Dear Ramona:

You are welcome. You shared that his father was very religious, and that his father and other family members “scared him and instilled a lot of fear in him regarding those beliefs”- the fear that they instilled in him included the fear that if he does not follow those beliefs- they will reject him and cast him out of the family in this life.

I mention “in this life” because according to a few religions, such as Christianity and Islam, there is a physical place called hell where bad people will spend eternity after their deaths. But in a lot of homes, parents give their children hell while their children are very much alive, and therefore hell can exist mentally,  inside a child’s mind, and often that mental hell exists in a person’s mind for the rest of one’s life.

You wrote: “It’s like he was living in a box”- a box of mental hell perhaps, a box with walls of fear keeping him in, as in a trap he cannot break out of.

“He agrees that certain beliefs are crazy and he admitted the fear they instilled in him.. yet, he doesn’t seem to want to let go of it. He identifies himself with his religion. So it seems like he will never change as long as he holds on to this”- I think that it is very, very unlikely that he will change the beliefs that he was scared into believing as a child, fear that is holding him in that box, keeping him conflicted and angry.

anita