Leaving a religion

continuing from the last entry "Sliding into a religion"

So how to get out.
Sometimes not so easy.

There are two ways:
-> The way to just leave and break contacts and simply be never seen again.
-> The way to kind of fade away nearly unnoticed

The second way is not possible in many cases. Because people will try to frighten the person who wants to leave. And don't think "if you wanna leave, just do it". It is not that easy.
You are in there. You totally have some weird dogma and rules in your head. And even if all those things are wrong in your opinion, you can't just rip those things off, that have been hammered into you for a long time.
So sometimes a person gets frightened, let's have a look at those scary things:

• "If you leave you can never come back!"
  Yes, this is frightning, because you made friends and don't wanna disappoint them. Also if you chose to leave now and find out that you were wrong you will have a problem.
• "If you want to leave you have to go now!"
  Yes this is frightning, because most likely you did not intend to leave NOW but organize some stuff so everything is ready to leave. Like finding an apartment and job in another city, get in contact with old friends and your family, etc.
• "You can't leave once you joined us. We are going to find you and bring you back!"
  Yes, you might have signed something, and they really might try to find you and bring you back. And once you are back, your life will be a mess. Noone will treat you like before because you became the black sheep.
• "You can't leave once you joined us. We are going to lock you up so you can't go!"
  Some really f***ed up organizations do that so you will just say that you have to think about it a bit longer and you WILL freaking leave without telling them a word!

I am sure there are more things they can say and scare the sh** out of you but the point is. They frighten you because by leaving you frighten them.
You have your reasons why you want to leave.
You have intern informations.
You might try to convince other members to leave.
You might try to get public to convince many people to never join in the first place
You are no longer paying into their pockets.
IF they do illegal things you might even go to the police with prove.

So what should you do in the case that you can't just fade away unnoticed?

1. You are not going to tell anyone that you intend to leave! Not even your "best friend".
2. If you have to fear the group once you left, your very fist destination will be a police station! You have to explain the situation and not make it sound less.
   
3. You are not going to pack many bags when you leave! Just take your passport if you have acces to it and the most important papers like drivers license, birth certificate, etc
4. Once you are out and you talked to the police (if that was nessesary) you are going to call people you trust, like old friends or your family or a church if you are religious...
   
5. If you have children, you are not going to tell them beforehand. You will just take them at some point, say you make a trip or something, and go. If you tell them before, they might tell it to someone, don't forget they might still be very brainwashed.
6. If you have a partner who does not want to leave, you will not tell him that you do. You can get in contact with him once you are out and safe.
   

This sounds a little dramatic but often enough it is that dramatic.
Of course noone will scare you that bad if you just leave catholic church or so. But well there are enough sick religious movements around that will get heavy on you.

So, no matter how bad they will act on you, once you decided to leave, you are going to do it. You will not care about hurting anyone and you will not look back. If you are not very sure you want to leave, don't, because that is a weakness they will use to get you back.
If you are sure, there is nothing that can hold you anymore.
If there are things you are in charge of, don't care about it. Don't try to get everything in order before you leave. That gives others signs and you might be observed (depending on what religious movement you are in)
They will deal with it when they see that no matter what they do, they can not get you back.