u/Neutrality-2

like we all know Aa is a cult and its founder was just a sex pest hiding behind religion, tale as old as time.

but the program itself is actually shit.

like seriously the steps don’t help you get better in any meaningful capacity.

youll often hear them broken in 3 phases, trust god, clean house, help other.

realize you’re an alcoholic and give your life to god…. they say your higher power can be whatever you want, but it’s god because this stuff is literally built on Christianity.

well first problem is that god isn’t real. but the mind is a powerful tool and people can believe hard enough to where they will paint everyday coincidences as acts of god and that helps build their “faith” .. ok fine

clean house. basically all the trauma you carry is bullshit and you’re awful and selfish for feeling bad….. oh we are only being assholes cause we want you to get better not because this is how we take out our own frustrations…. screw your feelings… oh whats that? all this invalidation actually makes people worse? oh you’re drinking again? well you’re just doing it wrong!

ok now take all this abuse and pass it down!

seriously everything after step 1 is not real. and Aa has become so synonymous with recovery that even people on the atheist subreddit recommend doing secular 12 steps - well the problem isn’t just the community, the steps themselves do more harm than good.

aa is literally blind leading the blind.

im working with a phd psychologist now and is helping me uncover and understand and validate my trauma and lived experience after a lifetime of being invalidated!

I got Misled in my young years cause people said whenever things were bad “oh god works in mysterious ways” and then later things worked out so I believed them.

But I’m realizing im 37 and never been married. My last relations ended 4 years ago and i haven’t found anyone since then and I can’t even tell the time because it feels like it was just a year or 2 ago but now im realizing it’s been 4 years!! I don’t even understand how!

And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now it’s just very clear that there is no god and it’s all a scam!

It’s a weird situation for me. Because when it comes to financial help and stuff like that my parents are the best in the world.

But when it comes to actually listening to me and the things that bother me or anything like that, they don’t give a damn!

And now I’m 37, never been married and they don’t give a damn.

If i say anything about how lonely i am they say “oh just be glad you can see and walk”

My experience is completely invalidated and I don’t have anyone I can talk to and there’s nothing more I can do.

The way he’s in my feed lately feels astroturfed. Then I saw how he is propped up by liberty and tpusa….

The way he exploits homeless people and calls them demon possessed when they clearly need mental health care is disgusting. And ofc he pushes his crappy I love Jesus merch in the same videos.

His Waffle House story is complete garbage too. Bro wanted to S himself but gave his life to Jesus and now a couple years later he’s got all this money, a mar-a-lago face Christian wife and social status…. Gee Christianity was never even close to being that good for me and I was Christian longer than he’s been alive.

Don’t even get me started on his Christian energy drink company…

i say this as someone who legit experienced trauma from religion because i am someone who took it seriously and internalized everything to the point where i felt like every bad thing happening in my life was god punishing me some how or trying to teach me a lesson and it literally drove me insane.

And i was scared to become atheist because i felt like things would get worse if i did....but eventually things got so bad i just realized it really doesn't matter if i believe or don't, but at least for my own self respect i feel it is better to be atheist.

I have read about Dystheism which isn't really popular or talked about - but its the idea that if there is a god he is not fully benevolent and might even be incompetent. It's actually what early gnosticism taught though the church worked really hard to stamp that out. The Mandaeans in ancient Iraq and Iran also believed along similar lines.

Though either way at this point in my CPTSD recovery I do not believe it is healthy to believe there is a god because believing in a benevolent power feels fundamentally unsafe when your body's daily reality feels like an emergency.

I went to firefox years ago because i wanted customization and to support the only non-chromium browser....but it just has so many random issues and incompatibilities these days i had to stop.

then i went the brave privacy route and it was alright, but even so because of how strict it is with privacy it can make a lot of sites i go to not work properly.

and now here we are, back to microsoft's browser! When I was young i loved tinkering, heck i was configuring GNU linux when i was 16 back in 2005! but now i just want things to work without hassle.

All this noise feels like TOO MUCH. I have trauma that has been gaslighted as my fault and failures my whole live that I am now figuring out at age 37 it wasn't my fault and my distress made perfect sense and was invalidated by EVERYONE for YEARS ON END! Even by people on reddit and by my own peers on the left.

I feel disgusted and burned out with everything. I want absolute silence and isolation and healing!

