The Brainwashing Technique Jehovah's Witnesses Use to Control You

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]Hello and welcome back. Today, we are going to be talking about a brainwashing technique from Jehovah's Witnesses that you might not even realize that you had.

[00:00:09]Because you've left the organization, you rejected the doctrine, you've done the research, and here's what we're talking about today, binary, black and white thinking. Maybe you still find yourselves thinking, right, wrong. Is this person trustworthy or not?

[00:00:27]This decision is good or bad. This situation is safe or dangerous.

[00:00:33]There is no middle ground. There is no nuance, and there is no gray.

[00:00:38]This is not a personality trait.

[00:00:41]This is a Jehovah's Witness belief structure that is still running your thinking even though you no longer believe the theology.

[00:00:50]Today, we're going to talk about what exactly creates this kind of dynamic, >> [clears throat] >> which beliefs um contribute to this, and how they show up in your everyday life after you've left the cult.

[00:01:03]And the specific practices that build what the Jehovah's Witnesses specifically took for you, which is cognitive flexibility.

[00:01:13]My name is Deanna Moore. I'm an NLP Master Practitioner, former Jehovah's Witness, born in a five generations. I spent nearly 20 years as a regular pioneer.

[00:01:23]And this [clears throat] is one of those topics that I don't think I've ever really heard directly addressed in ex-Jehovah's Witness space. And it should be because this is a topic that affects everything, our relationships, our career decisions, spiritual exploration, our ability to trust people, our fear of the end of the world. All of this gets tied into this belief of black and white. So, let's talk about black and white thinking in ex-JWs comes from three specific belief structures.

[00:01:59]The first reason why you might find yourself in this trap of black and white thinking is because truth is singular and the organization was the only one that had it.

[00:02:12]We were taught from childhood that there is one truth, one channel, one interpretation, and that nuance was not a sign of intelligence, it was a sign of spiritual weakness.

[00:02:27]In those gray areas are where apostasy dwells.

[00:02:32]So, when you leave and you discover that most of life is actually gray, that reasonable people can disagree, that multiple things can be true all at once, and that uncertainty is actually the norm, your nervous system has no framework for that.

[00:02:48]It never built one.

[00:02:49]>> [clears throat] >> Gray feels like danger because we always treated it as danger.

[00:02:55]Here is the second belief that contributed to this black and white programming. People are either in the truth or they're not.

[00:03:04]Jehovah's Witnesses divided the entire world into two categories, Jehovah's Witnesses and with the world.

[00:03:12]And that division actually carries very profound moral weight. The worldly people were spiritually compromised.

[00:03:22]And the brotherhood meant that brothers and sisters were in the faith and that's it, only only them.

[00:03:29]That [clears throat] binary decision-making process gets applied to every person that you meet after leaving, too. Are they safe or unsafe?

[00:03:39]Do they understand or don't they? Can I trust them or can't I?

[00:03:42]This black and white judging of people is actually exhausting, and it it keeps you isolated because nobody fully clears that bar because we're not in that framework anymore even though the belief is still there creating it.

[00:04:02]A third belief that contributes [clears throat] to this black and white thinking is that actions are either pleasing to Jehovah or not.

[00:04:13]Every decision in JW life had the right answer.

[00:04:18]What to wear? Who to associate with? How you spend your free time? What entertainment is acceptable and what is not? That moral framework was total and it was very either/or. It was very black or white. So, when you leave and suddenly every decision is yours to make with no binary framework to reference, that freedom can sometimes actually be a little bit terrifying.

[00:04:48]Decision paralysis.

[00:04:50]Constant second-guessing yourself.

[00:04:54]Sometimes we have this compulsive need to find the right answer.

[00:05:00]They're all in this in this framework of the black and white thinking.

[00:05:05]So, let [clears throat] me give you some specific examples of how this black and white thinking shows up in post Jehovah's Witness life.

[00:05:14]In our relationships, we either fully trust someone or we don't trust them at all.

[00:05:21]And when somebody disappoints you, even if it's just a slight disappointment, they move from this trusted column to the untrusted column. There's no category for difference of opinions. There's It's It's a There's no category for a flawed person that I still care about.

[00:05:42]Post-cult, most of us go on some sort of spiritual exploration, some sort of spiritual journey. And when you've left one absolute truth, you start [clears throat] looking for another absolute truth.

