spiritualabuse

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.

Hi everyone, I joined this group as soon as I saw it created, but I haven't posted here before. I feel so much turmoil still around my religious affiliation (evangelical Christian). I'm at a point now where I can say, "I don't think I'm a Christian anymore." The thing is, even if I'm not, the Bible verses and teachings are so, so ingrained in my psyche after being in the church from the time I was born.

I am having a lot of difficulty with making decisions now, in particular. When I was actively living as a Christian, I would pray and seek advice from church leaders and read the Bible if I had to make a decision. I always had this dread hanging over me that I might make a decision that was against "God's will" though; as a result, I definitely made a number of decisions that were harmful to me because it seemed like they were more acceptable to the church.

Now, I don't feel that dread about God's will, but I feel that I am completely lacking a foundation or framework for deciding what to do. I'm currently going through some career decisions and I can't separate "my values" from what I was indoctrinated into. Every time I try to start processing through this, I end up just breaking down because I feel like I don't even have an identity, and maybe I never have had one of my own. It's all very overwhelming and crushing.

I know there aren't any easy solutions to this, but I hope someone out there can at least relate to where I am at.

Thanks for listening ❤️

#Decisions #Career #Faith #Christianity #spiritualabuse #Identity #MentalHealth

I have withdrawn from communication from all family members other than my siblings over the past couple years. The main issue is with my mother, but if I communicate with any extended family members, she will find a way to get the information and then reach out to me again. She comes up with these situations that she decides are absolutely crucial (ex. do I want this old bookcase they are getting rid of?) and will bombard me with messages (email, WhatsApp, SMS, etc.). I don't respond or even open the ones that would have a "read receipt", so then she starts bombarding my siblings saying that she desperately needs an answer to this question and would they ask on her behalf. This behaviour just confirms to me that I am not ready to have contact with her again.

So, she had texted me last week to say that she and my dad would be in town over the weekend. I didn't read the whole thing, so I am just assuming that she also tried guilt-tripping me into seeing each other. And then my 100-year-old great aunt died on Saturday morning.

And now the bombardment begins. The big difficulty here is that I am actually in the same city so I can't isolate myself as well as I could when I lived abroad. I cannot attend this funeral. I keep asking myself if I would regret it later if I didn't but I don't think I have the perspective to be able to answer that question.

The thing is, I feel like if I go, the expectations on me to be who I've always been - my typical role in the family system - will be so high. I'm at a point now where I don't think I can even fake being that person anymore, but I don't have any kind of solid expression of myself now to replace it. I don't know who I am or what I like or what I want to do or even what I believe.

And that's the other issue - I can't walk into a church. The funeral will certainly be a religious event and I can't be part of those words and conversations and Scriptures and prayers and I will have my religious abuse triggered and start dissociating and lose the ability to form sentences or be present.

To be honest, the part of me that has always highly valued and appreciated heritage and history and tradition is either very deeply buried or dead and I just feel nothing about my aunt's death. I know there is a lot of emotional repression going on too, but I simply don't have the capacity to open this up.

I don't see my therapist until Thursday and it's already been since Saturday.

I'm not looking for advice about what to do, but just wanted to share with someone what I am experiencing right now.

#Family #Relationships #Funeral #EmotionalAbuse #spiritualabuse #Trauma #Depression #Anxiety #MentalHealth

I just woke up from a dream about my ex. He is a narcissist. I have had no contact with him since 2013, but somehow he shows up in my dreams. I hate this!
It feels like I can't fully break free from him even after such a long time. How is he still in my head?? How can I get him out?
Not the start to 2022 that I wanted...

#Dream #nightmare #Ex #NarcissisticPersonalityDisorder #narcissisticabusesurvivor #EmotionalAbuse #mentalabuse #spiritualabuse #Trauma #Depression #Anxiety #PTSD

Any former members? Anyone an adult now who was raised in this?
#cults #harmfullteaching #spiritualabuse #quiverfull

It's been a rough year trying to find a therapist... One of my reasons for coming back to my home country was to have access to consistent therapy in my native language. Unfortunately, that has not been my journey so far.

The first (and persisting) issue has been finances - therapy isn't cheap! If I had a sufficient budget, I think it probably would have been easier to find a competent therapist more quickly. Sometimes therapists who work for subsidized services are not the same quality (not always!!).

So last summer, I finally had enough income to start looking for a therapist. I sent an intake form to a local centre that offered subsidized services and accepted the first therapist I was matched to. This therapist was male...which was the first mistake. He was not specialized in trauma therapy and ended up doing me a lot of harm in the three months I worked with him.

In the wake of that, I was fortunate to have access to eight weeks of free therapy sessions with a therapist from my depression/anxiety group with the local public mental health service. She was the first mental health professional to ever acknowledge that I had experienced trauma, that I was having a trauma response, and that I needed trauma therapy. I wish I could have kept working with her, but there were limitations due to the service's regulations.

Following that, I found another subsidized service that had only female therapists and that specialized in trauma, and I signed up with them. The therapist that was available was not very responsive to my stated needs, was very chatty, and seemed to want to be more of a friend than a trained professional. We had three sessions together and I think the last straw for me was when she told me that I was doing fine because I could still go to work and some of her clients couldn't. Just not helpful or respectful.

So then I took a month off because I couldn't cope with trying again.

Last week, I signed up with BetterHelp (online counselling) because they had a one month free promo and it seemed worth a shot. I'm proud of myself for not accepting the first therapist I was matched with when she didn't have the expertise and experience that I was looking for. I had my first online video session with a second therapist yesterday and I think it will be ok. She is very willing to take it slow and to build up trust and safety. She understood why that was important to me and just let it be.

I'm feeling hopeful - but hope is also a scary thing.

Here's to round four!

#Therapy #OnlineTherapy #Therapist #MentalHealth #Depression #Anxiety #Trauma #NarcissisticAbuse #EmotionalAbuse #spiritualabuse #mentalabuse #Hope