Episode 7 – Getting Healthy and Waking Up

[00:01:52] Before we get started I’d like to give thanks for the iTunes reviews that I’ve received. They mean a lot to me personally and they kind of give the show credibility for those who are looking for shows like this. I had asked for some a few weeks ago and some of you responded and I really appreciate that also. Just hit a little mark. We’re hitting 5000 downloads today. Just a week and a half ago to give you some idea. We hit 3000. So it seems like things are really picking up which is pretty cool and something that I really hadn’t expected. This has gone far better than I could have anticipated. Now today I’d like to start with a little public service announcement something happened this week that hit me after last week’s episode. The singer for the band Linkin Park Chester Bennington committed suicide. That kind of hit me hard for two reasons. One I just kind of got done reliving my own story and my own suicidal ideations and things and putting that out into the world. On the last episode to his music personally helps me on my journey. Their music ran the gamut from screaming to let out rage to these beautiful compassionate messages that mean he could sing at all different vocal ranges. They sing about things like codependents and depression and overcoming things. I could be totally frustrated with my life. Listen to one of their songs and feel like I either got the rage out or that I was understood. Sadly his own issues presented themselves in the end. Often it is those that hurt the most.

[00:03:27] That kind of churn out some of the most beautiful art. If you’re listening and you’re hurting I mean I don’t know how many people are listening I know. You know with 5000 downloads maybe there is somebody out there that’s hurting. I just want to say that there are better ways out. Sometimes the disease wins as in his case and it is profoundly sad. However many do beat these thoughts and feelings. Our stories just don’t make the news because shocking will triumph inspiring for ratings any day. I’m one such person and I know that there are many others. If you need help reach out with an open mind. You can find new ways of living and you can find what all of us are ultimately chasing which is happiness. The suicide prevention hotline can be called any time. 1 800 2 7 3 8 2 5 5. In fact if you google suicide prevention hotline It appears that they even have an online chat which is pretty cool. Just just reach out. Just please reach out. People do care about you and you can learn to care about yourself.

[00:04:34] At the end of last week’s episode I discussed this newfound revelation that I might have been dealing with some sort of ADHD for my whole life. This revelation was huge for me because it took away the moralization of my struggles that I’ve been giving my whole life and showed me that the cult that I have been taught to turn to for everything didn’t really have the answers to everything. In fact there was a famous talk that made the rounds by a brother Mack in the organization that highlighted how we’re all just getting by on pills and prayers brothers pills and prayers. This world is so wicked that it’s on the way out and it’s so hard to make it through well. That never sounded like a good life to me. It sounds more like an existence not a way to live. So I took this opportunity to dive farther into things I wanted to learn more about ADHD of course. And I dove headfirst into some online forums about it. I wanted to see how other people lived with it and kind of see how I fit in. I mean after all it is a spectrum. So you can’t. So not everyone is going to have the same experience. I would spend the next couple of years heavily involved in that community not only receiving help but I also stuck around and tried to help others as much as I could. What I learned was that ADHD is an executive function disorder. That’s exactly what it sounds like.

[00:06:03] It’s a difficulty in executing things in such a disorder you may face some measure of impulsivity and difficulty carrying out what you want to do unlike what the elders in the corrugation had just told me which I mentioned last week we all do what we want to do and it all comes down to choice. Well I was learning that our brains are often hijacked by many chemical imbalances and different disorders and sometimes just situational things. It doesn’t mean that we have no choice in this world but it does mean that life doesn’t merely come down to a matter of choices. If it did and we had this total control and all we needed to do or make better choices in life then we could be perfect for and if we could be perfect you know as this Christian I thought I was why would there be a need for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that I held in such high esteem. Why would he need to sacrifice himself because we could overcome our sinful or imperfect natures simply by making better choices right. Speaking of choices I ended up having one to make here. You see Jehovah’s Witnesses ridicule self-help they also for many years pretty much condemned any kind of psychology. After all the only thing that you really needed was prayer and faith. Faith could move mountains and if you did go to the realm of psychology just don’t mention that you’re a Jehovah’s Witness is ok. I mean if you do so and then talk about all your problems you might make Jehovah or Jehovah’s Witnesses which is what they’re really concerned about look bad and we can’t have that. You see you can see here how they are all about appearances which I’ve mentioned before the outward appearance.

