I second the recommendation for Leaving the Fold by Dr. Marlene Winell. I took a lot of notes and still re-read some parts. It has helped me a lot with unlearning the mental and emotional conditioning.
"Leaving the Fold" was a helpful read for me. It's no cure, but did help me understand that I'm not alone in having trauma from my excessively religious upbringing. It's not just about the deconversion process, but also covers some of the lingering psychological effects that we face after.
There's a book called Leaving The Fold that has a chapter or two on post-religious sexual guilt. Therapy helped me through a lot, but if it hadn't I think that book would have introduced me to the necessary concepts to start healing sexually.
I feel like I have found a kindred spirit, except you teach instead of doing a corporate job. You need to get some counseling ASAP. PTSD with anxiety and what sounds like escalating depression does not go over well when one feels trapped without alternatives. Sounds like you're in the southwest US. If you're in the Tucson area, I can send you some counseling recommendations and avoidance names (purely from my own experience).
In the mean time, find yourself a copy of Marlene Winell's Leaving the Fold. I'm not very far through it yet, but when I get bad flashbacks to church-supported abuse, or when I'm having a worse than normal "I'm stuck in this life that I didn't choose to be in" feelings, I'll open it and read a little and it makes me feel like there's hope at the end of the tunnel. During the worst times, it helps me feel like I'm not alone.
I think one of the worst aspects of your type of situation is that bringing up PTSD caused by church makes people literally laugh out loud at you... and then avoid you. They do not get it, and they won't get it, because they didn't go through it. Especially hard are the people who think that your experiences aren't valid because they used to be mormon and didn't get that kind of treatment.
My mantra is "there are alternatives that I haven't thought about yet because I'm too busy freaking out about what's in my head." You're welcome to use it if it will help. Otherwise, I hope you get some professional help, because it's hell to live with that day in and day out. Good luck to you.
Hmm. I first learned about it from Dr. Marlene Winell’s book Leaving the Fold, the latter half of which has a lot of great info and different exercises for self reparenting. The book is about healing from high demand religions, though (although it does dip into family functioning in that context), so it may not be directly applicable to your situation (unless that’s something you also experienced).
I have also found Jennifer Nurick’s articles helpful. She sells courses as well, but I just read the free articles. She has some little infographics like “Getting to know your inner child” and “Things our inner child likes to hear” that I have saved in a folder on my phone, as a kind of cheat sheet.
I also found this list a while ago and am planning to check out some of these books myself. Looks like all of them have pretty good reviews.
There are a ton of good articles and books out there. Hopefully you will find what works best for you!
Leaving the Fold by Marlene Winell is a really good one. It's not expensive but there are lots of free articles also available at her website Journey Free.
You’re experiencing a complete identity collapse and worldview collapse. This is a very traumatic thing for a person to go through. It happens to a lot of people who deconvert, and depression and feeling suicidal is actually pretty common, so know you’re not alone. I went through the same thing. I deconverted a few years ago, and in some ways, I’m still going through it.
You’re in shock right now. Everything you thought you knew about the world and about life was wrong. Everything you built your life on has been turned upside down. Your whole identity revolved around being a Christian, so now you don’t even know who you are anymore. Years and years of building up a picture of the world, building a philosophy for life, forming opinions and beliefs, hours spent learning scriptures, hours spent in church, hours spent praying, money given to the church, all down the drain.
You are experiencing a death, several actually. The God you thought was real and loved you more than anyone else, that you lived your life for, He’s dead now. The dreams you had for your future and eternity are dead now. The person you were is dead now. Your whole sense of purpose is dead now. Your life as you knew it is gone. You are grieving, and that is to be expected.
There’s a grieving process you’ll go through, but it gets better. I’d suggest reading the book Leaving the Fold by Marlene Winell. Amazon Link There are also therapists who specialize in religious trauma, who help people who are going through exactly what you’re going through.
>Religion made me so dependent on Jesus Christ that it made me lazy as fuck after deconverting. I don’t like taking showers I don’t like doing homework I don’t like going to class. And I tend to overthink and worry when I don’t need to.
What you’re describing isn’t laziness. You’re in a deep depression. A major symptom of that is that it kills your motivation, sometimes to do even basic tasks. You’re also experiencing anxiety.
>Now that I left what I thought was my only hope I have no reason to keep on living
>I have a deep desire to not exist anymore. Really. To die.
>I literally wish there was way to put yourself to sleep painlessly just to end it all. If there was, I would have been gone a long time ago.
It sounds like you’re suicidal. Please find someone to talk to. You can DM me if you want someone to listen. Also, you can call the suicide hotline at 800-273-8255. They have counselors there who will listen and are great to talk to.
