230- Conditioning, Depersonalization and reacquiring lost self

Trigger warning : religious cult, abuse, trauma. 

Life in a religious cult is a very difficult one, especially when you don't even chose to follow a particular path when you are presented with documentation from those door-to-door or street preachers. 

I was born into that cult my dad had made-up, from a mix of his life,  his mental illnesses and the mystical period everyone was experiencing back then. I thought that everyone around me was living in the same conditions. 

Throughout my life there, he employed conditioning techniques, which are common to many cults. Their goals are to render the person incapable of independent thought and opinions, and thus exert a stronger control of their individuality - by wiping it, so to speak, with manipulation and constantly berating you until you believe that you are actually, indeed, less important than a grain of dirt. 

Religious cults' conditioning techniques create a side-effect of depersonalization, as we lose the sense of self, and it becomes tricky to find our personality back as if it's been cornered into a back alley of our minds.  As an adult, I still experience depersonalization, which "can consist of a detachment within the self regarding one's mind or body, or being a detached observer of oneself. Subjects feel they have changed and that the world has become vague, dreamlike, less real, or lacking in significance".  

I find that this definition sounds a lot like another aspect of my cPTSD experience : that of dissociation  "any of the wide array of detachment from immediate surroundings to more severe detachment from physical and emotional experience. The major characteristic of all dissociative phenomena involves a detachment from reality, rather than a loss of reality as in psychosis."  (this paragraph's links are wiki articles). 

I found this illustration to show-case operant conditioning which can give you a good idea of the topic. 

Part of these conditioning techniques rely on depicting the world as a sinful, scary place (it can be scary indeed, but this is exaggerated a million-fold in cults). 

When you repeatedly hear that you are so unimportant in the world and that your existence has only the purpose of service to your fellow disciples and all, together, are under the moral obligation of giving the best moral example to the world and ultimately respect the chain of command to the religious cult's leader and straight to god, you can find yourself trapped and you actually believe every single word he says. 

These words include a host of "the world is dangerous, the world is full of people who will abuse you because it's led by the unnamed" (aka the devil, satan...) ; and that your only salvation from the world is to abstain interacting with it - with the exception of spreading the "good words" of my father, THE last messiah and savior of the world in a chain of other lesser saviors god send before. If you cannot preach or the person refuses, you are to cut all ties.

All these are accompanied by verbal, emotional and physical abuse ; I was told that I was good for nothing, that whatever I was doing was done wrongly, with utter flaws. I was told to still try my best, but that I would never achieve anything, because there was only one perfect being on this planet... god incarnated, in the form of my dad. 

I also overheard fights between my dad and the-then believed mother (but actually step-mother), during which my invariable uselessness was the basis of disagreements and that my religious-cult dad had for me and that if I indeed didn't fulfill them, he'd kill me with his bare hands. 

Any deviation in executing orders and religious precepts I was supposed to follow were met with punishments, ranging from physical beatings to getting locked in the WC for hours at a time ; loss of the small rewards I could enjoy for a short-while, or meal privations. These were also the same punishments if I dared to also contradict any accusation against me, orders or repeatedly found rebellious acts. The only difference was the intensity of these punishments - multiplied many times because I had shown that grain of individuality that had to be put back down and crushed. 

Direct consequences of my trauma and repeated conditioning, include delayed emotional growth, self-esteem issues, many fears, and a worry-wart aspects of my personality. For many years, I didn't know that these were called anxieties and phobias,  which are mental illnesses - like all the other ones I suffer from and learned about in the past 20 or so years in an exponential learning curve in the process of regaining the person that I lost during my formative years. 

More entries about anxiety, and my latest update to them is a bucket-load of anxieties.

I consider myself a work in progress ; not only did I have to learn that my upbringing wasn't normal, through example (such as those at my friend M's family), but had to redefine who I was, who I am and what I believe in, as a contrast to what I was forced to believe.  

I've been deprogramming the robot I was supposed to become, partially alone and partially with therapy and support. 

In this path, I rid myself of religious beliefs in deities, multiple and lonely alike ; I no longer believe in god and have become an atheist. I know this can shock some of you, but this is me and I won't apologize nor let anyone derail me from critical thinking and opinions. Not anymore! This is part of taking the power back on all those years I had no right to develop a personal belief system, and even less to chose not to have one in the divine imaginary friend. 

I'm also taking that power over all the conditioning and abuse ; I am giving myself the right to express and hold my opinions as well as redefining the person that I am : I am not a mere victim but a survivor.

I am fighting every day to stay alive and to be grateful for everything and everyone that I can thank for having helped and supported the difficult rebirth out of my ashes. 

I am in dialogue with my mental illnesses ; this is not a mere war but a quest to integrate all my parts, and use my pains. I am scarred, but I am truthful to my absolute beliefs in compassion and kindness as guiding tools to recover and heal myself, as well as those around me.

Recovery and healing aren't straight lines, but always possible.