I resigned from the church over 8 years ago and thought I had resolved most things and moved on. Lately my rage has returned towards the Mormon faith and all Mormons in general. My daughter has turned 16 and has a full and normal life free of the Mormon machine. I look at her and see how much the church stole and destroyed my youth.

I was the perfect mormon teen drone. I was so anxiety ridden and obsessed with being perfect. My parents were overly critical and verbally abusive.... I was never good enough or perfect enough.. ever. I am a semenary grad, BYU grad, was a virgin when I got married... etc. I lost my whole youth to the church and I cannot stop being angry and grieving the loss.

I have been through counseling. I thought of going back but my counselor has since retired. I am relunctant to get a new counselor due to living in hippie counselor heaven. My husband is a successful executive and I do not need to be judged negatively because of our financial status. It feels very much like being judged by Mormons.

Any advice out there from someone who has been through this... does it end... how long will this intense anger last.... Wendybird

I lost my childhood to Mormonism and cruel parents. I can never get that back. So I have anger issues, too. I guess it's like living with scars. One feels somehow disfigured.

Just tell yourself you damned well deserve to be angry, and some of the rage will ease. Own your rage, and use it to bring an end to the curse of LDS. I like that you saved your daughter. Be proud of that.

My daughter is getting ready for prom. We just bought her a beautiful strapless dress. I should just be happy for her but part of me is having my face rubbed in just how different my childhood would have been free of the church. I feel like I was emotionally raped... I will grieve the loss and wait for this to pass......

I felt like I was over it, guess the anger will come and go as life goes on.

wendybird Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My daughter is getting ready for prom. We just
> bought her a beautiful strapless dress. I should
> just be happy for her but part of me is having my
> face rubbed in just how different my childhood
> would have been free of the church.


> I feel like I
> was emotionally raped...

This is largely due to the fact that YOU WERE
EMOTIONALLY RAPED !

You have anger, because you want to. Its your preference to being a MORmON. Its your own way of hedging yourself against being emotionally raped again. its your emotional insurance
policy to make sure that you don't go back for more emotional exploitation. rejoice in the fact that you finally have enough sense and personal self esteem to feel this way.

"One feels somehow disfigured."

I can't think of a better discription for an adult victim of childhood Mormonism.

I understand, I wish I'd figured all this out years ago. Sometimes it makes me sick to think about it.

If I could just get my family out I think I'd do much etter. All I can do is keep asking thoughtful questions and hope they don't turn their brains off.

It resurfaces. I just read Bill Hickmen's biography and developed the conclusion the bring-them-young and Orson should-hide were real s__t tarts.

Anger never ends. You can harness it,bridle it and saddle it. You can lock it in stall or ride it a full gallop until you have worn it out, but it will rear up again, sometime, somewhere.

Hopefully the person carrying the anger becomes adept at training it for their own purposes. It takes time and patience to train things like puppies, parrots and buckets of rage.

Do not think of anger as a negative. It has its uses. The important thing is to not let it use you.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2013 06:29PM by blueorchid.

I wasn't angry until I moved back to Utah after living out of state for many years. And the only reason I'm mad is because I've dealt with many @sshole "priesthood" holders at work and around town. I just can't stand the arrogance. I thought I had left TSCC behind, but living here again has surfaced many messed up memories and resentments. In general, I'm a really nice and happy person, but I CANNOT tolerate Mormons at all. Especially because of the way they have treated my kids since moving back. My kids may as well have the black plague. They are shunned and left out of pretty much everything. As soon as I'm done with school, I'm outta here. I don't have time to be angry but this state encourages it with it's f@cked up policies.

My experience has been that it's a lot like the stages of grief and each person will handle those stages differently. Just like you never really "get over" the death of a loved one, the pain can lessen with time. I think counseling will really help some people.

As for my own experience, at times I couldn't care less about what people believe or what the corporation is up to at the moment. Other times, I am frustrated and angry for the perpetuation of delusional thinking and self-deception.

When my daughter was married in the temple some time ago, and I could not attend, it reopened wounds that I thought had been healed up for some time.

