I discovered Religious Trauma Syndrome while writing this text

I started to write on the Internet in 2004, and since then, I never stopped.

However, my relationship with writing is not stable, really. We have been on a break several times.

At first, I thought I loved writing. I even thought I should become a professional writer someday. Yet some years later I would come to the conclusion I couldn’t be a professional writer because writing is too stressful for me.

I knew I was capable of writing really good stuff that people enjoy reading. Most of the articles I published in the past would always receive lots of comments, most of them with effusive compliments to the quality of my texts.

Also, I like my own texts. When I read them, I feel proud of myself.

All this conflict got me in trouble, because I couldn’t come to a final conclusion. After all, should I write or not? Do I have a talent for writing or should I focus on my other skills (whatever they are)?

In 2006, I abandoned being myself, became a religious extremist and started a relationship with a bully

I was born and raised a Catholic, and as the years passed, I became more and more serious about my Christian faith, which led me to read the Bible.

Not surprisingly, reading the Bible made me identify many inconsistencies in the Catholic Church. They were not really following the book. I had to decide between the Bible and the Church…

…and so I left Catholicism, and started to practice my faith alone, reading the Bible and praying every day, waiting for God to show me what church should I join next.

If I wanted to remain a Christian but didn’t wanted to be catholic, my only option was to become an evangelical Christian. Yet, as time passed, the more skeptical I was about evangelical churches, for obvious reasons.

At the end of 2005, I decided that God was telling me to leave my city and move to Rio de Janeiro. Once there, I would meet a girl who developed a crush on me.

She was not my type, but I was deceived by a personality flaw of mine. I loved the feeling of being praised, admired, and desired. To know that there was a girl romantically interested in me made me feel so good that I would encourage her flirting.

Little did I know I was setting up a trap I would fall into. I ended up being unintentionally pavloved.

I didn’t like the girl, but when she flirted with me I would feel good because of my pride. With time, my brain removed the pride and I started to feel good just because the girl was there.

We started to date, but it was not official. One day, she decided she could not date me anymore unless I joined her church. (She didn’t use those words, but that’s exactly what she meant…)

And then my brain came up with one of the biggest bullshits I ever convinced myself of:

God had sent me to Rio de Janeiro to find that girl because she was the one He had chosen to me and her church was the church I should join.

I visited her church, and during the service, the preacher was just listing the absurdities that happened in other Christian churches and how they were not following the Bible.

That was everything I needed to hear.

If people in that church had the same opinion I had, obviously they were different, right?

It would take me 7 long years to learn that no, there was no difference at all

But before coming to that conclusion, I became a loyal sheep in that extremist evangelical Christian congregation.

They believed they were so much better than anyone else they would even discourage the congregation to visit other evangelical Churches, because they were heretic (no kidding, that’s exactly the word they used).

And the Catholic Church, to them, was the church of the Devil, and the Pope was the Antichrist in flesh.

Being in such extremist church had a deep [negative] impact in my life. Back then, I couldn’t do any of the things I used to, and I couldn’t behave the way I used to behave: I could not swear, drink alcohol, listen to mundane music, or dance. I needed to go to church every single fucking day, and on Sundays, I should go twice.

Right after joining the church, me and the girl started dating officially. Two years later, we got married, and we stayed together for 5 more years.

Those 7 years were what I consider to be the Dark Ages of my life

My ex-wife was a bully. Her idea of humor was laughing at the cost of humiliating others. She could not have fun in any way other than saying mean things about people, me included.

As if this was not enough, if I didn’t laugh at the mean jokes she made, she would act offended because of my “lack of humor”, telling me how mean I was for being harsh on her even though she was “just joking”.

Over the years, I grew insecure, anxious, and depressed.

It was only in 2013 that I finally snapped out of that cage

The leaders of the church got involved in a scandal of national proportions. They got arrested for embezzling church’s money, among other crimes.

It was a huge disappointment, but it opened my eyes for reality. I was finally able to have an unbiased opinion about my faith, and I started to question it.

I decided to read the book Why I Believed: Reflections of a Former Missionary, by Kenneth W. Daniels. It was a turning point in my life: I could not have faith anymore.

After some weeks, I finally built the courage to tell my ex-wife I was no more a Christian.

Boy, I was not ready for that… She acted like it was the worst thing she ever heard in her entire life. She tried to accept the new reality, but she couldn’t.

We divorced that same year.

I was now free from every single influence of religion in my life

I could now resume my life from where I left it.

But it wouldn’t be that simple.

Only today, just because I decided to write this article, while I was searching for some references, I ended up hearing for the first time in my life about the Religious Trauma Syndrome, which explains perfectly what have been happening to me after I abandoned faith.

I developed depression, anxiety, grief, loneliness, loss of social network, family rupture, social awkwardness, difficulty with pleasure, loss of meaning, confusion, difficulty with decision-making, difficulty belonging, and specially, negative beliefs about self-ability & self-worth.

I’ve been working on these symptoms every day since 2013, and I made huge progress.

I have no idea how long I’m gonna take to fully recover, though.

But until there…

I’ll force myself to do the stuff I know I can be good at, even though I don’t feel confident about it

Because feelings lie.

Like I read in the book The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking, by Oliver Burkeman, when you are depressed, you may think you can’t get out of your bed, but this is not true. What you can’t do is to feel like getting out, but you are totally capable of taking action.

It’s all a matter of decision.

Tell yourself “I can’t do it” and you won’t do it. Tell yourself “I don’t wanna do it” and again you won’t do it. But tell yourself “I’m doing it” and you’ll fucking do it no matter what.

That’s why I decided I’ll write again, and I’ll do it consistently, even though I’m not really feeling like doing so.

If I just write every day, with time I’ll develop my skills and confidence. And then, anything can happen.

If you don’t do it, you already know what’s going to happen.
If you keep doing it everyday, you have no idea. — David Ams