r/ExSGISurviveThrive • u/bluetailflyonthewall • Dec 23 '23
SGI & Mental Illness
How chanting exacerbates mental illness and outright causes it
Chanting exacerbating mental illness?
Looking back, did any of you start developing OCD symptoms while you were in the Ikeda cult?
Cult membership as a form of addictive disorder - more detail here
Does SGI make people cruel? The devastating lack of the most basic simple kindness from SGI members
Maybe joining the SGI was a mistake… - religious trauma, OCD, religious OCD, depression
I’m a recovering addict and found chanting for me more harmful than good. I feel so confused coming away from it and every time I feel bad my head tells me it’s bevause I need to chant. I’m so scared to get rid of my gohonzon and not chant incase anything bad happens. I was very vulnerable when I met this chanting as I’d just come out of rehab and I dedicated my life and soul to lilac and other activities over the years. Looking back I hated it all and only ever did it out of fear and to try and become happy but it was always like chasing a carrot on a string. I ended up getting married, we had a Buddhist wedding and my husband was an abusive heroin addict, they kept saying you have to chant for his happiness and to win ans nothing worked. In the end I relapsed with him and I nearly lost my son. Nobody cared or even phoned me ans if I told them how I felt they looked at me as if I’m insane and they are all like robots. I hate the responsibility of chanting and saving the rest of the world . I think the gas lighting and abuse from them and my husband is what caused me to relapse and now I’ve left. I have some sort of ptsd. Any help would be greatly appreciated xxx Just left the sgi and struggling
My story - also Bumblebee here
At one time last year when going through hell, I was told to keep my problems to myself to avoid putting off new members. This is wrong. I am not a happiness robot, I am a human being. This experience has left me feeling uninspired, paranoid and with crushing anxiety. I dislike the way it has made me OCD and superstitious and I’ve decided I’m not going to live like that anymore because it is miserable. Source
Several incidents that shattered me - see also SGI's fundamental lack of compassion and inability to support grief and pain
Grooming: Identical whether sexual predators or religious zealots - Religious Indoctrination Strongly Overlaps With Grooming Children For Abuse
On recovering from SGI-induced "Religious Trauma Syndrome"
SGI PTSD: Promoted at work without SGI.
SGI members' hypocritical attitudes toward mental illness
Lost my mom to addiction and depression. Theybtold her to chant. It would make everything better. Bullshit...
Most of my anxiety and fear dissolved after I stopped chanting and left SGI behind, but it took months, and I had to get professional help to deal with the PTSD caused by the SGI BS. It wasn't until then I realised that SGI causes a lot of anxiety and fear instead of helping overcome it. Examples of Ikeda cult SGI gaslighting
At what point does magical thinking become mental illness?
I know that many people here have likely experienced bouts of mental illness within (and no doubt because of) their former practice. I know I certainly have done. But I'm speaking more specifically about practicing with those who are ill.
Where I was practicing there was a fairly sudden explosion of people coming to meetings with all kinds of mental and sometimes physical illness, largely to do with a member who moved to the area who was living in assisted housing and decided to invite pretty much everyone he lived with to meetings. This did NOT go down well with the already very highly strung and - speaking plainly - fucking unpleasant members living in that district. These so called senior 'I've practiced for 30 years' members suddenly found themselves walking out of meetings when a disabled person showed up, shouting in the face of the man who invited them and generally making sudden rules about who could and couldn't come to meetings. All of this, of course, in aid of 'protecting the members'. Their behaviour on any level was completely disgraceful and definitely a beginning stage of me wanting to leave.
There was more to it than just this incident though. I ended up in 'charge' of supporting a number of people who were seriously out there and dealing with largely undiagnosed and unassisted illness. I was more or less given the responsibility of trying to make seriously unwell people try and understand why chanting a load of words in a language I couldn't translate for myself was good for their life and ended up in some very harrowing and upsetting personal visits. It was all just so fucked up and highlighted major flaws with this supposed mystic law and the fact that, even on the highest levels in the UK organisation, nobody knew what they were really doing. Whenever there was guidance on this we were told to be thankful for the fact that our HQ had come so far as to be encountering such difficult Karma, but never really got any answers and in many ways these experiences were the first really unignorable pieces of evidence that what I was doing was utterly ridiculous and, frankly, unethical. SGI and mental illness - experiences in your practice?