[00:07:50] They like to talk about a scripture that references whitewashed graves that look good from the outside but inside we’re full of dead men’s bones and they would apply that outward to other religions. They did a lot of projecting. In reality they often claim things about others that were just as true if not more so within their own call. I was quickly realizing that I needed to look outside for some things. After all this one revelation was changing my worldview. It made me have some compassion for myself for once instead of self-hatred I had to accept that I might not be able to do everything that I wanted to do because I like every human being have limitations. Now that doesn’t mean that those limitations have to destroy my life or dominate it. It just means that I might need some coping tools or strategies to manage it. In the end I did end up leaving that 80 forum that I was a member of for so many years at a point I realized that we all play roles in life. Some are the victors some are the victims but your attitude about things impacts your experience. I knew that I couldn’t get rid of ADHD but I could better my life with it. A man without arms might not be able to catch a ball in his hands like everyone else. But that doesn’t mean that he can’t find some way to catch a ball. Humanity seems to find a way if it looks hard enough. Again don’t don’t take this in a perfectionistic way like what I would have back in the day.

[00:09:23] I’m not saying that we can all do everything because we can’t but we can all live happy and productive lives even if they aren’t exactly everything that we thought we wanted. My goal with this episode is to show you what I learned over the next seven years from audio books and podcasts that changed my perspective that open my eyes and it gave me a new and healthy life. It got me out of this cult mindset away from the dysfunction and the toxic ways of being.

[00:09:52] I learn so much and I want to share it because whether you were in a cold or not. This stuff can help everyone. I mean these aren’t cults or anti-coal books these are just books and podcasts. I listen to that were healthy for anyone. This is what I learned that turn my life around from a narcissistic suicidal self-loathing guy that was putting on pounds in debt with ease to a person that has empathy for others and acceptance for myself and that has dropped the weight gotten out of that and is actually happy and healthy.

[00:10:29] On my website this J.W. life dot com you’ll find links to these books and other resources under this particular episode. Episode number 7. They aren’t affiliate links. I’m not in the bookselling business or anything here I’m just trying to make this easy on people. If you need help you can find this help that you need as well. We can all learn and grow no matter our lot in life. It is difficult to look back over those years and to figure out exactly in what order I learned these things so I can look through. I have an account with audible dot com which is an Amazon company and see in what order I bought the books from them. Unfortunately though not all came from there I believe I bought some also Barnes and Noble has a good selection or at least they did have a good selection of audio books on their site so I’m going to kind of do my best to reconstruct this period of life. What I learned. I do think in a way the order did matter somewhat because you know one book would kind of build off the next day. I would learn something in one book and realize that maybe I was having you know this other issue that was kind of really preventing me from from applying it. And so I would get a book on that issue after learning about ADHD. I realized that I had a big problem with perfectionism So I started looking into books on the subject. The one that made the greatest impact was a book called happier by Talb been Shahar.

[00:12:05] My biggest takeaway was this one phrase happiness is the ultimate currency. In other words that’s what we’re all striving for. We think that once we get to a certain place we’ll be happy. For instance you might go to college and you’re pushing so hard to achieve and you think that once you get that degree you’re going to be happy. Then you get a degree and you’re not. Now you have this job that you need to get. So now you’re looking for this job that you’re going to get. And you say that once you get that dream job then you’ll be happy then you get that dream job and you’re still not happy. Well you know once I get that dream car that dream house or that family whatever whatever it is for you that goal becomes happiness postponed. We have a distorted view of goals in the western world. Goals are there just to give us a direction. They tell us where we’re headed. But in the end it isn’t about that goal or that and it is the journey there that really matters and that’s where we find our joy. By you know sometimes literally stopping to smell the roses. In fact there was an example in this book that actually impacted me very specifically. Happiness isn’t about what you do as much as it is about why you do it. So I did a study on people that clean and hospitals those people were studied. And it was found that they were very happy people. Why.

