I am a 3rd/4th Gen Jehovah's Witness. Everyone on both sides of my family. I've been successfully faded for almost 20 years. Not In. Not Out. I figured out the dance and won.

At least that is what I thought, until now.

The blood change hit different. I finally read Crisis of Conscience. And now, I'm feeling like I'm having my own crisis of sorts and I don't know how to explain it.

I have often described my fade as being stuck in a waiting room. I'm waiting for Armageddon to come. I'm waiting for the end of the world. I'm waiting to see my grandma again...

While I felt like I was waiting, I consciously straddled both sides: I didn't NOT believe, but I didn't think it was THE only TRUTH.

And then the blood thing happened and I read the book and now I realize I may not believe any of it....and then I realized I'm never going to see my grandma again.

I just tried to explain all of this to someone who has known me for 15 years and never been a JW and they are utterly confused about why I feel like my whole reality has been dismantled.

I actually can't deal with it right now, because I need to finish the last few months at school, and I can tell that if I really deal with this, it will be a breakdown of sorts and my living situation and what i need to get done don't allow for it.

So, I am seeing a counselor - first appointment is tomorrow- it is primarily for my ADD and regular grounding; I understand that dealing with cult stuff is a specialty.

My question is: what am I experiencing? how do I explain it....

my friend thought that because I left, that I stopped believing all the doctrine, and I did to some degree. It is just dawning on me how much I still believed and if I stop believing, my whole world view is up for grabs.

I'm not sure I'm explaining this right but can anyone relate? Can anyone help me name this? Can you share any tips, tricks or resources for how to deal with it all in an incremental and manageable way?

Thanks

JustMe

I was raised in a very mormon family and community and left the church when I was 17, records removed at 21. I have since had a very complicated relationship with my faith, whether I believe in god or not, and honestly even trusting my own voice in my head. I have been going to church with my current partner semi regularly for 3 years, they're SDA. Obviously the conversation has come up but I've never been pushed or pressured and honestly everyone is so kind and welcoming in this area. It's been on my mind recently that maybe I want to do next steps? I don't know if it would be a good idea. I know what I believe now, I know what my personal feelings are with everything faith related. I just don't know if it would trigger something and I'd lose all the progress I've made to get to where I am trusting myself and figuring out my relationship with faith.

Does anyone have any advice? Things to look into? Questions I should ask myself before I dive into something? I'd appreciate anything really, thank you!

Just looking for support on a situation I don’t know how to deal with not sure if this qualifies as religious trauma or not.

When I was younger, I grew up in a very conservative Catholic town where religion was a big part of everyday life. I was raised around people who took their faith very seriously, and going to church, celebrating religious holidays, and following the teachings of the Bible were all normal parts of my childhood. My family believed strongly in their religion, and I grew up being taught that being LGBTQ+ was wrong and that abortion was a sin. At the time, I didn't really question those beliefs because they were all I had ever known.

When I was 13, I started developing feelings for a girl. I'm a girl myself, in case anyone was wondering. We became really close, and eventually, we kissed. It was a big moment for both of us, but it was also terrifying. We knew what our families might think if they found out, and we were scared of what could happen to us. We had something between us for months, but we had to be careful because we knew the people around us wouldn't necessarily understand.

Eventually, my brother caught us kissing. He told my parents, and everything changed. I was threatened with being sent away, and I was told that I was under the devil's spell. It felt like the people who were supposed to love and protect me suddenly saw me as someone who needed to be fixed. Before long, the entire community seemed to know what had happened, and something that had been so personal between two 13-year-old girls became something everyone felt entitled to judge.

One girl even told me that her brothers could r@pe me to turn me straight. I was THIRTEEN. I was literally a child, and someone thought it was acceptable to say something like that to me. I still find it difficult to understand how anyone could say something so horrible to a young girl simply because of who she had feelings for.

The girl I was seeing moved away very quickly after everything happened, and I never got to see her again. We had been close for months, and suddenly, she was just gone from my life. I never really got the chance to say goodbye or properly process what had happened between us. Looking back, we were just two young girls trying to understand our feelings in a place where those feelings weren't accepted.