I hope you're able to come to some level of peace. Unresolved anger can lead to bitterness. Not healthy for a long term state of mind.

hey wendybird, don't despair. i left the church 25 years ago. was ok for years, and then the cult decided to play politics with my rights in the free state of california. all sorts of pain came flooding back. rfm was here to help.

same again when mittens threatened to take the cult to the white house.it help that he got his ass kicked. it helped even more that the cult obviously was "inspired" that he was gonna win! lol

I was so relieved when he did not win..... all I could think of was four years of General Conference every time he opened his mouth :)

I was disappointed that he didn't win, only because it would have given me the opportunity to talk to people about having grown up in the church. It was a great ice breaker for me, and now it's gone.

Keep callin' him Mittens, though. :)

Anger at Mormonism is a lot like pus.

It's a perfectly normal response and we feel better when we drain it. Some people accomplish this through venting here at RfM. Others talk to a friend, another exmo, or a therapist.

I didn't have those options and so I followed the advice given by Julia Cameron in "The Artist's Way." I poured out my anger on morning pages before starting work every day. It cleared me to be more focused and creative at work. I repeated myself, sometimes I cried, sometimes I felt flushed with the injustice. I was very angry with some of my children, my sister, the Mormon church, the board of directors, etc.

After writing in the old comp book, when it was filled up I burned it. It was not for human consumption, believe me. I visualized my anger in the smoke, ascending upwards away from me. This really helped me.

That was in 2005 or so. Now I look back on it and what has happened to those injustices. My sister was mad because our mother left the vacation cabin to me alone, so she sued me to prevent us using it while mother was still alive. She won. I had offered to settle and my offer included splitting the proceeds with her when it was sold after mom's death. She would have received almost $70,000. As it turned out, the judge also awarded me the entire balance of her estate since I was denied the enjoyment of it (out of spite) yet had to shoulder the expenses of upkeep.

My youngest daughter who (in my view) stopped speaking to me for three years is now the daughter I am closest to. She lives around the corner and we share many interests. She says she just needed that time to differentiate herself because I have such a strong personality !! I assumed she hated me because I was so authoritarian while raising my children.

The board member who accused me of theft from the thrift store I started and actually came to my home and took my garden tools down to the store turned out to have Alzheimers and was relieved of his position. His wife later apologized to me profusely.

In the long haul, over time, I believe that karma is at work--not in a reincarnation way, but in this life. People get what they deserve and even those who seem to be prospering (like apostles for example), have a hidden life of suffering.

Life does teach us all the same lessons-- one of the main one is the Serenity Prayer and it applies to Mormon anger:

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference."

You can do nothing about LDS, Inc except to be the wonderful, happy, fulfilled independent apostate adult and show every Mormon you meet that you are still you, still kind, not a prostitute or a drunk, and YOU ARE HAPPIER.

Sometimes that takes some work to get there.

Best of luck

Anagrammy

8 years ago, I burned my personal progress book, my journal I was forced to keep as a teen detailing how I would be a good mormon for life,and my triple combination well marked through sememary and BYU..... and yes it was very liberating and cleansing I would recommend this to anyone.

I don't have much anger, ever. Frustration, yes.

Lots of things contributed to how little anger I ever felt over leaving the LDS Church. I was an adult convert, I had a completely different perspective going in.

My anger, over the years in the LDS Church was over the behaviors of people who ought to know better that took it out on me. (I had not yet learned the principle of: Do not take anything personally. And, let go of what you can't control.)

I get angry from time to time. But it's very rare, now days. I know that it's a negative emotion that is detrimental to me on many levels- it's OK to feel the emotion, then to get out of it quickly as it's self-sabotage--as all negative emotions. Sure, I'm human, I am going to be responsive to what others do, however, the less I allow negative emotions to influence my thinking, the better life is.

The more productive choice, I have learned, is to detach from other people's negativity/drama/outbursts/ and not let it influence my thinking and my life.

I have never had any concern about "recovery" as some called it, probably because I was in my late 50's and was a convert earlier in my life.

My attitude was governed by: I changed my mind, and went about an Exit Process from Mormonism, deleting and rewriting all those automatic thinking scripts that ran in my head. It was about looking forward, not back. Living today and letting the past go... I don't live there anyhow.

It was about creating a new World View and allowing that to evolve. And, the most important part for me in that process: let it all go, forgive everyone everything and live with an attitude of gratitude. It was about taking my power back and owning it and not giving it away to anyone.

I never have understood nor internalized any religion or belief that I subscribed to or accepted at different times of my life as detrimental to me, delusional, etc. It's religion. It is what it is. It's the same pattern throughout human history.

