jesusinstilettos · 5 months ago
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I’m about to save you thousands of dollars in therapy by teaching you what I learned paying thousands of dollars for therapy:
It may sound woo woo but it’s an important skill capitalism and hyper individualism have robbed us of as human beings.
Learn to process your emotions. It will improve your mental health and quality of life. Emotions serve a biological purpose, they aren’t just things that happen for no reason.
1. Pause and notice you’re having a big feeling or reaching for a distraction to maybe avoid a feeling. Notice what triggered the feeling or need for a distraction without judgement. Just note that it’s there. Don’t label it as good or bad.
2. Find it in your body. Where do you feel it? Your chest? Your head? Your stomach? Does it feel like a weight everywhere? Does it feel like you’re vibrating? Does it feel like you’re numb all over?
3. Name the feeling. Look up an emotion chart if you need to. Find the feeling that resonates the most with what you’re feeling. Is it disappointment? Heartbreak? Anxiety? Anger? Humiliation?
4. Validate the feeling. Sometimes feelings misfire or are disproportionately big, but they’re still valid. You don’t have to justify what you’re feeling, it’s just valid. Tell yourself “yeah it makes sense that you feel that right now.” Or something as simple as “I hear you.” For example: If I get really big feelings of humiliation when I lose at a game of chess, the feeling may not be necessary, but it is valid and makes sense if I grew up with parents who berated me every time I did something wrong. So I could say “Yeah I understand why we are feeling that way given how we were treated growing up. That’s valid.”
5. Do something with your body that’s not a mental distraction from the feeling. Something where you can still think. Go on a walk. Do something with your hands like art or crochet or baking. Journal. Clean a room. Figure out what works best for you.
6. Repeat, it takes practice but is a skill you can learn :)
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eevylynn · 1 year ago
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If my stepdad's uber religious, Mormon parents actually start building a house on the property behind my parents' house like they've claimed for the past 25 years, my mom and stepdad are planning on putting up a wooden fence between the properties.
They also said that they'd let me loose with paint on that fence to paint rainbows, black lives matter fists, the "Coexist" logo with the different religions, etc on the side that faces my step grandparents.
Omg yesss!!!!!!!
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creature-wizard · 1 year ago
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PSA: If you're searching out resources to help cult survivors, check their citations and look out for these names - and if you see them, leave immediately - because these people are all far right conspiracy theorists:
Svali
Cisco Wheeler
Fritz Springmeier
Cathy O'Brien
Mark Philips
Lawrence Pazder
Michelle Smith/Pazder
Lauren Stratford
Texe Marrs
Bill Schnoebelen
Rebecca Brown
Mike Warnke
Literally all of these people were (or in some cases, still are) pushing far right conspiracy theories derived from early modern witch panic, blood libel, and The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Literally do not trust anyone or anything that cites them.
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cultsurvivorsafe · 6 months ago
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Cult survivors deserve peace. Cult survivors deserve safety. Cult survivors deserve happiness.
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olskuvallanpoe · 5 months ago
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*in the ice court*
the other crows: fighting for their lives, puking up bombs, getting blood sucked out of their bodies, picking fights with every guard, blowing up a lab, seducing generals
matthias: having the Worst™️ religious trauma experience of his entire life
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fragmented-artist · 7 months ago
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Blaine
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notaplaceofhonour · 8 months ago
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I was raised in the People of Destiny cult (later renamed, and more well-known as, Sovereign Grace Ministries, now Sovereign Grace Churches).
The valorization of martyrdom and The End Times was so ubiquitous it was ambient noise. We stood in the church lobby theorizing about who the antichrist would be, we argued about whether Jesus would rapture us all before, after, or during the Tribulation Period where Satan would be given free reign over the earth. There was a strong Christian Zionist fixation on Israel as the final battleground and capital of the coming Messianic Age. But the one thing we were all certain of was is that we were in the End Times, that we were not of this world and couldn’t get too attached to our lives here.
We were raised to believe our sin nature made us undeserving of life, that we deserved death and eternal conscious torture.
My parents read us the Jesus Freaks books (a series by Christian Rap group DC Talk about martyrs). I spent “devotional time” reading Fox’s Book of Martyrs. We had guest speakers from Voice of the Martyrs, their pamphlets were often stocked in our church’s information center. We grew up with our dad listening to right wing talk radio and making us listen to songs about how the Godless atheists were outlawing Christianity in America, that we could all become martyrs soon.
The group’s theology was damaging & traumatic in a lot of other ways that contributed to the suicidality I have continued to struggle with for the rest of my life. For a long time I did not believe I would live past 20. There are times when the idea of giving my death meaning by using public suicide to make a political statement has appealed to me.
So now, seeing so many social media posts glorifying the suicide of a US Airman this week, I have been furious. Reading his social media posts, I recognize so much about the way I was raised in his all-or-nothing, black-or-white mindset, the valorization of death-seeking & martyrdom, and the apocalyptic fire-and-brimstone imagery of self-immolation. The moment I saw people I followed celebrating his self-immolation, I said to myself “this feels like a cult”
So when I learned he was raised in a cult too, nothing could have made more sense to me. His political orientation may have changed, but his mindset did not—it was no less extreme or cult-like.
