First post!

I always thought that if I were to start a blog, I would do it once I had “attained.” I’ve had a very unusual life thus far (I’m now in my early thirties) but this seems like a strange time to start blogging, since I have basically hit rock bottom. But, having reached this place, I am starved for a community. A group of people who I can share my story with anonymously, but who will support me nonetheless. You see, I have a diagnosis of Complex-PTSD so severe that after a tremendous number of inpatient psychiatric hospitalizations, I have been told by my current inpatient doctor that I cannot live independently. This means that I could be in the hospital for several months at least until I get transferred to either a group home or a state hospital. (I don’t know how terminology works elsewhere but I live in the USA, where a state hospital is a long-term facility.)

Along the way, I have had my fair share of supports, such as the International Cultic Studies Association, which I would highly recommend to anyone escaping a coercive religious environment. I was homeschooled in a group that held to the exact same creed that was written in 1689 and last I checked was also the official statement of faith for the Westboro Baptist Church. The main difference between us and WBC was that they obviously are known for their shocking proselytization efforts, whereas we were run by introverts so we just avoided conflict by largely ignoring the fact that we believed that people were dropping to their eternal damnation every second. Honestly, I don’t know which is worse. Unfortunately for me, I also have a hard time disentangling the toxicity of the religion from the innate toxicity of each of my parents’ personalities. Neither of them was raised in the group and I have no idea how much of what happened would have happened anyway, regardless of religion. My mother certainly is quite sadistic by nature and used the religion as a tool for her purposes. However, I plan to write mostly about my recovery from religion because even if she didn’t believe the stuff, I sure did, and being beaten over the head with the doctrine of Total Depravity from the time you’re born and being threatened constantly with going to hell if you don’t believe all the theology exactly just right will mess anyone up. Also, and this is key, I was handed a meaning of life by my parents and religious authority figures. I was indoctrinated that the meaning of life was in our concept of God, and if I ever left, I would have no meaning or purpose. A huge part of what I want to do with this blog is document my journey to finding meaning in my life apart from that theology.

Someday, maybe I will tell the tale of how I left Christianity entirely. For now, suffice it to say that despite being homeschooled and in extreme isolation, and despite going to an Evangelical college, and despite immersing myself in nothing but Christian apologetics (and lots of it), I had “doubts.” I tried incredibly hard to be a Christian, but after years of wrestling, I realized that I could never be both Christian and true to myself. It was not until very recently that I discovered that there are other people who have been making the same arguments that I had been making all this time and that these people call themselves “atheists.” I had been referring to myself as an agnostic. Now I refer to myself as atheist or agnostic as my mood strikes me. Meanwhile, every mental health worker I’ve ever worked with (and believe me, I’ve been through a lot of therapy) has been telling me that I have over-the-top trauma from my abusive family. I don’t plan to spend as much time on the Complex-PTSD, which is apparently referred to as Developmental Trauma in the international version of the DSM, but it will probably come up sometimes. For example, although I in no way desire a relationship with either of my parents, my heart aches for my siblings, one of whom is married with several children. They idolize our parents and given that I have cut off our parents AND God, they really want nothing to do with me, leaving me largely alone. I do have a few extended family members who are phenomenal, but I miss my siblings every minute of every day, more deeply than I could ever describe. When I left, our parents went into total-lockdown mode on my siblings. I’m the black sheep, and turning out like me seems to be the worst thing that could happen to a person. I had hoped that if I left they would follow, but that backfired and instead, my having become an apostate has cemented them in their beliefs all the more.

Anyway, despite having phenomenal online support groups, I thought I’d carve out a tiny portion of the web and make my story known. I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, I’m essentially institutionalized as a psych patient. On the other hand, before my symptoms got out of hand, I got my Master’s degree in TESOL from a state university and graduated with a GPA of something like 3.96 (after undergrad at Evangelical college), adopted a turtle who I still love and adore (and who is safely staying with a friend for the moment although I miss him like crazy), and I like to talk about things like: politics (I lean quite far to the left), how to help marginalized people groups (especially immigrants since that was such a huge part of my field), and the meaning of life. Before I got so sick I used to like to travel to Spanish-speaking countries and I still like attempting to pick up their beautiful language. Everyone always tells me how incredibly smart I am. But it’s not like I can cure my loneliness by going out and joining Mensa when I can’t even leave the psych ward! I want to go to MeetUp groups if those are even still a thing and explore my interests and maybe find some sort of volunteer group for philanthropic atheists who are dirt poor but would love to give their time. Unfortunately, it seems that for the moment, these things are off the table and that is why I’m starting this blog. I need to prove to myself that there are people out there who will like me for who I am, trauma and stigma and all. And if I only have access to an online community right now, then an online community it is!

I dedicate the rest of this entry to some resources I have come across, some recently, some long ago, because they helped me and maybe they can help someone else, too. At some point, I plan to put up an entry describing how I arrived at the title of this blog, but not everything can be put in the first entry. Please also note that while I plan to loosely follow APA formatting because I’m neurotic about citing sources, if I feel that a source is properly cited, I will not always be doing things the fully proper way.

An annotated bibliography of resources:

Books:

• Haidt, J. (2006). The happiness hypothesis: Finding modern truth in ancient wisdom. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465028023
  • I’ve been reading this book, which was recommended by the YouTuber Genetically Modified Skeptic, and even though I’m only a couple chapters in, it has helped me understand better how the mind works.

