Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Christian Gaslighting At It's Finest


Let's compare this meme I loathe which I saw all over Facebook, now, with another one...


Dear Yahweh, why did you give me a brain if you didn't want me to use it?

So wonder me and Yahweh parted ways, narcissists never wanted me to use my brain too and tried to practice various methods of "thought control" to get me to shut down the screaming intuition and intellect inside. I don't believe in the existence of a Big Brother god watching my thoughts for various modes of "thought crime" but this is a place where I think religion has served the powers that be. How else do you do this but shut down people's emotions and thoughts?

One odd thought I have about Jesus at times, is here was a guy who broke the "rules" enough to arrested and be crucified, and then his followers today teach absolute obedience and authoritarianism as the highest good. Weird huh? I have discussed with some people, if Jesus existed, how much was added to his teachings later in the interest of empire and control? When you see evangelical Christians support Trump in his racism and xenophobia, obedience to the "strong man" or "daddy" is running that show.

Verse like this one read differently to me now. When someone tells you to "shut down" your thoughts that worries me.

2: Cor. 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

Can one have a real relationship with someone when they just want you to basically shut up and shut your mind off, and obey?

Religion has a huge mind control elements in it's toxic forms, and one main part of this is getting you to deny your own feelings, intuition and questioning your own thoughts. This is how cults shut down all thinking. How else do they get people to wear pajamas for daily wear or believe a UFO is going to whisk them away to a better place?  If someone was to ask me what my least favorite verse in the bible is now,  Proverbs 3:5 "do not lean on your own understanding" is first among them.

I've read where some people have said Christianity is a religion that has separated people from the "Source" and real divinity, and this is why it is so insistent on shutting down our feelings, emotions and thoughts.  It has divided us from a world we are a part of. It is an interesting theory. The break down of conscience and self in Christianity leads to cognitive dissonance and people being separated from their "inner man".

 Christians are always led to practice thought control on themselves. I did it to keep going as a "good Christian".  I have been given this picture of a "decent Christian woman" and spent years just learning to repress myself to fit this mold. Doubts would arise and even questioning compassion when I was to treat people as "others" or judge on wickedness. I knew I was failing to conform, and I spent years in this trap of trying to make myself become a person I really was not. This can make me cry about those years and how self suppression had been taught to me by Christianity.

This is the same process I underwent in my ACON abuse. I was told time and time again, I was deficient, and broken, and that I needed to become someone else to be accepted and loved. I was "not enough". In my family's case that would have meant no longer being autistic, or poor or fat. I held out for too many years taking their abuse and refusals to love me, hoping one day I could achieve a modicum of success to be a person they would love and accept. The overlaps with Christianity here do not escape my notice. My deconversion rested on the very fact, that the same messages came to me from my abusers as from the religion I was in. My abusers even maintained a degree of thought control, too just like religion, telling me various thoughts, and doubts were WRONG.

One main problem with Christianity is that it teaches us to believe in a torturing God, that wants to hurt us [in hell] for listening to our own thoughts! Think about that. We end up being forced to give our power and become victims. We are beaten down and told we are "worthless" without Jesus. We are emotionally and otherwise abused. We also are told we are not good people in ourselves. We are broken and we must become "new creatures" in Christ, and when we are born again, we are to have our personalities and minds replaced to a degree. Think about the message of that. You aren't good enough as you are, the person you became was not good enough, the whole message is to CHANGE or else. This is not a world of unconditional acceptance or love but a world of conformity.

Think about how often religion tells people to submit and especially women and children to OBEY. This definitely is a system of dominance and deception. One irony of the Bible is it tells people to seek for truth. What if you examine your religion and find that it is full of lies? If I die, and end up at some doorway to hell with a condemning God. I would confront it and say, "but you told me to seek after truth and now you contradict yourself."

For those of us who were within narcissistic families, we were told over and over not to trust our own minds and that we are always wrong. We were told not to listen to our own brains that were screaming inside, "This is very wrong!" It has occurred to me that Christianity has given the same message. "The heart is deceitful, don't trust your own mind, don't trust your own thoughts". Where does this lead a person but to be controlled by others?


