Religion; et alternativ til psykolog ved psykiske plager?

[Fustasjeopphengsforkobling]

Svært mange har fått hjelp av Jesus. Har nettopp sett vitnesbyrdet til Nicky Cruz (http://troensbevis.no/nyheter/sommerstevnet-nyheter/item/92289-fra-farlig-forbryter-til-ny-skapning-i-jesus). Sterk historie om hvordan hans eget og en rekke andres liv ble totalforvandlet i møte med Jesus. Deretter også hans søsken, og hans mor og far som drev med hekseri, satanisme og spiritisme, og kalte Nicky Cruz for djevelens sønn som barn. Nicky Cruz var en knallhard gjengleder av en bande i en av New Yorks kriminelle miljøer, men ble totalforvandlet da han tok imot Jesus når David Wilkerson åpnet opp evangeliet for hans hjerte.

[Abigor]

Svært mange har fått ødelagt livene sine av jesus og tusenvis av menesker har måttet dø i valget sitt om å nekte å tro på denne fremmede guden.

[arne22]

Tja si det. det kan nok sikkert være noen som har fått ødelagt livet på grunn enten på grunn av religion eller de mennesker som står bak religionen.

 

Det mangler vel på den annen side ikke eksempler på dem som har blitt ødelagt og godt til grunne på på grunn av feil eller uhensiktsmessig behandling innenfor den kliniske psykologien og/eller psykiatrien.

 

Hvis man skal være litt vitenskapelig orientert og se på de store tall, så spørs det om ikke den kliniske psykologien og psykiatrien står for en del flere ødelagte menneskeskjebner enn for eksempel kristendommen, slik som den praktiseres i moderne samfunn nå i dag.

 

Ellers hvis man skal lese statistikk om hvem som er "lykkeligst på jobb" så har jo de kristene prestene tradisjonelt toppet denne statistikken.

 

http://www.vl.no/troogkirke/prester-lykkeligst-p%C3%A5-jobben-1.50014

 

Det som "motstandere av religion" har lett for å hevde det er jo at "hos psykologen og hos psykiateren så handler det om vitenskap, så der er alt trygt og godt".

 

Slik er det jo nettop ikke. Hvis man går den kliniske psykologien og psykiatrien etter i sømmene, så dreier det seg jo stort sett bare om "tro" der også. Man mangler for eksempel "dybdekunnskap" om hva såkalte "psykiatiske sykdommer" egentlig er, og også hvordan "den friske psyke" egentlig fungerer. Man forstår ikke årsaken til de "sykdommene" som man behandler og man forstår heller ikke virkemåten til de medisinene man skriver ut, annet enn ganske overfladisk.

 

På denne måten så blir egentlig det valget man har å velge mellom psykiaterens/psykologens "tro og antakelser" og tilsvarende "prestnes eller predikantens tro og antakelser". (Når valget er disse to alternativene.)

 

En sak som jo er meget godt egnet som et eksempel på den grad av vitenskapelighet eller mangel på sådan som finnes innenfor den kliniske psykologien/psykiatrien det er jo de psykiatriekse utredningene rundt massemorder ABB. Her får man et rimelig godt overblikk over hvordan det står til med "vitenskapleigheten" innenfor disse fagområdene.

 

http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/22-juli/psykiatrisk_vurdering/

 

En annen side ved saken det er jo at man kan diskutere "hva er egentlig en psykisk plage", en viss form for "eksistensiell krise" som de fleste mennesker kanskje skal og bør gå gjennom noen ganger i løpet av livet er det en "psykisk plage" ?

 

Det kan vel hende at det kanskje ikke er det og at det finnes flere alternativer, for eksempel filosofaget. (Men det finnes vel kanskje flere teologer og predikanter enn det finnes filosofer.)

 

Skulle det for eksempel vært interessant og nyttig og hatt et "filosofifag" i skolen ?

Endret 21. juli 2014 av arne22

[cuadro]

Når den problemstillingen som diskuteres er "Religion; et alternativ til psykolog ved psykiske plager" så er egentlig en metodediskusjon eller en diskusjon om vitenskapsteori i seg selv en avsporing i forhold til den opprinnelige problemstilling som er av ganske praktisk natur.

 

Det er en ting jeg kan være enig om. Problemet jeg har med dine innlegg er at de konsekvent forsøker å "sverte" den vitenskapelige tyngden av kunnskapsfaget, hvilket ikke er en ærlig tilnærming til psykologi som et fagfelt. Innleggene dine uthever stadig spørsmål om hvorvidt det "egentlig er så vitenskapelig anrettet som vi skal ha det til". Og ja, det er det.

 

Men når du nå er helt klar på at du legger vekt på problemstillingens sanne natur, hvilket er den praktiske håndteringen av et kunnskapsfelt, som vel å merke er utrolig mye vanskeligere å forholde seg til enn vitenskapen bak det, så kan vi nok bli mye mer enige. Jeg blir likevel ikke så lett overbevist om at det er likegyldig om man henviser til psykolog, enn f.eks. prest. Slik jeg skrev i ett av mine første innlegg:

 

"[..]Denne kunnskapen, selv om kort og ung, er vitenskapelig anrettet. Det inkorporeres i et helseorgan som jobber fot om fot med medisinen, og tilbyr løsninger på bakgrunn av kompetanse prester, buddhister, Gud og "samtalepartnere" ikke har. Dersom noen lider av psykologiske plager, spesielt av alvorlig karakter - slik som eventuelt depressjon eller selvmordstanker - er det direkte skadende å foreslå annet enn profesjonell hjelp."

[Gjest Bruker-95147]

psykologer eller sjamaner, snåsakaller og arahanter - jeg er likevel happy for at det forskes seriøst på dette emnet

 

 

 

“You have to be somebody before you can be nobody,” Jack Engler wrote twenty years ago inTransformations of Consciousness, and recently revisited in Psychoanalysis and Buddhism. A supervising psychologist and instructor at Harvard Medical School, where he teaches psychotherapy, Engler has a private practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is a former president of the board of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts and a founding member and teacher at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.

While at university, Engler became frustrated by the academic study of philosophy and theology in the absence of experiential knowledge. He began spiritual practice as a Trappist monk under the guidance of Catholic writer and Buddhism enthusiast Thomas Merton. Engler met Vipassana teachers Anagarika Munindra and Dipa Ma while researching his doctoral thesis in India for the University of Chicago; both Munindra and Dipa Ma became his mentors. In November of 2003, Engler shared with Tricycle editor James Shaheen what these remarkable teachers taught him about human potential, the power of presence, and the possibility of enlightenment in this lifetime.

link

 

Det "lille" jeg har erfart i min forskning, er at løsningene ligger rett foran nesa, og det er så enkelt at det blir liksom for enkelt til å fatte

 

[arne22]

 

Når den problemstillingen som diskuteres er "Religion; et alternativ til psykolog ved psykiske plager" så er egentlig en metodediskusjon eller en diskusjon om vitenskapsteori i seg selv en avsporing i forhold til den opprinnelige problemstilling som er av ganske praktisk natur.

 

Det er en ting jeg kan være enig om. Problemet jeg har med dine innlegg er at de konsekvent forsøker å "sverte" den vitenskapelige tyngden av kunnskapsfaget, hvilket ikke er en ærlig tilnærming til psykologi som et fagfelt. Innleggene dine uthever stadig spørsmål om hvorvidt det "egentlig er så vitenskapelig anrettet som vi skal ha det til". Og ja, det er det.

 

Men når du nå er helt klar på at du legger vekt på problemstillingens sanne natur, hvilket er den praktiske håndteringen av et kunnskapsfelt, som vel å merke er utrolig mye vanskeligere å forholde seg til enn vitenskapen bak det, så kan vi nok bli mye mer enige. Jeg blir likevel ikke så lett overbevist om at det er likegyldig om man henviser til psykolog, enn f.eks. prest. Slik jeg skrev i ett av mine første innlegg:

 

"[..]Denne kunnskapen, selv om kort og ung, er vitenskapelig anrettet. Det inkorporeres i et helseorgan som jobber fot om fot med medisinen, og tilbyr løsninger på bakgrunn av kompetanse prester, buddhister, Gud og "samtalepartnere" ikke har. Dersom noen lider av psykologiske plager, spesielt av alvorlig karakter - slik som eventuelt depressjon eller selvmordstanker - er det direkte skadende å foreslå annet enn profesjonell hjelp."

 

 

 

Nei, jeg sverter ikke, jeg bare forsøker å balansere litt.

 

Ellers når det gjelder graden av og typen vitenskapsmetode innefor et fag som psykiatri så er det jo et par faktorer som går igjen:

 

1. Ingen har noen gang "sett sykdommen i et mikroskop". Man har for en stor del ingen konkret kunnskap om hva sykdommen egentlig består i. Man observerer sykdommen indirekte gjennom atferd, og så setter man navn på det som man antar er en "sykdom" som er en bakenforliggende grunn til denne "atferden". (Kikker man på utredningene rundt massemorder ABB, så ser man at det er dette prinsippet som er i bruk, man sammenligner atferd med kjente mønster som man mener eller tror indikterer "sykdom".)

 

2. Ingen kjenner til hvordan de medikamentene man bruker egentlig fungerer med hensyn til virkningsmekanisme. Det eneste man vet med sikkerhet det er at medikamentene medfører bivirkninger som kan redusere livskvaliteten og forkorte livslengden for pasienten.

 

3. Hvilke diagnoser som skrives ut svinger en del med hva som er "moderne diagnoser" for tiden.

 

4. Bak de fagmiljøene som står for diagnostikken så befinner det seg også en billion dollar industri som er avhengig av at stadig flere personer får sine diagnoser slik at selskapene skal kunne tjene penger.

 

Et eksempel på en slik "moderne diagnose" med økende popularitet det er jo for eksempel "utmattingssyndromet".

 

For få år siden så var dette en diagnose som få hadde hørt om. Når man ser hvordan en faglig diskusjon rundt denne sykdommen kan forløpe, så er denne som vanlig basert på observasjon av atferd, som en indirekte sykdomsindikator, og så er den neste fakttor "å ha den rette tro" rundt det å klassifisere atferden som en riktig type sykdom.

 

http://tidsskriftet.no/article/1015463/

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurasthenia

 

Blant de diagnosene som har hatt en meget stor økning i popularitet gjennom de siste årene er jo "ADHD". For få år siden så var det så godt som ingen som hadde ADHD. I dag så er dette en helt alminnelig sykdom der så mye som 8-10% av en gutteklasse kan ha "ADHD".

 

Rent statisktisk sett så har det oppstått en "ADHD epedemi" og i forbindelse med dette en "billion dollar ADHD behandlingsindustri" som produserer medikamenter for behandling.

 

Møstret med at man ikke kjenner helt konkret til hva sykdommens årsak egentlig er eller hva sykdommen egentlig er, og man kjenner heller ikke til helt eksakt til hvordan medisinene virker eller hva langtidsvirkningene kan/vil være.

 

http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_Deficit_Hyperactivity_Disorder

 

http://www.kjendis.no/2014/07/21/kjendis/blondinbella/isabella_lwengrip/isabella_lowengrip/adhd/34447307/

 

Når det gjelder ADHD så skriver man ut stadig flere "diagnoser" og det gjennomføres også stadig flere "behandlinger".

 

Hva med å stille et par kritiske spørsmål til om det virkelig finnes noen slik ADHD epedemi og om diagnostikken rundt denne sykdommen til dels baseres på litt overtro ? (Diagnossystemet DSM-4)

 

Forekonsten av ADHD ser da ut til å være noe kulturelt betinget. "Sykdommen" ser ut til å opptre hos industrialiserte land og i kulturer som ligner litt på hverandre. Samtidig så opptrer det et annet helsemessig problem i de samme landene: overvekt.

 

Man kunne for eksempel kanskje tenke den tanken at ADHD epedemien kanskje ikke er noen egentlig sykdomsepedemi, men snarere en naturlig reaksjon på et endret oppvekstmiljø og endrede livsforhold innenfor de kultuene der ADHD er et problem.

 

Når det ellers gjelder alvorlige problemer rundt selvmord og slike ting så bør man vel kankje ikke utelukke at den kliniske psykologien og psykiatrien kan ha vært medvirkende årsaker til at dette har skjedd. Det har i alle fall blitt utbetalt en del erstatninger i den forbindelse.

 

Det er ingen grunn til å sverte, men det er heller ikke noen grunn til ikke å tegne et balansert og realistisk bilde av hva den kliniske psykologien og psykiatrien kan bidra med.

 

Det vil være et samfunsmessig problem dersom man sykeliggjør og behandler det normale og hvis man behandler et behov for et bedre livs og oppvekstmiljø med dop.

 

Man bør ikke tro på nisser og dverger og heller ikke alltid og i enhver sammenheng på den kliniske psykologien og/eller psykiatrien. Man bør heller ikke alltid tro på diagnoser som ingen egentlig vet hva er eller medisiner som ingen egentlig vet hvordan virker. Da er de vitenskapelige metodene som er i bruk kanskje egentlig litt i underkant.

Endret 22. juli 2014 av arne22

[arne22]

... Og et lite spørsmål til de ikke religiøse eller "vitenskapelig anlagte", .. eller andre som måtte ønske å svare:

 

En annen svært populær diagnose innenfor den psykiatriske diagnostikken, det er jo diagnosene angst og depresjon og behovet for såkalte "lykkepiller". Det har således oppstått et markedssegment for den farmasautiske industrien der man tjener gode penger.

 

Behovet for lykkepiller har således også i likhet med behovet for ADHD medisin hatt en karakter av tidevis epedemi innenfor vestlige industriland.

 

http://www.medisinmotpiller.no/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=29:egne-opplevelser-fra-en-stor-skeptiker-til-lykkepillen&catid=21:brukere-forteller-om-sine-egne-erfaringer&Itemid=44

 

http://www.nrk.no/livsstil/lykkelig-uten-lykkepiller-1.11357271

 

Gitt at person X lever alene i en drabantby der det finnes få eller ingen sosiale tilbud. Dagene tilbringes mye alene. Tankene spinner til sist mye rundt i ring, og det er etter hvert vanskelig å se noen mening i det hele. Person X begynner etterhvert å oppleve hverdagen som tung og vanskelig og livsgnisten begynner å forsvinne.

 

Da har person X to mulige tilbud.

 

Tilbud A. kommer fra fastlegen og fra det profesjonelle hjelpeapparatet. Person X får et tilbud om å medisineres med lykkepiller og å gjennomføre en samtale med psykolog en gang i måneden kun mot en liten egenandel.

 

Tilbud B. kommer fra en religiøs meninghet i nærheten. Her får Person X et tilbud om en sosial omgangskrets, venner og noen å dele tanker, føeleser og et felles livssyn med.

 

Hviket tilbud vil i det lange løp kunne ha den beste effekt for Person X tilbudet fra den religiøse meningheten som fjerner problemet på sitt årsaksnivå, eller det profesjonelle hjelpeapparatet som kan bidra med å dempe problemet på et symptomnivå?

 

Er det slik at den kliniske psykologien og psykiatrien har en god tradisjon for å fjerne problemene på et årsaksnivå, eller har man heller en tradisjon for å arbeide med å dempe symtomer? Kan det være slik at i en del tilfeller så er det slik at den profesjonelle hjelper helt mangler den evne til praktisk problemløsning som den uprofesjonelle hjelper faktisk har ?

Endret 22. juli 2014 av arne22

[Gjest Bruker-95147]

Det er vel umlig å spå hva som vil hjelpe best, men jeg er veldig glad for at begge mulighetene ligger åpne

 

Ble selv påtvunget lykkepiller for endel år siden - prøvde å si at jeg ikke trengte dem, men en meget insisterende fastlege mente noe annet. Jeg tok imot en usannsynlig stor mengde av preparatet, og lot dem ligge uåpnet hjemme. Etter tre uker og ny konsultasjon, skrev fastlegen i min journal: nå ser jeg at pasienten bruker medisinen på riktig måte, for nå har han fått tilbake glimtet i øynene .. Og to uker deretter var jeg tilbake i vanlig jobb. Lurer på hvordan det hadde gått hvis jeg hadde stolt på det den legen mente om hva som skulle til for å bli frisk

[malmanomar]

Mitt inntrykk er at både psykiatrien og religion feiler fatalt, i forhold til å avklare eksistensielle og psykiske problemer.

