Recognizable questions
- Why does freedom suddenly feel so strange?
- Why do I miss my old routine when I wanted to stop myself?
- Who am I if I no longer see myself as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses?
- What do I do with evenings and weekends that suddenly feel empty?
- Do I need to figure out right away what I do believe?
- Why do relief, sadness, anger, and doubt keep alternating?
- How do I build a new life without having to change everything at once?
- And what if I sometimes long for what I’ve left behind?
Maybe you decided for yourself to stop attending meetings and field service. Maybe you gradually became less active. Maybe you were disfellowshipped or officially let it be known that you no longer want to be one of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Those situations are not the same.
The consequences are not the same for everyone either. One person stays in close contact with family and friends, while for another a large part of their social world changes. One person feels mostly relief. Another feels sadness, fear, or confusion. And many people can experience different feelings at the same time.
What can happen when a long-familiar religious routine changes is something unexpected:
space opens up.
No meeting that evening. No field service that morning. No preparation still left to do. Maybe no daily text anymore. No convention you have to account for.
All of a sudden, you have time.
But knowing what you want to do with that time is something else.
“Free time” can feel strange
When you’ve had a fixed weekly structure for years, a free Saturday or Sunday morning can feel surprisingly unfamiliar.
Maybe you had longed for that freedom.
And yet you’re sitting at home thinking:
What am I actually supposed to do now?
That doesn’t have to mean you made the wrong decision.
It also doesn’t prove that, deep down, you want to go back.
You may not even miss the faith itself. You may simply notice that a familiar structure has disappeared.
A routine can provide stability, even when you no longer stand behind everything that happened within that routine.
That’s why it helps to keep two questions separate:
Do I miss my faith?
and:
Do I miss structure, people, familiarity, or the sense of belonging somewhere?
The answer can also be a combination of these.
You don’t have to fill the emptiness right away
After a busy, organized life, there can be a tendency to fill every empty space again immediately.
A new hobby. Sports. Going out. Traveling. Dating. New friends. Courses. Research into Jehovah’s Witnesses. Watching videos for hours. Reading everything you weren’t allowed to read before.
But freedom doesn’t have to become productive immediately.
Maybe one of the strangest things you have to learn again is:
that an empty evening is allowed to just be an empty evening.
You don’t have to do anything for the congregation.
But you also don’t have to prove right away that you now have an amazing life outside the organization.
Maybe you feel guilty when you do nothing
Some former JWs notice that the activity is gone, but the feeling that they have to do something is not.
You sleep in on Saturday morning and think:
I should really be doing something useful.
You sit on the couch and feel restless.
You plan a weekend away and notice that part of you is still thinking about what you would have done on such a weekend before.
That doesn’t automatically mean this is true for every former JW. But if you recognize it, you may wonder:
Does something really need to happen, or have I become used to free time having to be filled?
Learning to tolerate rest can also be part of starting over.
Who am I, really?
Something much bigger than your schedule can change too.
For some JWs, faith, social environment, morals, outlook on the future, and identity have been strongly intertwined for years.
You may have known how to describe yourself:
I am one of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
That may have come with an entire framework. What you believed. What future you expected. Which choices you considered important. Who your friends were. How you viewed relationships. What was right and wrong. What your purpose in life was.
When part of that falls away, an unexpectedly big question can arise:
Who am I without all of this?
You don’t have to have an answer to that right away.
You don’t have to choose a new identity
A common mistaken assumption after a major change is that the old answer must immediately be replaced by a new one.
I was a JW, so what am I now?
Atheist? Christian? Agnostic? Spiritual? Ex-JW?
Maybe you don’t know yet.
That’s allowed.
You also don’t have to know right away what you think about God, the Bible, Jehovah, religion, relationships, holidays, politics, sexuality, or all the other topics you once had a clear framework for.
“I don’t know right now” is also an answer.
It can even be an important in-between stage in which you explore for the first time what you think yourself, without having to know the outcome in advance.
Your values don’t automatically disappear when your faith does
Maybe you wonder:
If the organization no longer decides what is right and wrong, what do I base my choices on?
You are not starting from zero.
Honesty may still matter to you. Caring for others. Loyalty. Reliability. Love. Responsibility. Justice. Family. Friendship.
You are allowed to re-examine why something matters to you.
Not:
What am I supposed to think?
But:
What matters to me, why does it matter, and what consequences do my choices have for myself and others?
Some values you considered important as a JW you can keep.
Others you may come to see differently.
And perhaps you will discover values you used to give little space to.
That process does not have to be finished all at once.
Watch out for a reversed identity
There is another trap, too.
Your identity may first have revolved largely around Jehovah’s Witnesses and then started to revolve entirely around being ex-JW.
You read constantly about the organization. You talk about it every day. You follow every change. You watch ex-JW videos for hours. You think a lot about what happened.
That can be completely understandable and even helpful for a while. You are trying to make sense of your own history all over again.
But eventually another question is allowed to arise:
Who am I when my life no longer has to revolve around Jehovah’s Witnesses, but also no longer against them?
You are more than your religious past.
Ration your research
After leaving, there can be a huge need for information.
Maybe you suddenly want to know everything.