My entire life I was taught to suppress my own thoughts and emotions. How many of us have our health ruined by having everything stuffed inside and being unable to be our authentic selves? Religion often denies this authenticity. Christianity really pushes this, everything is about "controlling" emotions and "fitting-in" and "obedience". One of the main rituals of Christianity, baptism makes it clear, that we are "defective" and "dirty" before being "washed in Christ's blood".  What does this do but give all our power away and ensure a weakness inside where one thinks they are "never good enough" just like our narcissistic families taught us to be? Toxic Christianity and Narcissistic scapegoating families are joined together in a dance of disempowerment.

In the meme, the thin feminine young woman in her blue sweater stands in a dark room with God's Word providing it's own flashlight. Her hair is over her eye. She is told not to listen to her own brain and that God knows all. She stands in a library which represents a depository of knowledge but the lights are turned off.  The perfectionism of God, to me was one tool used for gaslighting too. Beyond the issue of a perfect being expecting his imperfect creation to measure up to his standards which are impossible for the majority, there's the issue that next to perfect, whenever something goes wrong, everything will be your fault. God can do no wrong but everything you do will be wrong compared to him.There's no winning in that system. No appeals. For all the mercy Christianity spoke of, I saw very little. There's no mercy for those kids at the border. There's no mercy for the fallen away who are supposed to get the lowest level of hell for doubting it all.

1. "You've stopped trusting in your own judgments..."


When a person it told to stop trusting in their own judgment, [#1 on the second gaslighting list meme] that is something that the toxic personalities brainwash people in, "We know better, We know you better then you know yourself." Shutting off one's own judgment, leaves one very vulnerable to predators. How many are shutting off conscience now to vote for evildoers?

2. "You are afraid of speak up or expressing how you feel...."

 With #2, silence was a given. For all the claims of a would be relationship with the Lord, one was supposed to sit there and take it, and not argue. Arguing and thinking were sins. Once I was told in one church, that just being a woman, made me more likely to be led astray by my own brain. Think about that one. That preacher told us women were too emotional to make good judgements. This is why we were to be silent in the churches and we were never to preach to men, just other women and children. It shocks me I sat there listening to that nonsense and did not walk out. I heard different forms of that even in Catholicism where we were given these same reasonings as why only men could be priests.

3. "You feel as though you are going crazy and that there is something wrong with you....."

Here with #3, in Christianity the focus is that there is something wrong with you, in fact a lot is wrong with you and you are a wretched sinner. Outside of a few very liberal churches, this is the main point, you must be saved from what God will do to you for being so "wrong" and essentially from yourself. [your "flesh" in the bible]. Some branches of Christianity like Calvinism teach that human beings are fundamentally DEPRAVED.


4. "You always second guess details...."


Christianity can keep one bamboozled under endless bible studies, memorizations, and debates on doctrine. In fundamentalism, getting one doctrine wrong, was enough to be told the hot place was waiting for you. There are apologetics, arguing how many angels can dance on a pin, or when will the last days finally come for the thinking Christians. These are distractions for adults. 

"5. You feel the need to apologize all the time...."

This is expected and demanded in Christianity all the time. We were expected to be SORRY all the time. In fact even when I was born again, being sorry for being a rotten sinner was the main impetus for bowing before God and turning to his will. Can one really be close with someone they are always apologizing too?  The Catholic churches and many mainline liturgical churches have their apologies scripted into rituals of confession. For the Christian fundamentalist, we were to apologize to God, for everything from watching demon TV to drinking a beer to uttering one cuss word. God sure did seem upset by a lot. Which brings in the idea of having to walk on eggshells, a fact of life for most abuse victims. 

6. "You frequently feel confused...."

My brain felt like a stew pot, all the time, stirred with a fast spoon. Reality was always bumping up against the religious things I had been taught. I would literally make excuses for God and Christians trying to fit everything into a narrow mold. The world often made less sense through Christian rose colored glass ideals.