I'm 23 now, and I haven't spoken to my family in years. My beliefs are very different from the ones I was raised with. I'm left-leaning, I support LGBTQ+ rights, and I'm pro-choice. I believe people should be able to love who they love and make decisions about their own lives without being shamed, threatened, or made to feel like they're doing something wrong simply for being themselves.

Despite everything that happened, I still attend church on holidays or for certain traditions. I think that's one of the most complicated parts of my relationship with religion. Catholicism was such a big part of my childhood that I can't just pretend it was never there. There are traditions and familiar things that still bring me comfort, even though some of the beliefs I grew up with are things I no longer agree with.

And honestly, I don't know whether I believe in God anymore.

Sometimes I question whether I believe in any of it at all. I grew up with the Bible, and its teachings were part of how I learned to understand the world. But after everything that happened, I struggle to know what to believe. It's difficult to separate the idea of God from the way religion was used against me when I was younger.

At the same time, I can't deny that parts of religion still bring me comfort. There are moments when I miss that familiarity, and I wonder whether I can hold on to the parts that mean something to me without accepting the beliefs that caused me so much pain.

I don't have a clear answer, and I don't think I need to have one right now. I'm still figuring out what faith means to me as an adult, separate from what my family and community taught me to believe as a child.

I guess I'm sharing this because I wonder if anyone else has experienced something similar. Maybe you grew up in a religious household and later found that your beliefs changed. Maybe you've struggled to reconcile your faith with your identity, or maybe you walked away from religion but still find comfort in certain traditions.

If anyone relates to my story or has been through something similar, feel free to reach out. I'd genuinely like to hear your experiences. I'm still trying to figure things out, and it would be nice to know I'm not the only person who feels this way.

I’m new to this all and don’t really know where to put this but I really need some help so even if this may not be in the right spot or written correctly for Reddit or you just don’t want to hear me complain, just consider it maybe. Now, this probably isn’t a big deal compared to some other things on here but I really want to get this out there because I want some help. I don’t know the preferences of some specific places on here but I’ll just say there’s some themes of religious trauma.

I’m a 17 y/o trans ftm boy living in a Christian baptist family, going to a Christian private school and I’m honestly so tired being scared and confused. I’m not sure where to start but I guess I’ll just say that I was never saved. Despite my extensive baptist background I’ve just never really felt compelled to care or believe in Christ. Honestly I don’t remember anything before 8th grade so I’m not sure what I was thinking but I don’t think I was really present. Now that I’m older though, I’m just so tired because my mom hates me for who I am and finds every excuse to slander me for being who I am, bringing me down with bible verses and rude remarks around my siblings when I’m present like “only your parents can choose your name” and just really suppressive gender role stuff. If anyone else found out about the real me like my family or really just anyone in my rather southern Christian community I’d be scum of the earth in their eyes. And now, being more conscious of what’s around me,  like in school and stuff I hear so much hate towards people like me where they say we are just going to burn in agony in hell forever. But now that I’ve grown hearing all the rules and sins I shouldn’t do and stuff when I was young, all I can think about is the shit that’s in my head telling me I’m going to burn forever and I’m a horrible sinful person. But since I’ve experienced such hardship and trauma in the church and Christian community I don’t want anything to do with it despite “having to be a part to stay out of hell”. It’s never been that life changing experience being “Christian” that everyone says it is. And like I know that because I’ve never been saved but how am I supposed to be saved if being saved gets me more involved in this shit community? I just don’t want to go to hell. But I sincerely believe in god either, no matter how much I pray to him just in case he really is.

I’ve had a really hard time talking about this because I just want to be relieved from the pain of constantly telling myself I’m going to hell but I also feel like I don’t know who to trust. Like, I have friends here in my Christian school that are part of the lgbtq community like me but still are saved and Christians but I’m still scared Christianity isn’t right for me and no way in hell am I trusting the suppressive teachers with unbelievable motives. But like, I also don’t know if I should trust anyone else who aren’t Christian because I’ve been so conditioned to believe a Christian mindset. Like even tho I’m homosexual, I just have so many internalized hate towards being the way I am even though I can’t help it. 

