Life After Religious Deconversion
When I went through my deconversion from Christianity, I didn’t know what to expect on the other side. I wasn’t sure if life after religious deconversion was going to be better or worse, but all I knew was that I wanted my life to be based on truth from that moment onward. In the eleven years since my deconversion, I’ve found that life has been so much better for me ever since and I suspect it will be for you too if you’re going through a deconversion as well.
While some things that were once precious will be lost to you, I would argue that those things were never good for you anyway. Furthermore, what you gain is far superior to the experience you could ever have while being repressed under religious thought and control. Therefore, today I’m going to present to you five things a person loses and five things a person gains in their life after religious deconversion.
The Things You Lose After Religious Deconversion
#1 You Lose the Obligation to Attend Church and Other Religious Activities
The most immediate and noticeable change when you deconvert is that you no longer feel obligated to attend religious services or activities. While some of these activities were enjoyable, there was always a pressure to be there, wasn’t there? If you had a tough week and needed more rest on the weekend, that was too bad because you were judged by others and by yourself for your church attendance. God forbid (literally) that you take some time for yourself on the weekends to recover and spend time with your family. And let’s be real, did any of us really need to hear those sermons every week when we actually needed rest and connection with the people we loved far more? Once you no longer feel guilted into the obligation of consistent church attendance, it’s amazing how much more enjoyable and relaxing your weekends (and maybe even weeknights) become. We as humans already have enough to do with our work, school, and daily lives. The last thing we need is another obligation to consume the last bits of energy we possess, especially when we wake up and realize that our religious obligation was actually a waste of time and based not on truth, but instead on assumptions and fear.
#2 You Lose the Obsession with Moral Perfectionism and Repentance
You know, it really sucked being obsessed with my behavior all the time as a Christian. I felt like I could never do anything right. It was like I was being monitored by God continuously as he nitpicked my behavior. After all, just ONE minor, insignificant mistake or moral fault could send me to a LIFETIME in hell. Yeah, like that ever made any sense. This caused me to constantly obsess over obtaining and maintaining moral perfection, as is the case for most of the Christians I’ve ever known. Instead of focusing on living a moral life and accepting my mistakes when they happened, I instead was encouraged by my religion to obsess over these mistakes, feel excessive shame and remorse for them, and repent for these “sins” afterward. However, when I left religion and became an atheist, I finally developed a proper understanding of moral reasoning and moved on with my life. I no longer obsess over my imperfections. I no longer need to repent to a god that might not even exist. And finally, I’m focused on being good instead of beating myself up for all the times when I’m bad. Honestly, being religious created an unhealthy psychological state for me, one which finally healed once I deconverted.
#3 You Lose the Fear of Judgment in the Afterlife
While going through a deconversion, one of the hardest things for some people to shake is their belief in hell or some type of judgement in the afterlife. It’s honestly sad how religious people are motivated by fear of judgment to stay in line. Instead of being motivated only by love and moral reasoning to be good, so many religions and their holy books have preferred fear and cruelty to keep people in their control. So basically, instead of tapping into people’s best instincts for social harmony, someone thought it necessary to scare the shit out of people to keep them in line. During my deconversion, I like many others, initially had some fear of hell. I occasionally thought, “What if I’m wrong? What if I’m going to go to hell or be judged harshly by a god when I die for becoming an atheist?” However, as time passed, I realized that most religions had their own unique afterlife fabrications and that because they were all different, they couldn’t all be true at the same time. I also strongly suspected that all of them were false. As a result, my feelings eventually shifted and I realized that for hell to be an actual threat, it had to actually exist. And for me to believe that it existed, there needed to be evidence of the afterlife. Because I soon realized in my research that there was absolutely ZERO credible evidence for the afterlife, my belief in hell faded and I realized that there was nothing to fear. It was all just superstition and deserved no further serious consideration. If you still have a fear of hell, just realize that it’s not based in reality or reliable evidence, but instead in indoctrination. It’s just a feeling, a feeling that will go away with time as your belief in hell goes away.
