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Hey Angie,
Thank you for sharing this. I was wondering if you or anyone reading this has any resources for deprogramming. Phone counselling would be great.
I was led through a variety of cultish religions and beliefs throughout my life. Growing up, my family members were extremely Catholic. My mother also believed in the occult and freaky things like contacting spirits and house hauntings. As an older child, she told me I was a witch, that our whole family is, and that scared the crap out of me since I'd been raised to fear witches. Soon I was able to switch my beliefs to follow hers but her beliefs kept changing and she always was gullible to the psychics, healers, and she believed it so strongly that I was indoctrinated, too. She later went back to Christianity, including the belief of experienceing Divine presense and freaky stuff like that, and I felt it was a betrayal to the other beliefs she'd taught me. At the same time, my best friend was a born-again evangelical and spent a few years drumming extreme Christian thought in my head.
I really started to break down mentally. I couldn't handle having all these beliefs in my head. As "trusting" and "blind faith" had been such virtues and ideals in my family, I felt I'd become so malleable that I would believe any and every new religion or cult I was introduced to. I believed there was a Christian god, I believed all the Hindu gods were real, I believed one could meditate and "commune" with Siddhartha, I believed there was a pagan Goddess and God (but I was afraid of them because I thought the rituals were real), I believed all the Greek gods and goddesses used to exist but they'd changed form. The scariest part was that I believed in "magick" and "Aleister Crowly" and people who tried to teach me how to manipulate energy and make an "energy ball." I was terrified of black magic and evil spirits. I was convinced people could read my mind (someone actually did it very accurately when I was young and ever since I had a phobia of so-called mind readers.)
I've had other trauma in my life and have worked with psychologists, but when they'd try to "ground" me during my phobia it didn't work, because in my "reality" the "evil spirits" were still there. What I needed was convincing that all that scary stuff wasn't real.
Over the past two months I've done a lot of reading and I now consider myself an Atheist, but I still get triggered into being afraid of the "otherworldly." My therapist specializes in trauma, but not in deprogramming or cults. I'd love to find someone who could help with this.
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