When you were leaving the church...did any of you get mentally and emotionally exhausted from thinking about it? I feel like the last few weeks tscc has been in the forefront of my mind constantly and it's tiring. Sometimes to the point where I wonder if it's worth it to completely rip it from my identity. I KNOW it is worth it, but the tired and lazy part of me is intimated by having to rework my spirituality now. A small part of me thinks "well what's the point in trying to find a new church or reconfigure your beliefs? I guess I could just half-ass the church I already know..."

I guess what I'm worried about is that...if I don't keep researching and reading and thinking about it, I'm not gonna feel any different than before I decided to leave. And that won't aid my new exmo identity along.

I don't know if this makes sense. I guess what I'm feeling at this point is numb about it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/25/2015 11:03PM by laxy.

I think sometimes you have to take a vacation from thinking about it. Allow yourself that and it is possible to do so. It just becomes too much.

It's not a race, lass. Take some time away from it all. You're way ahead of where most of us were at this stage. The big questions will still be there after you get some chill time. Best to you.

I get mentally and emotionally exhausted now; and I've been out for years. It isn't Mormonism I can blame it on these days. Just the stresses and pressures of life can get to be overwhelming at times.

So I've been learning to let things go I used to stew about.

When it gets to be too much, I let it go. That goes for a lot of things. Except for of course the basics need doing. I don't neglect to pay my utilities, or take care of business, for example.

But even there, I go at my pace, and not someone else's. We "all march to a different drummer." It can take a long while to summons the courage and verve to leave the church for good.

It's like breaking a lifelong habit, leaving Mormonism behind. In some ways it was life affirming to be *in it.* On the other hand it just made me numb inside, and feeling empty and hollow. I found I got far more nourishment outside the church than inside. Once I got to that realization it was a no brainer to leave.

Leaving the Church, weighing the repercussions, worrying what people would think, and the hounding "what-if-it-IS-true?" question that resonated...yes, those left me sad, depressed, and exhausted.

Not to mention, the pain of having the shelf break, and seeing all the lies and deception in the wreckage of everything I thought was true.

And people treating me differently. The shunning hurt really bad.

A year and a half later...I don't think about it as much.

I surrounded myself with different people and experiences that had nothing to do with Mormonism...

It gets better!

Our Heavenly Father knew we would become weary with all the inputs, conflicts and divergent flows. This is why He allowed Ben & Jerrys, pizza, weekends and loud laughter after Mormonism did its best doo-doo on our thought processes.

Humor is the only anesthesia that is harmless, unless there's an armed reader/listener. Tread carefully your newfound freedom. As for myself, I have lost family, friends and too many cherished life pieces since leaving the only true church.

I became an early church history scholar the first few years, then a scriptorian, and now a commentator that few listen to.

May you adjust well. If you miss the authoritarian lashings, I suggest you first try out Jehovah's Witnesses, then move up to Scientology and finally a very loud holy roller group.

Mormonism is tame compared.

Perhaps you will find the following of use:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=How+to+deprogram+after+a+cult

We are profoundly tired.
We are Persona Non Grata to what used to be best friends. I tried to leave before and had a stroke, and figured that was my punishment--how deluded I was! I am no longer dragging my foot (literally), and we are running like heck.


Late psychiatrist Fritz Perls said, "The way out is through!"

Thank Heaven for this forum and all of you.

Love that quote.

"The way out is through."

For me, this played out with the church first, and my TBM wife second.

Today? Glad to be shed of both.

For the first 8 months all I could do was think about he loss of my faith and rebuild something in its place with lots of reading.

The path of least resistance is an empty one.

My love of learning has been reignited. There's a whole new world to discover outside the damned church, new people to meet, new things to experience.

Keep chugging along.

As others have mentioned, it does get better.

I've only been out a little over a year and there still isn't a day that goes by when I don't think about TSCC to some degree or another. But it's much less now than it was very early in my "faith transistion". I hope that by this year's end, I can stop thinking about it so much and start to live a normal life.

Best of luck to you.

You don't have to figure out what you believe or what the replacement will be. You can do that down the road if you want to, but you don't have to do it now. Take a break from it ALL.

If you want to replace it in a year or more, then start looking around if you want to. You don't have to ever replace it with anything if you don't want to.

After 4 years away, i've decided that Sunday is a real day of rest. Finally! I do anything i want that is fun, relaxing, or interesting. Today I dabbled in the garden, baked a blueberry cake, walked the dog, and that's about it. I feel rested and ready to go on Monday morning. I never felt that way on Sunday evening when I was mormon. I always felt like I needed a couple of days off to recover from Sunday.

You are normal. My children and I had already left the cult, when I found out that the priesthood leaders had kicked, hit, and shoved my boys, to force them to go to meetings, and the bishop's creepy older boy had molested my little girl--and nothing had been done about it. This was upsetting and angering enough, but then I learned that the whole thing is a lying cult. I couldn't sleep or eat for about 3 days, constantly reading on the internet, discovering lie after lie after lie! I thought the lies would never end! Anger was my biggest problem.

