I'll be honest... I'm too scared to leave. I know it's silly, and it's part of the brainwashing, but did anything catastrophic/noticeable happen when you left the church? What about when you removed your garments or stopped paying tithing? How do you stop the "what if's" and the guilt?

Nothing. But I had been inactive for 41 years before I resigned....and I never wore garments so that was a non issue.

RB

Oy, the guilt! Especially when you break one of the biggies!! Which is silly, cuz all the guys have been wanking off for years, but handling that guilt okay.

You have to recognize that there is no mormon Jesus, no rutabaga Holy McGhost. Sure, maybe there's a christian Jesus, I'll grant you that, but if there is a real Jesus, no way on Kolob does he have anything to do with mormonism.

The sun comes up each morning, and sets at night. Good things happen to bad people, etc., etc. It's called the Bell Shaped Curve. There is zero sense to what happens on the individual level, but at the end of the day, the Bell Shaped Curve's distribution will have been met.

The thing is, you finally get to be you! Always wanted to drink champagne from a showgirl's navel? Do it, and send us the YouTube link, please!

"But first, do no harm."

Everything in my life improved, and I am not exaggerating.

Being married to a gay man was miserable. We are now good friends living our authentic lives.

I learned to trust my own thoughts instead of trying to figure out which thoughts were coming from external forces.

Removing my garments made me more comfortable and free to choose clothing I liked.

When I stopped paying tithing, I had more money to spend on my own needs and wants.

My "what if's" were short-lived and quickly put to rest by reality.

Try replacing your guilt with a little healthy anger and righteous indignation towards those people who would try to use guilt to control and manipulate you.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2016 01:24AM by Pista.

When I stopped wearing garments, I was more comfortable. When I stopped paying tithing, I had more money. Nothing bad happened to me. I felt more at peace. I had less anxiety, fear, and irrational guilt.

Really, the only potential bad that is likely to happen to you is possible family conflicts. I was very fortunate in that my wife was a few steps ahead of me in the path away from TSCC.

I remember the "what if I am wrong and it is all true?" feelings and thoughts. It lasted a whil but honestly it passes. Life gets better and better as your mind becomes freer to think for itself, Congratulations on starting to be free. The view is awesome from the other side.

Well...the weight of the world lifts from your shoulders and you'll hear a heavenly choir sing (like in the Sword and the Stone when Arthur draws the sword from the rock), then you might be a bit scared 'cause it's a whole, new, bright world out there where you are no longer told how to live your life, and you'll have to make some decisions for yourself, and those that are
still TBM will feel sorry for you until they leave too.

At first it will feel weird to be around TBMs without your garments, but you'll stop caring too much about what other people think (however, you can still be polite), and when you throw those away, don't waste your time cutting out the markings; just chuck them.

Setting boundaries will be a new thing for you, as will learning to be authentic. You'll have extra time to do things you've always wanted to do, and a 10% raise doesn't dissapoint.

Of course, things can be a bit tricky when a spouse loves the church more than you, or when your children ask why you left, but you'll work these parts out as they show up; people on this board are very helpful to advise how to paddle through those waters.

Leave- you'll find out that those lessons on apostasy are not true...just like the rest-of-everything-LDS isn't true. You'll still "feel the spirit" when emotional cause is present. You can still choose to be a good person without the church telling you that you must and how. You can make real friends, and not just have them assigned.

After awhile you'll shake your head about how you could be duped into believing all that the church told you was true, and you'll come to an understanding that it is a cult, and you don't want to be in a cult, and you'll be aware of just how silly all the worry about leaving is...but right now it's real, and not silly, because you feel like Truman in "The Truman Show" when he finds out he's been living a lie all of his life for everyone else, and then gets brave...and walks through the door.

Be brave.

p.s. The guilt goes away when you no longer believe that the church or other people are in authority over you. As for the what-ifs, take them as they show up and research how those things began. Often when the back-story gives greater context, things come into a more realistic perspective.

Life has been good for me since then because I had control of it and didn't do anything stupid.

Nothing bad happened to me at all. My life and relationships are sooo much better:)

Oh, I got a bit fatter.. I bet that's Satan sneaking me calories in the night!

