IF you deconverted in midlife, can you help?

[pocaracas]

Sorry, I'm late for this, it seems.... I skipped all but the first page and noticed that the last is covered in Huggy...

Hi, All, 

Most of the atheists I've met have been so for their entire lives, or at least since they were kids. I think those of us who leave religion in midlife or well into our adulthood have a different experience as we have a lifetime of conditioning to overcome. I'm really struggling, some days more than others. I hope you'll read the intro, but if you don't want to, please jump to the numbered list at the bottom. (thank you)

I'm sorry, I don't really qualify to help, given that I saw through the deception when I was 10... Still, I'd like to throw in my 2cents, if that's alright?

I introduced myself on the Intro forum a few weeks ago. As a recap, I was raised in a Christian Fundamentalist home full of lots of hellfire and brimstone and a literal interpretation of the Bible. Fourteen years ago, I converted to Judaism for a number of reasons, one being that I found the Christian concepts of original sin and Hell to be horrific, abusive, and meant to ignite fear. I never really enjoyed religion, not Christianity or Judaism, only went to services because it was a given in my mind that God exists and that I should worship him. Over the years, I just stopped going to synagogue. It lost its meaning for me. I didn't understand Hebrew and thus well over 75% of the service. I had no Jewish family or friends, so I went alone. It's a very family-centered religion, and I felt very alone.  

How did you convert to Judaism?
Did you just stop believing that JC was the son of god, but rather some preacher/prophet and all the NT became a big untrustworthy story?

Feeling alone gave rise to concerns about being alone as I age as I am unmarried, childless, and have health problems. I am concerned about support or lack thereof as I get old. So I figured if I can't find the community I need in Judaism, maybe I can go back to Christianity? My fear of Hell has never completely gone away, so I wondered if maybe somehow deep down I knew that I needed Jesus. So I started conversing with a member of the Open Brethren gospel hall my family goes to. I also checked out a Messianic Jewish (believers in Jesus) synagogue and went to church another Sunday. All of these things felt really phony and like they just didn't settle my mind. 

I wonder... what do you mean by "felt really phony"?
What was phony?

So I started studying the Bible, creation, evolution, science, cosmology, and I came to the conclusion that the evidence for evolution is just too great to be denied.

True, but that's no reason to stop being a christian... Catholics accept evolution just fine.

I realized then that the Bible cannot be literal.

Again, Catholics have been at that level for ages... the protestant movement is the one that kinda took a few step backwards, philosophically speaking...

My belief in God, at least the God of the Bible, started falling like a house of cards.

Again, I'm curious, what is this thing you call "the God of the Bible"?

All of this happened over a period of a few weeks. I became very depressed as I lost my delusion of being immortal seemingly overnight. I would never see my family, friends or pets after I died. My world view collapsed.

Yes, that is known to be a devastating psychological blow.
That comforting crutch that holds so many people in a feeling of never ending life, when it falls, you see the world for all its cold indifference.
It's not that you will never again see your loved ones... it's that you will stop being. You will stop having awareness. You will no longer think, no longer remember, no longer feel anything.

Here, the Catholics would argue that you will go on being. God is this metaphysical property of existence, of being in existence, so once that is bestowed, it cannot be removed... or something like that. It's a belief... like most others, based on little more than wishful thinking.
I admit it's nice to think that our awareness, our persona, our mental self will somehow survive the biological death of the body... but there's nothing to suggest that possibility as remotely plausible.

I became the most reluctant atheist I can imagine. I did NOT set out to become an atheist, only to know what truth is, and that led to lack of evidence for Biblegod. 

Denial is the first stage of grief...
You were grieving a lost loved one... god.
Just keep going. One day at a time.
It will get easier with time.

I am seeing a therapist who was raised in a Christian cult and can relate to some of what I'm going through. I take medication for chronic depression, anxiety and OCD. I'm also in an online support group with Dr. Marlene Winell for people who are leaving harmful religion. I've been getting together with other Skeptics (mostly atheists) regularly. 

Some of those atheists out there end up being too logical about the whole thing and try to make you see the logic of it all... but you need emotional support, right now.
Logic won't help... logic already did its work.

I'm sorry about that long intro, but I feel it's a necessary backdrop to the questions I want to ask: 

1. Fear of Hell - Despite rationally determining that the God of the Bible cannot be true and things like Hell can't exist, I am STILL afraid. I know it makes no logical sense--how can you fear what you don't believe in? But those fears are still in there. Did you or do you have this? How long did it take to lose it? Is there anything that helped you? I feel like I'm trying everything (reading, watching videos, talking with other atheists, etc.) and that nothing is working well enough. 