Two things helped me. I made four "vows" to myself. 1) I would not let the Mormons take God and Christ away from me. The Mormon cult is NOT OF GOD. Christ is seldom mentioned. Mormons do not teach, preach, or practice LOVE. I would keep those principles which bring me and my family joy, and throw out all the lies.

This is very difficult to do. You are trying to "un-brainwash" yourself, and you need to stay vigilant, to catch yourself being superstitious, fearful of punishment, shy of others, feeling inferior, feeling helpless and small, and all those other feelings which kept you a slave to a cult. It took me years! The good news is that when you leave, you are instantly happier, and you get better and better all the time.

The worst day out is better than your best Sunday in.

The world treats you better than the Mormon church did. Even if all the Mormons shun you, and you lose all your Mormon friends, you will be treated with more respect, compassion, encouragement, and love by the non-Mormons.

2) I wanted to find the Truth, at any price, so I stood up to the shunning, and decided I didn't like these people, anyway, because they were cruel to me, gossipers and liars, and hated women, gays, other races, and other religions. Ugh.

3) I wanted Mormonism OUT OF MY LIFE. I learned about "extinguishing" thoughts, in my psychology class. Students forgot more quickly, when new information was introduced. The new thoughts pushed out the old thoughts. That was my technique! I stopped studying about Mormon lies, and started reading about science. I studied astronomy, and observed the photos from the Hubble Telescope (I recommend you look carefully at these). I took two philosophy classes. I read beautiful poetry every night in bed, instead of those old scriptures. Novels, the Classics, Carl Sagan, Kenneth Clark. I learned to meditate.

4) I would not rush into another religion right away. When I was more recovered, I studied other religions of the world, and decided that I had my own unique concept of God and Christ, from natural science and the bible both, and there was no mention of Christ wanting to build churches, cathedrals, or temples. As for Heaven: "In my Father's house are many mansions...." There's room for all. ALL are saved!

You will find a cure by going out in nature--even in the rain. Please do this! I was hiking alone, my mind clear, enjoying the day, when I came upon my own Ultimate Truth: We all are One. We are one with the universe. Like Carl Sagan says, "We are all made of 'star stuff'"

It is a hard task to become "reborn."

that has got to be in the top ten of one liners I've ever ready here at RfM. Just terrific!

That is horrifying what happened to your kids. I hope they have been able to recover and are doing well. And you too. My heart goes out to you.

Take a break from church. The Mormon church isn't going anywhere. Other churches aren't going anywhere. God isn't going anywhere. Give yourself a break from all things church-related. Tell yourself, "I'm going to take a year where I don't set foot inside any church for purposes of worshipping, and where I don't worry about what I believe or don't believe. I'm just going to live my life."

The Mormon church has trained you that you must have firm answers to life's questions. But it really is okay to not know. Or to say, "I don't know for sure right now, but I can explore that at a later time."

The Mormon church has subjected you to some intense programming. It will take quite a while for you to determine what *you* think makes sense in terms of religion or spirituality as opposed to what other people think makes sense. There is no reason why your ideas are not just as possible or valid as their ideas.

Deal with one thing at a time. Deal with your divorce from Mormonism first and with healing from that, before you worry about where you're going next.

As was mentioned, it's not a race. There's no time clock ticking on this one.

Cut yourself a break and just deal with one thing at a time.

Do not worry -- you are not alone.

When we were first leaving, I just could not research enough. My kids probably thought the computer grew out of my fingers!

Slowly, slowly the exhaustion kicked in and I just slowed down. I agree with you. No amount of research was going to show me TSSC was true, so why was I bothering?

Well, mainly it was the money --- gah !!! We gave a lot !!! The loss of all that TIME, all that EFFORT, all those HOURS and HOURS. It just boggled my mind.

So I took the advice of the previous poster and dug into literature and the classics. Try reading Uncle Tom's Cabin or Swiss Family Robinson, or One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. Enough there to keep you brain more than occupied. And you'll likely be much better off for it.

We tood the RfM advice and stayed away from any church shopping or activity for a full year. BEST ADVICE EVER. It allowed us to re-connect with our kids on a much deeper level than ever before.

But we still wanted God in our lives, if nothing else, to give me a LITTLE break from the kids in an environment where they could learn the Bible stories. So we checked out most of the local denominations and settled on one that is very low-key and has a great children's program/ministry. But it's still not top of our priority list.

Looking back now, I don't miss a thing. Truly.

There's two things I would say leaving the church is like from experience.

Divorce and childbirth.

Divorce because it's painful realising your current situation cannot continue and the transition is going to hurt and involve a lot of adjustment. But it gets better.

Childbirth because you cannot rush your body to heal and get back to normal. But it gets better.

There were times my mind couldn't take anymore information about the church. Finding out all the facts became an obsession but the side effects were anger, depression and desire for revenge.

Writing it all down helps as it gives you a chance to put your thoughts in order and tell your story. That way you can explain to yourself and then others if need be why you left.

Not that you need to justify yourself but I did it so I could refute any accusation that I left because I was offended or wanted to sin. Also the reasons why I was never going back.

I have been out little over a year and the world looks so much better now. I have taken up hobbies that I could never do while the church claimed all my time, spent money on myself that I could never do while the church claimed tithing and most importantly made genuine friends.

It gets better :)