DementedSheep said:
If anything, when I start getting really stupid I need a good slap not coddling or pills and I certainly don?t need religion shoved at me
Thank you. I can definitely relate to this part of your post. I needed discipline, and I went to a religious school.
I've had smatterings of symptoms of various personality disorders throughout my life, but who hasn't? I grew out of the most awkward and ridiculous phases, like being too self-conscious to eat in front of some people as if it was horribly undignified and just being ridiculously self-conscious in general, looking at people like this O_O, or being known as the depressed quiet kid (even though I did not believe I was depressed) and having that awkward "trying-not-to-smile-with-my-teeth-even-though-they're-fine" smile whenever I did actually smile, amongst other things. I may still be lazy and indecisive and sometimes I get nervous when I know it's irrational, but I'm not going to claim I have ADD or social anxiety or something. To get things done I just need people there to discipline me to keep in touch with the practical side of things and not procrastinate so much. I digress.
Religion has lingering effects on me. Telling children that the holy spirit can prompt people to do things, sometimes things that are out of one's comfort zone, can be bad for them. I felt like God wanted me to do uncomfortable things. I was shy, and the nagging anxiety (or the "holy spirit") hit me randomly, urging me to start up a random conversation with an old lady stranger or a new couple at church or that person on msn I barely talk to or even telling me to do things which I could see no logical reason for doing, like taking another route home (there are probably more petty examples than those, I just remember the latter because I noticed a creepy slow car I thought could've been following me and ended up running home). Back then I perceived that whenever I disobeyed that feeling, something went wrong. Even when it didn't, I contemplated possible sequences of events that could've changed my life forever and resulted from me obeying that urge. There was certainly a possibility that the bad things that happened were coincidental and that the anxious feelings were because of other things, but I was twelve and I didn't think of that, my mind automatically connected things to the supernatural because that's the way I was raised. For example, when I really didn't want to go to my friend's lame Sunday school Christmas dance although I had that annoying urge to, my other friend came over and she accidentally walked outside with our new pet bird perched on her and it flew away. I know it's not a tragedy, but I was only young and I felt terrible for how bad my friend must have felt when my mother said "oh, *insert name here*!" and for how my sister got upset. I felt like it was all my fault just because I didn't go to that concert.
I still randomly get these nagging urges that go against my will, and it's quite uncomfortable. I mean, this feeling might not really compare to actual diagnosed anxiety, its presence is more unconfortable than terrifying. I want to go to bed right now seeing as I only had 2-3 hours of sleep last night (which is probably contributing to my anxiety) but I feel an urge to finish this post. Sometimes I'll get the same anxious feeling saying "don't post this thing you've written", "don't follow through with the reasonable sounding business ideas you're writing down", or "wear this shirt to bed, not that one". Some are perfectly reasonable anxious urges, such as "stop making excuses and hand in that job application".
It might just be my unconscious mind picking up on subtle cues or mostly forgotten memories and telling me something is "off" via my intuition. That explanation sounds reasonable for the time I felt like I should turn back instead of walking home, and later I remembered I had an after school detention. Sometimes it could simply have been my conscience speaking, saying "you should be at school right now, you're not really that sick". Maybe it was just plain old anxiety warping my perception and attitudes so that I either noticed only the negative or caused something negative to happen through being negative, and thus confirmed an irrational belief in the feeling's legitimacy.
I think I'd managed to choke it for the most part during the time I was well into questioning my faith. Then a class did a drama presentation, which was a re-enactment of what they said was a true story that went something like this. Someone was contemplating suicide and said to God that he wouldn't commit suicide only if he proved he was real by causing someone to do a head stand in front of a vending machine, or something crazy like that. Then this woman had this anxious urge to do a headstand, and although it was embarrassing, she did, and through doing so, virtually saved the man's life (I also recall a few other stories told by teachers or preachers). Then I thought, what if it is actually true that this feeling should be taken seriously? Was this story fabricated or some kind of insane coincidence? I even partially read
The Holographic Universe and considered the possibility that it could actually be a premonition and that some kind of scientific theory that accommodates a seemingly supernatural connection between past, present, future could be plausible. The possibility that the anxiety is really there to tell me something and it's not always just some spontaneous chemical imbalance left over from my younger years when my conscience was warped by pentecostals into feeling guilty for being comfortable with what I want to do instead of doing undignified things to prove my love for Jesus really isn't a pleasant thought.
Maybe I'd have been rewarded if I followed those prompts. Of course, I'd feel better once I'd "obeyed" them. Maybe I'd feel truly free, free from my irrational social inhibitions and like I was fulfilling my true purpose by obeying my deepest convictions. But I still think the feelings are not normal and healthy and are a sign of cognitive dissonance. I mostly rationalise peace nowadays by thinking that the feelings aren't likely anything truly eerie or supernatural and that the emotion is explained through scientific terms already.
I'm not sure whether or not those ramblings clarify what I mean enough, and I'm too tired to care to proofread right now.