 

Jeg syns dog en mellomtilnærming er den beste. Alle vet hvem Freud var, hvor mange vet noe om Jung, hans elev, opphavsmannen til blant annet begrepet "den kollektive underbevissthet"? Desverre har for mange psykologer og psykiatere idag fremdeles for stor tiltro til Freud, fordi de ikke forstår Jung, mistror ektheten av hans arketypiske modeller, eller ikke tror pasienten er tjent med, eller vil forstå, en Jungiansk tilnærming til deres livssituasjon.

 

(Hadde vært fint med en tilbakemelding fra deg, Awarewolf, på Jung og hans oppfatning av psyken og dens relasjon til virkeligheten. )

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCpWyn4NjEc

[GXT]

Å tilbringe tid/sosialisere med andre kan være alt som kreves. Jeg ser ikke helt hvorfor religion absolutt skal få en slik særstilling. Som vi vet redder ikke Jesus noen som helst, men vi har tendenser til å få nye perspektiver og fokus når vi engasjerer oss i noe, eller i tilfeller med religion, blir lurt.

Så f.eks. kristendommens hjernevasking kan fungere ved at vedkomne rett og slett tenker på andre ting i stedet.

Jeg var selv vitne til en person som snudde en depresjonsperiode ved å begynne å spille fotball, så jeg tenker at aktiviteter og liknende er minst like effektivt.

 

Men for noen er lykkepiller en redning. I flere tilfeller kan vi dokumentere kjemiske ubalanser som fører til depresjonstilstander.

2. Ingen kjenner til hvordan de medikamentene man bruker egentlig fungerer med hensyn til virkningsmekanisme. Det eneste man vet med sikkerhet det er at medikamentene medfører bivirkninger som kan redusere livskvaliteten og forkorte livslengden for pasienten.

 

Vi vet omtrent hvordan de virker, men ingen er koplet på samme måte. Vi kjenner til hvordan de påvirker sinnet vårt, men til hvilken grad er vi ikke sikker på før vi ser resultatene. Derfor er de en stor hjelp for noen og ubetydelige for andre. Hadde vi ikke vært klar over hvordan medikamentene skal fungere, hadde vi ikke brukt dem.

På samme måte er det noen som kjenner bivirkninger, mens andre går uten tegn til bivirkninger.

- Nettopp fordi vi er alle forskjellige.

Til tider kan det være vanskelig å vurdere hvorvidt det er nødvendig, og mange leger velger derfor å gjøre det slik for å sikre seg selv.

Jeg ser ikke for meg at legene bryr seg om disse pilleprodusentenes inntekter. Det blir for tåpelig.

[ChiaroScuro]

Får inntrykk av at dem som bruker religion til å dempe psykiske plager ofte ikke kommer seg noen vei. Det blir en patologisk form for tro når folk vier livet sitt til religion etter min mening, isteden for å få god psykologisk behandling. Først er det best å bruke det som vi vet kan ha god effekt.

Mot normalt, må jeg være uenig med det du skriver.

De som sliter og velger kirken, møter en empati hos prest og menighet som er uten sidestykke.

Klart de har en skjult agenda, men den kommer senere.

 

Det er som Blåkors. Går du dit, edru, og sier: "Jeg trenger hjelp." får du profesjonell hjelp.

[arne22]

Å tilbringe tid/sosialisere med andre kan være alt som kreves. Jeg ser ikke helt hvorfor religion absolutt skal få en slik særstilling. Som vi vet redder ikke Jesus noen som helst, men vi har tendenser til å få nye perspektiver og fokus når vi engasjerer oss i noe, eller i tilfeller med religion, blir lurt.

Så f.eks. kristendommens hjernevasking kan fungere ved at vedkomne rett og slett tenker på andre ting i stedet.

Jeg var selv vitne til en person som snudde en depresjonsperiode ved å begynne å spille fotball, så jeg tenker at aktiviteter og liknende er minst like effektivt.

 

Men for noen er lykkepiller en redning. I flere tilfeller kan vi dokumentere kjemiske ubalanser som fører til depresjonstilstander.

2. Ingen kjenner til hvordan de medikamentene man bruker egentlig fungerer med hensyn til virkningsmekanisme. Det eneste man vet med sikkerhet det er at medikamentene medfører bivirkninger som kan redusere livskvaliteten og forkorte livslengden for pasienten.

 

Vi vet omtrent hvordan de virker, men ingen er koplet på samme måte. Vi kjenner til hvordan de påvirker sinnet vårt, men til hvilken grad er vi ikke sikker på før vi ser resultatene. Derfor er de en stor hjelp for noen og ubetydelige for andre. Hadde vi ikke vært klar over hvordan medikamentene skal fungere, hadde vi ikke brukt dem.

På samme måte er det noen som kjenner bivirkninger, mens andre går uten tegn til bivirkninger.

- Nettopp fordi vi er alle forskjellige.

Til tider kan det være vanskelig å vurdere hvorvidt det er nødvendig, og mange leger velger derfor å gjøre det slik for å sikre seg selv.

Jeg ser ikke for meg at legene bryr seg om disse pilleprodusentenes inntekter. Det blir for tåpelig.

 

Det stemmer ikke i det hele tatt at vi vet hvordan disse medikamentene fungerer. Det er jo ellers riktig nok at det står beskrevet i populærvitenskaplig literatur at "i forbindelse med depresjoner så oppstår det en kjemisk ubalanse i hjernen som man så retter opp med kjemisk preparat x".

 

Går man denne argumentasjonen etter i sømmene så oppdager man det at det bare er en brøkdel av en kjede av årsakssammenhenger man har oversikt over.

 

Et pedagogisk eksempel:

 

Man kan for eksempel stille et spørsmål: Hvordan virker en bil ? Så kan man svare på denne måten: En bil virker på den måten at når man trykker på gasspedalen så kjører bilen framover. Det vil være en sammenheng mellom trykkraften på gasspedalen og bilens hastighet framover. Forskning har vist at når vi trykker hardere på gasspedalen så kjører bilen hurtigere framover.

 

Bestemor på 70 har begynt å se litt dårligere og hun har blitt litt langsommere i rekasjonene, så derfor så har hun også begynt å redusere hastigheten i forbindelse med sin bilkjøring. Dette finner man ut at man vil behandle, og ettersom en større kraft på gasspedalen vil løse saken, så legger man inn et 5 kilos lodd i høyre sko. Trykket på gasspedalen øker, og saken er løst.

 

Stort sett så er de årsakssamenhenger man forklarer tatt ut av sin hele og store sammenheng slik at sluttresultatet kan bli noe variabelt.

 

Når det gjelder hjernens intelektuelle og emosjonelle funksjoner så har man svært liten oversikt over hvordan dette "virker" rent fysilogisk og hvilken effekt ulike medisiner har i en slik helhetlig sammenheng. Langtidseffekten ved bruk av den type medisiner som brukes i psykiatrien er til dels ganske negativ, ofte eller i alle fall noen ganger med redusert helse og tidlig død som sluttresultat.

 

Når det gjelder den farmasautiske industriens påvirkning på de diagnosene som skrives ut, så skjer jo dette selvfølgelig ikke på den måte at industrien kontakter den enkelte lege.

 

Det drives forskning på nasjonalt og internasjonalt nivå som "bestemmer" hva som er "riktig måte å behandle på". I forbindelse med denne forskningen så er den farmasautiske industrien en stor aktør og en stor "påvirker".

 

På basis av summen av forskningsresultater så utarbeider man nasjonale retningslinjer som danner et rammeverk rundt den diagnostikk som utøves av den enkelte lege.

 

Her har vi for eksempel de nasjonale retningslinjene for hvordan man skal behandle depresjoner hos voksene:

http://www.helsedirektoratet.no/publikasjoner/nasjonale-retningslinjer-for-diagnostisering-og-behandling-av-voksne-med-depresjon-i-primer--og-spesialisthelsetjenesten/Sider/default.aspx

 

Ellers så heter jo det faget som har å gjøre med den fysiologiske "virkemåten" til hjernen nevropsykologi, og kikker man litt inn på dette fagområdet så ser man etter mitt syn at man forstsatt kun er i en forholdsvis innledende fase i forhold til å forstå hvordan hjernen "fungerer" og eventuelt hvordan medisinene virker inn.

 

http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevropsykologi

 

Når det gjelder litt komplekse årsakssammenhenger og bruk av medisin så har man jo ikke en gang oversikt over hvordan Paracetamol virker.

 

http://www.vg.no/forbruker/helse-og-medisin/ny-forskning-paracetamol-har-liten-effekt-mot-korsryggsmerter/a/23259859/

[malmanomar]

 

Får inntrykk av at dem som bruker religion til å dempe psykiske plager ofte ikke kommer seg noen vei. Det blir en patologisk form for tro når folk vier livet sitt til religion etter min mening, isteden for å få god psykologisk behandling. Først er det best å bruke det som vi vet kan ha god effekt.

Mot normalt, må jeg være uenig med det du skriver.

De som sliter og velger kirken, møter en empati hos prest og menighet som er uten sidestykke.

Klart de har en skjult agenda, men den kommer senere.

 

Det er som Blåkors. Går du dit, edru, og sier: "Jeg trenger hjelp." får du profesjonell hjelp.

 

Det der er tull. Det vet jeg av egen erfaring. Jeg har snakket med flere enn en prest som bare har vist meg at folk av det med det yrket enten er i villfarelse om livets realiteter eller har inngått et kompromiss (forfalskning) av egen tro for å forsone seg med dens grusomheter og absurditeter. Når du sier skjult agenda. Glad du er med på den. Så om vi skal sammenligne med en somatisk sykdom: Man gir ikke pasienten opium med en skjult agenda om å gjøre ham til heroinist. En slik "lege" bør man ikke stole på.

 

Religion skaper først og fremst psykiske problemer, den løser dem ikke.

 

Om Religiøst Trauma Syndrom:

http://journeyfree.org/rts/

 

Part 1: RTS – It’s Time To Recognize It

by Marlene Winell, Ph.D.

I’m really struggling and am desperate never to go back to the religion I was raised in, but I no longer want to live in fear or depression. It seems that I am walking through the jungle alone with my machete; no one to share my crazy and sometimes scary thoughts with.

After years of depression, anxiety, anger, and finally a week in a psychiatric hospital a year ago, I am now trying to pick up the pieces and put them together into something that makes sense. I’m confused. My whole identity is a shredded, tangled mess. I am in utter turmoil.

These comments are not unusual for people suffering with Religious Trauma Syndrome, or RTS. Religious trauma? Isn’t religion supposed to be helpful, or at least benign? In the case of fundamentalist beliefs, people expect that choosing to leave a childhood faith is like giving up Santa Claus – a little sad but basically a matter of growing up.

I’m really struggling and am desperate never to go back to the religion I was raised in, but I no longer want to live in fear or depression. It seems that I am walking through the jungle alone with my machete; no one to share my crazy and sometimes scary thoughts with.

After years of depression, anxiety, anger, and finally a week in a psychiatric hospital a year ago, I am now trying to pick up the pieces and put them together into something that makes sense. I’m confused. My whole identity is a shredded, tangled mess. I am in utter turmoil.

But religious indoctrination can be hugely damaging, and making the break from an authoritarian kind of religion can definitely be traumatic. It involves a complete upheaval of a person’s construction of reality, including the self, other people, life, the future, everything. People unfamiliar with it, including therapists, have trouble appreciating the sheer terror it can create and the recovery needed.

My own awareness of this problem took some time. It began with writing about my own recovery from a fundamentalist Christian background, and very quickly, I found out I was not alone. Many other people were eager to discuss this hidden suffering. Since then, I have worked with clients in the area of “recovery from religion” for about twenty years and wrote a self-help book called Leaving the Fold on the subject.

In my view, it is time for society to recognize the real trauma that religion can cause. Just like clearly naming problems like anorexia, PTSD, or bipolar disorder made it possible to stop self-blame and move ahead with learning methods of recovery, we need to address Religious Trauma Syndrome. The internet is starting to overflow with stories of RTS and cries for help. On forums for former believers (such as exchristian.net), one can see the widespread pain and desperation. In response to mypresentation about RTS on YouTube, a viewer commented:

Thank you so much. This is exciting because millions of people suffer from this. I have never heard of Dr. Marlene but more people are coming out to talk about this issue – millions–who are quietly suffering and being treated for other issues when the fundamental issue is religious abuse.

Barriers to Getting Help for RTS

Thank you so much. This is exciting because millions of people suffer from this. I have never heard of Dr. Marlene but more people are coming out to talk about this issue – millions–who are quietly suffering and being treated for other issues when the fundamental issue is religious abuse.

At present, raising questions about toxic beliefs and abusive practices in religion seems to be violating a taboo, even with helping professionals. In society, we treasure our freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. Our laws and mores reflect the general principle that if we are not harming others, we can do as we like. Forcing children to go to church hardly seems like a crime. Real damage is assumed to be done by extreme fringe groups we call “cults” and people have heard of ritual abuse. Moreover, religious institutions have a vested interest in promoting an uncritical view.

But mind-control and emotional abuse is actually the norm for many large, authoritarian, mainline religious groups. The sanitization of religion makes it all the more insidious. When the communities are so large and the practices normalized, victims are silenced.

Therapists have no real appropriate diagnosis in their manual. Even in the commonly used list of psychological stresses, amidst all the change and loss and disruption, there is no mention of losing one’s religion. Yet it can be the biggest crisis ever faced. This is important for therapists to be aware of because people are leaving the ranks of traditional religious groups in record numbers¹ and they are reporting real suffering.

Another obstacle in getting help is that most people with RTS have been taught to fear psychology as something worldly and therefore evil. It is very likely that only a fraction of people with RTS are even seeking help. Within many dogmatic, self-contained religions, mental health problems such as depression or anxiety are considered sins. They are seen as evidence of not being right with God. A religious counselor or pastor advises more confession and greater obedience as the cure, and warns that secular help from a mental health professional would be dangerous.

God is called the “great physician” and a person should not need any help from anyone else. Doubt is considered wrong, not honest inquiry. Moreover, therapy is a selfish indulgence. Focusing on one’s own needs is always sinful in this religious view, so RTS victims are often not even clear how to get help. The clients I have worked with have had to overcome ignorance, guilt, and fear to make initial contact.

What is RTS?

Religious Trauma Syndrome is the condition experienced by people who are struggling with leaving an authoritarian, dogmatic religion and coping with the damage of indoctrination. They may be going through the shattering of a personally meaningful faith and/or breaking away from a controlling community and lifestyle. The symptoms compare most easily with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, which results from experiencing or being confronted with death or serious injury which causes feelings of terror, helplessness, or horror. This can be a single event or chronic abuse of some kind. With RTS, there is chronic abuse, especially of children, plus the major trauma of leaving the fold. Like PTSD, the impact of RTS is long-lasting, with intrusive thoughts, negative emotional states, impaired social functioning, and other problems.

I suffer with guilt and depression and struggle to let go of religion. I am also battling with an existential crisis of epic proportions and intense heartache. . . I feel like I am the only person in the world that this has happened to. Some days are okay, but others are terrible. I do not know if I will make it through this.

With RTS, the trauma is two-fold. First, the actual teachings and practices of a restrictive religion can be toxic and create life-long mental damage. In many cases, the emotional and mental abuse is compounded by physical and sexual abuse due to the patriarchal, repressive nature of the environment.

Second, departing a religious fold adds enormous stress as an individual struggles with leaving what amounts to one world for another. This usually involves significant and sudden loss of social support while facing the task of reconstructing one’s life. People leaving are often ill-prepared to deal with this, both because they have been sheltered and taught to fear the secular world and because their personal skills for self-reliance and independent thinking are underdeveloped.

Individuals can experience RTS in different ways depending on a variety of factors. Some key symptoms of RTS are:

• Confusion, difficulty making decisions, trouble thinking for self, lack of meaning or direction, undeveloped sense of self

• Anxiety being in “the world,” panic attacks, fear of damnation, depression, thoughts of suicide, anger, bitterness, betrayal, guilt, grief and loss, difficulty with expressing emotion

• Sleep and eating disorders, substance abuse, nightmares, perfectionism, discomfort with sexuality, negative body image, impulse control problems, difficulty enjoying pleasure or being present here and now

• Rupture of family and social network, loneliness, problems relating to society, personal relationship issues

These comments from people going through it may be the best way to convey the intensity of RTS:

My form of religion was very strongly entrenched and anchored deeply in my heart. It is hard to describe how fully my religion informed, infused, and influenced my entire worldview. My first steps out of fundamentalism were profoundly frightening and I had frequent thoughts of suicide. Now I’m way past that but I still haven’t quite found “my place in the universe.”

I felt despair and hopelessness that I would ever be normal, that I would ever be able to undo the forty years of brainwashing.

