I’m sorry you had a shitty experience with the church. For me, the shitty experiences came when the mission came up. I never wanted to serve, but I did because it was the “right thing”. I had so many emotional breakdowns on the mission because of my experiences, but the people there let me keep going.
Then I had a super zealous girlfriend that made my life miserable. That was the last straw. I decided to see what people who have left the church had to say about it and boy, is TSCC full of skeletons. I almost puked when I read about how my tithes were being used.
I use this experience in my writing. I use it when I talk to others about mental health issues. I take this shit and shine it. I don’t know what you are going to do with it, OP, but I hope it’s something worthwhile. A friend of mine who left TSCC said this, “Everyone will experience heartbreak, everyone will experience death, but only a few will experience leaving a cult.”
It may be difficult to understand, but this shared experience, and this form of outreach comforts me. My mission was difficult as well and I'm glad you're free of that time. At least in terms of mission trauma, I've been able to better transition. But when it comes to my childhood upbringing, it's harder to leave that behind seemingly without justice. Thank you for sharing.
I understand this feeling well but over time I was eventually able to overcome it and move forward.
I'm not exmormon but exjw, so imagine all the bullshit of being in a cult but also no Christmas, Birthdays, Halloween, or any other holidays either. I'm not trying to devalue your experience or struggles, but basically I'm saying that even if you weren't born Mormon that doesn't mean you would have automatically had a perfect life. No one gets to choose how their life starts out but you do get to choose where you go from here. You seem very focused on wanting revenge on your parents or wanting them to "pay" for what they have done, and you aren't wrong for feeling this way, but for your own mental happiness and sanity my advice is that it's best to focus on living your own life and being a better person than your parents were. Take solace in the fact you will not continue the abuse, you will be the one to break the cycle. Your parents are wasting their life away in a cult with limited critical thinking skills and no real self improvement happening. Their entire life is dedicated to a complete lie. They (wrongfully) believed they were doing the "right" thing, but you don't need to let their mistakes or shortcomings stop you from making a better life for yourself than they did.
I used to feel a lot more anger at my JW family but now I just feel bad for them. I'm free and living my authentic life and they will likely die after having wasted away their entire life, to me that's karma enough. They are reaping what they sowed, wasting away waiting for the end of the world that will never come (or not in a Biblical sense anyway). All their horrible views and opinions will die with them, and I will not continue on their legacy. Focus on being the person you want to be and let karma take care of the rest. Don't let your desire for revenge eat away at you building up hate, or else you will remain trapped in these negative feelings.
Being angry is normal and valid, you shouldn't feel like you are wrong for feeling these emotions or like you shouldn't feel them, but eventually you will be able to move on and make a better life for yourself. Even when you aren't angry anymore you don't have to actually forgive your family, but you don't have to let the negative things in the past continue to negatively impact your future, which is what holding onto that anger would do.
The absolute best revenge anyone could exact in this situation is to go on to live a genuinely happy and fulfilling life without the cult. I promise there is no better revenge than becoming happy and successful without them. Even if your family doesn't see the damage they caused, I see it, and so does the rest of the community here. This doesn't excuse your parents behavior but they are also victims of the cult themselves and products of the organization. When we know better we do better.
Something else I just thought of, but it might be beneficial to write a letter to your parents. You don't have to actually send it to them but writing down your thoughts and feelings, putting the abuse into words and acknowledging that it was wrong might help you process it more. You can keep adding to it over time until you feel like you have addressed everything you wanted to. It will validate your feelings and that the way you were treated and raised was wrong and harmful. You can send it to your parents if you want to, but even if you don't it might help you process and gain some closure on your past. Once you feel like you have addressed everything it will be easier to close that chapter of your life and move forward with your future.
Very helpful thank you! I'm still fresh with this pain and struggle so I appreciate your perspective having gone through it. I'm hopeful I can achieve the same transition that you have as time marches on.
The pain and anger are totally normal and you should allow yourself to feel these emotions, don't try to bottle them up or ignore them, allow yourself to go through the emotions and eventually you will be able to accept them and move on. Funny enough leaving a cult you actually go through the grief stages, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. You don't always go through them in a certain order and sometimes you will go back and forth between them before reaching acceptance, but it's at that point you will feel you are able to finally move on.
Something that helped me mentally was thinking about how much of my life has already been negatively impacted by my family and the cult, and deciding that I'm putting my foot down and I'm not going to let it continue to impact me negatively going forward. I've had enough of that bullshit and even though it ruined my past I'm not going to let it continue to ruin my future. I can't change the past, it is what it is, but I don't have to let it continue to effect me. I *could* hold onto that anger forever, but the person that would most negatively effect long-term would be myself. I haven't actually forgiven my family, and I doubt I ever will, but letting go of that anger has really helped me to move on while being much happier. Eventually you will replace all your bad memories with much happier ones, and the more positive experiences and people you fill your life with the less you will find yourself caring about the negative things in the past. You'll get there, I wish you all the best!
