Caa: Church Addicts Anonymous

[rach]

Do you have someone in your life who has an unhealthy addiction to church?  Not so much religion but church?  A-mum is so obsessed with church it drives me bonkers.  She literally cannot stay away, and if she misses any church activities she gets irritable, angry, sharp temper, depressive, just like withdrawls in a drug addict!  A-mum misses out so much on life because she is always getting her next fix on "church."  Every sunday when she comes home she will talk about and gossip about church stuff all day long.  It's got to the point, I mean starting a year or so ago I shut down and walk away when she starts talking about church stuff.  I just don't want to hear it but more than that I'd like to encourage her to limit her time with church activities and do other stuff instead.  But like I said she is addicted.  I don't see what there is to be addicted about church?  I always hated going. 

[buffettphan]

Yes.  My mother.   My husband too, but he is addicted to religion as well as to all his churchy activities.

[Margee]

I've discovered the addict in me over the years. I've had all the 'addictions'..(except hard drugs). I had the food addiction, the romance addiction, the alcohol addiction, the people pleasing addiction, the church addiction and now the Ex-c addiction.  Some of course, are more healthy than others. The church addiction was to get approval from Gawd and other people and to look good in the community. The 'hits' are all about the same. (trying to fill a void) Now that I've discovered all this, I finally can look within myself and not to outside sources to 'fill me up'.

 

Sorry you have to listen to the church addiction stories hon. Romance addictions stories are much more interesting to listen to.......

Big *hug* for you today!

 

 

[MerryG]

... more than that I'd like to encourage her to limit her time with church activities and do other stuff instead.  But like I said she is addicted.  I don't see what there is to be addicted about church?  I always hated going. 

 

Amen, sister, on finding church loathsome. I hated every minute of church or Sunday school that I ever had to attend. Those moments that weren't mind-numbingly boring were terrifying.

 

Your "A-mum" definitely sounds as if she needs not only other activities to fill her life, but needs help to boost her self image. The fact that she not only has to go to church all the time, but spends days gossipping about church people makes her sound as if she's insecure and feels deeply empty.

 

Poor you for having to put up with it! There's probably not much you can do except what you are doing -- walking away when she tries to make you an enabler.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

I find it revealing how much the descriptions in The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous resemble the fundie chrisitians I know.  Exchange "alcohol" for "jesus" and you'd never know the difference.

[WaitingInfinity]

My father, also a pastor. He loves being at church and won't cancel it even on holidays. Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, Wednesday nights. All church all the time and if I didn't go, I was on the road to bad decisions. I missed church 4 times (3 illness and 1 test) from the time I was started going to church after I was born and I got the "I'm disappointed in your decision not to go" speech the one time I missed to study for that AP test. 

[Lilith666]

My father, also a pastor. He loves being at church and won't cancel it even on holidays. Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, Wednesday nights. All church all the time and if I didn't go, I was on the road to bad decisions. I missed church 4 times (3 illness and 1 test) from the time I was started going to church after I was born and I got the "I'm disappointed in your decision not to go" speech the one time I missed to study for that AP test.

It doesn't matter why you missed church. He can be disappointed all he wants; you have your own life to live. Next time he does that, say, "OK. And?"

[4EverFree]

Both of my parents are church addicts. One incident that sticks in my memory is my going into hospital at age 11 for a small operation and my father turning up to see me 15 mins before visiting hours ended because my hospital visit clashed with the sunday evening meeting.  Apparently he left a whole 25 mins early to come see me, while my mother attended the whole service.

 

Both my sister and I (2 of 3 children) live 5000 and 7000km away from home and they see their grandchildren at best once a year.  Last year on a rare visit to Canada, they opted to attend a local church here as a tourist among strangers, rather than be home when my sister and her family arrived from the airport after flying in from eastern canada.  Their comment?  Well, we'll just see everyone once we get back.   Any excitement of reunion totally overshadowed by a need for whatever drug attending church gives to them.  Yes, there should be support groups for this type of thing.........!

[rach]

@ sharonmhanna that is just awful!  Shows just how deep a church addict will go to get their fix.  How awful for a parent to go to church when their child needs them.  It is very difficult for a-mum to keep herself away from church any time the doors are open, but I know if I'm in the hospital she will be there with me.  She is a good person, but she just has these needs that she is using the church to fulfill.  Such as feeling special and important.  Well if she gives 100 volunteering hours to the church, she can feel important I guess.  One thing the church provides is a closed community.  For instance, you might not be able to be a famous person amongst the whole world.  So, you might try to become a very special person in a church with 100 people where you are more likely to get noticed.  This is one thing that makes for church addiction. 

 

There do need to be support groups for church addiction but the problem is, people look at it like a "safe" addiction. But there are no safe addictions. children of church addicts will tell you how destructive it is.  Children of church addicts end up neglected whilst the church is being tended to.  For instance, the parent might teach sunday school but fail to teach their own children good behaviour, or clean the nursery at church whilst their own home is in spoils.  And they end up fighting a losing battle, trying to get their mums and dads attention whilst the parents are too caught up in the church. 

