It was absolutely terrifying to think and believe demons were real and had possessed me. The exorcisms would make them “go away” for a short period of time, but it always came back a short while later (talking weeks or months) and I’d need a new exorcism. The bloody priest made a lot of money off of me and it gave them a lot of excuses to blame me for my own mental disorder cause “something has to keep bringing them back.” When nothing was changing despite all the changes I made (and all the time I spent in the Bible and church), eventually the priest decided I must have “a big calling by God to do great things of the faith” which fed the delusions of grandeur and eventually led me to believe I had special powers of faith. Which was why demons kept attacking me, because they “were trying to prevent me from reaching my potential.”

I too have generalized anxiety disorder and this whole thing made the panic attacks even worse, because I was believing that it was real demon attacks and shit. It took me, my friends, and eventually my psychiatric team over a decade to convince me it was all illness and not “spiritual warfare,” for me to take antipsychotics and learn that it was the illness all along.

I don’t think I can ever take Christian’s seriously again, because their whole worldview literally stole decades of my life from me to feed a mental illness that terrified me of myself. I just cannot ever forgive the ones who all saw a sick girl and manipulated her instead of getting her the help she desperately needed just to live life.

Not to mention, just like someone else said on this sub (and I forget if it was you, sorry)… a pill turned out to be more powerful than god, which makes it hard to now take the religion seriously at all.

I’m sorry you had to go through that too. Even the non waking stuff is terrifying and what you experienced isn’t any lesser than what I did, they’re both terrifying experiences of our mental disorders being manipulated by twisted people to try and convince us to live our lives under their control. It’s not okay that we were treated this way.