>I thought that the purpose of life was for the end times to occur and for Jesus to come and rescue me so that I can go into this peaceful land called Paradise. Now that I don’t believe that shit, it’s like what’s the point of living? To experience and make the best out of life? All for the experience? It’s a waste of time to me. Having to go work to make a living and get a job and make money. That’s literally the goal in everybody’s life. To make enough money to be stable on this life. Some may disagree with that and say I gotta work and shit but I find it all a waste of time if you’re gonna die and nothing is going to come with you.
We’re you looking forward to God rescuing you from this life because you were miserable and couldn’t see yourself having to live out your full life on earth? Because if so, it sounds to me like you could have undiagnosed depression or another mental health issue that maybe you were trying to self-medicate with religion, but with treatment it’s possible you could get better and start to enjoy life.
>It made me so focused on the end times happening and conspiracies and all that. Now that that is absent from my mind it’s like there is emptiness. No meaning attached to anything I do. (Nihilism much?)
You grew up being told what your purpose was and being told what the meaning of life was. You never had a chance to find your own sense of purpose and meaning in life because it was dictated to you by others. You never had a chance to explore and find yourself and figure out what you really want out of life because they told you what you were supposed to want.
Now you’ve got to adjust to a new reality. There is no Antichrist. No Mark of the Beast. No Rapture. This world will carry on the way it has been for a long time. There are tons of possibilities of things you could do with your life, things you could experience. There are tons of fun new things you could try that you could never do before because you were taught they were sinful. You can live your life however the fuck you want to without having to “pray and seek God” to see if it’s his will first.
You can decide for yourself what your morals are, what you think is right and wrong. You can form your own opinions about things instead of being told what to think. You can learn to live your life without having to feel false guilt all the time, without having to constantly apologize to God for everything you do. You can look back over your life and realize all the times you thought you did a horrible sin and carried guilt about it, in retrospect, you see there was nothing wrong with what you did, and you can let go of that shame. You can explore the world and find out it’s not the evil, scary, sinful place they told you it was. You can make friends with some atheists, some Muslims, people you were told not to associate with, and find out they’re ok people. There’s so many fun and cool things to do in this world, but you were never allowed to do them.
>Maybe I’m just a lazy person who dreams for too much happy and perfect shit
You’re not lazy. And the reason you dream of too much happy and perfect shit is because that’s what they taught you to do. They promise you pie in the sky as a reward for giving up any kind of pleasure in this life and doing what they say. “Give us all your money, don’t drink, don’t curse, don’t have sex, don’t do anything fun, come live in our cult and do whatever we tell you, and you’ll get a bunch of magical shit that’s way better than what you could get in the world.” The problem is that it makes it so you can’t be happy with normal things.
I went through the same thing. I was a Charismatic/Penticostal and was taught the prosperity gospel. If you tithe and have faith, God will make you a millionaire. If you’re not a millionaire, you aren’t there yet - maybe you don’t believe God enough, or you’re sinning, or not tithing enough, but the end goal is to be rich, so you can never be satisfied with having just “enough.” If you only have “enough” you’re failing in some way. It was hard to let go of that because I had to accept that it was never my divine destiny to be a millionaire. But once I got over that, I eventually started learning how to actually enjoy what I had.
>I wish there was a god so I can focus on an afterlife and be happy about that, because without that it’s like why the fuck am I here and why can’t god provide his creation a perfect life free from hardship and having to work for things, you know what I mean?
When you grow up with religion, you’re robbed of the opportunity to develop certain coping mechanisms for life. Religion is kind of a crutch. When people lose their religion as an adult, they often have a hard time dealing with the hardships of life because they never learned certain problem solving and coping skills. The church doesn’t want you to be able to stand on your own two feet and deal with life bc they want you to be dependent on them. You can adapt and learn, but it just takes time. Again, therapy can help with this.
Don’t give up on life yet. It gets better. Reach out to others for help, and if possible, find a religious trauma therapist who can help you work through all this. I’m here if you need to talk.
So, two things.
First of all, this is in one way totally normal. It's a textbook response to grief such as death or the ending of a deeply important relationship even if that relationship is with an imaginary person. The pain is just as real, and the grief process just as necessary.
In another way, which compounds the first, the depression is abnormal and the result of substantial, consistent training that makes "being outside the cult" an emotionally distressing experience. TL;DR check out the BITE model. The Christian is infected with pervasive anxiety. End of the world, divine censor, imperfection as evidence of personal failure of character, lurking demons evidenced by happiness, proof of divine pleasure evidenced by sadness, just about everything. Then the Christian is taught soothing techniques and that these things- which are specific to the religion- is the only emotional safety because everyone else has all the same anxieties.
Because you are recently deconverted, and because you're doing so well already, I expect that talking to a therapist would be helpful for you. But if you don't feel like doing that, you may find great value in Marlene Winell's Leaving The Fold. Your experience is common. There are ways through it. You're doing very well.