[00:05:56]A new system, a new framework, a new authority that can tell you what's real because sometimes sitting with that I don't know can feel un- incredib- unbelievably incredibly unbearably uncomfortable.

[00:06:15]In your career and in finances, you might have a tendency to either go all in on something >> [clears throat] >> or pull back entirely. You can't be in this exploratory middle ground. Maybe that feels like you're not being committed enough. And that was always dangerous.

[00:06:33]How about your relationship with yourself?

[00:06:36]A lot of times this black and white feeling sounds like I'm either great or I'm a loser.

[00:06:43]We're either doing well or we're failing.

[00:06:46]We don't have a framework for I'm making progress and it's messy and that's okay. There's succeeding and there's failing. Which means that anything in between reads as a total failure is or imperfection.

[00:07:03]Here is um some exercises that we can do to help us build cognitive flexibility.

[00:07:10]Because the truth is we never developed cognitive flexibility.

[00:07:14]The first exercise is a complexity challenge. So every time you catch yourself making a binary judgment, whether it's about a person, a situation, or a decision, I want you to deliberately force yourself to generate three more interpretations. Not to find the right one, just to prove to your brain that more than right or wrong exists.

[00:07:41]>> [clears throat] >> So for example, I don't trust this person. Okay, what are three other possibilities?

[00:07:49]Maybe they're going through something.

[00:07:52]Maybe they have a different communication style.

[00:07:55]Maybe they made a mistake.

[00:07:59]You don't have to believe any one of them. I just want you to start generating these different ideas because the act of generating alternatives builds the neural pathway for nuanced thinking. Okay?

[00:08:14]So, here's you know, here's another example. I had somebody say this the other day. Somebody didn't respond to an email right away and so they instantly said they don't like me, they're judging me, they're cutting me off. Okay, so how do we create this this cognitive flexibility here?

[00:08:30]Well, the lack of response was that because they don't like you or is it maybe because their dad is in the hospital?

[00:08:38]Or because they are suffering from maybe depression that they don't want to tell anybody about. Or maybe they had to make a sudden trip. You see that that flexibility is something that we want to start developing.

[00:08:52]Here's the next exercise. It's called the tolerance window.

[00:08:56]Choose one area of life.

[00:08:58]Maybe do this exercise for a week where you deliberately stay in uncertainty without fixing it.

[00:09:05]Okay?

[00:09:06]Don't look it up, don't ask someone, don't make a decision.

[00:09:11]Just sit with not knowing.

[00:09:15]Now, this is going to feel ridiculously uncomfortable for ex-Jehovah's Witnesses because we were certain about everything and uncertainty was spiritually dangerous. The discomfort is the point.

[00:09:28]Every time we tolerate it without resolving it, we expand what our nervous system can handle and that expansion is the beginning of cognitive flexibility.

[00:09:40]So, [clears throat] practice number three, exercise number three, the both and game.

[00:09:47]Jehovah Witness thinking is either or.

[00:09:51]And the antidote is both and.

[00:09:55]So, we're going to start deliberately reframing either or statements into both and statements. So, this is how that works.

[00:10:05]I can't trust my own judgment becomes I'm still developing trust in my own judgment and I'm making good decisions already.

[00:10:17]People [clears throat] are either safe or dangerous becomes people are complex and I can learn to read them over time.

[00:10:27]The both and game doesn't require you to believe something false.

[00:10:33]It requires you to hold two things as true at the same time.

[00:10:38]Which is exactly the cognitive flexibility that Jehovah's Witnesses removed.

[00:10:43]I want you to understand that this black and white thinking is not who you are.

[00:10:49]It was built and it was built deliberately through very specific beliefs and it was reinforced over years of repetition.

[00:10:58]And because it was built, it could be remodeled differently. You are allowed to not know. You're allowed to change your mind. You're allowed to find someone both flawed and worthy of loving.

[00:11:12]You are [clears throat] allowed to exist in the gray.

[00:11:15]And that permission is something that we were never allowed to under the Watch Tower framework.

[00:11:22]It's in our own nervous system, that permission, waiting to be developed.

[00:11:28]So, I want you to leave me a comment.

[00:11:31]Which of the three ways that black and is black and white thinking showing up in your life?

[00:11:36]And I'd like to hear your experiments on how you start reframing them, or if you need some help, also leave that in the comments, okay? All right, I read every single comment. I hope you enjoyed this one, and I'll see you in the next one.