ex-jw Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder

There's Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; what about Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Why have I never heard of that before? It's real, I've had more flashforwards than I have flashbacks. Of all the horrible experiences I've suffered in life, most of them never happened.
True story: A group of us were watching a movie at a friend's house. I don't recall the name of it, but the scene of several families fleeing the Nazis in WWII Europe stood out in my mind. They were making their way throught the forest, as quietly as they could, hiding between trees and bushes. They knew that Nazi soldiers were nearby, somewhere.
I had to leave the room, step outside, breathe, relax. That movie evoked some of the most frightening memories in me. No I'm not going to tell you I was there some 70 years ago. And nothing even remotely like that ever occured to me in real life. But I did grow up with full certainty that atrocities like that will, without a doubt, happen to me and everyone I knew in a few short years or sooner.
Growing up as a  Jehovah's Witness I was made to believe in the end of the world, that Armageddon will annihilate the vast majority of humankind with epic catastrophes, both natural and manmade. On top of those horrors, the condemned will also start to become rotting corpses before they're killed, but vivid images of that on top of everything else also haunted me. It's in the Bible so it must be true. (Zechariah 14:12,  “And this is the scourge with which Jehovah will scourge all the peoples who wage war against Jerusalem. Their flesh will rot away while they stand on their feet, their eyes will rot away in their sockets, and their tongues will rot away in their mouths.")
You understand why many Jehovah's Witnesses grow up traumatized by this future that's just around the corner, will happen sooner than you think!!! But for me, despite all the nightmares from that alone, what terrified me more was what was going to happen before the final war between God and Satan, the "Great Tribulation." Once all the nations of the earth declared that they've established peace and security, plagues will issue forth, the United Nations (depicted as the 666-marked Wild Beast of Revelation 13:18, "This is where it calls for wisdom: Let the one who has insight calculate the number of the wild beast, for it is a man’s number, and its number is 666.") During these unprecedented events is when the whole world will wage war against Jehovah's Witnesses. All other religions have been exterminated by the UN, as depicted by the Wild Beast turning on Babylon the Great, that being the world empire of false religion. And with the only true religion remaining, with Satan and the demons focused entirely on us, massing every military force upon us just as the Nazis focused their efforts on destroying the Jews, Gypsies, other undesireable and yes, Jehovah's Witnesses were also hunted down, sent to concentration camps where more than 2,000 died. This terrified me mostly because if we compromised our faith in any way during this time, if I gave in to the fear of man, I was going to perish in some horrific way at Armageddon. I was convinced that I couldn't do it. If I was embarrassed by my religion at school, of not saluting the flag, of not celebraring the holidays, then how could I not give in and give up when the world Tribulates Greatly??? That time will be far more traumatic than any other time in history, meaning that what we will face is going to be worse that what the victims of the Nazi holocaust endured! If I was incapable of witnessing to strangers by myself, if I was unable to witness to the kids at school, then of course I was going to die at Armageddon.
Testimonies from Jehovah's Witnesses that survived the Holocaust were endless, their extreme tests of faith amidst the violence and killings documented in so many issues of The Watchtower and Awake! magazines and in their publications, plus an occasional survivor would be on stage at a convention giving his experiences. It didn't help that I read and saw photographs from a book on the Nazis and their "Final Solution", the haunting pictures of the skeletal victims in the camps, stripped of clothing, dignity and hope just before they were murdered. All of that, the Nazi Holocaust being the small-scale equivalent of the Great Tribulation haunted me day and night.
No wonder I wanted so much to die before then! Not by suicide, for people who commit self-murder won't be resurrected. And leaving the religion, everything and everyone I know to be part of the wicked world ruled by Satan, no longer having Jehovah's protection from demons was not an option. Getting killed while I was in the door-to-door ministry was the best bet. An angry householder killing me while I was serving Jehovah would have been the best thing for me with it's guarantee of a resurrection into an earthly paradise. And yet I hardly ever went out in service because of my anxiety. I couldn't even prepare my presentations because of nervousness shutting down my brain!
The Great Tribulation was a worse nightmare for me than Armageddon, because if you're still faithful to Jehovah despite the horrors, your eyes won't rot out of their sockets as you're getting killed in some gruesome fashion by the armies of heaven.
Then somehow, thanks to the miraculous healing powers of Jehovah's holy spirit you won't be crippled by post-traumatic stress disorder. Thanks to the inhumane indoctrination I've had plenty of pre-traumatic stress disorder to cripple me many times over.

Generosity as a countermeasure

Awesome guy our apt manager/owner is! He just bought ice cream off the ice cream truck for the two girls, their parents and I. Just being his generous self. And clever imho. The stress of dealing with tenants that are deadbeats, quarrelsome, criminal... He manages apartments, therefore he must deal with that all the time. Plus whatever financial concerns he may have. There is the danger of the stress and grievences carrying over to others a person interacts with, a tendency we all have. We're more  likely to be short-tempered with everyone else in our lives when one or two assholes strive to make us miserable. Being generous to people who appreciate what you do for them, like us, is a countermeasure to that tendency. Even when you don't feel like being generous with your time, energy or in this case pocket-change, go ahead anyway, because soon you'll feel different, lighter, and more able to cope with the negativities of life.
Btw that's one of many reasons to broaden out the number of people you interact with daily, making it more likely to have those that genuinely appreciate you offsetting the exploitative jerks that don't. It may take effort for some like me, but it's worth it.

