r/ReligiousTrauma

Hello. Next week I will be a groomsmen in my friends wedding. He is very religious and there will be a pastor with a message and prayer. I have roles and responsibilities in the wedding so I can't afford to lose my cool.

However, based on pripr experience, I'm certain at some point something will be said that will trigger me. The biggest thing that gets me is they'll say something that hints at (obviously they don't say this but this is what I hear) "without Jesus, you are a sinning failure who will never find a happy relationship" and then every nods in agreement. Gives me lots of anxiety as a single guy in my 20s.

I need ways to cope and get through it. I don't want this stuff to phase me anymore, but at the very least I need to be able to hear it without getting religious trauma flashbacks.

Help please

So I am a 46 year old Female. I intentionally moved 7 hours away from my Parents living in a Coastal Town in Florida.

My parents are very religious and conservative. I am the entire opposite and they despise me for that. I feel it. I try to maintain all peace I can however because I see through their facade, and have actual pity for them deep down.

I have been suffering with a sinus and an ear infection for a week now. On Antibiotics, telling my Mother I didn’t think it was the best time for them to come visit. She didn’t care and came anyways with my Father. They got here on Thursday and I’m very ill, trying to keep peace and be a nice host anticipating the moment they leave so I can rest. Well,last night on the 4th of July, she decorates herself in a giant American Flag and is anxious to go downtown to celebrate all for Facebook pictures. I know what it is and was about.

She pouts that I don’t feel well and it’s ruining her vibe energy and so I pull myself together and walk 2 miles feeling like utter shit and stop and sit down. Tell my parents to go ahead without me and enjoy. I will wait but I am dehydrated so I’m gonna rest. She gets upset and says if I’m not going she’s not. All for reverse psychological triangulation with my father.

Well, what happens next is mind blowing.

My Father gets so mad he KICKS a public trash can downtown in front of lots of people walking. Demands to walk 5 miles back to my house and so I have to walk back to my car with my mother drive home. Wait for my dad to arrive at my house. Big theatrics of they are leaving (it’s 8 pm now) and driving 7 hours back home. I am absolutely traumatized and to maintain peace I ask them to stay and leave in the morning. They do and left at 6 am this morning without even a goodbye.

He has become more violent in the past two occasions in different situations but this in public was beyond alarming to me.

He is 70 and my mother is 68 years old. I failed to mention he is a Pastor as well.

Any advice on how to deal with this. I love alone and not married no kids so they feel entitled to show up anytime. But they use me as a vacation and act like it’s them caring to spend time with me. When in fact, they don’t even like me deep down because I’m everything they aren’t.

Advice please. Thanks it’s my first Reddit post because I’m just trying extremely upset on what to do about this.

I grew up in a christian household. my moms side of the family is extremely religious and always have been. My entire childhood emotions were always set aside and we were always taught to be grateful for our blessings and to just ignore the bad because "satan" was attacking us and he wanted us to feel negative emotions. I was taught by allowing myself to feel those emotions i was letting Satan win and giving him power.

I am now 31 years old and have 2 children of my own. I still am christian and believe in god but I feel I have steered away from the extremism... in particular the way of thinking that I mentioned above. I grew up never feeling heard, never being taught how to handle those emotions and I was taught to suppress them. I knew it wasnt right and I never want my children to feel that way.

The past 2 years have been some of the hardest times in my life. I had a pregnancy loss followed by another very high risk pregnancy where we almost lost my son and i suffered severe complications that put my life at risk, we suffered massive income loss and severe financial distress, I lost my grandparents within 9 months of eachother and now I have been having some pretty serious and severe health issues that are effecting my mental and physical health and my mobility. Its been a lot. ​

I have tried going to my mother for emotional support and I always leave the conversation feeling defeated. Instead of providing real tangible support, showing any empathy, or providing any comfort im always met with the same response. "Give it to god, Satan is attacking you and you need to keep praying and believe that god will fix it and cure you" when i tell her I have prayed im told to pray harder and to believe in my heart he will heal me. She tells me I need to tell Satan I rebuke everything hes doing to me. She prays over the pgone and yells at satan. There is no addressing my feelings, no addressing the problem. Just dismissing and praying.

