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Thank you Nibbler. In regards to feeling traumatized at church, I believe another aspect of this is youth bullying. It can be particularly hard on your testimony if the individuals that are praised as model youth are also the perpetrators.
I have a friend whose son took his own life after being relentlessly bullied in the church scouting program, Sunday meetings, and by these same church boys at his public school. After the suicide, the parents found the church unresponsive in acknowledging the problem, investigating the scope of it, or making strides to fix it.
a few years have passed, these parents now are seeing their son’s tormentors sending out missionary announcements. The word that they used to describe the situation is “incongruent.”
Mr. Sneelock wrote:I think all of your responses have truth to them; I’m probably experiencing a mixture of cognitive dissonance, feelings of betrayal, and a major loss of identity.
First of all…let me say that all of you are amazing to me. Reading this thread and hearing your thoughts makes me glad to be a part of a group with such insight. Thanks for all of your examples.I could go through each of your comments and highlight the parts I love, but will just try to respond with these thoughts in summary:
-AmyJ hit it, I think…cog dis tells us something is wrong.
– the quote above by Sneelock is a great secondary reminder of real feelings underneath, such as betrayal and identity.
– so many others like dande, nibbler and SD and everyone confirm this isn’t just you, Sneelock. This happens to us. A lot of us.
There is something underlying the feelings that make you want to get up and leave. Perhaps we grow by facing those demons. We can’t just blame the church and be done with it. There is something god wants us to learn about ourselves, and how we can overcome these by choices and actions because it is painful to endure it week after week.
My last thought…I am finding that much of the cog dis in my life is just me and life. Take church out of the picture…and I still have these issues and thoughts and feelings inside me to deal with in other areas. I am starting to think it has less to do about anything Joseph Smith started…and more to do with the human experience.
Getting a late self-identification of Asperger’s Autism (in my 30’s) started an exercise in identifying who I am and what I believe based on faultier perception equipment than I had thought I had. I studied blogs, writings, and all kinds of stuff written about or by people in similar boats to me. The consensus of experience seems to be that for about (loosely) 1.5 years after the identification is internalized and holds meaning, that is how long it takes for whatever is going to slide into place identity-wise to do so. After that, it goes from life transformation to life maintenance (until the next developmental hormone fluctuation which will be menopause for me). Applying this understanding means that about 6 months to a year from now, things are likely to be settled/resolved than not (unless I do something to extend the process).
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