I get depressed and upset. Jesus no longer saves me. God no longer created me. What purpose is there? What am I left with? What do ex-Christians fill the hole with? So we are here for no reason, no divine plan. From nothing—into nothing; reality is harsh. Plus I’m pissed that I was so brainwashed for so long – smashing CDs, burning books, rebuking Satan. . . it’s like having your entire world turned upside down, no, destroyed.

There is a lot of guilt and I react to most religion with panic attacks and distress, even photos, statues or TV. . . I guess although I was willing it was like brainwashing. It’s very hard to shake. . . It’s been a nightmare.

I feel angry, powerless, hopeless, and hurt—scars from the madness Christianity once had me suffering in.

It took years of overcoming terrific fear as well as self-loathing to emancipate myself from my cult-like upbringing years ago. Still, the aftermath of growing up like that has continued to affect me negatively as a professional (nightmares, paranoia, etc.).

The world was a strange and frightening place to me. I feared that all the bad, nasty things that I had been brought up to believe would happen to anyone who left the cult would in fact happen to me!

Even now I still lack the ability to trust very easily and becoming very close to people is something I still find very alien and hard to achieve.

After 21 years of marriage my husband feels he cannot accept me since I have left the “church” and is divorcing me.

My parents have stopped calling me. My dad told me I’m going to hell (he’s done this my whole life!).

I had to move away from my home because I just could not be in the environment any more. My entire family is Christian and I struggle to explain to them what I am going through. I feel extremely isolated and sometimes I wonder if I am going insane. I am extremely lonely and I suffer from intense depression at times.

I lost all my friends. I lost my close ties to family. Now I’m losing my country. I’ve lost so much because of this malignant religion and I am angry and sad to my very core. . . I have tried hard to make new friends, but I have failed miserably. . . I am very lonely.

Many of us feel that we cannot relate to the ‘outside’ world as the teachings we were brought up on are all we know and our only frame of reference.

My new secular friends wouldn’t understand. My Christian friends either have abandoned me or keep praying for me.

My attempts to think outside the Christian box are like the attempts of a convict to escape Alcatraz prison– tunnel through hundreds of feet of stone and concrete, outsmart gun-carrying guards, only to maybe make it to the choppy freezing cold water and a deadly swim to safety. This may be a little dramatic, but true to my heart. I now continue to try to rebuild my soul from the abuse it’s endured.

RTS can range in severity, depending on specific teachings and practices of particular churches, pastors, or parents. Persons most at risk of RTS are those who were:

• raised in their religion,

• sheltered from the rest of the world,

• very sincerely and personally involved, and/or

• from a very controlling form of religion.

The important thing to realize is that Religious Trauma Syndrome is real. While it may be easier to understand the damage done by sexual abuse or a natural disaster, religious practices can be just as harmful. More and more people need help and the taboos about criticizing religion need to be questioned.

¹The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) from 2008 indicates that Americans by the millions are making an exodus from their faith. The number of people who affiliate themselves with “No religion” has nearly doubled from 1990 to 2008. The 18.7 million people who fall in this gap have presumably come from mainline Protestant, Baptist, and Catholic churches, which have lost 12.7 million believers during the same time frame.

Part 2: Understanding RTS: Trauma fromReligion by Marlene Winell, Ph.D.

The kind of religion that causes damage is that which requires rigid conformity in order to survive in the group or have hope for the afterlife. Such a fundamentalist religion has a closed system of logic and a strong social structure to support an authoritarian worldview. It can be a comfortable environment as long as a member does not question. Children learn very early to repress independent thinking and not to trust their own feelings. For truth, believers rely on external authority – Scripture and religious leaders. With the consequences of disbelief so severe, leaders are able to demand acceptance of farfetched claims at the expense of personal observation or scientific evidence. The culture rewards individuals who contribute in religious ways. Proselytizing is generally expected, even for children. Obedience is the highest value and personal development truncated.

Clearly, psychological problems can develop long before the additional trauma of leaving the fold. I’ll use the example of Bible-based fundamentalisms. True to the definition of trauma, survivors of these report feelings of terror, helplessness, and horror in facing death and injury – the horror of Jesus’ death (along with other atrocities in the Bible), the terror of hell for oneself and everyone else, and the helplessness of being a frail human in a wicked world, a tiny player in an overwhelming cosmic drama.

Toxic Teachings

There are different churches in this category with beliefs and practices that vary but core doctrines are consistent. All of the major authoritarian religions have enormous psychological control because they are based on fear, which is the most primitive and powerful human emotion. Secondly, they emphasize shame; humans are bad and need redemption. So the basic meme complex passed on to each generation of children is that you need religion in order to survive and in order to be acceptable.

Eternal punishment. The first key doctrine is eternal damnation (or annihilation) for all unbelievers. This is the terrifying backdrop for the salvation message presented to all newcomers and all children born into the faith. The Bible is quoted, including the words of Jesus, to paint a horrifying picture of hell as a lake of fire, a fire of eternal torture impossible to quench despite any pleading. Mormons describe a hell of “outer darkness” that is cold and just as terrifying. Jehovah’s Witnesses threaten the horror of dying forever at Armageddon and missing out on Paradise.

Small children can obviously visualize these things while not having the brain capacity to evaluate the message. Moreover, the powerful social context makes rejecting these teachings impossible. Children are completely at the mercy of religious adults.

The salvation formula is offered as a solution of course, but for many, it is not enough to ward off anxiety. How does one really know? And what about losing one’s salvation? Many adults remember trying to get “saved” multiple times, even hundreds of times, because of unrelenting fear.

I feel like much of my life was lived in fear. I am reading all I can to continue to find peace from what I’ve been taught. I still fear and I am 65.

I feel little hope, because I don’t know how it is remotely possible for me to ever let go of my fear of hell. If I give up my belief system, I’ll go to hell. Even though my whole life has been so unhappy in the church–it has brought me nothing but turmoil and heartbreak and disappointment and unanswered questions and dissatisfaction.

“Left behind” terror. Another horrible fear is about missing the “rapture” when Jesus returns. I have heard many people recount memories of searching for parents and going into sheer panic about being left alone in an evil world. Given that abandonment is a primary human fear, this experience can be unforgettably terrifying. Some report this as a recurring trauma every time they couldn’t find a parent right away.

During my freshman year in college, I started having nightmares. In my dreams, the rapture would happen and I would be left behind, or worse, sent to hell. Several times I woke up just before I was tossed into the flames, my mouth open, ready to scream. My mind was crying out, “Please, Jesus! Forgive me! I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough! I’m sorry!

After twenty-seven years of trying to live a perfect life, I failed. . . I was ashamed of myself all day long. My mind battling with itself with no relief. . . I always believed everything that I was taught but I thought that I was not approved by God. I thought that basically I, too, would die at Armageddon.

Surrounded by threat. Believers simply cannot feel safe in the world if they take to heart the teaching about evil everywhere. In the fundamentalist worldview, “the World” is a fallen place, dangerously ruled by Satan and his minions until Jesus comes back and God puts everything right. Meanwhile it’s a battleground for spiritual warfare and children are taught to be very afraid of anything that is not Christian. Much of “the World” is condemned at church, and parents try to control secular influences through private and home schooling. Children grow up terrified of everything outside the religious subculture, most of which is simply unfamiliar.

I was raised on fire and brimstone, speaking in tongues, believing the world was a dangerous and evil place, full of temptation and sinners seeking to destroy me/drag me down.

Some groups place more emphasis on literal teachings about demons, and believers learn to be afraid of evil spirits lurking everywhere. Being saved is a “covering” and one must put on the “whole armor of God” to go about ordinary life. A frequently quoted verse with a terrifying image is I Peter 5:8, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”

Self as bad. Second to the doctrine of hell, the other most toxic teaching in fundamentalist churches is that of “original sin.” Human depravity is a constant theme of fundamentalist theology and no matter what is said about the saving grace of Jesus, children (and adults) internalize feelings of being evil and inadequate. Most of these churches also believe in demons quite literally, some to the point of using exorcism on children who misbehave. One former believer called it “bait-and-switch theology — telling me I was saved only to insist that I was barely worth saving.”

I’ve spent literally years injuring myself, cutting and burning my arms, taking overdoses and starving myself, to punish myself so that God doesn’t have to punish me. It’s taken me years to feel deserving of anything good.

Believers can be understood to be in the crazy-making situation of a double bind — having heavy personal responsibility to adhere to religious rules but not having the ability to do so. Never is God blamed for not answering prayer or empowering the faithful as promised.

I spent most of my life trying to please an angry God and feeling like a complete failure. I didn’t pray enough, read enough, love enough, etc.

To think you are good or wise or strong or loving or capable on your own is considered pride and the worst sin of all in this religious worldview. You are expected to derive those qualities from God, who is perfect. Anything good you do is credited to God and anything bad is your fault. You are expected to be like Him and follow His perfect will. But what if it doesn’t work? Fundamentalist Christianity promises to solve all kinds of personal problems and when it does not, it is the individual that bears the paralyzing guilt of not measuring up.

I have tried to use this brand of Christianity to free myself from the depression and addictions that I have struggled with from childhood, and have done all the things that “Christianity” demanded I do. I have fasted, prayed, abstained from secular things, tithed, received the spirit, baptized in the spirit, read the Bible, memorized Scripture, etc. etc. None of it has worked or given me any lasting solution. . . I have become so desperate at times, that I have wanted to take my own life.

Demon possession. A special form of abuse occurs when children are actually accused of being demon possessed. This can happen when children misbehave, parents are incompetent, or children’s behavior is misinterpreted in spiritual ways, often with the help of clergy. I have heard many stories of this kind of labeling, which is of course the ultimate in both shame and fear. Forced exorcisms are also all too common, even in this modern day, and certainly qualify as trauma, lasting into adulthood.

When your parents exorcised you and said you had “unclean” spirits that was very very wrong. To believe a child can have demons just shows how seriously deluded your parents really were. You have spent your whole life being scared…being scared of your dad, of God, of hell, the rapture, the end of the world, and death as well as the dark.

Cycle of abuse. A believer can never be good enough and goes through a cycle of sin, guilt, and salvation similar to the cycle of abuse in domestic violence. When they say they have a “personal relationship” with God, they are referring to one of total dominance and submission, and they are convinced that they should be grateful for this kind of “love.” Like an authoritarian husband, this deity is an all-powerful, ruling male whose word is law. The sincere follower “repents” and “rededicates,” which produces a temporary reprieve of anxiety and perhaps a period of positive affect. This intermittent reinforcement is enough to keep the cycle of abuse in place. Like a devoted wife, the most sincere believers get damaged the most.

I prayed endlessly to be delivered from those temptations. I beat my fists into my pillow in agony. I used every ounce of faith I could muster to overcome this problem. “Lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil” just didn’t seem to be working with me. Of course, I blamed it on myself and thought there was something wrong with me. I thought I was perverted. I felt evil inside. I hated myself.

I do not want to give up my faith in Christ or God but I have NEVER been able to hold onto my own decisions or to make them on my benefit without IMMENSE PAIN re: God’s will which I was supposed to seek out but could not find.

Don’t think, don’t feel. Fundamentalist theology is also damaging to intellectual development in that it explicitly warns against trusting one’s own mind while requiring belief in far-fetched claims. Believers are not allowed to question dogma without endangering themselves. Critical thinking skills are under-valued. Emotions and intuitions are also considered suspect so children learn not to trust their own feelings. With external authority the only permissible guide, they grow up losing touch with inner instincts so necessary for decision making and moral development.

Fundamentalism makes people crazy. It is a mixture of beliefs that do not make sense, causing the brain to keep trying to understand what cannot be logical.

I really don’t have much experience of decision making at all. I never made any plans for my adult life since I was brought up to believe that the end of the world would come.

I suppressed a lot of my emotions, I developed cognitive difficulties and my thinking became increasingly unclear. My whole being turned from a rather vibrant, positive person to one that’s passive and dull.

Abuses of Power

Added to these toxic aspects of theology are practices in the church and religious families that are damaging. Physical, sexual, and emotional harm is inflicted in families and churches because authoritarianism goes unchecked. Too many secrets are kept. Sexual repression in the religion also contributes to child abuse. The sanctioned patriarchal power structure allows abusive practices towards women and children. Severe condemnation of homosexuality takes an enormous toll as well, including suicide.

I had so many pent up emotions and thoughts that were never acknowledged. . . Instead of protecting me from a horrible man, they forced me to deny my feelings and obey him, no matter what. It’s no wonder I developed an eating disorder.

So while the religious community can appear to offer a safe environment, the pressures to conform, adhere to impossible requirements, and submit to abuses of power can cause great suffering, which is often hidden and thus more miserable. More sensitive personalities are more vulnerable as well as those who sincerely believe the dogma. Individual churches, pastors, and parents make a big difference too, in the way they mediate the messages of the religion.

Note: There is much more to be said about the practices of religious child-rearing and I recommend Janet Heimlich’s book, Breaking Their Will. There is also more information about physical and sexual abuse, illness rates, and results of sexism, among other things, largely hidden by the network of Christian professionals comprising an alternative economy, e.g. doctors who do not report bruises or rehab centers with drug use we never hear about.

Part 3: The Trauma of leaving Religion

by Marlene Winell, Ph.D.

Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS) is a function of both the chronic abuses of harmful religion and the impact of severing one’s connection with one’s faith and faith community. It can be compared to a combination of PTSD and Complex PTSD (C-PTSD). In the last article of this series, I explained some of the toxic aspects of authoritarian religions that cause long-term psychological damage (Bible-based ones in particular). In this writing, I will address the trauma of breaking away from this kind of religion.

With PTSD, a traumatic event is one in which a person experiences or witnesses actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others. Losing one’s faith, or leaving one’s religion, is an analogous event because it essentially means the death of one’s previous life – the end of reality as it was understood. It is a huge shock to the system, and one that needs to be recognized as trauma.

What it means to leave

Breaking out of a restrictive, mind-controlling religion is understandably a liberating experience. People report huge relief and some excitement about their new possibilities. Certain problems are over, such as trying to twist one’s thinking to believe irrational religious doctrines, handling enormous cognitive dissonance in order to get by in the ‘real world’ as well, and conforming to repressive codes of behavior. Finally leaving a restrictive religion can be a major personal accomplishment after trying to make it work and going through many cycles of guilt and confusion.

However, the challenges of leaving are daunting. For most people, the religious environment was a one-stop-shop for meeting all their major needs – social support, a coherent worldview, meaning and direction in life, structured activities, and emotional/spiritual satisfaction. Leaving the fold means multiple losses, including the loss of friends and family support at a crucial time of personal transition. Consequently, it is a very lonely ‘stressful life event’ – more so than others described on Axis IV in the DSM. For some people, depending on their personality and the details of their religious past, it may be possible to simply stop participating in religious services and activities and move on with life. But for many, leaving their religion means debilitating anxiety, depression, grief, and anger.

Usually people begin with intellectually letting go of their religious beliefs and then struggle with the emotional aspects. The cognitive part is difficult enough and often requires a period of study and struggle before giving up one’s familiar and perhaps cherished worldview. But the emotional letting go is much more difficult since the beliefs are bound with deep-seated needs and fears, and usually inculcated at a young age.

Problems with self-worth and fear of terrible punishment continue. Virtually all controlling religions teach fear about the evil in ‘the world’ and the danger of being alone without the group. Ordinary setbacks can cause panic attacks, especially when one feels like a small child in a very foreign world. Coming out of a sheltered, repressed environment can result in a lack of coping skills and personal maturity. The phobia indoctrination makes it difficult to avoid the stabbing thought, even many years after leaving, that one has made a terrible mistake, thinking ‘what if they’re right?’

It is truly amazing the pain I went through due to what was inputted into my mind… All I know is it took such a toll on me that I did not care if I died and went to hell to escape the hell I was in and the immense fear it put into my life.

Depression, anxiety, fatigue, insomnia, etc… you name it. It sucks. Probably from years of guilt being a Christian and a sinner, and thinking people I love are in hell.

Making the break is for many the most disruptive, difficult upheaval they have ever gone through in life. To understand this fully, one must appreciate the totality of a religious worldview that defines and controls reality in the way that fundamentalist groups do. Everything about the world – past, present, and future – is explained, the meaning of life is laid out, morality is already decided, and individuals must find their place in the cosmic scheme in order to be worthwhile. The promises for conformity and obedience are great and the threats for disobedience are dire, both for the present life and the hereafter. Controlling religions tend to limit information about the world and alternative views so members easily conclude that their religious worldview is the only one possible. Anything outside of their world is considered dangerous and evil at worst and terribly misguided at best. So leaving this sheltered environment is bursting a bubble. Everything a person has believed to be true is shattered.