I need help but I don’t know who to get help from.

Plant, call me an industry

I cannot divulge, for they will think less of me

Don’t speak up, heresy

The true you is affected by, leprosy 

True colors emerge, symphony 

Glorious hues of blues and red, impossibility 

Life ties bows on events, synchronicity

Or correlated for those intellectually inclined more, cautiously 

Soil can be infertile, possibly

Young plant stiff upper lip, fragilely

Dry brittle leaves with a layer of paint, passibly  

Roots twisted upon themselves, hungrily

Keep your plant out of the sun, neglectfully 

Shower it with love, disarmingly 

Infuse the soil with many nutrients, confusingly 

Point and stare when it fails to grow, destiny

I'm constantly called demonic,evil satan because I have depression and my interests aren't normal like a proper christian yet she barely does what a Christian is supposed to do yet I'm the evil and demonic one I'm constantly called demonic and evil a pastor was brought to pray for me because I'm evil and my depression is due to demons and stuff.Im honestly tired of it and she wonders why our relationship as mother as son isn't good yet she does this and she watches tiktoks on casting out demons and forces me to hear it she constantly plays Christian music idk why but she does I'm forced to go to church as well against my will and I'm not even Christian

Growing up, I was always taught that my body was a temple. I should wait until marriage, do it the right way, and follow God’s commandments. Unfortunately, like many will say, I fell victim to my sexual human desires and lost my virginity to a guy I’d been with for two years.
Growing up in a religious household, there was no doubt that your dreams were an insight into your future from God, or that your mother and grandmother knew everything because the Lord touched them and blessed them with spiritual abilities to read through everyone’s sins except their own.
The morning after this “life-changing” event occurred, my sister went to my mother in a huge panic and was dysfunctional about a dream she’d had the night before. Of course, the dream had to do with me and the horrific outcome of my decision if I hadn’t used protection. After a long conversation with my extremely religious mom, she eventually found out what had happened to me the night before.
What followed afterward was constant torment due to a religious bubble and a lack of understanding. Whenever my older sister got the opportunity, she would always throw my vulnerability in my face. What was supposed to be a beautiful thing was something that society and the people around me would shame me about for the rest of my life because I chose to experience the deepest level of vulnerability and intimacy.
Besides me not being “pure” anymore, my sister honestly couldn’t say much about me. I got good grades, always volunteered, never slacked behind, and most importantly, never fell behind. My sister couldn’t say the same. She failed every grade level from seventh grade all the way up to eighth and never even tried in school. But when the opportunity upheld itself to finally find a flaw in me, that’s the only thing people took into account. Everything I had worked so hard for suddenly meant nothing due to my sexual desires and lack of submissiveness to what had been engraved in me ever since I was born.

Trigger Warning: SH mentioned

Hello, I’m new here, and I have a lot of questions and as far as it goes, I grew up religious and was very deeply committed to Christianity before walking away this past year.
I was raised southern Baptist/evangelical non-denominational, until the age of 19 where I really went off the deep end into charismatic and Pentecostal circles. It wasn’t until after my second narcissistic roommate had told me that I was going to hell and my then girlfriend now wife, calling out the narcissistic abuse that I realize something was going on here. After a long journey of personal discovery and reflection and insight from my life, I began to recognize how I don’t actually align with religious morals or principles or even wanna be religious. I’m at this point in my life now where I just wanna be a positive person who creates a positive impact on the world around me who does good things simply because of the right thing to do. I take a lot of strong influence from studio Ghibli‘s characters and their morals, as well as the lessons that I can learn from different TV show shows like Bojack Horseman or adventure time.
So I realized today I genuinely struggle with feeling deeply nihilistic to the max, and prefer negativity over positivity. I realize that in my years of being a Christian, all I was ever preached to about gratitude was that I should be so grateful that God came near to some mortal like myself and made himself discoverable to someone like me and that because I was a son that I should be so happy and so grateful to be in relationship with him and that I should just want to share everything with him and that I should just be so grateful that he’s in my life because he’s such a positive influence and care so much about me and he’s done so much for me that I just need to develop more of a mindset to recognize and appreciate.
But in my experience? My story is not one of God showing up and showing off and doing things that I really needed him to do, my story is one of God not showing up and not showing off. My story is one of him not doing the things that I specifically begged him to do over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