This feels like such an emotionally neglectful response. Emotions need to be heard, acknowledged, addressed and felt. I have brought that up to her and she is incapable of seeing it that way. I feel i carry a lot of trauma by not ever being taught emotional intelligence, emotional maturity and how to sit with my own emotions. I feel i carry a lot of emotional pain from never having that empathy and support from my own mother growing up and to this day.

Aside from everything else motherhood is hard and comes with a lot of challenges. My oldest is autistic and my experience of motherhood hasnt been all sunshine and rainbows. I really could have used my mom during this time but I have felt completely neglected by her and dismissed. I feel telling someone you are praying for them and not providing any other type of support is a cop out so you dont have to actually address someone's emotions.

Anyone else go through something similar? What have you done?

Im 17 years old and am the eldest daughter of a brown muslim family. Both my parents have made my life a living hell. This all began to get worse 3-4 weeks ago when i was playing with my friends and he sneaked into my room so i changed the tabs on my laptop because he gets really mad when I play with my friends. When he comes into my room my friend calls me and he gets super mad, takes my phone and checks every single thing on it. He read through every single text message between me and a friend of mine (lets call him david). Me and david are just friends but for some reason my dad thought he was my bf even though there were no flirtatious messages between me and him and it was just us talking like regular friends and arguing as a joke. He got super mad at me and deleted my accounts, also he was checking and reading through all these text messages infront of my mum and my younger brother. During this, he also started acting like he was about to have a heart attack and about to die because I “disgraced” him and I ruined his honour. He fell off his chair and acted like he had difficulty breathing.
My mum began slutshaming me which is nothing new since shes always hated me and been jealous of me. For some reason she thinks of me as her competition and has said stuff like im ugly and when i grow older im gonna get more hideous, and that when she was the same age as me she was more beautiful. During all this happening, she also started to cuss me out and began saying to my dad that he should marry me off and not send me to school anymore. She started saying how im an idiot and im gonna fail anyway so he should stop wasting his money on me and just get me married. She began saying i was gonna run off with some guy in the future and it made me feel so mad and sad because I dont even have a boyfriend or anyone like that in my life. She also started threatening to kill me and started talking about honour killings and how I should be grateful my dad’s nice and if it was someone else he wouldve killed me by now. My younger brother also got super worried and started crying during all this.
I had my mocks 2 days after this all happened and I was not able to concentrate on them at all. I did pass them all but I wasnt able to get As like I wanted. I could not sleep or eat normally after this and I still struggle quite a lot with eating. Looking at food just makes me sick and makes me want to throw up. My parents especially my dad gets mad at me for “not eating” but the thing is i physically just cant eat. It makes me feel so nauseous.
Ever since this day, my dad will always sit in my room day and night and I cant be alone. One night he sat in and out my room upto 1am to keep an eye on me. He’ll give me 2 hour lectures everyday on how i should be grateful, how hes worked his ass off to give us a great life and how i need to start acting right.
Im so confused what exactly hes mad about since all i did was have a guy friend? Did i do something so wrong. I just want to die I feel like im stuck in this hell hole.
My mum never takes my side she just makes the situations more worse. Shes been saying to my dad that he shouldn’t have brought me a phone and he should take my phone away. Today she called my youngest uncle and said she was gonna tell him the “truth” about me. She was sobbing when she called him and for some reason my dad also begun to cry. She keeps talking about how im gonna run away with a man. Like run off with who?? Im so done with her bullshit.
My dads a software engineer and he keeps telling me how he knows about everything thats in my phone. He says that he can get everything, all my text messages, all my accounts, all my photos like everything on his laptop and he can “expose” me for everything that im hiding from him but he chooses not to because im his daughter.
He was saying to me today that if my future husband finds out about this then hes gonna hate me and hes gonna think im sinful, a slut and hes gonna divorce me. They keep talking about me getting married when i dont even want to get married and theres nothing I can do to stop this. They compare me to the kids of their other religious friends and started talking about how they wear hijab and i dont.
I dont have any close friends irl or teachers that i can tell this to. I moved to the uk only last year from another country so im not close to anyone here. Even as im typing all this right now hes trash talking about me down stairs with my mum.
I feel so trapped here and i even tried to choke and self harm myself but im too much of a coward to do it. Im scared to tell others about this because what if they think im in the wrong, or im lying? Parents wont let me get a job even though i want to saying that im lazy and wont be able to work.
Please let me know what i can do to leave this place before i lose my mind. I turn 18 this year and want to move out but i have no source of income or money and i have no idea where to go.