607 BCE. The Governing Body. Blood. Disfellowshipping. History. Old publications. Lawsuits. Other people’s experiences.
Research can help you understand events and beliefs anew.
But you do not have to spend every waking minute researching.
When you notice that you are constantly reading, sleeping badly, hardly thinking about anything else, or repeatedly seeking information to reassure yourself, it may be wise to build in deliberate breaks.
Not because you should not keep exploring.
But because your life is still going on in the meantime.
Your feelings don’t have to follow one another logically
One day you may think:
Finally.
The next day:
What have I done?
Then maybe:
I never want to go back.
And a week later:
I miss everyone.
That may seem contradictory, but different losses and desires can exist at the same time.
You can be happy about your freedom and sad about people you miss.
You can no longer believe certain teachings and still have warm memories of the congregation.
You can be angry about events and still love active JW family members.
You can feel relieved that you stopped and be afraid of Armageddon.
One feeling does not automatically make the other untrue.
Longing does not automatically mean you want to go back
On a lonely Sunday you may suddenly long for the Kingdom Hall.
Or for the friends you had there.
For going somewhere together.
For a convention.
For singing.
For the feeling that everyone had the same goal.
Take that feeling seriously, but do not immediately draw a conclusion from it.
Ask yourself:
What exactly do I miss?
Do I miss Jehovah?
My faith?
My family?
My friends?
The community?
The certainty?
The structure?
The sense of belonging?
Maybe you discover that you truly miss certain parts of your faith.
You are allowed to explore that too.
ExJW.World does not have to tell you what the answer should be.
Be careful with “catching up on everything”
After years of not doing certain things, you may feel:
Now I want to experience everything.
Your first birthday. Christmas. Going out. Dating. Sex. Alcohol. Festivals. A tattoo. Different clothes. New friends.
Some things may turn out to be amazing.
Others not at all.
Freedom does not mean you now have to do the opposite of what Jehovah’s Witnesses teach.
Then the organization would still be helping determine what you do — only in the opposite direction.
The more interesting question is:
Would I also want this if it had nothing to do with my past as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses?
You don’t need to make up for anything to prove that you are free.
First build a gentle rhythm
Complete freedom sounds appealing, but people usually need some structure.
You can therefore create a new rhythm without building another overloaded schedule.
Think, for example, of set bedtimes and wake-up times, work or study, exercise, errands, an evening to see someone, time outdoors, a hobby, and intentionally leaving some time with nothing planned.
The goal is not:
to replace my old schedule as quickly as possible.
But:
to discover which rhythm is good for me.
Experiment in small ways
You don’t have to know right away what your hobbies are.
Try things.
Go for a walk. Go work out. Read something that sparks your curiosity. Take a course. Go have coffee somewhere on your own. Visit a museum. Learn to cook. Make music. Do volunteer work. Go to an event.
Not every activity has to become a life purpose.
You are allowed to try something once and think:
No, this isn’t for me.
That is also information about who you are.
Getting to know new people takes time
A congregation offered something that does not automatically arise outside a religious community: recurring contact with the same people.
New friendships usually do not form because you show up somewhere once.
They grow through repetition.
That is why places where you keep running into the same people can be helpful: sports, volunteer work, a course, an association, work, study, or another recurring activity.
You don’t have to find a new “congregation” right away.
A few reliable connections can already mean a lot.
Five things you don’t need to know today
You do not need to know today:
whether you will ever go back;
what exactly you believe about God;
how you describe yourself religiously or non-religiously;
what your new social life will eventually look like;
who you will be in five years.
You are allowed to change your mind along the way.
When professional help may be wise
Leaving a religious community is not a mental disorder.
Grief, doubt, or temporarily not knowing who you are also does not automatically mean you need therapy.
But professional help can be wise when anxiety, depression, panic, sleep problems, guilt, trauma symptoms, or loss of functioning become severe or last for a long time.
Also, when family rifts, shunning, or loss of your social network weigh heavily on you, it can be comforting to talk to someone who is not trying to decide whether you should go back or stay away.
A good therapist does not need to judge your faith for you.
He or she can help you explore what you think, feel, need, and want.
A small exercise for your first weeks
Take a sheet of paper and make three columns:
This I miss
This I do not miss
This I do not know yet
Write without correcting yourself.
Maybe under This I miss you write: my mother, singing, certainty, friends.
Under This I do not miss: getting up early, certain expectations, meetings.
And under This I do not know yet: Jehovah, the Bible, Christmas, new relationships, who I want to be.
That third column matters.
You don’t have to immediately move everything into yes or no.
Finally
Having stopped does not have to be an endpoint.
It can be a transition between a life whose many parts were familiar and a life whose shape you do not yet know exactly.
Maybe that feels liberating.
Maybe empty.
Maybe both.
You don’t have to fill that emptiness right away.
You don’t have to choose a new belief just because the old one has started to shift. You don’t have to try everything that once did not fit into your life. And you do not have to prove that leaving was the right decision.
You may first discover.
What do I miss?
What do I want to keep?
What do I want to leave behind?
What do I still believe?
What don’t I know?
What gives me energy?
Which people do I want around me?
And perhaps above all:
If no one were telling me what my new life is supposed to look like, how would I want to build it slowly myself?