My foundation has truly dropped out from under me. Despite being told I am courageous, tenacious, and this is rugged work, I consistently find wave after wave of grief that overwhelms me. I can hardly believe how upended it has made my life.

My whole sense of purpose, value, and meaning was wrapped tightly around my Christian faith…I kept my doubts buried and crucified, and I tried hard not to think about the troubling things of faith…A year ago, I abandoned evangelicalism…the pain I feel is deep and raw.

The impact can create problems with day-to-day functioning.

The amount of inner turmoil during this time was overwhelming. It affected my daily life and many days I didn’t want to get out of bed. I was depressed and anxious at the same time. Being in college was difficult. I could hardly focus on class.

I am utterly confused and at the moment my whole life is ruined as I don’t know what to think. I’ve been off work a month with anxiety.

I have – for about three years – been dependent on drinking alcohol every night for a very long time.

Shattered assumption framework

In the study of trauma, certain developments are highly relevant to understanding RTS. One is the shattered assumption framework, or ‘loss of the assumptive world’ (Kauffman, 2002). It has been used to understand traumatic loss such as death of a loved one, but can easily be applied to loss of faith. According to Beder (2004), ‘The assumptive world concept refers to the assumptions or beliefs that ground, secure, stabilize, and orient people. They are our core beliefs. In the face of death and trauma, these beliefs are shattered and disorientation and even panic can enter the lives of those affected.’

The most damaging traumas are those that are human-caused and involve interpersonal violence and violation (DePrince and Freyd, 2002). (In my opinion, this would describe indoctrinating children in fear-based religion.) This approach names three basic assumptions held about the world that are shattered with these traumas: the world is benevolent, the world is meaningful, and the self is worthy (Janoff-Bulman, 1992). A fourth is sometimes included which says that others are trustworthy (Roth and Newman, 1991). This model applies well to religion if one thinks of the ‘world’ as that created and maintained by the religious group. The religious version of ‘self is worthy’ is usually a paradoxical view of the self which is both sinful and special. That is, an individual has nothing intrinsic to be proud of but can have great purpose, and can play a role in a cosmic, spiritual drama.

These researchers explored the way schemas and other cognitive factors lead to humans’ cognitive conservatism and resistance to changing basic assumptions. Another line of research indicates negative responses in the brain when a person is confronted with information that conflicts with strongly-held beliefs (Shermer, 2011). Traumatic experiences shatter basic assumptions and beliefs. Conversely, a shattering of beliefs is traumatic. Coping and healing from trauma requires an individual to reconcile their old set of assumptions with new, modified assumptions (DePrince & Freyd, 2002). The trauma is understood to have both affective and cognitive components.

Loss of faith or leaving one’s religion viewed through this lens helps to explain the intensity of the trauma. A religion contains a large and complex set of assumptions held to be true by the group. Rejecting the ‘meme complex’ that has been passed on through generations is a major cognitive disruption as well as a risk of social rejection. Panic about being helpless in a meaningless world can result.

Never have I experienced such confusion, pain, grief, loss fear, anxiety, depression, paralysis. All because of religion, faith, God.

It is noteworthy that all of the most controlling, authoritarian religions make sweeping, ultimate promises along with demands for devotion. Individuals who were most sincere, devout, and dedicated seem to be the ones most traumatized when their religious assumptive world crumbles. This would make sense from Kauffman’s (2002) perspective that shattered assumptions cause the self to fragment into pieces. As he puts it, ‘The assumptive world order is the set of illusions that shelter the human soul.’

Some days are better than others of course but most days are blighted by some form of dark cloud. The real tragedy for me is that I love life – in all of its hues, shades, problems and challenges – I just can’t see life through a prescribed formula any more.

I feel in total crisis, panicked, and terrified of facing a future alone. No confidence in my own decision making if it isn’t in line with Christianity, and inability to find fulfillment from within.

For many people who leave their faith, it is like a death or divorce. Their ‘relationship’ with God was a central assumption, such that giving it up feels like a genuine loss to be grieved. It can be like losing a lover, a parent, or best friend who has always been there.

It is like a death in the family as my god Jesus finally died and no amount of belief could resurrect him. It is an absolutely dreadful and frightening experience and dark night of the soul.

When I left, it felt like I was losing a friend or even a spouse – was definitely ‘traumatic’. Now, as an outsider, I see how crazy-making and damaging it was to me.

Betrayal trauma theory

This approach has challenged the traditional focus on fear as the primary response to trauma. PTSD has been assumed to be an anxiety disorder, requiring the individual to experience intense fear, helplessness, or horror in response to a traumatic event. Treatment has emphasized corrective emotional processing.

Understanding post traumatic distress in terms of shattered assumptions and betrayal can shed light on effects not related to fear or terror. Freyd (1996) studied the impact of childhood abuse, or the betrayal of a trusted caregiver, on memory, and concluded that a low awareness of violation appears to have survival value. These theories indicate that a cognitive appraisal which raises awareness of violated assumptions can be traumatic.

The concept of betrayal is important in that it changes the whole context of understanding trauma that is human caused. First of all, society is resentful of the ways in which victims of trauma shatter our illusions of safety and often engages in victim blaming in order to order to maintain basic assumptions (Van der Kolk, McFarlane, and Van der Hart, 1996). The letter to the editor printed in the previous issue shows the way society resists recognizing that religion can do any harm.

Secondly, and especially in the case of Complex PTSD, which refers to ongoing, repeated abuse, it makes a huge difference to shift the focus to relational issues. As explained by DePrince and Freyd (2002), mainstream psychology has focused on fear and tended to pathologize trauma survivors’ reactions. In this approach, responsibility for the experience of fear is placed on the individual survivor, implicitly or explicitly. Cognitive-behavioral therapies are focused on treating the individual’s anxiety symptoms.

When betrayal is included as an important reaction to trauma, research and treatment questions are placed in a relational and social context. The pathology is not just in the mind of the survivor. Relevant questions include who did the betraying, what was the betrayal about, the relationship to the perpetrator, and the societal response to the events. With a betrayal framework, these authors say that closer attention is paid to the relationship between the perpetrator and victim in interpersonal violence. (Regarding religious indoctrination, a case can be made for emotional and mental abuse, which is also violent with long-term effects). This framework allows for a historical context in which there may be intergenerational transmission of trauma.

Betrayal may also come in the form of response the survivor receives from others following the event, such as disbelief, minimizing, or otherwise devaluing the individual’s experience. A view of trauma that recognizes the sociocultural forces at play helps us go beyond individual emotions and consider the community’s role in addressing the transgression. Recognizing interpersonal betrayal in trauma requires that we confront the reality of the harm humans can cause one another (DePrince and Freyd, 2002).

Shattered faith

As an example of ‘loss of the assumptive world’, losing one’s religion is a special and potentially extreme case. A shattered belief system can be devastating and cause cognitive and affective problems, including an acute sense of betrayal. Many ex-believers have anger about the abuse of growing up in a world of lies. They feel robbed of a normal childhood, honest information, and opportunity to develop and thrive. They have bitterness for being taught they were worthless and in need of salvation, yet never able to be sure they were good enough to make it. They have anger about terrors of hell, the ‘rapture’, demons, apostasy, unforgivable sins, and the evil world. They resent not being able to ever feel good or safe. Many are angry that the same teachings are inflicted on more children continuously. They have rage because they dedicated their lives and gave up everything to serve God. They are angry about losing their families and their friends. They feel enormously betrayed.

The following comments support the theories of trauma involving shattered assumptions and betrayal.

As a child I had an awful fear of hell, and I used to fall asleep crying cause I thought I wasn’t saved. Irrational fear leads to irrational decisions. Now with my career in the tank, having lost contact with friends and family over my leaving the church, I am trying to put my life back together.

So now at the age of 43, I feel that my youth was wasted. I think about all the fun I lost out on, all the women I rejected, and the education I could have had. I think about all the worry, guilt and fear I’ve had to endure for 31 years.

I’ve been feeling a mixture of anger, sadness, and desperation regarding my former ‘life of faith’… I spent about 20 adult years as a ‘serious Christian’… trying to live out ‘radical Biblical obedience to God’… The fact is I could NEVER totally please God. ‘He’ made impossible demands of me and it was a fantasy to think that he provided the actual resources necessary to fulfill them.

RTS as Complex PTSD

The definition of Complex PTSD is interesting in light of religious indoctrination: ‘a psychological injury that results from protracted exposure to prolonged social and/or interpersonal trauma with lack or loss of control, disempowerment, and in the context of either captivity or entrapment, i.e. the lack of a viable escape route for the victim’ (Wikipedia). Small children who are subjected to toxic religious teachings and practices are trapped and dependent on their dysfunctional families. Pete Walker (2009) has developed an approach in psychotherapy that considers emotional flashbacks to be the key symptom of Complex PTSD. Because of the prolonged nature of the trauma, he says Complex PTSD can be even more virulent and pervasively damaging in its effects. (Complex PTSD has not yet been included in the DSM; nor has RTS.) This seems to be true for many who have left religion.

When asked to describe my past, overwhelming emotions sap my body of positive energy…Flashbacks assault my subconscious in vicious nightmares after dredging up this damage.

I remember many dark nights trying to sleep being fearful of many things in life, lying there in bed worrying while trying to sleep while considering all the nasty things that might happen to me as a sentence from god for my suggested bad/evil choice of leaving. The worry and lack of sleep made life and work that much harder to handle. I even got headaches from thinking and worrying so endlessly.

A lonely trip into the unknown battling that what you have been taught, questioning over and over again that what might be true or untrue. Feelings of guilt and fear of daring to trust your own natural human instincts or reasoning. A pathway of uncharted waters, supposedly booby trapped by devils and monsters.

I had a nervous breakdown as the beliefs that I was being taught were not really helping me develop as an individual. I have spent the last 5 years in and out of hospital for suicide attempts and things were gradually getting worse… Every day became a nightmare, I became immersed in a depression that had only one way out… suicide. I didn’t want to kill myself, however life was so miserable that suicide seemed like a reasonable option.

I have just woken up from another nightmare. My husband says I cry out in the night and cry in my sleep. I was in an empty room with no escape. Totally alone and so so scared.

Why RTS is so invisible

With RTS, the social context is completely different from other trauma recovery situations. Natural disaster experiences, childhood sexual abuse or family violence are all understandable to friends and professionals who are likely to be sympathetic and supportive. In the case of religious abuse, a person is often hounded by family and church members to return, and reminded in many ways that they are condemned otherwise. In essence, they are pressured to return to the perpetrator of their abuse. Their suffering is not seen. In fact, they are made pariahs when they do not return and this social rejection is an added layer of serious injury absent from other varieties of trauma.

A survivor of religious trauma is also surrounded by potential triggers, especially in more religious communities. Symbols of sexual abuse are not celebrated, but someone with RTS is expected to enjoy Christmas and Easter, or at least be quiet. Religion holds a place of privilege in society. Churches are everywhere and prayers and hymns are ubiquitous. In many communities, to not believe the prevailing religion makes one a deviant, putting one at risk of social rejection, employment problems, and more.

Anger for other kinds of abuse is considered normal and acceptable, whereas ex-believers are supposed to forgive and ‘not throw the baby out with the bathwater’. They are called too sensitive or accused of taking religion the wrong way. People understand nightmares about wartime combat but not about Armageddon. Expressing feelings is usually dangerous. Too often, the result is a shaming attack rather than support, i.e., ‘blaming the victim’.

From an orthodox, conservative point of view, people who have left their religion and are suffering are seen as failures – they simply haven’t done it right. A fundamentalist Christian view is that they have been ‘rebellious’ and brought about their own problems. Depression and anxiety are often considered sins or even demonic attacks. Personal misery is seen as a natural result of rejecting God; being apostate brings God’s punishment.

A religious counselor will redirect a client back to the religion, typically with biblical guidelines to repent and become more devout. The client suffering with RTS is then likely to try harder to meet the impossible demands of the religion, much like returning to a situation of domestic violence. They will do this because of the authoritarian nature of such counseling, but fail again and feel hopeless or evil or crazy. No one concludes that it is the religion itself, which is at fault. (And religious counselors often have very little training in psychology while getting exempted from standard licensing requirements.)

In many seemingly secular settings, religious views are still considered ‘normal’ and even advocated in aggressive ways. In medicine and in treatment for drugs and alcohol, professionals assume that pushing religion is acceptable. Yet people struggling with RTS-related substance abuse simply cannot stomach the religious tone of Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, and get very little sympathy.

In one case, a client of mine who was in a psychiatric ward because of panic attacks due to RTS told me that a doctor told her she needed to get right with God. Imagine giving parallel advice with some other kind of abuse. I also had a call from a veteran who was searching for an alternative because his counselor at the VA said he preferred working with people who believed in hell because he could get them to behave.

In many ways, a person with RTS can be retraumatized again and again through minimizing and denial. This can cause regression to an earlier state of fear by triggering the phobia indoctrination. One person wrote about the unequal social status of religious abuse:

If I were to say that Christianity took my childhood, filled me with fear, paralyzed me with anxiety, annihilated my Self, robbed my body of feeling, stole my future, gave me an unequal marriage role, and cost me thousands of dollars, Christians would dismiss it with ‘You were in the wrong church, you take things too seriously, or you made your choices based on your own free will’.

It is no better when I talk to those raised outside of Christianity. They gently suggest that I’m over sensitive or making a big deal out of nothing or that I don’t understand who Jesus really was or that it couldn’t have been all that bad since I turned out to be such a nice person.

Why is it so hard for people to understand that Christianity completely messed up my life?!?!?!

If I had been discriminated against, beaten, sexually abused, traumatized by an act of violence, or raped, I would be heard. I would receive sympathy. I would be given psychological care. I would have legal recourse and protection. However, I am a trauma victim that society does not hear.

RTS victims feel very alone because, except on certain online forums, there is virtually no public discourse in our society about trauma or emotional abuse due to religion. This gap was noticed by a young man who wrote to me about his YouTube deconversion series:

I’ve been working on the 4th part, focused on trauma, for better than a month now and having a hard time with it. I’ve been reading a lot about trauma and finding myself amazed by how closely what we attribute to trauma and PTSD align with my experience of deconversion. No one talks about religion and trauma. Not in the scientific journals, not on trauma resources… I thought maybe I would be the only one to address it.

Child Protective Services will aggressively rescue children who are physically or sexually abused, but the deep wounding and mental damage cause by religion, which can last a lifetime, does not get attention. The institutions of religion in our culture are still given a privileged place in many ways. Criticism is very difficult. Parents are given undue authority to treat their children as they wish, even though the authoritarian and patriarchal attitudes of religion, along with too much respect for the Fourth Commandment to obey parents, has resulted in harsh and violent parenting methods. Even the sexual misdeeds of the Catholic clergy have been amazingly difficult to confront. Children are treated like the property of parents or parish, and too much goes on behind closed doors.

Multiple issues

Space considerations prevent a full description of all the challenges a person faces over a lifetime of recovering from religious indoctrination and living in a religious environment. Cognitive problems can be serious because decision-making for oneself is difficult and critical thinking skills are undeveloped. A person healing and recovering needs to unlearn many dysfunctional ways of thinking and behaving and then rebuild. They are faced with reconstructing reality, in essence. The old assumptive world is gone and a new one must be built. A new sense of self has to be developed, and personal responsibility for life has to be accepted. The existential crisis can be enormous when one feels entirely groundless and must start over.

One of my biggest problems has been the inability to trust my own intellect.

I strained everyday to get rid of the old beliefs, but they never seemed to go away.

I guess ultimately I’ve made my peace intellectually. I’ve been reading and learning religious history, philosophy, etc for almost a decade. But I wonder…emotionally I can’t convince myself I’m not going to hell for every little thing. Does it ever get easier? Does 20 years of intimidation, coercion, fear mongering and bigotry take just as long to disappear?

Adding to the challenge is the all-too-common rejection from family and friends. For most people from a religious family, they must also reconstruct an entire social structure, while learning to view other people and the world in completely new terms. This can even require new employment. Marriages suffer when only one leaves the faith, and divorce is not uncommon.

I left the church and told my family almost two years ago; they are sure I am going to hell and taking my 3 small children with me. All friends were Christians and are no longer around. My community is deeply religious, and I feel isolated and afraid. I think I need counselling, but don’t know where to turn.