The gaslighting in Christianity is extensive..... when I recovered from my abuse, I couldn't ignore the overlaps with religion and how religion gave me the same messages as abusers. I had lost contact with myself which I am still working on finding now. I wanted there to be a god who was loving and kind but I had to face my disappointment. None of this was real. There was no one there. I got nothing but silence. Does anyone who is still in, figure out that those of us who deconverted tried but the "god" didn't hold up it's end of the bargain?

And this overlaps too with the abuse process as well, some of us tried and tried for years. We tried to win the love from people who had no capacity for it and simply did not love us. We were too "wrong', well the same goes in religion. How many feel the disappointment for years and remain within? I doubted Christianity by 2007, only 5 years after my conversion in but hung on out of guilt, and gaslighting same as I did too long with abusers.

We are told we must be perfect but we were made imperfect to start with.  We are told God loves us unconditionally but then are handed a long list of conditions. We are told someone has to die in our place a hideous horrible bloody death to be made worthy of anything but eternal suffering and fire. We are told Christianity will make us free, but then are told we must be worthy servants and slaves to Christ. We are told all our requests in prayer will be answered but then told maybe the answer is No and to not put God to the test. We are told to have a personal relationship with an entity who never looks on us as an individual and only gives back silence. Our emotions are played with our imaginations, telling us, that this Being truly LOVES us, but we are all subject to hideous medical suffering or the possibility of death or the pain of losing loved ones.

Ask yourself is this about any love or truth or is it a cage of deception and control? My experiences with severe ACON abuse, has led me to some very deep questions about religion and it's messages. Why do so many religions and the predominant one in America [Christianity] focus on our unworthiness?

What good does it do, the constant labeling of faults, does it improve goodness or does it simply bring a conquer and divide ethos to humanity? If Christianity has at it's core a scapegoat, doesn't this mean some gaslighting comes with that too? It is a victim and victimizers set up. While Jesus whether he truly existed or not,  had some decent messages about love your neighbor, and caring for the poor and sick, I think about what religion became with the passage of centuries. It became more of a power system, to build empire and keep people suppressed. We are in dangerous times now where Christianity is now serving as a vehicle of totalitarianism in America and where humanity could be facing extinction to a rapidly heating up earth, but instead of facing reality, we are being gaslighted by the majority of Christianity. Having our realities denied. Told to ignore things that are happening. Told Trump is a loving man who wants to make America better.

I saw this quote on the ex-Christian reddit board. I totally related to it. I can't love the Christian god. It hurt me on levels I can't even explain. It took me to the same places, that my abusers did. I no longer believe it exists.


“You know that Christian idea that God is perfect? How he’s always waiting for you and anything that goes wrong must be your fault because he can do no wrong and it’s all about you having to come to him and meet his perfection?”

I nodded.

“That’s called gaslighting.”

That was the moment that really defined me as an atheist. When I saw that the Christian God I had been begging to save me was at best nonexistent, and at worst a horrific abuser.

 ACON healing led to my deconversion, but there's new discoveries I am confronting like this one, religion gaslighted my mind as much as my narcissistic parents did. I was told not to trust my intuition. Intuition keeps us safe in this brutal world. It warns us when things are wrong. It tells us not to give evildoers the benefit of the doubt and to flee, but sadly this religion says "Don't trust your own thoughts." How is one supposed to even stand up for themselves when they have been indoctrinated into their own mind, brain, and intuition supposedly failing them?


Religion can drive one to madness, because some of them focus on telling you that you must fix yourself over and over, and then they put up more hoops for you to jump through. Some get tired of being told how they "ought" to be, and how they don't measure up. Why did humanity create a God that was so impossible to please? There must be religions out there, where they worship gods or "divinity" that do not expect perfection or force the acceptance of an offer of perfection. I always thought perfectionists were rather abusive. The demanded perfectionism is part of the gaslighting process as well. 

