In my religious background, there is huge emphasis on fearing God, fearing His wrath, and hell. Hell is very graphical. Here are some verses showing how graphical it is:
“And if ye do it not - and ye can never do it - then guard yourselves against the Fire prepared for disbelievers, whose fuel is of men and stones.” (Q 2:24) “Lo! Those who disbelieve Our revelations, We shall expose them to the Fire. As often as their skins are consumed We shall exchange them for fresh skins that they may taste the torment. Lo! Allah is ever Mighty, Wise.” (Q 4:56) “For such, their habitation will be hell, and they will find no refuge therefrom” (Q 4:121) “Lo! the hypocrites (will be) in the lowest deep of the Fire, and thou wilt find no helper for them;” (Q 4:145) “Lo! those who disbelieve and deal in wrong, Allah will never forgive them, neither will He guide them unto a road, Except the road of hell, wherein they will abide for ever. And that is ever easy for Allah.” (Q 4:168-169) “They will wish to come forth from the Fire, but they will not come forth from it. Theirs will be a lasting doom.” (Q 5:37) “Theirs will be a bed of hell, and over them coverings (of hell). Thus do We requite wrong-doers.” (Q 7:41) “O ye who believe! Lo! many of the (Jewish) rabbis and the (Christian) monks devour the wealth of mankind wantonly and debar (men) from the way of Allah. They who hoard up gold and silver and spend it not in the way of Allah, unto them give tidings (O Muhammad) of a painful doom, On the day when it will (all) be heated in the fire of hell, and their foreheads and their flanks and their backs will be branded therewith (and it will be said unto them): Here is that which ye hoarded for yourselves. Now taste of what ye used to hoard.” (Q 9:35) “Know they not that whoso opposeth Allah and His messenger, his verily is fire of hell, to abide therein ? That is the extreme abasement.” (Q 9:63) “Hell is before him, and he is made to drink a festering water, Which he sippeth but can hardly swallow, and death cometh unto him from every side while yet he cannot die, and before him is a harsh doom.” (Q 14:16-17)
Even though I have left this religion but I get this nightmare that I am getting punishment for leaving the religion. I feel scared that what if I am wrong and end up burning in hellfire.
How to get rid of this fear so that I can live my life freely?
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Just be excellent to one another. No matter whether or not Marcus Aurelius actually said this, this quote helped me a lot when I was younger, emphasis on the first two lines:
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
A hard thing for me to do as I got so much negative experiences from people that I actually want to transition into the most bad person I ever can.
You don’t need to help every single person. One day you will meet someone having trouble with something that will be easy for you to help with and they will want your help. You don’t need to help by putting yourself into a difficult situation.
Look man, I’ve already been dead once and have nothing to report so maybe that helps.
So how are you alive again?
Luck that my family noticed and directly kept my blood pumping until the ER resuscitated me.
I wasn’t quite brought up to the same extent, but fear of hell was a big one for us too. It still bothers me occasionally, if I’m honest, and probably always will. A thorn in the mind that was embedded as a child that I’m still trying to dislodge. (And another reason I never wanted my kids to be raised in the church.)
Here’s the thing that comforts and challenges me, beyond the Marcus Aurelius quote that had already been posted— How do you know it’s the Christian God waiting for you? What if it’s Odin? Anubis? Zeus? Allah? What if you end up in Valhalla? Why do you fear being bad for Jesus and not Santa Claus? Just be a good person. I’d rather be evaluated for my own successes and failures than get in just because I’m friends with the homeowner’s kid.
Finally, if you have the opportunity and ability to, I would also highly recommend watching The Good Place.
How did you get rid of your fear of the Greek Tartarus or the Norse Hel or etc… Same way.
I did not know them while growing up but this one had been hammered since I was born. I have left religion in 2025 so I think I am getting adjusted with this new way of life.
Then you have to ask yourself what you are really afraid of? You’re obviously not afraid of the concept. Otherwise you’d be just as scared of Naraka as Hell. You’re afraid of the psychological conditioning, or brainwashing. Which is a logical thing that can be understood.
Now I’m not qualified to suggest anything about overcoming psychological conditioning, however you know that the issue is that conditioning and not the fairy tale nonsense. No idea if that helps but hopefully it takes most of the fear out of the equation.
Hell isn’t real, neither is heaven. I died for a little bit and came back, if they hadn’t told me my heart stopped, I never would have known.
Me too, and same. No heaven, no hell, nothing.
And I went down the rabbit hole of NDE research for a while – it’s really interesting that for people who have NDE visions, they always match the person’s religion/culture. Like, non-Abrahamic believers who report NDEs don’t tend to have the classic Western heaven/hell experience. If it was real, wouldn’t everyone have the same experiences, rather than whatever matches their religious or cultural expectations? It’s not real.
