#religious anxiety

[magnetothemagnificent]

If you come from a culture that believes in the Evil Eye and struggle with your mental health, here are a few gentle reminders:

-It's okay to talk about your anxieties, especially with a mental health professional. I know you may be scared of tempting the Evil Eye, but your anxieties will consume you if you don't talk about them.

-It's okay to think envious thoughts about other people. Your thoughts won't hurt them, and it hurts you more to be anxious that your thoughts have that power. Thoughts are not actions.

-It's okay to express joy and excitement about something. You deserve this good fortune. Don't let the Evil Eye take away your happiness.

-If you need to say the word "Cancer" or "Death" or "Miscarriage" or other scary words, say them. You don't need to live in the pain of bottling all these words up.

-If something bad happens to someone in your life, it's not your fault. Even if you thought bad thoughts about them. Even if you were jealous of them.

There is nothing wrong with believing in the Evil Eye, but we live in a world that is increasingly more stressful and anxiety-inducing, and we cannot let our superstitions hurt ourselves and others. Sometimes beliefs can turn into obsessions.

And if you feel like your belief in the Evil Eye has come to the point of an obsession, I hope you're able to find the help and comfort you need, ideally with a culturally-informed professional. You don't need to live in shame and fear.

*Antitheists or anyone trying to comment about how evil or stupid religion is, keep your comments to yourself.*

[alethianightsong]

My brain whenever I start to feel bad for losing my faith but God is supposed to be all-seeing so he saw me having a faith crisis & did nothing:

"IT'S NOT MY FAULT if in God's plan. He made the devil so much stronger than a maaaaaaaan!"

[xenomorphfemme]

Me, explaining catholicism, folk catholics, Virgin Mary veneration, and curanderismo to my partner, who was raised Jehovah's witness :

[worlds-silliest-specimen]

anyone else with religious anxiety/OCD get triggered by noises that sound like whale noises or “ethereal scream” type noises because they remind you of angels and youre afraid the world is ending? or is that too specific

[walkingencyclopediaofweirdmayo]

FUCK MY ANXIETY IS SO BAD

[yeslordmyking]

You cannot claim to care about a person unless you want them to live a godly life and go to Heaven, and you are doing everything you can to guide them to doing it

[max-the-mouse]

TO WHOEVER NEEDS TO HEAR THIS:

THE RAPTURE IS NOT REAL.

it will NOT happen.

The rapture was only introduced into US christianity in the late 18th-19th centuries.

Fundamentally, the rapture serves as a boogeyman to lord over believers, keeping them trapped in the church because....well....you dont want to be left behind when the rapture happens, do you?

YOU WILL NEVER HAVE TO TAKE THE MARK OF THE BEAST. THERE IS NO ANTICHRIST. THEY HAVE BEEN SAYING THE END TIMES ARE NEAR SINCE TIME STARTED. ALL OF THE "SIGNS" ARE JUST THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN HAPPENING IN THE WORLD FOREVER. THEY WILL HAPPEN AGAIN AND AGAIN. AND THE RAPTURE WILL NEVER HAPPEN.

you will not hear a trumpet call and then be left alone. you will not have to survive the tribulation of apocalyptic hell with satan ruling the earth until christ returns.

i promise.

you have a future!!!! you really do!!!! life will not end suddenly bc of the rapture.

plan for your future!!! envision it!!!! think about places you want to go and people you want to spend time with!!!

in order to build a beautiful future for yourself you must envision it!!!

[aguineapigcouldntdothis]

hey. hey. you there. religious jew who wants to do so well because you truly do love g-d and you see His presence everywhere and you have faith in Him and He gives you everything. yes, you. if you're not a religious jew you can read this too this just isn't geared towards you.

ok now that i have your attention read this: g-d knows you. He made your body and your soul and He understands it fully. there's gonna be some times where you can't commit to something, where you can't fulfill that mitzvah. maybe you've got an amazing new job that will pay the rent and the bills youve been struggling with for months but you need to work shabbat. maybe you cant say prayers or blessings in public bc you dont feel safe to speak hebrew outside of your own home. maybe you struggle to keep up a routine and have a hard time with daily mitzvot. whatever it is i promise Hashem does not hate you and does not see you as a failure.

