Healing the Wounds left from Indoctrination
You’ve quit drinking from the fountain of religion cold turkey…now what?
It’s time to do the work. You’ve released yourself from years and years of hive thinking and indoctrinated belief of the musings of primitive men on god only to be shattered.
What do you do?
I remember feeling a sense of relief juxtaposed with betrayal. It took me a while to realise I needed to heal the wounds inflicted by growing up religious. The feeling of betrayal gave way to anger, hot and unending. I lashed out. I took to social media, Facebook my platform of choice, constructed my soapbox, stood up with my megaphone and lambasted the perils and dangers of religious brainwashing.
I implored my friends to open their eyes and begin to seek, I was a mad woman, seething with my rage over having the wool pulled over my eyes from infancy. I was most angry with my mother. Instead of focusing on healing, I played the blame game.
Don’t be like me.
While it is tempting to launch an all-out assault on Religious Institutions and the adherents that would have you back to grovelling and praying on your knees for absolution for your humanness, resist. Unpack those feelings one by one and trace them back to their genesis.
My emotional and mental state wobbled in the wake of my liberation. I was never overly conservative but I had to admit that I had internalized a lot of the more harmful teachings from growing up in the Church. It took about a year or two for the embers of my rage to simmer, only because I stopped feeding the fire and began feeding myself.
I began feeding my mind, soul, and body. Healing, I’ve come to realise is a journey and not a point of finality. Especially when it comes to reworking years of layered conditioning.
Expressing my feelings with friends that cared truly helped. Friends that either went through what I went through years prior or were on a similar journey. I began to consider my mother and her reasoning behind her zealous nature when it comes to her god.
I tried empathy and forgiveness. Then I separated myself from anyone that was no longer lending to my growth. I began to do the work in order to heal the wounds.
In my teen years, I was always drawn to the occult and esoteric knowledge but my religious tutelage always made me climb back up the rabbit hole when I felt guilty. I always heard my mother in my head telling me I was opening up myself for demonic possession by wanting to know about the wrong things.
Newly liberated I dived deep. Devoured everything I could find. Began studying astrology, tarot, witchcraft, Kabbalah, Hermeticism, and much more. I sought out Buddhism, Hinduism, Voudon, I-Ching and read spiritual texts like the Bhagavad Gita and the Gnostic Gospels.
I was searching to create my own brand of spirituality, one that resonated with my inner being.
Quieting the mind and being mindful during asana was the balm to the chaos I was seeking to quell. Meditation allowed me a way of releasing crystalized methods of thinking. At the start, I would visualize things that had been taught to me that didn’t line up with my personal truth. Yoga allowed me to relax and centre myself.
Both practices heal the mind and body and show you have to be present always. I needed to stop reliving my past. Release needed to come so I could appreciate that what I went through shaped who I am in ways that were beneficial as well. So I meditated daily and went to an Ashram twice a week.
I transitioned to a plant-based vegan diet. Cleansed my body and dropped 60+ pounds. Deadweight that was symbolic of my religious upbringing. I felt lighter in more ways than one and energized. I’m not recommending you do this, I don’t believe veganism is for everyone. It is a very nutrient deficient lifestyle no matter how you do it and I learned it the hard way. With that being said, it helped me when I needed it to.
Journaling is a powerful tool for self-awareness, self-help, reflection and memory keeping. Journals are so versatile and you can use them to work through the emotions and thoughts that are plaguing you. I’ve kept journals at various times in my life, but I never finished an entire journal, I would always give up or just fall off of the daily chore due to being traumatized by my mother during my teen years. She found a journal I had and punished me for my innermost thoughts and emotions. It was jarring. During this time, however, I began again. I used prompts to help me work through my feelings. I kept notes from books I read. I released things on paper that I didn’t know was even bothering me. You can unpack anything in a journal. It’s yours.
I also got into art journaling. Creativity is a great way to do self- therapy. And that’s what you need. You need to act to the work in order to heal.
I began seeing a therapist for a few months. I cannot stress how beneficial therapy is and if you can afford it you should definitely find one you can open yourself up to. Therapy helped me identify the root of what was hurting me. I was able again to release using various therapeutic techniques like Mental and Emotional Release an aspect of NLP or Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
Healing is necessary after an upheaval like shedding your religious upbringing and belief in god. You’ve believed something was true your entire life and then you found out or came to an understanding that it wasn’t. That takes a toll. A lot of people don’t do the work to heal the wounds left behind and instead, they behave the way I did in the beginning with anger and vitriol. While indignantly yelling at the top of your lungs can be cathartic it doesn’t help you if you don’t work through the issues the emotions are connected to.
Do the work. You don’t have to follow what worked for me, you can forge your own way through to your healing.
For me my healing is continual. So much of what I went through as a child can be traced back to religion. The parenting ideologies my parents adhered to can be traced back to religion. The method they took with our sexual education can be traced back to religion. The way they conditioned us to behave can be traced back to religion. Everything. That includes my country of birth and everyone I know. It is so deep into the foundations of our culture that my work remains unfinished. Perhaps you are the same.
Healing will be the active thing you will have to do throughout your life but the good news is that it only lends to your self-growth on the road to self-mastery.
You can do it. I believe in you.
Healing the Wounds left from Indoctrination
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