Religions gain power confusing and gaslighting their victims.


Friday, July 26, 2019

Spammers


My blog is being attacked by tons of spam. I can block out all their spam using blogger tools. It's weird, I can tell these are not real spammers, as most of the messages don't have something to sell or a website listed in them. There's a nut out there, who hates my blog, or it's messages and keeps sending upwards of 25 spams a day. Many of them are just dumb things with trite fake compliments, you can tell are not done by any real commenters. There's also word salad too. I don't know if the spammer is another blogger, I suspect but someone I won't name or this one admin from an ACON message board I got banned from. She had made a rule that no one was allowed to use the term narcissistic or narcissism. Anyhow people are odd, stop wasting my time and yours. It's dumb.

Friday, July 19, 2019

The Beauty of KyoAni (Kyoto Animation)



I was sad to hear what happened to Kyoto Animation when an arsonist and murderer attacked them and 33 people died.

"How Faith Breaks Your Feeler"



'How Faith Breaks Your Feeler"



 The teaching of hell itself, has brought a lot of hell to planet earth. It's one teaching that is destructive to human empathy. Anyone who is okay with people burning for eternity in a torture chamber worse then any of Hitler's concentration camp ovens because it lasts forever, and think that is "just" is having their human sense of compassion and justice destroyed inside. The acceptance of such a fate for millions or billions doesn't endear empathy and kindness on earth. Inside that needled at me always. I am glad I dared to face it. I definitely have already covered how Christianity affected me in negative ways, where I mourn the friends I could have had, and the priggishness it took me into.

Neil Carter makes a list: I agree with called "How Faith Is Like An Abusive Lover"

1. Tearing you down.
2. Gaslighting

3. Excessive Control
4.  Cutting You off from the rest of the world
5. Threats and Fear Tactics
6.  Love Bombing Followed by devaluation
7.  Moving the Goalposts
8.  Projection and Blameshifting.

Christianity affected me in all the ways listed. The whole religion was a giant tear down. I think America may have a special symbiotic relationship with conservative Christianity in our "You are never enough" culture. I was thinking the other day how the self help people are maybe only one step removed from the heaven people but promise money and success if you "obey".
Gaslighting is definitely a part of it all, when you are told even in scripture that you cannot trust your own feelings or thoughts.  Excessive control, well that is summed up in all the love of authoritarianism and having the world run on the dominance, and punishment model.

As I moved away from religion and deconverted, I got more and more horrified by the stuff my old IFB acquaintances were posting on social media.  Their feelers are all broken. Almost all of their political stances is about denouncing someone they deemed as weaker and less powerful then them. They fully support racist agendas and white supremacy.

Some stuff in support of Trump and Republican politics always bothered me, but I noticed a shift even in them. I left the churches before I left the religion, but I noticed they were posting mean and meaner things.  There was even more hatred for the poor, immigrants, and gay people. Trump really has led to a lot more cruelty and empowered closet racists where people did not insult people like this in polite company  but now feel free to do so because the president does it..There is a hardening of people in conservative land. Religion and politics joined together to tell them "feelings" are bad, listen to the powerful. Consciences all shutting down like shutters across the land, so now they can lock kids in cages and it's acceptable.

I find myself winnowing the friendship list, to spare myself the right wing triggering. Today I unfriended someone today who posted a Confederate flag in support of it! This woman doesn't even live in the South and as far as I know never has but the symbol of the racist South must mean something to her in her love of Trump. These folks do show the signs of having their empathy squashed. Their religion made it more possible for someone like Trump, to lead them into shutting down human compassion.

Heat



source: Time magazine.

How can anyone deny global warming now? Every summer gets hotter and hotter and the heat waves far more frequent. I was in one horrific heat wave where over 700 people died back in the 1990s, but that was a freak happening. Now they are coming far more often and with higher temperatures. People warn about 'wet bulb' temperatures that make it impossible for the human body to cool down. There's been a few times with air conditioning even in here, I have gotten covered in a sheen of sweat, with sweat dripping down my face. I do turn off the air conditioning intermittently and at night after a period of cooling the room to go to sleep.  I can't imagine how people function without air condition though I know many are too poor to have it. With these lungs, it's like living like a canary in an ever heating up coal mine.