Why should anything help?
You've been conditioned to fear dying without being in communion with god.

When I was 8yo, I watched the movie Nightmare on Elm Street... it scared the hell out of me! It scared me so much that I spent the next year or more going to bed and holding on to the bedsheets with all my strength so I wouldn't get pulled into the bed, like Johnny Depp did. That felt real.
I can't say how it happened, but eventually, something in my mind clicked and decided that the category of things that are shown on TV is all false, except for the news and documentaries. If you'll notice, this was shortly before I also stopped accepting what the adults told me about god... not that the adults ever tried very hard. In Europe, even being from a traditionally Catholic country, there isn't that pressure that appears a little all over the US.

You have to let your mind click by itself... until then, grab on tight to those sheets and be brave.

Existential angst/crisis - On some days I feel enlightened and a little relieved, but other days I am weighed down from the moment I awake with this feeling of dread and depression. These are some of the most uncomfortable feelings I've ever experienced. Did you go through this? How long did it take to get through it, and was there anything that helped? 

Never went through any of that... seems more like a symptom of depression. Perhaps whatever medication you're on isn't working so well and needs adjusting. Some people need many many rounds of adjustments to their medication before they arrive at the right mix that lets them function normally.

Fear of dying - Mosts atheists I've met say they don't have a fear of death because they believe they'll just cease to exist, but I don't really see anyone talking about having fear of dying--what the process is going to be like and feel like both emotionally and physically, but primarily emotionally. I am afraid that my irrational fears of an afterlife will flood me at the end, and the result will be terror. So to some degree, I fear feeling fear. 

Yes, one does come to the notion that, once the body dies, the mind dies with it. After all, the mind is simply the combined effect of all electrical activity in the nervous system (not just the brain).
But that doesn't mean that I'm not afraid of dying. I am terrified of dying!
Dying is the number 1 thing that scares me!
Exactly because I am aware that once I reach that stage, that's it, no more, game over, the end, finito. I don't want my life to end, ever. It's the most precious thing to me.
Still, I know that, at some point, I'll have to come to grips with reality and death may become a release...

I have watched Christopher Hitchens' interviews and discussions as he was dying as well as read about his book Mortality, which he wrote while he was dying. As much as we can tell from a book, it doesn't sound like he had fear, only a sense of lack of meaning in the last days. I read that said that he wished his death itself could have some meaning, that he could die for something. I am very afraid of these feelings of desolation and that I will wish that I had somehow been able to still believe. Considering that you had a lifetime of religious indoctrination, do you think that these deeply instilled fears will somehow resurface at the end of your life? Do you know of any other atheists who have shared their dying experience with the public? I'd like to go view them. 

Don't know... but I think it's worth to, sometimes, seek out lists of things that people regret from their lives, as they reach old age and get close to dying.
Try to see if there is something on those lists that you think you will regret doing or not doing... and make it so you will not have those when you reach that time.

I'm rather miserable in the midst of these thoughts and fears, although some days are easier than others. It seems that the thoughts and feelings cycle: I'll feel like I'm doing well for a few days, and then I'll go back to a slew of days feeling weighed down by grief and fear. 

That feels like a depression... you're already having that looked at by a professional, so... All I can say is that you share this with your therapist. It might be important for him/her to know how often it happens.

Was your process of deconverting similar? I am hoping you can share some of your experiences and that hopefully I'll learn that these negative feelings are able to be overcome. How long does it take? I want it to be over now, but it appears to have its own timetable. 

Like I said, my personal experience was when I was very young and I hadn't all that baggage that you have... I had nearly none. Still, at that age, I thought I was the only person in the world (LOL, but true) that didn't believe in the existence of this thing called God... so I kept it to myself for years, sharing it a bit with my brother who quickly saw it like I did.
Then I found that there were more people like me... and that was a comforting thought.
Why comforting?... why do we like to belong to some group of people?
Perhaps you could see to it that you find a group of people where you feel comfortable, where you feel like you belong, where non-belief is not frowned upon, even if most of those in the group are believers.

Thank you!

I hope I didn't cause any more problems...  
If I did, I'm sorry.

Best of luck in getting through this.
It will take strength.