New atheist/ Ex-christian with depression and anxiety

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nealfager's picture
New atheist/ Ex-christian with depression and anxiety

If anyone has constructive not negative thoughts about anxiety and depression on both sides of belief and unbelief please let me know.
I don't know how many people on here are Ex-christian or exbelievers in a god but I am. It is a completely different experience in most aspects of how I see the world.
So for much of my life I've dealt with anxiety and depression. It never made sense to me as a Christian why I would be depressed if I believed in Jesus but I was.
Yet it made sense to me why atheists would be depressed since they don't believe in a heaven or afterlife. Now that I don't believe in the Bible but I don't know what else to believe in I'm not ready to believe there is no afterlife or reason for spirituality and I can't believe we don't have a soul.
The idea that nothing happens when we die and our emotions might just be electrical signals. Is depressing me and giving me anxiety.

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CyberLN's picture
Neal, long term anxiety and

Neal, long term anxiety and depression are frequently caused by biochemical imbalances. Perhaps you should consult with a physician as a starting place. If yours is biochemical, then medications will help a great deal, allowing you a better opportunity to heal.

algebe's picture
@Neal TRD: "The idea that

@Neal TRD: "The idea that nothing happens when we die and our emotions might just be electrical signals."

Maybe our emotions are just electrical signals, but what amazing signals they are. We don't need gods to justify or explain our emotions. Emotions are for feeling, for sharing, for savoring like fine wine. Read some Shakespeare sonnets or poetry by Wordsworth, Shelley, or Blake, or listen to some Beethoven or Mozart to see the heights where those little electrical signals can take us.

As for nothing happening after death, well I find that a comfort. I don't worry about the fires of hell and demons with pitchforks. Nor do I face the prospect of bliss in heaven while others, including maybe some of my loved ones, are burning in the pit. Knowing that life is finite makes me focus on the here and now in the real world. It also makes me want to stay here as long as possible, so I won't be going quietly into that great goodnight.

mykcob4's picture
I deal with PTSD every day. I

I deal with PTSD every day. I went to counseling, which helped, but I had to take low doses of PAXIL. The drugs cleared the clouds away.
Being atheist makes things especially difficult. It isn't the prospect that there is no eternity, at least a conscience one. It's the isolation from a majority that lives in a man-made fantasy.
My suggestion to you is to seek a doctor. A doctor will diagnose your depression, and then offer REAL suggestion that may include counseling and maybe drugs.
Professionals will not care or should not care about your lack of religious beliefs. They will treat your depression.

Pitar's picture
When I was a child of 6 my

When I was a child of 6 my father was a nuclear bomber pilot flying America's first generation jet bombers. The military did not prepare these men properly to expect what such high performance aircraft demanded of them and many crashed due to inexperience. Instead of putting fighter pilots in those cockpits, who lived in a high performance world of aerial warfare, they put bomber pilots in them who did not have the experience needed to anticipate what the airplanes could do and keep their heads "way out in front", so to speak. Many crews died in avoidable crashes. I lived in base housing and my friends all had bomber crew fathers. Many of them lost their fathers to such crashes. I was always fearful my own father would be next. But, he'd come from a career of flying high performance fighter planes and it served him well. I was a nervous, fidgety wreck at 6 years old. My whole family was.

The above wore on me for the 4 years my father flew those flying coffins, as I had come to think of them. Concurrent with that experience I was losing my religion by leaps and bounds and by 10 years of age I was self-affirmed in atheism but remained quiet about it. I had no such feelings about it as I did about the PTSD I felt about losing my pop to some ridiculous calamity.

Losing faith (god and all that it spun off) was a desire of mine to lose, if hindsight can be called into play. While I might be able to empathize with the feeling you're having by contrasting it to losing my father, I can only say that the loss you're feeling about god and religion is my notion of a gain to my way of thinking.

What I would like to discuss is your connection and disconnection. If you feel strong remorse for disconnecting you must have even stronger convictions for accepting the consequences of it. That takes strength and I commend you for embracing it.

ProgrammingGodJordan's picture
What if I told you you don't

What if I told you you don't need to believe in anything?

Research shows that neutral aligned persons tend to do better in logical tasks than both negatively and positively emoting beings.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4050437/

Neutral beings tend to avoid beliefs/opinions.

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I am creator/founder of a phenomenon called 'non-beliefism'.
( nonbeliefism ) is (atheism minus theism)
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I am a casual body builder/software programmer.

AaronD.Hess's picture
I understand the fear and

I understand the fear and anxiety you are going through. I discovered I was an athiest last year. I was raised Christian, specifically 7th Day Adventist. When I was a teenager I left the church. I couldn't understand by a loving god would wait until only 2,000 years ago to make Jesus the only way into heaven.
So for a long time I believed all religions were ture deep down. I flirted with chines Taoism and a new american cult of Christianity called A Course in Miracles.
It wasn't until last year when I came out as an atheist. I discovered the YouTube video series by Aron Ra called The Fundamental Falsehoods of Creationism. I was raised a creationist and seeing those discarded beliefs of my childhood so thoroughly and vigorously torn apart was fun. Then at one point Aron Ra made a huge point against the generic spirituality I had been hiding in. He pointed out that if there was an entity talking to humanity and leading to a higher purpose then when it communicated all Holy Men should be able to recognize it and agree what it said, instead if religion was just making it all up as we went it Holy Nen would be constantly argueing, reinturpreting, and fracturing into different sects. That was the moment when I became an atheist, when I saw the world for what it was, and not what I wished it could be.
I have depression and anxiety too. I feel sad and scared and foolish. I no longer can believe in a god whispering in humanitys ear to do good. I came onto this site to find people to talk too who have had simular thoughts and feelings.
It did scare me too to realize that emotions are just chemical reactions of brains. I take antidepressants and that has done more for my depression than praying and meditation ever did.
I know by the subject for your post that you are finding it scary that our feelings are just electrical impulses. But I didn't realise until recently how more scared I was that my depression and fear were given to my by God as a trail or a punishment. How scary it was that a supernatural entity will for a whim or an unknown transgression on my part punish me with depression, fear, and suicidal thoughts. It is a lot less scary to me that those are caused by a chemical imbalance by my abnormal brain and can be treated easily with real medicine and therapy.

bigbill's picture
what your experiencing is

what your experiencing is natural because you were once in your Christian walk believing in certain creeds and then by changing over you have suffered the consequences of reality setting in.Atheism can be a very depressing anf though provoking filled with anxiety. B ecause once one leaves the faith that they been espousing for some time this brings with it all kinds of changes.You can lose frienships and a place to go when in trouble what religion brings to the table is a place to socialize with fellow people who believe in like manner.Also there are questions you have to ponder what about the afterlife? to ponder if this is true or not brings on anxiety.tell me did you speak to anyone before you went ahead and left the faith?It just maybe that this life is all there is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. I know what a depressing thought. Some times accepting things in this life can be very demanding of our psyche. But if you suffer like I do from depression and anxiety what you have to ask yourself what is causing this fear to come on me, Should I get mental health assistance and so on. You need since you sufer depression to air your thoughts to a trained listener who will be of some help to you.Best of everything to you.

xoxosta's picture
I never thought cannabis

I never thought cannabis would help with things like apathy and depression. I get that it sounds strange to many people, but if you approach it in a controlled way instead of just letting things slide, you can actually get some pretty amazing results. By the way, I only buy my weed from https://westcoastbud.io/ now. I’m done experimenting and prefer to stick with top-quality stuff.

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