I’ve talked about so many of the reasons this response from the broader left scares me, including how it’s laundering that airman’s antisemitic beliefs, but I cannot think of anything that would hit me in a more personal place than this specific response to this specific situation has.
When I see the images, I think: that could have been me. That scares me, and what scares me more is that so many prominent people are overwhelmingly sending the message to people like me that there is nothing else we can do that would have a more meaningful impact than killing ourselves for the cause.
I do not believe that. I will not even entertain it. And having to see his death over and over and over again, to argue against people who are treating this like an intellectual/moral exercise or a valid debate we all have to consider has been immensely triggering and fills me with a rage I rarely feel. It’s unconscionable that we are even putting self-harm on the table, and that pushing back against that is somehow controversial.
There is hope. Our lives do have meaning. There are far more effective means of fighting injustice. And the world is a better place for having you in it. Don’t fall into believing this is a way to give life purpose.
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aithusarosekiller · 1 month ago
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AU Jegulus who are so deeply in love that it feels like nothing can come between them until regulus chooses to visit his parents and in an instant, all the religious trauma and guilt floods back in until he just can't do it anymore. He ends up leaving James alone, stranded, wondering if there was anything he could have done to help him before his parents got in his head again. Before a man James didn't even believe in tore his happiness away from him.
He never blames Regulus, of course, but he spends his nights lying there in silence thinking about how it could have been different
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ghosting-bats · 11 months ago
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having religious trauma from the most boring of churches is such a unique experience. stained glass and high ceilings dont mean anything. but dingy basements and hotel bibles mean everything. my religious trauma (and i would assume a lot of others) isnt as pure as what is shown. its gross basements, hand-me-down bibles, wooden chairs that look like theyre at least 50 years old, vhs tapes and big box tvs, ugly carpet, and "god bless you" instead of i love you.
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deservedgrace · 5 months ago
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cult jokes are a symptom of and contribute to the simultaneous sensationalizing of cults (cults are all dark cloaks and animal sacrifices and devil worship and group suicide and despicable/unhinged beliefs) and diminishing of cults ("uwu come join my CULT XD we're gonna make cookies and WORSHIP SATAN teehee"), but i'm realizing how they go so hand-in-hand with the mindset of "only ~stupid/evil/crazy/etc.~ people could possibly join a cult. if it were me i would simply not fall for cult propaganda."
the diminishing part means that people don't take you seriously if you say you're an ex cult member or talk about your experiences in a cult or believe you are a current victim of a cult, because cults are just silly little groups that have weird beliefs but are otherwise innocuous. the sensationalizing part means people will also not take you seriously because if it was Actually a cult cult, that does harm and has evil beliefs, you should've known better because any reasonable person would have seen through it. the other side of "only an [xyz] person joins a cult" is "i am not an [xyz] person so i will never join a cult or be victim to propaganda and other cult tactics." the other side of "if it were me i would simply not fall for propaganda" is "someone falling for propaganda is fully a choice and a personal failing on their part." and combined they make: if you were [xyz] enough to join a cult and fall for propaganda, that means you deserved it.
people who would never make jokes about any other kind of abuse but feel perfectly fine making cult jokes used to kind of baffle me, because why is joking about personal abuse a problem but large-scale/group abuse is fine? why is it suddenly funny when you're the one that wants to perpetuate the abuse? but if your belief around cults is: "your experience wasn't that bad [diminishing], and if it was that bad [sensationalizing] it was your own fault and personal failing [i would simply not fall for propaganda], which means you deserved what you went through [only stupid/evil/crazy/etc people join cults]" and you don't understand how cults or cult tactics work, cult survivors/victims probably feel like a fair target for jokes (they are not, to be clear).
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sky-daddy-hates-me · 1 year ago
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How delusional do you have to be to think that the religion that has forcibly invaded and converted multiple countries throughout the centuries has preserved languages and cultures.
Old norse was only converted to the Latin alphabet because of Christianity, almost destroying the runic alphabet.
Christians forced indigenous children in North America and Canada to attend schools that stripped them of their culture and abuse them into Christianity. There are still Christian organisations who are dedicated to preaching to the native tribes on the North American continent.
How many mythological/folklore/fairytale figures have been diluted down to make it more christian friendly? How many have been demonised because they went against christian values?
How many historical artifacts or culturally significant items have been stolen or destroyed because of Christianity?
It genuinely breaks my heart to think of all the pain and suffering and death Christianity has caused to numerous countries, and the historical knowledge we might have lost in the process.
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exjw-safeplace · 2 months ago
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Exjw's what are some songs that you love that helps or you relate to?
I will open this question up honestly to literally any excult member or anyone with religious trauma. I'm genuinely curious what kind of songs everyone has found.
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parkakeet · 11 months ago
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idk but when I was a kid I would read constantly as a form of escapism and then when I was finally yanked from my fantasy world and into the real one I had dissociated so hard that there was a cognitive dissonance that made me try to rationalize that the real world was wrong and that I belonged in the fantasy world.
my parents would take away my book and put me on a church pew and I would become genuinely distressed because I was trying to remember what fantastical thing was happening to me.
idk, something something cults and not feeling safe in your real life.
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cultsurvivorsafe · 8 months ago
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Cult survivors, you don't lack intelligence. You don't lack morality. Your abuse was and never will be your fault.
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wisteria-grows-here · 9 months ago
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fragmented-artist · 7 months ago
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Blaine
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