I tend to "think funny" so when I realized how Joseph Smith Jr had created his own religion and how people generations later still believe his supernatural, metaphysical visionary claims, it struck my funny bone. I giggled. Then I laughed and laughed and laughed. For days! OH MY GOSH. He got away with it! And it's still working.

I've also developed a very thick skin (thanks to Mormonism and my experience in the work place). The result: it's nearly impossible to offend me, or "make" me mad, or force me to "take" offense. Simply put: I refuse to give anyone that kind of power over me.

The result of living with an attitude of gratitude and thankfulness is amazing. I recommend it highly. Find the good, ignore the bad, and find the joy and freedom and happiness.

ahh..how sweet it is!

Susie Q - Like you I'm a convert. TBM for 15+ years, temple marriage, bunch of kids. Like you I feel some frustration, find a lot of humor, and the anger is there at times but not consuming. On the other hand, spouse is BIC TBM, now exmo. Totally different experience. He didn't choose the church, it chose him and dictated all the choices he made up until he discovered it was false. His anger is off the charts. He can only believe that if he was raised differently, he would have made choices based on his needs, wants, desires instead of what "a good mormon" would choose.

My experience leads me to believe that converts have their own difficulty in accepting responsibility for their choices and BIC members some different difficulties - they do have to look at their own choices, but they also have to deal with the anger at the people in their lives that filled their minds with this crap, for the conditional love they still feel from their family members. I think both have their issues: some shared and others different. My situation is that my BIC spouse's anger is much deeper and more personally crippling.

Excellent points!!

goatsgotohell Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Susie Q - Like you I'm a convert. TBM for 15+
> years, temple marriage, bunch of kids. Like you I
> feel some frustration, find a lot of humor, and
> the anger is there at times but not consuming. On
> the other hand, spouse is BIC TBM, now exmo.
> Totally different experience. He didn't choose
> the church, it chose him and dictated all the
> choices he made up until he discovered it was
> false. His anger is off the charts. He can only
> believe that if he was raised differently, he
> would have made choices based on his needs, wants,
> desires instead of what "a good mormon" would
> choose.
>
> My experience leads me to believe that converts
> have their own difficulty in accepting
> responsibility for their choices and BIC members
> some different difficulties - they do have to look
> at their own choices, but they also have to deal
> with the anger at the people in their lives that
> filled their minds with this crap, for the
> conditional love they still feel from their family
> members. I think both have their issues: some
> shared and others different. My situation is that
> my BIC spouse's anger is much deeper and more
> personally crippling.


YES!! Excellent points. I have pointed out many times in my posts that they are very different experiences. I know my experience in leaving the LDS church is much different than a BIC. In addition, while converts and BIC members are similar in some respects, every one's situation is different. The dynamics of their family is different.

A lot also has to do with our personalities and our age when we converted and when we left, and how we lived Mormonism and where we lived it.

Our history is different.
In my case, I come from a long line of Christian ministers and Christian missionaries (served in South America). Religion/church/service/ etc. was just part of my world before I converted.

So many, many factors go into our personal journey out of the LDS Church when we decide it is no longer what we want to believe and accept, and change our mind.

That is why this board is so important. It gives people the opportunity to share their experience and gain some understanding in how they can be and are, many times, extremely different. They are all valid. One does not negate another's experience.

We didn't talk about how we were internalizing Mormonism as members so we didn't know what others were struggling with along the line. One more thing this board provides!

It's different for my children that have left also.

One point about tithing. I have never been angry or upset about that. It benefited us when tax time came around, as we itemized our deductions and always got a nice refund. I used to call the refunds: Tithing Refunds! :-)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2013 11:43AM by SusieQ#1.

Beautiful post (susieq#1) and an amazing way to look at the world no matter where you are coming from.

For me, the intense anger was short lived. I still experience mild anger from time to time, particularly when I remember how much tithing I paid. During those times, I try to remember how glad I am to know the real truth now, how much of my hard-earned money I've saved from TSCC, and to look forward to the future without the albatross of TSCC beliefs.

To think I truly thought beer, wine, coffee and liquor was evil.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2013 08:21PM by nofear.

I left about 30 years ago (cheezus!! How did I get so old?!?) and was angry for a long time.

I let it go for about 20 years until my family brought up all that anger again recently in one concentrated day and I blasted them with 'YOU'RE DEAD TO ME!!'