[00:13:40] I mean after all they’re surrounded by people that are sick or dying and they have to clean up things like surgery rooms and other areas behind profoundly sick individuals every day. It seems from the outside like those people would maybe hate their jobs. In reality though those people didn’t see what they did as just cleaning up blood or vomit. They were helping people. They got to know people and saw what they did for what it was instead of just the act that they were performing well this really hit me because back when I was listening to the book I was cleaning. I’ll let you in on a little secret. I didn’t clean because I liked cleaning. I mean let’s face it the janitor cleaner is the butt of all the jokes. Sometimes people treat you as a servant and see you as nothing more and you don’t always clean up the most pleasant things. But why did I clean. Well for the same reasons that many Jehovah’s Witnesses have cleaning businesses it’s all we could do to make more money than a minimum wage job because we couldn’t go to college. It gives many Jehovah’s Witnesses a flexible schedule to work around so that they can devote more time to pioneering and other Jehovah’s Witness interests. For me I kept trying to get away from it but I kept getting sucked back in because we needed the money. Now I did like working with my wife. But here’s another secret all of our clients today will notice that I clean all of the bathrooms in every house. Want to know why. It’s because I had bad social anxiety and if I clean bathrooms nobody would talk to me.

[00:15:18] I wasn’t out and about in the House of course now people know me well and maybe wish I would start talking at times but it’s better than where I once was. So I learned how to find the joy and happiness in life or in my work even I literally became happier just like the title of the book. It was such a contrast to the way the cult taught me to see the world. I was taught to see it as bad and awful and to look toward the future for happiness rather than today. I started to see our own cleaning business for what it was which was helping people which I’d love to do. In fact I started to realize how good cleaning was for me. Being a perfectionist it gives me an outlet for some of those tendencies. It helps me to work physically while I listen to audio books and podcasts that expand expand my mind every day. Now I actually love what I do and the people that we do it for. In fact he’s in the intro and we’ll do here again cleaning kind of save my life and I’ll explain why in the next episodes about our journey out of the call another book that hit me was the book mankind’s search for meaning by Viktor Frankl in it. It is his tale of surviving the horrors of concentration camps. The quote that is famous from this book rings true. His famous quote is everything can be taken from a man except the one thing the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances to choose one’s own way.

[00:16:53] Now as with everything nothing is absolute and through other things I’ve learned since reading this book and I’ve I’ve come to understand that although we do have that choice we may or may not have the tools needed to make a healthy choice but if we have healthy tools we can choose to see things differently. There are people in those camps that lack the tools and that gave up and died or that turn into people that they wouldn’t have wanted to be otherwise. Frankel observed this and was able to see beyond those immediate circumstances. Clearly he had tools that others didn’t around him. Nobody with the tools for something better would have chosen death just like those that commit suicide wouldn’t choose such a course if they had better tools so as to see a way out or is I believe the depression or whatever actually blunts these tools. But I digress. It does help though not to get wrapped up in the present situation when it is negative. And to look for the good in the book boundaries by Henry Cloud I learned how to set proper boundaries with other people. This is big for both me and my wife. When you’re in a cult it is difficult to have proper boundaries when the overreaches those boundaries on a daily basis dictating how to believe how to think how to behave how to feel. Back to that bite model I discussed an episode about the fog. There are a lot of narcissists and codependent people in the cult which makes sense when you think about what it takes to make a call. My wife was super codependent with me and I had my narcissistic tendencies.