Only Narcissists Defend Narcissists


This is almost an iron clad rule. One thing I could use as a narcissist test, is if they hated my website or others exposing narcissism. They'd recoil like the Wicked Witch of the West from a bucket of water! Most people with empathy want nothing to do with narcissists. Also be wary of those who can read an entire post history on an ACON blog and then side with the abusers! That's scary. I think this post is correct too, in that Narcissists Hunt in Packs!

Thursday, July 18, 2019

The Society of Being Never Enough




“In Buddhism, there is a concept called maitri, a Sanskrit word that is translated as “unconditional friendship with oneself.” This may be hard for Westerners, with their habits of self-criticism and constant drive toward self-improvement, to even stop and consider. Maitri means being able to relax with yourself, to feel at home in your own mind and own body, to feel one’s own essential goodness. That is the seed of happiness.”

—Leonard Scheff

This is something I need to explore. It sounds nice to me. You mean I can wake up and have a day where there is some pleasure and peace? Sounds interesting. You mean I don't have to constantly prove myself?

Well I got bitten by the self-improvement people again. The "never good" enough society is wearing me down. They claim "concern" while shredding you to pieces. I noticed they always get angry when you don't want to do what they are selling, and say things like "Life is unfair, deal with it." Once someone says the "life is unfair" line to me. I am done. The self-improvement cult is just another religion based on false promises, guilt, shame, vague claims and impossible demands.

 It tells us over and over, we don't do enough and that it's our fault we did not make money or succeed. Religion almost crushed me but this has almost crushed me too. I've been hurt by so many people preaching it's messages. So many have internalized the garbage. The elites want to tell us it's our fault we are poor.  They benefit from this. I am tired of being blamed for things beyond my control. With habits, even there they abuse telling us that proper living will fix everything and that problems in our lives are not from having proper habits, especially as they denigrate the food and destroy proper living and social connections. To some people life is supposed to be nothing but austerity and self-improvement. I'm bored with it all. Why should I care at this point?  I wish people would stop trying to make me care about things I really don't care about. Go do you, but I'm tired. Leave me alone. 

Maybe I should tell all new people, I am a dark depressive goth. If you won't like it, walk now, because I am not going to be this other person you really want. You want a smiling cheerleader whose got plenty of money, there's plenty of those. I complain and cry too much? Well go find yourself a stoic for a pal. I've had a lifetime of liars, bullshit artists, religionists, self-help gurus and others tell me I am not enough.  They promised me I could fix everything. Try this one for size, maybe I don't want to fit in. Maybe I have no interest in what you are selling.

Aspies can get together and analyze, complain, vent and the rest but in "self improvement" culture, this is the greatest sin. You must be always looking for the golden brick road to freedom. You must always be dreaming of the day "you make it". Everything is about status. Anyone who diverts from the path of seeking status, is condemned. I have noticed a dark side of humanity where even people in the lowest echelons, like the friend who lived off her family, always want to feel superior to someone else. I'm tired of being that person. All this crap does is make me shut the door tighter and tighter.

Is there to be no joy or happiness? America is a very unhappy place for a reason, the positivity and self improvement cult have taken over. In this cult you must always smile and the greatest sin is to be "negative" and "lazy". The irony is that with all the goal posts depression is more likely. You will not be relaxed or happy.

In this society you are told that you are only as good as what you do for anyone and must produce, produce, produce. Even if disabled, you have to make sure you do all the volunteer work in the world to prove your worthiness and you must be inspiraporn, where you never get down and always stay "brave". One can be diagnosed with chronic fatigue, the kind that keeps most with it even from getting out of bed, and puts one in tears just to take a shower, but if you are not "doing", you are not "living" supposedly. You are "bad", you "didn't try hard enough", you "complain too much". You know maybe some of us have not drank the Kool-Aid. We don't worship the lash on our backs anymore that screams "Never Enough"! They've swiped the carrot away too many times.