If you're me, when you leave you finally manage to get off anti-depressants and start to do things that are actually beneficial to you again. One example.. Coffee, I have a crap liver and coffee has been proven to help with liver function.

Honestly, between better mental and physical health.. I can't remember the last time I felt this this good in my life.

I had panic attacks for awhile when I first stopped going to church. It sucked. It was mainly thoughts of " what have you done? Not only have you lost your own salvation, but that of your children and any future grandchildren!"
But I realized that if the Mormon God were a loving father God, he would not threaten me or my kids, it was all the brain washing coming up.
When I look at how my kids are treated out of the church compared to how they were treated in, there is no way I could take them back to subjected to ridicule and treated as if they were less then the other families who had both parents in the church.
I used to be afraid of the dark, even as an adult. I would make sure the light was on before I went outside if it was night and hurry back in as soon as possible.
A couple months ago, I went outside in the dark, no lights on, and realized I wasn't scared anymore. There is no longer a boogyman hiding in the dark, put there by lds inc.
panic attacks have mainly gone, though alcohol can set one off. I have been out for 2 years. Sunday's are much more enjoyable and I really enjoy just being with my family and don't feel guilty about not doing VT or callings or paying tithing or not going to church or always saying yes to who ever needed help for whatever. It gets netter. You just have to be deprogrammed. And that will take a while.

You are free to think for yourself and do as you damn well please, you immediately get a 10% increase in your income, you gain an extra day on the weekend, you can drink whatever you please, you no longer have to wear 'angel drawers', and you are forever free of monthly contacts and individuals telling you how to live your life.

Downside - none that I have ever found and I have been out since 1970!

I immediately started adding 10%+ to my contributions to my 401k and it made a HUGE difference in my financial comfort level now that I have retired.

I started wearing normal underwear what felt soft and comfortable and that helped me sleep better.

I stopped feeling guilty about ever dag-blamed thing like not writing in a journal, finding my relatives back to Adam, not baking bread and canning fruit.

Finally, I actually laughed at some of the outlandish things that are in mormon doctrine and moved on with my life.

I remember feeling like that. Even though I was studying psychology in college and *knew* TSCC and its superstitions were all bunk, the feeling that I would be punished was there. The first time I posted here, my heart was racing.

Check out https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking

"In clinical psychology, magical thinking can cause a patient to experience fear of performing certain acts or having certain thoughts because of an assumed correlation between doing so and threatening calamities."

So here's the thing. There is no guarantee that something horrible will or won't happen to you. However, it won't be because you left a superstitious cult. It's just that life is uncertain. For everyone.

TSCC knows this and uses magical thinking as a tool to control/influence/manipulate people with both fear and hope; easily manipulated emotions.

Here is the reason why nothing really happens:

People are always interested in themselves, not you.

You leave... and they don't care. They will go on about their lives without you just fine.

It's just like sneaking out of a room of 200 people when nobody is watching... only to realize that nobody noticed you were there to begin with!

Once you get outside the bubble, the church looks much different and you'll be very glad it's not true. The not-being-true thing isn't a belief or opinion, it's a and historical and scientific fact.

If you think the spiritual experiences you had were real, there are many practices that get you the same thing without the big price tag. Yoga, for example.

So really, it's safe to leave. It's definitely not safe to stay in that unhealthy thought-controlled environment. You can't afford to wait until after you're dead to love and accept yourself and others unconditionally.

...back in 1996, the biggest reason I didn't go ahead and resign immediately was the thought in the back of my mind that if I ever needed financial help and had nowhere else to turn, I could call on the church for assistance. The other reason was that I didn't want to upset my elderly Mormon mother. But I realized that everyone else in the world who isn't a Mormon has to get by some way or another without any help from the church. So we resigned in 1998. My mother eventually found out, and she was indeed terribly upset, but we had to live our own lives and go our own way.

You correctly noted in your post that your fears are part of the brainwashing. Let me assure you that it takes months and sometimes years to completely rid your mind and psyche of the conditioning that we lifelong Mormons got. I actually had to go through a period of "de-programming"---separating in my mind the things that Mormonism had taught me was true and right from what I personally believed was true and right. Part of my de-programming was to intensely study Mormon history and doctrine, and dissect it in my mind, so that I had no question that it was false. That's why I still write historical and doctrinal material on this BB, for the benefit of newbies who are just now finding this stuff out.