[RenaissanceWoman]

You know what worries me about her, rach? When something goes wrong. And it will. Church people are people, with their own agendas, insecurities, politics, gossip, etc. Once that happens, she will be in a world of hurt.

 

I was like her for a few years. I was literally a rock star at my church (singer and piano player in the praise band). I did everything, volunteered everything (I'm an artist and willing public speaker too, so imagine the possibilities), showed up for everything. It was my world. But one woman (music director -- insecure little freak) did not like me, and I pointed out the rude, unfair, and divisionary tactics she was using against me and others. Suddenly I was persona non grata, for exposing the ugly underbelly. It has caused me more years of anguish than the years of joy and comfort I found there. Recovery has been longer than the addiction was.

 

I now see that they were damaging me all those years I was "in" -- abusing my time, talent, money, and family responsibilities. Giving me false friendships, manipulative ego boosts, monopolizing my life. And I obviously see the damage done in my "out" period. So I was screwed both in and out. Sad state of affairs.

[rach]

@ReneissanceWoman....you've been there.  You know what it's like.  I worry about who in the church is a-mum's real friend and who is just using her.  I know some of them are real friends, because there have been some very hard times already.  But I have seen others in the church abuse her.  A-mum tends to put church people on a pedestal, the higher their authority in the church (especially the pastors families), the higher of a pedestal she has put them on in her mind.  It's like she is trying so hard to reach those pedestals she has placed them on, to be one of them.  And you and I both know that pastors and "church superstars" are really just like everybody else, and shouldn't be idolized.  But for all she's done for the church she hasn't got much appreciation at all.  I wish she'd give her time and talents to somebody who actually would appreciate it, because the church just feeds off it and moves on, parasitic beast that it is. 

[RenaissanceWoman]

Funny you mention the pedestal. My band leader was a mentor to me, and I loved him like a favorite uncle. He urged me to play piano music that was way out of my league, he pushed me to learn to play piano from nothing but a guitar chord sheet for every song, he convinced me that I could (for the first time in my life), play these songs on the piano and sing into a microphone at the same time -- Billy Joel style, he encouraged me to develop keyboard riffs to play electronically on the days that the regular piano player played the piano parts. He and I worked on so many 3-part harmonies to sing under our main female singer, and for me to sing in the middle of his deep raspy voice and the girl's strong high voice was pure musical heaven for me. He treated me like a musical gift, and I loved and respected him all the way. We did small "power trios" and duets when other members of the band were not available but music was needed. I went out of my way every week. I stretched and grew so much in those years, and it was an amazing new world for me. I often joked (in his presence too) that if he asked us to come and rehearse at 3:00 in the morning -- we'd all be there! Such was our devotion and love for the music and for his leadership and for the success of the congregation as a whole.

 

But then... you guessed it... he was not politically able to stand up for me when I needed it most. He stood back as I was (metaphorically) burning at the stake and screaming for his help for several long painful months. Even now, just typing this, I can feel a vice-grip squeeze on my heart.

 

I told him to his face: "I had you so atmospherically high on a pedestal, that when you fell off of it, you could not help but smash all to pieces. There is nothing left to pick up." He hung his head and said quietly, "I know."

 

OK, before tears start falling all over my keyboard, let me just say... church and its pedestals are dangerous. Be warned.

[Positivist]

My SIL is a church addict. She packed up her husband and kid in the middle of an out-of-town family campout, early on Sunday, to get everyone to church. She said, "We just really need this right now." I've worked with drug addicts and it looks very similar.

[rach]

@Reneissance Woman, that is quite a story about holding someone up on a pedestal only to see them come crashing down.  My a-mum has put the churches highest "stars" (the ministers) on impossibly high pedestals.  I'm just waiting for it all to crash and burn.  In a way I understand, because for a few years I had done exactly that with god.  God was perfect, he was all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good, he could do infinitely beyond all we could ask or imagine, he could never make a mistake, and then finally I started reading the bible with a clear mind, and Yahweh-Jesus fell off of that extraordinarily high pedestal, and the shock waves are still reeling through me.  As in your experience with the band leader, I was left to "burn at the stake" screaming for god to help me, but no god ever arrived on the scene.  A-mum has not had that shocking, painful crash-and-burn experience yet either with god or with church authorities.  It needs to happen, for her own good, but I fear she will break beyond repair when it does. But I'd say its better to be broken, than to be wrong. It is her security and she clings to it ferociously.  She really believes that the ministers can't be wrong, takes every belief of theirs and makes it her own.  Calls it "her church family."  Has spent more hours doing volunteer work in the church than spent with me.  Taught me as a little child that the correct answer to "what do you want to be when you grow up?" is "pastor's wife."  Astronaut was never the right answer.  So she needs to have some kind of breaking experience, whilst there's still time, otherwise her whole life is going down the drain for this miserable religion.