Ptsd And Religion/ Spirituality

[Nadege]

I find comfort in church and come to pray, I also pray at home. I am Eastern Orthodox. I do not partake of sacraments, as I do not have enough faith in dogmas. I stay away from theology and as far away as possible from internal arguments of various churches. Hours of people's time have been spent on Orthodox-Catholic debates and all kinds of debates and mutual disparagement. I find it a big turnoff. As PTSD sufferers we know what it is like to be at our lowest point, and we know that all humans are pretty much the same. I have learned not to judge people harshly because I don't know what is going on inside them. They are a child of God just like I am.

I am aware of miracles; and I know of their occurrence across religion lines. Bodies of Catholic, Orthodox and Jewish righteous people have been found incorrupt; cures and myrrh-streaming have been documented. (I won't go as far as taking apparitions and messages at face value.) I am mystified as to what God is. A distant relative of mine, an Israeli philosophy professor, told me of an upcoming book The Models of God - or various understandings of God.

What does annoy me is church authorities forcing a political agenda on me. I will figure out for whom to vote, thank you very much. The priest of the church where I am still a member but do not go anymore, recently posted on the church's website If you are not pro-life, you cannot call yourself a Christian. It made me want to put a huge flag outside my window - I am a pro-choice Christian. Enough. I will continue on my journey to God without serving as someone's pawn.

 

[Meadowsweet]

I've had an on off relationship with a spiritual connection all my life. When I was young, it was something that made me feel less alone. But the guidence I get when I listen to my heart (or my connection) tends to be very useful.

However, because I have an innate belief that I'm a bad person, I can sometimes beat myself up with spiritual ideas too.

Over the past year, therapy for me has been more than useless. With a therapist who sometimes seemed more afraid of me facing my trauma than I was, I think it did more harm than good.

So I found my self-reliance again and have accepted my beliefs and have been practising again. I still have symptoms regularly, but I'm dealing with them much better.

I'm practising just letting the feelings and images rise and not increasing the thoughts that come with them. I've begun slowly changing my diet (caffeine has gone and alcohol one evening a week), I'm keeping up with exercise and finding I'm able to meditate again.

But most of all, I find that looking at my life from a much wider view (similar to the great description in post 2), it helps make ptsd and trauma less powerful and less all encompassing. It's like, when I close my mind to spirituality there are too many emotions and conditioning to fit into that enclosed space and they take over - but when I open my mind to something bigger, the emotions etc are still there, but there is enough space for them, so I feel more in control and able to deal with them.

I don't follow a religion or a prescribed path, my path is quite eclectic. But it helps me enourmously.

 

[Red Feather]

I believe in love and light and blessings. One word I used once was brilliancy. It is beyond judgment and labels. The way I see it, religion sometimes uses labels and vocabulary that binds the knowledge to some specific culture or way of thinking. And then people identify with that and can use it for their own selfish reasons. That's why religion can be triggering for me too.

If I relate this discussion to PTSD, I would say that the trauma iniciates a kind of non-language. At least that is what happened to me, it causes this sort of rift between my own image of myself and my connection to God. So I often feel like I disconnected and have no culture. I guess healing from the trauma, also means healing that connection in a way that is full of love, and focused on self-care. I just don't know to how bridge the gap yet.

 

[Nadege]

because I have an innate belief that I'm a bad person.

Not innate - learned by you, or rather, taught to you.

 

[aka]

Church and religion are big triggers for me seeing as most of my trauma occurred while being there for school and church events. Although I have never blamed god for the abuse I am lately having a hard time having faith in him. Every time someone brings up anything that has to do with organized religion I feel anger and a sense wanting to "push back" against what is being said.

 

[Privateer]

I'm strongly religious, which is unusual enough in my part of the world where athiests are a majority but even more unusual considering I'm not a member of any of the more common religions here.

Anywho, I don't hate my Gods for the things that have happened to me; I voluntarily put myself in the path of most of them, after all, and it was, for the most part, other humans (as much possessed of free will as am I) who perpetrated these acts and who must bear responsibility for them.