Recently I've been struggling with my trans identity because of religious reasons... I accepted the fact I was trans about a year ago because I thought I was gonna die soon, and I figured nothing would really change but how I viewed myself if I were a man instead of a woman. But I survived and I'm still alive, I didn't plan for this... I was genuinely so scared but so happy when I accepted myself, I finally started looking at myself in the mirror and wishing for more change and growth. Being trans, or rather being more male/masculine, does genuinely make me happy. I feel like a person now, not something less than human like how I was raised (I have a lot of childhood trauma)...

The issue is, is that no one really accepts me... My best friend is amazing and she still uses he/him pronouns, but she's told me that she feels guilty for me because I'm trans. It makes her upset. Ive asked her before how she'd feel if I went on t and, I have memory problems (that I guess I don't pay attention very well?), so I don't remember what she said but I think it was "she can't stop me and she'll always love me, but she doesn't want me to" (I think). I also asked her how she thinks God would feel about it, if He hates me or not. She said that He doesn't hate me but He'd rather not be trans...

And thats the big issue. I don't want to upset God... I don't want to go to hell... I'm supposed to love Him... I don't understand why being trans is a sin, I want that explained to me. I'm not sure if He supports me. I obviously need to follow Him if I want His love but I feel like I need to cut my "transness" out of myself to be better and to be with Him. "Take up your cross and follow Me", and being trans means it's my cross to bear...? Thats what my mom would probably say

..

is that I also have to wonder if this is just a trauma response? I grew up in a space where men had everything. They were loved more, given more grace, but was told they had to be more responsible for the household (my father was never responsible, ironically he acted more like a whiny woman or a child having a tantrum than an adult or man). I was taught to be quiet, keep my head down, never to say "no", when I get married, I should never say no to sex because "you never know how petty he is, he can punish you for it". I was yelled/screamed at, called slow, my father would make sexual comments or even touch me, in front of my mother and she'd still go "he's just completing you, don't worry about it" and I could say and do nothing... I hated it. I hated being their doll, something less than human.

I understand that being a woman doesn't mean that you have to be a doll, to be obedient and nearly unemotional because "it's a burden"

Ironically after accepting myself as transmasc, I started to realize how beautiful and wonderful women are. Genuinely, theyre incredible! They aren't just babies machines or something to please others. I'm starting to think theyre the "better sex" and God had to nerf them with periods lol

Another ironic thing is that after accepting myself, I realized I feel not as much resistance to God than when I was a girl. I wanna go towards Him more and actually learn Him... It seems the God I was raised with is a different God than who He actually is... I don't know, I have to read the Bible more. Either way I like the message to live with Love and Compassion and I'm gonna do that regardless I'm a follower of Christ or not

But when applying womanhood and femininity to myself... I hate it... It's almost disgusting... I hate myself. I hate having this internal conflict... I just want to be happy and accept myself. I want to be a person. I want to find and be me