[00:18:33] I bought this book to help put things back in order where they should be in a healthier place. I guess actually if you think about the shows that I wasn’t a true narcissist because a true narcissist would never admit that they had a problem in the first place or look for a solution. So like I said I had narcissistic tendencies. Another good book by Henry Cloud was called necessary endings. I read this probably a little too early in my awakening process to see where it really could have applied. And exiting the cult sooner. But the lesson is so good for everyone. How do you get a rosebush to grow. Do you just let it run wild and never touch it. No. You have to prune it. There are things that are dead that you have to remove so that the plant has energy to devote to new life. The same is true for our lives. There are often things that we’re involved in or people that we’re involved with that are sucking us dry. I like the term vampires for people like that but they really just take from us without offering us anything in return. Maybe it’s a job a person or a hobby or some other commitment that just really shouldn’t have a place in your life anymore because it’s just not giving you anything so that you can grow by getting rid of it. You will have the energy to grow. Just like those roses I remember at one point years later looking at my wife and pointing out that the cold just took and took and took from us and it never gave us anything in return.

[00:20:04] Eventually we both outgrew it and it was one of the healthiest things we’ve ever done to let it go. Probably my favorite book was a book called A million miles in a thousand years by Donald Miller. Now I don’t know if this book had the greatest impact but I loved listening to this book. The book is all about writing a better story not necessarily a fictional one but your own. It’s about editing your own life taking that 10000 foot view of it all or watching it as an outsider and looking at the roles that you were playing in it. I had notes on this book and many others but they were lost when I had a memory card that got corrupted years ago so. So what I had to do for this book is I went looking for quotes and this one really sums up the book a lot for me. The quote is. And once you live a good story you get a taste for a kind of meaning in life and you can’t go back to being normal. You can’t go back to meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable thread of wasted time. You think about it. This is so true. I’m at the point now in life free and outside of this cold. I could never go back to what I used to think was normal I want to take this opportunity to beg you if you’re listening to this and you’re unhappy with your life. Expand your mind read books that challenge your way of thinking or being no matter how uncomfortable it is. There is something better out there you just have to find it.

[00:21:41] And by challenging those areas in which you’re unhappy you’re likely to find a way out sooner. If it’s not for you. Find out now. Don’t wait. Find out now. You know Jehovah’s Witnesses often talk about people like me that leave and they say that I left because my feelings got hurt in the congregation or because I just wanted to go live some the botched lifestyle and then in that way they can trivialize it. Well I never sought to leave. I had no intentions I could have never imagined that I would leave Jehovah’s Witnesses. It wasn’t one thing it was a process of learning that took years. And once you learn something good and healthy you can’t go back to that toxic wasteland. It’s over. They shouldn’t fault you for it. But they have to in order to justify staying there themselves. Another quote from this book is this the human body essentially recreates itself every six months nearly every cell of your hair and skin and bone dies. And another is directed to its former place. You are not who you were last November or think about it. Your body is changing so quickly while so many people stay stuck in the same mentality and emotional space what could happen in your life if you took the time to change your perspective on life. Your emotional health by learning new tools or whatever is troubling you in life. So I’m going to take this opportunity to tell you that crabs in a bucket story if you go crabbing and you put crabs in a bucket. Some will try to escape if you don’t have a lid on it.

[00:23:24] However as one gets close to escaping the others will actually grab it and pull it back down. Now there may be simple reasons for this but it’s a good illustration for how humans behave in a group. If you try to escape from your present situation you try to write a better story as the book says there are going to be people that it shines a light on that will try to pull you back down. After all if you can change in your life that makes them feel bad because why can’t they. It’s like you are doing this to them. They take it personally and rather than being happy for you and celebrating with you they might actually try to pull you down. Now that’s not to say that well-meaning people might actually see something that you’re maybe you’re writing a story in which you’re about to drive off a cliff but assuming you’re doing healthy things you may have to do them and leave some people behind. It’s just a fact of life. For example I had mentioned before that we had a mounting tax that I listened to the Dave Ramsey Show for years if you like podcast you can listen to it as a podcast as well. And he also has a number of books. They’re all about how to handle money basically in a nutshell if you have debt. You are the gazelle and Adele is a cheetah trying to run you down you should run as quickly as possible to get away from debt before it gets you. And once you get away from that Cheetah stay away from it.

