Hey there, name's Nick. I'm from Northern California, and I am here to hopefully conquer my worst fear. I am currently 25 years old, a college student and enjoy gaming (my favorite games are Halo, Warhammer 40K and Metal Gear Solid,) anime, drawing, nature, good food and my friends. I am an introvert. I am also a brony (I got into My Little Pony in late-June 2011, several months after Friendship is Magic came out in October 2010,) and enjoy drawing and talking about those cartoon ponies, which also comforts me greatly, and I have written fanfics before in the past, though it's not really my thing.
I am not religious, I am spiritual, and consider myself a "one-man religion." While this gives me great comfort and happiness most of the time, it also leads me to feel alone and insecure, because I do not belong to any organized faith. I think I will go ahead and say that my worst fear is that the evangelical Christians are correct in saying that Jesus is the only true god and that all other gods are false and demonic idols, and that I will burn in Hell for practicing my own religion. This fear is so bad that ever since 2011 it has caused chronic hallucinations of hellfire and demons, physical sensations on my body and other symptoms that my fearful mind would interpret as "evidence" that my fears were true and Hell is a real place...in other words it becomes a vicious cycle where my fear causes the symptoms, the symptoms stick around even when I'm not currently afraid, and the symptoms cause the fear. Luckily I don't always deal with the symptoms, but when I do, they really disturb me. And that is something I want to overcome.
:welcome:
What is your family background? I've known some pretty scary Evangelical Christians. I used to be one myself actually, and I have to say that my initial fears about God smiting me for daring to question the world haven't ever come to anything.
I've often discussed this with my daughters, and we have come to the conclusion that we all feel somewhat like cult survivors. Whether or not you were part of such a church, those ideas have a huge hold still on sections of our society. My nephew is extremely worried about my salvation, as I would have been at his age if I'd had an auntie like me!
I can assure you that you absolutely can overcome this. Why do you think it has taken such a strong form in your case? x
What is your family background? I've known some pretty scary Evangelical Christians. I used to be one myself actually, and I have to say that my initial fears about God smiting me for daring to question the world haven't ever come to anything.
This may surprise you to hear this, but I don't come from any kind of conservative Christian background at all. My mom is a New Ager, always has been, and I ended up being spiritual, not religious, simply due to what my mom was into, although I have since made such beliefs my own, different from what my mom believes. I had absolutely ZERO fear of damnation until two or three years after I moved from Berkeley to Chico in 2001...there was a very much higher concentration of born-again Christians up in this smaller town, and it was then that I started to develop my fear.
I've often discussed this with my daughters, and we have come to the conclusion that we all feel somewhat like cult survivors. Whether or not you were part of such a church, those ideas have a huge hold still on sections of our society. My nephew is extremely worried about my salvation, as I would have been at his age if I'd had an auntie like me!
Oh dear, sorry to hear that. I would hate to have a relative who secretly believes I'm going to Hell...I probably couldn't even handle being in the same room as them, my fear is that bad!
I can assure you that you absolutely can overcome this. Why do you think it has taken such a strong form in your case? x
Thanks. Well it's been steadily growing since 2004, with outbreaks of fear in 2004, 2006 and 2011. It got started by the mom of my friend at the time, who rather joyously told me how "wonderful" it would be if I accepted Jesus, so I could be free from Hell. Naturally I didn't see this as a joyous thing at all...until then, I thought Hell was only for truly evil people like Hitler, and that you'd still go to Heaven even if you were a non-Christian, just all that mattered is you were a good person. But I guess not.
Things built and built like that, with several kids I was friends with at high school turning out to be evangelical Christians and trying to guilt-trip me into converting, and around that same time I would see Christian bumper stickers (stuff like "no Jesus, no Heaven, know Jesus, know Heaven") everywhere and my superstitious mind would think that God was putting them there for me to see as a "warning" that I was going to go to Hell. But still no hallucinations.
Finally, in 2011 I found myself irrationally afraid of Harold Camping's (now known to be false) May 2011 Rapture prediction, which rekindled my fear of damnation. A few days after it was proven wrong, I was nonetheless still full of fear, and that was when I started meditating, and my subconscious fear would cause anyone or anything I visualize to sprout horns and a pitchfork and morph into a demon. I had a gut feeling not to tell my therapist about this, because I knew he was a Christian, but until then he had respected my own religion. However, the evening I went to see him, and I told him I couldn't meditate because everything I tried to see would turn into a demon, and there was fire everywhere, he used that as an opportunity to try and convert me to Christianity. He told me my gods were actually demons, and that they were lying to me, which is EXTREMELY inappropriate for a therapist to do. His words scared me so much that they made me start seeing fire and demons even with my eyes open, and that was the first real time I remember having hallucinations.
Thankfully I don't have hallucinations or other symptoms all the time, just sometimes, but still, that's how my fear got to be so big. But I think that if I have trained myself over the years to be so afraid and to conjure up these fires and demons, I can train myself to not be afraid too. And sorry for this long post.
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