I have been associated with the religion of my parents since birth. I am now in my fifties. If I leave openly I will be disfellowshipped and WILL lose all my family and friends. I suffer from OCD and severe depression. What should I do?…if I go, my wife will stay – I foresee nothing but grief ahead for me.

In conclusion, I believe it cannot be overstated that mental health professionals need to recognize the seriousness of Religious Trauma Syndrome. Religion can and does cause great personal suffering, fractured families, and social breakdown. There are many individuals needing and deserving recognition and treatment from informed professionals. We need to let go of making religion a special case in which criticism is taboo. It is our ethical responsibility to be aware and our human obligation to be compassionate.

References

Beder, J (2004-2005) ‘Loss of the assumptive world – How we deal with death and loss’, Omega, 50(4), 255-265

DePrince, A.P. & Freyd, J.J. (2002) ‘The harm of trauma: Pathological fear, shattered assumptions, or betrayal?’ in J. Kauffman (Ed.) Loss of the Assumptive World (pp. 71-82), New York: Brunner-Routledge

Janoff-Bulman, R. (1992) Shattered Assumptions: Towards a new psychology of trauma, New York: Free Press

Kauffman, J. (2002) ‘Safety and the assumptive world’ in J. Kauffman (Ed.), Loss of the Assumptive World (pp. 205-211), New York: Brunner-Routledge

Shermer, M. (2011) The Believing Brain, New York: Times Books

Van der Kolk, B. A., McFarlane, A. C., and Van der Hart, O. (1996) ‘A general approach to treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder’ in B. Van der Kolk, A. C. McFarlane, & L. Weisaeth (Eds.), Traumatic stress: The effects of overwhelming experience on mind, body, and society (pp. 417-440), New York: Guilford.

Walker, Pete. (2009) ‘Emotional flashback management in the treatment of Complex PTSD’, Psychotherapy.net

This article was published in the British journal, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Today, Nov. 2011: RTS in CBT Today

Endret 24. juli 2014 av malmanomar

[Gjest Bruker-95147]

Over til hva en ekte sjelesørger tenker om det å være kompetent:

 

 

P1 og P2:

”Når jeg lytter til mennesker, prøver jeg alltid å lytte på to kanaler på en gang. Det er krevende og givende. Den første kan vi kalle P1. Hva får jeg inn på P1?

På P1 prøver jeg å høre hva folk sier. Og bare det er jobb nok. Vil du være en virkelig god lytter, må du lytte like mye med dine øyne som med dine ører. Det vonde lander sjelden i ord på første forsøk. Men ser du et sekund et smertedrag som farer over ansiktet, så aner du kanskje at akkurat der var vi i nærheten av den virkelige smerten.

Vil du være en god lytter, må du gi den du lytter til all din oppmerksomhet. Det er stadig tid nok til å forberede ditt eget neste innlegg når den andre har talt ferdig. Men i tillegg til å lytte på P1 har jeg pålagt meg også å lytte på P2.

På P2 følger jeg med på hvilke følelser samtalen skaper i meg. Jeg tror at følelser er fulle av informasjon. Noen definerer det å være saklig som det å holde følelsene utenfor. Jeg gjør det motsatte. For meg er følelser facts. Like mye facts som armer og ben og tall og ting.

Dessuten er de breddfulle av informasjon, om jeg kjenner nøyere etter.

Når jeg snakker med et menneske, skapes det nesten alltid følelser i meg i løpet av samtalen. Etter et kvarter står det vanligvis en skikkelig bølge i mitt bryst. ”En bølge” er et godt bilde på en følelse. Jeg kan straks avgjøre om bølgen er behagelig eller ubehagelig. Men noe mer kan jeg ikke si sånn med det samme.

Når bølgen er der, skifter jeg diskret kanal. Men jeg har stadig et vennelig uttrykk i øynene, så jeg tror ikke den som snakker merker noe. Men nå forlater jeg ham altså noen sekunder, for å lytte til en annen kanal som også har sending fra ham: P2.

Og jeg har tre standardspørsmål:

 

1. Hva heter bølgen?

2. Hva hos denne personen har provosert meg?

3. Hva i mitt verdisystem har reagert?

 

Bølger er greie og samarbeidsvillige og jeg kan regne med raske og konsise svar. Bølgen sier for eksempel: Jeg er sint.

Svaret overrasker meg, jeg sitter som prest i samtale med en klient som snakker om dyptgående personlige problemer, og så tillater jeg meg til å være sint på ham?

”Hva hos denne personen har provosert meg til å bli sint?”

Svaret kan for eksempel være dette: Han kontrollerer meg ved sin treghet. Han snakker uendelig langsomt, noen få ord i minuttet. Dermed styrer han hele samtalen. Her er det umulig å bryte av, stille spørsmål, skifte emne. Han kjører sitt løp. Den hjelpeløse har akkurat nå full kontroll over hjelperen. Klienten styrer terapeuten.

”Hva i mitt verdisystem er det som reagerer?”

Svaret er enkelt: Jeg liker ikke å bli kontrollert. Det er det verste jeg vet. Friheten er tapt.

Så dukker dette spørsmålet opp: Kanskje det er slik han håndterer folk flest, kontrollerer dem gjennom treghet. Men hvorfor har et menneske et så sterkt behov for å kontrollere sine omgivelser? Det må være fordi han ikke har tillit til dem. Men da blir det ikke vanskelig å forstå at han råker ut i svære konflikter med mennesker, både hjemme og på jobben. (”Høydepunkter” - Karsten Isachsen)

 

 

Følelser er fulle av informasjon

Ting skjer hver dag.

Mye av det som skjer, berører meg ikke. Dagsrevyen forteller om et jordskjelv i Kina, men det er informasjon som jeg ikke tar inn. Samme kveld møter jeg en gammel klassekamerat på gaten som sier: ”Bevares så feit du har blitt!”

Den treffer: Den berører mitt verdisystem. Følelser oppstår.

 

Jeg spurte en nabo forleden om han syntes jeg var blitt for tykk. Han sa: ”Hvis du var badedyret mitt, ville jeg slutte å blåse nå.”

 

Hver dag skjer det ting som jeg ikke liker, ting som er på kollisjonskurs med mine verdier. Men mine følelser er alltid i overensstemmelse med mine verdier.

Jeg trodde lenge at mine følelser var bestemt av ytre begivenheter. Jeg sa: ”Det skapte vonde følelser.”

Men dette er mer presist: ”Det utløste vonde følelser.”

Fordi mine følelser alltid er i overensstemmelse med mine verdier, så bestemmer jeg egentlig til enhver tid hva jeg har lyst til å føle. Endrer jeg mitt verdisystem, har det som konsekvens at mine følelser endres. Jeg hører protesten fra mange:

”Men du må jo bli forbannet når den mannen sier det den mannen nettopp har sagt.”

Mitt svar er:

”Ja, med det verdisystemet du har så må du bli forbannet når den mannen sier det den mannen nettopp har sagt. Og ditt verdisystem er meget vanlig og meget alminnelig, så du kan regne med bred støtte for din reaksjon. Av hundre mennesker kan du regne med at 90 vil reagere akkurat slik du reagerer. Men de siste 10, de fra 90 til 100, de vil reagere annerledes. Fordi de har et annet verdisystem.”

 

Hvordan du har det fra time til time avhenger i noen grad av hvordan mennesker rundt deg oppfører seg. Men det avhenger enda mer av noe annet: Av dine ferdigheter i møte med dine egne følelser.

Følelser blir til når begivenheter møter verdier.

Men begivenheter er ofte på kollisjonskurs med verdier. I et kollisjonsøyeblikk kaster jeg meg gjerne til siden. Jeg føler panikk, smerte, raseri. Jeg vil vekk, jeg vil unngå.

I neste øyeblikk bebreider jeg den som skapte ubehaget. Når jeg bebreider, minsker smerten. Men hva gjør bebreidelser med begivenheten? Intet.

 

I stedet for å bebreide: Favn begivenheten. Utvid rammene for hva som er mulig.

Gå inn i situasjonen. Vær til stede. Vær sårbar. Går du inn i situasjonen, kan du etter hvert influere på prosesser og være med og styre kommende begivenheter. Nå kan du oppleve begivenheter med de berørtes øyne. Noe mer er ikke mulig.

Noen mennesker søker politisk makt eller formell makt. Da kan du regjere, bestemme, belønne og straffe. Men du styrer ikke følelser med formell makt.

 

Mitt viktigste verktøy i møte med andre mennesker er min egen personlighet. Men da må jeg kunne følelseslivets ABC.

1. Ting skjer
2. Mitt verdisystem berøres
3. Følelser oppstår

 

I vår kultur går jeg nesten direkte fra A til C. Min versjon av virkeligheten blir da: Ting skjer og følelser oppstår. Men da er jeg mentalt enøyd. Følelser oppstår kun når ting skjer som berører mitt eget verdisystem. Jeg ønsker å være sårbar, jeg ønsker å være irritabel. Men jeg ønsker å se min sårbarhet og jeg ønsker å kunne navnet på min irritabilitet. Jeg vil ikke være en fremmed i mitt eget hus.

Iblant sier mennesker ting på en følelsesladet måte. Det gjør meg alltid nysgjerrig og får meg til å prøve å lytte på to kanaler på en gang. På P1 prøver jeg å høre hva folk sier. På P2 prøver jeg å se hva i min egen sårbarhet som ble berørt.

 

En gang satt jeg på et prestekontor da en meget oppbrakt kvinne kom inn og ba om en samtale.

Vi satte oss ned og hun begynte å snakke. Hun fossnakket. Det var som å åpne en kran. Og hva sa hun?

”Jeg har kommet hit i dag for å spørre om hva kirken mener om abort. Det er jo så vanskelig,” sa hun, ”for på den ene side –”

Og så listet hun opp argumenter.

”Men på den annen side,” fortsatte hun, og listet opp motargumenter. ”Men,” sa hun, ”man må jo nå fram til et syn. Og det er ikke enkelt, for på den ene side –”

Og så kom alle argumentene på nytt.

”Og så på den annen side –” fortsatte hun og rørte det hele sammen.

Da hun etter syv-åtte minutter trakk pusten for første gang, fikk jeg sjansen til å komme med mitt første innsmett. Hun hadde jo stilt meg et konkret spørsmål. Jeg valgte å ikke svare på det. Det heftige følelsesengasjementet gjorde meg nysgjerrig. Jeg synes ofte jeg får mer informasjon på P2 enn på P1. Så jeg nøyde meg med å si:

”Synes du dette er vanskelig?”

”Ja, jeg synes det,” brast det ut av henne. ”Det er ikke liketil. For på den ene side –” Og så listet hun opp for tredje gang argumenter for og imot. Neste gang hun pustet, sa jeg:

”Så du synes ikke dette er lett?”

”Nei,” sa hun, ”det er ikke lett –”

Så stanset taleflommen like brått som den var begynt. Det var som kranen ble skrudd igjen. Jeg så at det blinket på kinnene hennes og så sa hun med en helt annen stemme:

”Min datter på 17 har blitt gravid. Hva skal vi gjøre?”

 

Hvis jeg hadde vært saklig i vanlig norsk forstand, så hadde jeg konstatert at det var kommet en kvinne inn på et prestekontor for å spørre en prest hva kirken mener om abort. Det er et rimelig spørsmål som fortjener et ordentlig svar. Og så kunne jeg ha holdt et kort miniforedrag om hva kirken måtte mene om dette. Og så måtte hun ha hørt på og så måtte hun ha stilt et par tilleggsspørsmål, og så måtte hun ha takket for at jeg tok av min tid og ha gått.

 

Og så kunne jeg lent meg tilbake i stolen og sagt til meg selv:

”I dag har du fortjent prestelønna di. I dag har du veiledet en villfaren sjel.”

Men i så fall hadde vi aldri kommet til selve saken: At datteren og hennes nærmeste med ett var kommet i en uvant, uventet og vanskelig situasjon hvor de ikke visste sin arme råd.

 

Følelser er fulle av informasjon.

Hver gang jeg sender følelsene på gangen i saklighetens navn foretar jeg en kirurgisk forenkling av virkeligheten. Følelsene skal ikke bestemme over meg alene. Det kan bli både umodent og tyrannisk. Men de skal heller ikke sendes på gangen hver gang i saklighetens navn. Følelsene skal ha den viktigste taburetten i mitt innvendige statsråd. Jeg vil aldri kunne forstå et menneskets anliggende til bunns hvis jeg ikke har syn, sans, språk og forstand på følelser. De er kanskje ikke en del av fakta, men alltid en hovedbestanddel i et menneskes realitetsopplevelse.

[GXT]

 

 

 

Det stemmer ikke i det hele tatt at vi vet hvordan disse medikamentene fungerer. Det er jo ellers riktig nok at det står beskrevet i populærvitenskaplig literatur at "i forbindelse med depresjoner så oppstår det en kjemisk ubalanse i hjernen som man så retter opp med kjemisk preparat x".

 

Går man denne argumentasjonen etter i sømmene så oppdager man det at det bare er en brøkdel av en kjede av årsakssammenhenger man har oversikt over.

 

Et pedagogisk eksempel:

 

Man kan for eksempel stille et spørsmål: Hvordan virker en bil ? Så kan man svare på denne måten: En bil virker på den måten at når man trykker på gasspedalen så kjører bilen framover. Det vil være en sammenheng mellom trykkraften på gasspedalen og bilens hastighet framover. Forskning har vist at når vi trykker hardere på gasspedalen så kjører bilen hurtigere framover.

 

Bestemor på 70 har begynt å se litt dårligere og hun har blitt litt langsommere i rekasjonene, så derfor så har hun også begynt å redusere hastigheten i forbindelse med sin bilkjøring. Dette finner man ut at man vil behandle, og ettersom en større kraft på gasspedalen vil løse saken, så legger man inn et 5 kilos lodd i høyre sko. Trykket på gasspedalen øker, og saken er løst.

 

Stort sett så er de årsakssamenhenger man forklarer tatt ut av sin hele og store sammenheng slik at sluttresultatet kan bli noe variabelt.

 

Når det gjelder hjernens intelektuelle og emosjonelle funksjoner så har man svært liten oversikt over hvordan dette "virker" rent fysilogisk og hvilken effekt ulike medisiner har i en slik helhetlig sammenheng. Langtidseffekten ved bruk av den type medisiner som brukes i psykiatrien er til dels ganske negativ, ofte eller i alle fall noen ganger med redusert helse og tidlig død som sluttresultat.

 

Når det gjelder den farmasautiske industriens påvirkning på de diagnosene som skrives ut, så skjer jo dette selvfølgelig ikke på den måte at industrien kontakter den enkelte lege.

 

Det drives forskning på nasjonalt og internasjonalt nivå som "bestemmer" hva som er "riktig måte å behandle på". I forbindelse med denne forskningen så er den farmasautiske industrien en stor aktør og en stor "påvirker".

 

På basis av summen av forskningsresultater så utarbeider man nasjonale retningslinjer som danner et rammeverk rundt den diagnostikk som utøves av den enkelte lege.

 

Her har vi for eksempel de nasjonale retningslinjene for hvordan man skal behandle depresjoner hos voksene:

http://www.helsedirektoratet.no/publikasjoner/nasjonale-retningslinjer-for-diagnostisering-og-behandling-av-voksne-med-depresjon-i-primer--og-spesialisthelsetjenesten/Sider/default.aspx

 

Ellers så heter jo det faget som har å gjøre med den fysiologiske "virkemåten" til hjernen nevropsykologi, og kikker man litt inn på dette fagområdet så ser man etter mitt syn at man forstsatt kun er i en forholdsvis innledende fase i forhold til å forstå hvordan hjernen "fungerer" og eventuelt hvordan medisinene virker inn.

 

http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevropsykologi

 

Når det gjelder litt komplekse årsakssammenhenger og bruk av medisin så har man jo ikke en gang oversikt over hvordan Paracetamol virker.

 

http://www.vg.no/forbruker/helse-og-medisin/ny-forskning-paracetamol-har-liten-effekt-mot-korsryggsmerter/a/23259859/

 

 

Nå må du gi deg. Selv jeg kunne fortalt om hvordan Paracetamol fungerer. Denne artikkelen du henvisert til sier egentlig ingenting relevant til dette.

Samtidig er dette heller ikke relevant siden vi allerede vet masse når det kommer til smerte.

 

Vi kjenner ikke til alle faktorene som er involvert når vi snakker om, depresjon, og i de fleste tilfellene kjenner vi ikke til årsaken. Men hva vi har funnet ut er at det eksisterer en sammenheng mellom kjemiske reaksjoner i hjernen og depressjon. Jeg sier ikke at denne sammenhengen definérer depressjon, men at det er en av faktorene.

