Stuff like “god damn”, “fucking hell”, etc. Anything that stems from religious sources. That includes fudged varieties like “jeez/geez” and “heck”.
And to clarify, this isn’t some attempt to avoid blasphemy or anything. I’m not particularly religious and would rather rewrite the neural pathways for those “defaults”, but haven’t been able to come up with satisfactory alternatives so far.
*To clarify further, I’m all good with most other curses (shit, fuck, ass, etc). I’m not trying to be inoffensive, just non-religious.
I’m sorry but although your objective is to rewire your neurons, in order to be understood by others with precision you would have to first change culture - and that takes a long, long time.
So in English you probably don’t have good substitutes that don’t sound religious outside of those you already mentioned and their varieties. I’d be asking a similar question to people who speak other languages, that can be fun to explore and see what other cultures use instead of “fucking hell” or “holy shit” if they have translatable expressions that don’t include anything religious.
That’s so fetch!
I’m not really too worried about being understood, just working on it for myself. And honestly, I think anything could be said in a certain way and be understood as a curse/outburst. Borrowing from different languages is a good idea, though!