I suggest that you realize that people coming out of other mind-controlling cults have to go through the same thing---particularly cults like the Mormon fundamentalist polygamists, Amish, Moonies, Scientologists, etc. If you haven't yet done so, I recommend that you watch the documentary "Going Clear," which is about leaving Scientology. That program interviews several former high-up leaders, and they relate how they were mind-controlled. It's quite similar to what the LDS church does to us. Above all, remember that the process takes time. Take it at your own speed.

Re: your comment: "did anything catastrophic/noticeable happen when you left the church?"

That reminds me of the scene in "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind," when the government agents had told the people living around Devil's Tower that poison gas was in the air, and they had to put on gas masks and evacuate the area. (That was their cover story for getting everyone out of the area so they couldn't see the spaceship landing.) But the hero, Richard Dreyfuss's character, believed that the government guys were lying. So he took off his gas mask, breathed a big breath of air, and didn't die. That's how he realized that he had been lied to.

It's the same with us coming out of Mormonism: church leaders have told us that disaster would befall us if we left the church. You just have to get out there and breathe on your own, and whatever happens to you is gonna happen. Bad things happen to all sorts of good people, including Mormons. Mormons lose their jobs, lose their homes, get cancer, get killed in car wrecks, and every other bad thing under the sun, just like what happens to non-Mormons. You have to train yourself to get rid of the magical/superstitious mindset that we were indoctrinated with.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2016 11:20PM by randyj.

+1000

Watch "askreality" Youtube channel by Chris Johnson. He does a very clear and simple job of helping with the psychological aspect of the experience.

I've experienced what you are experiencing. It's scary leaving a comfort zone in general. Time always heals. Once you're fully free, you'll look back and realize how uncomfortable it actually was.

Plus, if there is a God, he won't turn you away because you didn't wear garments. If there is a god, it's not the god of Mormonism.

You've obviously read and researched all the things that prove the church is an obvious fraud. My recommendation, keep reading and watching those things until they've fully hit home. Remembering WHY you left is important. They continue to teach the same lessons in church to remind you of your testimony. You need to do the same, but on the other side of the fence and remember why you left. :)

Learning to buy real underwear is stressful. O my gosh - so much nicer to wear than garments.

Life is SO much better without Mormonism.

Buying underwear is fun, no active temple recommend required. Any color or design. Once I stopped wearing garments I felt much prettier and less frumpy. And the female issues if you are using pads regular underwear are much nicer for that too less sweaty.

Well I lost my car keys several times.

And I managed to find them each time without praying.

Feel free to give it a try!

My magic underwear turned into fairy dust. I had to go commando for a whole week.

It felt awful to realize that most of my "friends" were fake and would only be my friends so long as I was Mormon...

But it was still totally worth it to leave. I would rather have real friends and not live in a fake cult that drains so much life and money from people.

Nothing happened when I resigned. Then I returned to my hometown to take care of my ailing mother and all that happened was I was shunned by the local Mormons. Of course, I hadn't lived there for years so it didn't matter much. But I did notice it.

One important thing did happen. I felt huge relief after my anger from being scammed died down. There is a tremendous relief from all the guilt, and feelings of duty heaped upon you. Once I came out and resigned I knew I didn't have to hide my disbelief any more. I also realized that I was so much less judgmental of others. That's another huge relief. Life just gets better and better outside Mormonism. Try it. You'll like it.

Stopped paying tithing long before I left. What happened? My family finally had enough money for food (I'm serious). Always had a job and some income. After we stopped believing (because we found out the truth) it seemed like our life got better. I read some old journals from when we were really active in the church, I had forgotten a lot. I was surprised by how much illness, job layoffs, car accidents and generally "bad luck" we'd experienced while being so active. We never received any of the blessings they talk about at church. I think you are scared to leave because you have been convinced by the church you won't be saved or bad things will happen. This simply is not true. They use this as a scare tatick to get you to stay. After you leave you will experience a peace, have more money, more free time, you will be happy.