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• Klein, L. K. (2019). Pure: Inside the evangelical movement that shamed a generation of young women and how I broke free. Atria Books. ISBN 978-1501124822
  • I had to put this book down because it was so absolutely spot-on and relatable that I started getting triggered. I plan to approach it again in smaller chunks.

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• Schwartz, A. (2020). The complex PTSD workbook: A mind-body approach to regaining emotional control and becoming whole. Sheldon Press. ISBN 978-1529312133
  • A doctor here at the hospital gave me this book and it has given me a lot more insight into my diagnosis. Note that there’s a 2020 edition and a 2017 edition and I honestly don’t know which one I have but since I just got it, I thought it was more likely to be the 2020 edition so I cited that one.

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• Van Der Kolk, B. (2015). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0143127741
  • I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told to just “put the past in the past.” While those who offer that advice are generally well-intentioned, they don’t understand that living in denial that the past affects the present makes things a lot worse. This popular book helps explain that.

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• Walker, P. (2013). Complex PTSD: From surviving to thriving: A guide and map for recovering from childhood trauma. Createspace. ISBN 978-1492871842
  • Another book on Complex-PTSD, this book offers helpful strategies for dealing with the disorder.

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An article:

• In season of giving, atheist groups’ charity rebuffed. (2013, December 19). Washington Post (Washington, D.C.: 1974). https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/in-season-of-giving-atheist-groups-charity-rebuffed/2013/12/19/45ddbef6-68f2-11e3-997b-9213b17dac97_story.html
  • I tried to find information on philanthropic atheist organizations and this was the best I could do. I decided to save it so I could look the organizations up and see if I could get any leads for when (hopefully not if!) I get out of the hospital.

YouTube Videos:

• An Ex-Christian Q&A (Inside the Ark Encounter)
  • This video was special to me because it was what initially opened my eyes to the fact that you didn’t actually have to be homeschooled in a cult in order to have religious trauma, and the number of people like me was much greater than I had imagined. This boosted my hope that I could indeed find support and community.

• Neil deGrasse Tyson on God
  • I like the way Neil deGrasse Tyson articulates something similar to what I have tried to articulate in the past: that I am okay with whatever point of view I end up holding and whatever point in my life. I don’t personally view myself as a die-hard atheist, and I’m not afraid of whatever I find works for me down the road. I’m merely functioning as an atheist right now because atheists seem to say the things that I can relate to the most closely.

• 4 Mistakes Theists Make When Trying to Convert Atheists 
  • I liked this because he describes a lot of things that I have encountered. I have personally had a LOT of extremely intense spiritual experiences, and people who try to convert me generally feel like I must not have “really” been a Christian; I must not have really had the same experiences that they have. But that is false, and I was as Christian as anybody could ever possibly be. I also appreciated that he explained eloquently that I don’t fully endorse anything anyone else says, and I don’t take anybody’s book, YouTube channel, or any other material as infallible Truth.

• The Theft of Our Values
  • My cousin introduced me to DarkMatter2525 and his work has been extremely helpful to me. This is definitely one of the longer videos on the channel but worth watching.

• 8 Reasons Going to Hell Will Be Awesome 
  • What finally got me out of Christianity was that there were many people in my life who I loved, such as my paternal grandmother, who according to our beliefs were either in hell or headed there. After having lain awake in bed for hours every night in terror of dying and going to hell, I finally resolved to myself that if God was going to send my Grandma to hell, then I was not going to spend eternity in heaven praising the God who sent her there. At that point, I wasn’t even convinced that hell didn’t exist, but I had to accept the possibility of ending up there if I was going to be true to myself and my values.

• Why Are Women More Religious Than Men? (Why Aren’t More Women Atheists?) 
  • At some point, I became frustrated that there were so many more YouTube channels on these topics put out by men than women. SkepticShe has a useful channel and some good videos. She hasn’t been posting much lately but she is active on Twitter.

• Did Jesus Actually Exist? (by SciManDan) 
  • Just a snarky video that made me laugh

• Hallelujah Homeschool Cult 
  • Having been homeschooled, I can vouch that this is a lot closer to how homeschool curriculums are often advertised than an outsider would probably like to believe

• Atheist grills Calvinist on Salvation
  • The group I grew up in was staunchly five-point Calvinist, and if you’ve never tried to explain TULIP to a psychologist doing her best to remain non-judgmental, you just haven’t lived.

• Born or Raised in Cultic Groups (Posted August 20, 2014vby the International Cultic Studies Association, aka ICSA) 
  • I found this video a long time ago and saved it. Early on in my treatment, people assumed that if something was wrong with my emotion regulation, I must have Bipolar Disorder or something else wrong with my genes. It wasn’t until I was given a consistent diagnosis of C-PTSD that treatment became effective.

• Religious Trauma Syndrome (TTA Podcast 368)
  • Okay, this one I have to admit I have not yet watched in its entirety, but what I did listen to was relatable and I feel that it is highly applicable to this blog because if I were the one doing diagnosing, I would diagnose myself with a heavy amount of Religious Trauma Syndrome in addition to C-PTSD. [EDIT: I watched the whole thing and it did not disappoint 🙂]

• “It’s impossible for atheists to do this!” …but It’s Not 
  • Saving the best for last, this was the video that got me out of a suicidal funk and encouraged me to set out on my search for meaning and purpose.

(Book and article citations made with assistance from bibguru at https://www.bibguru.com/c/isbn-citation-generator/ )