Help please!
Yesterday my mom noticed (at a funeral) that I wasn't praying or participating in the mass. She confronted me about it, and I told her that no, I am not Catholic. Apparently it's sinking in and she's a bit hysterical... crying and screaming that she doesn't know me anymore. What do I do? I don't know how to react/behave when she's doing this. It's like she wants me to feel like I'm doing something wrong, but it isn't working, so she's getting hysterical. *edit* I gave her a hug when she calmed down and told her I love her. That seemed to help, a little. Based on her previous behavior in situations where I've done something "wrong," she will (in the future) make barbs and slight passes at my beliefs. (Already she made one: insisting my love of science is causing my social anxiety disorder.) The advice given in the comments is really helpful. I plan on making the most of it.
I read HPMOR and thought "if this stuff (meaning rationality) actually works, it's powerful in a way that I haven't seen before." I remember thinking something like that at the time, but memory is fairly unreliable. I'll have to dig through old journals to see if I mentioned it anywhere.
The sequences also had the advantage of being written in an entertaining way. Beyond that, I'm not sure what makes me any different. I'd like to think I'm special or have some trait that makes me more prone to rationality, but that's purely self-serving. More likely it's luck-- reading it at the right time when I was in a headspace to absorb that kind of knowledge.