i definitely understand being a perfectionist and wanting to go all out. to show that you are fully devoted and that you appreciate Him at every point in your life. also lets be real sometimes you just wanna prove to yourself that you can do all these little things and that you have the discipline to do it. or you wanna impress someone else you admire. that's completely normal and those emotions are part of what makes us human (however those can be signs of underlying mental health issues so pls talk to someone if you need!). anyway, Hashem doesnt mind that we can't do it all all the time. sometimes we can't do it all ever. He knows that something is always better than nothing. we were given the gift of life, of food, of being jewish, of the torah, of everything else by g-d and we can express our gratefulness for that in so many ways and they are all important.

g-d is not that shitty teacher you had in middle school who judged you in front of the class every time your essay wasnt an A+. He created everything and gave us the joy of life and is here to guide us through us. He made us human with all of our possible emotions because that is what we are meant to be. we are meant to be flawed and without that we wouldnt even be people anymore. you're gonna have shitty days, weeks, months, even years and He understands that and even if you can only do tiny things it still matters.

[sadieshavingsex]

I’m tired of healing I’m tired of waiting to heal I’m tired of researching what’s wrong with me I’m tired of feeling pathologized im tired of pathologizing myself im tired of not feeling safe im tired of overanalyzing everything im tired of not being able to make a decision im

[ariesbilly]

nothing but respect for MY fruity four

[creature-wizard]

Sheeshhhh I knew cultural Christianity was bad but I didn’t know it was that bad. Rapture anxiety??? That’s a thing??? What even is that???

So basically, rapture theology (a thing among Evangelicals) teaches that the faithful will be taken up to Heaven before the Tribulation (End Times) begins, while everyone else will be left behind to deal with all of the horrors of the End Times.

Loads of kids who were taught this were afraid that they weren't good enough Christians to be raptured when the time came. They lived in constant fear of everyone they knew vanishing around them. Being unable to find their friends or family members for a few minutes could set off panic that the rapture had happened and they'd been left behind.

And while being raptured up to Heaven was supposed to be great in theory, it wasn't exactly the greatest comfort to kids who wanted to actually grow up and live an adult life.

Since the End Times are supposed to start off with war in the Middle East, literally any conflict going on there can trigger rapture anxiety. Or any conflict that might hypothetically end up there. As can news of literally anything whatsoever that's supposed to predicate the End Times. Or anything that faintly resembles the Mark of the Beast, which is supposed to happen in the middle of the Tribulation.

The sooner Christians let go of rapture theology, the better, because it's just so incredibly fucked up.

[fragmented-artist]

X

Blaine

[gxlden-angels]

To everyone with Rapture anxiety, I just woke up from a dream where I tripped the lead angel playing the trumpet, ending the whole thing so it's no longer an issue. You can rest easy now

[luminalunii97]

When I say I don't like religious people, I mean every time I see an Instagram post, a tweet, a YouTube video, a movie, or anything lgbt that's cute and fills me with happiness and joy, I have to avoid comments and replies. On the off chance that I go read reviews or comments (looking for people like me who felt seen and represented to see what they're feeling, because I don't have real life friends to share this stuff with, queer internet users are all I have) there are almost always homophobic people there shouting my happiness away and they're almost always religious people saying things like "you're going to go to hell" "god hates you" "you'll see you'll have to answer one day" aaaaaand my day, possibly week, is ruined!

In all honestly, I've heard it all a billion times, every queer and else person has heard it. It's such oooold news and somehow they don't get tired of repeating it. What do they think they're going to accomplish? Straight people out by inducing fear and indoctrination? Oh yeah, that sounds right!

[walkingencyclopediaofweirdmayo]

My mom's talking about The Rapture again. What a great way to start the morning.

[demontouched]

i really like that fantasy high isn't six* people entering brennan's world. it's seven people working to build and establish a world, and brennan was just the start. he had an idea, he shared it with friends, and said "join me, let's make this something beautiful together."

(*for the people who saw this before the typo fix, i'm sorry 😭 i didn't even realize. i'm very bad at typing.)