Chapter 6

The Giant Clamp

While trying to sort through everything and make sense of my reality I categorised and labelled various constructs and thoughts. I’ve already mentioned one such entity, Jim, in my previous blog post An angry young man – a way of compartmentalising the darker side of my psyche.

Another entity was the Giant Clamp.

I used to be very superstitious, understandably while growing up I was led to believe that God was behind everything, responsible for everything. Some things He supposedly controlled and micromanaged like the seven ages of the creation of Earth and some things He had just planted the seed and let it unfold like a fractal – events like the Big Bang, planetary weather systems, the rise and fall of nations (except Israel of course). But He had His hand in everything. Thus when I came across new experiences that I couldn’t explain my first assumption was that it was His doing.

For several years leading up to me leaving the cult I would experience these strange sensations whenever I wrote anything in my personal diary that questioned the church or God that felt like a crushing pressure on my body that made it very difficult to continue writing and would distract me. No doubt it slowed my progress in reasoning my way out of the cult.

Even once I left the cult I still experienced this as I continued to work through my recovery. In a diary entry as recent as 11 February 2009 I described the sensation as:

… this weird oppressive sensation like a massive G-clamp around my chest, squashing me.

My superstitious mind had me believe that this sensation was God expressing his displeasure at me questioning Him, for not having faith, not believing – and because of my paranoia I would often abandon whatever I was thinking or writing about at the time and rebuke myself for wavering in my faith.

In a much earlier diary entry on 20 August 2007:

I have that feeling again. That clamp, that coldness, oppressive presence – like a giant monster is looming behind me. I’ve said things I shouldn’t have; thought things I shouldn’t have. But I can’t help what I think or how I feel.

Experiencing the Clamp was terrifying. I stopped working on the first draft of my book last year in 2009 because of it. I would often be so scared afterwards believing I had annoyed God that I would be very apologetic and undo all the good work I had done in progressing towards leaving the cult.

Even though I suspected and hoped that the sensation was purely psychological it took quite some time before I could actually believe that. It didn’t help that this was all tied in with various phobias such as my fear of flying and fear of spiders – both which were grounded in a fear of God’s anger. In that same diary entry on 11 February 2009 I added:

I’m fairly certain that it’s just my own guilt or conscience …

I don’t experience the Clamp nowadays. I’ve managed to overcome that – which proves it wasn’t God hurting me or punishing me for being an unbeliever. It was all me, all in my head. I had been brought up to have the utmost reverence for God and fear of Hell that the Clamp was my mind reacting strongly against any thought that threatened the pedestal on which I held God or compromised my opportunity to enter in Heaven in the next life (thus condemning me to eternal torture in Hell).

Rationalising such a strong and frightening physical sensation to being the product of my own mind was hard – but considering it was the result of a strong and frightening fear of Hell and the wrath of God it balances out and finally I accepted the truth and could move on.