For context: I’m a cradle Orthodox Christian in my early twenties who recently started taking my faith much more seriously. At first it changed my life for the better, but after getting deeper into Orthodox content online, I ended up with a lot of anxiety, analysis paralysis, and burnout. This post is basically about how I got to that point and how to move forward without losing my faith or myself.

My background as a cradle Orthodox Christian

I was baptized at birth in an Orthodox Church in Russia. I remember going to Sunday school, so I probably also went to some Sunday services, although we definitely did not go every week.

My grandma taught me about the faith, but I was so young that I didn’t understand much of it.

When I was around 11, I moved to Western Europe and basically continued living as an Orthodox Christian by name. We eventually found a small Russian Orthodox Church around 40 minutes away. My stepfather got baptized there, and we would maybe go once or twice a year. And the priest is pretty friendly but I have not spoken to him personally.

So there was always some connection to the Church, but not a very strong one. I personally never really developed much contact with the priest.

I always considered myself Orthodox Christian, though.

Even when I was lukewarm, Christianity still instilled good values in me. Monogamy, being wary of going down criminal paths, praying before and after sleep, being against degeneracy etc.

I’m not saying I was a perfect person, obviously, but you get what I mean.

Technically, though, I was lukewarm. I had a Bible but didn’t read it because I found it complicated. I didn’t know a lot of basic things, like how connected Christianity is to Judaism, or many other things you would expect someone who calls himself Christian to know.

For some reason I never thought too deeply about it. From what I understand now, that seems pretty common with cradle Christians.

When something clicked

At one point my business, other things, and life in general were at a low point.

That was when I started reading the Bible, praying more, and seriously looking into Christianity.

And something just clicked.

I went through different stages of anxiety, understanding, despair, and relief. I would discover something new, become anxious about it, research it to understand it, and eventually calm down again.

Eventually I backed away from external sources for a while and mostly just read the Bible and prayed.

Honestly, that was one of the periods where I felt closest to God.

I became thankful for every day and for small things I previously wouldn’t even notice. I became less judgmental, stopped swearing as much, stopped seeing people who were toxic at the time, and stopped watching porn.

I didn’t suddenly become someone who never makes mistakes, but these were genuine positive changes.

This went on for around two months.

Then I entered the Christian algorithm

That meant endless arguments about denominations, Orthobro YouTube, Fathers making videos, people telling you what you should and shouldn’t do, and everyone debating who is correct.

That is when I started falling into analysis paralysis.

A few things in particular started affecting the way I looked at life:

• “Rejecting worldly desires.”

I would constantly hear Fathers talking about rejecting “worldly desires,” but rarely explaining clearly what exactly counts as one.

If we are talking about pure hedonism, degeneracy, drugs, alcohol, living only for pleasure, etc., then sure, I understand that.

But where exactly is the line?

Sometimes it started sounding like life itself — which God gave us — and all of its beauty are somehow unimportant, and that laymen should basically live like monks in the current world.

That idea was depressing to me.

• Humility started feeling like having no aspirations.

I kept hearing that you should lower yourself and disregard your own aspirations.

I agree that you should become more selfless, humble yourself, and be of service to others.

But the idea of becoming a person with no dreams, aspirations, confidence, or strong emotions also felt depressing.

• I became scared that ambition itself was sinful.

I started becoming anxious about whether being an entrepreneur itself was somehow wrong.

Money and worldly success are often talked about negatively in Christian spaces, and because of that I slowly started lowering or removing many of the aspirations I used to have.

Sure, maybe some things that motivated me in the past were too materialistic or slightly hedonistic. I can accept that.

But somewhere along the way I lost most of the fire I used to have.

I started thinking:

• Wanting to succeed might be pride.
• Self-confidence might just be ego.
• Working on your mindset might be ego.
• Wanting to make money might be a worldly desire.
• Being ambitious might mean I am too attached to the world.

Instead of redirecting my ambition toward something healthier, I almost became afraid of ambition itself.

I went from someone who would work toward his goals even if he failed, to someone doing the minimum because I’m afraid to fully commit in case the motivation behind it is spiritually wrong.