#4 You Lose the Shame for Prioritizing Yourself
While I can’t speak for all religions, the version of Christianity I grew up with turned me into a self-depriving people pleaser. I was expected to serve others and always put their needs above my own. Sacrifice as a concept was adored within my religious community, treated like an ideal to be sought. As Christians, we based our worth as individuals on how much value we provided to other people, instead of basing our worth on who we were. There was no emphasis on self-worth, self-love, or self-care; it was all about what you could do for others. I often heard the phrase “God first, others second, you last” from the people around me. What an awful piece of advice and a terrible way to live! This concept is completely contrary to everything we know from modern psychology about achieving the wellbeing of both the individual and society as a whole. Instead of prioritizing the wellness of the individual, religion actually prioritizes the wellness of itself! It was never about helping people achieve wellness; it was always about profiting and upscaling the religion. In the same way that greedy companies mistreat their employees to maximize their financial gains, religion also encourages self-deprivation, self-neglect, and self-sacrifice to maximize its reach. However, once you leave religion behind, you can finally drop that insufferable shame for honoring your needs and start prioritizing yourself the way you’ve always deserved. You start to realize that YOU come first and that you’re no good to anyone if you aren’t taking proper care of yourself.
#5 You Lose the Company of Close-Minded People
And finally, the last thing you lose when you deconvert from religion is the company of close-minded people. At this intersection between your past religious life and your new secular life, you discover very quickly who truly loves and respects you. In my experience, some of your religious friends, the open-minded ones, will continue being friends with you and agree to disagree with you when necessary. Some of them may also choose to disrespect you by refusing to even acknowledge your shift, continuing to treat you like you’re still religious. And lastly, some of them will show you just how close-minded, prejudiced, and insecure they really are, leaving your friendship or criticizing you for your new position. The reality is that while you will lose people, either completely or partially, the ones that you lose were probably never that good for you anyway. However, the people that stay in your life and treat you and your new position with respect–you don’t lose these people. You only lose the ones that are worth losing.
The Things You Gain After Religious Deconversion
#1 You Gain the Company of Open-Minded People
In your life after deconversion, you not only gain new people who respect you and your new position, but as alluded to earlier, you also gain appreciation for the open-minded people who still remain in your life after your deconversion. Because religion thrives on being close-minded to the world of possibilities, when you leave religion, you finally gain access to people who are much more open-minded. These people will not only be much more likely to be interested in discovering and valuing you for who you really are, but they will also be much less prone to being condescending toward the way you think and feel. I would argue that open-minded people are healthier to associate with and will bring much more love and acceptance into your life than any close-minded people ever could. While I do value challenging my beliefs occasionally because I value truth, the last thing anyone needs is a close-minded person who doesn’t care to understand or respect another human being for who they are or how they think.
#2 You Gain the Ability to Ground Your Beliefs in Evidence
This one is a big one. Instead of constantly trying to convince yourself that something is true on the basis of faith or religious dogma, you can begin rebuilding your beliefs on the basis of evidence. You won’t realize how insecure you felt about your previous beliefs until you develop new ones based on evidence, observation, science, moral reasoning, and psychology. The confidence you gain in what you know to be true is vastly superior to the feeble confidence you understandably had in faith, religious authoritarianism, or superstitious texts. No longer are you trying to force confidence and conviction because they come naturally since you actually have evidence this time! Also, the days of having to have an answer for everything are over. I remember when I was a Christian that I was expected to be ready to “defend the faith” at all times. I often felt like if I didn’t have an answer for something, I had to pretend like I knew the answer or defer to the “God knows the answer” excuse. Now, as an atheist, I admit what I don’t know when the evidence is insufficient, but boy oh boy, when I do know something, I KNOW it and can prove it. Being able to be honest with myself about what I do and don’t know is such a relief. Being grounded in evidence instead of trying to determine what is true based upon shifting feelings (i.e. faith) has resulted in clarity instead of the frustration I previously lived with in my religious past. Now I know what I know and have the honesty and humility with myself and others to admit what I don’t know. It’s so freeing!
#3 You Gain the Motivation to Live YOUR Best Life
Once you leave religion and realize that the concept of an afterlife is probably just another man-made pipedream, you gain an urgency to start taking your life more seriously. Instead of deferring your hope and happiness to an afterlife that may never happen, you understand that this life is probably the only one you’ll ever get and that you need to live it YOUR way. Gone are the days of living your life in subjugation to an authority that might not even exist and sacrificing yourself for the benefit of your “non-profit” religions and churches. Instead, you begin to question what really matters to YOU and who you really are, beginning the process of self-discovery and aligning with your true self. Doing what matters to you becomes of primary importance because you realize how much time you’ve wasted serving goals and values that were never really yours. The truth is that you actually begin living YOUR life for the first time. No longer are you living by someone else's arbitrary rules or values, but instead by those of your own. You begin to realize that what you need, want, think, and feel actually matters and that religious servitude has only been stealing those things from you your entire life. Because of your deconversion, you now OWN your life and can begin to live your best life as a result.