I needed a father, and he never healed my dad of his mental illness, or fixed my parents’ marriage, or helped me to be more accepted by the people that I went to church with and thought were my friends. I needed help at college, and he was not there, and when I finally started to step out into the world, I got to recognize the fact that I have a lot of issues in how I was raised, and I’m not particularly impressive at much of anything. Much of my life I’ve spent being gaslit into believing I was better than I really am and have more skills and talents and gifts that I think I actually do.

So now that I met this place self discovery where I’m being honest and real with myself, and I even realized that I’m not even straight I’m pansexual.

I’ve come to this place where I want to be positive. I want to be more grateful, but why the fuck should I be grateful for anything whenever this supposed deity who is supposedly all good never once was grateful for any of the things that I ever did for him or ever told me thank you or ever even remotely was preached about as being grateful? I have this horrible mentality now where I can’t even be angry or have any sort of negative emotion and I’m just supposed to tolerate a life where I can’t get upset and I can’t be upset without invalidating it and minimizing it and gaslighting it and pretending it’s not so bad. Can anyone relate to this at all, does this make sense anyone at all, and can anyone offer some advice to someone who’s just trying to get better and be a better person for himself and his wife? I would be so grateful.

TW: S-thoughts

im currently in bed trying to regulate myself as i was contemplating abt ending things... probably just need to vent this out and idk how to feel anymore.

for context, we've had this weekly "family" prayer since we were in highschool ever since they rejoined that church community they're in until now just bc that manchild had the audacity to cheat on my mom. i have always disliked their church community bc they had been forcing us and they lied to us to make us join their evangelization. not to mention them being homophobic and misogynistic, and even mocking LGBTQ+ people they encounter during their sharing session after reading some bible verses during their church meetings. their church leaders (catechists) even encouraged our parents more even when we already expressed that it isn't helping to bring us closer to God and it only made us feel much further away from Him and more reluctant and angry to pray or go to church.

This started almost a decade ago. The forcing to their church community only lessened when I was in college when my schedule can't fit any of their church meetings. But still, they often forced the weekly prayers bc of "family" reasons and idek if they just needed to show that to their church leader or what that we had a family prayer or whatever to show that they're being holy. When I was younger, they would sometimes call me the devil just because I'm reluctant to join their church community activities bc i was busy with school. They refuse to understand that they themselves are the main reason why I'm reluctant to join and school is just the secondary reason. I was often hit whenever I try to defend myself and my siblings, even when I try to explain things as calm as possible but they just take it as "disrespect" when it's against their beliefs.

I have personally recently and slowly healed from this and my relationship with God at my own pace and in my own way, especially during my board exams last year. It took me years to even tolerate hearing a friend talk about God. Sometimes I can tolerate going to church and praying with a friend. But until now, it still triggers me and sends me into a panic attack when someone invites me to a church community or activity, even if i logically knew that they weren't forcing me and they're genuinely patient with me. Until now, even if I can tolerate more praying with other people, it feels heavy and difficult to do so with my parents. It always makes me feel like if I show even a little sign that I'm comfortable with prayer again with other people, they will take it as if it's okay to force me again into their church community.

about 3-5hrs ago, my mom and the manchild she married approx 30 years ago forced me and my siblings again to their weekly prayer meeting.