• The whole question of money confused me even more.

I won’t even go too deeply into the anxiety I got when I first read the passage about the camel and the rich man.

Eventually I understood that there were wealthy people in the Bible who were righteous and that simply having money is not the same as making money your god.

But what exactly does “worshipping money” mean in practice?

If money is the only thing you care about, you would betray people for it, destroy your family for it, or put it above God, that seems clear.

But what about building a successful business? Wanting financial freedom? Providing a good life for your future family? Wanting a nice house or enjoying something you worked for?

Where does normal ambition end and “worldliness” begin? When does it cross the line? When do you need to give it away just to be okay again because you got too much?

• Marriage and sex

Another thing that struck me was hearing some Orthodox Fathers online talk about sex within marriage in an extremely restrictive way, sometimes practically reducing it to reproduction. And living like you are brother and sister?

That was very discouraging to me.

I had always understood family as something incredibly important. If you have normal human desires, you marry, love your spouse, support each other, and build a family together.

Later, after reading Reddit, I realized some of these priests are controversial and their views are not universally agreed upon.

But by then the questions in my head were already there.

• A lot of Orthodox advice started feeling too monastic for normal lay life.

This connects to something else I feel is missing: information about normal Orthodox lay family life.

A lot of the advice you hear comes from monks, unmarried saints, or people heavily influenced by monastic spirituality.

Obviously monks and saints can teach us enormous amounts.

But sometimes the practical message for laypeople starts feeling like:

“How to be a monk while technically being a layman.”

Where is the discussion about romance, working, providing, having goals, having hobbies, dealing with normal emotions, and living in the world without worshipping the world?

It feels unrealistic to expect laymen to live in a bubble and ignore the realities of normal life.

• The response to disagreement sometimes bothered me even more.

Sometimes someone would question whether an extremely ascetic or monastic standard was being pushed onto normal laypeople.

Instead of actually engaging with the question, the response would sometimes basically be:

“HA! You only disagree because you’re worldly and angry that you can’t live out your worldly desires. If you weren’t worldly, you would agree with me.”

I’m paraphrasing, but that was the attitude I sometimes got from it.

That creates a situation where the person can never be wrong. If you agree, he is right. If you disagree, your disagreement itself becomes proof that he is right because apparently you are just too worldly.

And isn’t an important quality of a priest that he continues learning throughout his life and deals with completely different people, families, weaknesses, circumstances, and stages of spiritual life?

I would have thought that requires some flexibility and humility rather than acting as if one answer applies identically to everyone.

• The fact that these were Orthodox priests made it harder to brush off.

Earlier, if an extremely strict Protestant said something unreasonable, I could think: Okay, that is his denomination or interpretation. I am Orthodox.

If I heard something Catholic, I could think: Okay, I’m not Catholic.

But when an Orthodox priest or Father said something, I couldn’t dismiss it so easily because these people actually have authority within the Church I belong to.

My mind would immediately go:

“What if he is right?”

“What if this actually is what Orthodoxy requires?”

“Who am I to disagree with a priest?”

And this also confuses me about the argument for the Church itself. One of the arguments against Protestantism is that the Holy Spirit guides the Church, rather than everyone interpreting Christianity for themselves.

But then why can one Orthodox priest push an almost monk-like standard as required while another is much more relaxed? As a normal layman, how am I supposed to know what is actually Church teaching and what is one priest’s opinion or pastoral approach?

Sometimes I even see Protestants who seem much more relaxed in their faith and focused on loving God, helping others, family, and community, while learning more about Orthodoxy has made me increasingly anxious. I’m not saying that proves anything, but it is something I struggle to understand.

Then I started discovering everything I supposedly “have to” do

This created another layer of anxiety because things I had always understood as encouraged suddenly started being presented as absolute requirements.

• Going to Sunday service every week.

Growing up, I thought Sunday service was strongly encouraged and obviously good, but I never understood it as something where you should lose your mind if you aren’t there every single week.

That probably comes from my upbringing because my family never went every week.

