- ̗̀ exmo enby ̖́-

exmormon blog. main: @fieldmemory

[oxytocinatrocities]

Yet another comic about leaving the Mormon church that can be applied to a variety of things.

[gibbearish]

kids who werent raised christian being like "lol baptising children is whack if they tried to do that to me i would start doing things to make it look like i was possessed" no you would not. you would bask in the pride and approval coming from the adults around you and you would quietly wait your turn because you were told from birth that sinning sends you to hell and baptism is The Promise that youre dedicating your life to jesus that youve had hyped up for years and watched other people be fawned over as they cry happy tears about it and you do NOT want to fuck up your One Big True Promise To Love Jesus Forever So You Don't Get Tortured For Eternity when you are literally 8 years old. im begging yall to remember its a thousand times easier to see the church's bullshit for what it is when you're not actively in the church. eight year old you is not thinking about trying to fight back against an oppressive religious group indoctrinating children because You Are The Children Being Indoctrinated. stop acting like you would've magically known better if it were you.

[heyftinally]

Here's the thing: even as a child who DID see through the bullshit very young, I still had to play the game. That's part of what was traumatizing. I had to play a constant game of make believe to placate the adults around me. I was a child responsible for the emotions of adults, because if I didn't play pretend well enough, they all got mad. Because I knew it was pretend, but they refused to believe it was anything other than stone cold fact, and denying that fact made you a horrible, stupid, evil person. It was the greatest show of immorality (which yes, I also thought was bullshit, but I was nine and being shamed for who I was).

When you're wholly reliant on someone to meet your basic needs, you're forced to play their twisted game or put yourself at risk. If I made us miss church, most of the day I felt like I was a terrible child because it would be made clear that my mom was mad at me for making us miss church - a place I hated being with every fiber of my being. So I had to decide: was it better to feel unsafe for 2-3hrs in church, or feel unsafe for 2-3hrs at home because mom was mad that we missed church and didn't want to listen to me talk about anything?

It was a no-win situation that I, a nine year old, had to navigate, because the adults in my life cared more about their make believe story than my safety and well being.

So no, even as a kid who knows it's all a pile of shit, you don't kick up and point out the bullshit - because it's not safe. Maybe you won't get beat, maybe you'll still have dinner that night (or maybe not - some parents ARE that abusive), but you'll still face the emotional abuse of being shamed and disliked simply for not playing make-believe with the adults. They'll make you feel like you're a fundamentally bad person for not wholly and completely committing to their made up story the same way they did.

And that is a scary, painful thing to realize when you're nine.

[g-o-d-l-e-s-s-h-e-a-t-h-e-n]

Tbh, thats a scary, painful thing when you're an adult too, cause yeah, you might have the option to leave or openly declare your disbelief, but at what cost?

You stand to lose your entire family and in many cases your entire community, to be shamed by them, to be ridiculed by them, you'll turn into the very thing they fear most and chance are you won't have anyone else in those moments. Its very insular and talking to outsiders is only encouraged if it's for the purpose of bringing them to Jesus, so even as an adult you often have no one to turn to and nowhere to go. It's an impossible situation to be in even for adults, a child is even more trapped and even more at risk. And even as a child you know that. It's not said in so many words, but the consequences of losing your faith and having someone find out is taught from very early on.

As a child it's not just you who has to face them, it's your siblings and parents too, it's your entire family, cause as a child your having faith is seen as your parent's responsibility, and they let you know that, if you fuck up, if you for one second look like you don't want to play their game your parents tell you "how do you think this makes me look?" It very quickly stops being concern for your soul and starts being "if you don't decide to stop making this family look bad you won't have one anymore"

And you know this happens, and that your family will do it too, cause you've seen it happened, you've seen another kid's family sitting in the very back of the curch and not staying for tea, you hear what the adults whisper about them, and you realize you have a choice, either play the game and play it well, or be the monster that puts your own family in that situation, and that's not much of a choice

[theshoesofatiredman]

I went through a phase after deconverting where I dwelt heavily on the question of: could I have gotten out sooner? And how would I have done it? The answer I kept coming up with is probably not, because my world was so insular, because I was financially dependent on family that never would've approved, because I had been indoctrinated since I was a child and had to fight through so many levels of shame and guilt and fear to even feel like my unanswerable questions deserved good answers.

If I had tried to embrace being gay as a child, I wouldve been bullied both by my peers and by my family. If I didn't play along, if I didn't repent and hate my queerness, I probably would've been sent to a conversion camp or some sort of conversion experience and have a whole other array of traumas to deal with. I didn't start really seeing through the bullshit until I was in my mid 20s, but even if I had believed earlier that Christianity was false, I wouldn't have had any other option other than to keep acting like it was true.

So I have to forgive myself for the years I wasted serving a false god.

[rednines]

They are gonna create an offshoot of mormonism that’s cool with trans people and machine guns and you’re all gonna convert to it I’ve seen the future

[balaclava-trismegistus]

Polycule of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints

[rednines]

[cryptotheism]

Didn't Mormonism borrow heavily from the Free Masons?