 

Jeg sier ikke at dette er den vanligste årsaken til depressjon, men det er en sammenheng vi kjenner til, har dokumentert og i dag utnytter i et forsøk på å gjøre ting mer overkommelig. Vet vi alt? Nei. Men vet vi nok til at vi kan dokumentere at de fungerer? Ja. Du nevnte de negative sidene tidligere, men du utelot at disse medikamentene fungerer for mange.

Endret 24. juli 2014 av Raxzer

[arne22]

Eksemplet med paracetemol var nå nærmest en spøk, men dog et eksempel på hvor vanskelig det kan være å slå fast med en absolutt grad av sikkerhet hva som er den egentlige effekten av et legemiddel i en større sammenheng.

 

Det er ellers selvfølgelig slik at for noen og i noen tilfeller så er psykofarmaka en nødvendighet og fordelene ved bruken av medisinen er langt større enn ulempene. Man bør dog heller bakenforliggende årsaker enn å behandle symptomer, dersom det finnes et slikt valg.

Endret 24. juli 2014 av arne22

[arne22]

 

 

Får inntrykk av at dem som bruker religion til å dempe psykiske plager ofte ikke kommer seg noen vei. Det blir en patologisk form for tro når folk vier livet sitt til religion etter min mening, isteden for å få god psykologisk behandling. Først er det best å bruke det som vi vet kan ha god effekt.

Mot normalt, må jeg være uenig med det du skriver.

De som sliter og velger kirken, møter en empati hos prest og menighet som er uten sidestykke.

Klart de har en skjult agenda, men den kommer senere.

 

Det er som Blåkors. Går du dit, edru, og sier: "Jeg trenger hjelp." får du profesjonell hjelp.

 

Det der er tull. Det vet jeg av egen erfaring. Jeg har snakket med flere enn en prest som bare har vist meg at folk av det med det yrket enten er i villfarelse om livets realiteter eller har inngått et kompromiss (forfalskning) av egen tro for å forsone seg med dens grusomheter og absurditeter. Når du sier skjult agenda. Glad du er med på den. Så om vi skal sammenligne med en somatisk sykdom: Man gir ikke pasienten opium med en skjult agenda om å gjøre ham til heroinist. En slik "lege" bør man ikke stole på.

 

Religion skaper først og fremst psykiske problemer, den løser dem ikke.

 

Om Religiøst Trauma Syndrom:

http://journeyfree.org/rts/

 

Part 1: RTS – It’s Time To Recognize It

by Marlene Winell, Ph.D.

I’m really struggling and am desperate never to go back to the religion I was raised in, but I no longer want to live in fear or depression. It seems that I am walking through the jungle alone with my machete; no one to share my crazy and sometimes scary thoughts with.

After years of depression, anxiety, anger, and finally a week in a psychiatric hospital a year ago, I am now trying to pick up the pieces and put them together into something that makes sense. I’m confused. My whole identity is a shredded, tangled mess. I am in utter turmoil.

These comments are not unusual for people suffering with Religious Trauma Syndrome, or RTS. Religious trauma? Isn’t religion supposed to be helpful, or at least benign? In the case of fundamentalist beliefs, people expect that choosing to leave a childhood faith is like giving up Santa Claus – a little sad but basically a matter of growing up.

I’m really struggling and am desperate never to go back to the religion I was raised in, but I no longer want to live in fear or depression. It seems that I am walking through the jungle alone with my machete; no one to share my crazy and sometimes scary thoughts with.

After years of depression, anxiety, anger, and finally a week in a psychiatric hospital a year ago, I am now trying to pick up the pieces and put them together into something that makes sense. I’m confused. My whole identity is a shredded, tangled mess. I am in utter turmoil.

But religious indoctrination can be hugely damaging, and making the break from an authoritarian kind of religion can definitely be traumatic. It involves a complete upheaval of a person’s construction of reality, including the self, other people, life, the future, everything. People unfamiliar with it, including therapists, have trouble appreciating the sheer terror it can create and the recovery needed.

My own awareness of this problem took some time. It began with writing about my own recovery from a fundamentalist Christian background, and very quickly, I found out I was not alone. Many other people were eager to discuss this hidden suffering. Since then, I have worked with clients in the area of “recovery from religion” for about twenty years and wrote a self-help book called Leaving the Fold on the subject.

In my view, it is time for society to recognize the real trauma that religion can cause. Just like clearly naming problems like anorexia, PTSD, or bipolar disorder made it possible to stop self-blame and move ahead with learning methods of recovery, we need to address Religious Trauma Syndrome. The internet is starting to overflow with stories of RTS and cries for help. On forums for former believers (such as exchristian.net), one can see the widespread pain and desperation. In response to mypresentation about RTS on YouTube, a viewer commented:

Thank you so much. This is exciting because millions of people suffer from this. I have never heard of Dr. Marlene but more people are coming out to talk about this issue – millions–who are quietly suffering and being treated for other issues when the fundamental issue is religious abuse.

Barriers to Getting Help for RTS

Thank you so much. This is exciting because millions of people suffer from this. I have never heard of Dr. Marlene but more people are coming out to talk about this issue – millions–who are quietly suffering and being treated for other issues when the fundamental issue is religious abuse.

At present, raising questions about toxic beliefs and abusive practices in religion seems to be violating a taboo, even with helping professionals. In society, we treasure our freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. Our laws and mores reflect the general principle that if we are not harming others, we can do as we like. Forcing children to go to church hardly seems like a crime. Real damage is assumed to be done by extreme fringe groups we call “cults” and people have heard of ritual abuse. Moreover, religious institutions have a vested interest in promoting an uncritical view.

But mind-control and emotional abuse is actually the norm for many large, authoritarian, mainline religious groups. The sanitization of religion makes it all the more insidious. When the communities are so large and the practices normalized, victims are silenced.

Therapists have no real appropriate diagnosis in their manual. Even in the commonly used list of psychological stresses, amidst all the change and loss and disruption, there is no mention of losing one’s religion. Yet it can be the biggest crisis ever faced. This is important for therapists to be aware of because people are leaving the ranks of traditional religious groups in record numbers¹ and they are reporting real suffering.

Another obstacle in getting help is that most people with RTS have been taught to fear psychology as something worldly and therefore evil. It is very likely that only a fraction of people with RTS are even seeking help. Within many dogmatic, self-contained religions, mental health problems such as depression or anxiety are considered sins. They are seen as evidence of not being right with God. A religious counselor or pastor advises more confession and greater obedience as the cure, and warns that secular help from a mental health professional would be dangerous.

God is called the “great physician” and a person should not need any help from anyone else. Doubt is considered wrong, not honest inquiry. Moreover, therapy is a selfish indulgence. Focusing on one’s own needs is always sinful in this religious view, so RTS victims are often not even clear how to get help. The clients I have worked with have had to overcome ignorance, guilt, and fear to make initial contact.

What is RTS?

Religious Trauma Syndrome is the condition experienced by people who are struggling with leaving an authoritarian, dogmatic religion and coping with the damage of indoctrination. They may be going through the shattering of a personally meaningful faith and/or breaking away from a controlling community and lifestyle. The symptoms compare most easily with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, which results from experiencing or being confronted with death or serious injury which causes feelings of terror, helplessness, or horror. This can be a single event or chronic abuse of some kind. With RTS, there is chronic abuse, especially of children, plus the major trauma of leaving the fold. Like PTSD, the impact of RTS is long-lasting, with intrusive thoughts, negative emotional states, impaired social functioning, and other problems.

I suffer with guilt and depression and struggle to let go of religion. I am also battling with an existential crisis of epic proportions and intense heartache. . . I feel like I am the only person in the world that this has happened to. Some days are okay, but others are terrible. I do not know if I will make it through this.

With RTS, the trauma is two-fold. First, the actual teachings and practices of a restrictive religion can be toxic and create life-long mental damage. In many cases, the emotional and mental abuse is compounded by physical and sexual abuse due to the patriarchal, repressive nature of the environment.

Second, departing a religious fold adds enormous stress as an individual struggles with leaving what amounts to one world for another. This usually involves significant and sudden loss of social support while facing the task of reconstructing one’s life. People leaving are often ill-prepared to deal with this, both because they have been sheltered and taught to fear the secular world and because their personal skills for self-reliance and independent thinking are underdeveloped.

Individuals can experience RTS in different ways depending on a variety of factors. Some key symptoms of RTS are:

• Confusion, difficulty making decisions, trouble thinking for self, lack of meaning or direction, undeveloped sense of self

• Anxiety being in “the world,” panic attacks, fear of damnation, depression, thoughts of suicide, anger, bitterness, betrayal, guilt, grief and loss, difficulty with expressing emotion

• Sleep and eating disorders, substance abuse, nightmares, perfectionism, discomfort with sexuality, negative body image, impulse control problems, difficulty enjoying pleasure or being present here and now

• Rupture of family and social network, loneliness, problems relating to society, personal relationship issues

These comments from people going through it may be the best way to convey the intensity of RTS:

My form of religion was very strongly entrenched and anchored deeply in my heart. It is hard to describe how fully my religion informed, infused, and influenced my entire worldview. My first steps out of fundamentalism were profoundly frightening and I had frequent thoughts of suicide. Now I’m way past that but I still haven’t quite found “my place in the universe.”

I felt despair and hopelessness that I would ever be normal, that I would ever be able to undo the forty years of brainwashing.

I get depressed and upset. Jesus no longer saves me. God no longer created me. What purpose is there? What am I left with? What do ex-Christians fill the hole with? So we are here for no reason, no divine plan. From nothing—into nothing; reality is harsh. Plus I’m pissed that I was so brainwashed for so long – smashing CDs, burning books, rebuking Satan. . . it’s like having your entire world turned upside down, no, destroyed.

There is a lot of guilt and I react to most religion with panic attacks and distress, even photos, statues or TV. . . I guess although I was willing it was like brainwashing. It’s very hard to shake. . . It’s been a nightmare.

I feel angry, powerless, hopeless, and hurt—scars from the madness Christianity once had me suffering in.

It took years of overcoming terrific fear as well as self-loathing to emancipate myself from my cult-like upbringing years ago. Still, the aftermath of growing up like that has continued to affect me negatively as a professional (nightmares, paranoia, etc.).

The world was a strange and frightening place to me. I feared that all the bad, nasty things that I had been brought up to believe would happen to anyone who left the cult would in fact happen to me!

Even now I still lack the ability to trust very easily and becoming very close to people is something I still find very alien and hard to achieve.

After 21 years of marriage my husband feels he cannot accept me since I have left the “church” and is divorcing me.

My parents have stopped calling me. My dad told me I’m going to hell (he’s done this my whole life!).

I had to move away from my home because I just could not be in the environment any more. My entire family is Christian and I struggle to explain to them what I am going through. I feel extremely isolated and sometimes I wonder if I am going insane. I am extremely lonely and I suffer from intense depression at times.

I lost all my friends. I lost my close ties to family. Now I’m losing my country. I’ve lost so much because of this malignant religion and I am angry and sad to my very core. . . I have tried hard to make new friends, but I have failed miserably. . . I am very lonely.

Many of us feel that we cannot relate to the ‘outside’ world as the teachings we were brought up on are all we know and our only frame of reference.

My new secular friends wouldn’t understand. My Christian friends either have abandoned me or keep praying for me.

My attempts to think outside the Christian box are like the attempts of a convict to escape Alcatraz prison– tunnel through hundreds of feet of stone and concrete, outsmart gun-carrying guards, only to maybe make it to the choppy freezing cold water and a deadly swim to safety. This may be a little dramatic, but true to my heart. I now continue to try to rebuild my soul from the abuse it’s endured.

RTS can range in severity, depending on specific teachings and practices of particular churches, pastors, or parents. Persons most at risk of RTS are those who were:

• raised in their religion,

• sheltered from the rest of the world,

• very sincerely and personally involved, and/or

• from a very controlling form of religion.

The important thing to realize is that Religious Trauma Syndrome is real. While it may be easier to understand the damage done by sexual abuse or a natural disaster, religious practices can be just as harmful. More and more people need help and the taboos about criticizing religion need to be questioned.

¹The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) from 2008 indicates that Americans by the millions are making an exodus from their faith. The number of people who affiliate themselves with “No religion” has nearly doubled from 1990 to 2008. The 18.7 million people who fall in this gap have presumably come from mainline Protestant, Baptist, and Catholic churches, which have lost 12.7 million believers during the same time frame.

Part 2: Understanding RTS: Trauma fromReligion by Marlene Winell, Ph.D.

The kind of religion that causes damage is that which requires rigid conformity in order to survive in the group or have hope for the afterlife. Such a fundamentalist religion has a closed system of logic and a strong social structure to support an authoritarian worldview. It can be a comfortable environment as long as a member does not question. Children learn very early to repress independent thinking and not to trust their own feelings. For truth, believers rely on external authority – Scripture and religious leaders. With the consequences of disbelief so severe, leaders are able to demand acceptance of farfetched claims at the expense of personal observation or scientific evidence. The culture rewards individuals who contribute in religious ways. Proselytizing is generally expected, even for children. Obedience is the highest value and personal development truncated.

Clearly, psychological problems can develop long before the additional trauma of leaving the fold. I’ll use the example of Bible-based fundamentalisms. True to the definition of trauma, survivors of these report feelings of terror, helplessness, and horror in facing death and injury – the horror of Jesus’ death (along with other atrocities in the Bible), the terror of hell for oneself and everyone else, and the helplessness of being a frail human in a wicked world, a tiny player in an overwhelming cosmic drama.

Toxic Teachings

There are different churches in this category with beliefs and practices that vary but core doctrines are consistent. All of the major authoritarian religions have enormous psychological control because they are based on fear, which is the most primitive and powerful human emotion. Secondly, they emphasize shame; humans are bad and need redemption. So the basic meme complex passed on to each generation of children is that you need religion in order to survive and in order to be acceptable.

Eternal punishment. The first key doctrine is eternal damnation (or annihilation) for all unbelievers. This is the terrifying backdrop for the salvation message presented to all newcomers and all children born into the faith. The Bible is quoted, including the words of Jesus, to paint a horrifying picture of hell as a lake of fire, a fire of eternal torture impossible to quench despite any pleading. Mormons describe a hell of “outer darkness” that is cold and just as terrifying. Jehovah’s Witnesses threaten the horror of dying forever at Armageddon and missing out on Paradise.

Small children can obviously visualize these things while not having the brain capacity to evaluate the message. Moreover, the powerful social context makes rejecting these teachings impossible. Children are completely at the mercy of religious adults.

The salvation formula is offered as a solution of course, but for many, it is not enough to ward off anxiety. How does one really know? And what about losing one’s salvation? Many adults remember trying to get “saved” multiple times, even hundreds of times, because of unrelenting fear.

I feel like much of my life was lived in fear. I am reading all I can to continue to find peace from what I’ve been taught. I still fear and I am 65.

I feel little hope, because I don’t know how it is remotely possible for me to ever let go of my fear of hell. If I give up my belief system, I’ll go to hell. Even though my whole life has been so unhappy in the church–it has brought me nothing but turmoil and heartbreak and disappointment and unanswered questions and dissatisfaction.

“Left behind” terror. Another horrible fear is about missing the “rapture” when Jesus returns. I have heard many people recount memories of searching for parents and going into sheer panic about being left alone in an evil world. Given that abandonment is a primary human fear, this experience can be unforgettably terrifying. Some report this as a recurring trauma every time they couldn’t find a parent right away.

During my freshman year in college, I started having nightmares. In my dreams, the rapture would happen and I would be left behind, or worse, sent to hell. Several times I woke up just before I was tossed into the flames, my mouth open, ready to scream. My mind was crying out, “Please, Jesus! Forgive me! I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough! I’m sorry!

After twenty-seven years of trying to live a perfect life, I failed. . . I was ashamed of myself all day long. My mind battling with itself with no relief. . . I always believed everything that I was taught but I thought that I was not approved by God. I thought that basically I, too, would die at Armageddon.

Surrounded by threat. Believers simply cannot feel safe in the world if they take to heart the teaching about evil everywhere. In the fundamentalist worldview, “the World” is a fallen place, dangerously ruled by Satan and his minions until Jesus comes back and God puts everything right. Meanwhile it’s a battleground for spiritual warfare and children are taught to be very afraid of anything that is not Christian. Much of “the World” is condemned at church, and parents try to control secular influences through private and home schooling. Children grow up terrified of everything outside the religious subculture, most of which is simply unfamiliar.