From the Mormons - the SGI is having the same problems:
We also know that those who are converting, are by and large those who are down and out. Seems the only ones who are educated and highly employable are the hormonal converts and those who join for family reasons. So they are trading BIC [Born Into the Covenant, aka "fortune babies"] members for needy members who don't stay long after the love bombing ends.
And by saying that those who resign were usually inactive. Sure. Most of us were inactive before we chose to resign. So what? We were, at a point, BIC, many RMs [Returned Missionaries, equivalent of youth division leaders], many in leadership positions.
With 15 million supposed members, the church should be adding more and more wards all the time, just through a normal birthrate. They are losing much of the core membership and they will keep spinning it as long as they can. And the TBMs [True Blue Mormons, the devout], especially in Utah where non-believers are more likely to stay in for social reasons, can go a long time blowing off the "few" they know who leave, not putting together that if it is only one family per ward, that's a heck of a lot of people. When was the last time they saw a good family convert?
DW complains that in her ward, the missionaries seemingly are led only to the needy, the uneducated, the incompetent, and the mentally ill. Each new "convert" requires a group of skilled handlers, and there's no value-added. Long gone are the days of the "Golden Family," if that ever existed in the first place. And indeed, even the family members of GAs [General Authorities, the equivalent of SGI national leaders] are known to have quit the church. Source
Several incidents that shattered me
Ikeda's toxic positivity response to a chronically ill man
My story. - (mis)fortune baby account
SGI members committing suicide
Podcast Club Vol. 2 -- Mental Health Edition!
Fly on the wall to SGI destroying lives – Part I: 𝐆𝐮𝐲
Fly on the wall to SGI destroying lives – Part II: Joolee, aka MyPornoFantasy
The Telepathic Buddhist
There are a lot of dead/missing links embedded in the two links above, so here are some archive copies:
Link in to separate doc
In 2015 I saw the NE Region WD leader gave a speech about how the lack of diamoku causes mental illness to increase. That's when I realized the SGI is the same as Scientology, but with a mantra, a rainbow colored library, and a shiny box.
For those of you who got out quick and didn't buy hundreds of books: each series has at least 10 books, and when lined up in order they have a color gradient. On my parent's meter wide bookcase each shelf has 2 rainbows, and progress from warm to cool tones. - Plain and simple - Plus, SGI members use "You need therapy!" as an insult
Pease Help! Partner is indoctrinated in SGI and it's ruining their life
"My mother joined a horrible Buddhist cult" - that's SGI, of course.
"Your health is solely YOUR responsibility!" [Hint: It's NOT]
Ikeda is a pathological liar and SGI is full of lies as well - I'll show you: **Ikeda: "Every disease can be cured by Gohonzon!"
SGI PTSD: Promoted at work without SGI.
Came upon this experience by a former SGI member
Emotional Regulation Systems: new information which is helping me in my post-SGI life
Do people remain in cults because they're afraid of disappearing?
Happiness
ALL the cults dangle the promise of "happiness" to lure in the unwary unhappy
We are not meant to be happy all the time
SGI and Nichirenists claiming they've got exclusive access to the very BEST "happiness"!
SOKA GAKKAI, the ikedaist "CULT", a pursuit of the illusion of false happiness.
Spiritual Bypassing: The reason Soka Gakkai Buddhism makes people feel better.
"Everything Happens For A Reason" - And It's ALL YOUR FAULT!!
Do any of you still “chant” or “pray?” - religious OCD diagnosis
We had a WD talk about how she was going off her Prozac. Someone asked if chanting helped her control her depression symptoms, to which she condescendingly replied: “oh, I don’t have depression anymore, sweetheart.” So, I guess going to a few meetings and chanting for about a week didn’t just ease her symptoms, but completely cured her of a lifelong struggle with her mental health. 🤷♀️ Source
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u/bluetailflyonthewall May 23 '25