Just wondering what y'alls thoughts are and if anyone has done something like this?

tbh im really sick of all this cause im 37 now and ive seen it all for so many years i really dont believe in mental health treatment at all anymore it has never helped me. I want to stop seeing him cause i find it draining but am worried if i do he will either send the police or get me in trouble with the VA somehow...

has anyone else experienced this? what are my options?

its not abnormal or mental illness....my reactions were NORMAL and EXPECTED for somebody who had my life experience. IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE WHY I AM THE WAY I AM!

it's really frustrating cause Christians only talk about how amazing god is and atheists only talk about how he doesn't exist - but are there any people that believe there is a god, but he isn't entirely good and even possibly evil in some ways? So many years of human history and so much pain and trauma it's crazy to think that the only options are "jesus co-sign my racism!" and "if you believe in god you're an idiot!!"

i am 37 she is 35... things were going great we been together about 3 years, I would have liked to get married....but I guess in the end she really wanted to have kids.

I told her initially that I want DINK life... and she was like "yeah i'll get you to come around"

But last night she put her foot down and I told look im 37 years old and recent studies even show every year that a guy is over 30 the % chance of autism and other issues goes up! And I have mental illness and addiction in my family i feel it would be unethical for me to have kids!

and that was it 😭

i've literally hung out with muslim people and never seen anyone pronounce it like that before! I don't think any ethnicity or religion pronounces it like that.

https://preview.redd.it/i1nvac07h6lh1.png?width=1481&format=png&auto=webp&s=3ecca3ee34b1c36a9fb9e63f3859c544018e91f6

I really despite how Christianity has become synonymous with racism even though most christians on this planet are people of color and The Church condemns racism as a moral sin against human dignity, but hey they gotta carry the flame i guess 🤡

https://preview.redd.it/r8ufxjzvy5lh1.png?width=1451&format=png&auto=webp&s=52bc19babd35fc05e47d305071bd93ef018a06bd

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been on vivitrol for over a year now and i still been drinking and im sick of driving so far eveyr month to get the shot so im not gonna go anymore

what should i do to quit? AA is bs, but smart didnt do much for me either and idk how to qujit

its been hard but at the same time he's my dog! and with and he understands context. with me, my parents and the vet and people work there even if he never seen them before, he is excellent - just other dogs and strangers at the house or people who get to close in other situations he struggles with.

but he is smart and magnificent and i love him! i trust him i dont believe he would ever turn on me. i can put my face against his and he doesnt lick his lips in stress or anything, he leans more against me. i think he genuinely does like and my parents and would not ever turn against us.

https://preview.redd.it/nffou0rn0kjh1.png?width=929&format=png&auto=webp&s=154d1954d15e8d25a1527e671be52743b4ed8f21

hi I am new to Catholicism. I have been a leftist pretty much my whole life.

Lately i kinda been feeling drawn to the catholic church from little things here and there to the point where now I am going to start OCIA.

I am a little hesitant because of how much christianity has been laced with racism these days. Every time you see someone say something racist on social media you'll see a bible verse or "christ is king" in their bio and its so gross to me.

Even i remember when CK died the catholic sub was propping him up as a martyr basically which makes no sense to me. He called pope francis a marxist (as if it's a bad thing 🙄) and said Catholics are idolators for honoring mary - if he was actually catholic himself he would have been excommunicated for saying the things he did.

And i get some people compartmentalize these things and excuse the heresy because they want him as a political ally - but even his politics are against catholicism because I saw even how the official church maintains the position that healthcare and housing are basic human rights and the government should absolutely help people who need it and not have all this hypercapitalistic crap that we have.

I genuinely don't understand how Christianity got laced with white supremacy when the majority of Christians in the world are literally people of color! Maybe cause of how much the west dominates both politically and culturally they basically made it seem like a white religion.

So I am exciting to start ocia but also am kinda nervous.

I counted I have 20 powers when there’s 24

i know I’m missing the barret power cause… u know

but there’s 3 others that I don’t have.

at some point Vladimir stopped giving me temples….

after that I was able to pick up a couple more powers by visiting new systems which gave me the temple quests….

but now I have visited all the systems and finished all the quests and talked to everyone and Vladimir won’t give me anymore temples and I’m missing 3 not including the barret power :(

what should I do in ng+ to make sure this doesn’t happen again?

I was thrown off at first because she called him Omar Shariff who is an Egyptian actor - so I was kind of impressed that a lady like her on an island with like 10 people knows about Omar Shariff and I thought ok maybe she is racist but she is at least informed enough to not just use the generic slurs, but she did call him a terrorist later so that went out the window

And I saw how she was respectful to the mayor and his wife and daughter who is mixed and thought maybe as long as you are Christian she doesn't discriminate against race - backed up by how she insulting towards Riley and how she seemed to want Ali to be christian...

but the way she called him "boy" at the end def had slave owner vibes...

What do you guys think? I hate her so much she gives me Umbridge vibes - but man she was well written and acted!