About Lisa Magdalena, The Original ExJW Therapist. Keith Pla

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My father's name was Keith Playford.

 In 1971, he was at the centre of the UK's first ever legal battle 

over a Jehovah's Witness blood transfusion refusal 

— a landmark moment in British medical and legal history. 

Keith had his wisdom teeth removed at a hospital in Margate 

and suffered severe blood loss.

 He refused a transfusion because the faithful and discreet slave

 told him Jehovah required it.

 He had written "No blood" on a piece of paper. 

The hospital fought and won an unprecedented court battle to force treatment.

 But it was too late. my Dad died anyway. 

He was 28 years old. I was two.

I grew up without him knowing and carrying the "No Blood" card 

 in my school bag, knowing my mother would watch me 

die for the same reason.

That is where my story begins.

 At 28 — the same age Keith died — 

I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease 

and survived with nine blood transfusions. 

The treatment the Watchtower denied my father saved my life.

And it is why — when you sit with me in a session —

 you will never spend a single minute explaining yourself. 

Because I already know. Not from a textbook. 

From a congregation. From a father I never got to know. 

From a lifetime of living exactly what you are carrying.

My name is Lisa Magdalena. I am The Original ExJW Therapist. 

And this is my story.

Where every relationship, every decision, every understanding 

of love, death, purpose, and identity 

was constructed inside the Watchtower framework.

My childhood was marked by abuse, JW control, 

and the constant background terror of Armageddon.

 I carried the No Blood card knowing what it meant 

— knowing what it had already cost my family. 

And at 16 years old, I made the only decision I could. 

I ran away.

I chose homelessness on the streets of England 

over the suffocating control of the organisation. 

I walked out with nothing. No community. No family support. 

No framework for who I was outside of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

I have been shunned ever since.

What I found on the streets 

— the thing the Watchtower had spent my entire childhood telling me

 I would never find outside the organisation 

— was kindness. 

A worldly person who showed me compassion when I had nothing. 

Who helped me find safety. 

Who proved, in the most tangible way possible, 

that the world outside the Kingdom Hall was not the enemy I had been told it was.

That act of kindness changed the direction of my entire life.

I want you to know that. 

Because I also want you to know what came next.

I got myself to safety. I found employment. I found an apartment. 

I built — slowly, painfully, and then with increasing clarity 

— a life that was mine.

Life continued to test me. 

I married a man who turned out to be as controlling as any JW elder. 

We had two beautiful daughters together.

 And during the birth of my first daughter,

 I faced a life-threatening situation that required a blood transfusion.

I accepted it. I accepted the very treatment that was denied to my father. 

The treatment that cost Keith Playford his life at 28. 

And in that moment — in that hospital room, making that choice

 — something shifted permanently. 

I began to see the full weight of what the blood doctrine had taken. 

What it had cost. 

What it had never had the right to demand. 

I knew I had to break free from the toxic and abusive pattern of my marriage. 

I mustered the strength to leave. 

And I began — really began — the work of understanding myself.

I explored Jungian psychology, archetypes, mindfulness, meditation, 

and the deep mechanics of how the mind builds and rebuilds itself. 

I felt a calling so clear it could not be ignored: to learn the professional skills, 

the clinical training, and the qualifications required to help 

other ex-Jehovah's Witnesses do what I was doing 

— find their way out of the wreckage 

and into a life that was genuinely, freely theirs.

So I went back to school. Then to university. 

Then to postgraduate study. 

I equipped myself with every qualification necessary to become 

an expert ExJW therapist. 

Not because I needed the credentials to understand the experience 

— I already understood it in my bones. 

But because the people I was going to sit with 

deserved both: someone who had lived it, 

and someone who had the clinical expertise to help them heal it.

Then came blood cancer.  I fought it. I won. 

And I accepted every blood transfusion offered to me (9 in all) 

— choosing the life that Keith was never allowed to choose.

 Every transfusion I accepted was, in some way, for him.

In that time I have sat with thousands of ex-Jehovah's Witnesses 

from every country, every congregation background, 

every stage of leaving 

— born-in, converted, disfellowshipped, faded, PIMO, LGBTQ+, 

second generation, third generation, 

people who left last week and people who left forty years ago.

I have sat with people who lost parents to the blood doctrine. 

People who gave decades of field service 

to an organisation they no longer believed in. 

People who were disfellowshipped 

and lost their entire social world overnight. 

People who carried the Memorial Hangover every April 

without knowing what to call it. 

People whose Armageddon anxiety was still 

running in their nervous system 

thirty years after they last attended a Kingdom Hall meeting.

I have watched every single one of them begin to heal.