I was raised on fire and brimstone, speaking in tongues, believing the world was a dangerous and evil place, full of temptation and sinners seeking to destroy me/drag me down.

Some groups place more emphasis on literal teachings about demons, and believers learn to be afraid of evil spirits lurking everywhere. Being saved is a “covering” and one must put on the “whole armor of God” to go about ordinary life. A frequently quoted verse with a terrifying image is I Peter 5:8, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”

Self as bad. Second to the doctrine of hell, the other most toxic teaching in fundamentalist churches is that of “original sin.” Human depravity is a constant theme of fundamentalist theology and no matter what is said about the saving grace of Jesus, children (and adults) internalize feelings of being evil and inadequate. Most of these churches also believe in demons quite literally, some to the point of using exorcism on children who misbehave. One former believer called it “bait-and-switch theology — telling me I was saved only to insist that I was barely worth saving.”

I’ve spent literally years injuring myself, cutting and burning my arms, taking overdoses and starving myself, to punish myself so that God doesn’t have to punish me. It’s taken me years to feel deserving of anything good.

Believers can be understood to be in the crazy-making situation of a double bind — having heavy personal responsibility to adhere to religious rules but not having the ability to do so. Never is God blamed for not answering prayer or empowering the faithful as promised.

I spent most of my life trying to please an angry God and feeling like a complete failure. I didn’t pray enough, read enough, love enough, etc.

To think you are good or wise or strong or loving or capable on your own is considered pride and the worst sin of all in this religious worldview. You are expected to derive those qualities from God, who is perfect. Anything good you do is credited to God and anything bad is your fault. You are expected to be like Him and follow His perfect will. But what if it doesn’t work? Fundamentalist Christianity promises to solve all kinds of personal problems and when it does not, it is the individual that bears the paralyzing guilt of not measuring up.

I have tried to use this brand of Christianity to free myself from the depression and addictions that I have struggled with from childhood, and have done all the things that “Christianity” demanded I do. I have fasted, prayed, abstained from secular things, tithed, received the spirit, baptized in the spirit, read the Bible, memorized Scripture, etc. etc. None of it has worked or given me any lasting solution. . . I have become so desperate at times, that I have wanted to take my own life.

Demon possession. A special form of abuse occurs when children are actually accused of being demon possessed. This can happen when children misbehave, parents are incompetent, or children’s behavior is misinterpreted in spiritual ways, often with the help of clergy. I have heard many stories of this kind of labeling, which is of course the ultimate in both shame and fear. Forced exorcisms are also all too common, even in this modern day, and certainly qualify as trauma, lasting into adulthood.

When your parents exorcised you and said you had “unclean” spirits that was very very wrong. To believe a child can have demons just shows how seriously deluded your parents really were. You have spent your whole life being scared…being scared of your dad, of God, of hell, the rapture, the end of the world, and death as well as the dark.

Cycle of abuse. A believer can never be good enough and goes through a cycle of sin, guilt, and salvation similar to the cycle of abuse in domestic violence. When they say they have a “personal relationship” with God, they are referring to one of total dominance and submission, and they are convinced that they should be grateful for this kind of “love.” Like an authoritarian husband, this deity is an all-powerful, ruling male whose word is law. The sincere follower “repents” and “rededicates,” which produces a temporary reprieve of anxiety and perhaps a period of positive affect. This intermittent reinforcement is enough to keep the cycle of abuse in place. Like a devoted wife, the most sincere believers get damaged the most.

I prayed endlessly to be delivered from those temptations. I beat my fists into my pillow in agony. I used every ounce of faith I could muster to overcome this problem. “Lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil” just didn’t seem to be working with me. Of course, I blamed it on myself and thought there was something wrong with me. I thought I was perverted. I felt evil inside. I hated myself.

I do not want to give up my faith in Christ or God but I have NEVER been able to hold onto my own decisions or to make them on my benefit without IMMENSE PAIN re: God’s will which I was supposed to seek out but could not find.

Don’t think, don’t feel. Fundamentalist theology is also damaging to intellectual development in that it explicitly warns against trusting one’s own mind while requiring belief in far-fetched claims. Believers are not allowed to question dogma without endangering themselves. Critical thinking skills are under-valued. Emotions and intuitions are also considered suspect so children learn not to trust their own feelings. With external authority the only permissible guide, they grow up losing touch with inner instincts so necessary for decision making and moral development.

Fundamentalism makes people crazy. It is a mixture of beliefs that do not make sense, causing the brain to keep trying to understand what cannot be logical.

I really don’t have much experience of decision making at all. I never made any plans for my adult life since I was brought up to believe that the end of the world would come.

I suppressed a lot of my emotions, I developed cognitive difficulties and my thinking became increasingly unclear. My whole being turned from a rather vibrant, positive person to one that’s passive and dull.

Abuses of Power

Added to these toxic aspects of theology are practices in the church and religious families that are damaging. Physical, sexual, and emotional harm is inflicted in families and churches because authoritarianism goes unchecked. Too many secrets are kept. Sexual repression in the religion also contributes to child abuse. The sanctioned patriarchal power structure allows abusive practices towards women and children. Severe condemnation of homosexuality takes an enormous toll as well, including suicide.

I had so many pent up emotions and thoughts that were never acknowledged. . . Instead of protecting me from a horrible man, they forced me to deny my feelings and obey him, no matter what. It’s no wonder I developed an eating disorder.

So while the religious community can appear to offer a safe environment, the pressures to conform, adhere to impossible requirements, and submit to abuses of power can cause great suffering, which is often hidden and thus more miserable. More sensitive personalities are more vulnerable as well as those who sincerely believe the dogma. Individual churches, pastors, and parents make a big difference too, in the way they mediate the messages of the religion.

Note: There is much more to be said about the practices of religious child-rearing and I recommend Janet Heimlich’s book, Breaking Their Will. There is also more information about physical and sexual abuse, illness rates, and results of sexism, among other things, largely hidden by the network of Christian professionals comprising an alternative economy, e.g. doctors who do not report bruises or rehab centers with drug use we never hear about.

Part 3: The Trauma of leaving Religion

by Marlene Winell, Ph.D.

Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS) is a function of both the chronic abuses of harmful religion and the impact of severing one’s connection with one’s faith and faith community. It can be compared to a combination of PTSD and Complex PTSD (C-PTSD). In the last article of this series, I explained some of the toxic aspects of authoritarian religions that cause long-term psychological damage (Bible-based ones in particular). In this writing, I will address the trauma of breaking away from this kind of religion.

With PTSD, a traumatic event is one in which a person experiences or witnesses actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others. Losing one’s faith, or leaving one’s religion, is an analogous event because it essentially means the death of one’s previous life – the end of reality as it was understood. It is a huge shock to the system, and one that needs to be recognized as trauma.

What it means to leave

Breaking out of a restrictive, mind-controlling religion is understandably a liberating experience. People report huge relief and some excitement about their new possibilities. Certain problems are over, such as trying to twist one’s thinking to believe irrational religious doctrines, handling enormous cognitive dissonance in order to get by in the ‘real world’ as well, and conforming to repressive codes of behavior. Finally leaving a restrictive religion can be a major personal accomplishment after trying to make it work and going through many cycles of guilt and confusion.

However, the challenges of leaving are daunting. For most people, the religious environment was a one-stop-shop for meeting all their major needs – social support, a coherent worldview, meaning and direction in life, structured activities, and emotional/spiritual satisfaction. Leaving the fold means multiple losses, including the loss of friends and family support at a crucial time of personal transition. Consequently, it is a very lonely ‘stressful life event’ – more so than others described on Axis IV in the DSM. For some people, depending on their personality and the details of their religious past, it may be possible to simply stop participating in religious services and activities and move on with life. But for many, leaving their religion means debilitating anxiety, depression, grief, and anger.

Usually people begin with intellectually letting go of their religious beliefs and then struggle with the emotional aspects. The cognitive part is difficult enough and often requires a period of study and struggle before giving up one’s familiar and perhaps cherished worldview. But the emotional letting go is much more difficult since the beliefs are bound with deep-seated needs and fears, and usually inculcated at a young age.

Problems with self-worth and fear of terrible punishment continue. Virtually all controlling religions teach fear about the evil in ‘the world’ and the danger of being alone without the group. Ordinary setbacks can cause panic attacks, especially when one feels like a small child in a very foreign world. Coming out of a sheltered, repressed environment can result in a lack of coping skills and personal maturity. The phobia indoctrination makes it difficult to avoid the stabbing thought, even many years after leaving, that one has made a terrible mistake, thinking ‘what if they’re right?’

It is truly amazing the pain I went through due to what was inputted into my mind… All I know is it took such a toll on me that I did not care if I died and went to hell to escape the hell I was in and the immense fear it put into my life.

Depression, anxiety, fatigue, insomnia, etc… you name it. It sucks. Probably from years of guilt being a Christian and a sinner, and thinking people I love are in hell.

Making the break is for many the most disruptive, difficult upheaval they have ever gone through in life. To understand this fully, one must appreciate the totality of a religious worldview that defines and controls reality in the way that fundamentalist groups do. Everything about the world – past, present, and future – is explained, the meaning of life is laid out, morality is already decided, and individuals must find their place in the cosmic scheme in order to be worthwhile. The promises for conformity and obedience are great and the threats for disobedience are dire, both for the present life and the hereafter. Controlling religions tend to limit information about the world and alternative views so members easily conclude that their religious worldview is the only one possible. Anything outside of their world is considered dangerous and evil at worst and terribly misguided at best. So leaving this sheltered environment is bursting a bubble. Everything a person has believed to be true is shattered.

My foundation has truly dropped out from under me. Despite being told I am courageous, tenacious, and this is rugged work, I consistently find wave after wave of grief that overwhelms me. I can hardly believe how upended it has made my life.

My whole sense of purpose, value, and meaning was wrapped tightly around my Christian faith…I kept my doubts buried and crucified, and I tried hard not to think about the troubling things of faith…A year ago, I abandoned evangelicalism…the pain I feel is deep and raw.

The impact can create problems with day-to-day functioning.

The amount of inner turmoil during this time was overwhelming. It affected my daily life and many days I didn’t want to get out of bed. I was depressed and anxious at the same time. Being in college was difficult. I could hardly focus on class.

I am utterly confused and at the moment my whole life is ruined as I don’t know what to think. I’ve been off work a month with anxiety.

I have – for about three years – been dependent on drinking alcohol every night for a very long time.

Shattered assumption framework

In the study of trauma, certain developments are highly relevant to understanding RTS. One is the shattered assumption framework, or ‘loss of the assumptive world’ (Kauffman, 2002). It has been used to understand traumatic loss such as death of a loved one, but can easily be applied to loss of faith. According to Beder (2004), ‘The assumptive world concept refers to the assumptions or beliefs that ground, secure, stabilize, and orient people. They are our core beliefs. In the face of death and trauma, these beliefs are shattered and disorientation and even panic can enter the lives of those affected.’

The most damaging traumas are those that are human-caused and involve interpersonal violence and violation (DePrince and Freyd, 2002). (In my opinion, this would describe indoctrinating children in fear-based religion.) This approach names three basic assumptions held about the world that are shattered with these traumas: the world is benevolent, the world is meaningful, and the self is worthy (Janoff-Bulman, 1992). A fourth is sometimes included which says that others are trustworthy (Roth and Newman, 1991). This model applies well to religion if one thinks of the ‘world’ as that created and maintained by the religious group. The religious version of ‘self is worthy’ is usually a paradoxical view of the self which is both sinful and special. That is, an individual has nothing intrinsic to be proud of but can have great purpose, and can play a role in a cosmic, spiritual drama.

These researchers explored the way schemas and other cognitive factors lead to humans’ cognitive conservatism and resistance to changing basic assumptions. Another line of research indicates negative responses in the brain when a person is confronted with information that conflicts with strongly-held beliefs (Shermer, 2011). Traumatic experiences shatter basic assumptions and beliefs. Conversely, a shattering of beliefs is traumatic. Coping and healing from trauma requires an individual to reconcile their old set of assumptions with new, modified assumptions (DePrince & Freyd, 2002). The trauma is understood to have both affective and cognitive components.

Loss of faith or leaving one’s religion viewed through this lens helps to explain the intensity of the trauma. A religion contains a large and complex set of assumptions held to be true by the group. Rejecting the ‘meme complex’ that has been passed on through generations is a major cognitive disruption as well as a risk of social rejection. Panic about being helpless in a meaningless world can result.

Never have I experienced such confusion, pain, grief, loss fear, anxiety, depression, paralysis. All because of religion, faith, God.

It is noteworthy that all of the most controlling, authoritarian religions make sweeping, ultimate promises along with demands for devotion. Individuals who were most sincere, devout, and dedicated seem to be the ones most traumatized when their religious assumptive world crumbles. This would make sense from Kauffman’s (2002) perspective that shattered assumptions cause the self to fragment into pieces. As he puts it, ‘The assumptive world order is the set of illusions that shelter the human soul.’

Some days are better than others of course but most days are blighted by some form of dark cloud. The real tragedy for me is that I love life – in all of its hues, shades, problems and challenges – I just can’t see life through a prescribed formula any more.

I feel in total crisis, panicked, and terrified of facing a future alone. No confidence in my own decision making if it isn’t in line with Christianity, and inability to find fulfillment from within.

For many people who leave their faith, it is like a death or divorce. Their ‘relationship’ with God was a central assumption, such that giving it up feels like a genuine loss to be grieved. It can be like losing a lover, a parent, or best friend who has always been there.

It is like a death in the family as my god Jesus finally died and no amount of belief could resurrect him. It is an absolutely dreadful and frightening experience and dark night of the soul.

When I left, it felt like I was losing a friend or even a spouse – was definitely ‘traumatic’. Now, as an outsider, I see how crazy-making and damaging it was to me.

Betrayal trauma theory

This approach has challenged the traditional focus on fear as the primary response to trauma. PTSD has been assumed to be an anxiety disorder, requiring the individual to experience intense fear, helplessness, or horror in response to a traumatic event. Treatment has emphasized corrective emotional processing.

Understanding post traumatic distress in terms of shattered assumptions and betrayal can shed light on effects not related to fear or terror. Freyd (1996) studied the impact of childhood abuse, or the betrayal of a trusted caregiver, on memory, and concluded that a low awareness of violation appears to have survival value. These theories indicate that a cognitive appraisal which raises awareness of violated assumptions can be traumatic.

The concept of betrayal is important in that it changes the whole context of understanding trauma that is human caused. First of all, society is resentful of the ways in which victims of trauma shatter our illusions of safety and often engages in victim blaming in order to order to maintain basic assumptions (Van der Kolk, McFarlane, and Van der Hart, 1996). The letter to the editor printed in the previous issue shows the way society resists recognizing that religion can do any harm.

Secondly, and especially in the case of Complex PTSD, which refers to ongoing, repeated abuse, it makes a huge difference to shift the focus to relational issues. As explained by DePrince and Freyd (2002), mainstream psychology has focused on fear and tended to pathologize trauma survivors’ reactions. In this approach, responsibility for the experience of fear is placed on the individual survivor, implicitly or explicitly. Cognitive-behavioral therapies are focused on treating the individual’s anxiety symptoms.

When betrayal is included as an important reaction to trauma, research and treatment questions are placed in a relational and social context. The pathology is not just in the mind of the survivor. Relevant questions include who did the betraying, what was the betrayal about, the relationship to the perpetrator, and the societal response to the events. With a betrayal framework, these authors say that closer attention is paid to the relationship between the perpetrator and victim in interpersonal violence. (Regarding religious indoctrination, a case can be made for emotional and mental abuse, which is also violent with long-term effects). This framework allows for a historical context in which there may be intergenerational transmission of trauma.

Betrayal may also come in the form of response the survivor receives from others following the event, such as disbelief, minimizing, or otherwise devaluing the individual’s experience. A view of trauma that recognizes the sociocultural forces at play helps us go beyond individual emotions and consider the community’s role in addressing the transgression. Recognizing interpersonal betrayal in trauma requires that we confront the reality of the harm humans can cause one another (DePrince and Freyd, 2002).

Shattered faith

As an example of ‘loss of the assumptive world’, losing one’s religion is a special and potentially extreme case. A shattered belief system can be devastating and cause cognitive and affective problems, including an acute sense of betrayal. Many ex-believers have anger about the abuse of growing up in a world of lies. They feel robbed of a normal childhood, honest information, and opportunity to develop and thrive. They have bitterness for being taught they were worthless and in need of salvation, yet never able to be sure they were good enough to make it. They have anger about terrors of hell, the ‘rapture’, demons, apostasy, unforgivable sins, and the evil world. They resent not being able to ever feel good or safe. Many are angry that the same teachings are inflicted on more children continuously. They have rage because they dedicated their lives and gave up everything to serve God. They are angry about losing their families and their friends. They feel enormously betrayed.

