Indoctrination and how it has severly effected me.

[brewer]

Welcome.

I'm not sure how old you are but it is apparent that you are still under your parents influence. That makes it tough. You mentioned OCD. You don't have to answer but if you could I'm curious what kind of therapy you are receiving. Medication? Talk/Psycho therapy? CBT/REMT? ............................ Are you talking to your therapists about your dilemma? Telling them that religion is a trigger for the OCD (which it appears to be)?

My first step away from the brain washing was to convince my parents that I was not going to attend church. I told them that I was not getting anything out of it and it made me feel uncomfortable. In typical parent fashion, they yelled and threatened and made me go the next Sunday. About 15 min. into the service I said I had to pee and got up and left. Didn't return. Was able to walk home as we were only a few miles away. When they got home, again in typical parent fashion, they yelled and threatened and said that I was going next Sunday. Sunday came, after a few minutes I got up and left again. They got the hint. The fact that they did not want to be embarrassed in front of the whole congregation helped. Could not have a seen in front of the movers and shakers in our small town. After that, I stuck to my guns and my parents and I agreed that they could believe what the wanted, I could believe what I wanted. It was an uneasy truce for many years.

This may not work for you. I don't know what lengths your parents will go to in keeping the fantasy alive. If they force you to attend, and you can't walk out, you could start smaller. Stop the chanting, stop singing, basically stop participating in the service. Don't stand every time they all stand. Don't open the books. Don't speak to others.

These are only suggestions, ones that may not work for you. You'll have to find your own way to deal with your situation. I wish you the best.

[Socratic Meth Head]

Welcome.

I'm not sure how old you are but it is apparent that you are still under your parents influence. That makes it tough. You mentioned OCD. You don't have to answer but if you could I'm curious what kind of therapy you are receiving. Medication? Talk/Psycho therapy? CBT/REMT? ............................ Are you talking to your therapists about your dilemma? Telling them that religion is a trigger for the OCD (which it appears to be)?

My first step away from the brain washing was to convince my parents that I was not going to attend church. I told them that I was not getting anything out of it and it made me feel uncomfortable. In typical parent fashion, they yelled and threatened and made me go the next Sunday. About 15 min. into the service I said I had to pee and got up and left. Didn't return. Was able to walk home as we were only a few miles away. When they got home, again in typical parent fashion, they yelled and threatened and said that I was going next Sunday. Sunday came, after a few minutes I got up and left again. They got the hint. The fact that they did not want to be embarrassed in front of the whole congregation helped. Could not have a seen in front of the movers and shakers in our small town. After that, I stuck to my guns and my parents and I agreed that they could believe what the wanted, I could believe what I wanted. It was an uneasy truce for many years.

This may not work for you. I don't know what lengths your parents will go to in keeping the fantasy alive. If they force you to attend, and you can't walk out, you could start smaller. Stop the chanting, stop singing, basically stop participating in the service. Don't stand every time they all stand. Don't open the books. Don't speak to others.

These are only suggestions, ones that may not work for you. You'll have to find your own way to deal with your situation. I wish you the best.

I am not recieving any CBT yet. Mostly talk therapy and medication. My OCD is mostly sexuality based. HOCD, POCD, and Harm OCD. I have already stopped singing in Church. My brother begged and pleaded to not go to church when he was an athiest, but they held up and they had convinced him. I dont want to be rude, so i will shake hands with them and i have been giving subtle hints to my parents like discussing the beauty of evolution and natural selection (my dad thinks god made evolution and my mom just flat out doesnt understand it). If i tell her i do not want to go, she will make me go. After my brother told my mom he was an athiest, he brought our pastor to talk to him, had everyone in the house go against him and so fourth. I live in the south which makes it much worse because everyone is like "isnt god amazing?" So i must internally throw around the question.

[Jenny A]

Hello,

Everyone has a different experience. I knew I didn't believe from about the age of five or so. I couldn't figure out why all the adults I knew did. I didn't hate church though. It was mildly pleasant, and I liked Bible camp. The sticking point came at adolescence with confirmation classes. I finished the classes but was unwilling to stand up and be confirmed. It required publicly professing things that I not only didn't believe in, but didn't even think plausible.

We didn't shout in my family. We just had endless forced discussions. It's the pastor who brought the matter to an end. He agreed that no one should stand up before his alter and lie. He said he wouldn't let me do it until I told him I believed. He was actually rather kind to me.

The mistake the poor man made was to suggest I read the whole Bible with commentary. Previously I had felt guilty about not believing because it hurt my parents and made me feel like an outsider. The Bible is great for relieving guilt for not believing. The god and morals in there are heinous. I suggest actually reading the thing. As you do, ask yourself if god is fair or moral. Think about things from the point of view of non-Hebrews. Pay attention to descriptions of the natural world. Notice the sacred importance of writing and how late writing appears. Ask yourself about the sanity of the OT laws. Mixed fabrics are a sin? Compare the Jesus of the first three gospels to the Gospel of John. Read what Jesus actually said about when the kingdom of heaven is coming. Trust me, the more you actually read that book the less you will believe it, and the better you will feel about not believing.