Not by forgetting. Not by pretending what happened was acceptable. 

But by doing the real, specific, expertly guided work of ExJW recovery 

— and building lives of genuine freedom of mind on the other side.

That is the work I do. That is the work I was born to do.

 But my approach to ExJW Therapy goes far beyond clinical training.

At the heart of everything I do is Jungian psychology 

— the therapeutic modality I have found most effective in working with 

the specific architecture of Watchtower conditioning.

The Jehovah's Witnesses organisation did not just install beliefs in you.

 It installed an entire unconscious structure 

— thought patterns, identity frameworks, relationship templates, 

emotional suppression mechanisms 

— that continue operating long after you 

consciously reject the organisation's teachings. 

Standard therapy addresses the conscious mind. 

Jungian work goes beneath it.

Through archetype diagnosis and personalised mentoring, 

we identify the specific unconscious patterns the organisation installed in you 

— and we dismantle them. 

Systematically. Gently. Permanently.

My approach is also deeply trauma-informed. 

I recognise religious trauma syndrome 

— the specific psychological and emotional damage caused by life 

inside a high-control religious group 

— not as an academic concept but as a lived reality. 

I understand from every angle.

And my approach is always client-centred. 

This means that in every session, the focus is entirely on you 

— your experience, your pace, your specific needs, your genuine strengths. 

I do not apply a generic recovery template to every ex-Jehovah's Witness. 

I work with the specific person in front of me.

Because every JW experience is both shared and unique. 

And you deserve both: a therapist who understands 

the universal patterns of Watchtower conditioning, 

and one who sees you 

as the complex, courageous individual you are.

I am not approaching your healing from a place of academic understanding. 

I am approaching it from the Margate congregation, 

from a father who was 28 years old, 

from the streets of England at 16, 

from a blood cancer diagnosis 

and the blood transfusions I accepted in Keith's memory.

The result you will feel immediately. 

The moment your session begins, you will experience the difference.

You will not spend 20 minutes educating your therapist. 

You will not feel the loneliness of having to explain 

what shunning actually means, 

or why the blood doctrine killed people, 

or what the judicial committee felt like from the inside.

You will simply be understood. Completely. 

From the first word.

And that changes everything about what is possible.

• B.A. Hons — British University Degree Level Education
• Fully Accredited Therapist
• Specialist training in Jungian Psychology and Archetype Work
• Trauma-Informed Practitioner
• Religious Trauma Syndrome specialist
• 26 years of exclusive ExJW clinical practice
• Founder of exjwcounseling.com — the leading ExJW Therapy platform worldwide
• Lived experience: third-generation ex-Jehovah's Witness, shunned, blood cancer survivor, Keith Playford's daughter

I have a loving partner. Three cheeky cats. 

And a dog who has no concept of personal space. 

Far too many houseplants. A pile of books I am always in the middle of. 

Stevie Nicks on the record player. 

And more freedom of mind than I once believed was possible 

for someone who started where I started.

I am not sharing this to paint a picture of perfection. 

I am sharing it because when I was 16 years old, homeless and shunned,

 I could not have imagined a life like this was possible.

And that is exactly the point.

The life I am living now — peaceful, joyful, grounded, genuinely mine —

 is the life the Watchtower told me I would never have outside the organisation.

They were wrong about that.

 Just as they were wrong about so much else.

And the life they told you that you would never have?

That is what we build together.

30 minutes with me, one to one, via Zoom audio. 

Wherever you are in the world.

You will experience the work firsthand. 

You will feel what it is like to be understood without explanation. 

And together we will talk about whether continued work 

— through individual sessions or the full ExJW Thriver Programme 

— is the right next step for you.

There is no pressure. No obligation. No sales pitch. 

Just an honest conversation between two people who know what the

 inside of a Kingdom Hall feels like 

— one of whom has spent 26 years helping the other find their way out.

Many of my clients tell me they visited this page for months before booking.

 I understand why. 

The Watchtower conditioned you not to trust outsiders. 

Not to believe you were worth the investment. 

Not to ask for help.

Everything the Watchtower told you about your worth was wrong.

You are worth this conversation.

Whenever you are ready, I am here.

He never got to rebuild his identity outside of the organisation's framework. 

He never got to wake up in freedom of mind 

and know that his life was entirely, fully his own.

He was 28 years old. He had a two-year-old daughter. 

And the Watchtower took him for a doctrine they quietly retired in 2026 

— calling it, with breathtaking understatement, a clarification.

I have spent 26 years making sure that the people Keith left behind 

— people like you — 

do not have to carry this alone.

That is who I am.

That is why I do this work.

And that is what is waiting for you on the other side 

of that first 30-minute conversation.