But I feel like I cant be if Im going to be with God

This has been on my mind for awhile and I just woke up from a dream about it. In the dream my mom found me at a queer convention or something and I don't remember much but she seemed just disappointed and took me to a pastor. I told her I was trans and seemed surprised a little. Yknow how in a dream one part sticks out more than others? Well one part I remember more any of it was when I told her I was trans and she said "Wow, I thought you were fighting the boss at my word, not at your front door". Which I think means I thought you were only listening to my preaching because you had to, not fighting it internally... Somehow... I dunno

Sorry for this incredibly long rant/vent. I don't have anyone to really talk to about this besides my bff. And I don't have money or means to a therapist yet (although thats on my to do list)

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a good day ❤️‍🩹

(also let me know where else to post this cuz I dunno what I'm doing)

I’ve been looking at threads about growing up religious from the perspective of pastors’ kids and have come across a common theme. Many spent their childhoods moving from church to church, whether, from inner-church controversy or the pastors “religious calling” to relocate. I’ve seen a lot of people talk about how their father, the pastor, had narcissistic tendencies. I’ve also seen many say things about the pastor’s wife suffering from severe depression, BPD, or something similar. This resonates with me, as I was a pastor’s kid all of my childhood and saw these characteristics in both of my parents. I also spent most of my childhood moving from state to state across the Bible Belt because of religious and personal differences with my dad and the church we were currently at. I’m wondering if this really is as common of a theme as it would seem from the threads I’ve looked at so far. And if so, why? Is it these type of people who are attracted to each other, and then this lifestyle? Or does the psychological toll of this situation create these kinds of issues?

If you've seen a few of my recent posts you would get an idea what I'm going through or how I got here. So everyday there's been this voice I belive its God telling me I'm going to hell because I reverted back to sexual immorality by watching porn defiling myself and not repenting completely and its because I blasphemed the holy spirit which was a last act of defiance and thats where I'll go when I die. You know those Christians who are always saying they know they're going to heaven, that's how I am about hell. I cried once before about not wanting to lust and wanting to serve him and it seemed like he heard me but ever since I watched porn and finished, this is the what has been going on since June 17. I am told that was a special day for myself aswell. I get terrifying glimpses as if I'm getting ready to leave this earth soon. I've also watched some testimonies about those who experienced hell and its been just downright beyond scary. Worse than any horror movie. I know what I did was wrong which I've pleaded with God to forgive me but it seems as if its failing on deaf ears. I believe my time is almost up. I get told while I'm burning in hell, my pastor will lead others to Christ. It's as if God is using his wrath upon me. I can't do anything or go anywhere without the voice and the notion or going to hell running in my head all day no matter where I go. I feel empty inside and as if I'm not really caring much for people. I pray and pray to not have a hardened heart but it seems as if its to late. This is all going on while I'm pretty sure I'm dying and only have a short time left. I may have mentioned it before but has anyone known or heard anyone giving testimonies about God talking them directly teling them they're going to hell and was told they committed blasphemy against the holy spirit? I try to watch and listen to things I used to but its not the same. I don't wanna tell my family cause they have they're religious views which revolves around being catholic. I don't know what to do anymore, its like im not happy about anything really. Everyday it seems whenever I try to cry out, I am not able to shed any tears but do end up doing so at various times, whether its watching something or hearing a certain song. I'm not sure if anyone can help at this time. I didn't go to my church this past week since I felt like I dont belong there anymore. I get scared to even sleep because I don't know if I'm going to wake up here on earth or in hell. I don't know where to turn for this. The last time I tried talking to my pastor about this but he tells me that voice is not God, its Satan. I'm on the brink of suicide.

I’m 22 years old now, And I’ve never got a chance to talk about what really happened to me and how it impacted me. PSA. This is strictly my experience. I’m not religious anymore by no means, but I’m not going to judge or try to make you think my way. It didn’t float my boat, but I’m not going to sink yours !