#4 You Gain the Freedom to Think for Yourself
In addition to the open-minded people you will attract, the confidence in your convictions, and the motivation to live a life in alignment with your values, you also gain the freedom to think for yourself. Instead of doubting your inner wisdom and deferring your mind to the religious authorities or holy books held over you, you begin to trust yourself and realize that you’re capable of thinking for yourself! Because thinking skeptically and freely is no longer the “sin of doubt” or some other type of sacrilegious grievance, you gain the ability to discern what is right, what is wrong, what is true, and what is false. Trading blind trust in authority for trust in yourself, you gain self-respect and finally honor your ability to think. You begin to realize that it is your responsibility to develop the critical thinking skills religion never taught you and that you are ultimately responsible for what you think and do. You also look back into your religious past and realize that you’ve always had this responsibility, but failed to acknowledge it because you gave away your ability to think to appease a religion that doesn’t want you to think. Now though, there is no institution trying to shut down your logical faculties, but instead only yourself, seeking truth and understanding in a world that far too often fears and avoids it.
#5 You Gain the Freedom to Be Yourself
Most importantly, in your life after religion, you leave behind all of the acting, pretending, and hiding you did to alter and stuff yourself into the tiny hole religion created for you. You gain the ability to expand into your true self and be who you’ve always been on the inside. Because you think for yourself and are no longer diminishing yourself under the authority of religion, you finally gain the freedom to be yourself. So many religious people spend their whole lives never living in alignment with their true values or expressing their authentic selves. But you, because you’ve left all of this self-repressing dogma behind, are about to bloom into something beautiful. Some people might tell you that you have “changed”; however, you and I both know this isn’t the case. You’re just being the person you’ve always been, free of the false self religion continually expected of you. And what the world needs is more people like you, not the mindless drones that religion keeps trying to manufacture, but instead REAL, authentic, independent-thinking individuals. The world never grows or changes in a healthy way when people are forced into self-abandonment and compliance through propaganda, indoctrination, or brainwashing. Instead, the world becomes a better place when every individual owns their own mind and contributes their unique perspective into the world’s consensus. Therefore, the freedom that you gain to be yourself when you leave religion is not only a gift to yourself, but also to the world. Individuation and collaboration make the world a better place, not compliance and dissolution of the self.
Final Thoughts
If you’re currently going through a deconversion, just know that after a while, all of the stress and uncertainty you’re experiencing will eventually get replaced with confidence and a much better life. While you may lose some people, you'll also lose the shame, guilt, fear, obligation, and self-depreciation that religion has been giving you too. And what’s left after that? The opportunity to gain healthier friends, ground your life in evidence instead of faith, live YOUR life for the first time, think for yourself, and most importantly, be yourself. All of these things are priceless! If only more people could go through this process to experience a better and healthier life, the world would become a better place.
You’re not crazy, you’re not weird, you’re not weak in faith–you’re just awakening to the reality that has always been in front of you and inside of you that others deny. Most people don’t get this far, either because they’ve never had something happen in their life to stir their awakening OR because they’ve lacked the courage to discover the truth when they do. But YOU…you’re not them, and you’re going to get through this.
While it may be difficult right now, you’ll eventually come out the other side and you’ll be FREE!
The Root Cause of People Pleasing
The root cause of people pleasing behavior is an emotionally unsafe childhood. Maybe self-expression wasn’t allowed. Maybe you were blamed for things that weren’t your fault. Maybe your parents or caregivers made you feel like you weren’t good enough, providing only conditional love in an effort to control you instead of accepting you the way you were. Whatever it was, all of these injuries damaged your self-image and filled you with toxic shame–the belief that your authentic self isn’t good, lovable, acceptable, worthy, or respectable as it is. And tragically, your natural response to this belief was to alter yourself in an attempt to gain safety, love, and approval instead of realizing that your caregivers failed to love you for who you are. Today, if you’re willing, you’re going to drop this shame and choose to love yourself as you are.
The Misery of Being a People Pleaser
People pleasers, also known as “nice guys or girls”, spend their whole lives wearing a mask to cover their true self. They constantly assess how to please everyone else except for themselves. Having spent the majority of my life as a people pleaser due to the toxic shame instilled in me by my narcissistic parents and Christianity, I can tell you that it ruins the quality of your life. Instead of living authentically, being who you are, doing what makes you happy, and taking good care of yourself, you do the exact opposite. The nice guy gives everyone else what they want in a desperate need to gain validation from those around him because he’s convinced that he’s unlovable and is unable to validate and love himself.