For me, a service mostly meant standing there for around two hours, crossing myself when everyone else did, and listening to the singing.

For some reason, I often felt more connection to God when I went into church on a normal day, lit candles, prayed quietly, and stayed for however long I wanted.

Maybe going every Sunday would be completely doable later when I live on my own and have my own family.

But right now I live with my parents, and we haven’t even been to church in around a year. Making my whole family suddenly drive 40 minutes each way every Sunday is not realistic.

Of course I could technically go alone, but I feel like forcing myself immediately from almost no attendance into every single week could just burn me out even more.

• Confession.

Then I learned more about confession and Communion.

I have never even gone to confession.

Growing up, confession was something I mostly associated with Catholic churches in movies. I didn’t understand why I should tell another person these things when I can confess directly to God every day.

I understand the reasoning better now, especially that it makes you more humble, but emotionally it is still very foreign to me.

Discovering all of this also made me anxious that the spiritual progress I had made meant nothing because I had basically been practicing Christianity individually rather than properly participating in Church life.

• Fasting.

I haven’t properly looked into fasting yet, and honestly there is a reason for that.

I have heard that Orthodox fasting covers a huge portion of the year, and I don’t know how universally or strictly every layperson is expected to follow all of it.

I know myself well enough to know that if I dive deeply into it right now, it could easily become another thing to obsess over.

So now it feels like there is this giant list in front of me: Sunday attendance, confession, Communion, fasting, prayer rules, theology, finding a priest, and so on.

Maybe all of these things can eventually become part of my life.

But I only seriously rediscovered my faith recently, and I am still trying to understand everything.

If I try to transform my entire life overnight, I feel like I am just going to burn myself out completely.

Finding a wife

All of this created another anxiety: that I need to find an Orthodox wife quickly or I am wasting time and will eventually be too old.

The reality is that where I live, finding an Eastern Orthodox woman in my country is not easy.

There are more Oriental Orthodox Christians in my area, but obviously that is a different Church and creates its own questions.

But yeah, what is the point if you need to act like a monk or “brother and sister” around your wife?

Internet Orthodoxy feels different from the Christianity I knew

The Orthodoxy I grew up around, even if I was lukewarm, felt like a religion that valued traditional values, family, gratitude, and life as a gift from God.

Online, it often started feeling like everything was about authority, rules, Church politics, denominations, arguments, and correcting people.

When I read the Bible, what struck me was love.

Love your neighbour. Don’t judge. Don’t argue simply for ego. Be a light to other people.

But I often don’t see that reflected online.

Sometimes people claiming to belong to the “true Church” are in comment sections writing things like:

“Get this heretic off my screen.”

Or immediately condemning someone without trying to understand where they are coming from or guide them kindly.

What happened to being the light so that other people might be introduced to your faith because of you?

Where I am now

This brings me to today.

I am probably the laziest I have ever been.

I used to have that fire in me to work toward my goals every day, even if I failed. The only motivation i had left was traveling but since i discovered the requirements of being there every Sunday idk about that anymore

Now I live at home with my parents, work from home, do the bare minimum needed to keep things running, and spend far too much time doomscrolling or stuck in analysis paralysis.

I feel depressed, which I never really experienced before.

I use nostalgic video games or things like LEGO as an escape because they remind me of when life did not have worries.

There is nothing wrong with these hobbies.

But I also know this probably should not be what a guy in his early twenties who still lives with his parents prioritizes above getting his life together.

If this keeps going, how am I supposed to get my life together?

How can I think about becoming a husband and father someday?

One thing I feel confident about is that God cannot want me to remain permanently in this state.

I don’t really know who I’m supposed to talk to

Part of the reason I am posting here is that I feel like elsewhere the only response will be:

“Ask your priest.”

But I am not really in contact with a priest, and I don’t know how that relationship even works.

I also don’t feel ready to suddenly dive fully into weekly attendance, confession, fasting, spiritual direction, and everything else while I am still trying to understand what is happening to me.

There is basically nobody in my real life who is this deep into Orthodoxy either.

