attachment to the indoctrination they received.
Instead of knocking on doors, Jehovah’s Witnesses were writing form letters to individuals to spread their message. Just to show that the real reason for their preaching work is to reinforce beliefs and keep their members busy so that they can’t think about what they’re taught or get into other things, these letters were hand written. If the goal was really to reach as many people as possible, we know that they could type out one letter, print copies, and spend their time envelope stuffing. Rather than do that, the members spend their time hand writing these letters to send.
The cult also had another trick up their sleeve that I don’t think anyone saw coming.
Jehovah’s Witnesses never let a tragedy go to waste. They can always find some way to exploit it for their own benefit, in this case taking food for the needy and using it for their own interests. The guise of prosocial behavior, the reality being very distanced from that.
The last couple of years had made it easy on them to be what we call PIMO, or physically in but mentally out, because they could just turn on a Zoom meeting and be present with their camera off while playing video games or doing anything else, all to keep some sort of status in the congregation that would prevent shunning from friends and family. The pandemic gave them great cover, but it was also false cover, shoving the harsh realities of what they were involved in into their face when they weren’t expecting the inevitable.
At times it was the fact that they started questioning things on the outside that led them to questioning things on the inside. For instance:
Some were upset that the cult was pushing the vaccines because they had concerns about it. How could “The Truth”, as Jehovah’s Witnesses refer to themselves, be promoting something that they personally saw as a lie.
Others saw the messaging around masking and vaccines as propaganda, and in their eyes it helped them to see propaganda that they had already been exposed to.
Some started looking more into science in general, and that led them to questioning other things that they had been taught.
Still others saw a fervor for science as “The Truth” and the disavowing of anyone, including other scientists, that disagreed as a reflection of the fervor for their religious truth and shunning in their religion.
There are takeaways from all of this.
We can see how an external event that cost the cult their current control led many individuals to take control back and to find freedom. We can see that it helps if we can get people that are currently invested in a cult to find time and space from that constant pressure of indoctrination. We can see that many are still stuck in cults that don’t want to be there. There are untold numbers of people inside the cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses that don’t want to be there, but it is a captive organization, one that will gaslight and extort you in every way possible to get you in and to keep you there. We need to see how these cults capitalize on tragedy for their own designs so that we can understand what these people are up against. We need to understand all of the hooks that these organizations use to keep people stuck in order to help provide resources that they could seek out when they are ready to start shaking free.
Growing up, Rachel moved roughly 15 times between the ages of 5 and 19. Without much stability other than the consistency of the cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses and her parents in her life, she was forced to move and adapt to new situations without attaching to anything. The out of control feelings and trauma stood to threaten her very existence, but eventually Rachel found better days outside of the cult and more stability in her life. This is Rachel’s story.
Support today’s guest by leaving her a comment HERE
Support the show by donating to the cause on our Patreon page, Patreon.com/shunned
Are you struggling in some area of life? Feeling stuck? Need an accountability partner or some encouragement? Need to talk to someone that understands cult life? Reach out and let’s talk. I have affordable programs to help as a certified life coach. Click HERE for more information.
Want more resources? Go to my other website exjwHelp.com
You can listen to the Shunned Podcast Spotify playlist here for all of the songs chosen by guests of the show.
This podcast was made possible by my original podcast This JW Life. You can find it on any podcast app. It is a 9 part series about life as Jehovah’s Witnesses designed to help you understand how it worked in one comprehensive story and to help you process your own if you came from that environment.
Behind the scenes of a rock concert for Saves The Day, Spencer gets to interact with these “worldly” people that weren’t Jehovah’s Witnesses, and he sees that he doesn’t need to save them like he had been told his whole life by the cult. Eventually Spencer comes to realize that the only person he truly needs to save is himself.
Support today’s guest by leaving him a comment HERE
Support the show by donating to the cause on our Patreon page, Patreon.com/shunned
Are you struggling in some area of life? Feeling stuck? Need an accountability partner or some encouragement? Need to talk to someone that understands cult life? Reach out and let’s talk. I have affordable programs to help as a certified life coach. Click HERE for more information.
Want more resources? Go to my other website exjwHelp.com
You can listen to the Shunned Podcast Spotify playlist here for all of the songs chosen by guests of the show.
This podcast was made possible by my original podcast This JW Life. You can find it on any podcast app. It is a 9 part series about life as Jehovah’s Witnesses designed to help you understand how it worked in one comprehensive story and to help you process your own if you came from that environment.
While some religions speak about the concept of grace, the cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses has another term for it… “undeserved kindness”. This is the underpinning of what it is to be one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, to know that you don’t deserve any chance at salvation as a good for nothing sinner, and to know that you don’t even deserve the life that you have now. For Joel, he had something else going on internally that served as yet an extra obstacle to his existence in the cult, and he was left wondering how that could possibly be fair. Why would he have something above and beyond what others had to contend with to try to be good enough for a God that hated a part of who he was.
Support today’s guest by leaving him a comment HERE
Support the show by donating to the cause on our Patreon page, Patreon.com/shunned
Are you struggling in some area of life? Feeling stuck? Need an accountability partner or some encouragement? Need to talk to someone that understands cult life? Reach out and let’s talk. I have affordable programs to help as a certified life coach. Click HERE for more information.
Want more resources? Go to my other website exjwHelp.com
You can listen to the Shunned Podcast Spotify playlist here for all of the songs chosen by guests of the show.
This podcast was made possible by my original podcast This JW Life. You can find it on any podcast app. It is a 9 part series about life as Jehovah’s Witnesses designed to help you understand how it worked in one comprehensive story and to help you process your own if you came from that environment.