The Psychology Behind The People Pleaser
Because the people pleaser’s childhood caregivers convinced him that he wasn’t good enough, he has already rejected himself. He had no chance to avoid this internal shame because it happened so early in his development before he could think for himself. Because he isn’t able to validate himself, he desperately seeks to counteract his own self-rejection with validation from others. He subconsciously feels, “If I can get other people to love and accept me, then maybe I’m worthy of my own love and acceptance.” However, in this process, because he’s rejected his true self, he erects a false self to show others because he’s terrified that others might see his “awful” true self. So, he’s driven to create an idealized personality that no one could reject that pleases everybody. He becomes a chameleon and alters himself to match whoever he’s with at the moment. As a result, his mind becomes exhausted in social situations due to the unrelenting effort to optimize his act to receive the acceptance he craves from those around him.
The Confusion and Social Anxiety of the People Pleaser
After a while, reading people and presenting the ideal false self to please them starts to confuse the people pleaser. He begins to realize that he’s not really sure who he is anymore. Afterall, when you spend your whole life as a professional actor, acting starts to feel safer than authentic self-expression. Because you have no idea how the people in your life will react to your true self, the fear of being yourself increases over time. Eventually this fear develops into severe social anxiety. Furthermore, this fear from your social anxiety isn’t that people might reject you; it is the belief that people will reject you because you have already rejected yourself.
My Years of Failed Attempts at Healing From People Pleasing
So now that we understand what causes people pleasing, how do we heal this unfortunate condition? For years, I tried to be more authentic, to force the mask off and show my true self to everyone, and I could never sustain it. Before my recovery from people pleasing, I was a perpetual smiler, smiling at everyone even when it wasn’t necessary. For a while, I tried to force myself to not smile excessively and I just ended up feeling like an asshole whenever I withheld my smiles because I couldn’t tell the difference between an authentic smile and my mask. Because I couldn’t even tell which ones were real and which ones were false, I often mistakenly suppressed the real ones in an effort to get rid of the false ones! It was so aggravating and confusing for me. In my effort to express my true self more, I couldn’t even figure out which behaviors were genuine for me.
What Finally Began My Recovery From People Pleasing
So what eventually worked for me? Determining the origin of my toxic beliefs about myself. I had to examine the damaging beliefs I had about myself and realize that I didn’t choose them for myself. Instead, I had to become aware that these unhealthy core beliefs came from my narcissistic parents and their toxic Christian religion. I was told from an early age that I was an evil sinner–despicable from the day I was born–and that I needed someone to save me from a hell that I apparently deserved just because I dared to live. Also, I was constantly criticized for not being good enough because my parents were perfectionists. Furthermore, I was always wrong because my parents idolized themselves and blamed me for their mistakes because they were covert narcissists. My parents systematically rejected my true self because they wanted to manipulate me into a more pacified, controllable version of myself that they could use to feed their narcissistic egos. As a result, self-discovery and self-expression didn’t happen in my childhood like it should have; instead, I repressed my true self to survive and took on characteristics that weren’t my own to give my parents and their religion what they wanted from me. I also later realized that just like my parents, the god of Christianity himself was a narcissist too, blaming and punishing humanity for his faulty creation and convincing us that we’re the evil ones when it’s actually his intolerant, wrathful, blood-loving, and hell-creating self that is evil.
Rejecting the Brainwashing of My Childhood
Once I understood that I was brainwashed to believe that I was an unworthy, unlovable, terrible person, I rejected those beliefs. It made me angry to see how an innocent child like me was conditioned by my parents and their religion to despise myself. I started to think independently and reconsider all of the beliefs that had been forced into me during my vulnerable childhood. I asked myself, “Who am I? What matters to me? What do I want? Do my actions indicate that I am a good person or a bad person? Am I a lovable person? Am I worthy of anyone loving me? Is my judgement always wrong or have I just been the victim of narcissistic abuse?”
The Beginning of Self-Differentiation from My Parents
As I asked myself these questions, I noticed that my answers differed tremendously from the poisonous presumptions pressured into me as a child. I realized that I was a unique person, with values and beliefs very different from my parent’s. Truth and authenticity actually mattered to me instead of wishful thinking and hidden motives. I also wanted real connection, not the conditional love from my parents that required self-abandonment. Furthermore, my actions indicated that while I was a very hurt person, I was also a good person who valued moral reasoning over the mandates of a morally-devoid god. I also realized that I was a lovable person and that like everyone, some people would like my personality and some wouldn’t. I decided that I was worthy of love and that even if no one else would choose to love me, I would choose to love me. And lastly, I realized that my judgement was actually quite good, considering all of the years of hyper-awareness that I developed as a people pleaser in emotionally unsafe environments.