[00:24:52] Well the time came when we got a bill in the mail for $50000 that we owed in back taxes. It was during our awakening process and I was seeing my efforts pay off in other aspects of life. So I told my wife that although there’s no debtors prisons we were going to have to do some hard time if we were ever going to pay off what we owed. So we discussed our path out. I remember telling my mom that we were going to work super hard to pay off our debt like that gazelle that’s running from the CIDA she told me in no uncertain terms that I would fail and that even if I did manage to get out of things these are just fall apart afterward. In other words your poor get used to it. Things can’t get better. Crabs in a bucket trying to pull me down. I’ll say the story for how all that played out. And so later but let’s just say that she was wrong. And those crabs often are. There was something in my life that was lacking and I could never quite put my finger on it. And so one day it hit me. In fact it was something it was a big issue between my wife and I. She would always ask for this one thing and I could not give it to her empathy. Empathy was a word that was not in my vocabulary. If you had a bad life it was just because you made bad choices. And if you just make better ones than you’d have what you wanted right. I mean basically you’re an idiot. Go fix it and be happy.

[00:26:21] Of course this lack of empathy was directed at myself as well that black and white attitude with no allowance for where people are on life where they came from what tools they might have their mental or emotional makeup and so on is so ugly. Well I learned it I learned a lot about emotional intelligence something of which I had zero. I grew up in an emotional desert where emotions were bad and to be avoided at all costs. I learned the art of perspective taking to try to put myself in someone else’s shoes. Of course that’s something I’ve heard a million times when nobody told me how to do it. And so I learned to try to see things through the eyes of other people something that actually I guess I kind of on a level never even gave any credence to. One book that helped was called the emotionally abusive relationship by Beverly Ingle. It helped me to recognize emotional abuse. Another good book was called it was called Healing the Shame that binds you by John Bradshaw. It was another excellent book that I lost my notes from. But the one thing that I took away from it was to feel compassion for yourself. And whatever happened to you often people that are abused in some way feel shame about it as if it were somehow their fault. The book said to get a picture of yourself at whatever age you were when something happened to you. For me I got pictures from right before my family became Jehovah’s Witnesses and things that changed. I scanned that picture in.

[00:27:56] I put it on my phone so that every time I use my cell phone I saw this picture. Look at that image. If this is if this speaks to you get your own picture of yourself. When when you were a child and something went wrong. Look at that image and feel compassion for that little boy or girl. I remember looking around at other kids and who they were and trying to imagine them up against what I was up against at or around that age. It was a very healing experience. When you see the innocence of a child and to realize that that was once you in fact I’d have to say that this book kind of on some level I think along with these other things I think that in the trajectory of all of this I’ve kind of gone back to where I started as that kid with healthy emotions before everything got shut down in one of the books I read. I don’t remember which one but it referred to emotions as being your emotional state is like a pipe. It’s like plumbing. And so if you have any one of those emotions that is plugged up then the emotions can’t go through that pipe anymore. Like a clogged pipe. So you have to learn to let all of those emotions flow freely if you don’t then it will impact the others. The others will be stifled or plugged up as well. One of the most powerful books that I read have a lot of notes on this one was called the power of vulnerability by Bernay Brown. I first saw one of her TED Talks on vulnerability.

[00:29:42] In fact I’ll have looked for it I found it and I will link it up on the podcast page podcast page 2 in case you want to watch it. It’s a free sneak peek into some of what this book is about. Coming from my world vulnerability was seen as a weakness especially kind of in my family as a male. You weren’t allowed to be vulnerable or have feelings. I was bullied also at home by my dad. And then at school by other kids I felt vulnerable and that vulnerability was never a good thing. But this book changed all of that. I learned that often the tools that we use as children to avoid pain those those coping tools that we have as children like shutting down vulnerability. They end up being our greatest downfalls as adults. While they may work as children they’re dysfunctional but they may work for survival those coping strategies all have an expiration date. So basically the book taught me to see myself and to let others see me. I can tell you from experience from being a guy that clean bathrooms so as not to be seen that hit at home for my dad so as not to be seen that to this day still walks with his head down and somewhat poor posture because I never wanted to be seen allowing myself to be seen has been incredibly freeing. Of course you have to get healthy and find healthy people to be seen by which I didn’t have a choice in as a kid. But I have the opportunity now to make that choice and I have the tools to do it. With this podcast the loan is very vulnerable. People listen to this that know me.