They downright plagiarized the freemasons.

[lemuel-apologist]

yeah, the slc temple is covered in freemason imagery.

[queenophydea]

My body is a temple and i dedicate it to debauchery hedonism and the pursuit of pleasure

[hexpatient]

once i figured out the whole thought stopping cliches thing, i literally see them everywhere. they are everywhere.

just a few common ones i particularly hate:

mind over matter

god works in mysterious ways

everything happens for a reason

trust the process

personal responsibility

etc. feel free to reblog with more! there’s hundreds.

[quirky-ex-cultist]

Your cult aesthetic looks like dark cloaks and goblets of virgin blood. My cult reality looked like modest dresses and indoctrination training.

Please don’t forget the real cults that are under the radar and remain mostly unchecked in our society to this very day. Please don’t forget how many people spend years of their lives being abused and misled by these cults.

[exmo-diaries]

lost focus and had a consensual workplace relationship

[letsgo-emxos]

c’mon let the guys try it 

[normal-horoscopes]

what is to be done about mormonism

@rednines

[rednines]

This is a complicated question that’s still a matter of debate in the exmormon/postmormon milieu but basically I’m of the opinion it will never reform and it has to die out and it’s our job to facilitate that process in the smoothest and healthiest way possible and right the wrongs and heal the wounds the cult has made.

anyways

https://read.cesletter.org/

CES Letter is one Latter-Day Saint's honest quest to get official answers from the LDS Church on its troubling origins, history, and practic

https://quitmormon.com/

Quitmormon

[weirdcultstuff]

Gonna start calling all the different christian doctrinal beliefs “fan theories”

[exmost]

kind of a vent

hey so uh I'm just now realizing that the lds church and many of the things normalized or even just common within it and its members and cultures is just... like, super fucked up.

I'm starting to wonder how many other people there are that prayed to God to kill them like I did, because I was suicidal but I'd never had the ability to go through with it.

I'm in a much better place now, but as soon as I realized that mormonism fit the BITE model terrifyingly well, things started to make more sense.

When I realized that I was constantly uncomfortable around church things (actually triggered but didn't put that together yet), I worried in the back of my mind that it was somehow my fault for being a sinner or full of evil spirits or something. I figured that wasn't the case but it was really the only religious explanation for why churchy things specifically triggered my anxiety. But if I was born and raised in a cult, it really does make more sense that the manipulation I'd learned to recognize in people (thanks to Dear Old Dad) would also become more apparent in an organization, and become just as concerning.

All of the little things that made my stomach turn regarding the church, like that song about sitting still and thinking about jesus being very hostile to neurodivergent people, or really most church songs with subtly disturbing lyrics - it wasn't because I couldn't feel the spirit due to anxiety or any fault of my own.

It was because I knew something was wrong.

Something was lying just under the surface with little sharp bits poking through. Something I couldn't allow myself to understand at the time, because I needed to feel safe (as all children do), even if that meant pain and ignorance.

I used the same metaphor for my abusive father.

Realizing that these things weren't safe was scary, but it was also a relief. I'm not going crazy, there's nothing wrong with my perception of what's going on. What I see is real.

People like you have played a huge role in this realization. Thank you.

tl;dr do people do tldrs here? idk. anyways, long and short of it is, I grew up in a cult, identifying that made things make more sense and also felt very similar to identifying my father as abusive.

Thank you for sharing your experience, and thanks to everyone else who shares their experiences. Love y'all.

i'm sorry for the pain you had to go through, but i'm happy to hear that you're on your way to healing. thank you for taking time to share ❤

[rednines]

If you haven’t dissociated in one of these fuck you

[rednines]

Only mormon kids will remember having to swear to an adult man that they haven’t ever masturbated in order to get a card that says they can put on a jumpsuit, hop into one of these and pretend to be different dead people as they get baptized over and over and over again, and then freeze to death once they get out

[fieldmemory]

the "i-was-raised-very-religiously" mood of being scared of cursing in any space other than your own or with close friends

[beegerbucket-blog]

“You might have grown up in a cult if…”

— Your parents bought their underwear from the church.

[constantqueercrisis]

i think its funny when members forget that like. i grew up mormon, i understand mormonism pretty well, like i know how you rationalize things, i know how you attach yourself to idealologies. nothing you say is that new/surprising to me or will convince me to come back lol

[heavensghost]

George Abraham, Birthright

[exmost]

My mom is devout Mormon, my dad isn’t. They got married and had me. I was raised in the church. In Sunday school I was told that my family wouldn’t be together forever if we weren’t sealed. I went home and told my mom this only for her to tell me we can’t bc my dad isn’t a member. I was 7 and being told my family wasn’t going to be forever. The teachers gave me dirty looks when they told me this bc they knew about my dad. I think this is a scare tactic to get the nonmembers to join.

that's terrible.... the passive aggressiveness in the mormon church has always been something that's bothered me. it definitely puts pressure on people like your dad to become a member just to fit in better... i'm sorry you had to hear that when you were only 7.

i hope you take care of yourself, anon ❤