The Rise of My Anger and Self-Worth
My answers to these questions began a shift within me from insecurity to righteous anger. I began to realize that instead of being a bad emotion that should be suppressed, my anger was actually a self-protective instinct meant to shield me from those who would harm me or diminish my value. It was this very anger that began to rebuild my self-worth. Whenever anyone mistreated me, instead of justifying and minimizing their actions like I usually did, my anger would rise and motivate me to communicate with them to achieve resolution. My anger was advocating for me, revealing mistreatment from those around me so that I could hold them accountable. I started to understand that many of the aspects of myself that I had repressed due to the unhealthy emotional environment of my childhood, like my anger, were actually parts of me trying to help me.
Rebuilding Myself One Day at a Time
Over time, I slowly began to integrate all of myself into my life, including the parts of me that didn’t always please those around me. I began to be myself a little bit more every day, exposing myself to my fear of rejection while also reminding myself of the truth of who I am and my worthiness as a person. As I overcame these fears one by one, I began to realize that these fears were nothing but illusions coming from the awful core beliefs about myself from my unfortunate childhood. My confidence started to build, not the type one gets externally from others, but instead the type that comes internally from oneself known as self-confidence.I also began to view myself in a much better light, raising my self-esteem. And, most importantly, I chose to love myself in a way that no one ever had, developing self-love.
Overcoming My Fear of Rejection
While many of these realizations have been immediate on the conscious level of my mind, it has taken time for these beliefs to shift on a deeper subconscious and emotional level for me. As I’ve recovered from my previously poor self-image, I’ve grown in empowerment and self-respect over time. I used to be afraid of significant shifts in my behavior being seen by people who’ve known me for a long time, feeling like if I ever revealed my true self, I would have to do it around new people. I began to realize that I had been rejecting myself every time I thought like this, diminishing and hiding myself from the people in my life just to make them comfortable and avoid triggering my own shame. I began to think, “What about me? What about my self-expression? What about my comfort? What about what I want?!” As a result of questions like these, I started to gradually reveal my true self to the people around me and as expected, some people liked me and some people didn’t, but that was okay with me because I liked me.
The Results of My Healing and Transformation
As I write this, I have transformed significantly from being mostly an externally-validated people pleaser to mostly being an internally-validated authentic man. I’ve let people go who weren’t good for me instead of trying to keep pleasing them. I’ve held people accountable who love me, but have been neglecting or disrespecting me. I’ve also held myself accountable for not being the man I want to be. The end result is that I’ve chosen to leave almost all of the relationships in my life because most of them were dependent upon my deprivation, tolerance, inauthenticity, and self-sacrifice. I’ve realized that it’s better to be alone in authenticity and love yourself than to surround yourself with people who don’t love or respect you the way you deserve. It’s this shift toward providing love for myself that has enabled me to leave these unhealthy relationships behind and begin a new relationship with myself, one with self-love, self-respect, and self-esteem. Relationships with others are less essential for me now because I provide for myself what I previously sought in the validation of others. Now I no longer try to make incompatible relationships work by altering or diminishing myself. I no longer try to see the best in people out of hopes that they will do the same for me. Instead, I try to see people for who they actually are based upon their actions and if they’re not good for me, they’re out of my life. The people who give me the respect I deserve and who celebrate me for who I am–those are the people who remain in my life. However, I am done with diminishing myself to make those who reject my true self accept a false version of me.
I’ve finally found the contentment with myself I’ve always wanted. I’ve finally found the love and acceptance I’ve desperately sought my whole life. I’m no longer a people pleaser because I’ve found love and acceptance where I least expected it–from myself.
Looking for Love in the Right Place
If you’re a people pleaser and you’re looking for love and acceptance, stop looking for it in the wrong places like others and religion. Instead, start looking for love in the one place that it really matters–from yourself. You don’t need to feel love for yourself to give it to yourself. You just need to choose to love yourself, for it is this choice that will begin your healing journey. Love yourself the way you’ve always wanted to be loved! It’s time for you to switch from being a people pleaser to a self pleaser. The world will benefit far more from your authenticity and self-expression than it ever did from your false self and fearful mask. It’s time for you to give yourself and the world the real version of yourself!
Final Thoughts
Will you choose to love yourself? Will you choose to become the validation for yourself that you’ve always painfully sought in others? Will you choose to stop avoiding rejection so that you can gain something far greater for yourself–your own joy, authentic expression, and happiness? Will…you…choose…YOU?
“It’s better to be who you are and be loved by some and rejected by others than it is to be someone who you are not and never be loved for who you actually are.”