[00:31:24] People listen to this that we clean for and you know I’m putting a lot of very personal things out there but it’s ok. Now they’ll know me better. Don’t be afraid to be known shame hides in the darkness. It thrives in the darkness when exposed to the light of day shame starts to die. Let me take a second here to tell my SJW listeners now tell your story to healthy people. If the experience of telling it is negative you might be surrounded by the wrong people. Think about it when you were in the cold you couldn’t tell your story. People keep their stories to themselves and then they feel alone all the while someone else likely in the same congregation maybe even sitting next to you in a in the mall has the same story and they’re hiding theirs and feeling alone. How can the court claim to have the truth when so much is hidden and discouraged from ever coming to light. Expose your story to the light. I’m thinking that after my story is done here on the podcast maybe I’ll try to help others tell their story. In fact I’ve already had some people reach out that what they’re told and others that just want me to hear their story share it. Tell me tell a friend tell someone own your own story and by doing so you start to take the power back from what happened to you. In the book The Power of vulnerability. There are two classes of people that are discussed the whole hearted and everyone else in a brown study.

[00:33:03] These people that she eventually called The whole hearted these healthy and happy people and she found some differences between them and everyone else. The whole hearted play and rest more while the others see exhaustion and productivity as their self-worth. She is the one that first introduced me to the concept that guilt is it. I did a bad thing and that shame is that I am a bad person which is very unhealthy. It is healthy to have a measure of guilt if you do a bad thing to someone it remore a little bit of remorse is a healthy thing but when you take it to the point where you feel like you’re now a bad person and you feel that shame that is incredibly unhealthy. I had a lot of what she calls shame tapes playing in my head. Unfortunately shame is often used to try to motivate people. It is a horribly unhealthy way to do so. As she explains shaming an addict is like giving a person dying of thirst some salt water to drink. You’re just fueling their fire and sending them in deeper. And this can be applied to so many situations. In fact this was a book where I really started to learn empathy because she teaches empathy as the antidote to shame. And that was huge for me. I needed it for myself and for others. She actually teaches empathy skills in the book to be able to see the world as someone else sees it to learn to be non-judgmental which was a big one for me.

[00:34:34] So not only understand someone else’s feelings but to be able to communicate to them that you understand so that they don’t feel so alone and to be vulnerable ourselves this message absolutely changed my life. It’s hard to have narcissistic tendencies while exhibiting empathy. They are the complete antithesis of one another. I can go on and on about this book if it sounds interesting to you just get it. Actually it’s not an inexpensive book if I remember but I guarantee you it is worth it and nothing else. Watch the free Ted talks. I think she even has some others and see if it’s if she is someone that you that you like and that that you think would challenge you. It was a the book itself actually is very engaging if you listen to it in audio format because it was like a recording of some sort of speaking engagement that she had done over several days. She has other good books too if you prefer the written word. Speaking of empathy and walking in the shoes of somebody else there was a podcast that I have now listened to for years and that has helped me tremendously. And it is by a comedian named Paul Gilmartin. And the show is called the Mental Illness happy hour. Again that’s the mental illness happy hour so if you have a podcast player and you’re listening to this it might be worth taking a look at. I have taken so many lessons away from this podcast. He has one guest on each week that he interviews. And speaking of vulnerability these people get deep into their lives and what they battle with. I will warn you everything that you could imagine could be discussed in these episodes.

