what was your first reaction when you learned the truth about Mormonism?
by nitsua6554 Mar 2012
When I first started hearing the truth I had such bad anxiety I couldn't sleep. All I could think about was "oh s***."
blueorchid
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
It happened very suddenly for me and I felt the most beautiful joy that I have ever felt.
To be stripped of all the lies in a heartbeat was intoxicating and I felt light, really, really light. I felt like a child again.
I wish it could be like that for all, but everyone is in their own particular place in life when it happens.
ladybug
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
Anger and relief, both at the same time.
myselfagain
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
ladybug Wrote:
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> Anger and relief, both at the same time.
That's how I would best describe it as well. I am also a bit ashamed I believed all the stuff that was pushed on us. Some of it I did feel was right, and a lot of it I tried to 'go along with the program'. No more- I am done, happily!
Greyfort
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
I'll probably never forget that moment. I sort of reeled back in my chair, with my hand over my mouth, and said out loud, "Oh my gosh! It's not true! It's actually, really NOT TRUE!"
I went into shock. I never imagined for a moment that there was actual physical evidence out there which proves the Church to be a fraud.
I'd have always thought that one could say, "Okay, so you can't prove it's true, but you can't prove it's not true either." Wrong. You can. That still amazes me.
WinksWinks
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
OMG I'm not alone? Other people have left the church without becoming Satan's minions???
Mixed with a little disbelief that my gut feeling that church was WRONG, was right thinking!
And all you guys here have concrete reasons! More than just feeling icky about anything churchy. More than just not liking the people. Historical facts! Exposed spin on the part of TSCC.
And I couldn't type on this forum without my hands shaking for months. Still so sure I might be wrong. But mostly, it seemed so right, full of truth, to read here.
The trolls scared me at first. Especially one of the favorite board apologists, posted on my first thread about leaving the poor mormons alone, make nice with them... Grr!
Not after all the @#$%& they put me through. I'm done rolling over like a good doormat.
Don Bagley
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
I was twelve when I figured it out. And I thought: I must tell my father. I did, and that went over like a Led Zeppelin song in sacrament meeting. The name calling and retraction of parental love began almost immediately. To this day the man hates me and has disowned me.
madeguy
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
Liberation. Later some anger. But mostly pure liberation.
WinksWinks
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
It's a family church, if you follow Satan's plan...
I'm sorry, Don. :(
I had an inkling about that age too, but I'd already been terrorized into complete compliance, and knew my opinion on even trivial matters was worth less than mud. A serious subject like the church? It was more a facet of reality than something that could ever be false by any stretch of the imagination, let alone criticized at all.
anagrammy
His loss. We love you here.
doubleb
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
Involuntarily mumbled out loud in any empty house, "It's all man-made. That explains everything." I immediately felt a subtle but constant weight lift from my shoulders, and I giggled out loud. I'm a 40-something year old dude, and i giggled.
The anger and rage didn't set in for weeks, then subsided. Now I'm just baffled by the quantity of sheep out there.
anagrammy
Nausea and fear - went into shock
Was shaking as I took off my garments.
Was afraid I would see visible Satan right there in the bathroom.
The next day I woke up feeling light as a feather. Lots of uncertainty, but a wonderful feeling that I was in control of my life now.
Anagrammy
myselfagain
Re: His loss. We love you here.
anagrammy Wrote:
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> n/t
Amen to that! How sad for you- my heart goes out to you that you went through, and continue to go through that.
rgg
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
That I'm just a kid have several years until I'm 18 so I can leave.
I starting thinking those thoughts at about age 4-5.
Mia
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
It was a sudden realization while reading about BoA on mormon think.
At first I had that feeling you get like when find out your lover has been cheating on you. Kind of a sick shock.
Very quickly after that was euphoria. It was like losing a bad lover!
I am free from all the fear, abuse, control. And lovey was going away for ever!
I literally lost all of my belief in the mormon church within the span of one paragraph.I would have never thought that could happen.
I've been reading the rap sheet ever since.
AmIDarkNow?
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
Anger and tears. I cried when it became evident that the Tanners were the ones telling the truth.
I wanted to drive to utah and give Mrs. Tanner a hug and thank her for hanging in there all these years.
sam
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
I just thought, Oh My God--I am so stupid. But, it affected me in various ways day to day--depression being one of them.
insanitee
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
My reaction?
