Imposter
Me: “So often I don’t feel like a real person. It’s as if my life is just watching a movie. It’s like I’m some sort of alien or imposter trying to figure out how to fit in and play the part.”
Therapist: “That’s common with trauma. It’s because your authentic self was squashed and not allowed to flourish and thrive.”
How messed up is that?
Religion allowed me no room for individuality or self-expression. Black and white thinking, always dying to self, submitting to others, looking outside of myself to know how to be or feel or act.
In an effort to banish anything that wasn’t absolute truth, they destroyed the only thing that is absolute – the validity of our existence and the certainty of our worth. They took away everything tangible for subjective ideologies. They stole my personhood, as if stealing my innocence wasn’t enough.
They shredded the very fabric of reality.
One comes out the other side of that a ghost, floating in a sea of uncertainty, always glancing around frantically for something solid to hold on to.
Mass control becomes easy when followers are desperate for a lifeboat, looking to their leader to validate their opinions, emotions, experiences, even their existence. It’s easy to manipulate people who become so unsure of themselves it’s difficult to know what they want if no one has told them. It’s easier to assimilate.
It’s not always obvious to the outsider, but yes, this is a common experience for those coming out of religion. It just takes a lot of self-awareness and education to understand where the nervousness and uncertainty is coming from.
Taking power is easy when your victims don’t even feel real. As someone who spent 26 years on the inside, I can tell you this is normal in those circles. It just isn’t talked about because most of us have so little sense of self we can’t piece together how our experiences have affected us. We don’t call out what we think is normal.
These soul-thieves and spirit-crushers cannot be allowed to leech any further into society, taking what is not theirs. Enough is enough.