You stop the "what ifs" and the guilt by going on and living a normal, healthy, reasonable life free of the cult's influence.
It'll take a while. How long a while depends on the individual. For me, it took about 3 years.

Look, you know it's all bullshit. Right? And there's more than ample evidence to back up that conclusion.
So anytime you wonder "what if," or feel guilty, just remember that: it's all bullshit. And you're just feeling the result of a nearly lifelong indoctrination into a cult.
Then go have a beer. :)

Your underwear drawer becomes a colorful thing.

Kittens die, and Jesus weeps.

The fact that you ask this question should be a BIG red flag to you. Only cults and abusive relationships create the feeling of "what will happen to me if I leave?" I frequently recommend folks like you to visit ex-JW sites. You will find they have the same exact question in their minds.

Life is so much better after Mormonism. It is good to be free of such fears.

Please post as much as you need to.

Yep, you got it.

Nothing ever happened to me when I cancelled my Sams store membership.

Nor did anything happen when I quit the local golf club when I moved.

If you have fear... that means you are in a CULT.

I emancipated myself from mental slavery.
Its quite liberating.

None but ourselves can free our minds.

You're singing my Anthem.

The BIG BY (Brigham Young) once said that if you left the Mormon (or is it Moron?) Church, your skin would become coal black, your hair would become silver white just like Satan's.

Now. let me see a raise of hands of all of you exmos that this happened to.

JBF Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The BIG BY (Brigham Young) once said that if you
> left the Mormon (or is it Moron?) Church, your
> skin would become coal black, your hair would
> become silver white just like Satan's.
>
> Now. let me see a raise of hands of all of you
> exmos that this happened to.

Does growing old gracefully and getting a little gray hair, plus having more of a tan from spending Sundays on the golf course instead of inside church, count?

If so, raising hand. If not...:)

You mean in addition to the horns that will sprout from the sides of your head, and the Scarlet Letter that will be emblazoned on your forehead for the rest of your natural life as a reminder to all living LDS that you are an apostate child?

The horns didn't sprout I'm happy to say, and the Scarlet Letter is a work of fiction, and a guilt trip the church will send you on only if you let it.

If/when you decide to leave, do it on your terms is my advice. Don't wait to be excommunicated or disfellowshipped, or wallow in inactivity. When you know, you'll just know. Then resign. Start fresh. Make new contacts. If you're still a believer in deity, start searching other religions for a leg up where you'd like to explore to see if it's a fit for you and/or your family.

I still had to worship when I left Mormonism. I couldn't leave my faith, just the religion had to go. It took me some time, years even, and going to different churches before I finally found where I belong. Don't give up on yourself, no matter what you decide you'll do next.

I looked at my years as a LDS as building blocks for my life and where I'm at now. I don't consider those years a loss, because I learned important values in my teachings as a child may not have learned had my parents not taken us to church. Some of the same values carried over into my post-Mormon life, and I tried to instill those values in my own children. Such as love for family, home, country, integrity, etc. So I chose to see my years of being LDS as a learning curve, and life as a journey.

You come back to yourself... and you are [still] happy!

You are not leaving anything.
TSCC left you long ago.
Accept it by moving on.
You own it to yourself.

WHAT IF you don't?
How will you grow?

How will you know/ remember yourself?

This is amazingly helpful and reassuring! Thanks for the advice, links, and recommendations. It's just what I needed to continue this journey. Just a couple of more questions..
*Have any of you sought professional counseling to deprogram? If so, how was it?
* Hyrum Smith is my great+ grandpa. Any help dealing with feeling like your family is a bunch of fraudsters?

Hyrum Smith gave my ggggrandpa his patriarchal blessing! :)) (Small world, isn't it?!) Tee hee. Too bad they were both wearing blinders, and both practiced polygamy and the rest of the stuff that was passed down to future generations.

I didn't need help so much with deprogramming from the church's teachings. I worked through much of that myself from just learning things we weren't taught as Mormon children ie, factual history instead of the made up things.