"Figures."
I've never been very churchy. I haven't paid much in tithing -- maybe a thousand dollars most, -- have held only a couple callings, crap ones at that, and have never been motivated by guilt. Learning for myself the "truth" of it was much like learning that I should've been putting 5w-20 oil in my car when I have been dumping in 10w-30. Not world shattering stuff, just nice to know that there's a better way.
baura
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
I was sitting in Elders quorum meeting. I was in the overflow chairs along the side of the room rather than in the rows of chairs facing the front. That gave me the vantage point more of a spectator of the proceedings rather than an participant.
I looked at it and the thought hit my mind with great force: "this is all baloney." It was a "still small voice" but it spoke with great impact. From that moment on I knew it was a man-made organization. I continued to attend church on pure momentum but I never believed in any of it again. In fact after that moment everything I observed at church seemed to be a HUGE indication that it was false. It was as if I had been awash in clues without realizing it and didn't really see them until after my epiphany.
This was 34 years ago in the spring of 1978. Blacks were still "cursed," the internet was only a pipe dream and I thought I was the only one in the world that had figured it out.
The RFM board does a GREAT service in letting us know we are not alone.
janet
sudden enlightenment at a precise moment when the light came on.
wow, the whole church is made up, not just the book of mormon, book of abraham, and polygamy. a few more wow's and laughter, lots of loud laughter after realizing I'd been had.
ktay
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
Anger, fear of the unknown, sadness/mourning and then relief.
Lost Mystic
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
I almost vomitted...
jeb
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
Whispering "Oh my gosh. It's fake. It's completely made up" after reading about the BoA and the Kinderhook plates. I sat in silence for a long while. Then, I delved back into researching the church to see what else those bastards lied about.
happyhollyhomemaker
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
Sheer and utter terror.
It was a mind-altering moment in which me, a little kid, was looking at all of these grown-ups who thought "this" is how it's supposed be. I felt like I was suddenly and quite unexpectedly an anthropologist watching the natives. I was terrified; everything I had ever known was instantaneously made foreign to me.
Their words and movements all took on a new significance, and I was able to converse in a way familiar to them, but still foreign to me. It was bizarre.
In truth, I think the mindset of watching the goings-on as an anthropologist was immensely helpful in getting passed the "i'm so pissed, I want to burn down salt lake city" place, to a place of viewing it as a quaint and strange set of customs & beliefs.
blueorchid
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
I loved reading that Baura because I had a very similar experience close to the end. I don't read many like what happened to you.
I was still at BYU, I got up to go to church, got dressed, and uncustomarily arrived late. I walked in the back of the chapel and something stopped me. They were already singing, and I just stood there looking at the back of everyone's heads and the Bishopric on the stand and the pews... it was like I was seeing it for the first time and I couldn't be there one more minute. It just came out of the blue like that.
I turned and left and I knew I would never go back. I didn't know why. I still believed though. I couldn't explain it, except I think my own self was beginning to take control finally.
It wasn't long after that, that I found out the truth while reading Miracle of Forgiveness. This was l973.
Like you,I honestly thought I was the only one. There were mormons, jackmormons, and me.
Like I said above, it was euphoric at first, but I buried everything deeply and didn't unearth it until a couple of years ago.
This board is the best.
Don Bagley
Re: His loss. We love you here.
My thanks to all of you lovely people. So much has been torn away from me, but I know that I am a real person who loves and bleeds like any other. If I can make you laugh or smile just once...there is no other agenda.
djmaciii
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
I never believed in the tooth fairy, santa or the Morg. Even when I was babtised at 8, I thought it was total BS.
The moment I finally put my foot down and told my family that I was never going again was liberating.
Tango-1
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
I was sick to my stomach for over 3 weeks...it was horrible..my world was changed forever! But now...pure anger at how I and my family were duped. Now I just want my $100K+ back. Bastards...
JackB
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
I entered a vacuum. Someone pulled the rug out from under me. I doubted everything in knew to be fact, even non-religious truths. It all made sense, and yet nothing made sense. It was something that caused great fear like I had never experienced, but at the same time, an inexplicable relief.