The Ugly of Evolution (the Egret and the toad)

I love birds, like the Florida egrets. I love frogs and toads, always have since early childhood. But to watch an egret impale a toad like I just did minutes ago, see it walk off, then drop the poor amphibian to stab it again and again, just... I know, if the bird didn't do that daily, with toads, lizards, frogs and who knows what else, it would starve and die. A terrible death. But so is being carried off and stabbed to death by a large monster.

That's the part of evolution I've always hated. Adaptations to changes in the environment, adaptations in predator-prey relationships is not about life it's about death. On individual levels it's often random. That toad may have been more capable at evading prey than its siblings, either by speed or by hiding, yet they'll live to reproduce instead of it. The egret may have been slower physically or neurologically than its siblings, yet it caught its food while while the others may starve, or are killed some other way. But the accumulation of several generations is not random. Those more likely to survive will spread their allels throughout the population precisely because those even slightly less well-adapted have died. And when evolution does not happen, it is because there is pressure to stay the same instead of adapting. That too is a process of death more than life, as those individuals that are slightly different are either less able to survive or are less likely to be chosen as mates. Or both.

Evolution is an amazing phenomenon when I see what its results are. I can understand why many have a need to believe that a creator-god exists to make it all happen. After all, plants and animals look so well designed! And many of them are spectacularly beautiful. They had to have been designed by someone, or by someones, such I used to believe (angels, working under the direction of Michael, Jehovah's firstborn son. The same mind cannot have designed both butterflies and wasps). But the truth is, as best as we can determine, is that they were designed from the bottom up, from individual groups and species by blind, impersonal  forces of selection, instead of top-down, by master architects.

I also love mice. And I have great affection for cats.
*groan*

I'd post more if I wrote more

I've realized yet another reason why it sucks to rush out the door in the morning. Aside from skipping the expected playtime with my cats. Morning, especially soon after I wake up is when Ihave the most brilliant thoughts. Brilliant comedy, brilliant solutions, brilliant ideas covering many subjects. Usually at random. This morning I hadto laugh because of a brilliant comedic solution that popped into my head. But now I have no idea what it was. Playtime with my Easter and her 3 grown children shouldn't be optional. It does me a lot of good, keeps my mind and heart healthy, and it's great for them too. But writing should not be optional either. Neither should drawing at night. I need all that and more.

Empathy default setting: ON

To have hate for LGBTQs to the extent of expressing approval of the Orlando massacre requires justification, it seems. Scriptures are often cited by haters, but not by those expressing grief and by people, organizations that contribute to help the survivors. Not that there aren't biblical passages that extol & mandate such compassion. It's just not necessary to acknowledge and act upon the belief that the killings were immoral. Empathy needs no justification, whereas hate does.

I'm reminded of the antisemitism of the Nazis. Their propaganda needed to offer so-called 'facts' about Jewish people that would shut down empathy. Individuals that risked their lives to save Jews, others need no justification for their morality.

My conclusion is that empathy doesn't need rationalizations to become active because its default setting is On. Shutting it off requires bad information, psychological duress, biochemical imbalance or some other factor. Only then is it possible to regard other humans (and nonhuman animals as well) as "other," as inferior, and as deserving of harm.

What do you think? Do you agree? Comments are welcome.

Empathy default setting: ON

To have hate for LGBTQs to the extent of expressing approval of the Orlando massacre requires justification, it seems. Scriptures are often cited by haters, but not by those expressing grief and by people, organizations that contribute to help the survivors. Not that there aren't biblical passages that extol & mandate such compassion. It's just not necessary to acknowledge and act upon the belief that the killings were immoral. Empathy needs no justification, whereas hate does.

I'm reminded of the antisemitism of the Nazis. Their propaganda needed to offer so-called 'facts' about Jewish people that would shut down empathy. Individuals that risked their lives to save Jews, others need no justification for their morality.

My conclusion is that empathy doesn't need rationalizations to become active because its default setting is On. Shutting it off requires bad information, psychological duress, biochemical imbalance or some other factor. Only then is it possible to regard other humans (and nonhuman animals as well) as "other," as inferior, and as deserving of harm.

What do you think? Do you agree? Comments are welcome.

I had a discussion with others about school bullying and suicide. Something that should concern everyone. That night, and the next day I had several flashbacks. Well, not truly the crippling PTSD ones anymore but my peace of mind was shattered. Because  of what happened to me over thirty years ago. More than three decades in the past, and it still hurts!
Fuck anyone who believes LGBT+ kids don't deserve protection like every other student.