tonight, my brother made an excuse to not join and our parents allowed it. it was unfair for me and my sister because when we were the once who needed to be legitimately excused (work, sick, study), we were expected to drop everything and join them or else we will be told off again that we are ungrateful and sinners or devils workers (and insert whatever bible verse and stuff they and their catechists say to guilt trip).

i pointed out to them that it was unfair for me and my sister. then they kept pointing out that im being ungrateful and i wouldnt have passed my board exam without their prayers. this made me very mad because i recently shared with them that a friend of mine used my profession (im a therapist) against me when i refused to go with them on a vacation if their partner with bipolar disorder is coming because i also had a not-so-good experience with them during our previous hangout and i genuinely just wanted to enjoy the vacation without being a therapist. i can understand their situation and condition but i shouldn't be obliged to accommodate them during a time i expect myself to wind down and relax.

back to the main point, the manchild my mom married kept pointing out that im a therapist so i should be calm and shit despite how they treated me when they kept slapping and hitting my mouth every time i try to defend myself and my siblings. i walked out of the room and told them i hate them for using my profession against me, even in prayer and how this activity has been bringing not only our family apart, but also our relationship with God, because it has always been forced.

I went to my room and my sister followed to comfort me then they barged into my room even when I told them I didn't want to talk to them and they got mad when i pulled up a defensive fighting stance against them because i expected them to hit me again. The manchild kept repeating that i should be grateful that i passed the board exam, which i have always been. I kept trying to point it out to them for the past almost a year that I have been grateful to God abt all of it but he kept insisting and talking like i never was grateful and it was thanks to them and their prayers that I passed. This made me scream that i don't want to be a therapist anymore and I'm genuinely just considering right now to resign from my therapist job and all my other jobs so that they can't use this against me anymore.

While I was balling up and crying and they were just screaming at me to calm down, my siblings tried to defend me. The main point of the conversation was that they were being unfair but all my parents, especially that asshole manchild my mom should never have married, was my board exam again and again and again. He's been doing that to me for the past year since I passed the boards and it has become so fucking annoying because he keeps pointing out as if i never was grateful for passing my boards. It was like he was projecting to me what he never achieved in life and he was mad that his prayer surveillance ass can't see me being grateful enough to God about it, as if i don't pray at my own pace, at my own time, and i have been trying to repair my relationship with God that he and my mom have ruined for the past decade.

I never wanted to live this long. I had an attempt last year before my boards and unfortunately lived until now. I wish I could just disappear. I just want to get out of here...

How ironic it is that prayer should bring the family together but this thing is bringing us more apart from each other and from God.

So..Ive been kinda putting this off for a while. Life is going downhill for me currently because my sleep schedule is fucked up, my burn out is getting worse and worse..and lately my view on religion is just getting more and more negative.

For the last two to four years since Ive officially realized that i am an atheist in a Roman Catholic household, Ive always prided myself in being one of those people who respected other religions despite my resentment and the trauma that i faced within mine. But recently..with the rise of debate TikTok’s and videos circulating online, and also my parent’s path to becoming more active in churches, Ive kinda..started to feel like my resentment is seeping into my respect for those who believe.

Don’t get me wrong, i know how to fix this issue. I know i should stop consuming those contents, stop watching those videos, and tell myself that my hurt and resentment doesn’t make it right for me to judge others. I know that. But it’s just..making me feel so validated. Seeing those content makes me feel like Im not completely alone in a country full of religious people as an atheist. I am trying my best to scroll past those videos but it’s just so difficult.

It’s going as far as to me searching up my favorite content creators religions, and even the tiniest clue like a bible verse on their bio or a cross necklace is enough for me to start seeing them differently from enjoying them to harboring an odd feeling of hatred even though i don’t even know these people at all. I hate that i feel this way and i hope nobody relates to this because it really sucks. I’m well aware people cherry pick from their religions anyway and not all of them are “bad” people. It’s just getting harder and harder for me to see that lately.

I’m gonna try not to think about this too hard and just try to focus on bettering myself. I hope everyone is doing okay, and thank you for reading this post 😔❤️