​

Sure some people may say that religion was only made to comfort people,

And that's Okey, some people need to be comforted, some people need to live their life alongside a belief system that forgives them which inturn may allow them to continue forward. Some people need a system that they can turn to when they have inner turmoil. Some people would rather believe in smt they can't proof than rather be uncertain for all their entire lives. Some people would rather pray to the unknown than rather sit there. Some people need comfort in knowing that someone watches over them and loves them while others don't. And that's completely Okey.

We simply need to understand that some people need religion and can't live without it, and some don't need religion. One thing that we can focus on is abolishing any religious practices that may bring harm towards the believer or non believers ( for example extremism, honour killings,child marriages, ostracism and what not.)

I feel like we as a society can maybe try and live alongside religion, since obviously some groups of people desperately need it to function.

When somebody randomly becomes supper obsessed with a religion and randomly starts becoming hyper religious especially in the Abrahamic religions it's referred to as religious psychosis.

But when people start turning to other things and being unusually obsessed whith things like the universe, tarot cards, crystals, rocks, statues, mother nature, zodiac signs, stars & moons and start praying and also worship all this things it's not considered psychosis, like be fr ... All this things can be considered as a religion as long as anyone uses them as a belief system. But yall would never say it religious psychosis when people of this beliefs start doing wierd shi 🙄🤨

And don't use the excuse that Abrahamic religions are the most popular and how their followers deconstruct more.

I see lots of people raging about bad experiences at church and I have not been able to relate until today. Church is mostly benign and people mean well. How bad can it be?

The lesson was on how when bad things happen to you, you still need to keep the commandments. So for example the reasoning goes that in order to receive blessings, you need to follow the commandments. Which infers that if you don’t keep the commandments, you could be putting yourself at risk. But they don’t really say that part because it’s a little karmic. And we were discussing how bad things happen to all people whether you keep the commandments or not. And the teacher was doing a number on being able to somehow shoehorn in the idea of still having the need to keep the commandments regardless.

And it was concerning to me how everyone was just nodding their heads and eating it up. Because if you just take a step back for 2 seconds and think for yourself, you will see that the answer is the same no matter what. If you don’t keep the commandments, and something bad happens to you like a trial or a loss or a health challenge… we’re not gonna necessarily say it’s your fault or that you deserve it, but if you’re seeking some protection in your life, you better consider keeping the commandments. Now on the other hand, if you are already keeping the commandments and something bad happens to you, well now all of a sudden this is a trial of faith, and you need to pass your trial by demonstrating your faith to god by … keeping the commandments. This is deeply problematic.

One person shared I lost my mother but having faith in Jesus helped me get through it. Another person said they were having a health challenge but thankfully they challenged themselves to watch general conference in its entirety, and that helped them get past their trial. Another person passionately recounted elder uchtdorfs talk about when he fell down while skiing and couldn’t get up (oh boo hoo a boomer fell down and this is seriously going into a gen conf talk for the entire world to hear the prophetic message). His grand son came up and said grandpa you can get up now. Just do it now! Each answer my eyes are rolling higher and higher. This is the zombie sleeping walking feeling I get from everyone around me. Am I in the Truman show?

After the hour ended and the person giving the closing prayer finished mumbling the same repeated meaningless church jargon, I was catching up with a good old friend and sharing the bad news of how my younger sibling had unfortunately passed away just last week. Mid conversation an elders quorum member walks up and asks if we’re related or if I’m visiting. Unbeknownst to him, I belong in this ward so he kindly introduced himself and asked what I thought of the lesson. I had already fought very hard to not speak up during the lesson and mercilessly punch some big holes into the lesson front of everyone. But I thought why would I hold back any punches from this gentleman? I don’t even know him.