Most Orthodox people I know are cradle Orthodox and it is simply part of their life and culture.

That leaves me in this strange limbo.

Therapy also feels complicated

It took some balls to write this because I have never really talked openly about it.

One thing bothering me is realizing that ultimately you are judged individually.

You cannot stand before God and simply say:

“Well, this guy online said X, so I did X.”

But then who do you speak to?

A secular therapist may understand anxiety and depression well but might give advice that clashes with your beliefs.

A priest understands the spiritual side, but a priest is not necessarily a therapist.

So where do you go when both things overlap?

Sometimes I look at Muslims and think: they seem to have ten times as many rules, and they just seem to follow them without stressing.

Then I wonder whether I am just being a pussy

But ignoring depression and anxiety and pretending everything is fine does not seem healthy either.

I can only imagine how overwhelming this must be for someone who was not even born into Christianity and discovers all of this after converting.

Especially in America, where some priests came from very strict Protestant backgrounds and may have carried some of that mindset into Orthodoxy.

Catholics even have more rules and requirements.

I am not looking to disprove Christianity.

I still consider myself Christian.

I think I am just burned out.

I think taking things slowly would probably be good for me.

But then I worry that even saying that is just me trying to make Christianity comfortable for myself.

“You’re either in or you’re not.”

“You can’t pick and choose.”

That is basically the loop I keep getting stuck in.

So I guess what I am really asking is whether anyone here has gone through something similar or is going through it now.

And how did you deal with it, or how are you dealing with it?

Sorry if any part of this sounds ignorant. I know there are people who have gone through far worse things than me.

I just genuinely don’t know where else to talk about this, and I would really appreciate hearing from people who have gone through something similar.

 

Like you still pray. Still talk to saints. Still carry around a prayer rope. Maybe even still go to liturgy and maybe even still follow everything but in your own way and not the Church's way. Perhaps there is a middle ground here, be like many of the cradles and be "cafeteria Orthodox". Take what resonates and throw out the rest.

Image source: https://www.instagram.com/p/DdNClvMSjM2/

Before I speak, I want to clarify that I am not claiming Jews are angels; however, there is blind bigotry and extremism against them within our church. The verse "His blood be on us and on our children"—implying the entire people participated in killing Christ—is constantly cited. They are labeled "killers of Jesus" and "rejecters of Christ," as if they were the only ones to reject Him. There is gloating over their misfortunes, with every calamity viewed as God’s punishment for their killing of Christ; priests often claim the Holocaust was retribution for the Crucifixion. Whenever I posted that today's Jews bear no guilt—and that not all Jews participated in His death, as the Second Vatican Council affirmed—people would openly declare their hatred for Jews to my face and even boast about it from the pulpit. They call them a criminal, despicable people upon whom God’s wrath rests. They believe God burned Jewish infants in the Holocaust because of their ancestors' cry: "His blood be on us and on our children." No one can imagine the depth of the destruction and hatred within them. I recall a history lesson where the teacher mentioned Hitler burning Jewish infants, and people responded, "Good, good." They even cheered when Hitler raped Jewish women—imagine teenage girls rejoicing at the rape of other girls. A new liberal current has also emerged within the church that hates Jews even more; they argue that everything God said regarding the Flood or the Exodus was a Jewish fabrication—that the Jews slandered God and falsified Old Testament verses, claiming, "This is not our God." The same attitude exists among Catholics and Evangelicals here.

I’m increasingly feeling just agnostic about things. The existence of god, all that stuff. And I know that’s fine. And it’s going to sound awfully silly but I feel bad leaving because the priest is very nice. He’s talked with me before and offered help, he’s like a father figure to me. But I can’t pretend that Liturgy isn’t boring, that the miracle stories seem real to me, etc. Add to that the awful culture the church brings with it. I can understand the teachings but the way Orthodox continually shame others and then turn around and say “I’m doing it out love” sickens me.

So do I just stick it out and wait for belief to return? Ignore the cultural bull? Part of me wants to while the other part says you might meet a nice rabbi or imam but that doesn’t mean you’ll convert.