[00:36:23] They’re not really something you want to listen to with the kids in the car but you can find one for just about anything that you personally battle. He also has surveys on his Web site that people can fill out and submit them anonymously that help give insight into what people are dealing with. You might even find it cathartic yourself to go through some of those surveys and to to let out some of what you’ve been through. People write about everything from their shame and secrets to their happy moments in life. He then takes those surveys and reads them on the show and comments on them in a very compassionate and emotionally healthy way. He deals with his own issues and he’s very open about them on the show. So you don’t have to feel alone. It can be very healing to people. Now again like I said it can be very dark at times but that darkness is real too. And everything is done with a view to healing and there’s humor thrown in because it’s beautiful to be able to find the humor even in those dark times. That podcast was instrumental in helping me to see how much other people are dealing with behind the scenes. You have no idea what other people are going through just like nobody knew what I was going through. We cleaned for people. The only person that knew what I was going through at my lowest point was my wife. And even then I couldn’t express to her the intensity of what was really going on inside of me.

[00:37:54] No one else can understand exactly where you are but if you look around you you really have no idea what someone else is going through. In fact I remember how thinking thinking how stupid it was that I thought that I could go to somebody door knock on it out of the blue. Offer them some cult propaganda and then if they rejected it think that oh they do them they don’t deserve the truth as if I had any idea who those people really were or what they went through on a daily basis. It was such shallow thinking and listening to the show deepen my appreciation for the human condition. I started seeing the bigger picture not this bigger picture painted by a cult about God and the goings on around us from the prospect of some great war between God and Satan. But my perspective of what was really going on around me was growing. In fact the more I learn in all of these rounds the more I realize that I don’t know near as much as I thought I did. Ignorance is a license for arrogance but once you challenge what you think and start expanding your horizons you really become more humble. In fact through the mental illness Happy Hour podcast I have been introduced to various books that helped. One was called The Narcissistic Family by Robert Pressman and Stephanie Donaldson pressman when he described it I knew this book was for me. I had once told my mom that I felt like I grew up in an alcoholic family without the alcohol. Well this book was actually written as a diagnostic manual for therapists by therapists because they saw these families were the same symptoms were being exhibited as though a parent was an alcoholic but nobody was drinking in the family.

[00:39:44] My dad was that alcoholic though he never touched alcohol. And my mom was codependent with him. I wish I still had the notes on this one. But if that sounds like your family read this book the last book that I’m going to mention that I learned so much from is called A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. Now this is a deep book that really finished off the last part of me that was in the way of my empathy fully expressing itself. And that was my ego and this book taught me how to just be not to overidentify with things like my religion my close status etc. just be when you strip off all those external things a way that we end up internalizing. We are just ourselves without ego. It is the ego that pushes us to do lots of unhealthy things in the end that religion has its own problems. That material thing will break or be replaced by something better. That job will end that you take that you identify with so much and so on. He actually mentions a scripture that Jesus said that if someone takes your tunic give them your cloak as well. Well the point is that you don’t want to let your ego get in the way. If someone took something from you they took an item not your identity. So rather than taking it personally like it was done to you which I’ll admit I still have a natural tendency to do because of ego and everyone does realize that they took a thing and not over identifying with it helps you stay away from drama. Think about it.

[00:41:31] A person that loses their possessions in a fire while it hurts in that moment they typically realize what really matters their lives and the lives of their loved ones that survived. Those are the things that matter. I learned the ego comes from getting stuck in thought in one’s own mind. I’m sure that with my hyperactive ADHD mind I had a very strong ego because I naturally get anxious about things as my brain tends to ruminate. The whole book is about separating things out. Don’t say I am unhappy say right now I have unhappiness inside me. You see you see the difference there. Separating that. Again don’t identify with your emotions as if they are you. The same goes for roles in life. People treat the CEO different than the janitor. As he pointed out allowing those roles to determine how they identified those people. Well we do the same with ourselves. Parents can identify too much with that role and forget who they are. Or maybe they try to fulfill their egos to their children. You don’t have to ask how to be yourself. Just stop adding baggage to yourself trying to figure out who you are. Like more roles. People keep trying them on and search to find themselves. But the reality is we are who we are.