I make no promises about your parents. Mom has been willfully forgetting that I don't believe for a good thirty years now. But we still love each other. (Yeah I'm as old as your parents or more so). My girls are in their late teens.)(

[AFTT47]

GD, we are born in a state of extreme immaturity due to the size of the birth canal. Our brain undergoes a great deal of development as we mature. Some hard wiring of the brain is genetic but quite a bit of it is the result of environment. Your brain was cruelly wired by bullshit. It will take some time to completely undo that but the fact that you were able to recognize the bullshit on your own means you are plenty open enough to get through the process. You'll do fine. Keep doing what you're doing and you'll be free before you know it.

[drfuzzy]

Hi GD and welcome!
I agree with JennyA - - - I love the member responses and reading suggestions.  PARTICULARLY the Bible.  Seriously.
I was raised Pentecostal.  I get what you're going through.  And being under your parents roof must be tough.  Keeping the peace is generally a good idea.  Seeing you read the Bible would calm their ruffled feathers, but for all the wrong reasons.  You've been taught to read it with belief, prayerfully, after all, this is God's Word, right?  Just read it.  Read it, but this time ask questions as you go.  Start with stories you may have loved as a child - the Exodus (have you ever wondered about God's treatment of the Egyptians in this tale?); or the Flood (have you ever imagined what was supposedly happening to all of the other people - or how Noah got a pair of penguins and polar bears and kangaroos halfway around the world to board his little boat?) - - just read.  Read it like any other story.  
   There are a lot of scientific analysis sites online about the Flood story - new archaeological analysis of the Exodus and the origins of the Hebrews - lots of stuff you can look into without it being a chore.  Just go with the questions, go with the flow and don't stress.  You'll come to your own conclusions.

[robvalue]

Welcome to the forum

I'm very sorry to hear about what you've gone through. You've clearly been heavily indoctrinated, and this has left pockets of resistance in your brain. It's natural for the brain to try and defend deeply ingrained belief by throwing up any defence mechanism it thinks will help.

For what it's worth, Christinaity is just another made up story along with every other religion. They thrive on people's thirst for easy answers and people's discomfort with death. If you hadn't been told about this religion, you'd never know anything about it. Nothing in it is actually evident from what we see.

Of course, Satan is the perfect "get out of jail free" card for them. Whatever doubts you have, it's Satan. Evidence? Satan. Other people talking sense? Satan. And so on. It's simple and childish, but coupled with your indoctrination it is powerful. Hopefully you'll see it's nothing but a cheap trick, in time.

My biggest piece of advice is to learn to trust the logical part of your brain to work out what is true and what is not. The emotional part is not realiable. It's been shown time and again that it gives all sorts of incorrect conclusions. Emotions help you do the right thing, but they don't work very well when investigating reality objectively.

I'm not sure if this will help or not, but I think it's worth a try. This is a video series I absolutely love, with a couple of very funny guys analysing and laughing at the bible. It's highly entertaining, and they provide interesting insights too. I'm hoping it could help break the spell that somewhat remains over you by highlighting how utterly stupid the bible is. I mean, it's really stupid. I can't stress that enough. So just reading it yourself will show that, but this is a fun way of doing it and it may dislodge some of those feelings.

I hope you stick around, and that we can help you through Don't worry, it's normal to feel distressed once you first get out of religion, especially when those around you are trying to drag you back in. In time, you'll see it's a bunch of nonsense. Your emotions are trying to catch up with the rational part of your brain. Regarding your parents, my advice would be to tow the line and just fake it until you can move out, unless doing so causes you to feel even worse. They clearly won't respect your decision and are beyond reason regarding this subject.

So here's the first in the video series I mentioned, along with a video I made to help people in your kind of situation.

http://youtu.be/ZQ8tMApaEK0

http://youtu.be/4W0mJ7svsKk

[SteelCurtain]

Welcome!

I'm sorry to hear about your struggles. That must really be hard.

My advice is to try and not "make up your mind." Keep letting the evidence in, and remember that a "belief" isn't something you choose. You cannot choose to be convinced of something. There is no way I can truly believe that unicorns are a thing based on my experiences thusfar in life.

As far as growing up in the South, I survived it as a non-believer, and you will too. Do well in school, go out of state to a good college, and once you are self sufficient, you are free to be who you want. My joys were in being an expert subterfuge. I could outsmart most adults, so when I'd have conversations with these people who are so inculcated they cannot see past their nose, I was able to make them look stupid, but only to me. I only got caught once, because I got cocky.

[robvalue]

It would appear this is a duplicate of this thread.

[SteelCurtain]

Moderator Notice
I have merged the two threads with the identical OP.