Impediments to Recvoery

[RachelSkates]

I have been fighting this for years. and I have discovered things which impede my recovery.  Here they are:

 

1. I LOVED the delusion. I have lots of delusions because accepting that a man rose from the dead is just the beginning. Then your brain is trained to a phantom that loves you, even when you are being played with by a pedaphilie (true).  Then your brain has to go all over the map to try to place that into the Proper Paradigm. When it can't, your brain starts to fill in the gaps and you go crazy. However, when I felt God loved me and all that, yeah, it felt good! I even had better health and more peace and all that. Even when I knew it was BS, I still had a parallel line running right next to it. "I know it's BS but GOd DOES LOVE ME. In short, religion drove me crazy. So if I am in it, it's great, away from it, the delusions are just different.

 

PS Don't tell me to get mental health. I have no mental health insurance and already did pro bono 8 sessions and that is over. 

 

2. Ancestry. My ancestors were put the sword for their faith. We had a lot of them in our family. As I grew up, we were always supposed to be different. It was like a cult, but not really. I know a lot of people were martyred back in the day, but if you have an unbroken succession of believers from that time, it changes the family line. We had genetics done and every single one of us has the double COMT mutation which brings about higher levels of dopamine (which can FACILITATE delusions). I am not so sure all that prayer and hocus pocus did not bring about a load of epigenetics to make it harder to leave it.  It seems I WILL be delusional and so it's best to be happy deluded than bad deluded. 

 

3. Family. My family is very, strongly insane. But what do you do when the "Accepted Delusion" prevails. It's odd to me that I am considered the mad one because I think God hates me but they are not considered delusional to think God loves them. The delusion aspects is "GOD" not if you think he loves or hates you.

 

4. Xianity did not work out for me alone. So in a sea of people, I am alone. I have one brother and one cousin who find it BS, but it's rough sailing. 

[Lerk]

On 8/4/2018 at 9:55 AM, RachelSkates said:

4. Xianity did not work out for me alone. So in a sea of people, I am alone. I have one brother and one cousin who find it BS, but it's rough sailing. 

 

I can't identify with much of your post, but this I can. I'm still in the closet because what little bit of testing of the waters that has happened has shown that being an open atheist will have unacceptable  results. My wife knows and has learned to live with it to some extent, although it still makes her angry. One son knows, because he deconverted, too. The religion has always been so important in our family that people think you're abandoning them if you don't believe it. No, you're abandoning mythology! Family is still family, if they'll let you be!

[MOHO]

1 hour ago, Lerk said:

I can't identify with much of your post, but this I can. I'm still in the closet because what little bit of testing of the waters that has happened has shown that being an open atheist will have unacceptable  results

 

I used to think that way. 

 

Gathering up the nerve to come out was the toughest thing I've ever done in my life. However, AFTER coming out, I realized that it was nowhere NEAR as tough as I thought it work be. It also did not have the impact on my life that I thought it would.

 

Don't misunderstand me. There were, are, and continue to be impacts on my life due to my coming out.  But not on the level of intensity that I assumed for so many years before coming clean. The fams understand, after a time, that I am the same old code-cut'n, guitar play'n, lawn mow'n introvert that I always was. I'm still there for them and they for me. Although there's that, ohhhhh just under the surface, tension. Not like the 800 lb gorilla in the room. More like a 2 oz hummingbird that flits in and out of the room and is gone just as quickly as it was noticed. 

 

So, Mr. @Lerk,

Unless you are earning a living from the fundy stuffs, or in support of it, I would be inclined to believe that your coming out would not be nearly as nasty as you currently feel that it would be. 

[Lerk]

26 minutes ago, MOHO said:

Unless you are earning a living from the fundy stuffs, or in support of it, I would be inclined to believe that your coming out would not be nearly as nasty as you currently feel that it would be. 

 

Maybe I'll broach the subject again sometime. The experience I had with my younger son, when I was "outed" shortly after my older son decoverted (by his father-in-law!), left me hesitant. He was in the process of moving to a different state (literally, they were taking a road trip from here to there) and we had a long phone conversation which 1) left me thinking that maybe he understood that some of the Bible couldn't be true, but 2) ended with me "admitting" that I believed that Jesus was god's son, just because dealing with it was too stressful at that moment. He seemed just to want to hear me say that, so I did. We haven't talked about it since, but his relationship with his brother is strained.

I just don't want to be shut out of either his life or his childrens' lives. Maybe that's not as likely as I fear it is. Or maybe in time it'll seem worth trying. If I were to push it now my wife would be really, really angry. That's a story in itself.