I’d suggest finding a therapist who can help you.
Dude, I am going to level with you. You probably have OCD. This is a common struggle for people who have religious compulsions but have left their religion. It’s one of the nastier scars that a religious background can leave behind.
You. Are not. Crazy. You’re not crazy, you’re not a bad person, and above all, you are NOT going to hell.
Every therapist here is part time exorcist.
Look at this this way: burning in hell might be uncomfortable for a little while, but after a year or so it would probably start to get boring. After a thousand years you could presume that you might actually enjoy it. After a million years of being burned you wouldnt even notice it and would probably miss it.
major spoiler for The Good Place
This is one of the things in The Good Place, but from a perspective of heaven. If you could do everything you ever dreamed of without a care of ever dying or being hurt, how long would it take you to be bored? You really going to be entertained watching your favorite movie for literally the ten billionth time?
And after having a pitch fork poked in your ass for the billionth time you just be like whatever bro
That’s what religious people don’t understand: pleasure and pain are temporal concepts. Anything done to you long enough just becomes common reality . You can’t be “tortured “ for eternity because after a long enough time, it’s no longer torture just reality
Yup, that’s the idea.
In my religion, it is that the pain will only increase. Hadith literature regarding hell is more graphic than I showed here.
It may help if you realize that “God” is unknowable and that there are as many possible scenarios where following that religion gets you punished as there are where not following that religion gets you punished
I think Christianity is a good example. They have the concept of hell too but I never felt afraid of that cuz I was never raised with that religion and I have never seen Christians preaching where I live that I will be doomed in hell for not believing in Jesus being Lord and that he died for my sins. According to my previous religion, they will be the ones doomed to hellfire (if they come to know “the truth” but did not leave their religion) and I am sure those who were raised Christian never feared from this hell.
A couple of things that might help, although this fear is probably deeply ingrained:
“Why should I fear death? If I am, then death is not. If Death is, then I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not? Long time men lay oppressed with slavish fear. Religious tyranny did domineer. At length the mighty one of Greece Began to assent the liberty of man.”
- Epicurus
If there’s a God and they created such suffering, they would not be a God.
“God," says Epicurus, "either wants to remove evils, but cannot; or he can, but does not want to; or he does not want to and cannot; or he wants to and can. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent; which is inadmissible in God. If he can, but does not want to, he is envious; which is also alien to God. If he does not want to and cannot, then he is envious and impotent; and this too cannot be attributed to God. If he wants to and can, which alone is proper to God, then where do evils come from? Or why does he not remove them? — Lactantius, On the Wrath of God
first of all, im sorry for the nightmares. it is insanely hard to get rid of dreams like those. unfourtunately im not a professional, but you need to go through a few questions.
- why did you leave this behind? was it the rules or the community?
- how much does the main ruleset change your daily life? are you having sex with your best friends’ wife? are you killing people? ofc you dont. this is an old rulebook, and this was a solution to keep everyone in the line. not gonna lie, it was a smart move.
- imagine sitting in the fire. all of your skin burns off. then some guy comes over, apologises, and gives you a new skin just to burn those off as well. do you find this realistic?
I think education and cogitative behavioral therapy techniques can be put to good use to retrain either inherited or indoctrinated intuitions & religious trauma
Fear is used to manipulate and control people. Personally I think the idea of a loving god cannot be reconciled with the idea of one that tortures people in Hell. He’s supposed to be our father after all. Would you torture your own children?
when you die you decay into worm food, then worm shit. That’s it.
i dont know. i wonder similar things. in that my first wife, who i miss so dearly, died 14 years ago. she was catholic. i keep thinking to myself, i miss her so much that i hope it’s all true so i could see her again. sort of like a pascal’s wager of sort.
sigh. anyway. you got this.
damn but at least you met her. Don’t be sad that it is no more, be glad that it happened.
Fear is non-specific first, and specific second. The way you treat specific fear is with non-specific interventions. When you feel the fear, breathe. Inhale for a count of four, hold for a count of 2, and exhale for a count of 6 or 8. Do that a few times until your body calms down. Treat the fear as fear first.
Then, treat the belief. Repeat something like “Even though I am afraid of <x>, I am safe here and now”. Over a period of weeks this helps your body stop responding with fear to your mind’s habitual beliefs.
Then treat the meta-belief. Recognize that the people who raised you - not just your parents but literally every relative, imam, community member, teacher, etc - they all lied to you for the explicit purpose of getting you to adopt a nervous system response that would torture you into compliant behaviors. They literally turned your own body against you, and they did it on purpose. “Spare the rod, spoil the child” is not merely an excuse to hit children, it’s an explicit acknowledgement that by beating children you permanently change their brain to betray them and flood them with anxiety and fear even just for having private thoughts.
