Hello!

[lightbeneaththeearth]

I am still trying to come to grips with what my story is and why I feel the loathing for myself that I do. It starts before I can remember with a dad who felt like his value, his quality as a human being, or his right to feel worthwhile depended on his righteousness. In that sense I think his wife and family were an extension of him. Faults and failures were evidences of his failings and so they were threats to his right to feel good about himself. I grew up with a mom who was at least episodically depressed. I remember when I had a room across from them and I remember him complaining loudly and angrily to her for what may have been hours. I don't remember him directly putting her down, accusing or calling her names but I am sure by the tone she felt like he was blaming her. One of the themes of this emotional dumping was about how could he be an example to the struggling members of our church if his own family was lazy and messy and disobedient. So I think the trauma started maybe with being afraid of my dad, but also with seeing my mother traumatized, sad, depressed.

At the same time that I felt a lot of joy in my parents love for me, and found a lot of joy in thinking of a perfect loving God, I also felt great guilt and anxiety that I wasn't good enough to deserve that love.

Things got the worst with puberty and feelings of guilt and unworthiness over sexual thoughts and private behaviors.  I would torment myself nightly in hopes of stopping myself. There was always a lot of fear in my house about the influence of Satan, and that we might be doing things that would put us in his power. Sometimes I was very afraid that I was possessed by a satanic spirit. It's a strange kind of trauma that you create and impose on yourself with your imagination, but it's real.

I put those things behind me for a few years, and started to like myself, and found some close friends for really the first time.

Then I spent 2 years as a missionary for my church and struggled under the weight of mind numbing rules, restrictions and busyness.

It seem like I came back a broken person. I spent a couple of years living depressed in my parents house. Then got married to a controlling and verbally abusive woman, she has lived a life that I can't blame her for how she is but after 15 years, and at the age of 41, I have never lived as an autonomous and independent adult.

I want to change that. So I study and work to get better because I want to express my ideas and my creativity in the world before I die. And I have a daughter struggling a lot like I did. I want to do everything I can for her.

[Kizzie]

Hi and a warm welcome to OOTS Light    I am not a religious person myself, but I can understand that while for some it is a blessing and builds moral character and fosters compassion, for others it's a curse. It sounds like the latter was the case in your family, that your F used it as an excuse to control and punish.  That's a lot of fear and dependency to instill in a child, traumatic really so I can well understand that you developed CPTSD and I'm sorry you feel broken. 

It's a really big step coming here and posting.  I hope here you will find the support and validation and caring you need and deserve.  Glad you found your way here