Maybe astroturfers are befriending me trying to send me into insanity. The powers that be don't like narcissism being written about? Why am I getting this unwanted attention?  I don't want to go down paranoid highway and "targeted" personland but sometimes I wonder why these people are pretending to be friends with me. They take up loads of my time, often more then I can handle. What's the reward in it? Why are you wasting my time? Go away.  I am not sending them money or anything. Maybe I still need to work on not being a source of narcissistic supply that emotional vampires want to glom onto. When people say things to me like "Poverty is your comfort zone", after the life, I've had, that just feels like abuse and gas lighting.


There's this other creep spamming my blog, sending something like 50 messages a day. It's not real spam, that advertises actual products or websites, within the text, but just generic, "I love your blog, blah blah" with nothing to sell.

I really wonder at times, these weird people show up in my life, they seem intelligent, I guess that's the draw like the catfish woman. I am a sucker for intelligent people who love books, and ideas, but then, I guess few in American culture care about friendship anymore, everything is competition and putting people down. I notice they always want to "fix me" according to their edicts even if they were friendly in the beginning. Early on they are nice, and seem intellectual and excited to share ideas, but then the criticisms begin. I often wonder if this is something Aspies face, too, where they see 'our limitations" behind the intellectual gifts they enjoy and then they go to town.

I try to do what I can but I am tired of their emotional beat-downs as well. People like this will tell you their problems but then condemn you for having any. I should tell all, "If you don't like me TODAY, go away and leave me alone."If I am too Wednesday Addams to you and not enough Patch Adams, too bad, this is me!"


It's very hard to live in a world where you can't be yourself and you are condemned. Or you are just someone people use to tell their problems too and you really aren't a friend. You think you are, but then they ghost you for 4 months without a word. You are just someone they told problems too. It is hard too, to realize you have the kind of life, and personhood where people get something out of feeling superior to. I hide a lot of my problems in real life so this became less of a problem in the day to day world, but I am noticing I have to shut it off online. It's making me a target for whatever reason. Maybe being so open on this blog is a risk. I plan to continue this blog, but I have to be more wary.

My husband has told me he wants me to become far more cautious about who I befriend online. He thinks people are using me for counseling and venting their problems to, and then just dumping me when they are done. He got worried about this most recent person writing me so much and expecting so much time, and it was getting to the point I was ignoring lots of their messages because I could not keep up time-wise or energy wise. 

Socially I am too tired. I am worn out. I stopped trying to make friends and that helped me a lot but I spend too much of my life afraid of people. There are life long ramifications of severe emotional abuse, that I may have to contend with. I also think that it's not me, its a very sick society. I do have a few real people in my life and know not to take them for granted. I am trying to train myself not to care what people think anymore. Caring gives them a place to hurt you and most of them have no qualms about doing that. Caring makes you a "sucker" open to criticism.

I need to work on befriending myself. I don't have energy for people like this anymore. I am finding myself investing too much time in relationships where the people don't care about me. Some of this is spilling over onto real life, where I feel I must "volunteer" to be worthwhile or that I must do and "help" others for them to care about me but then I find out they don't when I really did. Maybe shutting down some of that "helper" stuff will benefit me, I need to help myself, and have continued with working on my life, I still go to the gym and try to do what I can. If someone demands too much of my time, I need to learn to say "no" and to withdraw faster.

Maybe it is a work in progress.  I don't want my time wasted anymore that is for sure. I don't like people who try to mold me into THEIR BOX. They don't get that I don't even what to do what they do.

This here is what unbridled capitalism has wrought. Everything is about success, status and "making it". Those who don't believe in the dream are "negative". Real friendship is rare. Relationships are all commodities. There's little connection, it's all about fitting in. It's all about being told what to be and what to do and if you don't conform, some get really angry. I don't want their conditions, not anymore. I need some maitri.