Once you have treated the physiological fear and started to address the cognitive fear, anger can help bring you clarity. From that clarity you can then move on to acceptance and forgiveness on your own terms.
Luckily I never get beaten but yeah I agree
A lot of commenters are saying something like “if you don’t believe then you have nothing to fear” and are entirely missing the point that it has been engrained into you and isn’t a simple matter of intellectual belief.
Recognize that the people who raised you - not just your parents but literally every relative, imam, community member, teacher, etc - they all lied to you for the explicit purpose of getting you to adopt a nervous system response that would torture you into compliant behaviors. They literally turned your own body against you, and they did it on purpose.
The person I quoted is overstating it the intentionality of people but more importantly: I think emphasising this is counter productive. It’s likely to replace your fear with bitterness. I think you will have more success if you can forgive them for doing this to you. They were well meaning but misguided and you are doing something brave by breaking the cycle. Practising the religion doesn’t actually remove the fears, but by leaving the religion you’ll be helping to stop this trauma from being propagated. You probably do have to recognise the harm that the commenter talks about before you can forgive the people that did it.
Forgiveness is probably better for you long term, but will take more work.
I will not forgive them for the way they try to suppress my questions. Even from my initial questioning, everyone treated me like an outcast just cuz I left their interpretation of religion. Some days ago, my dad said that too much knowledge is bad and we should not be too knowledgeable. The misogynist, hyper-conservative, toxic parents they are. If I could do, I will piss on their graves. And for imams, they think they are hooligans. I have seen from my own eyes the terrorist organization recruiting for Jihad and how mosque welcome them. Another mosque’s Imam think that if you follow his interpretation, it does not matter how much you sin. You are not blasphemer. If you leave their sect, you are blasphemer. They are the source of making people radical, committing pdfilia and trying to take place of what Catholic popes used to be before Protestant Reformation. I will not forgive anyone. I may not go as far as some people like Stalin went to suppress religion but the way they lied with me, tried to suppress me and my ego, trying to make me feel that I am mentally ill just because I feel attraction to boys too or that I don’t wanna marry, they don’t deserve forgiveness.
It seems like your parents are behaving the way your society has taught them to behave. I imagine they were subjected to similar forms of indoctrination as you were, but yeah maybe they crossed a line in their treatment of you it was just my two cents.
My only crime was that I became more religious than them in my early childhood out of my own devotion and I became a poster child for piety. It all starts to disappear when I left my sect first, then I start to listening music and being clean shaved.
That’s shitty man.
I’m lucky enough that most of the people that have mistreated me in my life haven’t been monsters, just people in a different position than me or maybe with different priorities. I found it much easier to forgive my middle school bullies for example when I considered that they were also vulnerable kids trying to fit in.
It’s unfortunate that the way they did that was by pushing me out and ostracising me (and hurting me) but it feels so much better to forgive them than it did to bitterly hold a grudge.
Your parents are probably also afraid of hell, and feeling guilt for having “failed you”. They probably get judged by their peers for not “raising you properly”. You should be proud of your commitment to escape this cycle of trauma. Maybe instead of resentment you could pity them. Or maybe you can be grateful that despite all the ways they mistreated you, they raised you in a way that allowed you to develop critical thinking skills and break the cycle of trauma.
Or not.
I don’t know your situation I’m just skeptical that holding onto resentment is going to give you good results, but I’m not a psychologist.
Some people don’t deserve kindness. I think I can at least hate them in my heart if I cannot take physical action against them
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/199VfjPJAa/ This woman talks about guilt specifically, but the message parallels with “fear of eternal hellfire or damnation”. You’ve been programmed, from infant hood, that hell exists and you’ll go there for not being a “good enough” Muslim, and it’s not going to be fixed instantly, it’ll take years to undo the programming you went through. Why do you think the religious fear college and even grade schools so much? Because the logic and knowledge that are passed along, as well as being exposed to a wide variety of people and cultures, prevents the religious programming they rely on. When the religious say that liberals are “indoctrinating” the children, it’s not that they are being indoctrinated, it’s that they Aren’t being indoctrinated by the religion, and are being exposed to things that make them question, and often turn away from, the indoctrination they received by the religious. The thing to remember about hell fire is that it doesn’t exist and any “god” who decided to torment you for eternity for not “loving it” the right way is a “god” that would find any reason to justify tormenting you for eternity no matter how you worshippedit, it’s an evil “god” to begin with.
