I just left Shincheonji, what happens next?
Not gonna lie, I feel like an full-fledged idiot for staying in Shincheonji so long. But also feel grateful because God me out of their bondage - when I didn't even know I was in it!
I don't think I would have ever left that place if I didn't see the posts from old Shincheonji members here! Keep posting, seriously. You're FREEING people.
STILL. I can't help but feel like I made the a terrible decision to leave, and I don't know who I am outside of NHNE and I kinda hate SSN and his followers right now.
For those of you who've been out centre - how did you heal? I feel distant from God and myself and my fake Shincheonji friends.
Help.
COMMENTS
#You made a great decision to escape from that cult. You can appreciate your time, focus and even your money, you have all the time in the world to pursue your dreams.
You give me a glimmer of hope I hope all the people I know in SCJ somehow find the courage and bravery to do what you did.
#Hello. Here former Shincheonji member for 5 years. Graduated from Apguyeong center in Seoul in 2014 and was enrolled, after 7 months of Bible study, in the Gwacheon branch of the church. My last official day there was on the 31st of December of 2018.
I know you might feel lost or that your friends were not really your friends. You might feel they just pretended, just to get you in, and then once in there, disappeared for the most part. You also might have not enjoyed the excruciating pain of being controlled until the point you had to write a report if you had to leave the country to visit your relatives. Or, that they forced you to act a certain way and commit to certain rules when you knew you were a human being, with human feelings, desires, aspirations, and ambitions. Because they brainwashed me into believing that you were a chosen, special one and that the rest of the world was not, I could not help but develop a very narrow and unconscious mentality about the world. The mentality that if they are not like you, they are no good. After I left, I still had that unconscious habit of framing people and take it too personal when they were not like me or had the things I had. Don't know if this is happening to you, but had to put it here. The only thing I can tell you is my experience, what I went through and the price I am still paying for being there for that long. Once I left Sincheonji I was really really really fed up with the way they were doing things and how they expected me to live my life. Right after that, I started feeling I was free like I had been released from prison and had time for MYSELF, to enjoy things I wanted to do. I felt I had to catch up for my stolen college years of partying and so on. The thing is that I was not in college anymore when I left, and the time to do that had passed. There is a time and a place to go crazy in life, to explore your sexuality, yourself, and so on. Mine had passed. Regardless, and unbeknownst to me, I felt like a had to catch up. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that in my opinion. However, I had to be wiser in the sense that even though I was making up for my college-youth years lost, I was already a graduate and had to care as well for other stuff, such as finding a job, working towards feeling more fulfilled, finding a career path, and so on. But no. It was only about living a life that was stolen from me. Now I am 26 years old. Haven't been to land a good job and haven't been able to maintain any relationship with a partner for too long. I was so preoccupied with not going to hell and follow the rules and be a good member, that I didn't pay attention to my emotions, and that despite being in Sincheonji, I was still a human being, with human responsibilities in a human world. You might feel in the future, depending on how old you are and to which degree you slacked off your world and human duties, that you must catch up for all the years and memories that never took form in reality. Please do it. You still must go through that. But never forget that the world never waited for you when you were in the church. It went on. My point is that you might have to start again, to reinvent yourself, and to fix things about your life you didn't pay attention. Don't be discouraged because you are not alone. Take the good and discard the bad from this experience.
#God bless you!!! I’m so happy you got out! When I got out I still had good connection with my family. I never cut that out as others. But if you did and also cut of other stuff. Then go and experience what NHNE stole from you. I had terrible confusion with the Bible. I couldn’t read it for a while, I had to breath. But I slowly came to understand it. I was in awe of God when I without a doubt learned that God is triune. There’s no way to come around it. Check out Sam Shamounian on the Trinity on YouTube. God bless you and stay strong, you will heal by repentance and by the Holy Spirit
#Don't blame yourself, people more intelligent than me and you are still in the cult, be grateful you're out (sorry if it sounds harsh). The thing is that extremely intelligent, caring and idealistic people are in cults, not even SCJ specifically.
Reconnect with your old pre-cult self. Follow your old passions hobbies, friends and family. I wouldn't advise to talk about your experience just yet, but only because you're still healing and conversations about your experience will get frustrating very soon, especially if the other part doesn't know anything about cults. For me rediscovering my love for sport is helping me overcome my destructive lack of motivation.
Inform yourself on cults, how do they work? How do they recruit people? How do they think? How do they control people, what is mind control? What are Cult-apologists? Knowing all these things will give you the possibility to explain what you have been through, you can SAVE people informing them on these things. Once you will be able to articulate what you have been through I would advise you to speak about your experience to your friends and family, conversations will probably still be a bit repetitive but at least now you'll probably feel less shameful and you'll be able to explain yourself.
Informing yourself is extremely important to heal here some resources
the (very christian) website regarding SCJ by an ex-member: https://www.shincheonjiaware.com/
An informative website on multiple different destructive cults created by the absolute madlad Steve Hassan https://freedomofmind.com/
Read his book "Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults, and Belief" one chapter is dedicated to healing after your cult experience. I would even advise to read Steve's other book "Combating cult mind control"
Checking out some atheistic perspective on religion will broaden your mind. I like genetically modified skeptic a lot he does a lot regarding cults, you can check him out on https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG1uayRlzz3ahT8ISRdyw7Q
Be strong, don't spread hate for others that are still members, be compassionate for them and see that they're wasting their life.
To see all the comments to this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Shincheonji/comments/i5pq76/i_just_left_shincheonji_what_happens_next/
