Surviving religious trauma and dealing with anxiety

By Dan Pazmino ~

I left Christianity about two years ago, but the effects of leaving the faith have only begun to erupt.

Like many people the study of the science and my life experiences started to discourage my desire to continue to the affliate with the faith. I was very involved in my non denominational church which really advocated the idea of "Gods will for your life". The church constantly wanted me to take a path I had no desire in exploring. Being in the children's ministry/ being in the prayer band. When all I wanted to do was make music and art.

It was very hard dealing with this especially when on many occasions I was told I should give up art.

This amongst the idea that my church community didn't really seem authentic and that Gods will wasn't really becoming a reality started becoming way too much. I did so much for God and there was no return not even what I thought Gods will was going to be. (Going to a Christian college and becoming a missionary).

When I stopped going to my church I noticed two things, that all the people I thought were my friends where never actually there for me in real life, and when they found out I wasn't going back that I was being shunned even more. This disgusted me, and made me want to be even less part of it. I continued in the faith personally until not being able to find any community that I really connected with.

Starting college was so lonely. I had lost my whole church community, most of my highschool friends went out of state and on top of that I moved out of my parents house. In that time I noticed the relationship I had with God started to shift to the relationship I had with men. I tried to fill that void with men and it only resulted in a huge disaster. I did things I never thought I would do, and began to feel slutty and wrong in the eyes of God. Really something that was the result of having such trust and expectations for the guys I was with and ending up being really heart broken and abused by these relationships. By the last relationship things where so bad that I was in such a stage of depression and under lying anxiety I decided to go meet a counselor from my school.

On top of this my doctor had prescribed me a light anti - depressant that didn't sit well with me, and then an anxiety pill which I continue to take. The medicine has really been the only thing that keeps me sane, I notice I am getting better but it hasn't been with even more difficulty. Such as the fact that I moved back in with my family, who are devote Catholics and my brother who is a fundamentalist and a street preacher. A lot of the things he says sound really stupid and I can't help but laugh but a lot of things hit straight to the bone. Like things about sex before marriage and birth control an hell/ the consequences of not repenting.

I'm usually able to tell myself those things are not true but at some point I have 10% of me that feels like maybe it's true. The fact of having him always around is even more traumatic. He's like a judge that constantly makes me feel like I'm not good enough. He gives me dirty looks and reads his bible loud and talks about hell every single day. It's such a toxic environment and it's so hard to have people not really understand how that feels like and understand why it's so traumatic.

I constantly hear people be like you just have to not listen but it's like how much of that can you put up with. I can constantly feel my anxiety increase everytime im in the house but it's hard because I can't really leave because that would mean not being able to continue go to college without the financial support of my parents. It even harder to have my parents take sides with him because they sort of agree with his beliefs. Lastly I've really been struggling with terrible nightmares and restlessness , something I never really dealt with as a Christian.

These are things that are tough because you don't really know how to make them go away, when you start to associate your illness with your lack of faith. Like I kind of prayed to have these problems go away in the morning and somehow I felt better which was so crazy. But the weirdest thing was like feeling anxiety just a little time after that because I felt I wasn't Godly enough to be asking for prayers from God it's crazy.

Idk what to do, I feel like I want to have a relationship with God but I can't without establishing what I really think is right and wrong, which I feel like I still associate with Christian morals. I would really like to hear how people have progressed in their spiritual life despite their past. Luckily I've found a way to study in Texas this semester so I won't be in this environment anymore, But it's still a healing process.

Luck to all of you healing ❤️

Comments

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~ S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden – Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Why I left the Canadian Reformed Church

By Chuck Eelhart ~ I was born into a believing family. The denomination is called Canadian Reformed Church . It is a Dutch Calvinistic Christian Church. My parents were Dutch immigrants to Canada in 1951. They had come from two slightly differing factions of the same Reformed faith in the Netherlands . Arriving unmarried in Canada they joined the slightly more conservative of the factions. It was a small group at first. Being far from Holland and strangers in a new country these young families found a strong bonding point in their church. Deutsch: Heidelberger Katechismus, Druck 1563 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I was born in 1955 the third of eventually 9 children. We lived in a small southern Ontario farming community of Fergus. Being young conservative and industrious the community of immigrants prospered. While they did mix and work in the community almost all of the social bonding was within the church group. Being of the first generation born here we had a foot in two

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

Search This Blog