I come from a similar past I deal with much of these things on my Youtube channel. Compelledunbeliever. I have let go of my childhood indoctrination but will never fully recover. There is just too much brainwashing to overcome. This being said I am now happier than ever and recovery is no longer a burden, its more like that slight irritation when your socks bunch up at your toes at the end of the day in your shoe. You don't really notice how much it bothered you until you take your shoes off. So take your shoes off and relax, you have done most of the healing already.

Learn to love yourself,your real, authentic self.....you ARE as you were intended to be!

I truly understand your uphill journey. At 61, an ex evangelical pastor, gay and Agnostic, I struggle with the condemning echoes of that part of my past. It's not easy to simply break and move on. For me. I've maintained a small sense of spirituality that satisfies my need while trying to make some sense out of life. Hang in there. Feel free to contact me. We share a lot in common.

If you can focus on what you've accomplished and not on what you haven't, you'll be in a better place already as you continue to move forward. None of us are entirely finished; it's the journey and what we learn that matters.

You are a product of your culture, being free from religion will just make you question and adapt without fear of the cosmic nany. But if things from the religion makes you feel good, continue them, but because you like it...

I believe that fundamentalist upbringings like yours and mine were actually child abuse from many perspectives. However, the biggest beef I have with a fundi upbringing is that morality and fatalism creep in unawares in normal life, particularly in decision making. I'm a highly aware 57 year old and I'm only now being able of root out the bias

Religion and what it taught you would be the biggest reason I know of to explain your feelings of self loathing. Recovering could be a lifelong journey and you might need to talk to a therapist if you can afford one. Make sure it is a secular therapist if you do. If possible find a support group that you can identify with.

It gets easier as you go along. I decided I'm agnostic a couple of years ago, and already the entire nightmare has faded away. I don't have the slightest impulse to attend church or do anything else religious.

Yes. We do recover. It took me a few years, but now I have done enough study to know that the Bible stories are mythological, and that churches are scams, always asking for money. I am now completely free from religion, without any anger issues, and have developed my own code of ethics, including the concepts that we are free to choose whom we love, and that faith (acceptance of an idea without evidence) is a trap set by scam artists. I wish you the best in reaching a full recovery.

Your past will always be a part of you. The secret is not to try and eliminate it, because you can't, but to transform it. Take all the bad and negative things from the past and use them for good.

After hearing a LOT of horror stories from friends who were chastised, beaten, ridiculed, or some times worse, just for being different, have given one thing a lot of thought.
And that thought, or conclusion I always seem to come to, is that most who go around claiming to be a Christian, are the most un- Christ like people ever. Saying that God loves you, and in the next breath say that you will burn in hell.
Any Friend, Family member, or whomever that will do any of the above to any one, is not a good person.
I don't care under what crutch, religion, what ever you may want you to behave that way. but that shit is evil.

Now to be clear, I do know quite a few who are believers, and they would never treat another that way. And I've also known some non-believers who are shit people, But to be honest, they are somewhat of a minority.

There is a great quote that I've always favored:
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”
― Steven Weinberg.

Another, although I don't know who coined it but,:
If you can't tell the difference between right and wrong, you don't lack religion, you lack empathy.

Sorry if this didn't make any sense, I got fairly angry in my head while I was thinking of what I was going to say.

Sometimes I think that while being gay is a burden, it is also a gift for some - causing one to question society and build up strength to stand for what is right. I think it ensures open eyes.

We live life daily. Our past is over and done, tomorrow is only shaped by our action in the present moment. Our journey is a life time of failures and success. Like Edison, he didn't look at all failures of things that happened to make a light bulb, what he learned was what you could not use to make a light bulb.
To deprogram yourself from a life time of programming takes time, it's not instantaneous. Don't beat yourself up, your free. It just takes time.

I have never been religious, and I don't know if you ever can fully. I know that religion instills a deep dread of hell to control people, and those sins you are "guilty" of are arbitrary rules created by men, who in the absence of understanding, invented gods and religions.

With no gods there are no sins. You answer to you. Religious thought is like a computer virus that sidetracks the CPU and corrupts data. The brain is difficult to reprogram, but it's not impossible. Try revulsion: when a religious thought crosses your mind, remind yourself of the harm religion has done or how ridiculous those beliefs are.

Do you really think people who are okay with slavery and infanticide, but find it unforgivable to wear blended fabrics have the moral imperative to judge you?

I didn't have as hard a row to hoe as you -- I'm heterosexual and was not ejected from my family when I left the faith. I've been out of the faith for 25 years, and fully embraced my atheism about 15 years ago. I'm 62.

The main ways that my faith harmed me was to cause many wasted years trying to live by dogma rather than by common sense responses to the situation on the ground. It kept me in a very painful and toxic first marriage for 15 years, when I probably would have been out of it in not less than 5, possibly far less, without the divorce taboo for example. This harmed my two children from that first marriage also.

But if you really unpack it, the biggest problem for me was the expectations that my faith set. I was taught from a very young age that if you sincerely and conscientiously practice your faith, everything will be okay in your life and in fact this deeply interventionist god would actively bless you. There can't be more arrogant and entitled thinking than that. Predictably, I have a lot of disappointments as a result. I did not expect to experience divorce and remarriage, and then being widowed and remarriage. I did not expect the death of one of my children. I did not price in all the suffering that went with both those deaths (mine, and theirs).

My religious expectations -- to be "the husband of one wife" and to be effortlessly happy all the time, living the "victorious Christian life" -- I now know to be complete nonsense. Intellectually I know that. In my heart of hearts, though, I still struggle with disappointment and sorrow. My life is not what I chose or wanted, and has generally not gone well for those I care about either.

That the exact nature of my life was never really mine to unilaterally choose I know in my head to be true but it still cuts me to the quick, existentially. I can will myself to, as you put it, "open my hands and let it go", and I largely succeed, actually. But not in the dark watches of the night. Not really. Not when I think of my dead wife and son and my quasi-estranged / indifferent daughter who felt I allowed her to be robbed of HER expected childhood by staying in that first marriage too long, etc.

So yeah, fundamentalism has been the gift that keeps on giving, in countless ways. It basically produced an entitled little brat who grew up to be an entitled adult with crazy ideas about reality, and who then was forced to face bare-metal reality through adversity.

Still, I have made progress on this over the years and suppose that I will continue to do so. It is just a maddeningly slow process and I have a feeling it will wind down more out of personal exhaustion than any sort of actual closure or release. I am getting to the point now where I'm too old to give a fig, and maybe that's the whole point of my journey.

My present wife had a harder life than me, right back to childhood, and she has managed to retain a more optimistic approach to life because she never counted on it to present itself on anything but its own terms. The difficulties she encountered were no surprise to her. She is weary, possibly more so than me, but not disappointed or frustrated with it. To her, it just is what it is. I try to learn from that.

I also remind myself every day that I DID escape, however belatedly, and I was able to find my way to an existence that is not circumscribed by anything but my best interest and those of my loved ones. Freedom of thought is a great thing.

There is no one, near as I can tell, theist or not, who nears the clearing at the end of their path unscathed. We're all wounded in various ways. If religion had not had a big role in it for me, someone or something else would have. We all make it up as we go through life, and get a clue later and with less clarity than we generally wish. The important thing is that we continue to grow as persons in the process. So the final lesson I've learned is, don't obsess too much about your personal purgatory; it is no better or worse than the next person's. Transcend it as best you can, and -- better still -- help others transcend theirs.