What I do worry about, though, is a nagging feeling that something or somebody, somewhere steers misfortune my way because it finds the whole thing terribly amusing; that my whole life is one cynical, cruel practical joke at my expense and that the punchline will be my demise, either by my own hand when I finally crack or by some 'hilariously' ironic twist of fate just after I think I've finally found peace.

I know how unlikely that is, but it's still a lurking fear in the back of my mind and I pray the Gods will grant me means to keep me and mine safe from any such being, should it exist.

 

[zbztster]

I'm not quite sure, how exactly to define what are anchors, just the feeling of being anchored.

Anchors are my personal term for tangible realities. It's like reaching out to a handrail if I feel unstable on my legs. I adopted the term after my first sailing adventure. We were in a terrible storm and the sailboat owner was incapacitated. I was the only other person on the boat, and a true rookie. We were in a very large bay at night. He advised me to pick out three light that would form a triangle and sail the boat in that triangular pattern all night. I did. It was scary to me but it all worked out. And from that experience I adopted what I call life anchors to help me navigate through life when some of my realities are questionable. My anchors defined are: God, Family and Career. Although all three are not always stable its rare that I lose all three at any given time (but not impossible). When I find myself drifting into PTSD desolation I start finding my way back by evaluating where I am in relation to my anchors. This may not work for everybody but it works for me, to a certain extent anyway.

I was used by a man who used religion to justify himself.

I've been around religion most of my life. Like anything else there are those who use it for purposes which are self-serving and destructive. This is the nature of man, our corruption, and in my opinion one of the worse abuses under any circumstance.

They are nuns yes, but very practical though, and pragmatical.

I've worked with the "Sisters of Charity" in the slums of Port au Prince. They are some of the most amazing people I have ever met. Just watching them in the administration of their compassion, the hands on stuff they do with those who have lost all hope is enough to make anyone believe that there is a God and He is "with us." Even more reason for me to embrace the mystery and open my heart to things I don't understand.

 

[zbztster]

This is where I am currently stuck... the forgiveness part. I can forgive, but after a while the hate returns and I have to work on forgiving again. It's not a one time fits all thing unfortunately. Maybe some day it will stick.

This is a huge statement that I wrestle with all the time. I think that most of us who suffer PTSD can define some (or even all) of our pain as caused by another. I have experienced forgiveness to be one of the key factors in dealing with the underlying roots of PTSD. As I forgive, truly forgive and let go, some of my symptoms go with it. This is not easy by any means though. The crap I hold onto is there with me every morning when I wake up, like right on the edge of my mind just waiting to remind me of how I've been hurt. It's like poison! I forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive and eventually some of it, the memories that is, start to evaporate and I become freer. But it's difficult and I need to reinforce it every day, sometimes constantly. But it does help me "sweep the closet" so to speak.

 

[Britt.f7]

What I do worry about, though, is a nagging feeling that something or somebody, somewhere steers misfortune my way because it finds the whole thing terribly amusing; that my whole life is one cynical, cruel practical joke at my expense and that the punchline will be my demise, either by my own hand when I finally crack or by some 'hilariously' ironic twist of fate just after I think I've finally found peace.

For a time, I thought I must have done something really bad in life to feel the pain I did. That I must have been a truly bad person. This is illogical, but I still felt it. I'm sorry that you feel that way at times. Please, just know, you are not alone in this.

 

[Nadege]

I'm practising just letting the feelings and images rise and not increasing the thoughts that come with them. I've begun slowly changing my diet (caffeine has gone and alcohol one evening a week), I'm keeping up with exercise and finding I'm able to meditate again.

Congratulations on all of the above! Keep it up girl!

 

[Loner]

For me, PTSD and faith are mutually exclusive. I believed in a higher power when I was younger, but as I grew a bit older and came to truly understand the kind of people my parents are, I could not keep my faith.

Up until then I believed that God put pain and challenges in my life as part of a greater plan, and I believed that my parents, while troubled, were fundamentally good deep down somewhere.