[00:42:52] Beneath all those external things it really helps me to get me get to get myself out of my head and especially with my identification with the cult roles that were put upon me and that I then took upon myself later a point that you made in the book that struck me was that people enjoy vacations so much because on vacation each moment is new and experiential. It gets you out of your head you’re being more yourself just enjoying this new place and not being dominated by ego or playing some role. I could again go on and on about this book but I just encourage you to read it as well. It is a very personal journey. In reading that book it is deep. I even feel a little out there at times a little woo for some I mean I’ll admit when I read it at first I was like wow I’m not so sure about this but that’s just because it’s so contrary to the ego driven world that we all live in. In fact I’d probably go reread it myself because the ego never stops trying to creep up. It’s something that never goes away it’s just something just like anything else in life like ADHD or something else that best you can manage. It just doesn’t necessarily go away. All right. I’m going to throw one more book out there real quick. If you struggle to figure out what actually matters to you in life I recommend the book The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. This was I don’t even know how long ago it was now but it was years ago. The story made headlines I think he was on Oprah. It’s his story of dying with pancreatic cancer. But it’s a lot more than that is really is a story about living with pancreatic cancer if you struggle to find the beauty in life. Read this book.

[00:44:42] You can also look at the last lecture online and there are various videos that you might find interesting. I believe there is even video of his literal last lecture as professor. So there you have it. Contrast these things here that I was taking in with the fear obligation and guilt that the cult taught me to live my life by. Can you see how a person might start to wake up when exposed to such healthy thinking. I really hope that you found something and what I’ve said here today that can help you. Now you’ll notice that I said that I hope this can help you. I didn’t say that I hope you can help someone else with it. People have to want something better before a change takes place. And that one too isn’t necessarily an internal thing for many like myself. It started because life got so bad that I really only had two choices kill myself or get healthy. I was pushed to that point. Now if you’ve got somebody that is already at that point directing them to healthier thinking might just help. But you don’t get to determine when that point is. That’s not even up to them necessarily. I never consciously sat down and thought about my options. Things looked very bleak to me. That’s all I could see subconsciously though I did want something better. I just didn’t have any idea how to find it. So don’t use this information to point it at someone else and how they need to change. Use this for yourself. If someone else needs to change. Change yourself first and then by your example you might attract them to that change.

[00:46:25] When the airplane is going down you have to put the oxygen mask on yourself first before you’re in a position to ever help anyone else. Remember too that growth is a process. If you want to grow muscle you first have to exercise and break it down to build it back up. It can be a very painful process. You just have to be willing to endure it for what it is. On the other side it isn’t about what you want when it comes to making change. It comes down to what are you willing to endure. And people have different levels of endurance. Life is a race that everyone has to run at their own pace. Next week I’m going to get into the stretch that stretch of my own race. Were these things that I just told you about and that I learned came into play. I’m going to tell you about our journey out. My wife was right there with me in all of this Shih-Tzu enjoyed these books and was influenced by them. We didn’t know how much they would influence us and we could have never predicted where they would eventually lead us. I’m excited to tell you how things worked out how we got there. Some of the odd things that happened on the way.

[00:47:34] So I really do appreciate you listening. If you like this or think that it might help somebody else please subscribe so that you can get each episode as they come out and tell others about this. I’m putting this out into the world to be of help and it’s not going to help anybody. Obviously people don’t spread the word. I don’t have a big podcast network behind me. I don’t have the cache of Leah Remini. That allowed her to do a series on Scientology. I’m just a guy that lived a certain life that wants to expose what literally millions of other people around the world have gone through. There are over eight million Jehovah’s Witnesses and scores of ex Jehovah’s Witnesses out there. There are millions more that have family or friends that are Jehovah’s Witnesses that they might be concerned about. Take this to them so that they can see what it’s like. And if nothing else maybe it just helps somebody to feel less alone. Visit my site at W WW. This J-ws life dot com if you want to discuss this further there will be a place to comment below each episode that I put out so there can be a discussion. Ask questions give suggestions or if you want just say hi. I might answer them on another podcast or maybe have fun you know. Of course I’ll engage in the discussion there but maybe there’s something that can help me to even change this ASPI has to make it better. Remember that others are fighting things that you might not realize and give them the benefit of the doubt.

[00:48:58] Love others do no harm and go be happy.