Hey Pandas, Have You Ever Faced Religious Trauma? (Closed)

I faced how extremely privileged and intolerant catholic Spanish schools are. They get tons of public money but since they are semiprivate they do what they want, even if it’s illegal. We were forced to go to religion class, mass and prey (despite it being illegal not give us a choice). Our “ethics” and “philosophy” teacher was a Christian fundamentalist that did not allow any debate and openly mocked any other belief. Any kid (like me) who was not Christian was bullied by the teachers (specially that one), sexism, racism and homophobia were also very common in the staff. All the teachers needed to be catholic to be hired. And they had ridiculous dress codes, even for a religious school. We weren’t allowed to show shoulders, wear any kind of shorts (not even until the knee) or sandals (because apparently teenagers feet are erotic); we would be in June at 40C and needed to wear long trousers and shoes.

When I was growing up, my step-mother forced me to go to an extreme Baptist church so she did not have to see us. She also fed us Melatonin to go to sleep faster (again, so she did not have to see us.) She was extremely cruel and told everybody at the church that my sister and I were brats, etc. She didn't even go to the church herself!

Not me but my father. One of the priests and teachers in his school tried to sexually abuse him when he was 16yo. That teacher had goten away with it many times. Luckily my father has as much of a bad temper than me so instead of thinking about the consequences he punched him in the face. Because of that they both got to the principal where my father was punished but at least the teacher moved away. Sadly he was not fired or punished in any way, he was simply moved to another school to keep trying to rape children.

My religious trauma was to do with the kind of sins that sent someone to hell within the Catholic church, and how that condemned my family. I loved my Catholic primary school, and our church, until 4th grade when I wanted to run away. Up until 4th grade the Catholic values we learned were about the equality of humans... "All (hu)man are created equal", "Love one another like I have loved you". In 4th grade we learned about sins,: thou shall not steal, drink, take drugs, etc. The problem was I had a large family with a history of drug issues in places, a gay cousin, the list goes on. These were people I loved and knew were lovely,they didn't deserve hell. I hated every minute at my primary school in those final 2 years.

Religion can tend to promote and talk about equality, than practice exclusion
and discrimination. For me that is traumatic.

When I first started having mental illness issues, I was convinced that I was possessed by some type of demon and that was the cause of all of my emotional distress. In fact, I told my family that I wanted them to pray over me and possibly get the demon out. They did.

My father is a pastor, and so my entire life, I've had the Christian religion shoved down my throat. And I've gone to 2 different Christian schools, and I have been in the church since literally before I was born. Everybody has very high and specific expectations for me to be doing. I'm the pastor's daughter and people know me as that. I don't even have a name to a lot of people. I deal with a past full of SH, and a present full of anxiety, symptoms of depression, and autism. I have always been told the "Come as you are" christian crap, but then my parents (being major hypocrites) are always telling me that I have to look presentable. And I always have had self-esteem issues from my so-called "godly", and my friends are never good enough for my parents specifically if they aren't Christians.