I said it was terrible, I thought it was very problematic. He wanted to know more so I briefly shared some of the points above. If bad things happen to all of us, how will keeping the commandments benefit us? And if by not keeping the commandments cannot be the direct cause or basis for your hardship, then what is the real detriment to ignoring them? I caught him up on some of the challenges of losing my younger sibling just very recently have been like for my family and I. My sister and I are no longer faithful. My parents are. The details surrounding the incident are especially difficult, it’s not like she suddenly passed away. Suffice to say she’s no longer here and everyone is deeply outraged, confused, and shocked. I explained who is and is not faithful and how the pain is all the same regardless. I said there is an insinuation in the lesson that if you don’t keep the commandments, this is partially the reason why you are experiencing your hardship. But of course no one will argue that my sister deserved to die in the way she did. This is textbook cognitive dissonance. I explained that my faithful father was genuinely at a loss as to why god, who had carried my sister through so many miraculous circumstances up until her adult age, would allow her to leave us in such a tragic and fleeting moment where the doctors could not have predicted things to go. Why would god take her away now and in this way after having sustained her through so many more difficult circumstances leading up to this point? (I didn’t share this detail, but my father is nuanced and felt uselessly futile at the idea of giving her a blessing during when we were questioning if she was going to make it or not) And how does whether someone keeps the commandments or not play into this and whether god is keeping score or who receives which tribulation and why? I explained that even beyond the family’s generic feeling of loss and grief, that my faithful parents in particular are feeling an even sharper and more bitter pain to the point where they cannot work or eat and they cry themselves to sleep at night.

All my buried and emotional feelings are beginning to seep through as I’m explaining all of this to my old friend and new elders quorum member acquaintance. We go back and forth a bit and I could tell that to him, this all made sense and that he was not seeing the cognitive dissonance. My old friend was mostly silent and just wanted to sincerely listen. Finally the elders quorum member interrupts me again and says, “you know what you need to do??” He passionately points to where the tv was during the lesson with his lips pressed together. “You need to do what the brethren have said. Think! Celestial!”

He was totally unironic and serious and genuine. I know he didn’t mean to make things worse and he was only trying to help. But in that instant while I had already felt a little emotional by disclosing some of these terrible details, and while feeling more and more cynical surrounded by zombified members in a cult who are towing the line and unquestioningly repeating all the talking points… amid all this and in response to his little dismissive and unsubstantial quip to “think celestial”, my blood instantly rose and I became truly enraged. And while fighting back tears I said “you know I really don’t need you telling me what to do right now… respectfully… that’s not helpful.”

Things got awkward and we politely dismissed each other. My friend gave me a million more hugs and we laughed off the sad vibes when my kids got back from their classes.

My still-faithful wife and I sad in the car for a long time discussing everything that happened. As well as my interpretation and perspective on all of the above. The night prior, she asked me to come to church with her and our family and now I have left those doors feeling worse than when I entered. She is a great listener and has overall been a tremendous support to my family and I during all of this.

I guess the reason I’m sharing this is just for the sake of sharing. I have shared to here other episodes at church that were mildly infuriating. But this takes the cake. I’ll probably continue to support my wife in the long term. And I really need more friends and I have an opportunity to rebuild an old friendship that has kind of been neglected. I don’t have resentment towards that individual or the church in general. But to those who storm out of the church in tears, I get it now and I can better relate. And yes we are taking steps to get connected with a grieving counselor.

TLDR. No matter what your tribulation is or what your worthiness is or what your faithfulness is, the answer is to always keep the commandments no matter what.

So many people (or chatbots) in here have taken the stance that if they are not in an organized cult then they can preach about their own personal gods as if it is healing.

It is not healing.

To come to a subreddit about religious trauma only to hear a bunch of crystal healing bullshit from entities and supreme beings is axtremely disheartening.

We escaped religion. Do not reinvent it and then push it on others as if you are helping.