Then I realized my parents were not capable of loving or feeling love. I had been able to accept my own suffering at their hands and reconcile such things with the existence of a benevolent God. When I realized that they weren't just troubled, they were sick, they were born that way, they weren't just upset or mad at me or hurt by life, they were messed up in the head, they were born with some wires crossed and had no hope or chance of getting better, well, I couldn't believe in any God that would create such creatures. My own suffering could of had meaning, because it could change me for the better, but what then are my parents? Demons? If they are human, than only a very cruel cruel god could have created, and given them all the normal human desire for love and human connection, but made them completely incapable of feeling such love? That sounds like hell. How could I fit such people into a world view that incorporated a benevolent higher power? Were they reincarnated? Did they do horrible things in their past life? Well that doesnt make any sense because they still had no choice in their character or brain chemistry.

To me, I look around and I see humans as animals. They act like animals. They don't act like beings created in the image of a perfect god.

THats just my opinion.

 

[sharky]

I believe that there is more out there than we could possibly know. I really do not mean to offend anyone as I do respect all religions, but I see religion very black and white. I think that man only made up religion as a means of coping with what they do not know - a means of coping with death. Along with that, religion is a way of keeping to moral standards for a lot of people. Which is definitely a positive thing.

On the other hand I like to think about how infinite the universe is. And although I do not believe in a higher power, the fact that everything mimics each other from the smallest organism to how things work in the universe... I take comfort in knowing that my soul may travel elsewhere once I die. Or who knows, maybe we are all stars ourselves and once we die an entire galaxy is born. Or that there are an infinite number of parallel universes. Our entire universe is just a single drop in the ocean of universes. And maybe that ocean is just an ocean on another planet somewhere, and so on. Kind of like one of those trippy pictures where someone is holding a mirror and it goes on and on and on and on.

I hope I'm making sense. So, no I am not religious. I do believe in the mind opening morals and ways of thinking that a lot of religions teach, but I am much more prone to believing in the power of the universe (and all the others) and that it's an endless (but mindless) power that just does what it does. That we are all chemical reactions to our environment. As bleak as that may sound to some of you reading this - I find peace in that. I find peace in going into a deprivation tank (if you don't know what that is, look it up! It's a GREAT way to meditate) and letting my mind go free into that endless space.

I could go on and on about all of the different theories that I have (or theories others have come up with that I think have a great possibility of being true) about the universe we live in. Or even the universes we don't live in.

And as far as higher powers goes... I do believe there are billions of beings out there that are much more advanced than we are. Zecharia Sitchin wrote about his studies of ancient civilizations and how they all talked about the Nephilim coming and mixing their DNA with that of Homo Erectus and created the 'thinking man'. The Nephilim was believed to be a race of aliens that looked much like man, and we were their 'experiment'. The ancient civilizations worshiped them as Gods.

I am not saying if I do or don't believe that but Zecharia Sitchin spent seventy years studying ancient civilizations and was one of the few people on Earth able to decipher Sumerian text. He was a very intelligent man. A lot of people call him a crackpot, but a lot of people at different times in history called the genius of their time a crack pot. I'd also like to state that it is no way shape or form propaganda for a certain religion. His book the 12th planet (the first book he wrote, I think) is the one that I have. And it's just all facts about ancient civilization and the history of man. It's very interesting and for me it feels good to have the gears in my head going after reading a chapter and letting it settle in.

It's great brain food for anyone with an open mind that is willing to accept someone else's way of thinking. Like I said, I don't even know if I believe it. But I do believe in higher beings elsewhere in the universe and he gives a lot of information to think about. He dedicated his life, so if you're interested in that kind of stuff - maybe pick up his book. On Amazon I got it for $1.50 I'm pretty sure.

Anyways, what this boils down to for me... I used to study religions but I found too much controversy over religions that were so similar that it's silly to me that so much controversy surrounds it. So I turned my mind to space, and one of the things I like to read about is the studies of Zecharia Sitchin. Along with parallel universes, string theory, how the universe works, etc. :)