The following comments support the theories of trauma involving shattered assumptions and betrayal.

As a child I had an awful fear of hell, and I used to fall asleep crying cause I thought I wasn’t saved. Irrational fear leads to irrational decisions. Now with my career in the tank, having lost contact with friends and family over my leaving the church, I am trying to put my life back together.

So now at the age of 43, I feel that my youth was wasted. I think about all the fun I lost out on, all the women I rejected, and the education I could have had. I think about all the worry, guilt and fear I’ve had to endure for 31 years.

I’ve been feeling a mixture of anger, sadness, and desperation regarding my former ‘life of faith’… I spent about 20 adult years as a ‘serious Christian’… trying to live out ‘radical Biblical obedience to God’… The fact is I could NEVER totally please God. ‘He’ made impossible demands of me and it was a fantasy to think that he provided the actual resources necessary to fulfill them.

RTS as Complex PTSD

The definition of Complex PTSD is interesting in light of religious indoctrination: ‘a psychological injury that results from protracted exposure to prolonged social and/or interpersonal trauma with lack or loss of control, disempowerment, and in the context of either captivity or entrapment, i.e. the lack of a viable escape route for the victim’ (Wikipedia). Small children who are subjected to toxic religious teachings and practices are trapped and dependent on their dysfunctional families. Pete Walker (2009) has developed an approach in psychotherapy that considers emotional flashbacks to be the key symptom of Complex PTSD. Because of the prolonged nature of the trauma, he says Complex PTSD can be even more virulent and pervasively damaging in its effects. (Complex PTSD has not yet been included in the DSM; nor has RTS.) This seems to be true for many who have left religion.

When asked to describe my past, overwhelming emotions sap my body of positive energy…Flashbacks assault my subconscious in vicious nightmares after dredging up this damage.

I remember many dark nights trying to sleep being fearful of many things in life, lying there in bed worrying while trying to sleep while considering all the nasty things that might happen to me as a sentence from god for my suggested bad/evil choice of leaving. The worry and lack of sleep made life and work that much harder to handle. I even got headaches from thinking and worrying so endlessly.

A lonely trip into the unknown battling that what you have been taught, questioning over and over again that what might be true or untrue. Feelings of guilt and fear of daring to trust your own natural human instincts or reasoning. A pathway of uncharted waters, supposedly booby trapped by devils and monsters.

I had a nervous breakdown as the beliefs that I was being taught were not really helping me develop as an individual. I have spent the last 5 years in and out of hospital for suicide attempts and things were gradually getting worse… Every day became a nightmare, I became immersed in a depression that had only one way out… suicide. I didn’t want to kill myself, however life was so miserable that suicide seemed like a reasonable option.

I have just woken up from another nightmare. My husband says I cry out in the night and cry in my sleep. I was in an empty room with no escape. Totally alone and so so scared.

Why RTS is so invisible

With RTS, the social context is completely different from other trauma recovery situations. Natural disaster experiences, childhood sexual abuse or family violence are all understandable to friends and professionals who are likely to be sympathetic and supportive. In the case of religious abuse, a person is often hounded by family and church members to return, and reminded in many ways that they are condemned otherwise. In essence, they are pressured to return to the perpetrator of their abuse. Their suffering is not seen. In fact, they are made pariahs when they do not return and this social rejection is an added layer of serious injury absent from other varieties of trauma.

A survivor of religious trauma is also surrounded by potential triggers, especially in more religious communities. Symbols of sexual abuse are not celebrated, but someone with RTS is expected to enjoy Christmas and Easter, or at least be quiet. Religion holds a place of privilege in society. Churches are everywhere and prayers and hymns are ubiquitous. In many communities, to not believe the prevailing religion makes one a deviant, putting one at risk of social rejection, employment problems, and more.

Anger for other kinds of abuse is considered normal and acceptable, whereas ex-believers are supposed to forgive and ‘not throw the baby out with the bathwater’. They are called too sensitive or accused of taking religion the wrong way. People understand nightmares about wartime combat but not about Armageddon. Expressing feelings is usually dangerous. Too often, the result is a shaming attack rather than support, i.e., ‘blaming the victim’.

From an orthodox, conservative point of view, people who have left their religion and are suffering are seen as failures – they simply haven’t done it right. A fundamentalist Christian view is that they have been ‘rebellious’ and brought about their own problems. Depression and anxiety are often considered sins or even demonic attacks. Personal misery is seen as a natural result of rejecting God; being apostate brings God’s punishment.

A religious counselor will redirect a client back to the religion, typically with biblical guidelines to repent and become more devout. The client suffering with RTS is then likely to try harder to meet the impossible demands of the religion, much like returning to a situation of domestic violence. They will do this because of the authoritarian nature of such counseling, but fail again and feel hopeless or evil or crazy. No one concludes that it is the religion itself, which is at fault. (And religious counselors often have very little training in psychology while getting exempted from standard licensing requirements.)

In many seemingly secular settings, religious views are still considered ‘normal’ and even advocated in aggressive ways. In medicine and in treatment for drugs and alcohol, professionals assume that pushing religion is acceptable. Yet people struggling with RTS-related substance abuse simply cannot stomach the religious tone of Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, and get very little sympathy.

In one case, a client of mine who was in a psychiatric ward because of panic attacks due to RTS told me that a doctor told her she needed to get right with God. Imagine giving parallel advice with some other kind of abuse. I also had a call from a veteran who was searching for an alternative because his counselor at the VA said he preferred working with people who believed in hell because he could get them to behave.

In many ways, a person with RTS can be retraumatized again and again through minimizing and denial. This can cause regression to an earlier state of fear by triggering the phobia indoctrination. One person wrote about the unequal social status of religious abuse:

If I were to say that Christianity took my childhood, filled me with fear, paralyzed me with anxiety, annihilated my Self, robbed my body of feeling, stole my future, gave me an unequal marriage role, and cost me thousands of dollars, Christians would dismiss it with ‘You were in the wrong church, you take things too seriously, or you made your choices based on your own free will’.

It is no better when I talk to those raised outside of Christianity. They gently suggest that I’m over sensitive or making a big deal out of nothing or that I don’t understand who Jesus really was or that it couldn’t have been all that bad since I turned out to be such a nice person.

Why is it so hard for people to understand that Christianity completely messed up my life?!?!?!

If I had been discriminated against, beaten, sexually abused, traumatized by an act of violence, or raped, I would be heard. I would receive sympathy. I would be given psychological care. I would have legal recourse and protection. However, I am a trauma victim that society does not hear.

RTS victims feel very alone because, except on certain online forums, there is virtually no public discourse in our society about trauma or emotional abuse due to religion. This gap was noticed by a young man who wrote to me about his YouTube deconversion series:

I’ve been working on the 4th part, focused on trauma, for better than a month now and having a hard time with it. I’ve been reading a lot about trauma and finding myself amazed by how closely what we attribute to trauma and PTSD align with my experience of deconversion. No one talks about religion and trauma. Not in the scientific journals, not on trauma resources… I thought maybe I would be the only one to address it.

Child Protective Services will aggressively rescue children who are physically or sexually abused, but the deep wounding and mental damage cause by religion, which can last a lifetime, does not get attention. The institutions of religion in our culture are still given a privileged place in many ways. Criticism is very difficult. Parents are given undue authority to treat their children as they wish, even though the authoritarian and patriarchal attitudes of religion, along with too much respect for the Fourth Commandment to obey parents, has resulted in harsh and violent parenting methods. Even the sexual misdeeds of the Catholic clergy have been amazingly difficult to confront. Children are treated like the property of parents or parish, and too much goes on behind closed doors.

Multiple issues

Space considerations prevent a full description of all the challenges a person faces over a lifetime of recovering from religious indoctrination and living in a religious environment. Cognitive problems can be serious because decision-making for oneself is difficult and critical thinking skills are undeveloped. A person healing and recovering needs to unlearn many dysfunctional ways of thinking and behaving and then rebuild. They are faced with reconstructing reality, in essence. The old assumptive world is gone and a new one must be built. A new sense of self has to be developed, and personal responsibility for life has to be accepted. The existential crisis can be enormous when one feels entirely groundless and must start over.

One of my biggest problems has been the inability to trust my own intellect.

I strained everyday to get rid of the old beliefs, but they never seemed to go away.

I guess ultimately I’ve made my peace intellectually. I’ve been reading and learning religious history, philosophy, etc for almost a decade. But I wonder…emotionally I can’t convince myself I’m not going to hell for every little thing. Does it ever get easier? Does 20 years of intimidation, coercion, fear mongering and bigotry take just as long to disappear?

Adding to the challenge is the all-too-common rejection from family and friends. For most people from a religious family, they must also reconstruct an entire social structure, while learning to view other people and the world in completely new terms. This can even require new employment. Marriages suffer when only one leaves the faith, and divorce is not uncommon.

I left the church and told my family almost two years ago; they are sure I am going to hell and taking my 3 small children with me. All friends were Christians and are no longer around. My community is deeply religious, and I feel isolated and afraid. I think I need counselling, but don’t know where to turn.

I have been associated with the religion of my parents since birth. I am now in my fifties. If I leave openly I will be disfellowshipped and WILL lose all my family and friends. I suffer from OCD and severe depression. What should I do?…if I go, my wife will stay – I foresee nothing but grief ahead for me.

In conclusion, I believe it cannot be overstated that mental health professionals need to recognize the seriousness of Religious Trauma Syndrome. Religion can and does cause great personal suffering, fractured families, and social breakdown. There are many individuals needing and deserving recognition and treatment from informed professionals. We need to let go of making religion a special case in which criticism is taboo. It is our ethical responsibility to be aware and our human obligation to be compassionate.

References

Beder, J (2004-2005) ‘Loss of the assumptive world – How we deal with death and loss’, Omega, 50(4), 255-265

DePrince, A.P. & Freyd, J.J. (2002) ‘The harm of trauma: Pathological fear, shattered assumptions, or betrayal?’ in J. Kauffman (Ed.) Loss of the Assumptive World (pp. 71-82), New York: Brunner-Routledge

Janoff-Bulman, R. (1992) Shattered Assumptions: Towards a new psychology of trauma, New York: Free Press

Kauffman, J. (2002) ‘Safety and the assumptive world’ in J. Kauffman (Ed.), Loss of the Assumptive World (pp. 205-211), New York: Brunner-Routledge

Shermer, M. (2011) The Believing Brain, New York: Times Books

Van der Kolk, B. A., McFarlane, A. C., and Van der Hart, O. (1996) ‘A general approach to treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder’ in B. Van der Kolk, A. C. McFarlane, & L. Weisaeth (Eds.), Traumatic stress: The effects of overwhelming experience on mind, body, and society (pp. 417-440), New York: Guilford.

Walker, Pete. (2009) ‘Emotional flashback management in the treatment of Complex PTSD’, Psychotherapy.net

This article was published in the British journal, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Today, Nov. 2011: RTS in CBT Today

 

 

 

Hele strukturen og innholdet i dette lange innlegget har jo karakter av en "trosbekjennelse".

 

 

Det er framsatt det som man i vitenskapelig sammenheng kanskje ville kalle en "hypotese" eller eventuelt en "arbeidshypotese" rundt "RTS - Religious Trauma Syndrome".

 

Går det an å si noen om hvilke undersøkelser det er gjort for å bekrefte eller avkrefte om hypotesen medfører rikrighet ?

 

Går det også an å si noen om hvordan inneholdet i denne hypotesen eventuelt viser seg å stemme overens med ulike religioner og menigheter ?

[malmanomar]

 

 

Hele strukturen og innholdet i dette lange innlegget har jo karakter av en "trosbekjennelse".

 

 

Det er framsatt det som man i vitenskapelig sammenheng kanskje ville kalle en "hypotese" eller eventuelt en "arbeidshypotese" rundt "RTS - Religious Trauma Syndrome".

 

Går det an å si noen om hvilke undersøkelser det er gjort for å bekrefte eller avkrefte om hypotesen medfører rikrighet ?

 

Går det også an å si noen om hvordan inneholdet i denne hypotesen eventuelt viser seg å stemme overens med ulike religioner og menigheter ?

 

Det er en diagnose som er helt i startfasen (som andre diagnoser har vært det). Mange som egentlig skulle vært diagnostisert med religiøst trauma syndrom har pr. idag feilaktig diagnosen schizotypi (har ikke tall over dette, fordi det finnes ikke, men jeg kjenner litt til det). Om jeg skulle gjette vil jeg si at kristendommen, og muligens islam, vil være trosretninger som i høy grad kan gi slike utslag. Jeg har selv snakket med flere pasienter innen psykiatrien som har hatt kristendom som hovedproblem. Så får man bare forvente at religiøse vil protestere mot dette for de vil for all del ikke innrømme at religionen deres skaper psykiske problemer. Og isåfall vil troende sikkert hevde at det er mennesket det har vært noe feil med, type "Du var aldri kristen, ellers så hadde du aldri snudd deg fra Jesus."

 

Men jo, akkurat som jorden var rund til og med da folk trodde den var flat, så er også denne tilstanden svært virkelig for tusenvis av mennesker fordi om den enda ikke er anerkjent som diagnose. Faktisk så er dette en svært alvorlig tilstand for veldig mange, bl. annet med ekstrem helvetesangst osv.

[arne22]

Det er vel ikke tvil om at reilgion som så mye annet kan spore av og gi uønskede resultater.

 

Religion kan vel i mange sammenhenger være "det limet" som holder sosiale miljøer sammen inklusive også hele nasjoner. Da er vel effekten neppe kun negativ.

 

En annen side ved saken det er jo at religion også kan virke som "det limet" som samler et sosialt miljø, samtidig som man kan få flere sosiale miljøer som samles mot hverandre. Da er det jo kanskje ikke så positivt.

 

Når det gjelder det som man kanskje kan kalle for "moderate kristne miljøer" så er det mitt inntrykk at effekten av religionen stort sett er positiv. (Noe intoleranse og slike ting finner men nok.)

[Sabell]

Å tro at man blir bedre og tro på en God Gud gjør bedre. Man trenger ikke tro på den Gud i bibelen for det Tro på en Gud som passer på oss feks kan gi en trygghet. Selvom det kun er tro. Som å tro på kjærligheten feks eller at andre er gode Spiller ingen rolle så lenge troen gjør en bedre selv. Å gir en det man har behov for som feks legen ikke klarer å gi en...Er ikke dermed sagt at alle blir bedre for det. Men det er mange muligheter til det med også å få tro på noe som kan være med å bidra til at man har den hjelpen man føler man har behov for. Å tro at feks bønn hjelper har en slags placebo for noen, mens for andre er det helt virkelig. Men vitenskapen har ikke svare på det uansett! Og det spiller heller ingen rolle så lenge det er med på å bygge oss til en del av hva vi selv også har ønske om til det bedre. En kan ikke sette standpunkt for noe en virkelig ikke vet, men man kan kjenne etter selv hva som funker for en selv å dele det med andre som kanskje også trenger akkurat det, fordi en selv feks vet med en selv at det har fungert. Og mennesker er ganske like i bunn og grunn Men når man feks ikke vet hva det vil si å være deprimert og selv klart å komme ut av det og skal til å hjelpe noen så går det mye på forskning og studier. Man skal helst ha litt erfaring for å kunne hjlpe en szhisofren feks. Og en lege eller psykolog trenger derfor ikke være veldig kompensert til det ! Det er jo en grunn til at de sier de aldri blir friske feks om en lider av szhisofreni. Men det finnes szhisofrene som fungere så og si normalt for det. Var på et teatersykke som heter I morgen var jeg alltid en løve ! ANBEFALES! Dessuter er vi mennesker slik at kan få "flere hjerner" Det holder med at vi feks har en negativ tanke vi gir oss selv som vi ikke ønsker allikevel gjør vi det Mens da kan den andre stemmen i hodet si dette liker jeg feks ikke. "Vil ikke ha det sånn" Og med det har sinnet en slags hjelper som får en feks til å oppsyke psykolog, mens andre har gått lengre inn i psyken sin og må ha mer hjelp til å finne veien ut igjen. Og den hjlepen finnes inni alle. Jeg kaller det Gud også da :)Fordi Gud er usynlig også Om man VELGER Å TRO det selvfølgelig

Endret 25. juli 2014 av Sabell