What is it like to suffer Religious Trauma Syndrome while still inside a High Demand Religious Organization? What causes Religious Trauma Syndrome and what are the risks that come with continuing participation? A Voice From Inside presents the rare voice of a critical insider of the Watch Tower Society, offering an account of the experience, how people are struggling, and what can be done to survive and move forward.
Writing under a pseudonym, Geoffrey Wallis courageously explains what has led many to label Jehovah’s Witnesses a Captive Organization and how the community’s policies lead to the phenomenon of Physically-In-Mentally-Out (PIMO). With raw honesty, the author tells the gripping story of his journey through Religious Trauma Syndrome as an active Jehovah’s Witness. He discusses the experience of stigmatized LGBTQ+ members, moral injury PTSD in the newly disillusioned, and what it’s like to rise up the ranks of the organization’s hierarchy. Along the way, he boldly speaks out about how to protect fellow members by calling for regulation to protect the religious freedoms of PIMOs and teaching others to reverse-engineer manipulative psychology with mindfulness practice.
Written to help bring change to the Jehovah’s Witness community as a whole, but also for anyone struggling with religious trauma, A Voice from Inside is both a witness to the experience of living in an HDGR as well as a clarion call for change and healing in a world that sorely needs it.
“Wallis not only shines a light on the psychological turmoil caused by the organization’s policies but does so with such intelligence, empathy, and personal understanding.”
Allison Del Fium, What the Faith? Podcast
“Wallis takes on all the shades of gray. He dissects the experience of this religion with laser precision.”
Lisa, igotout.org
“The purpose of A Voice from Inside is to contribute to the growing awareness of Religious Trauma Syndrome by providing a discussion of the peculiarities of this condition among those who choose to stay inside closed religious communities.
I hope to do this with the first-person account of my experience with Religious Trauma Syndrome and subsequent recovery while maintaining active membership as a Jehovah’s Witness. I will explain what leads some to remain physically in, but mentally out (PIMO).
For now, this is my decision and that of an untold number of disillusioned Jehovah’s Witnesses. I neither defend nor recommend this choice. But I certainly understand it and I wish to bring light to the situation.”
— Chapter 1, The PIMO Perspective
“After years and years of repeating my tired psychological defenses of Watch Tower doctrine in the face of emerging evidence from science, academia, and my personal intuition, I came to the point where I simply knew too much to continue defending the belief system that I so cherished.
I remember when my worldview shattered. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. It was only after several months of mindfulness practice that I learned to be comfortable with the pleasant openness of consciousness that occurs when one releases the defensive ego to the mysterious calm of universal entropy.
But my initial awareness that everything I thought I knew about myself and the world could be completely wrong was fucking terrifying. Such is the experience of the shattered self and shattered worldview that is sufficiently traumatic to cause the symptoms of Religious Trauma Syndrome for months or years to come.”
— Chapter 5, An Introduction to Religious Trauma Syndrome
“It has been said that all religions begin as cults. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a cult as “a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object” (Simpson & Weiner, 1989).
There are certain qualities that predispose a man to a cult-like following of disciples. Not the least of these is spirituality in its purest sense. Beyond this: confidence in the face of entropy, the ability to use eye contact, voice inflection, and body language to arouse motivating emotional responses in others, and sufficient imagination to construct a compelling ideology that fills gaps in the accepted mythology and addresses the most urgent biological and psychological deficiencies of the masses.
Doubtless, among the ranks of historical characters who possessed these qualities were Abraham, Moses, Jesus of Nazareth, Mohammed, and Charles Taze Russell, the founder of the Zion’s Watch Tower Society”
— Chapter 2, Chronicling Captivity - The Path Toward High Control
“I feel that the terms ‘cult’ and ‘brainwashing’ are overly simplistic and pejorative. However, the sociopsychological state that leads to these accusations appears in many closed communities, New Religious Movements, and High Demand Religious Groups. Not the least of these is Jehovah’s Witnesses.
In A Voice from Inside, I will outline what I call the mechanics of psychological captivity and apply Robert Jay Lifton’s eight criteria of ideological totalism to the Watch Tower Society (WTS). Further, I will argue that the ideological totalist environment of WTS increases the potential for a precipitous fall from the heights of dogmatic faith to the perilous lows of PTSD and Religious Trauma Syndrome.”
— Chapter 3, The Mechanics of Psychological Captivity