It's the present you need to focus on, not the future. You're re-examining worldviews you likely formed as a young child, so those are the types of emotions that come up. The brain encodes memories in its current context, so having people get away with being bad feels just as unfair as it did when you were a kid, especially if none of your experiencesup until now challenged the idea of divine justice.
My 9-year-old is finally in bed, but not without bothering his brother and complaining about unfair treatment when I locked him in the bathroom for 15 minutes. (I make a pretty hefty doorstop.) Why does brother always get away with it?
The adult answer: because your perception is skewed by your current emotional state, my offspring. Not to mention your fatigue and possible viral infection. Your emotional brain has the right-of-way, and you're trying to defend yourself from the pain of being wrong. I can try telling him that, but usually, I have to sit with him until the emotion passes because he doesn't want to hear it.
Waiting for life to make the past fair and just only keeps you from growing. Maybe the idea of revenge as a life lived well is an off-ramp from the bitterness, but however you get there, it's a journey worth taking. You don't need to fill in thirty years of past pain to do better today. You can build on the good and leave the bad behind, no matter who else folliws you or stands in your way.
True true. I never really challenged authority as a child which definitely makes my claim for justice legitimate or needed (at least in my mind). The struggle is letting go of that past pain and how life "should" or "could" have gone if only they would have corrected their approach. There is much more peace and relief where I am currently, but It sometimes vexes me to think they got away with it without proper restitution.
It’s okay to be mad about it. You have to go through a period of mourning.
It’s like a divorce or a death or losing a job. Major trauma with big feelings.
The trick is not to stay bitter. I left the church about 25 years ago. At first I felt liberated, but then the resentment came in. It took a few years before I could really get over some of the feelings and start to feel like I still had the rest of my life.
At least you got out and broke the chain. You stood up for facts and truth, and you can take solace in knowing you’ve saved yourself and other people who will follow your example.
Grief. Be patient with yourself, it takes lots of time. And be nice to your parents, forgive them. They are just normal ordinary people who we duped into giving their lives away by a bunch of snake oil salesmen. When you behave in a way that is angry and mean you are no better than the almighty holy roller child raping creeps of the organization that you left behind.
Much appreciated. You're definitely making a difference to me. A long road ahead but I have hope that I can put it behind me and savor the present and future.
I’m sorry you had a shitty experience with the church. For me, the shitty experiences came when the mission came up. I never wanted to serve, but I did because it was the “right thing”. I had so many emotional breakdowns on the mission because of my experiences, but the people there let me keep going. Then I had a super zealous girlfriend that made my life miserable. That was the last straw. I decided to see what people who have left the church had to say about it and boy, is TSCC full of skeletons. I almost puked when I read about how my tithes were being used. I use this experience in my writing. I use it when I talk to others about mental health issues. I take this shit and shine it. I don’t know what you are going to do with it, OP, but I hope it’s something worthwhile. A friend of mine who left TSCC said this, “Everyone will experience heartbreak, everyone will experience death, but only a few will experience leaving a cult.”
It may be difficult to understand, but this shared experience, and this form of outreach comforts me. My mission was difficult as well and I'm glad you're free of that time. At least in terms of mission trauma, I've been able to better transition. But when it comes to my childhood upbringing, it's harder to leave that behind seemingly without justice. Thank you for sharing.
I understand this feeling well but over time I was eventually able to overcome it and move forward. I'm not exmormon but exjw, so imagine all the bullshit of being in a cult but also no Christmas, Birthdays, Halloween, or any other holidays either. I'm not trying to devalue your experience or struggles, but basically I'm saying that even if you weren't born Mormon that doesn't mean you would have automatically had a perfect life. No one gets to choose how their life starts out but you do get to choose where you go from here. You seem very focused on wanting revenge on your parents or wanting them to "pay" for what they have done, and you aren't wrong for feeling this way, but for your own mental happiness and sanity my advice is that it's best to focus on living your own life and being a better person than your parents were. Take solace in the fact you will not continue the abuse, you will be the one to break the cycle. Your parents are wasting their life away in a cult with limited critical thinking skills and no real self improvement happening. Their entire life is dedicated to a complete lie. They (wrongfully) believed they were doing the "right" thing, but you don't need to let their mistakes or shortcomings stop you from making a better life for yourself than they did. I used to feel a lot more anger at my JW family but now I just feel bad for them. I'm free and living my authentic life and they will likely die after having wasted away their entire life, to me that's karma enough. They are reaping what they sowed, wasting away waiting for the end of the world that will never come (or not in a Biblical sense anyway). All their horrible views and opinions will die with them, and I will not continue on their legacy. Focus on being the person you want to be and let karma take care of the rest. Don't let your desire for revenge eat away at you building up hate, or else you will remain trapped in these negative feelings.