That helped a lot. The deprogramming still continues, just incrementally. Be very patient with yourself. It has taken a lifetime for you to get where you're at now. Realize you're still learning, and still have a long way to go. Be easy on yourself.

:))

After I resigned from the Church, I moved, got in to a new relationship, got a new job, and pretended that the mormon church never existed. My family is all out of state and most of them have left the church anyway.

So twenty years went by, the same relationship is stronger than ever and my career is better than ever. I had a bit of a hot temper at times. But life is good overall. Then one day in the lunchroom at work, there's a news story on tv about the new Gilbert Arizona temple. One of my co-workers says "I wonder what goes on in there". In my mind I think 'I'll tell you what went on in there when I went through'. When I opened my mouth to tell him, nothing came out. I noticed my heart racing, and that I was extremely angry. I looked away so no one would see my state of mind, and asked myself, where the hell that came from? Then I found this board and started looking back at my life in the church, and searching for ways to deal with the anger that I was not even aware of until then, in a healthy way. Most of the anger is gone now and my never-mormon sweetheart is totally supportive of the time I spend here. After a difficult and vulnerable-feeling time when I first started posting here, I now tell her everything and even read her my posts, on the ones I think she might be interested in.

So to sum things up, when you leave the church, make a clean break. Life will instantly get better. But after you leave, you might have some work to do to heal from your past. If you do that, life gets even better.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/10/2016 08:51PM by azsteve.

"One of my co-workers says "I wonder what goes on in there". In my mind I think 'I'll tell you what went on in there when I went through'. When I opened my mouth to tell him, nothing came out. I noticed my heart racing, and that I was extremely angry."

If someone asked me that question, I would have invited them to watch the endowment ceremony on youtube. Maybe make it a drinking game, where you have to take a drink every time you hear the words "We will go down."

I'll be prepared next time someone says they wonder what goes on in the temple. The fact that the question bothered me so greatly, told me that I was angry at the church and didn't even know it at the time. In addition, I was deathly afraid at the time to talk about the temple ceremonies.

It's been a few years now since that happened and I am not afraid to discuss and even act-out the signs and penalties now in public, and let others decide from that if they think the church is a cult. But you have to be careful because if one of your co-workers is a TBM with unresolved issues and a big mouth, it could ruin your career.

Everything happens, but most importantly you now have a lot of money to either save or spend.

when you leave your wife comes back to you and your pickup truck is not wrecked and you dog is alive ...




oh .... wait ....

that's what happens when you play country and western music backwards.



... nevermind ....

You begin to really celebrate life.

You stop believing underwear has magic power.
You have more money in your bank account. If you still feel like donating 10% of it, you can CHOOSE where it goes.

If you leave, you have more free agency than you had as a member.

Nagging thoughts, guilt and shame are not your constant companions cast over you by overwhelming thoughts of not measuring up to the impossible standard established by the cult of Mormonism.

YOU get to be your own boss. Your are the person who decides what books to read, what Internet you choose to plug into, what constitutes fact and what constitutes fiction. No one gets to do this for you, telling you this is what a god wants you to do. You, yes you, can talk to a god just as much as any other man, so if you want to try it, do it. Don't pay 10%+ to a charlatan who talks smooth and claims you need to rely on him or her. I searched this angle out for myself, coming up with the conclusion for me that the proof of a god or god was not strong. The beauty of it all is that everyone is free to search and come to their own conclusions.

You have been indoctrinated BIG TIME to distrust your own ability. This is a cult's goal.....to make you rely on them.

Give freedom a chance. I can tell you from my heart and soul it is so worth it.

Here's what happened to me when I left....I finished my degree and started my career, haven't been out of work since, I'm happy and have a great life, working on about 10 more years to retire.

Here's what happened to others in my family when I left...my TBM dad's dementia got worse and worse, he needed new heart valves and eye surgery, my mom got lung cancer, my TBM brother lost over half of my parents investments when the markets crashed, and he has no savings of his own, my other TBM brother got seriously sick and is now on disability.....etc.

Life happens, no matter what you believe.

Nothing really happens.

Once you say you are out, you are out.

Mormonism has no power over you except for the power you give it yourself.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/12/2016 06:22PM by anybody.