The shame I felt for allowing myself to get that angry again lead me here and I've been reminded of how crazy the culture of TSCC is AND how lucky I am to be out of it. I've forgiven myself- I deserve it. They're caught up in a crazy culture and it's not my fault that I ad to (finally) stand up and save myself from the false 'love' and call them out for their bull-(poop).

Everyone here reminds me with every post how insidious TSSC is.

I keep saying 2013 is the year of being brave: you all prove it every day! With every post!

So, in short (Too Late!!): yes the anger 'ends' - but it only takes that one (or 5) special triggers to bring it all right back into your face.

'thank you, cult upbringing... Well played'

"One feels somehow disfigured."

I can't think of a better discription for an adult victim of childhood Mormonism.

I agree with both of you. However, the answer for me is yes, mostly.

Most of my life was spent being twisted by Mo-ism. I regret it and wish it had been different, yes, but it wasn't. I was furiously angry for years and I'd be lying if I said I don't still have moments of anger at times, I probably always will.

For the most part, though, I've learned to let it go because the anger was making me a darker, nastier person that I didn't want to be.

Mormonism is my past, I can't change that. Many of my family members are still pathetically devoted to TSCC, which makes me sad. I can't change them and I can't change my past. What I can do is learn from it, try to understand what in me made me stick with it long after I should have and move forward to the best of my ability. Sometimes this means being snarky, sometimes it's finding the humor in TSCC. Sometimes it involves talking, telling stories, sharing with friends and family who get it. Sometimes it's in being angry, but not as much. I've found being here on Rfm helps, for the support and seeing people in various stages of recovery.

One of the good things in my life is like yours, wendybird. My children have grown up without the poison of Mo-ism in their lives. This is definitely something to celebrate!

I don't think anger ever ends. Sometimes I am totally furious. Most of the time I am just sad for the smart people I know who are being totally stupid. I have friends who have been "obeying" their idiot husbands for about 40 years.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2013 11:14PM by laurel.

Me too, laurel. I've been out for just over 12 years now and the fact that my extraordinarily intelligent, accomplished and masters-degree holding sister has bought into this and is totally sublimating her life and all the goals she used to have to fit this ideal and submit to her (sorry, but pathetic as(*#le husband) makes me incredibly sad all the time.

Same for other women I know who are pretty amazing, but doing nothing and sublimating their very selves.

Just sayin,' Therapy is your friend! It's certainly been mine!

My TBM upbringing was just like yours, and I never rebelled. My family--especially one older brother--was physically abusive as well as verbally abusive. It was always my fault, and not theirs.
Unfortunately, I continued on into college at BYU, and got married in the temple to a chosen returned missionary whose chose relative was in important GA. My new husband beat me, and put me into the hospital. I finally gathered up all the strength I had, and decided that I wanted to live, and the only way to survive was to get a divorce. The divorce was uncontested, on the grounds of extreme physical cruelty, but the @#!!#* Mormon cult would not give me a temple divorce. The creep and his GA family said they still owned me and my children, whom I had several years later with my second husband.

This divorce situation fueled my hatred for many years, until I finally formally resigned. I wrote everything down in our resignation letter. My children resigned with me.

Still, My anger flares up, when I hear of yet another travesty, another lie, another scam perpetrated by the evil cult.

I did a lot of ranting and raving!

You and I are lucky that our children are out. We are also lucky that we are in a good place, financially. My advice to you is to live in the moment. Concentrate on all the good things in your life. Have fun. You DESERVE a happy rest-of-your life!

A psychiatrist helped me a great deal! I have PTSD. You ought to be checked, too. You might have mild depression, or anxiety. We don't go through a lifetime in a cult unscathed. Yes, I feel "disfigured", even though I'm quite healthy.

There is a reason there is a "recovery from Mormonism" board. RFT has helped me a great deal. Keep on posting here. You are not alone.

I too suffered from clinical anxiety, was treated for it by a psychiatric nurse. Took medication for many years. It is amazing how the cult scars us.

I have been on this board before, and used it during my initial break with the church 8 years ago. I am back to get some support with this overwhelming anger that has re-emerged and taken me by surprise.

I was angry for a number of years--and I still become angry now and then. What has changed is I am not globally angry--not everything about Mormonism sets me off anymore. I become angry about specific issues. I am much better at identifying what it is specifically that angers me and articulating it clearly for myself. That was a good change, since being angry a lot is tiring.

