#to be clear i'm not saying every ex/evangelical has dp/dr or a dissociative disorder

[deservedgrace]

this might be a bit scattered and vague because bringing attention to dissociation makes me dissociate more and forget things and struggle to explain stuff lol, but... i feel like evangelicalism kinda teaches you dissociation as a baseline? especially if you're raised in it as a child?

like, arguably equating being human to being sinful, human nature and sin nature being interchangeable phrases for the same concept, convincing people that they need to be separate from sin if they are to be good and therefore need to be separate from being human, calling your wants, needs, emotions, thoughts, etc sinful and needing to repent for simply being human and having a human experience, that "existing in the flesh is not what god intended for us", that almost requires dissociation on some level

but there's also the dissociation from "the world" and "worldly things", from common phrases like "we're in the world not of it", believing that we are so separate and distinct from the world that we're called to "save it", to the belief that this life isn't our "real" life, our "real" life is the one we have with god in heaven

and all of that is just, par for the course, extremely normal beliefs to constantly be exposed to: your human self is not your "real" self, this world is not the "real" world. and that's without even getting into the way they use music, prayer, chanting, etc, to induce hypnotic states and other thought/emotion stopping tactics to disconnect you from your thoughts and emotions if you start feeling or thinking the """wrong""" things

and like, i didn't realize until after i left and long into my mental health journey that my default is dissociation. i thought it was normal to just exist like this because i didn't really have anything to compare it to, especially because i was taught that worldly people were the ones running on autopilot and disconnected to their thoughts, actions, emotions, etc

i just... wonder how common it is, and how many people don't even realize it