I had a good conversation with my doctor today. He said that he generally provided solutions-focused treatment and wasn’t much for “existential musings,” but that maybe the latter was what I really needed. So we talked about the belief systems that I grew up with that taught me that I was evil, and which in turn make me fiercely adamant that everyone I know now still believes that I’m evil. Generally, mental health providers are trained not to provide any reassurance and to discourage reassurance-seeking behavior, and my doctor now is no exception. But today when he asked what I needed, I said I just needed reassurance that I was not a bad person. He objected that it wouldn’t help for more than a minute or so, and I disagreed. So he reassured me that he didn’t view me as bad, and I’ve been feeling much improved ever since. What people often don’t understand is that given my background, the evidence points that I am detestable, and in order to change my view of myself, I need to build evidence to the contrary. I do this through getting reassurance and engaging in existential musings. I often rag on my poor doctor for paying extra to go to Catholic college and imply that it was a complete waste of money because Catholics don’t know squat, but today, he was a tribute to his heritage and actually did okay.
I continued my musings long after the conversation and found a couple more helpful resources. The first is a PDF from UC which looks like it was the basis for a student presentation. It has a few typos, but it was a good read and just its memes alone make it worth checking out:
https://www.uc.edu/content/dam/uc/ce/images/OLLI/Page%20Content/2019F2%20Religion.pdf
I also came across this video for a philosophical synopsis:
To most people, these things may seem like common sense. But I was raised with these guys:
I actually purchased these recently because some part of me apparently felt that I needed them in my possession at the hospital. If that’s not cognitive dissonance, I don’t know what is.
The first is our creed, which is available for free online but I’m pretty sure you have to buy the modern English version. It’s cheap, though. The second was our hymnal, published in 1961. They eventually came out with a revised edition which was red, but we in my circles all knew that only the original blue one was any good. At the same time that I was seeking out this literature, I listened music that I grew up with. Three songs stuck out in particular:
https://www.opc.org/hymn.html?hymn_id=663
The first link is to the song “Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted,” which is from the aforementioned blue Trinity Hymnal. Then there’s “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us,” in this case sung by Fernando Ortega, and “All I Have is Christ” by Sovereign Grace music. The latter two came into my life much later, but sum up pretty well what I grew up with. I got these guys so seriously stuck in my head that for a while it felt hopeless to get them out. I think my brain kept going back to them because of the familiar theology, including two of the existential musings I talked to my doctor about today.
First, we believed that because God was infinitely holy, the slightest infraction (which we called “sin”) on our part made us deserve punishment that was both infinite and eternal. To say that I didn’t deserve eternal damnation was to say that God was not infinitely holy. I really don’t see the connection now and I don’t know if I did then, either, but it was repeated often enough that I knew I had sure better believe it. Since then I’ve studied enough psychology to know that the predominant research now shows that punishment is the least effective means of behavior modification. And in situations where it is used, there is a lot of procedure. What jumped out to me most in my reading was that punishment must always be used with the exclusive purpose of shaping further behavior. In other words, eternal damnation makes no sense because it provides no mechanism whatsoever for rehabilitation. It is nothing but cosmic vengeance by a god who is obsessed with his own glory and what individual humans think of him. Kind of like something a vengeful human would invent.
Secondly and probably even more damagingly, whether or not we had agency over something had no bearing whatsoever on whether we had moral responsibility, or whether we should feel guilty or ashamed for it. This is why I feel personally responsible for almost everything. I feel like COVID, the pollution in the oceans, and anything else you can think of is solely my fault. My parents taught over and over that I had freewill, that I was responsible for my own behavior, but that because I had an evil nature, I would never choose anything but evil. How God could predict my future behavior with perfect accuracy and still say I had freewill definitely made no sense to me at the time, but through the years it became intuitive. If something bad happened, I felt guilty and ashamed. Whether I could have prevented it made no difference at all. Whether I was doing my best certainly was not a consideration. Conversely, God could cause things to happen (like sin) and not bear any moral responsibility. This disconnect between agency and moral responsibility is one of the most damaging things I have faced.
While I wouldn’t recommend that people with Religious Trauma Syndrome go seek out old religious material like I did, in my case it provided some insight into my struggles. I cannot say enough that I am my paternal grandmother’s granddaughter. I have to look at the philosophical underpinnings of things constantly. There are a lot of DBT skills that are awesome but I can’t stop there. I crave depth. I used to think I found that in religion. Then I discovered apostasy, and there really is no going back.
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