It also helped me a lot to create a life apart from Mormonism. I am less angry because Mormonism is a lot less relevent to my life. Of course, if you have a LDS family, if you live in Utah, etc., that is harder to do than if you don't. So, discovering and pursuing new interests helps a lot.

But I do still get very angry with the Mormon Church now and then. They are an organization that will piss you off and being pissed off is the right response to a lot of what they do.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2013 10:46AM by robertb.

Maybe you can stop being angry when the mormon church and mormon culture stop doing to young women what they did to you.

Until then, anger is justified, and may be necessary.

I want to start by saying that I believe you when you say that the early part of your life was totally messed up by the Mormon Church and your TBM parents. I understand that you were robbed of your youth because you were forced into living life according to the way that the Mormons and your parents thought you should live. Now you have escaped from the Mormon cult you are still feeling the anger and pain that was inflicted upon you in your younger years. What I am about to say in no way tries to minimize the pain and anger that you are feeling. What I will attempt to do is give you an alternative way of looking at things.

We humans have two parts to our brain/psyche. There is the emotional part and there is the rational/logical part. That simple fact was driven home to me one afternoon during a psychotherapy session. I was complaining to the therapist about never having enough time to do everything that I was supposed to do in my daily life. I felt like I was being torn apart by all the conflicting requirements for my time and my inability to satisfactorily fulfill those requirements. After I had stated my feelings about that problem to the therapist he told me to sit quietly and listen. Here is what he said:

“I believe that you are being controlled by your emotions and those emotions go back to your early childhood. I seriously doubt that you have ever taken a careful look at what is controlling and driving you. So let’s do that now.

From a logical standpoint, the things that you absolutely must do in life are simple. You must have water to drink, food to eat, and oxygen to breathe. Everything else that you do is optional. Yes, you have a long list of things that you think that you must do. But if you tear up the list and ignore those things, you will continue to live, as long as you have water, food and oxygen.

Your long list of “things you must do” is based on your long-term emotional conditioning. No doubt that initially came from your parents and your family life. You were taught to think and react in certain ways and you have expanded your list of items as you have gone along through life. But you have never stepped back and taken a careful rational look at whether or not the items on your list are actually necessary.”

Now let’s try to apply the foregoing wisdom to your current problem. There is no doubt that you are feeling a lot of anger and pain. Those feelings flow from your emotional reaction to all the bad stuff that happened to you during your younger years. So now let us step back and take a rational look at your emotions.

It would be nice if medical science had a magic pill that you could take which would selectively delete all your memories of all the bad things that happened to you in your younger years. But that pill doesn’t exist. We can’t unring the bell. We can’t erase your bad memories. We cannot re-write your life story. The bad stuff that happened to you will always be there and it will always make you angry and sad. Simply stated, there is absolutely nothing that can be done to change that.

The good news is that we can teach you a new way to live your life. And that is to “live in the present moment.” Your memory is your enemy. You need to cease and desist from dragging up old bad memories and being angry about them. If you shut down your memory and live in the present moment then you can learn to enjoy life and be happy in the present moment.

To someone who has never heard about this concept, it may seem like a very difficult thing to do. But in fact, with some conscious effort and practice it is something that you can learn to do. Why would you want to do this?
The Mormon Church and your parents messed up your younger years. If you don’t learn to stop thinking about those problem years and live in the present moment, then the Mormon Church will, in fact, screw up the rest of your life. The only way that you will be permanently free of the Mormon church and all the pain it causes you is to stop thinking about it and live your life in the present moment.

I will assume that as you look around inside your house there is nothing there that reminds you of your Mormon past and your TBM parents. You should not have any pictures or mementos from those early years. If a friend who doesn’t know about your past comes to visit, that person should have no way of knowing about your past ties to Mormonism. This means that the only place that Mormonism now exists is in your own mind. If you can learn to stop dragging up the old bad memories and totally live in the present moment, then Mormonism will be gone from your life. You will probably need to quit visiting RfM.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life. And for you to have a happy, enjoyable life (from this point forward) you should not ever think about your Mormon past.

In one therapy session, my therapist helped me turn my life around by teaching me to think rationally about life and to live in the present moment. Doing the same thing is the key to you getting over your anger about Mormonism and your parents. You must learn to live your life in a new way, namely always living in the present moment.

Give it a try. You don’t have anything to lose and you have everything to gain.

It makes me feel so lucky to have discovered the truth in my early teen years. While I cannot say I've been there, I empathize completely.