It's obvious when it is an ex christian because their false idol is one supreme source of power and magic and love and that has no place here

so basically I used to be very Christian for a very long time and my family is religious as well all of my friends are religious. about 9 months ago I kind of stopped believing in it after a fallout with almost all of my religious friends and these friends that claim they are Christian did a lot of really awful things to me along with that I had a very bad injury because a guy on my cross country team broke my ankle on purpose and throughout all of that my Christian told me it was my fault and that it was all apart of gods plan and I was told so many times throughout my injury recovery that I didn’t pray enough and it wasn’t his fault it happened and that it was just gods plan and Im a terrible person for not forgiving him. and all of that really tainted my view on christianity so much that I can’t even hear the word Jesus without wanting to throw up and stepping into church and thinking about god has me so anxious and angry and sick that its unbearable at times. ive had anxiety attacks due to all of this. but I don’t feel like I went through a bad enough experience for it to qualify as religious trauma. so if someone can help me figure out whats going on it would be nice :)

My mother has been following a woman on Telegram for the past two years. This person posts long videos and voice messages with Islamic reminders. She tends to speak very loudly, almost shouting at times, which really disrupts our family life. Since my mother started listening to these, I feel like she has changed, to the point where her views have become very rigid, even extreme.

For example, one day my mother gave me a “reminder” saying that I must obey my husband no matter what (which is already problematic, but anyway). She added: “even if your husband forbids you from seeing your parents.” I looked at her completely shocked, like “are you serious?” Seeing my reaction, she assumed I was “against religion” and got angry.

I replied: “Okay, but what if it’s for no reason? Just to annoy me? I’m still not going to stop seeing my own parents.” She said yes, I should. I then asked: “So I should ignore him and go see you anyway?” She replied: “If I find out, I won’t even open the door for you. If I don’t know, then consider it as if you spiritually divorced your husband.”

I sighed because she was making no sense. And since she was getting even more angry at my reaction, I just pretended to agree to avoid escalating things.

Another day, I was playing Valorant. I only speak when I’m alone at home, otherwise my parents don’t allow me to use voice chat (even though I’m 21…). Sometimes I mute my mic, but I still listen to other players — I don’t speak, I just listen. My mother again told me to turn off the console because it’s not appropriate to listen to men’s voices. I told her it’s just a game, I’m not even talking, and listening actually helps me locate enemies better. But she insisted that even listening to a man’s voice is haram.

It wasn’t like this before. Even though I already wasn’t allowed to speak freely, listening to other players was never an issue. Now everything is being reframed through this religious lens.

There was even a time when, in the street, I simply said “thank you” while smiling at a man, while I was with her. She threatened me to never smile again and told me I should lower my gaze in front of men. As if I should become rude just to fit this interpretation of religion.

I have so many examples since she started following this woman… it’s starting to feel really suffocating.

I don’t know what to do. To avoid her getting angry, I almost always just agree with her.

I was with my wife at the mall but we split up for a bit to go look at different shops and this religious couple was doing prayers for people and stopped me. I straight up told them that I had religious trauma from my upbringing and I don't really trust patriarchal religious practices who have men as a Lord and savior. They started talking to me about God and I was pretty uncomfortable, then the lady said "are you married?" I said yes...she said okay you know you are supposed to obey your husband and do what he says cause he's the head of the household...I was like ohh you mean wife? Her jaw dropped hahaha she looked so angry. Anyways I love pissing religious people off, I can't help it.

I’m no longer a Muslim. And I’m so fucking tired of the emotions that still come up in me everytime I see something that’s even slightly “haram”.

For context, I grew up in a very Islamic environment and I was very religious at one point. Long story short I came to realize how disgusting Islamic culture is and what’s even worse is that I’ve been embedded in it so long that I can’t help but have so many disgusting emotions come up even though I’m trying really damn hard to push them away.

Like when I see a girl expressing herself by dressing in revealing clothes, or if my sister goes out secretly to see a guy, or if I see others drink/smoke/just let loose and have some fun. For some fucking reason this random feeling of anger just spawns inside me and it frustrates me so much because I just wanna feel like I’m a normal person again. It just makes me feel miserable and alone and I really wish I wasn’t like this.