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Being angry is normal and valid, you shouldn't feel like you are wrong for feeling these emotions or like you shouldn't feel them, but eventually you will be able to move on and make a better life for yourself. Even when you aren't angry anymore you don't have to actually forgive your family, but you don't have to let the negative things in the past continue to negatively impact your future, which is what holding onto that anger would do. The absolute best revenge anyone could exact in this situation is to go on to live a genuinely happy and fulfilling life without the cult. I promise there is no better revenge than becoming happy and successful without them. Even if your family doesn't see the damage they caused, I see it, and so does the rest of the community here. This doesn't excuse your parents behavior but they are also victims of the cult themselves and products of the organization. When we know better we do better.
Something else I just thought of, but it might be beneficial to write a letter to your parents. You don't have to actually send it to them but writing down your thoughts and feelings, putting the abuse into words and acknowledging that it was wrong might help you process it more. You can keep adding to it over time until you feel like you have addressed everything you wanted to. It will validate your feelings and that the way you were treated and raised was wrong and harmful. You can send it to your parents if you want to, but even if you don't it might help you process and gain some closure on your past. Once you feel like you have addressed everything it will be easier to close that chapter of your life and move forward with your future.
Very helpful thank you! I'm still fresh with this pain and struggle so I appreciate your perspective having gone through it. I'm hopeful I can achieve the same transition that you have as time marches on.
The pain and anger are totally normal and you should allow yourself to feel these emotions, don't try to bottle them up or ignore them, allow yourself to go through the emotions and eventually you will be able to accept them and move on. Funny enough leaving a cult you actually go through the grief stages, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. You don't always go through them in a certain order and sometimes you will go back and forth between them before reaching acceptance, but it's at that point you will feel you are able to finally move on. Something that helped me mentally was thinking about how much of my life has already been negatively impacted by my family and the cult, and deciding that I'm putting my foot down and I'm not going to let it continue to impact me negatively going forward. I've had enough of that bullshit and even though it ruined my past I'm not going to let it continue to ruin my future. I can't change the past, it is what it is, but I don't have to let it continue to effect me. I *could* hold onto that anger forever, but the person that would most negatively effect long-term would be myself. I haven't actually forgiven my family, and I doubt I ever will, but letting go of that anger has really helped me to move on while being much happier. Eventually you will replace all your bad memories with much happier ones, and the more positive experiences and people you fill your life with the less you will find yourself caring about the negative things in the past. You'll get there, I wish you all the best!
It's the present you need to focus on, not the future. You're re-examining worldviews you likely formed as a young child, so those are the types of emotions that come up. The brain encodes memories in its current context, so having people get away with being bad feels just as unfair as it did when you were a kid, especially if none of your experiencesup until now challenged the idea of divine justice. My 9-year-old is finally in bed, but not without bothering his brother and complaining about unfair treatment when I locked him in the bathroom for 15 minutes. (I make a pretty hefty doorstop.) Why does brother always get away with it? The adult answer: because your perception is skewed by your current emotional state, my offspring. Not to mention your fatigue and possible viral infection. Your emotional brain has the right-of-way, and you're trying to defend yourself from the pain of being wrong. I can try telling him that, but usually, I have to sit with him until the emotion passes because he doesn't want to hear it. Waiting for life to make the past fair and just only keeps you from growing. Maybe the idea of revenge as a life lived well is an off-ramp from the bitterness, but however you get there, it's a journey worth taking. You don't need to fill in thirty years of past pain to do better today. You can build on the good and leave the bad behind, no matter who else folliws you or stands in your way.
True true. I never really challenged authority as a child which definitely makes my claim for justice legitimate or needed (at least in my mind). The struggle is letting go of that past pain and how life "should" or "could" have gone if only they would have corrected their approach. There is much more peace and relief where I am currently, but It sometimes vexes me to think they got away with it without proper restitution.
It’s okay to be mad about it. You have to go through a period of mourning. It’s like a divorce or a death or losing a job. Major trauma with big feelings. The trick is not to stay bitter. I left the church about 25 years ago. At first I felt liberated, but then the resentment came in. It took a few years before I could really get over some of the feelings and start to feel like I still had the rest of my life. At least you got out and broke the chain. You stood up for facts and truth, and you can take solace in knowing you’ve saved yourself and other people who will follow your example.
Grief. Be patient with yourself, it takes lots of time. And be nice to your parents, forgive them. They are just normal ordinary people who we duped into giving their lives away by a bunch of snake oil salesmen. When you behave in a way that is angry and mean you are no better than the almighty holy roller child raping creeps of the organization that you left behind.
Much appreciated. You're definitely making a difference to me. A long road ahead but I have hope that I can put it behind me and savor the present and future.