Religious Trauma

It's been a few years since I stepped inside a church. I was raised in a specific one and it was drilled into us from an early age that we were somehow the one "true" church because everything was strictly Bible-based. 🙄 I believed it. I thought I was doing the right thing by going and trying my best to participate in the ways they allowed.

I never felt like I belonged. Ever. I actually hated myself for many years because I thought that it was my fault that people never wanted to be my friend. The only time I had anyone actually talk to me other than an impersonal greeting was when they needed something. I tried. I tried so hard to make friends but it always backfired. If you're quiet, they think your vain. If you talk and they probe and you answer honestly, you're not good enough for them.

It's bittersweet that my daughter is the one who actually started getting me to question things. She opened my eyes and I began to really see what it truly was.

Once I saw it, it couldn't be unseen. There's a lot of trauma and maybe someday I'll add bits here and there but what finally got me to leave was a mental breakdown of sorts. I could no longer sing the hymns. Every time I attempted to sing, the tears wouldn't stop flowing. Even after all this time, it still really hurts to think about and, strangely, I feel guilty at times for not going. Does anyone else ever feel like this?

#Religious Trauma

I don’t think anyone understands the magnitude of fear I have towards my mother. When my dad died, I wanted to go with him, because I felt like I had nobody to protect me from my mother! I had to be hospitalized for suicidal ideation. I’m really shook up from yesterday’s phone call, prior to that I felt empowered because I had finally put up a fortress in my mind to protect myself from her by blocking her number. I am now afraid to block her new number before I leave because, I don’t know what might happen if I do between now and when I move. I still have a few months before I can move. She is one of the main reasons I’m leaving, to leave the abuse behind. I’ve experienced so much trauma in this state. I see my mother every where, she’s in every woman, she’s every bully I’ve ever encountered. She is the reason I had no boundaries, struggle with self advocacy, and everything else a programmed codependent child is robbed of. Essentially, she set me up to be a perpetual victim of abuse. I now feel like a spineless, coward who betrayed myself, and feel like I’ve been knocked back down to sit at her feet, where she can continue to control me. She believes she is god’s special prophet and everyone else is subservient to her, except my younger brother (who will rule over and judge the world someday) and anyone else she likes. Everyone else is her and his servant. I literally mean this. This is the cult I grew up in.

I struggle with shaking the feeling that I am evil. My whole life I was told that I was bad, evil, crazy, demonic, possessed, seductive, a liar, a dirty girl/woman, gold digger and I was going to hell.

(I will not argue with anyone in self defense of these accusations, if you believe I deserved/deserve this abuse because of something I did, said, or wore; you are part of that dysfunctional system.)

These are things my parents told me from childhood. My spouses, society, the church, and my siblings have either explicitly or implicitly said these things to me and have influenced my children. It was so bad that I even agreed and had a psychotic episode where I believed I was possessed. Several times I tried to get accepted by my parents, by confessing my sins and admitting to demonic influence they tried to exorcise demons out of me, but I was still an evil old devil who couldn’t be saved on my own, no matter how much I believed or how devoted I was, or how much work or preaching I did myself I was still the evil one. I was outcast and rejected by my family, community and the church. I have severe psychological damage due to this abuse. I have no family, not even my children. I have no community because I’m an outcast and even though I moved and lived in a new town, I can not make friends, because it’s the same religious dogma. I will never be good enough for the church or their deity. I used to care about being accepted by them. Now, I am grateful I am no longer involved in that cult. I am free, yet I am sensitive to being judged as evil, or bad, or a sinner. I don’t even believe in evil as a cosmic moral concept. There is no battle of good and evil. Just some seriously disturbed human beings persecuting other humans in the name of their beliefs and religious values, believing they are doing good. I am grieved though, for the life that was stolen from, the loss of my children and never having a loving family and lack of support and the lack of self esteem and fear of rejection I was left with. So, after 40 years of suffering I became an atheist, then a pagan. I don’t need to be saved and I don’t want to hear about the J man and I don’t need any thoughts and prayers. Empathy, accountability, responsibility and respect of my humanity and boundaries is a good start. That’s what everyone wants, needs, and deserves. Empathy is my religion and love is my passion.