I was six months into my mission in France. I was supposed to go out and tell French people about this thing I now knew to be false. I was looking at another year and a half of this. At the time, I didn't have the courage to leave. I waited it out, came home on time, and left a few months later once I realized I could be my own person. I also had to realize the church was not even a good lifestyle or that the good outweighed the bad. It needed to go - all of it. Never been happier.
matilda
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
I
was picked up by the missionaries at 15. Spent whole life as UBER TBM grieved for my unworthiness because I did get a definitive answer grieved after four miscarriages obvuiosly I wasnt worthy to raise his children grievef because my husband was inactive grieved because the children I did manage to pump out went inactivit.Once again if I had been a better mother it would not of happened. My abusers took it all including a million bucks. As Jenny said in Forest Gump. THERE ARE JUST NOT ENOUGH ROCKS.
Outcast
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
Angry and then embarrassed then angry again at the knowledge that I had stumbled into yet another scam "religion".
So I've decided that all organized religions are inherently evil...at least those that require you to pay money to receive "blessings" and try to manipulate your feelings to get you to do something you wouldn't normally do.
My personal view of God is he doesn't require worship or my money...just wants us to enjoy everything this world has to offer...to share a good thing.
utahmonomore
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
Part of me was relieved, and part of me was left with a big open empty hole in the pit of my stomach. I think whatever insides I left em right there in the "religious books" aisle at the library. Now it all makes sense. I want a refund da*mit!
CA girl
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
Outrage. I read about the lies re: The First Vision and I knew, from the historical facts presented, that the church leaders were lying to us. I didn't know the extent of the lies but it was obvious they were lying and I was outraged. My testimony pretty much fell apart within an hour but since I wanted the church to be true, it took months of studying everything I could get my hands on to make sure I was right. I mean, I knew I was right but I had to be certain. I couldn't stop researching.
Oh, and the morning after I first discovered the First Vision crap was a Sunday and as I sat in Primary (I was a counselor), the Primary president came over and sat by me and asked me what was wrong - that I looked like I lost my best friend. I didn't give her a straight answer but she was right on target. I had lost something pretty big.
matilda
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
Never got a testimony. After years gave up studied. Feel telieved but ad a woman. So so so abused. Thtee years out still have graphic nightmares that ate church crap. AS I SAID THERE ARE JUST NOT ENOUGH ROCKS FOR THOSE WHO HAVE COME OUT AFTET A WHOLE LIFETIME. ALL MY LIFETIME BUDDIES TREAT ME LIKE A PARIAH. SOMEONE MUST MAKE THEM ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE ABUSE.
djmaciii
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
$100,000 wow
desert_vulture
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
A mixed emotion of excitement, euphoria and fear. I knew things would never be the same. I still remember reading online about Warren Jeffs, clicking on the "Book of Abraham" link at the bottom of the article, and watching this video: http://www.bookofabraham.info/ When I saw Facsimile 1 and realized that JS had simply copied Horus' head onto the missing Anubis head, the last tumbler fell into place in my mind, and I instantly realized that he made it up. ALL OF IT!! I will never forget that moment!
Hotel California
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
That is the one thing that plagues me about leaving -- I know my Mother feels like a failure for having children who have "gone astray." I hate being the cause of her suffering (even though I really know the TSCC is to blame).
This is why I am still in the angry, wanting-to-take-down-the-whole-institution phase. Of course, if she found out it was all a farce, she'd prob. just blame herself for putting us all through it.
The guilt never ends.
earthandspace
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
I was the YM President and reluctantly admitted to myself that I didn't believe the night before an early temple trip with the young men. I remember wondering what I should do about the temple trip and I decided to just follow through and go through the motions. After that trip I sort of shoved down the doubts for many months.
Its interesting to see people say they had a type of detached experience watching fellow Mormons in a meeting. During the time period where I was trying to fake it I attended a PEC meeting in the bishop's office one Sunday morning. During the meeting I had the strangest sensation of detachment from what was happening in the meeting while watching everyone participate. It all seemed so worthless and fake and pointless.
I never let myself read anything contradictory of the correlated version of mormon history until many months into my internal disaffection. Once I finally broke through that barrier and let myself honestly read and examine the facts it was only a few weeks until I told my wife and asked to be released. The whole experience has been one of anxiety, utter relief, sadness, isolation, and liberation.
yin
Re: what was your first reaction when you learned the truth?
I was thrilled when I finally admitted it to myself.
My second thought, and the one I've been wrestling with for years, is: "How do I get my family out?"
"Recovery from Mormonism - www.exmormon.org"