Alright, I want to preface this. It is going to touch on subjects that are sensitive and highly personal to people so I ask that you stay respectful and don't religion bash (specific religions or religions in general). People have the right to believe what they want to believe and they are not wrong for having a different belief system than you do.
tl;dr: How do you overcome decades of religious belief that suicide is an unforgivable sin that will haunt you for eternity?
On to what I need help with. I have found as I have planned and attempted in the past is perhaps the biggest component of my personal SI is the religious beliefs I was born and raised with. For the first 20 years of my life I was indoctrinated (charged language I know, but it applies) in the mormon faith. You can call it Christianity (it is), you can call it a cult (I disagree, but will admit it is a high demand religion and shares some of, but not all of, the hallmarks of a cult), or you can call it pure poppycock as God isn't real. For the sake of this discussion it really doesn't matter what your view or even my current view of it is. What matters is what was drilled into my head relentlessly for hours every day of the week both formally (Church, youth activities, seminary,etc) and at home (Family home evening, family scripture study, family prayer, rules, expectations,etc).
By the time I was 20 and had failed to become a missionary for the church because of health reasons (a mixed blessing to be sure), I was utterly and thoroughly so sure that what I had grown up learning was the truth that there was no question in my mind about the gospel and what it taught. There was no room to doubt. Also clear to me then was I fell well short of those teachings and it became the root of a lot of my guilt and self hate over the years.
After that, I slowly stopped attending, stopped studying, and stopped associating with the church and its teachings and have wrestled myself free of the associated guilt. Mostly. I think there's a part of me that will never truly let it go. It formed the basis of my life, my morals, and my ethics for two decades while I became who I am today.
Back to my SI. One of the things I was taught, was that our lives have eternal consequences. How we live our lives here will effect us for eternity. Choices that are against the teachings of Christ and the gospel, if not repented of, can lead to these eternal consequences which can limit our happiness forever. Obviously, ctb qualifies as a choice that does not align with those teachings, and given that I will be dead repentance is right out too. I was taught that ctb is murder of self, which is nigh unforgivable anyways.
This bedrock of indoctrination causes absolute paralysis when attempting to ctb. It's more than, I just don't know what happens when I die. It's that I do know... and that decision is going to limit my happiness, keep me from my family, and leave me miserable for eternity.
Now again, these are not beliefs that I have put any sort of stock in for years. I need help decoupling decades of indoctrinated beliefs from my SI so I only look at death objectively and not through the lens of what I was taught in my formative years that I am now quite agnostic about.
For those of you who grew up religious, or perhaps still are, what steps, tips, tools, techniques, resources, etc have you used to overcome those beliefs and come to accept that it can be okay to ctb if you need to?
tl;dr: How do you overcome decades of religious belief that suicide is an unforgivable sin that will haunt you for eternity?
On to what I need help with. I have found as I have planned and attempted in the past is perhaps the biggest component of my personal SI is the religious beliefs I was born and raised with. For the first 20 years of my life I was indoctrinated (charged language I know, but it applies) in the mormon faith. You can call it Christianity (it is), you can call it a cult (I disagree, but will admit it is a high demand religion and shares some of, but not all of, the hallmarks of a cult), or you can call it pure poppycock as God isn't real. For the sake of this discussion it really doesn't matter what your view or even my current view of it is. What matters is what was drilled into my head relentlessly for hours every day of the week both formally (Church, youth activities, seminary,etc) and at home (Family home evening, family scripture study, family prayer, rules, expectations,etc).
By the time I was 20 and had failed to become a missionary for the church because of health reasons (a mixed blessing to be sure), I was utterly and thoroughly so sure that what I had grown up learning was the truth that there was no question in my mind about the gospel and what it taught. There was no room to doubt. Also clear to me then was I fell well short of those teachings and it became the root of a lot of my guilt and self hate over the years.
After that, I slowly stopped attending, stopped studying, and stopped associating with the church and its teachings and have wrestled myself free of the associated guilt. Mostly. I think there's a part of me that will never truly let it go. It formed the basis of my life, my morals, and my ethics for two decades while I became who I am today.
Back to my SI. One of the things I was taught, was that our lives have eternal consequences. How we live our lives here will effect us for eternity. Choices that are against the teachings of Christ and the gospel, if not repented of, can lead to these eternal consequences which can limit our happiness forever. Obviously, ctb qualifies as a choice that does not align with those teachings, and given that I will be dead repentance is right out too. I was taught that ctb is murder of self, which is nigh unforgivable anyways.
This bedrock of indoctrination causes absolute paralysis when attempting to ctb. It's more than, I just don't know what happens when I die. It's that I do know... and that decision is going to limit my happiness, keep me from my family, and leave me miserable for eternity.
Now again, these are not beliefs that I have put any sort of stock in for years. I need help decoupling decades of indoctrinated beliefs from my SI so I only look at death objectively and not through the lens of what I was taught in my formative years that I am now quite agnostic about.
For those of you who grew up religious, or perhaps still are, what steps, tips, tools, techniques, resources, etc have you used to overcome those beliefs and come to accept that it can be okay to ctb if you need to?
